View allAll Photos Tagged foreshadowing
Italian Landscape
West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 61
•Date: 1790
•Medium: Oil on Canvas
•Dimensions:
oOverall: 103.5 × 130.4 cm (40¾ × 51 5/16 in.)
oFramed: 122.2 × 146.7 × 6.9 cm (48⅛ × 57¾ × 2 11/16 in.)
•Credit Line: Paul Mellon Collection
•Accession Number: 1983.1.47
•Artists/Makers:
oArtist: Joseph Wright, British, 1734-1797
Overview
Wright’s artistic interests varied widely, ranging from portraiture and scientific topics in his early “candlelight” period to popular subjects, romantic history, literature, and landscapes in later years. This painting dates from the end of Wright’s career. It is a romantic and fantastic blend of his memories of Italy and the countryside of his native Derby.
In the foreground, a rustic figure sits by the side of a rock-strewn path; he is a small, lonely human presence in this broad and arresting view of nature. A path winds above him to the villas in the hills, while to the right the land gives way to a rolling meadow, a still lake, and a distant mountain. In the background great masses of earth rise dramatically, culminating in a long silhouette against the pale blue sky.
Wright’s unorthodox use of color in the cliffs has an expressionistic quality that seems to foreshadow the works of later artists. At a distance from the painting the sharp contrast between the colors emphasizes the geometry of the forms. Viewed closer, the forms begin to flatten out into abstract patterns. While Wright’s vision of nature is romantic in its use of light and color and in its pervasive nostalgic mood, it is also classical in its purity of line and form and in its controlled and balanced composition.
Inscription
•Lower Left: I Wright / Pinx / 1790
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.[1] A.J. Bentley, by 1831;[2] by descent to John Bentley, Esq. [1797-1879], Birch House, near Bolton, Lancashire, and Portland Place, London; his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71); purchased by F.B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Durlacher Brothers, London); sold 11 April 1960 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); sold 6 July 1960 to Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[3] gift 1983 to NGA.
[1]According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie’s, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned. (Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 2 vols., London, 1968: I:260.)
[2]He lent the painting to Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene--Convent of St. Cosimata.
[3]Stockbook no. 3055, Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.
Associated Names
•Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
•Bentley, A.J.
•Bentley, John
•F.B.
•Mellon, Paul, Mr.
•Mills, Mr.
•Nicolson, Benedict
Exhibition History
•1831—Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene - Convent of St. Cosimata.
•1963—Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222.
•1969—Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repro.
•1986—Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist
•1990—Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. 119, color repro.
•1993—Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting, 1750-1850, Denver Art Museum, 1993-1994, no. 22, repro.
•1999—An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.
Technical Summary
The canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Bibliography
•1968—Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light. 2 vols. London, 1968: 1:92, 260, no. 292; 2:pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” The Art Quarterly 34 (1971): 477, fig. 7.
•1985—European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 440, repro.
•1992—Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 350-352, repro. 351.
•1992—National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 153, repro.
•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 281, no. 228, color repro.
From British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries:
1983.1.47 (2922)
Italian Landscape
•1790
•Oil on Canvas, 103.5 × 130.4 (40¾ × 51⅜)
•Paul Mellon Collection
Inscriptions
•Signed and Dated at Lower Left: I Wright/Pinx/1790
Technical Notes
The canvas is plain woven ; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.1 A. J. Bentley by 1831 ; by descent to John Bentley [1797-1886], Birch House, near Manchester, and Portland Place, London (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71), bought by F. B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Thos. Agnew & Sons), London, from whom it was purchased August 1960 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
Exhibitions
Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English M asters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831,no. 145, as Italian Scene—Convent of St. Cosimata [sic]. Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222. Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repto. Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. H9,colorrepro.
This canvas has been known since at least 1831 as a view of the Convent of San Cosimato, but neither the buildings nor the setting are consistent with Wright’s identified views of this subject.2 Nicolson believed that the picture “must be an imaginary scene, half-English, half-Italian, where Roman villas have incongruously come to settle on the Derbyshire hills. “3 The topography does not suggest the configuration of any actual Italian landscape, and both the hill town and the motif of the seated figure in the foreground are reminiscent of the Gaspardesque. The scene seems to be a combination of memories of Italy and imaginary picturesque elements characteristic of Wright’s late style in landscape—broad, generalized, and frankly decorative. The highly personal treatment of color in the sunlit hills at the center—derived ultimately though it may be from those broad areas of contrasted color characteristic of, for example, the sides of Vesuvius when seen from a distance—has an almost abstract quality: Cummings has compared it to “a Warhol silk-screen.”4
A smaller version with the lighting from the right and differences in detail, notably in the foreground, belongs to the Blaffer Foundation in Houston.5 Butlin has argued that “the subtlety of the observation of the same landscape under different conditions of light surely betokens a real landscape observed by the artist in Italy.”6 However, this is not necessarily the case. Wright’s three views of the actual San Cosimato are admittedly of a real landscape, but they were painted, at the same period as the Washington and Blaffer pictures, under three different conditions of light, surely conditions imagined in the studio for variety’s sake by an artist whose main preoccupation was light.7
Notes
1.According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned (Nicolson 1968, I: 260).
2.Nicolson 1968, I : nos. 262-264; 2: pls. 257, 282, 283.
3.Nicolson 1968, I : 92.
4.Cummings 1971,477.
5.This picture was unknown to scholars before its appearance in an anonymous sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 19 July 1978, no. 87, repro.
6.Martin Butlin, Aspects of British Painting 1550-1800: From the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston, 1988), 116.
7.Egerton 1990, 191, has independently taken the same view.
References
•1968—Nicolson 1968, I : 92, 260, no. 292; 2: pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” AQ 34 (1971): 477, fig. I.
Italian Landscape
West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 61
•Date: 1790
•Medium: Oil on Canvas
•Dimensions:
oOverall: 103.5 × 130.4 cm (40¾ × 51 5/16 in.)
oFramed: 122.2 × 146.7 × 6.9 cm (48⅛ × 57¾ × 2 11/16 in.)
•Credit Line: Paul Mellon Collection
•Accession Number: 1983.1.47
•Artists/Makers:
oArtist: Joseph Wright, British, 1734-1797
Overview
Wright’s artistic interests varied widely, ranging from portraiture and scientific topics in his early “candlelight” period to popular subjects, romantic history, literature, and landscapes in later years. This painting dates from the end of Wright’s career. It is a romantic and fantastic blend of his memories of Italy and the countryside of his native Derby.
In the foreground, a rustic figure sits by the side of a rock-strewn path; he is a small, lonely human presence in this broad and arresting view of nature. A path winds above him to the villas in the hills, while to the right the land gives way to a rolling meadow, a still lake, and a distant mountain. In the background great masses of earth rise dramatically, culminating in a long silhouette against the pale blue sky.
Wright’s unorthodox use of color in the cliffs has an expressionistic quality that seems to foreshadow the works of later artists. At a distance from the painting the sharp contrast between the colors emphasizes the geometry of the forms. Viewed closer, the forms begin to flatten out into abstract patterns. While Wright’s vision of nature is romantic in its use of light and color and in its pervasive nostalgic mood, it is also classical in its purity of line and form and in its controlled and balanced composition.
Inscription
•Lower Left: I Wright / Pinx / 1790
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.[1] A.J. Bentley, by 1831;[2] by descent to John Bentley, Esq. [1797-1879], Birch House, near Bolton, Lancashire, and Portland Place, London; his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71); purchased by F.B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Durlacher Brothers, London); sold 11 April 1960 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); sold 6 July 1960 to Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[3] gift 1983 to NGA.
[1]According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie’s, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned. (Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 2 vols., London, 1968: I:260.)
[2]He lent the painting to Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene--Convent of St. Cosimata.
[3]Stockbook no. 3055, Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.
Associated Names
•Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
•Bentley, A.J.
•Bentley, John
•F.B.
•Mellon, Paul, Mr.
•Mills, Mr.
•Nicolson, Benedict
Exhibition History
•1831—Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene - Convent of St. Cosimata.
•1963—Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222.
•1969—Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repro.
•1986—Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist
•1990—Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. 119, color repro.
•1993—Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting, 1750-1850, Denver Art Museum, 1993-1994, no. 22, repro.
•1999—An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.
Technical Summary
The canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Bibliography
•1968—Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light. 2 vols. London, 1968: 1:92, 260, no. 292; 2:pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” The Art Quarterly 34 (1971): 477, fig. 7.
•1985—European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 440, repro.
•1992—Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 350-352, repro. 351.
•1992—National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 153, repro.
•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 281, no. 228, color repro.
From British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries:
1983.1.47 (2922)
Italian Landscape
•1790
•Oil on Canvas, 103.5 × 130.4 (40¾ × 51⅜)
•Paul Mellon Collection
Inscriptions
•Signed and Dated at Lower Left: I Wright/Pinx/1790
Technical Notes
The canvas is plain woven ; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.1 A. J. Bentley by 1831 ; by descent to John Bentley [1797-1886], Birch House, near Manchester, and Portland Place, London (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71), bought by F. B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Thos. Agnew & Sons), London, from whom it was purchased August 1960 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
Exhibitions
Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English M asters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831,no. 145, as Italian Scene—Convent of St. Cosimata [sic]. Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222. Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repto. Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. H9,colorrepro.
This canvas has been known since at least 1831 as a view of the Convent of San Cosimato, but neither the buildings nor the setting are consistent with Wright’s identified views of this subject.2 Nicolson believed that the picture “must be an imaginary scene, half-English, half-Italian, where Roman villas have incongruously come to settle on the Derbyshire hills. “3 The topography does not suggest the configuration of any actual Italian landscape, and both the hill town and the motif of the seated figure in the foreground are reminiscent of the Gaspardesque. The scene seems to be a combination of memories of Italy and imaginary picturesque elements characteristic of Wright’s late style in landscape—broad, generalized, and frankly decorative. The highly personal treatment of color in the sunlit hills at the center—derived ultimately though it may be from those broad areas of contrasted color characteristic of, for example, the sides of Vesuvius when seen from a distance—has an almost abstract quality: Cummings has compared it to “a Warhol silk-screen.”4
A smaller version with the lighting from the right and differences in detail, notably in the foreground, belongs to the Blaffer Foundation in Houston.5 Butlin has argued that “the subtlety of the observation of the same landscape under different conditions of light surely betokens a real landscape observed by the artist in Italy.”6 However, this is not necessarily the case. Wright’s three views of the actual San Cosimato are admittedly of a real landscape, but they were painted, at the same period as the Washington and Blaffer pictures, under three different conditions of light, surely conditions imagined in the studio for variety’s sake by an artist whose main preoccupation was light.7
Notes
1.According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned (Nicolson 1968, I: 260).
2.Nicolson 1968, I : nos. 262-264; 2: pls. 257, 282, 283.
3.Nicolson 1968, I : 92.
4.Cummings 1971,477.
5.This picture was unknown to scholars before its appearance in an anonymous sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 19 July 1978, no. 87, repro.
6.Martin Butlin, Aspects of British Painting 1550-1800: From the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston, 1988), 116.
7.Egerton 1990, 191, has independently taken the same view.
References
•1968—Nicolson 1968, I : 92, 260, no. 292; 2: pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” AQ 34 (1971): 477, fig. I.
Italian Landscape
West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 61
•Date: 1790
•Medium: Oil on Canvas
•Dimensions:
oOverall: 103.5 × 130.4 cm (40¾ × 51 5/16 in.)
oFramed: 122.2 × 146.7 × 6.9 cm (48⅛ × 57¾ × 2 11/16 in.)
•Credit Line: Paul Mellon Collection
•Accession Number: 1983.1.47
•Artists/Makers:
oArtist: Joseph Wright, British, 1734-1797
Overview
Wright’s artistic interests varied widely, ranging from portraiture and scientific topics in his early “candlelight” period to popular subjects, romantic history, literature, and landscapes in later years. This painting dates from the end of Wright’s career. It is a romantic and fantastic blend of his memories of Italy and the countryside of his native Derby.
In the foreground, a rustic figure sits by the side of a rock-strewn path; he is a small, lonely human presence in this broad and arresting view of nature. A path winds above him to the villas in the hills, while to the right the land gives way to a rolling meadow, a still lake, and a distant mountain. In the background great masses of earth rise dramatically, culminating in a long silhouette against the pale blue sky.
Wright’s unorthodox use of color in the cliffs has an expressionistic quality that seems to foreshadow the works of later artists. At a distance from the painting the sharp contrast between the colors emphasizes the geometry of the forms. Viewed closer, the forms begin to flatten out into abstract patterns. While Wright’s vision of nature is romantic in its use of light and color and in its pervasive nostalgic mood, it is also classical in its purity of line and form and in its controlled and balanced composition.
Inscription
•Lower Left: I Wright / Pinx / 1790
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.[1] A.J. Bentley, by 1831;[2] by descent to John Bentley, Esq. [1797-1879], Birch House, near Bolton, Lancashire, and Portland Place, London; his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71); purchased by F.B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Durlacher Brothers, London); sold 11 April 1960 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); sold 6 July 1960 to Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[3] gift 1983 to NGA.
[1]According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie’s, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned. (Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 2 vols., London, 1968: I:260.)
[2]He lent the painting to Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene--Convent of St. Cosimata.
[3]Stockbook no. 3055, Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.
Associated Names
•Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
•Bentley, A.J.
•Bentley, John
•F.B.
•Mellon, Paul, Mr.
•Mills, Mr.
•Nicolson, Benedict
Exhibition History
•1831—Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene - Convent of St. Cosimata.
•1963—Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222.
•1969—Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repro.
