tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71986610850502202222024-03-13T01:36:50.327+01:00Once Upon a Time...Dirk Puehl's blog featuring anectdotal tales from history, literature, mythology, art and art history - Arranged along dates and events that happened once upon a time on this day.Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.comBlogger536125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-44468194063155589162017-04-23T20:28:00.002+02:002020-12-19T09:52:42.407+01:00"The Painter of Light" - J.M.W. Turner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><br />23 April 1775, the English Romanticist landscape artist J.M.W. Turner was born in Covent Garden, London, allegedly on St George’s Day.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
“… the sublime, in the strict sense of the word, cannot be contained in any sensuous form, but rather concerns ideas of reason, which, although no adequate presentation of them is possible, may be excited and called into the mind by that very inadequacy itself which does admit of sensuous presentation. Thus the broad ocean agitated by storms cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible, and one must have stored one's mind in advance with a rich stock of ideas, if such an intuition is to raise it to the pitch of a feeling which is itself sublime – sublime because the mind has been incited to abandon sensibility and employ itself upon ideas involving higher finality.“ (Immanuel Kant)</blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4XDpKG7xhg/WPzwXOaQdvI/AAAAAAAA5SE/XXIs5uk4jb0ETSD-0GrQ2W2fxz0idXdQACLcB/s1600/The_Fighting_Temeraire%252C_JMW_Turner%252C_National_Gallery.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="470" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4XDpKG7xhg/WPzwXOaQdvI/AAAAAAAA5SE/XXIs5uk4jb0ETSD-0GrQ2W2fxz0idXdQACLcB/s640/The_Fighting_Temeraire%252C_JMW_Turner%252C_National_Gallery.jpg" title="J.M.W. Turner: "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838" (1839)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">J.M.W. Turner: "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838" (1839)</td></tr>
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She is a ghost ship. White as if she had already risen from the grave, the ugly, steaming black thing in front tugging her across the cesspool of a river gilded by a gloriously setting sun that illuminates a London pea souper into something welling out of a mythic age. The swan song of the Age of Sail and the Wooden Walls of England that had kept her safe through endless wars with the continent since the Dutch raided the Medway in 1667. “Temeraire”, no longer HMS, His Majesty’s Ship, since she was already sold for scrap, white, like a Spanish 1st rate and not a British ship of the line in distinctive black and yellow “Nelson Chequer”, no longer “saucy”, as she was known in the fleet in her days, had become the embodiment of an era under the imagination and brush of one of Britain’s very patriotic, visionary and finest painters, J.M.W. Turner. She had already made her appearance in his earlier works commemorating the Battle of Trafalgar, in the background, shrouded in gunsmoke and the chaos of masts, spars and shot-torn canvas of the melee that was her finest hour, first in “The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory” from 1806 and, almost twenty years later, in Turner’s rather allegoric “Battle of Trafalgar”. And while the artist was present when Nelson’s lead-lined, brandy-filled coffin was carried from his battered “Victory” when she finally was moored in the Nore, he took his time to travel down to Portsmouth to see other veterans of Trafalgar, “Temeraire” among them, made sketches, interviewed survivors and gathered the inspiration that went into his celebrated marine paintings, those commemorating and retelling the battle as well as others. He didn’t see “Temeraire’s” end, though, like thousands did in September 1838. After serving as a prison and then as a receiving ship for twenty-five years, the “Fighting Temeraire” had fired her guns for the last time in June to salute the coronation of Queen Victoria. Then her artillery was removed, her masts cut down and the ugly black, towering hulk that remained was tugged by two paddle steamers up from Sheerness to Rotherhithe and gutted at Beatson’s Wharf in Limehouse Reach and her remains sold. "Perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveller may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood, and even the sailor's child may not answer nor know that the night dew lies deep in the war rents of the wood of the old Temeraire", wrote John Ruskin, art critic and Turner-admirer. But by then, “The Fighting Temeraire” already had become a myth and not least because of Turner’s iconic painting. Whether Turner bemoans a bygone age under a setting sun or celebrates the glorious dawn of a new one or manages to splice the imagery of past, present and future into a sublime vision of Britain’s industrial age is in the eye of the beholder.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CBiCTW8KLZo/WPzw45N9xpI/AAAAAAAA5SM/aII2RQ1h7Nsw3duRtKM8AKYT0TjOF3FEACLcB/s1600/Turner_-_Rain%252C_Steam_and_Speed_-_National_Gallery_file.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="472" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CBiCTW8KLZo/WPzw45N9xpI/AAAAAAAA5SM/aII2RQ1h7Nsw3duRtKM8AKYT0TjOF3FEACLcB/s640/Turner_-_Rain%252C_Steam_and_Speed_-_National_Gallery_file.jpg" title="J.M.W. Turner: "Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway" (1844)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">J.M.W. Turner: "Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway" (1844)</td></tr>
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In all probability, Turner wasn’t born on 23 April but set the date deliberately and patriotically on St George’s Day, the date commemorating England’s patron saint. That it was Shakespeare’s probable day of birth and death as well didn’t do any harm either, Romantic as Turner was. Mr Turner senior was a barber and wig maker in Covent Garden with some influential customers, his junior proved to be quite an apt and self-taught young draughtsman, his proud papa exhibited his son’s drawings in the shop windows and at the age of 15, Joseph Mallord William joined the Royal Academy as one of its youngest members. Located back then in Somerset House, young Turner learned painting in earnest at the feet of grand mannered Sir Joshua Reynolds while right next door the Royal Society was in session and discussed and demonstrated the latest insights in natural science while the Age of Enlightenment had already climaxed in the French Revolution on the continent and the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. And while the emerging Romantic Movement, by and large, writers, painters and musicians, began to fight enlightenment’s rationality with tooth and claw, warming up to the ideas of the revolt in France and paradoxically revered a glorified, fairytale-like past and found solace in nature, the very state of the land the industrial revolutionaries were about to dam, harness and exploit for progress and the betterment of mankind in general, the finer points of distinction between mere beauty and the sheer, awe-inspiring sublime à la Burke and Kant were interpreted in rational discourse while the rest of the Romantics just felt it. In contemplating old ruins, alpine peaks, sea storms and the fate of exceptional human beings. While Turner wept, allegedly, when he saw a landscape by Claude Lorrain for the first time. He would never paint like this. Nor would he. But he learned a thing or two. To reduce individual humanity to background staffage, for example. And to use the sun as direct, immediate source of light in his land- and seascapes for the first time since Lorraine did more than a hundred years before. Maybe the light produced by the polluted atmosphere after the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies in the Year without a Summer of 1816 played a role as well, maybe even more than Lorraine and the physical findings of the Royal Society. The latter usually entered Turner’s concepts rather as soon as they were published. But, more and more, strange suns and fantastically coloured clouds set the stage for Turner’s imagination of the Promethean struggle of England’s steps into the Industrial Age, dark Satanic mills, rain, steam and speed and all that. And sublimely Romantic. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w8VvmiZRn6M/WPzxgSqV7JI/AAAAAAAA5SU/q7GjIhQygZg_Sp1vBzgluTmlg_0UhnuDQCLcB/s1600/Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_-_Snow_Storm_-_Steam-Boat_off_a_Harbour%2527s_Mouth.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w8VvmiZRn6M/WPzxgSqV7JI/AAAAAAAA5SU/q7GjIhQygZg_Sp1vBzgluTmlg_0UhnuDQCLcB/s640/Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_-_Snow_Storm_-_Steam-Boat_off_a_Harbour%2527s_Mouth.jpg" title="J.M.W. Turner: "Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">J.M.W. Turner: "Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the "Ariel" left Harwich" (1842)</td></tr>