•1986—Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist
•1990—Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. 119, color repro.
•1993—Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting, 1750-1850, Denver Art Museum, 1993-1994, no. 22, repro.
•1999—An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.
Technical Summary
The canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Bibliography
•1968—Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light. 2 vols. London, 1968: 1:92, 260, no. 292; 2:pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” The Art Quarterly 34 (1971): 477, fig. 7.
•1985—European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 440, repro.
•1992—Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 350-352, repro. 351.
•1992—National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 153, repro.
•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 281, no. 228, color repro.
From British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries:
1983.1.47 (2922)
Italian Landscape
•1790
•Oil on Canvas, 103.5 × 130.4 (40¾ × 51⅜)
•Paul Mellon Collection
Inscriptions
•Signed and Dated at Lower Left: I Wright/Pinx/1790
Technical Notes
The canvas is plain woven ; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.1 A. J. Bentley by 1831 ; by descent to John Bentley [1797-1886], Birch House, near Manchester, and Portland Place, London (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71), bought by F. B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Thos. Agnew & Sons), London, from whom it was purchased August 1960 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
Exhibitions
Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English M asters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831,no. 145, as Italian Scene—Convent of St. Cosimata [sic]. Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222. Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repto. Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. H9,colorrepro.
This canvas has been known since at least 1831 as a view of the Convent of San Cosimato, but neither the buildings nor the setting are consistent with Wright’s identified views of this subject.2 Nicolson believed that the picture “must be an imaginary scene, half-English, half-Italian, where Roman villas have incongruously come to settle on the Derbyshire hills. “3 The topography does not suggest the configuration of any actual Italian landscape, and both the hill town and the motif of the seated figure in the foreground are reminiscent of the Gaspardesque. The scene seems to be a combination of memories of Italy and imaginary picturesque elements characteristic of Wright’s late style in landscape—broad, generalized, and frankly decorative. The highly personal treatment of color in the sunlit hills at the center—derived ultimately though it may be from those broad areas of contrasted color characteristic of, for example, the sides of Vesuvius when seen from a distance—has an almost abstract quality: Cummings has compared it to “a Warhol silk-screen.”4
A smaller version with the lighting from the right and differences in detail, notably in the foreground, belongs to the Blaffer Foundation in Houston.5 Butlin has argued that “the subtlety of the observation of the same landscape under different conditions of light surely betokens a real landscape observed by the artist in Italy.”6 However, this is not necessarily the case. Wright’s three views of the actual San Cosimato are admittedly of a real landscape, but they were painted, at the same period as the Washington and Blaffer pictures, under three different conditions of light, surely conditions imagined in the studio for variety’s sake by an artist whose main preoccupation was light.7
Notes
1.According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned (Nicolson 1968, I: 260).
2.Nicolson 1968, I : nos. 262-264; 2: pls. 257, 282, 283.
3.Nicolson 1968, I : 92.
4.Cummings 1971,477.
5.This picture was unknown to scholars before its appearance in an anonymous sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 19 July 1978, no. 87, repro.
6.Martin Butlin, Aspects of British Painting 1550-1800: From the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston, 1988), 116.
7.Egerton 1990, 191, has independently taken the same view.
References
•1968—Nicolson 1968, I : 92, 260, no. 292; 2: pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” AQ 34 (1971): 477, fig. I.
90 West Street (alternatively West Street Building) is a building in Lower Manhattan, New York City designed by architect Cass Gilbert and structural engineer Gunvald Aus for the West Street Improvement Corporation.[2] When completed in 1907, the building's Gothic styling and ornamentation served to emphasize its 23-story height, and foreshadowed Gilbert's later work on the Woolworth Building. Originally built as an office building, the main tenant was the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and the top floor was occupied by Garret's Restaurant, which advertised itself as the "world's highest restaurant".[3][4].
Located on West Street, between Cedar and Albany Streets, just south of the World Trade Center site, the building had a view to the Hudson River before Battery Park City was built on fill across West Street..
In 1998, the building's exterior was designated an architectural landmark by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 2006, it received a National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[5] Restoration of the lobby revealed some of Gilbert's original terra cotta work that had been covered over during an earlier modernization project. During this restoration, the copper roof was replaced and replacement gargoyles were added.[6] The building was converted into apartments and reopened on March 7, 2005.[7].
The building was severely damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed directly across the street. Scaffolding which had been erected on the facade for renovation work did nothing to stop the fiery debris from raining into the building and tearing a gash deep down its northern face.[4] Two office workers were killed when they were trapped in an elevator. The firestorm raged out of control for several days; the building, which had housed businesses including Hanover Capital, Frost & Sullivan, and IKON Office Solutions, was completely gutted. It is believed that 90 West's heavy building materials and extensive use of terra cotta inside and out helped serve as fireproofing and protected it from further damage and collapse, as opposed to the more modern skyscraper at 7 World Trade Center, which suffered similar damage and collapsed later that day
Okay, time to play the version of “Where’s Waldo” where instead of Waldo, you look for numbers inside white rectangles!
#1, Broadway & 44th Street: Our first attempted viewing spot.
#2, 7th Avenue & 45th Street: Planet Hollywood, where the bastards (technical term coined by Shobhit) would not allow us to use their bathroom.
#3, Broadway between 45th & 46th Streets: Mariott Hotel, where the guy at Planet Hollywood directed us to their public bathroom on the second floor; it was our last chance to use a bathroom for the next nine hours, reducing what otherwise would have been end-of-event bladder-induced agony to mere bladder-induced discomfort.
#4, corner of Broadway & 47th Street: Where we stood all afternoon and half the evening in eager anticipation for lots of confetti, one giant ball, and performances by the likes of Ke$ha, “NKOTBSB” (New Kids on the Block / Backstreet Boys, the used acronym for which makes my mind go dirty places), and . . . a wedding?? Yep. Some couple won a contest so they could be married at the intimate locale of Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
#5, 7th Avenue between 46th & 47th Streets: Location of the Droopy-Boobed Bear ad.
#6, 45th Street between Broadway & 7th Avenue: The main stage where the performers proved to the world their relative lack of talent, which was televised and screened from the top of…
#7: 43rd Street between 7th Avenue & Broadway: One Times Square, where organizers foreshadow the coming year by dropping the ball.
(2004/1928) The wrestlers' 2004 leap for joy was foreshadowed in the Cricket in 1928 by Bill Furlong. The wrestlers included current Pirates Head Coach Jack Decker (2nd from left).
Daniel Buren - Les Deux Plateaux
The Palais-Royal (French: [pa.lɛ ʁwa.jal]) is a former French royal palace located on Rue Saint-Honoré in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre. Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, it was built for Cardinal Richelieu from about 1633 to 1639 by architect Jacques Lemercier. Richelieu bequeathed it to Louis XIII, before Louis XIV gave it to his younger brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. As the succeeding Dukes of Orléans made such extensive alterations over the years, almost nothing remains of Lemercier's original design.
The Palais-Royal is now the seat of the Ministry of Culture, the Conseil d'État and the Constitutional Council. The central Palais-Royal Garden (Jardin du Palais-Royal) serves as a public park; its arcade houses shops.
History
Palais-Cardinal
Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, the palace was the personal residence of Cardinal Richelieu. The architect Jacques Lemercier began his design in 1629; Construction commenced in 1633 and was completed in 1639. The gardens were begun in 1629 by Jean Le Nôtre (father of André Le Nôtre), Simon Bouchard, and Pierre I Desgots, to a design created by Jacques Boyceau. Upon Richelieu's death in 1642 the palace became the property of the King and acquired the new name Palais-Royal.
After Louis XIII died the following year, it became the home of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria and her young sons Louis XIV and Philippe, duke of Anjou, along with her advisor Cardinal Mazarin.
From 1649, the palace was the residence of the exiled Henrietta Maria and Henrietta Anne Stuart, wife and daughter of the deposed King Charles I of England. The two had escaped England in the midst of the English Civil War and were sheltered by Henrietta Maria's nephew, King Louis XIV.
The Palais Brion, a separate section near the rue de Richelieu to the west of the Palais-Royal, was purchased by Louis XIV from the heirs of Cardinal Richelieu. Louis had it connected to the Palais-Royal. It was at the Palais Brion that Louis had his mistress Louise de La Vallière stay while his affair with Madame de Montespan was still an official secret.
Philippe I, Duke of Orléans
Henrietta Anne was married to Louis' younger brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans in the palace chapel on 31 March 1661. After their marriage, Louis XIV allowed his brother and wife to use the Palais-Royal as their main Paris residence. The following year the new duchess gave birth to a daughter, Marie Louise d'Orléans, inside the palace. She created the ornamental gardens of the palace, which were said to be among the most beautiful in Paris. Under the new ducal couple, the Palais-Royal would become the social center of the capital.
The palace was redecorated and new apartments were created for the Duchess's maids and staff. Several of the women who later came to be favourites to King Louis XIV were from her household: Louise de La Vallière, who gave birth there to two sons of the King, in 1663 and 1665; Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan, who supplanted Louise; and Angélique de Fontanges, who was in service to the second Duchess of Orléans.
The court gatherings at the Palais-Royal were famed all around the capital as well as all of France. It was at these parties that the crème de la crème of French society came to see and be seen. Guests included the main members of the royal family like the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria; Anne, Duchess of Montpensier, the Princes of Condé and of Conti. Philippe's favourites were also frequent visitors.
After Henrietta Anne died in 1670 the Duke took a second wife, the Princess Palatine, who preferred to live in the Château de Saint-Cloud. Saint-Cloud thus became the main residence of her eldest son and the heir to the House of Orléans, Philippe Charles d'Orléans known as the Duke of Chartres.
he Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture occupied the Palais Brion from 1661 to 1691 and shared it with the Académie Royale d'Architecture from 1672. The royal collection of antiquities was installed there under the care of the art critic and official court historian André Félibien, who was appointed in 1673.
About 1674 the Duke of Orléans had André Le Nôtre redesign the gardens of the Palais-Royal.
After the dismissal of Madame de Montespan and the arrival of her successor, Madame de Maintenon, who forbade any lavish entertainment at Versailles, the Palais-Royal was again a social highlight.
In 1692, on the occasion of the marriage of the duke of Chartres to Françoise Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Blois, a legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, the King deeded the Palais-Royal to his brother. The new couple did not occupy the northeast wing, where Anne of Austria had originally lived, but instead chose to reside in the Palais Brion. For the convenience of the bride, new apartments were built and furnished in the wing facing east on the rue de Richelieu.
It was at this time that Philippe commissioned a Grande Galerie along the rue de Richelieu for his famous Orleans Collection of paintings, which was easily accessible to the public. Designed by the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, it was constructed around 1698–1700 and painted with Virgilian subjects by Coypel. The cost of this reconstruction totaled about 400,000 livres. Hardouin-Mansart's assistant, François d'Orbay, prepared a general site plan, showing the Palais-Royal before these alterations were made.
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
When the Duke of Orléans died in 1701, his son became the head of the House of Orléans. The new Duke and Duchess of Orléans took up residence at the Palais-Royal. Two of their daughters, Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans, later the Duchess of Modena, and Louise Diane d'Orléans, later the Princess of Conti, were born there.
At the death of Louis XIV in 1715, his five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him. The Duke of Orléans became Regent for the young Louis XV, setting up the country's government at the Palais-Royal, while the young king lived at the nearby Tuileries Palace. The Palais-Royal housed the magnificent Orleans Collection of some 500 paintings, which was arranged for public viewing until it was sold abroad in 1791.
He commissioned Gilles-Marie Oppenord to redesign the apartments of the Duchess on the ground floor in 1716 and to decorate the Grand Appartement of the Palais Brion in the light and lively style Régence that foreshadowed the Rococo, as well as the Regent's more intimate petits appartements. Oppenord also made changes to the Grande Galerie of the Palais Brion and created a distinctive Salon d'Angle, which connected the Grand Appartement to the Grande Galerie along the rue de Richelieu (1719–20; visible on the 1739 Turgot map of Paris). All of this work was lost, when the Palais Brion was demolished in 1784 for the construction of the Salle Richelieu, now hosting the Comédie-Française.
Louis d'Orléans
After the Regency, the social life of the palace became much more subdued. Louis XV moved the court back to Versailles and Paris was again ignored. The same happened with the Palais-Royal. Louis d'Orléans succeeded his father as the new duke of Orléans in 1723. He and his son Louis Philippe lived at the other family residence in Saint-Cloud, which had been empty since the death of the Princess Palatine in 1722.
Claude Desgots redesigned the gardens of the Palais-Royal in 1729.
Louis Philippe I
In 1752 Louis Philippe I succeeded his father as the duke of Orléans. The Palais-Royal was soon the scene of the notorious debaucheries of Louise Henriette de Bourbon who had married to Louis Philippe in 1743. New apartments (located in what is now the northern section of the Rue-de-Valois wing) were added for her in the early 1750s by the architect Pierre Contant d'Ivry.[15] She died at the age of thirty-two in 1759. She was the mother of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, later known as Philippe Égalité. A few years after the death of Louise Henriette, her husband secretly married his mistress, the witty marquise de Montesson, and the couple lived at the Château de Sainte-Assise where he died in 1785. Just before his death, he completed the sale of the Château de Saint-Cloud to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Louis Philippe II
Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans was born at Saint-Cloud and later moved to the Palais-Royal and lived there with his wife, the wealthy Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon whom he had married in 1769. The duke controlled the Palais-Royal from 1780 onward. The couple's eldest son, Louis-Philippe III d'Orléans, was born there in 1773. Louis Philippe II succeeded his father as the head of the House of Orléans in 1785.
Theatres of the Palais-Royal
The Palais-Royal had contained one of the most important public theatres in Paris, in the east wing on the rue Saint-Honoré (on a site just to the west of what is now the rue de Valois).[16] It was built from 1637 to 1641 to designs by Lemercier and was initially known as the Great Hall of the Palais-Cardinal. This theatre was later used by the troupe of Molière beginning in 1660, by which time it had become known as the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. After Molière's death in 1673 the theatre was taken over by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who used it for his Académie Royale de Musique (the official name of the Paris Opera at that time).
The Opera's theatre was destroyed by fire in 1763, but was rebuilt to the designs of architect Pierre-Louis Moreau Desproux on a site slightly further to the east (where the rue de Valois is located today) and reopened in 1770. This second theatre continued to be used by the Opera until 1781, when it was also destroyed by fire, but this time it was not rebuilt. Moreau Desproux also designed the adjacent surviving entrance façades of the Palais-Royal.
At the request of Louis Philippe II two new theatres were constructed in the Palais-Royal complex shortly after the fire. Both of these new theatres were designed by Victor Louis, the architect who also designed the shopping galleries facing the garden (see below). The first theatre, which opened on 23 October 1784, was a small puppet theatre in the northwest corner of the gardens at the intersection of the Galerie de Montpensier and the Galerie de Beaujolais. Initially it was known as the Théâtre des Beaujolais, then as the Théâtre Montansier, after which Victor Louis enlarged it for the performance of plays and operas. Later, beginning with the political turmoil of the Revolution, this theatre was known by a variety of other names. It was converted to a café with shows in 1812, but reopened as a theatre in 1831, when it acquired the name Théâtre du Palais-Royal, by which it is still known today.
Louis Philippe II's second theatre was larger and located near the southwest corner of the complex, on the rue de Richelieu. He originally intended it for the Opera, but that company refused to move into it. Instead he offered it to the Théâtre des Variétés-Amusantes, formerly on the boulevard du Temple but since 1 January 1785 playing in a temporary theatre in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. This company changed its name to Théâtre du Palais-Royal on 15 December 1789, and later moved into the new theatre upon its completion, where they opened on 15 May 1790. On 25 April 1791 the anti-royalist faction of the Comédie-Française, led by Talma, left that company's theatre on the left bank (at that time known as the Théâtre de la Nation, but today as the Odéon), and joined the company on the rue de Richelieu, which promptly changed its name to Théâtre Français de la rue de Richelieu. With the founding of the French Republic in September 1792 the theatre's name was changed again, to Théâtre de la République. In 1799 the players of the split company reunited at the Palais-Royal, and the theatre officially became the Comédie-Française, also commonly known as the Théâtre-Français, names which it retains to this day.
Shopping arcades
Louis Philippe II also had Victor Louis build six-story apartment buildings with ground-floor colonnades facing the three sides of the palace garden between 1781 and 1784. On the outside of these wings three new streets were constructed in front of the houses that had formerly overlooked the garden: the rue de Montpensier on the west, rue de Beaujolais to the north, and rue de Valois on the east. He commercialised the new complex by letting out the area under the colonnades to retailers and service-providers and in 1784 the shopping and entertainment complex opened to the public. Over a decade or so, sections of the Palais were transformed into shopping arcades that became the centre of 18th-century Parisian economic and social life.
Though the main part of the palace (corps de logis) remained the private Orléans seat, the arcades surrounding its public gardens had 145 boutiques, cafés, salons, hair salons, bookshops, museums, and countless refreshment kiosks. These retail outlets sold luxury goods such as fine jewelry, furs, paintings and furniture to the wealthy elite. Stores were fitted with long glass windows which allowed the emerging middle-classes to window shop and indulge in fantasies. Thus, the Palais-Royal became one of the first of the new style of shopping arcades and became a popular venue for the wealthy to congregate, socialise and enjoy their leisure time. The redesigned palace complex became one of the most important marketplaces in Paris. It was frequented by the aristocracy, the middle classes, and the lower orders. It had a reputation as being a site of sophisticated conversation (revolving around the salons, cafés, and bookshops), shameless debauchery (it was a favorite haunt of local prostitutes), as well as a hotbed of Freemasonic activity.
Designed to attract the genteel middle class, the Palais-Royal sold luxury goods at relatively high prices. However, prices were never a deterrent, as these new arcades came to be the place to shop and to be seen. Arcades offered shoppers the promise of an enclosed space away from the chaos that characterised the noisy, dirty streets; a warm, dry space away from the elements; and a safe-haven where people could socialise and spend their leisure time. Promenading in the arcades became a popular eighteenth century pastime for the emerging middle classes.
From the 1780s to 1837, the palace was once again the centre of Parisian political and social intrigue and the site of the most popular cafés. The historic restaurant "Le Grand Véfour", which opened in 1784, is still there. In 1786, a noon cannon was set up by a philosophical amateur, set on the Paris meridian, in which the sun's noon rays, passing through a lens, lit the cannon's fuse. The noon cannon is still fired at the Palais-Royal, though most of the ladies for sale have disappeared, those who inspired the Abbé Delille's lines:
Dans ce jardin on ne rencontre
Ni prés, ni bois, ni fruits, ni fleurs.
Et si l'on y dérègle ses mœurs,
Au moins on y règle sa montre.
("In this garden one encounters neither meadows, nor woods, nor fruits, nor flowers. And, if one upsets one's morality, at least one may reset one's watch.")
The Cirque du Palais-Royal, constructed in the center of the garden, has been described as "a huge half-subterranean spectacle space of food, entertainments, boutiques, and gaming that ran the length of the park and was the talk of the capital." It was destroyed by fire on 15 December 1798.
Inspired by the souks of Arabia, the Galerie de Bois, a series of wooden shops linking the ends of the Palais-Royal and enclosing the south end of the garden, was first opened in 1786. For Parisians, who lived in the virtual absence of pavements, the streets were dangerous and dirty; the arcade was a welcome addition to the streetscape as it afforded a safe place where Parisians could window shop and socialise. Thus, the Palais-Royal began what architectural historian Bertrand Lemoine [fr] describes as "l’Ère des passages couverts" (the Arcade Era), which transformed European shopping habits between 1786 and 1935.
Palais de l'Égalité and the Revolution
During the revolutionary period, Philippe d'Orléans became known as Philippe Égalité and ruled at the Palais de l'Égalité, as it was known during the more radical phase of the Revolution] He had made himself popular in Paris when he opened the gardens of the palace to all Parisians. In one of the shops around the garden Charlotte Corday bought the knife she used to stab Jean-Paul Marat. Along the galeries, ladies of the night lingered, and smart gambling casinos were lodged in second-floor quarters.
The Marquis de Sade referred to the grounds in front of the palace in his Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795) as a place where progressive pamphlets were sold.
Upon the execution of the Duke, the palace's ownership lapsed to the state, whence it was called Palais du Tribunat. The Comédie-Française, the state theatre company, was reorganised by Napoleon in the décret de Moscou on 15 October 1812, which contains 87 articles.
Bourbon restoration to Second Empire
fter the Restoration of the Bourbons, at the Palais-Royal the young Alexandre Dumas obtained employment in the office of the powerful Duke of Orléans, who regained control of the palace during the Restoration.
The Duke had Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine draw up plans to complete work left unfinished by the Duke's father. Fontaine's most significant work included the western wing of the Cour d'Honneur, the Aile Montpensier, and with Charles Percier, what was probably the most famous of Paris's covered arcades, the Galerie d'Orléans, enclosing the Cour d'Honneur on its north side. Both were completed in 1830. The Galerie d'Orléans was demolished in the 1930s, but its flanking rows of columns still stand between the Cour d'Honneur and the Palais-Royal Garden.
Following the July Revolution of 1830 when the Duke of Orléans ascended the throne as Louis-Phillipe I, the palace remained the principal residence of the new monarch.
In the Revolution of 1848, a Paris mob attacked and looted the royal residence Palais-Royal, particularly the art collection of King Louis-Philippe. During the Second French Republic, the palace was briefly renamed the "Palais-National".
During the Second French Empire of Napoleon III, the Palais-Royal became home to the cadet branch of the Bonaparte family, represented by Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon III's cousin. A lavish dining room was constructed in the Second Empire style, and is now known as the Salle Napoleon of the Council of State.
During the final days of Paris Commune, on May 24, 1871, the palace, seen as a symbol of aristocracy, was set afire by the Communards, but suffered less damage than other government buildings. As a result, it became the temporary (and later permanent) home of several state institutions, including the Conseil d'Etat, or State Council.
The Palais-Royal today
Today, the Palais-Royal is the home of the Conseil d'État, the Constitutional Council, and the Ministry of Culture.
Gardens
The first garden of the Palais was planted by Cardinal Richelieu in 1629, where the Court of Honor is today. In 1633, Richelieu obtained authorisation to extend the garden northeast into the land occupied by the obsolete medieval city walls of Paris. He also received permission to sell forty-five building sites around the garden. The new garden site was 170 meters by 400 meters, making it the third largest garden in Paris, after the Tuileries Garden and Luxembourg Garden. The new garden featured long alleys shaded by trees, elaborate parterres and flower beds, a fountain in the centre, and a circular water basin at the north end. The master hydraulics engineer Jean-Baptiste Le Tellier designed the fountain, which, like the Louvre Palace, took its water from the La Samaritaine pump on the Seine.
The garden was redesigned several times, notably in 1674 by André Le Nôtre, and his nephew Claude Desgots in 1730. In 1817, under Charles X of France, the main water basin was enlarged to twenty-five meters in diameter, and the longitudinal parterres were remade in 1824. In 1992 the landscape gardener Mark Rudkin created new lawns and flower beds, termed "Salons of greenery", with seasonal flowers enclosed by grills covered with climbing plants. The garden was classified as a French historical monument in 1920, followed by the rest of the Palais-Royal in 1994.
A small cannon was installed in the middle of the bowling green at the north end of the garden in 1786. It fired a shot each day at noon, regulated by an ingenious mechanism that used a magnifying lens pointed at the sun's noontime position to light the match which fired the gunpowder. Between 1891 and 1911, the official noontime in France was defined by the cannon shot. It was stolen in 1998, but recovered and returned to its place in 2002.
The two major alleys of the gardens are named for two of the famous 20th-century residents of the neighbouring buildings, the writers Colette and Jean Cocteau.
(Wikipedia)
Les Deux Plateaux, more commonly known as the Colonnes de Buren, is an art installation created by the French artist Daniel Buren in 1985–1986. It is located in the inner courtyard (Cour d'Honneur) of the Palais Royal in Paris, France.
As described by the architectural writer Andrew Ayers, "Buren's work takes the form of a conceptual grid imposed on the courtyard, whose intersections are marked by candy-striped black-and-white columns of different heights poking up from the courtyard's floor like sticks of seaside rock. ... In one sense the installation can be read as an exploration of the perception and intellectual projection of space."[1]
The work replaced the courtyard's former parking lot and was designed to conceal ventilation shafts for an underground extension of the culture ministry's premises.[1] Some of the columns extend below courtyard level and are surrounded by pools of water into which passersby toss coins.
The project was the brainchild of the culture minister Jack Lang and elicited considerable controversy at the time. It was attacked for its cost and unsuitability to a historic landmark. Lang paid no attention to the orders of the Commission des Monuments Historiques, which objected to the plan. In retrospect Ayers has remarked: "Given the harmlessness of the result (deliberate — Buren wanted a monument that would not dominate), the fuss seems excessive, although the columns have proved not only expensive to install, but also to maintain."
(Wikipedia)
Das Palais Royal, früher Palais Cardinal, ist ein Pariser Stadtpalast im 1. Arrondissement, etwa 150 Meter nördlich des Louvre. Das Palais beherbergt heute in seinem Haupttrakt den Staatsrat (frz. Conseil d’État), im Westflügel die Comédie-Française und den Verfassungsrat (frz. Conseil constitutionnel) und im Ostflügel das Kulturministerium.
Geschichte
Es wurde in den Jahren 1627 bis 1629 von dem Architekten Jacques Le Mercier für den ersten Minister Ludwigs XIII., Kardinal Richelieu, gebaut, nach dessen Tod 1642 ging es in den Besitz der Krone über und nahm seinen heutigen Namen an. Nach Richelieu bewohnte die Königinmutter und Regentin Anna von Österreich das Palais mit ihren beiden minderjährigen Söhnen, Ludwig XIV. und Philippe d’Orléans.
Zur Zeit der Fronde, die in den Jahren 1648 bis 1653 in Paris und ganz Frankreich wütete, erlebte Ludwig XIV. eine Nacht im Palais Royal, die seine lange absolutistische Regentschaft stark prägen sollte. Nachdem Angehörige der Pariser Parlamente, der französischen Gerichtshöfe, im Jahre 1648 gegen königliche Verordnungen Mazarins und Annas von Österreich revoltierten, war die Regentin gezwungen, mit ihren beiden Söhnen, dem minderjährigen König Ludwig XIV. und dessen jüngerem Bruder Philippe, Herzog von Anjou, Paris zu verlassen und in das königliche Schloss nach Saint-Germain-en-Laye zu fliehen, um einer Gefangennahme durch die Frondeure zu entgehen.