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Smallness, smoothness, delicacy of all things beautiful. With one sweep, Burke’s “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” from 1757 had degraded Winckelmann’s ideal of classic beauty into a nerve-calming remedy on par with a few drops of valerian essential oil. Satan battling God, natural catastrophes, at best bathed in dazzling light or clouded in near darkness, there was the rub. Awe-inspiring phenomena that induced terror and put mankind in its place. That was what being sublime was all about. “Dark, uncertain, and confused", as Burke himself put it and thus having a cathartic effect, far more and deeper than beauty, at the latest when the subject realised that all was perception, fiction. With Burke and the Romantic’s exegesis of his works, Modernity began to dawn in Europe. Turner painted his fair share of the sublime. By the sea, in the Alps, in imagination of the horror, the glory and the pain of battles at sea. And, slowly but surely, the dark Satanic mills crept into landscapes à la Lorraine. Just as they did in real England’s green and pleasant land. While others, first and foremost Constable, magnificently captured landscapes and clouds as they were probably since those feet in ancient time walked upon mountains green, Turner embraced the awe-inspiring human endeavours of the Industrial Age, disassembled reality under the auspices of natural science and progress and put it back together, according to his own perception and his own narrative, bathed in the light that only he could paint. William Blake wrote a quote from the scriptures beneath his poem: "Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets". Turner certainly wasn’t a white-bearded, wild-eyed, bournous-clad prophet of Old Testament dimensions. There were other Romantics who fitted that bill far better than he did. But he was a visionary in every sense of the word. A singularity among the Romantics, after all was said and done, and an artist without immediate successors. It took Europe at least a generation to catch up with Turner, when French Impressionism salvaged snatchings from his overwhelming legacy and processed them into their own vision. And now it was upon his epigones to cry that they would never see, let alone paint, like Turner.<br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about J.M.W. Turner on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <style>
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</style>Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com1Covent Garden, London WC2E, UK51.5117321 -0.1232697000000371225.856660600000005 -41.607644700000037 77.166803600000009 41.361105299999963tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-60623905929043875922017-04-14T07:40:00.000+02:002020-04-13T22:03:02.189+02:00"The Van Dyck of his Age" - John Singer Sargent<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">14 April 1925, the “leading portrait
painter of his generation”, Florence-born American John Singer Sargent, died in
London at the age of 69.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“I don't dig beneath the surface for things that don't appear before my own eyes.“ (John Singer Sargent)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Singer Sargent's portrait of the "Pailleron Children" (1880), looking like something out of Henry James' "Turn of the Screw"</td></tr>
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It is all in the eye of the beholder, of course. A profile of a not yet quite sated bird of prey, a deathly pale skin that would not look out of place in a Bram Stoker novel, a dress too refined for a house of ill repute and too risqué for opening the social season even in Paris, a pose that is a breath before a Flamenco step, a gesture of indignation or an invitation to admire, in a chiaroscuro that highlights the flesh, slightly purple-tinted as it is. The full-length portrait is the peak of sophistication in a sophisticated age. Everyone immediately recognised “Madame X”, as the full-length portrait was labelled, it caused a scandal, the socialite’s mother demanded the piece to be withdrawn immediately while the lady herself was quite enchanted, no wonder, since the artist had captured “the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau", like probably no one else could. However, he softened the impact a bit afterwards when he repainted the dress’ shoulder strap that had somehow come askew into a more presentable position. The harpies or sirens that carry the table supporting Madame X’s subtly seductive position remained bare-breasted, though. Like Hogarth, Sargent had an eye for details that could tell whole novels to the savants who are able to recognise them. And like some of the 20th century’s best movie directors, he had the ability to arrange props and visual side notes into a narrative that gave the seemingly snapshot-like arrangements of his famous portraits the depth of a third dimension. They presented a highly polished surface, as voluble, verbose even, as the narratives of his friend, the other American ex-pat Henry James, while the possible drama, that of an ending age actually, is hinted at in blanks. Such as his flirt with Impressionism in some of his backgrounds. Modern art’s struggle to find new expressions for yet unseen perceptions is duly noted, observed and ignored. John Singer Sargent was obviously content with being the Van Dyck of his age, one of the last of the Old Masters.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Singer Sargent: "Portrait of Madame X" (1884)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Henry James attested a ''the slightly
'uncanny' spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has
nothing more to learn'', almost an epitaph but quite appropriate for an artist
with the Diadochi-fate of being a living legacy, best known and filed under the
somewhat derogatory term “salon artist”, innovative arrangements or not. And
despite, or maybe because of his immense talent, Singer Sargent “worked like a
dog”, as his sister once put it, and not only by playing the full entertainment
suite for his sitters, just to get the best out of them, obviously, and console
them over the fact that he felt obliged to scrape the canvas clear and start
afresh, perfectionist that he was. It was the entertainment aspect that made
him withdraw from painting portraits, later in his life, after the volcano they
had all danced upon in the “Gilded Age” had exploded in the Great War and the
catastrophe of the 20th century began in earnest. And, unlike the other not
modern and apparently hidebound contemporary artists, John Singer Sargent, in
his basically detached manner, a continuous thread running through all his
works, found the means to depict the horror. As a snapshot with the props and
the hints that imply the catastrophe without indulging in it. He remained a
fateful chronicler of his day and age, or rather the elements of it he chose to
see and deemed chronicle-worthy or those that paid well, as with his portraits.