Jedoch verlangten die politischen Unruhen bald zunehmend die Präsenz der königlichen Familie in der Hauptstadt Paris und so kehrte Anna von Österreich mit ihren Söhnen im Jahre 1651 nach Paris in das Palais Royal zurück. In der Nacht vom 9. auf den 10. Februar gelang es aufständischen Pariser Bürgern, durch die Kooperation königlicher Angestellter bis in das Schlafgemach des jungen Königs vorzudringen, um dessen Anwesenheit zu überprüfen. Der sich schlafend stellende Ludwig lag schutzlos ausgeliefert in seinem Bett, während die aufständischen Bürger an diesem vorübergingen. Die Mitglieder der königlichen Familie waren faktisch zu Gefangenen in ihrem belagerten Palais geworden. Obwohl dem jungen König in jener Nacht kein körperlicher Schaden zugefügt wurde, grub sich dieses Erlebnis im Pariser Palais Royal dennoch tief in sein Gedächtnis ein. Niemals wieder wollte er seinen Untertanen so macht- und schutzlos ausgeliefert sein, was aus späteren Aussagen Ludwigs XIV. und einigen innenpolitischen Maßnahmen hervorgeht. Auch die Tatsache, dass er das von ihm beauftragte Schloss in Versailles in den 1680er Jahren zu seinem festen Wohn- und Regierungssitz machte, geht zum Teil auf die früheren Pariser Erfahrungen zurück. Aufgrund seiner Lage außerhalb von Paris galt Schloss Versailles als eine besser zu verteidigende Anlage als die königlichen Schlösser und Palais im Pariser Zentrum.
Im Jahr 1636 wurde in einem Anbau das Palasttheater geöffnet. In den Jahren 1660 bis 1673 spielte dort die Schauspieltruppe von Molière. Nach seinem Tod diente das Gebäude bis zum Jahr 1763 als Ort für diverse Opernaufführungen, dann brannte es – am 6. April 1763 – komplett aus. Am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts wurde die Anlage wiederaufgebaut. Seit dem Jahr 1786 dient sie der Comédie-Française als Sitz.
Seit der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts residierten im Palais Royal die Mitglieder des Hauses Orléans, beginnend mit Philippe I., dem Bruder Ludwigs XIV., und seiner (zweiten) Gemahlin Liselotte von der Pfalz. Es folgten ihr Sohn, der Regent Philippe II., Louis Philippe I. und Louis-Philippe II. („Philippe Égalité“).
Am 8. Juni 1781 kam es zu einem weiteren Brand des Palais Royal. Es geriet der Opernsaal in Brand, weshalb die Pariser Oper erneut umziehen musste. In den Jahren 1781 bis 1784 ließ Philippe Égalité die Galerie de Bois bauen, ein gigantisches Immobilienprojekt, wobei rund um den Palastgarten drei riesige Galerieflügel mit etwa 60 Häusern mit Arkadengängen, Wohnungen, Läden, Gastronomiebetrieben und Vergnügungseinrichtungen errichtet wurden, die bis heute stehen. Hier konzentrierte sich bald das Nachtleben der Hauptstadt. Die Promenade auf der „Allée des Soupirs“ (Seufzerallee) war in ganz Europa berühmt, weil sich dort die schönsten Mädchen und Frauen aus allen Ständen prostituierten, auch Personen aus dem Hochadel wurden dort angetroffen. Da die Anlage dem Herzog von Orléans, einem entfernten Vetter des Königs, gehörte, hatte die Polizei keinen Zutritt. Dies ermöglichte eine gewisse Versammlungsfreiheit und so wurde das Palais zu einer Zentrale der Patriotischen Bewegung, darunter auch der Klub der Zweiundzwanzig. Am 13. Juli 1789 (nach einigen Quellen am 11. Juli oder 12. Juli) rief dort Camille Desmoulins zum bewaffneten Aufstand auf. Der Herzog selbst schloss sich der Revolution an (und nannte sich „Philippe Égalité“), als Mitglied des Nationalkonvents stimmte er sogar für die Hinrichtung seines Cousins, des Königs. Das verhinderte aber nicht, dass er selbst unter der Terrorherrschaft 1793 festgenommen und guillotiniert wurde.
Die einst berüchtigten Spielhallen wurden im Jahre 1838 geschlossen.
Zu den Bewohnern der Häuser am Jardin du Palais Royal gehörten unter anderem Colette, Jean Cocteau und Jean Marais.
Von 1829 bis 1831 wurde, nachdem die Galerie de Bois geschlossen wurde, eine neue Galerie im Palais Royal errichtet, die Galerie d’Orléans.
Bei den zahlreichen Brandstiftungen im Zuge der Pariser Kommune wurde unter anderem auch das Palais Royal teilweise in Brand gesteckt.
Im Ehrenhof (Cour d’Honneur) des Palais Royal befindet sich seit 1986 das begehbare Kunstwerk Les Deux Plateaux des französischen Installationskünstlers Daniel Buren.
Das Palais Royal im Film
Das Palais Royal dient in diversen Spielfilmen als Kulisse. Zu ihnen gehören:
Charade (1963) von Stanley Donen
Interview mit einem Vampir (1994) von Neil Jordan
Männer und Frauen – Eine Gebrauchsanweisung (1996) von Claude Lelouch
The Da Vinci Code – Sakrileg (2006) von Ron Howard
So ist Paris (2007) von Cédric Klapisch
Ca$h (2008) von Éric Besnard
Vorsicht Sehnsucht (2009) von Alain Resnais
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) von Christopher McQuarrie
(Wikipedia)
Der Jardin du Palais Royal ist eine große Parkanlage im 1. Arrondissement von Paris. Sie wurde 1633 angelegt und ist als Jardin remarquable ausgezeichnet.
Lage und Namensursprung
Der Park ist von vier arkadenartigen Galerien umgeben: Galerie de Montpensier im Westen, Galerie de Beaujolais im Norden, Galerie de Valois im Osten und Galerie du Jardin im Süden.
Geschichte
Der Garten wurde vom Kardinal Richelieu gewollt, um den Palais Royal zu schmücken und vom königlichen Gärtner, Pierre Desgotz, gestaltet. Palast und Garten wurden nach dem Tod des Kardinals Ludwig XIII. vermacht und die königliche Familie ließ sich dort nieder. Das heutige Aussehen mit Galerien und Alleen erhielt er durch Charles X.
Besonderheiten
Statuen
Zwischen 1900 und 1945 standen in dem Garten eine Vielzahl von Statuen, von denen heute nur noch zwei erhalten sind:
Martial Adolphe Thabard,
Le Charmeur de serpent (1875) und
Paul Le Moyne,
Le Pâtre et la chêvre (1830)
Le Charmeur de serpent, errichtet um 1830
Le Pâtre et la Chèvre, errichtet um 1830
Monument à Victor Hugo, Marmor von Auguste Rodin, errichtet 1909; steht heute im Musée Rodin
Statue de Camille Desmoulins, Bronze von Eugène-Jean Boverie, errichtet 1905; 1942 abgebaut und eingeschmolzen im Zusammenhang mit Mobilisation des métaux non ferreux
Am Eingang zum Garten Les Deux Plateaux oder Colonnes de Buren
Le petit canon
1785 erfand Sieur Rousseau, ein Ingenieur für mathematische Instrumente und Uhrmacher, der ein Geschäft in der Beaujolais-Galerie hatte, eine Kanonenuhr. Sie wurde 1786 auf Anordnung des Duc d’Orléans gegenüber von Rousseau Laden aufgestellt und auf den Meridian von Paris ausgerichtet. Dank einer Lupe entzündeten die Sonnenstrahlen einen Docht, der das Pulver in der Kanone sonnigen Tagen von Mai bis Oktober entzündete und somit zur Mittagszeit einen Knall auslöste. Dies diente dazu, die Uhren in Paris auf die genaue Zeit einzustellen. Auf dem Sockel stand der Spruch: Horas non numero nisi serenas (Nur die glücklichen Stunden zählen.) 1799 wurde sie weiter südlich (in die Nähe der Colonnes de Buren) verlegt, wo sie noch heute steht.
Ab 1816 oder 1826 war die Zeit, die vom Mittagsweiser am Palais Royal angezeigt wurde, nicht mehr die offizielle Zeit in Paris. Zu jener Zeit galt in der Tat die durchschnittliche Sommerzeit von Paris (die Zeit der Uhren) und ersetzte damit die Zeit, die an der Sonnenuhr abgelesen wurde. 1891 wird die mittlere Zeit des Medianwerts von Paris auf ganz Frankreich ausgedehnt. 1911 wird es verboten, sich nach der petit canon zu richten, denn Frankreich hat die GMT angenommen.
1990 wird die Kanone restauriert und beginnt wieder, mittags zu donnern. Doch damit muss sie wieder aufhören, wegen des Plan Vigipirate. Als sie 1998 gestohlen wird, wird eine Nachbildung aufgestellt. 2011 entscheidet das französische Kulturministerium, die ursprüngliche Funktion wieder herzustellen aber ohne die Auslösung per Sonnenstrahl. Jedoch gibt es einen Beauftragten, der jeden Mittwoch um 12 Uhr einen Schuss abgeben muss.
Weitere Besonderheiten
In dem Garten steht ein Wallace-Brunnen.
Am 15. Dezember 1934 wurde von der tschechoslowakischen Gemeinde in Frankreich eine Gedenktafel in der Galerie von Valois zum Andenken an die tschechoslowakischen Freiwilligen angebracht, die am 22. August 1914 „(um) an der Seite Frankreichs die Freiheit der Nationen (zu) verteidigen und die nationale Unabhängigkeit wieder (zu) erlangen“. Die Tafel soll daran erinnern, dass sich zwei tschechische Vereine in Paris, der Sokol von Paris und der Sozialistische Verein Rovnost, vor einem tschechischen Restaurant im Garten, wo sie ihre Versammlungen abhalten, in der Absicht zusammenkamen, Frankreich im Krieg zu helfen. Dies führte zur Verpflichtung von mehreren hundert Freiwilligen in der Fremdenlegion für die Dauer des Krieges.
Filme, die hier gedreht wurden
1963: Charade von Stanley Donen
2015: Le Grand Jeu von Nicolas Pariser
2018: Baron noir, TV-Serie
2018: Dix pour cent, TV-Serie
2018: Mission: Impossible – Fallout von Christopher McQuarrie
(Wikipedia)
Les Deux Plateaux, im Französischen bekannt als « colonnes de Buren », ist ein Kunstwerk des französischen Künstlers Daniel Buren[1], das mit Hilfe von Patrick Bouchain geschaffen wurde. Das Werk befindet sich vor dem Palais Royal von Paris, zu dem auch der Jardin du Palais Royal gehört, der seit 1920 als eines der historischen Denkmäler von Paris eingestuft ist. Das Palais ist Sitz des Kulturministers; im ihm befinden sich auch das Theater der Comédie-Française und der Conseil constitutionnel, das französische Verfassungsgericht.
Die Skulptur
Les Deux Plateaux ist ein Projekt aus dem Jahr 1985. Die Skulptur erstreckt sich über eine Fläche von 3000 Quadratmetern auf dem Haupthof des Palais Royal de Paris im ersten Bezirk. Bevor dieser Hof durch das Werk von Daniel Buren überbaut wurde, diente er als Parkplatz. Er entwarf dann ein bewusst urbanes Werk als Gegensatz zur Feierlichkeit des Ortes (Kultusministerium und Verfassungsrat), damit sich das Publikum frei darin bewegen und auf den Säulen herumklettern konnte.
Das Projekt soll zwei unterschiedliche Plateaus darstellen, auf denen eine Anordnung von 13 × 20 = 260 Säulen aus Marmor zu sehen ist. Die Höhe der Säulen ist stets 2,40 m, obwohl sie unterschiedlich weit aus dem Boden ragen. Diese Form der dem Auge „verborgenen Kunst“ war ein Faible des damaligen Präsidenten Mitterrand (s. u.). Sie sind aus Carrara-Marmor und schwarzem und weißem Marmor aus den Pyrenäen gefertigt, die als die edelsten Materialien in der Bildhauerei gelten. Die Säulenreihen sind in Anlehnung an die klassische Architektur des Quadrats ausgerichtet, sie sind im Schachbrettmuster angeordnet. Zu dem Kunstwerk gehören auch ein unterirdischer Brunnen und ein Lichtspiel.
Geschichte
Hintergrund
Das Werk wurde ursprünglich vom ehemaligen französischen Kulturminister Jack Lang in Auftrag gegeben, der den Ehrenhof des Palais Royal vergrößern wollte. Für Lang war es ein Ärgernis, dass die Sehenswürdigkeit Palais Royal im südlichen Bereich durch einen Parkplatz herabgewürdigt wurde. So kam er auf die Idee, diesen Parkplatz in ein Kunstwerk zu verwandeln. Das Projekt Les Deux Plateaux wurde dann 1985 vom damaligen französischen Staatspräsidenten François Mitterrand aus mehreren Vorschlägen ausgewählt. Daniel Burens Ziel bei dieser Arbeit war es, das Untergeschoss freizulegen und einen Kontrast zwischen Klassik und Moderne zu schaffen.
Polemik und Renovierung
Als das Projekt 1986 fertiggestellt wurde, kam es zu zahlreichen Kontroversen, vor allem in den Medien, mit fast 225 Artikeln in 45 französischsprachigen Zeitungen, insbesondere des Le Figaro. Daniel Buren sah sich mit vielen Initiativen konfrontiert, die sich gegen die Skulptur wehrten. Ihm wurde vorgeworfen, einen mythischen Ort degradieren zu wollen. Trotz zahlreicher Versuche, die Arbeiten zu stoppen, wurde das Werk schließlich am 30. Juli 1986 der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt, obwohl die juristischen Auseinandersetzungen erst Ende 1992 abgeschlossen waren. Er erhielt Petitionen von Anwohnern, Briefe, parlamentarische Anfragen, Graffiti und Beleidigungen an Bauzäunen.
Nachdem zahlreiche Schäden – unter anderem auch durch Budgetkürzungen und mangelhafte Bauausführung bedingt – aufgetreten waren, wurde das Werk 2008 renoviert. Die Kosten für die Restaurierung werden auf 3,2 Millionen Euro allein für die Säulen geschätzt.
Im Zuge der Renovierungsarbeiten wurde das Werk mit einer neuen farbigen Bauwand versehen um die Baustelle zu schützen und damit die Besucher das Geschehen im Inneren verfolgen können.
(Wikipedia)
The photographs in my Weed Flower Micro sets may appear to be close-ups of regular-sized flowers – they are not!
These are micro (macro) photographs of tiny little flowers which bloom on ordinary weeds found in my lawn.
How tiny? The largest weed flower in the set is only, when measured across its widest part from petal tip to petal tip, 3/4" in diameter (19mm)!
Some of these miniscule flowers are so small that the entire blossom you are looking at is 1/4" in diameter (6mm)…or smaller. Again, that’s measuring from petal tip to petal tip across the widest part of the bloom.
The smallest part of a weed flower that I have managed to successfully shoot and achieve good detail in is a photo I made of a bud that measured LESS than 1/32" in diameter (0.7mm) across its widest part!
For relative size references I have included a photo of certain flowers and buds next to the head of an ordinary paper match, which dwarfs the blooms and buds.
It’s delightful to discover the beauty, complexity, and variety in something so small that it’s easily ignored, taken for granted, dismissed as a pest, or just downright difficult to see with the naked eye.
And it’s an even greater delight to realize that this incredible beauty has been growing wild in my lawn, year after year, right under my un-seeing eyes as I’ve repeatedly mown them down with my lawn mower, never realizing the unseen beauty that I was trampling under my feet.
It’s the most challenging form of photography that I pursue, but I have a lot of fun making these photos for us to look at; I hope you enjoy viewing these as much as I do.
.
My photographs and videos and any derivative works are my private property and are copyright © by me, John Russell (aka “Zoom Lens”) and ALL my rights, including my exclusive rights, are reserved. ANY use without my permission in writing is forbidden by law.
www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/24/covid-19-cases-are-rising-...
COVID-19 cases are rising sharply again — should we worry?
Omicron subvariants BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 now 93% of cases
Here we go again?
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising once again across the country, driven by more contagious sub-variants of the virus and leaving health experts unsure whether vaccination and immunity from prior infection will be protective enough to prevent yet another deadly wave of infections.
Nearly a third of the country is now registering substantial or high levels of COVID transmission in the last seven days, including most Bay Area counties at the high level, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But now, more than two years into the pandemic, what exactly does that mean in terms of serious illness?
Hospitalizations from COVID are up over 30% in the last two weeks in New York State, said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist and Editor-at-Large for Public Health at Kaiser Health News. “The situation in the Northeast may foreshadow what’s to come in the Bay Area.”
Death rates mostly have yet to increase, but in earlier waves, they tended to follow the trend in hospitalizations.
The rising numbers follow a relatively short reprieve from this winter’s nationwide surge propelled by the highly contagious omicron variant. Omicron began spreading in December, with infections peaking a month later and then dropping sharply through February and March.
Nationally, average daily cases are up more than 70% since the end of March, though they remain far below the omicron and delta peaks, and the decline in hospitalization rates appears to be reversing. In California, average daily cases have gone up by more than 50% since the end of March.
The rebound comes just as U.S. officials dropped the mask mandate for public transportation after a judge in Florida said it exceeded their authority — with people from all over now crowding unmasked into planes, buses, subways and rail cars. Though the federal government is appealing the judge’s ruling, airlines and many transit operators indicated the mask mandate isn’t likely to return soon.
New CDC data Thursday showed that the highly transmissible omicron variant that dominated in January has given way to its more contagious cousin, BA.2, which now accounts for three out of four cases across the country. And BA.2 is yielding to an even faster-spreading sister, BA.2.12.1, now one in five cases.
Wastewater surveillance nationally and in the Bay Area tells a similar story, with two-thirds of wastewater sites across the country reporting increases in virus levels.
Experts are watching warily.
The CDC refocused its community-level assessment in February to prioritize how the virus is affecting local hospital capacity over case levels. That new measure shows 94% of U.S. counties still at the green low level.
But even that has changed over the past week for New York, where many counties are listed at the red high level at which the CDC recommends wearing masks in public indoors. Deaths in the Empire State also have begun to tick up, although the rate remains low.
Though the BA.2 omicron subvariant drove sharp increases in cases and hospitalizations in Europe and Asia, health experts remain unsure to what extent that will happen here in the U.S., where two-thirds of Americans have been vaccinated, 45% of those had a booster and many have recovered from recent COVID-19 infection.
In a presentation this past week to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, county Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said BA.2 is driving “what’s looking like now the beginning of a swell — we certainly hope that it doesn’t take off.”
But Cody added that “it looks like we have a pretty good immunity wall here in our county and in the Bay Area, both in vaccinations and through all the infections from omicron that just ripped through populations.”
“I think that’s why this new BA.2, even though it’s more infectious, was not able to gain a foothold the way that omicron was,” Cody said. But she cautioned that “we should be nothing if not humble two years in. … We just have to do what we always do and watch the trends carefully and see what unfolds.”
Ali H. Mokdad of the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, which publishes closely monitored COVID-19 projections, said the latest earlier this month foresees a jump in cases that will peak in less than a month.
“We project that we’ll have a bump in cases, but it will be short-lived,” said Mokdad, who formerly worked for the CDC. But he said that with newer mutations of the virus already emerging overseas, it’s no time to be cavalier about the virus and the U.S. should bolster efforts to monitor cases and make treatments available.
“COVID-19 is not done with us,” Mokdad said. “It’s just waiting for us to make a mistake.”
Gounder said “it’s too early to say how worried people should be about the BA.2 and BA2.12.1 variants.” Whether rising infections will progress to severe disease, hospitalization and death, she said, will depend on vaccination rates, particularly among the elderly and other vulnerable populations.
Dr. John Swartzberg, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, noted that while BA.2.12.1 is more transmissible than even BA.2, it does not appear to be more virulent. Even so, he said it’s not a good time for travelers and commuters to be ditching masks on planes, buses and rail cars. Los Angeles County health officials decided to maintain the requirement for local airports and public transit.
“Withdrawing a valuable nonpharmaceutical tool in the face of rising numbers of infections where nobody knows whether it’s going to be just a blip or something profound just seems completely inappropriate,” Swartzberg said.
Cody noted to the county board that “with each generation, the virus seems to become more infectious,” and that even if it’s not more virulent, that can lead to more hospitalization and deaths. A Bay Area News Group analysis found that the more contagious omicron variant killed more Californians at its peak than last summer’s virulent delta variant, including more who were vaccinated and boosted.
“That infectiousness is what’s driving the case rates,” Cody said. “And so even if on an individual level, you’re less likely to have severe disease, on a population level, that can overwhelm a hospital, just because of the sheer number of people getting sick. A small proportion of a large number can still be a large number. And that’s what we saw with our omicron surge.”
scitechdaily.com/covid-19-third-dose-vaccine-protection-a...
COVID-19 Third Dose Vaccine Protection Against Hospitalization Wanes After 3 Months
Kaiser Permanente finds the Pfizer COVID-19 third dose vaccine protection against hospitalization from omicron wanes after 3 months.
A research study released on April 22, 2022, in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine shows that a booster dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine provides strong protection, roughly 80% to 90%, in the first few months against hospital admissions and emergency department visits caused by the delta and omicron variants of COVID-19. However, this protection against omicron deteriorates over time – even after a third vaccine dose.
“Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 booster doses significantly improve protection against omicron, although that protection seems to wane after 3 months against emergency room visits, and even for hospitalization,” said the study’s lead author, Sara Y. Tartof, PhD, an epidemiologist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation and a faculty member of the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, both in Pasadena. “Trends in waning against delta-related outcomes were generally similar to omicron, but with higher effectiveness at each time point than those seen for omicron.”
The researchers examined 11,123 hospital admissions and emergency department visits that did not result in hospitalization for acute respiratory infection for this study. The researchers looked at Kaiser Permanente patient records in Southern California from December 1, 2021, to February 6, 2022, when both the delta and omicron variants were circulating in the population.
■ After 2 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against omicron was 41% against hospital admission and 31% against emergency department visits at 9 months.
■ After 3 doses, effectiveness against omicron-related hospitalization was 85% at less than 3 months but fell to 55% at 3 months or longer.
■ Against emergency department visits that did not result in hospitalization, vaccine effectiveness of 3 doses against omicron was 77% at less than 3 months but fell to 53% at 3 months or longer.
“Although the Pfizer COVID-19 protection levels against omicron after 3 doses are substantially higher than those seen after 2 doses, they are less than those observed for delta or other COVID-19 strains,” Tartof said. “Additional doses of current, adapted, or novel COVID-19 vaccines may be needed to maintain high levels of protection against subsequent waves of COVID-19 caused by omicron or future variants with similar potential to escape protection.”
Reference: “Durability of BNT162b2 vaccine against hospital and emergency department admissions due to the omicron and delta variants in a large health system in the USA: a test-negative case–control study” by Sara Y Tartof, PhD; Jeff M Slezak, MS; Laura Puzniak, PhD; Vennis Hong, MPH; Fagen Xie, PhD; Bradley K Ackerson, MD; Srinivas R Valluri, PhD; Luis Jodar, PhD and John M McLaughlin, PhD, 22 April 2022, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(22)00101-1
Italian Landscape
West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 61
•Date: 1790
•Medium: Oil on Canvas
•Dimensions:
oOverall: 103.5 × 130.4 cm (40¾ × 51 5/16 in.)
oFramed: 122.2 × 146.7 × 6.9 cm (48⅛ × 57¾ × 2 11/16 in.)
•Credit Line: Paul Mellon Collection
•Accession Number: 1983.1.47
•Artists/Makers:
oArtist: Joseph Wright, British, 1734-1797
Overview
Wright’s artistic interests varied widely, ranging from portraiture and scientific topics in his early “candlelight” period to popular subjects, romantic history, literature, and landscapes in later years. This painting dates from the end of Wright’s career. It is a romantic and fantastic blend of his memories of Italy and the countryside of his native Derby.
In the foreground, a rustic figure sits by the side of a rock-strewn path; he is a small, lonely human presence in this broad and arresting view of nature. A path winds above him to the villas in the hills, while to the right the land gives way to a rolling meadow, a still lake, and a distant mountain. In the background great masses of earth rise dramatically, culminating in a long silhouette against the pale blue sky.
Wright’s unorthodox use of color in the cliffs has an expressionistic quality that seems to foreshadow the works of later artists. At a distance from the painting the sharp contrast between the colors emphasizes the geometry of the forms. Viewed closer, the forms begin to flatten out into abstract patterns. While Wright’s vision of nature is romantic in its use of light and color and in its pervasive nostalgic mood, it is also classical in its purity of line and form and in its controlled and balanced composition.
Inscription
•Lower Left: I Wright / Pinx / 1790
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.[1] A.J. Bentley, by 1831;[2] by descent to John Bentley, Esq. [1797-1879], Birch House, near Bolton, Lancashire, and Portland Place, London; his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71); purchased by F.B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Durlacher Brothers, London); sold 11 April 1960 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); sold 6 July 1960 to Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[3] gift 1983 to NGA.
[1]According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie’s, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned. (Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 2 vols., London, 1968: I:260.)
[2]He lent the painting to Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene--Convent of St. Cosimata.
[3]Stockbook no. 3055, Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.
Associated Names
•Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
•Bentley, A.J.
•Bentley, John
•F.B.
•Mellon, Paul, Mr.
•Mills, Mr.
•Nicolson, Benedict
Exhibition History
•1831—Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene - Convent of St. Cosimata.
•1963—Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222.
•1969—Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repro.
•1986—Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist
•1990—Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. 119, color repro.
•1993—Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting, 1750-1850, Denver Art Museum, 1993-1994, no. 22, repro.
•1999—An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.
Technical Summary
The canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Bibliography
•1968—Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light. 2 vols. London, 1968: 1:92, 260, no. 292; 2:pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” The Art Quarterly 34 (1971): 477, fig. 7.
•1985—European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 440, repro.
•1992—Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 350-352, repro. 351.
•1992—National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 153, repro.
•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 281, no. 228, color repro.
From British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries:
1983.1.47 (2922)
Italian Landscape
•1790
•Oil on Canvas, 103.5 × 130.4 (40¾ × 51⅜)
•Paul Mellon Collection
Inscriptions
•Signed and Dated at Lower Left: I Wright/Pinx/1790
Technical Notes
The canvas is plain woven ; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.1 A. J. Bentley by 1831 ; by descent to John Bentley [1797-1886], Birch House, near Manchester, and Portland Place, London (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71), bought by F. B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Thos. Agnew & Sons), London, from whom it was purchased August 1960 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
Exhibitions
Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English M asters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831,no. 145, as Italian Scene—Convent of St. Cosimata [sic]. Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222. Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repto. Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. H9,colorrepro.