John Singer Sargent was arguably the most sought-out portraitist and certainly
the best-paid painter of his time. Along with the displayed virtuosity for its
own sake, magnificent gimmickry with colour, light and shadow, quotes from art
history and ironic bows to great masters, from Velazquez and van Dyck to
Reynolds and the ubiquitous Grand Manner. However, storyteller that he was,
Sargent’s grand mannered snapshots usually told, or at least hinted, at the
sitter’s vita and personality as well, not unlike the so-called “problem
pictures”, quite popular picture puzzles in oil asking their spectator to
unravel the usually gold-framed scene.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sTB1JE15Zkk/WPBfS0iZCzI/AAAAAAAA5QA/3pyRF1jQ-b4P8prRemaLRhAYWEvVrRJuwCLcB/s1600/John%2BSinger%2BSargent%2BGassed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sTB1JE15Zkk/WPBfS0iZCzI/AAAAAAAA5QA/3pyRF1jQ-b4P8prRemaLRhAYWEvVrRJuwCLcB/s640/John%2BSinger%2BSargent%2BGassed.jpg" title="John Singer Sargent Gassed" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Singer Sargent "Gassed" (1919)</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“Sargent was down again and painted a
portrait of me walking about in my own dining-room, in my own velveteen jacket,
and twisting as I go my own moustache; at one corner a glimpse of my wife, in
an Indian dress, and seated in a chair that was once my grandfather's; but
since some months goes by the name of Henry James's, for it was there the
novelist loved to sit - adds a touch of poesy and comicality. It is, I think,
excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my
wife, in this wild dress, and looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other
end; between us an open door exhibits my palatial entrance hall and a part of
my respected staircase. All this is touched in lovely, with that witty touch of
Sargent's; but, of course, it looks dam queer as a whole.”, Stevenson wrote
after the painting was finished, about a year before the publication of “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”
and, with a touch of Whistler, Sargent captured the whole state of affairs, a
hyper nervous novelist, estranged from his wife and an open door that leads to
some fantastic realms, a problem picture all in all. But then, everybody looked
larger-than-life, more fantastic and somehow more real in the depicted
imagination of John Singer Sargent and how he saw his world. A world that ended
with the Great War, when modern art finally overtook him and vanished into a
world he chose rather not to access, like all the other leftovers of a bygone
age, the last academic artists like Sir Edward Poynter or Pre-Raphaelites,
Waterhouse or Collier, who withered away in the 1920s and early 1930s,
half-forgotten already during their life and times and sneered at by those who
did remember them, rather like the Crystal Palace dinosaurs in Earl’s Court. But Singer
Sargent still stood apart, a fashionably old fashioned spectator, who observed,
experimented, never truly participated, too early ripened for the long 19th
century and too ripe for the 20th. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_MZa3gGuKEU/WPBgQLgDbdI/AAAAAAAA5QI/UIzojhMBkigD1_mnimdVEZFZmiHJolMtgCLcB/s1600/John%2BSinger%2BSargen%2BPortrait%2Bof%2BRobert%2BLouis%2BStevenson%2Band%2Bhis%2BWife.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="528" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_MZa3gGuKEU/WPBgQLgDbdI/AAAAAAAA5QI/UIzojhMBkigD1_mnimdVEZFZmiHJolMtgCLcB/s640/John%2BSinger%2BSargen%2BPortrait%2Bof%2BRobert%2BLouis%2BStevenson%2Band%2Bhis%2BWife.jpg" title="John Singer Sargent "Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife"" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Singer Sargent "Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife" (1885)</td></tr>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1895294 -0.77595179999998221 51.8251724 0.52043520000001775tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-84246928000819649282017-04-08T19:20:00.001+02:002022-08-10T16:49:14.927+02:00"It was, of course, the Venus de Milo" - The Rediscovery of an Icon of Western Aesthetics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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8 April 1820, The young farmer Georgios Kentrotas, looking for construction material in the ruins of the old capital of the island of Melos, found the Aphrodite of Milos, better known as Venus de Milo.<br />
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"You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom." (George Bernard Shaw)</blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-anse77Wz1VI/WOkX9SpdKkI/AAAAAAAA5Nw/xXJhEDz48kIY9msE77M-oYV5FaRYNz69QCLcB/s1600/Jean-Baptiste%2BMauzaisse%2BVenus%2Bde%2BMilo.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-anse77Wz1VI/WOkX9SpdKkI/AAAAAAAA5Nw/xXJhEDz48kIY9msE77M-oYV5FaRYNz69QCLcB/s640/Jean-Baptiste%2BMauzaisse%2BVenus%2Bde%2BMilo.jpg" title="Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse's ceiling panel of the Louvre's Salle des Bijoux, where the Venus is exhibited (1822), showing Father Chronos (Time) with his scythe, giving back the lost masterpiece." width="602" /></a></td></tr>
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Father Chronos (Time) with his scythe, giving back the lost masterpiece.</span><!--EndFragment--> </td></tr>
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Viewing the naked female form meant certain death. As Actaeon witnessed much to his chagrin. Stumbling across Artemis and her entourage of shapely nymphs bathing in a secret spot of lake in the woods, the enraged goddess turned the Peeping Tom into a stag to be torn apart by his own hounds. But then, the female of the species was “kalon kakon”, a beautiful evil, ever since Pandora, the first of her kind, met Epimetheus and opened her fateful box. For centuries, “beauty” and “perfection” in Greek art, mother of Western aesthetics, was epitomised and idealised in adoration of the naked male body, climaxing in the perfection of the sculptures of the Classical period around 450 BCE in the Belle Époque of Periclean Athens. “Kalos kagathos” was the watchword of the age. Being beautiful naturally meant being good. And naked and male, of course, the counterpoint of the female “kalon kakon”. Girls and goddesses still were subjects of Greek art, but decently clothed, goes without saying. Until the age’s greatest artist, the sculptor Praxiteles, revolutionised the Greek ideal of beauty over night. He unveiled his “Aphrodite of Knidos”, moulded to the perfection of the Classical period’s golden ratio. And the lady didn’t wear a stitch. It was the first depiction of the naked female form in Greek art since the Bronze Age. Nevertheless, it was “kalos kagathos”, beautiful and good, and while Plato himself epigrammatically quipped “When