This canvas has been known since at least 1831 as a view of the Convent of San Cosimato, but neither the buildings nor the setting are consistent with Wright’s identified views of this subject.2 Nicolson believed that the picture “must be an imaginary scene, half-English, half-Italian, where Roman villas have incongruously come to settle on the Derbyshire hills. “3 The topography does not suggest the configuration of any actual Italian landscape, and both the hill town and the motif of the seated figure in the foreground are reminiscent of the Gaspardesque. The scene seems to be a combination of memories of Italy and imaginary picturesque elements characteristic of Wright’s late style in landscape—broad, generalized, and frankly decorative. The highly personal treatment of color in the sunlit hills at the center—derived ultimately though it may be from those broad areas of contrasted color characteristic of, for example, the sides of Vesuvius when seen from a distance—has an almost abstract quality: Cummings has compared it to “a Warhol silk-screen.”4
A smaller version with the lighting from the right and differences in detail, notably in the foreground, belongs to the Blaffer Foundation in Houston.5 Butlin has argued that “the subtlety of the observation of the same landscape under different conditions of light surely betokens a real landscape observed by the artist in Italy.”6 However, this is not necessarily the case. Wright’s three views of the actual San Cosimato are admittedly of a real landscape, but they were painted, at the same period as the Washington and Blaffer pictures, under three different conditions of light, surely conditions imagined in the studio for variety’s sake by an artist whose main preoccupation was light.7
Notes
1.According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned (Nicolson 1968, I: 260).
2.Nicolson 1968, I : nos. 262-264; 2: pls. 257, 282, 283.
3.Nicolson 1968, I : 92.
4.Cummings 1971,477.
5.This picture was unknown to scholars before its appearance in an anonymous sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 19 July 1978, no. 87, repro.
6.Martin Butlin, Aspects of British Painting 1550-1800: From the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston, 1988), 116.
7.Egerton 1990, 191, has independently taken the same view.
References
•1968—Nicolson 1968, I : 92, 260, no. 292; 2: pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” AQ 34 (1971): 477, fig. I.
This is the last section of Victoria Harbour docks yet to have effect from its rebranding as Docklands. Foreshadowing future development, the current occupants of this waterside property are prolific and live in extensive multi-level residences -- these mounds of dirt are literally a rabbit warren.
The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, tr. Sobór Vasíliya Blazhénnogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, because it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.
The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.
As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.
Construction under Ivan IV
The site of the church had been, historically, a busy marketplace between the St. Frol's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat". One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation" for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars.
Contemporary commentators clearly identified the new building as Trinity Church, after its easternmost sanctuary; the status of "katholikon" (собор, sobor, large assembly church) had not been bestowed on it yet:
On the Trinity on the Moat in Moscow.
In the same year, through the will of czar and lord and grand prince Ivan began making the pledged church, as he promised for the capture of Kazan: Trinity and Intercession and seven sanctuaries, also called "on the moat". And the builder was Barma with company.
— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)
The identity of the architect is unknown. Tradition held that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik, the official Russian cultural heritage register lists "Barma and Postnik Yakovlev". Researchers proposed that both names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev or, alternatively, Ivan Yakovlevich Barma (Varfolomey). Legend held that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Many historians are convinced that it is a myth, as the architect later participated in the construction of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow as well as in building the walls and towers of the Kazan Kremlin. Postnik Yakovlev remained active at least throughout the 1560s. This myth likely originated with Jerome Horsey's account of Ivan III of Moscow having blinded the architect of the fortress of Ivangorod.
There is evidence that construction involved stonemasons from Pskov and German lands.
Architectural style
Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.
Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin,[5] emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.
The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.
Dmitry Shvidkovsky suggested that the "improbable" shapes of the Intercession Church and the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye manifested an emerging national renaissance, blending earlier Muscovite elements with the influence of Italian Renaissance. A large group of Italian architects and craftsmen continuously worked in Moscow in 1474–1539, as well as Greek refugees who arrived in the city after the fall of Constantinople. These two groups, according to Shvidkovsky, helped Moscow rulers in forging the doctrine of Third Rome, which in turn promoted assimilation of contemporary Greek and Italian culture. Shvidkovsky noted the resemblance of the cathedral's floorplan to Italian concepts by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Donato Bramante, but most likely Filarete's Trattato di architettura. Other Russian researchers noted a resemblance to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, although he could not have been known in Ivan's Moscow. Nikolay Brunov recognized the influence of these prototypes but not their significance; he suggested that mid-16th century Moscow already had local architects trained in Italian tradition, architectural drawing and perspective, and that this culture was lost during the Time of Troubles.
Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.
The 1983 academic edition of Monuments of Architecture in Moscow takes the middle ground: the church is, most likely, a product of the complex interaction of distinct Russian traditions of wooden and stone architecture, with some elements borrowed from the works of Italians in Moscow. Specifically, the style of brickwork in the vaults is Italian.
Layout
Instead of following the original ad hoc layout (seven churches around the central core), Ivan's architects opted for a more symmetrical floor plan with eight side churches around the core, producing "a thoroughly coherent, logical plan" despite the erroneous latter "notion of a structure devoid of restraint or reason" influenced by the memory of Ivan's irrational atrocities. The central core and the four larger churches placed on the four major compass points are octagonal; the four diagonally placed smaller churches are cuboid, although their shape is hardly visible through later additions. The larger churches stand on massive foundations, while the smaller ones were each placed on a raised platform as if hovering above ground.
Although the side churches are arranged in perfect symmetry, the cathedral as a whole is not. The larger central church was deliberately offset to the west from the geometric centre of the side churches, to accommodate its larger apse on the eastern side. As a result of this subtle calculated asymmetry, viewing from the north and the south presents a complex multi-axial shape, while the western façade, facing the Kremlin, appears properly symmetrical and monolithic. The latter perception is reinforced by the fortress-style machicolation and corbeled cornice of the western Church of Entry into Jerusalem, mirroring the real fortifications of the Kremlin.
Inside the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and vertical cylinders of the churches. Today the cathedral consists of nine individual chapels. The largest, central one, the Church of the Intercession, is 46 metres (151 ft) tall internally but has a floor area of only 64 square metres (690 sq ft). Nevertheless, it is wider and airier than the church in Kolomenskoye with its exceptionally thick walls. The corridors functioned as internal parvises; the western corridor, adorned with a unique flat caissoned ceiling, doubled as the narthex.
The detached belfry of the original Trinity Church stood southwest or south of the main structure. Late 16th- and early 17th-century plans depict a simple structure with three roof tents, most likely covered with sheet metal. No buildings of this type survive to date, although it was then common and used in all of the pass-through towers of Skorodom. August von Meyenberg's panorama (1661) presents a different building, with a cluster of small onion domes.
Structure
The foundations, as was traditional in medieval Moscow, were built of white stone, while the churches themselves were built of red brick (28 by 14 by 8 cm (11.0 by 5.5 by 3.1 in)), then a relatively new material (the first attested brick building in Moscow, the new Kremlin Wall, was started in 1485). Surveys of the structure show that the basement level is perfectly aligned, indicating use of professional drawing and measurement, but each subsequent level becomes less and less regular. Restorers who replaced parts of the brickwork in 1954–1955 discovered that the massive brick walls conceal an internal wooden frame running the entire height of the church. This frame, made of elaborately tied thin studs, was erected as a life-size spatial model of the future cathedral and was then gradually enclosed in solid masonry.
The builders, fascinated by the flexibility of the new technology, used red bricks as a decorative medium both inside and out, leaving as much brickwork open as possible; when location required the use of stone walls, it was decorated with a brickwork pattern painted over stucco. A major novelty introduced by the church was the use of strictly "architectural" means of exterior decoration. Sculpture and sacred symbols employed by earlier Russian architecture are completely missing; floral ornaments are a later addition. Instead, the church boasts a diversity of three-dimensional architectural elements executed in brick.
Colour
The church acquired its present-day vivid colours in several stages from the 1680s to 1848. Russian attitude towards colour in the 17th century changed in favour of bright colours; iconographic and mural art experienced an explosive growth in the number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original colour scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:
And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
— Revelation, 4:3–4 (KJV)
The 25 seats from the biblical reference are alluded to in the building's structure, with the addition of eight small onion domes around the central tent, four around the western side church and four elsewhere. This arrangement survived through most of the 17th century. The walls of the church mixed bare red brickwork or painted imitation of bricks with white ornaments, in roughly equal proportion. The domes, covered with tin, were uniformly gilded, creating an overall bright but fairly traditional combination of white, red and golden colours. Moderate use of green and blue ceramic inserts provided a touch of rainbow as prescribed by the Bible.
While historians agree on the colour of the 16th-century domes, their shape is disputed. Boris Eding wrote that they most likely were of the same onion shape as the present-day domes. However, both Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo churches have flattened hemispherical domes, and the same type could have been used by Barma and Postnik.
Development
1583–1596
The original Trinity Church burnt down in 1583 and was refitted by 1593. The ninth sanctuary, dedicated to Basil Fool for Christ (the 1460s–1552), was added in 1588 next to the north-eastern sanctuary of the Three Patriarchs. Another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, was buried on the church grounds in 1589; a sanctuary in his memory was established in 1672 inside the south-eastern arcade.
The vault of the Saint Basil Sanctuary serves as a reference point in evaluating the quality of Muscovite stonemasonry and engineering. As one of the first vaults of its type, it represents the average of engineering craft that peaked a decade later in the church of the Trinity in Khoroshovo (completed 1596). The craft was lost in the Time of Troubles; buildings from the first half of the 17th century lack the refinement of the late 16th century, compensating for poor construction skill with thicker walls and heavier vaults.
1680–1683
The second, and most significant, round of refitting and expansion took place in 1680–1683. The nine churches themselves retained their appearance, but additions to the ground-floor arcade and the first-floor platform were so profound that Nikolay Brunov rebuilt a composite church from an "old" building and an independent work that incorporated the "new" Trinity Church. What once was a group of nine independent churches on a common platform became a monolithic temple.
The formerly open ground-floor arcades were filled with brick walls; the new space housed altars from thirteen former wooden churches erected on the site of Ivan's executions in Red Square. Wooden shelters above the first-floor platform and stairs (the cause of frequent fires) were rebuilt in brick, creating the present-day wrap-around galleries with tented roofs above the porches and vestibules.
The old detached belfry was demolished; its square basement was reused for a new belltower. The tall single tented roof of this belltower, built in the vernacular style of the reign of Alexis I, significantly changed the appearance of the cathedral, adding a strong asymmetrical counterweight to the church itself. The effect is most pronounced on the southern and eastern facades (as viewed from Zaryadye), although the belltower is large enough to be seen from the west.
The first ornamental murals in the cathedral appeared in the same period, starting with floral ornaments inside the new galleries; the towers retained their original brickwork pattern. Finally, in 1683, the church was adorned with a tiled cornice in yellow and blue, featuring a written history of the church in Old Slavic typeface.
1737–1784
In 1737 the church was damaged by a massive fire and later restored by Ivan Michurin. The inscriptions made in 1683 were removed during the repairs of 1761–1784. The church received its first figurative murals inside the churches; all exterior and interior walls of the first two floors were covered with floral ornamentation. The belltower was connected with the church through a ground-floor annex; the last remaining open arches of the former ground-floor arcade were filled during the same period, erasing the last hint of what was once an open platform carrying the nine churches of Ivan's Jerusalem.
1800–1848
Paintings of Red Square by Fyodor Alekseyev, made in 1800–1802, show that by this time the church was enclosed in an apparently chaotic cluster of commercial buildings; rows of shops "transformed Red Square into an oblong and closed yard." In 1800 the space between the Kremlin wall and the church was still occupied by a moat that predated the church itself. The moat was filled in preparation for the coronation of Alexander I in 1801. The French troops who occupied Moscow in 1812 used the church for stables and looted anything worth taking. The church was spared by the Fire of Moscow (1812) that razed Kitai-gorod, and by the troops' failure to blow it up according to Napoleon's order. The interiors were repaired in 1813 and the exterior in 1816. Instead of replacing missing ceramic tiles of the main tent, the Church preferred to simply cover it with a tin roof.
The fate of the immediate environment of the church has been a subject of dispute between city planners since 1813. Scotsman William Hastie proposed clearing the space around all sides of the church and all the way down to the Moskva River; the official commission led by Fyodor Rostopchin and Mikhail Tsitsianov agreed to clear only the space between the church and Lobnoye Mesto. Hastie's plan could have radically transformed the city, but he lost to the opposition, whose plans were finally endorsed by Alexander I in December 1817 (the specific decision on clearing the rubble around the church was issued in 1816).
Nevertheless, actual redevelopment by Joseph Bove resulted in clearing the rubble and creating Vasilyevskaya (St. Basil's) Square between the church and Kremlin wall by shaving off the crest of the Kremlin Hill between the church and the Moskva River. Red Square was opened to the river, and "St. Basil thus crowned the decapitated hillock." Bove built the stone terrace wall separating the church from the pavement of Moskvoretskaya Street; the southern side of the terrace was completed in 1834. Minor repairs continued until 1848, when the domes acquired their present-day colours.
1890–1914
Preservationist societies monitored the state of the church and called for a proper restoration throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but it was regularly delayed for lack of funds. The church did not have a congregation of its own and could only rely on donations raised through public campaigning; national authorities in Saint Petersburg and local in Moscow prevented financing from state and municipal budgets. In 1899 Nicholas II reluctantly admitted that this expense was necessary, but again all the involved state and municipal offices, including the Holy Synod, denied financing. Restoration, headed by Andrey Pavlinov (died 1898) and Sergey Solovyov, dragged on from 1896 to 1909; in total, preservationists managed to raise around 100,000 roubles.
Restoration began with replacing the roofing of the domes. Solovyov removed the tin roofing of the main tent installed in the 1810s and found many original tiles missing and others discoloured; after a protracted debate the whole set of tiles on the tented roof was replaced with new ones. Another dubious decision allowed the use of standard bricks that were smaller than the original 16th-century ones. Restorers agreed that the paintwork of the 19th century must be replaced with a "truthful recreation" of historic patterns, but these had to be reconstructed and deduced based on medieval miniatures. In the end, Solovyov and his advisers chose a combination of deep red with deep green that is retained to the present.
In 1908 the church received its first warm air heating system, which did not work well because of heat losses in long air ducts, heating only the eastern and northern sanctuaries. In 1913 it was complemented with a pumped water heating system serving the rest of the church.
1918–1941
During World War I, the church was headed by protoiereus Ioann Vostorgov, a nationalist preacher and a leader of the Black-Hundredist Union of the Russian People. Vostorgov was arrested by Bolsheviks in 1918 on a pretext of embezzling nationalized church properties and was executed in 1919.[citation needed] The church briefly enjoyed Vladimir Lenin's "personal interest"; in 1923 it became a public museum, though religious services continued until 1929.
Bolshevik planners entertained ideas of demolishing the church after Lenin's funeral (January 1924). In the first half of the 1930s, the church became an obstacle for Joseph Stalin's urbanist plans, carried out by Moscow party boss Lazar Kaganovich, "the moving spirit behind the reconstruction of the capital". The conflict between preservationists, notably Pyotr Baranovsky, and the administration continued at least until 1936 and spawned urban legends. In particular, a frequently-told story is that Kaganovich picked up a model of the church in the process of envisioning Red Square without it, and Stalin sharply responded "Lazar, put it back!" Similarly, Stalin's master planner, architect Vladimir Semyonov, reputedly dared to "grab Stalin's elbow when the leader picked up a model of the church to see how Red Square would look without it" and was replaced by pure functionary Sergey Chernyshov.
In the autumn of 1933, the church was struck from the heritage register. Baranovsky was summoned to perform a last-minute survey of the church slated for demolition, and was then arrested for his objections. While he served his term in the Gulag, attitudes changed and by 1937 even hard-line Bolshevik planners admitted that the church should be spared. In the spring of 1939, the church was locked, probably because demolition was again on the agenda; however, the 1941 publication of Dmitry Sukhov's detailed book on the survey of the church in 1939–1940 speaks against this assumption.
1947 to present
In the first years after World War II renovators restored the historical ground-floor arcades and pillars that supported the first-floor platform, cleared up vaulted and caissoned ceilings in the galleries, and removed "unhistoric" 19th-century oil paint murals inside the churches. Another round of repairs, led by Nikolay Sobolev in 1954–1955, restored original paint imitating brickwork, and allowed restorers to dig inside old masonry, revealing the wooden frame inside it. In the 1960s, the tin roofing of the domes was replaced with copper.
The last round of renovation was completed in September 2008 with the opening of the restored sanctuary of St. Alexander Svirsky. The building is still partly in use today as a museum and, since 1991, is occasionally used for services by the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1997 Orthodox Christian services have been held regularly. Nowadays every Sunday at Saint Basil's church there is a divine liturgy at 10 a.m. with an Akathist to Saint Basil.
Naming
The building, originally known as "Trinity Church",[8] was consecrated on 12 July 1561, and was subsequently elevated to the status of a sobor (similar to an ecclesiastical basilica in the Catholic Church, but usually and incorrectly translated as "cathedral"). "Trinity", according to tradition, refers to the easternmost sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, while the central sanctuary of the church is dedicated to the Intercession of Mary. Together with the westernmost sanctuary of the Entry into Jerusalem, these sanctuaries form the main east–west axis (Christ, Mary, Holy Trinity), while other sanctuaries are dedicated to individual saints.
Sanctuaries of the cathedral
Compass point Type Dedicated to Commemorates
Central coreTented churchIntercession of Most Holy TheotokosBeginning of the final assault of Kazan, 1 October 1552
WestColumnEntry of Christ into JerusalemTriumph of the Muscovite troops
North-westGroin vaultSaint Gregory the Illuminator of ArmeniaCapture of Ars Tower of Kazan Kremlin, 30 September 1552
NorthColumnSaint Martyrs Cyprian and Justinia (since 1786 Saint Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia)Complete capture of Kazan Kremlin, 2 October 1552
North-eastGroin vaultThree Patriarchs of Alexandria (since 1680 Saint John the Merciful)Defeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552
EastColumnLife-giving Holy TrinityHistorical Trinity Church on the same site
South-eastGroin vaultSaint Alexander SvirskyDefeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552
SouthColumnThe icon of Saint Nicholas from the Velikaya River (Nikola Velikoretsky)The icon was brought to Moscow in 1555.
South-westGroin vaultSaint Barlaam of KhutynMay have been built to commemorate Vasili III of Russia
North-eastern annex (1588)Groin vaultBasil the BlessedGrave of venerated local saint
South-eastern annex (1672)Groin vaultLaying the Veil (since 1680: Nativity of Theotokos, since 1916: Saint John the Blessed of Moscow)Grave of venerated local saint
The name "Intercession Church" came into use later, coexisting with Trinity Church. From the end of the 16th century[66] to the end of the 17th century the cathedral was also popularly called Jerusalem, with reference to its church of Entry into Jerusalem as well as to its sacral role in religious rituals. Finally, the name of Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, who died during construction and was buried on-site, was attached to the church at the beginning of the 17th century.
Current Russian tradition accepts two coexisting names of the church: the official "Church of Intercession on the Moat" (in full, the "Church of Intercession of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat"), and the "Temple of Basil the Blessed". When these names are listed together the latter name, being informal, is always mentioned second.
The common Western translations "Cathedral of Basil the Blessed" and "Saint Basil's Cathedral" incorrectly bestow the status of cathedral on the church of Basil, but are nevertheless widely used even in academic literature. Especially during the 19. century, in English and other languages the Saint Basil's Cathedral was also called (Cathedral or Church of) Vassili Blagennoi.
Sacral and social role
On the day of its consecration the church itself became part of Orthodox thaumaturgy. According to the legend, its "missing" ninth church (more precisely a sanctuary) was "miraculously found" during a ceremony attended by Tsar Ivan IV, Metropolitan Makarius with the divine intervention of Saint Tikhon. Piskaryov's Chronist wrote in the second quarter of the 17th century:
And the Tsar came to the dedication of the said church with Tsaritsa Nastasia and with Metropolitan Makarius and brought the icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker that came from Vyatka. And they began to offer a prayer service with sanctified water. And the Tsar touched the base with his own hands. And the builders saw that another sanctuary appeared, and told the Tsar. And the Tsar, and Metropolitan, and all the clergy were surprised by the finding of another sanctuary. And the Tsar ordered it to be dedicated to Nicholas ...
— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)
Allegory of Jerusalem
Construction of wrap-around ground-floor arcades in the 1680s visually united the nine churches of the original cathedral into a single building. Earlier, the clergy and the public perceived it as nine distinct churches on a common base, a generalized allegory of the Orthodox Heavenly City similar to fantastic cities of medieval miniatures. At a distance, separate churches towering over their base resembled the towers and churches of a distant citadel rising above the defensive wall. The abstract allegory was reinforced by real-life religious rituals where the church played the role of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem:
The capital city, Moscow, is split into three parts; the first of them, called Kitai-gorod, is encircled with a solid thick wall. It contains an extraordinary beautiful church, all clad in shiny bright gems, called Jerusalem. It is the destination of an annual Palm Sunday walk, when the Grand Prince must lead a donkey carrying the Patriarch, from the Church of Virgin Mary to the church of Jerusalem which stands next to the citadel walls. Here is where the most illustrious princely, noble and merchant families live. Here is, also, the main muscovite marketplace: the trading square is built as a brick rectangle, with twenty lanes on each side where the merchants have their shops and cellars ...
— Peter Petreius, History of the Great Duchy of Moscow, 1620
Templum S. Trinitatis, etiam Hierusalem dicitur; ad quo Palmarum fest Patriarcha asino insidens a Caesare introducitur.
Temple of Holy Trinity, also called Jerusalem, to where the tsar leads the Patriarch, sitting on a donkey, on the Palm Holiday.
— Legend of Peter's map of Moscow, 1597, as reproduced in the Bleau Atlas
The last donkey walk (хождение на осляти) took place in 1693. Mikhail Petrovich Kudryavtsev noted that all cross processions of the period began, as described by Petreius, from the Dormition Church, passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and ended at Trinity Cathedral. For these processions the Kremlin itself became an open-air temple, properly oriented from its "narthex" (Cathedral Square) in the west, through the "royal doors" (Saviour's Gate), to the "sanctuary" (Trinity Cathedral) in the east.
Urban hub
Tradition calls the Kremlin the centre of Moscow, but the geometric centre of the Garden Ring, first established as the Skorodom defensive wall in the 1590s, lies outside the Kremlin wall, coincident with the cathedral. Pyotr Goldenberg (1902–71), who popularized this notion in 1947, still regarded the Kremlin as the starting seed of Moscow's radial-concentric system, despite Alexander Chayanov's earlier suggestion that the system was not strictly concentric at all.
In the 1960s Gennady Mokeev (born 1932) formulated a different concept of the historical growth of Moscow. According to Mokeev, medieval Moscow, constrained by the natural boundaries of the Moskva and Neglinnaya Rivers, grew primarily in a north-easterly direction into the posad of Kitai-gorod and beyond. The main road connecting the Kremlin to Kitai-gorod passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and immediately afterwards fanned out into at least two radial streets (present-day Ilyinka and Varvarka), forming the central market square. In the 14th century the city was largely contained within two balancing halves, Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, separated by a marketplace, but by the end of the century it extended further along the north-eastern axis. Two secondary hubs in the west and south spawned their own street networks, but their development lagged behind until the Time of Troubles.
Tsar Ivan's decision to build the church next to St. Frol's Gate established the dominance of the eastern hub with a major vertical accent, and inserted a pivot point between the nearly equal Kremlin and Kitai-gorod into the once amorphous marketplace. The cathedral was the main church of the posad, and at the same time it was perceived as a part of the Kremlin thrust into the posad, a personal messenger of the Tsar reaching the masses without the mediation of the boyars and clergy. It was complemented by the nearby Lobnoye mesto, a rostrum for the Tsar's public announcements first mentioned in chronicles in 1547 and rebuilt in stone in 1597–1598. Conrad Bussow, describing the triumph of False Dmitriy I, wrote that on 3 June 1606 "a few thousand men hastily assembled and followed the boyarin with [the impostor's] letter through the whole Moscow to the main church they call Jerusalem that stands right next to the Kremlin gates, raised him on Lobnoye Mesto, called out for the Muscovites, read the letter and listened to the boyarin's oral explanation."
Replicas
A scale model of Saint Basil's Cathedral has been built in Jalainur in Inner Mongolia, near China's border with Russia. The building houses a science museum.
Okay, this was a very imperfect 365, but, by god, I’m done! In retrospect, the hard times of the last year were the days that I most needed this project, and it was on the completely normal days that I struggled to pick up the camera. I started on November 7 on a total whim when I was suffering from jet lag on my way home from Japan. Around day 24 I realized what I had gotten myself in to. I am over a month behind. What can I say? Life happens.
I didn’t learn how to do a proper ttv until day 110. My first full body shot was on day 137, and I only took one reflection shot on day 156. I vowed never to take a picture of my feet, and when I did, one of four that I took ended up on Explore. I travelled to New York, Madison, Boston, Dallas and Santa Fe. Four shots include a Batman mask. Most of the time, I was reading or cooking.
Thanks to everyone….you kept me going!
Sictransitgloria: fellow teacher and Flickr traveler! I think we must have been separated at birth! I love your sense of humor.
MlleMathilde: Your work inspired me from the very start! Thanks for everything!
Nerboo: I am so glad to see your pictures in my stream everyday! You inspire me!
Elh70: Your perseverance totally inspires me!
Ceece: More pictures, please! I miss you!
One daaaangerous easter egg: Are you part magician? What you do with color is amazing.
.krys.: Hi friend! Keep going, you can do it! I love seeing your pictures, and I totally relate to your experiences in the classroom.
ravinasniper: Rav! I think I met you at your day 100----seriously, your stream kept me going some days.
Blamstur: Thanks for all your lovely comments!
Amanda_Smith: I can’t wait to see you finish your own 365!
Texas_to_Mexico: Your pictures remind me of Mexico, and I am so glad to see them on cold Michigan days.
Ymn201: Diana! You rock!
Carcharzel: I love your SPs and I look for them regularly. You totally have a gift---I especially love your ttv work.
PATierney: Your pictures make me gain weight.
Jamelah: Man, your 365 was awesome, and it totally inspired me.
Hello Darlin: Seriously, girl. Pick it up! You can do it! I miss your lovely face!
RobertN: I loved your 365! I’m still waiting to see you make more use of that awesome remote!
JaciSue: Another total magician. I want to be like you when I grow up.
JustinTM: Hang in there, kiddo!
Mississippi Snopes: Doug---thanks for making me understand that it’s okay to skip some days ….or 30. It was a very big deal and it kept me from quitting a few times. Really, I love your stream, esp your pictures of your family!
Sezohanim: You get to do the next 365. You would be great! I love what you do with your camera!
MatthwJ: thanks for your pumpkin cookie recipe!
Mollyjolly: Fellow teacher! I love Bingo and Frankencow.
nuala29: Simply----I LOVE your work.
Jeannatheodd: Hey girl---I totally miss your 365! Find your camera soon!!
Tinwoody: Your ttv work inspires me!
Nesster: thanks for this great ttv---I think I've probably used it 100 times by now.
Mom: Thanks for everything! It totally motivated me that you looked at my pictures every day!