Cypris saw Cypris at Cnidus, "Alas!" said she; "where did Praxiteles see me naked?", Aphrodite’s avatar, the courtesan Phryne who had modelled for the sculptor, was accused of impiety, Hypereides, her counsel for the defence, just skipped his closing argument, bared his charge’s breast before the assembled Areopagus and the judges, seized by sacred dread, simply could not condemn something so beautiful and consequently good. “Kalos kagathos” had become a female aspect as well. But the days of the pure ideal of the Classical period of ancient Greece were numbered anyway. In the wake of Alexander’s conquests, a new perspective displaced the focus of Greek artists, who now worked in a Hellenistic world reaching from Italy to India, away from goddesses and heroes and godlike athletes towards the picturesque beauty of everyday life. Drunken crones, old wrestlers, prostitutes and what not were sculpted with the same life-like perfection as deities and deified rulers. And Praxiteles’ Caravaggio-like idea of having sinners pose as saints may well have caught on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WyxiHHUsBDw/WOkZP78cLtI/AAAAAAAA5OA/QkiV4GMJ3fcp7b874qX-NIUMFervPCuaACLcB/s1600/Cnidus_Aphrodite_Altemps_Inv8619.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WyxiHHUsBDw/WOkZP78cLtI/AAAAAAAA5OA/QkiV4GMJ3fcp7b874qX-NIUMFervPCuaACLcB/s640/Cnidus_Aphrodite_Altemps_Inv8619.jpg" title="A Roman copy of Praxiteles' now lost Aphrodite of Knido" width="270" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Roman copy of Praxiteles' now lost Aphrodite of Knidos</td></tr>
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Jules Dumont d’Urville was a bit of a tragic figure. He wanted to become a naval officer, but with Napoleon’s ships bottled up in their ports by the overly powerful Royal Navy, the young first class graduate of the French Naval Academy of 1808 was condemned to sit on the beach until the end of the war before he would embark on his first mission. However, Jules did not waste his time, learned several languages and developed a keen interest and considerable knowledge in cultural and scientific matters. When His Catholic Majesty Louis XVII’s corvette “Chevrette” finally left Toulon in 1819 to carry out a hydrographic survey of islands in the Aegean Sea, back then still a part of the Ottoman Empire, it was a bit of luck for the art world to have d’Urville on board as one of her officers. After a couple of months of sailing and surveying the Cyclades, the “Chevrette” finally lay off the island of Melos. And as chance would have it, another classically educated French officer, Lt Olivier Voutier from the schooner “Estafette” was exploring the island and had dug in the ruins of the theatre of Melos’ ancient settlement, high on a hill overlooking the island’s anchorage. And while the French lieutenant, accompanied by two of the schooner’s crew, busied themselves in the dirt and dust searching for antiquities, a local farmer, one Georgios Ketrotas, looted the place for construction material and had stumbled across a chamber. The three Frenchmen became interested, joined the local and saw him covering a statue with dirt. They insisted in further excavating the object instead, gazed first at a charming face with the hair tied into a bun and then the famously disarmed torso and a marvellous bust and by nightfall, the four men had excavated the lower, draped half of the slightly larger than life-sized statue. It was, of course, the Venus de Milo. Obviously, the lady was a bit too heavy to carry her away in the tiny “Estafette” and while Voutier desperately looked for means of transporting her back home to France anyway, “Chevrette” arrived on the scene. Dumont d’Urville immediately agreed with Voutier about the find’s significance when he saw the statue while the farmer Ketrotas now demanded his finder’s fee in earnest. But neither would “Chevrette’s” captain take the lady on board and the corvette sailed on to Constantinople sans Venus. D’Urville hurried towards the French embassy and persuaded King Louis’ ambassador to the High Porte, Charles François de Riffardeau, marquis de Rivière, to buy the lady for France. Together with the marquis’ secretary, the Comte de Marcellus, D’Urville sailed back to Milos and arrived just about the time when she was loaded on board of another vessel after Ketrotas had sold her to a local Ottoman dignitary. D’Urville and the secretary persuaded the local pasha to annul the transaction and sell the lady to them and ambassador de Rivière accompanied her in person to her new home in the Louvre.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An engraving of the Venus de Milo made shortly after her arrival in Paris, still mounted on her plinth bearing the inscription of her creator's name, Alexandros of Antioch</td></tr>
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After Napoleon’s defeat and the end of the First Empire, the Louvre had to return a couple of artworks to their previous owners. Among them was the Venus de’ Medici, shipped back to the Uffizi in Florence already in December 1815. This particular Venus is not quite a work by famed Praxiteles, the inscription on her plinth clearly states that she was created by one Cleomenes of Athens who lived around the 1st century BCE, but she was modelled along the lines of the groundbreaking Aphrodite of Knidos. In March 1821, when the Venus the Milo arrived, the Louvre was not quite Venus-less, but lacked a few highlights, especially after the rival British Museum had just acquired the infamous Elgin Marbles and the curators were all too happy to pronounce their new arrival to be a work of Praxiteles himself. Even though the inscription on her plinth read (Alex)andros, son of (M)enides, citizen of (Ant)ioch at Meander made (it). Since the place in Asia Minor received his new name after one of Alexander’s diadochi not before 301 BCE, it was quite obvious that she didn’t even come from the School of Praxiteles who died some 20 years earlier. However, over and above the pedigree of Praxiteles as one of the top artists of antiquity, it would link the statue to the Classical period and not Hellenism, still viewed along the lines set by Winckelmann almost a century before as a decadent end of days of Greek culture. Thus, the plinth mysteriously disappeared and for a long while, she was claimed to be a work by the classical master sculptor, just to outdo the lost Hellenistic Venus de’ Medici, the Florentines and the British anyway. La Milo’s arms were never found and if she even is a Venus has been hotly debated ever since her rediscovery back in 1820. She might have held an apple, Paris’ gift that caused the Trojan War, which would clearly be a venereal hallmark, so to speak. A lance and shield might imply a Nike, commemorating a forgotten victory in a forgotten war like the other Hellenistic masterpiece in the