2016 .... Artist - Kent Monkman .... A striking installation at the entryway of 'Shame And Prejudice' reminiscent of the Nativity Scene is based on a northern renaissance painting by Petrus Christus. Kent Monkman states the large scale piece speaks to the poor housing and third world conditions on many reserves and serves to foreshadow the removal of children represented elsewhere in the exhibition ....
Like a rocket in the first milliseconds after ignition, this contestant is already leaping upward, foreshadowing the mighty power that has been unleashed.
Coaches, fans and contestants are divided over the merits of the "Sitting Start," which is what we see here.
Its proponents contend it allows the haunches to uncoil like a mighty spring, giving the dog an extra boost over the first yards of the course.
Those who favor the "Standing Start" say its better to have all four paws ready for action. Why sit on half your traction?
Well, that's what makes this sport such a favorite for spectators and contestants alike. Back to you, Bob, at the mens' nordic skiing and archery competition . . .
McPaws Monster Dog Pull, McCall, Idaho, Winter Carnival 2009.
24/365
Film print: taken with a Nikon N90. I used a 3 filter while printing (I believe)
I got some prints back from my photography teacher for critiquing yesterday, I got an A and I was happy :)
(didn't take this yesterday, uuugh)
SORRY I'M SO LATE.
I'm going to try and change this, things have been so stressful though.
Yesterday I had to dissect a frog in biology class and I couldn't handle it and I was freaking out all day. I didn't even touch the frog or get within a foot of it (my partner did the work!) but it was still terrifying for me.
Then in English class I didn't know the answer for an English quiz
example of foreshadowing: Benevolio: "Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!" - Romeo is coming.
That is the best I had. We shouldn't be reading right now so I have to skim really fast through Romeo and Juliet so I can study for exams.
So that was basically my day yesterday
The physics of this seem impossible. (so do the finances). But I love that people put this amount of time and care into restoring and maintaining the old buildings. And, this is foreshadowing. Chez Drive will need to a foundation overhaul in the future.
Visit my WebSite www.ValeriaSpiga.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
All material in my gallery MAY NOT be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission
I diced two cans of Italian tomatoes, and the carnage oddly forshadowed me slicing my finger open while later cutting the whole tomatoes you see in the bowl...
129/365
October 2, 2009
So as I was thinking of a picture today this was the only thing that came to mind. The weather is miserable again today...rainy, cold, windy...I don't mind the rain when it's warm but MAN is it cold!!
I'm wearing Garry's jacket, actually. He had it for some reason but never really wore it. He decided to let me borrow it since I'll need it more than him...it won't get me through a Chicago winter unfortunately. But for right now it'll do. I then decided to grab the mug I drank some tea out of last night as it was thundering intensely. But it was a quick storm.
I don't know...perhaps it could also be called "the christmas sith" or something like? I really look like I'm about to kill someone...but that's how I feel about winter :-P
TRF: Just found out today that my roomie's moving out from the 15th to the 18th. Dangit. I'm worried I'll get assigned a roomie that actually sticks around :(
The Adoration of the Shepherds, c.1520-40
by Bonifazio de’Pitati, sometimes called Bonifazio Veronese (1487-1553)
Bonifazio depicts the Holy Family in a gently undulating Italian landscape. The mood is tender, but a darker note is introduced in the shape of the bound sacrificial lamb, which foreshadows Christ’s suffering and death.
Olga's husband loves Shevchenko. He found a harness and suggested that the three of us take the cat for an evening walk. This takes more patience than one might think.
Eric arrived in authentic lederhosen, foreshadowing next year's theme: Pants Heard 'Round the World.
A foreshadowing of what's to come in my Nepal project.
I've seen fiber optic cables used in "fountains", but it's high-time we use em' for streams and waterfalls!
That would make clear all of the cloudy questions. #Winnipeg #downtown #exchangedistrict #wall #red #sky #shadow
This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.
Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.
Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.
Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.
The decorated apsidiole at the end of the southern aisle.
As foreshadowed in my previous newsletter, I love the way the timing of this week's editions has worked out so far — yesterday we were looking at the stars, and today we're turning our gaze downward to what falls to earth. As for me, I'll be airborne in a few short hours, heading back to NYC after an amazing visit here in Austin, Texas. Once I'm done with this dispatch, I'm hoping to catch Birth of the Cool at the Blanton Museum before I head for the airport, and if there's no time for that I'm hoping to squeeze in a quick visit to Domy instead.
Alas, I fear that I'm leaving Austin with the same worn boots I rode in on — I made two trips to Allen's but was unable to make a decision. (If you've seen all the boots lining the shelves there you'd understand why.) While I'm on the topic of local shops, I'll tell you about a few other places in Austin that made me happy during my visit. Yesterday we stopped into this really great little shop called IF+D and acquired some Enron memo pads which espoused their company values in bold type along the bottom, (Integrity, honesty and respect, in case you were wondering). IF+D is right near milk + honey where I got a transcendentally relaxing pedicure upon my arrival here last week. Right now I am typing from the convivial Jo's, which has been my morning haunt for the past week.
What I've liked about this year's Texas sojourn is that I've been in Austin long enough to get to know the place a little. In spite of the fact that I travel all the time, I'm actually kind-of a bad traveler. In part it's because I'm a creature of habit, but mostly it's because I am much more interested in how a place IS rather than how it seems. And you only get to know how a place really is by spending time there.
It might seem like a stretch, but this feeling of understanding Austin a little more makes a lot of sense to me in relation to today's editions, Prospect Park #9 and Prospect Park #11 by Brooklyn-based photographer Scott Whittle. First of all, I did meet Scott in Texas — at Fotofest, almost a year ago to the day. Scott's gotten to know Brooklyn — Prospect Park specifically — over the course of years, not days. And while a lot of the things he captures are the kinds of things that you might find at a park in a city setting, knowing what his process has been makes me understand that he is knowing a place in the way that we all get to know the places that we live in. His practice might be meditative and solitary, in process at least, but there's something about it that makes me think of connectedness as well. The human trace, I suppose.
I am also thinking about him in relation to this amazing dinner that I had last night, at a place called Ranch 616, with the Kitchen Sisters, following the party celebrating the release of their new Blurb book, Hidden Kitchens, Texas. Davia and Nikki are finding stuff that no one might see otherwise too, exploring the world of hidden kitchens and sharing them with the world on NPR. I heard SO many great stories about Texas at the dinner, affirming my belief that one of the things that artists do best is help us see things in the world that we wouldn't notice (or perhaps even know about!) otherwise.
At dinner we were surrounded by an amazing array of people — the owner, the chef, a musician named Cindy Cashdollar, a cowboy actor (for real!) and a woman who works for the Texas Attorney General. For the past 17 years, she's been speaking about crime prevention all over the state and she promised to send me some speaking tips via email. I have a feeling she'll school me in speaking better than any professional PR coach might ever be able to do! By the time dinner was done, I knew Texas a whole lot better and am curious to learn more.
That's exactly what I'm going to do right this second, as the clock is ticking. I'll be back tomorrow, writing from the East Coast to introduce you to this week's bonus fine art edition. Look for me then!
M60A1 (RISE) Main Battle Tank (E1993.128) - Successor to the M48, another General Patton
One major criticism of the M48 was its relatively poor armour protection which left it vulnerable to the Soviet T-54. When the M60 appeared in 1960 there was little evidence of change in this respect; the lower hull was thicker but armour thickness on the upper hull had been slightly reduced. In terms of firepower and performance there were great changes which had been foreshadowed in later M48 production. M60 carried the British 105mm gun and employed the 12 cylinder Continental diesel engine which gave it a very lively performance.
Like M48 the M60 is a large tank, made bigger by the enclosed commander's cupola, virtually a little turret in its own right. Early models featured a turret similar to M48 but the M60A1 has an elongated turret with an improved shape at the front. Later changes included modifications to the engine under the Reliability-Improved-Selected-Equipment programme or RISE.
The M60 has also been supplied to many of America's allies, most notably to Israel where it has seen considerable service and been extensively modernised. The M60 was never used in Vietnam but it did see service with United States forces in the Gulf War. Our exhibit came from US Army stocks in Germany and is finished in a typical camouflage scheme.
Full Tracked
Gun - 105 mm Gun
2* Machine Gun (7.62mm & 12.7mm)
Continental AVDS-1790-2A, 12 cylinder, air-cooled
Vehicle Statistics
6.946m Length (Overall)
3.631m Width (Overall)
4 Number (Crew)
52,617kg Weight (Overall)
48.28kph Maximum (Speed - Road)
Diesel Type (Fuel)
105mm Calibre (Main Gun)
750bhp Power (Engine Output)
1420ltr Volume (Fuel)
500km Radius (Range)
143mm Maximum (Armour Thickness - Hull)
63rounds Number (Projectile)
3.27m Height (Overall)
Tankfest by World of Tanks - 24.-25.6.2016
The Tank Museum - Bovington, UK
Worlds biggest and best live display of historic armour, living history, and much more at the Home of the Tank - The Tank Museum, Bovington, United Kingdom.
More from Tankfest:
www.flickr.com/photos/jukkaokauppinen2/albums/72157670621...
More from me:
www.flickr.com/photos/jukkaokauppinen
Tankfest videos:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIGRHBJyGQb3PpXwFlOKve2OUJ...
Every season has its special beauty and autumn is no exception. Watching the trees turn from a uniform green to all varieties of gold, yellow and red is a spectacular experience. How can it be that all this beauty is sign of death and decay? With all this beauty there is a certain sadness in knowing that the changing colors foreshadow the arrival of a long cold winter.
------------------------
"Der Herbst ist der Frühling des Winters." (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)
-----------------------
Reliance Building Chicago
The Reliance Building is the first skyscraper to have large plate glass windows make up the majority of its surface area, foreshadowing a feature of skyscrapers that would become dominant in the 20th century. It is located at 32 North State Street, Chicago, Illinois, and as of 2006 houses the Hotel Burnham.
The Reliance building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970; and on January 7, 1976, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The building was designed by Charles B. Atwood of Daniel H. Burnham's architectural firm, with E.C. Shankland as engineer. Its basement and ground floor, designed by John Wellborn Root, were constructed in 1890, while the upper three stories of the building previously on the site remained suspended above on jackscrews. The addition of the remaining floors in 1894–1895 completed the building and marked the "first comprehensive achievement"[4] of the Chicago construction method. The building's plate-glass windows are set within a tiled facade. Its steel-frame superstructure is built atop concrete caissons sunk as much as 125 feet beneath the footing.
The Reliance Building has been called "proto-Modernist" in its lack of the hierarchy found in Classical facades. Its stacks of projecting bay windows and terra cotta cladding create an effect of extraordinary lightness.[5] It was a direct precursor of the all-glass Friedrichstrasse skyscraper proposed by Mies van der Rohe in 1921.[6] Richardson's Marshall Field Warehouse, built only eight years earlier, seems in comparison to be heavy, ponderous, and of another era.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Building
Often, truth is in the shadows.
--------------------------------------
Long about an hour before sunrise
she drags his body down to the edge of the swollen river
wrapped in a red velvet curtain
stolen from the movie theater where she works.
Quiet as a whisper, under the stanchions of a washed-out bridge
she cuts him loose...and watches as the flood waters spin him
around once, then carry him away. Then she removes the golden
ring upon her finger...and she throws it in.
And I wonder; Baby why don't you cry? Baby why don't you...
Baby why don't you cry?
Three days later in a bar in southern Mississippi she meets a man
by the name of Charles Lee.
She introduces herself to him as "Lee Charles".
"What a coincidence." he says...and one week later they are married.
He wakes up one night six months down the line
to find her staring at him in the oddest way.
When he says, "Honey, what's wrong?"
she says, "Oh nothing dear...except that tears are a stupid trick of God."
And by the time they find his body six weeks later...
Well hell, she's a thousand miles away.
And I wonder; Baby why don't you cry? Baby why don't you...
Baby why don't you cry?
She runs from devils. She runs from angels. She runs from the
ghost of her father and five different uncles. Blinded by their memory,
seared by their pain, she'd like to kill 'em all...then kill 'em all again.
She don't think much about what she's done or the funny feelings that
she feels. No, she don’t. To her it's just a condition she picked up as a
child... a little thing she calls, "the wound that never heals", she calls it,
"the wound that never heals"
And I wonder; Baby why don't you cry? Baby why don't you...
Baby why don't you cry?
Jim White, "The Wound That Never Heals"
It's those thoughts that keep you awake at night that haunt you all of the following day and make your stomach turn. It's going to be a long day. I don't know if I can handle anything today.
another odd election day in toronto. there are some decent and some terrible city councillor choices to make, one good public school trustee to vote for (and voting against the incumbent is pretty much mandatory since i found spelling errors in the campaign literature) and then the race for mayor. over 25 candidates, some of whom had dropped off the ballot, and a 2 horse, 1 ass race for the frontrunners.
speaking to neighbours on the way to and at the local school where voting is taking place was both grim and promising. having an election just before hallowe'en provides plenty of creepy imagery to foreshadow the attack ads, the threats from the right wing zealots having temper tantrums and the clenched ass i get when i see the dismal voter turnout statistics - half of the front gardens and lawns on the way to the school were full of ghouls and skeletons and leftover trappings from the weekend's zombie walk.
did you vote yet? if not, there's still plenty of time. participatory democracies only work when people actually participate - at least go spoil your ballot if you can't support (or vote against) a candidate.
this 1965 building by Minoru Yamasaki features his modern take on the Gothic arch and foreshadows the similar arches he later used for the original WTC. the quartz and concrete columns contrast with marble inlays which are arranged to create abstract designs.
via Instagram www.instagram.com/p/BG0o4_xGGg8/