Louvre, the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Maybe she even cradled a baby in her arms or just admired herself holding a mirror. A convincing theory has been brought up quite recently by archaeology professor and textiles expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber explaining the rather curios position of the lady’s arm stumps. She might have held up a distaff with a ball of wool in her left and spun the thread with her right hand, a scene often depicted in vase painting and clearly associated with prostitution, since the ladies of the trade spun wool while they waited for their customers. In a Hellenistic context, the Venus de Milo might actually have been not a goddess but a prostitute. But this only adds to her beautiful, armless imperfection, making her an iconic part of the picturesque heap of broken images Western civilisation gathered after the discovery of how boring and lifeless classical perfection is at some point during the Romantic Movement, around the time the Venus de Milo arrived at the Louvre.<div>
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And more about the Venus de Milo on:<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo</a><br /><br />
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Trypiti 848 00, Greece36.7375255 24.42780459999994536.724731999999996 24.407548599999945 36.750319 24.448060599999945tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-51363161381006099572017-02-27T16:16:00.000+01:002017-03-01T08:06:51.373+01:00Very Picturesque Melancholy - Prague, Jakub Schikaneder and his Nocturnes<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
27 February 1855, the Bohemian painter Jakub Schikaneder was born in Prague. <br />
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“You know yourself how little sunshine reaches Prague's dark streets and alleys.“ (Gustav Meyrink, “The Golem”)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Jakub Schikaneder "Early Evening on the Hradčany" (around 1900)</span></td></tr>
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"A schöne Leich”. A beautiful funeral, to the good people of Vienna, the place where the dead buried at the Zentralfriedhof, the Central Cemetery, outnumber the living by almost two to one. The place where the elderly still set up saving accounts to pay for their “schöne Leich”. The place where Sigmund Freud came up with the “Todestrieb”, death drive, and where death and dying always had a somewhat funny side and usually was celebrated with a drunk and merry note over Mozart’s “Requiem”. Not that Vienna’s beautiful Bohemian cousin Prague isn’t every bid as morbid as the merry Danube necropolis. With the added melancholy of centuries of foreign rule by the Habsburgs, the apocalyptic visions of the Hussite Wars and the Thirty Years’ War and a liberal dose of mystery and magic since the days of Emperor Rudolf II’s Bohemian Parnassus. However, it was the Habsburg’s spearheading of Germanisation since the Thirty Years’ War that reduced Czech language almost to being the means of lower class communication and hindered the further development of genuine Czech fine arts for almost two hundred years. The nationalist revivals of those downtrodden by the major empires of the age at the beginning of the 19th century, from Dublin to Warsaw, Athens and Kiev, saw a rise of Czech identity as well, first in language and writing, then with fixed bayonets on the barricades of the revolution of 1848 and finally in music and the visual arts a generation later. And while the first notable Czech painters took up the style taught at the Imperial Academies and celebrated under these auspices their own Slavic and Bohemian identity-establishing heroes and heroines, only a few years later modernity caught up with their successors who began to work with the various –isms of the second half of the 19th century’s art trends. They studied in Paris, naturally, in Vienna, Düsseldorf and Munich and one aspiring artist from Prague was quite taken with the Munich School’s subtle blend of Academic Art, elapsing Romanticism, Baroque Chiaroscuro and a note of Impressionism. Jakub Schikaneder who would develop the style into imagery with a morbid and mysterious All Souls' Day mood, sometimes gloomy enough to let even the sulkiest of his Russian contemporaries appear like they were merrily morbid Viennese. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Jakub Schikaneder "All Souls' Day" (1888)</span></td></tr>
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Schikaneder grew up in Prague’s Old Town as the son of an Austrian customs officer, not exactly in bourgeois upper middle class surroundings, but as the scion of an art loving family who had the author of the libretto of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” among their forebears, the lad had at least the moral support to further an artistic career, first in the theatre and, since he was 15, at Prague’s Art Academy. He began to exhibit his works already during his time at the academy to an audience that hungered for works by genuine Czech artists. Even though the young painter’s inherent sarcasm and irreverence that went against the grain of the hard core of Bohemian patriots like the journalist and author Jan Neruda who criticised Schikaneder’s works rather severely in the National Newspaper, the “Národní listy”. Never the less, Schikaneder won the prestigious artistic commissions to contribute to the decoration of Prague’s iconic National Theatre and other public works and had finally assembled enough money to finance several trips and stays across Europe, first and foremost in Paris and Munich. Becoming a professor at Prague’s new Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in 1891 helped him to travel again and again to Europe’s artistic hotspots and stay in touch with current art trends while he led an otherwise quite un-bohemian life, overshadowed only by the death of his only child during the first year of its life. Getting inspired by Whistler’s Nocturnes and reading Schopenhauer in Prague’s moody atmosphere does things to one’s inspiration, though. When the last decade of the 19th century ended, Schikaneder entered the arguably most important phase of his artistic work after a couple of years of refocusing. It was the time when his night images of Prague came into being. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Prague and her defenestrations. Here: Jakub Schikaneder "Murder in the Hiouse" (1890)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So-called “Problem Pictures”, a visual narrative encouraging the spectator to solve the depicted puzzle, family drama with open endings, court procedures, crime scenes, more often than not, were quite popular in France and especially in Great Britain. Schikaneder saw a few during his travels and was intrigued. He painted one or two himself, bridging his period à la Munich and his later Prague nocturnes. Narrative along with Realism went overboard while Symbolism lurks in the shadows of the Staré Město’s winding lanes, the Hradčany and the shores of the Vlatava and the eerie light of the gas lanterns. Gustav Meyrink’s golem wouldn’t look out of place at all and sometimes, Symbolism comes out in the open when Joe Black is seen, fiddling in the driveway or listening to a moribund musicians last song in a Prague with her landmarks depicted not quite correct but extrapolated to convey a mood. It all ends with the usual late Symbolist body count, sick beds, morgues and dead girls by the dozen until modernity and the 20th century finally caught up with Schikaneder himself on the brink of the Great War. When a new generation of very active young artists began to exhibit their works, Cubists, chiefly, their professor from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design began to withdraw and finally fall silent. Schikaneder’s last pictures show scenes from the German North Sea coast and Heligoland, quite sombre, still with a whiff of Symbolism, until he died at the age of 69, back home in his beloved Prague, duly forgotten outside his home turf, leaving a legacy of very picturesque melancholy.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i7sWaEIBiRQ/WLRBNUuuiDI/AAAAAAAA5Kc/cVhQ1k9zscYzgo2lQoZaCjiP0ns8rstBQCLcB/s1600/Schikaneder_-_Straoprazska_zakouti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i7sWaEIBiRQ/WLRBNUuuiDI/AAAAAAAA5Kc/cVhQ1k9zscYzgo2lQoZaCjiP0ns8rstBQCLcB/s640/Schikaneder_-_Straoprazska_zakouti.jpg" title="Jakub Schikaneder Lane in Old Prague" width="470" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Jakub Schikaneder: "A Lane in Old Prague" (1907)</span></td></tr>
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And a bit more on:<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakub_Schikaneder" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakub_Schikaneder</a><br />
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Prague, Czechia50.0755381 14.4378004999999849.7475681 13.789606999999981 50.4035081 15.08599399999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-46340042490149013892017-01-05T15:10:00.001+01:002020-07-31T20:56:07.287+02:00"Viene, viene la Befana" - On Befana, Italy's Christmas Witch<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />5 January – on the eve of Epiphany, La Befana the Christmas Witch flies through the night and brings gifts to children in Italy.<br /><br /> <br /><br />"Viene, viene la Befana<br /> Vien dai monti a notte fonda<br /> Come è stanca! la circonda<br /> Neve e gelo e tramontana!<br /> Viene, viene la Befana"<br /><br /> <br /><br /><i>Here comes, here comes the Befana<br /> She comes from the mountains in the deep of the night<br /> Look how tired she is! All wrapped up<br /> In snow and frost and the north wind!<br />Here comes, here comes La Befana! </i></span><div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">(Giovanni Pascoli)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Once upon a time there lived an old woman east of Suez who was known as the best housekeeper near and far. Her reputation preceded her and thus it was no wonder that three wise men stopped by at her house on a cold January evening and asked for accommodation. They came from the East they said and were led by a star towards Bethlehem to praise the infant. The crone did not complain about tales from oriental fortune tellers at all, did not even accuse them of being led by a bottle rather than a star and even considered to join them to pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews and do a lot of praising and all that. Alas, top notch maintaining of a household famously is not work done by itself and the lady told the three Magi to go on ahead, she would just tidy up, arrange a few things and join them later on the road. And finally, when everything was shipshape and Bristol-fashion, she packed her things, heaved a sigh and set out on the road to Bethlehem. Alas, a sense of direction apparently was not her strong side and soon she was lost and wandered the roads and asked every girl and boy she met on her way if he or she was the infant and gave them sweetmeats when they shook their heads and on she marched to this very day. On every night before Three King’s Day, Epiphany, she appears to ask her way and give sweets to children in return and became known as Befana after La Festa dell'Epifania. And since old habits tend to stick, she sometimes even cleans the house and is glad to find a glass of wine and something to eat left for her. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O-F0CKrgmTg/WG5SbBBw7KI/AAAAAAAA5Cw/Khr0AnvkbTEDezbNA-fw9fAT8YvIGVRpQCLcB/s1600/journey-of-the-magi.jpg%2521Large.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="442" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O-F0CKrgmTg/WG5SbBBw7KI/AAAAAAAA5Cw/Khr0AnvkbTEDezbNA-fw9fAT8YvIGVRpQCLcB/s640/journey-of-the-magi.jpg%2521Large.jpg" title="James Tissot (1836 - 1902) "Journey of the Magi" ( 1894)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">James Tissot (1836 - 1902) "Journey of the Magi" ( 1894)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br /><br />Poor Befana, condemned to walk the night for all eternity like Ahasverus or Melmoth the Wanderer, has acquired a few more sombre aspects. Sometimes, it is not the infant saviour she asks for but her child who had died in a plague. In other variants of the legend her son was slain by order of Herod the Great during the Massacre of the Innocents and a doll that once had belonged to him or a robe sewn from her wedding dress given as gifts certainly carry a somewhat melancholy tune. But she remains a friendly sort and whatever made her appear as a witch, the worst she does is leaving garlic, onion or the ubiquitous lump of coal for naughty children in Italy and in Italian communities across the world while the rest receives gifts. La Befana appeared in Italy for the first time in her current guise during the late Middle Ages and she rode either a donkey or even a broom, the one she uses to sweep the house, and became known as the Christmas Witch. However, it’s safe to assume that some older customs and aspects of the Crone and ancient deities shine through La Befana’s appearance. The story of the Triple Goddess, the Maiden, Mother and the Crone, is ages old, naturally, and often told to reflect the seasonal cycle. La Befana, the old witch, walking the night and giving gifts towards the end of the year or just around the beginning of the new might very well echo ancient customs of the Italian peninsula. Once, before the Christians and even before Rome was built on her seven hills, there was a cult among the Sabines, the ones whose women were famously abducted by Romulus, revering a goddess known as Strenua. To honour her, they gave gifts at the beginning of the New Year known as strenae and in Roman times, Strenua had her shrine and a sacred grove on the Via Sacra on Capitoline Hill and a procession on 1 January when twigs from the grove were carried up to the old citadel, somewhere near the place where the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara coeli al Campidoglio stands since the last 1,500 years. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cnbqlnbVmtc/WG5TAbuhZNI/AAAAAAAA5C4/BJ_Tp7JvHYQdUOjFrYtjWk6Wb3HbdMD_gCLcB/s1600/800px-Perchtenmaske.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cnbqlnbVmtc/WG5TAbuhZNI/AAAAAAAA5C4/BJ_Tp7JvHYQdUOjFrYtjWk6Wb3HbdMD_gCLcB/s640/800px-Perchtenmaske.jpg" title="A Perchten mask from Austria" width="470" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A <i>Perchten</i> mask from Austria</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br /><br />And who knows, maybe the witchy part of La Befana was blown across the Alps from the snowy north with the Tramontane and the Goths, Lombards and the rallying cry “Wibbelingen!”, Waiblingen in Swabia, of the Ghibellines. And up there, in the cradle of the Tramontane in the mountains and on the upper reaches of the River Rhine, where once the Alemanni and Suebi gathered, the goddess Bertha or Perchta roamed through the nights during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany and found out whether children were naughty or nice. Sweets or coal, however, were not to be found in the arsenal of a walker of the Rauhnächte, the rough nights, rooting back to the Dark Ages. Perchta would leave hard cash, a silver coin, in the shoes of well-behaved little ones, whatever that meant in the 8th century. Those who weren’t got their bellies slit, their guts eaten and their abdominal cavity stuffed with straw. By the end of the Middle Ages, the custom to leave food and drink during the Rauhnächte for Frau Perchta was condemned in Austria and Southern Germany and the Perchtenläufe, display processions with people wearing masks and costumes not unlike that of Krampus, were banned well until the folklore revivals of the 19th century. Italy, though, maintained the more gentle customs of La Befana and in one version of the story, she even finds the Christ child, gives him her gifts and he blessed her with a smile. <br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about La Befana on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befana" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befana</a></span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Rome, Italy41.9027835 12.49636550000002441.524646 11.850918500000024 42.280921 13.141812500000025tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-3912161643636572342016-11-06T10:28:00.006+01:002022-09-20T20:27:20.431+02:00"On the field of Lützen on the same day / Gustavus Adolphus lay in his blood.” - The Death of the Leu von Mitternacht<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">6 November 1632, the Leu von Mitternacht (lit.: Lion from Midnight, meaning from the North), Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, fell in the Battle of Lützen, 20 miles southwest of Leipzig during the Thirty Years’ War.</span><br />
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> “Like a ray of light it flashes through the fog / no rider in the saddle sits / The fleeing beast, it steams, it reeks / Its white is dipped in scarlet red // The saddle bloody, bloody the mane / All Sweden saw the horse / On the field of Lützen on the same day / Gustavus Adolphus lay in his blood.” (Theodor Fontane “6 November 1632, A Swedish Legend”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R6ntS0WYxdA/Vjxldoly1ZI/AAAAAAAAzUY/51nOQmnCpOo/s1600/Lu%25CC%2588tzen.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R6ntS0WYxdA/Vjxldoly1ZI/AAAAAAAAzUY/51nOQmnCpOo/s640/Lu%25CC%2588tzen.jpg" title="Wilhelm Carl Räuber’s (1849 – 1926) imagination of Gustavus Adolphus’ dead at Lützen (1886, Museum Schloss Lützen)" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Wilhelm Carl Räuber’s (1849 – 1926) imagination of Gustavus Adolphus’ dead at Lützen (1886, Museum Schloss Lützen) </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. Like many other creatures great and small of mythological significance to the Indo-Europeans, greys experienced a bit of a revaluation under the new management of the Christian symbol system. Once, though, white horses were held sacred from the steppes of Central Asia to the hills of the Berkshire Downs where “The White Horse of the White Horse Vale / Was cut out of the grass”, as Chesterton once put it, “before the gods that made the gods”. And while deities like Odin, Indra and Svantovit rode them as well as Persian kings, Celtic fertility goddesses and Greek heroes and white horses were sent as messengers to propitiate the gods before battle by Romans, the Norse, Huns and Magyars, greys never lost their ambiguous connotation of being bearers of bad tidings and ghostly apparitions. When Streiff galloped out of the November mist and gun-smoke of battle, the king’s charger, riderless and smeared in blood, running between the front lines, offered a spectacle of epic proportions on many archetypal levels. Even if Streiff wasn’t a grey at all, as popular iconography and history painting have it, but a chestnut. The “Lion of the North”, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, champion of the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years’ War, did own a grey once, though, but the horse was shot under him during a reconnaissance ride near Ingolstadt after the Battle of Rain on the River Lech in the spring of the year. Count Tilly fell there, then the commander of the Imperials and the Catholic League before Wallenstein took over. The year before, Gustav Adolf already had acquired his Oldenburg chestnut charger from Johann Streiff von Lauenstein, one of his cavalry colonels, for a thousand riksdalers, at least ten times the price of a war horse. Ironically enough, the gift of an Oldenburg stallion by a breeder near Celle once prevented Tilly from sacking the stud farm and Gustavus’ horse shot at Ingolstadt, probably another Oldenburg, was recovered by the Bavarians after the siege was raised and the town had become the first fortress that held against a Swedish army during the Thirty Years’ War. The “Schwedenschimmel”, the Swedish grey of Gustavus Adolphus, was taxidermied as a trophy and is now Europe’s oldest stuffed animal, on exhibition in the city museum of Ingolstadt. Streiff, Europe’s second oldest specimen so preserved, would suffer a similar fate. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vQWq5hXyDSo/VjxnGafixGI/AAAAAAAAzUs/WQlYzc3F8pM/s1600/Carl_Fredrik_Ki%25C3%25B6rboe_-_The_horse_of_Gustav_II_Adolf_at_the_Battle_of_L%25C3%25BCtzen.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vQWq5hXyDSo/VjxnGafixGI/AAAAAAAAzUs/WQlYzc3F8pM/s640/Carl_Fredrik_Ki%25C3%25B6rboe_-_The_horse_of_Gustav_II_Adolf_at_the_Battle_of_L%25C3%25BCtzen.jpg" title="Carl Fredrik Kiörboe (1799 - 1876): "The horse of Gustav II Adolf at the Battle of Lützen"" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Carl Fredrik Kiörboe (1799 - 1876): "The horse of Gustav II Adolf at the Battle of Lützen" </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> <br />Things looked bleak for the Protestant cause after 14 years of war that killed literary more people than the plague. The “Magdeburger Hochzeit”, the infamous sack of Magdeburg by Count Tilly’s imperial mercenaries in 1631 with a death toll of 25,000 slaughtered civilians of a total of 30,000 inhabitants, men women and children, marked the horrible climax of a horrible conflict. A few weeks later, a Swedish army appeared on the battlefields of Saxony, led by the Protestant King of Sweden himself and defeated Tilly decisively at Breitenfeld. Gustavus Adolphus became the champion of the Protestants and with the innovative use of muskets, the mobility of field artillery and dashing cavalry charges the ways to wage war had changed for ever. For a year, Gustavus Adolphus led the Protestant armies, mostly victorious. Wallenstein managed to defeat him only once, near Nuremburg, and the autumn of 1632 saw the armies back again in Saxony. After Tilly’s demise, Wallenstein now headed the Imperials and the troops of the Catholic League, Gustavus Adolphus the army of the Protestant Union, roughly 20,000 men on each side. Dense fog over the battlefield at Lützen delayed commencing of hostilities, Gustavus Adolphus is reported to have knelt in front of his kneeling, praying army, a “moving song” was sung, probably the Protestant rallying hymn Vår Gud är oss en väldig borg ("Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" / “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”), then “Mount!” was ordered, the king himself wore only a buff coat of elk skin, wounds received in battle prevented him from donning armour. The Battle of Lützen had begun. When Wallenstein’s second-in-command Pappenheim’s counter charge on the outflanked Imperial left wing stopped the Protestant advance, the next Swedish cavalry divisions moved up, personally led by Gustavus Adolphus, fog rose again, the myopic king was separated from his Smålands cavalry regiment, got too close to the Catholic firing line, a musket ball hit him in the left arm, Piccolomini’s Imperial cuirassiers caught up with him, another bullet hit the king in the back, he fell out of his saddle, was dragged along by his horse Streiff, the beast stopped, one of the Imperials shot the king in the head, another pierced him with his estoc, a slim bladed long sword. Gustavus was dead. His corpse was plundered, he lay naked in the mud and Streiff galloped away.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OgjqO91g3DM/WB70pVkxtSI/AAAAAAAA4i0/BFYLCNO01eYtRcIY-BvWKRK9iyli2Ar7QCLcB/s1600/Battle_of_Lutzen.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OgjqO91g3DM/WB70pVkxtSI/AAAAAAAA4i0/BFYLCNO01eYtRcIY-BvWKRK9iyli2Ar7QCLcB/s640/Battle_of_Lutzen.jpg" title="Carl Wahlboom's (1810 - 1858) imagination of the "Death of King Gustav II Adolf at the Battle of Lützen" (1855)" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Carl Wahlboom's (1810 - 1858) imagination of the "Death of King Gustav II Adolf at the Battle of Lützen" (1855), with a correctly coloured chestnut Streiff </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> <br />There is an old legend that people back home in Sweden heard the roar of battle and saw the apparition of Streiff running through the mist that November day when their king died. However, every Swedish soldier and Protestant landsknecht on the spot recognised the riderless Streiff, an outcry went through the army, first of despair, then of rage and the Protestants charged again and again and eventually won the Battle of Lützen. Narrowly. The naked, plundered body of the king was recovered and carried by the army in a funeral procession from Saxony to the coast of the Baltic Sea. Swedish troops continued to fight until the end of the war in 1648 and Gustavus Adolphus’ reforms cleared the way for Sweden to become a major if continuously broke European power for the next 150 years. Gustavus Adolphus’ charger that ran so picturesquely in the fog between the frontlines died a year later from the wounds he received on the day his master fell. The carcass was taken from the Swedish port of Wolgast in Pomerania to Stockholm. Streiff, just like the Schwedenschimmel of Ingolstadt, was taxidermied and is exhibited today in the Livrustkammaren, the Royal Armoury established by Gustavus Adolphus himself in 1628, along with Gustavus' armour. The king himself was finally buried in Riddarholm Church after his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg kept his body for herself, first in Wolgast, later in Nyköping castle, unwilling to surrender her beloved husband to eternity. Another somewhat Gothic aspect that surrounds the death of the Lion of the North. His buff coat of elk skin, however, captured by the Imperial cuirassiers at Lützen was a trophy brought “all bloody” to the king’s adversary Emperor Ferdinand II in Vienna and ended up in what is now the Museum of Military History until the Great War was over in 1918. Humanitarian aid from Sweden helped the starving, newly founded Austrian Republic to her feet and as a gesture of gratitude, Gustav Adolf’s buff coat was returned and is now at Livrustkammaren, along with Streiff and the rest of the king’s paraphernalia. <br /><br /></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R9vsDsOAWao/WB72EFWAFNI/AAAAAAAA4i8/Pz1Ght221vYFbghTivu5d9LPY8ccTbREQCLcB/s1600/Streiff_-_Livrustkammaren_-_24363.tif.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R9vsDsOAWao/WB72EFWAFNI/AAAAAAAA4i8/Pz1Ght221vYFbghTivu5d9LPY8ccTbREQCLcB/s640/Streiff_-_Livrustkammaren_-_24363.tif.jpg" title="Taxidermied Streiff at the Livrustkammaren*" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Taxidermied Streiff at the Livrustkammaren* </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> <br />Theodor Fontane’s poem quoted above goes as follows:<br /><br /> <br /><br />Der 6. November 1632<br /> Schwedische Sage<br /> <br /> Schwedische Heide, Novembertag,<br /> Der Nebel grau am Boden lag,<br /> Hin über das Steinfeld von Dalarn<br /> Holpert, stolpert ein Räderkarrn.<br /> <br /> Ein Räderkarrn, beladen mit Korn;<br /> Lorns Atterdag zieht an der Deichsel vorn,<br /> Niels Rudbeck schiebt. Sie zwingen's nicht,<br /> Das Gestrüpp wird dichter, Niels aber spricht:<br /> <br /> »Busch-Ginster wächst hier über den Steg,<br /> Wir gehn in die Irr', wir missen den Weg,<br /> Wir haben links und rechts vertauscht, –<br /> hörst du, wie der Dal-Elf rauscht?«<br /> <br /> »Das ist nicht der Dal-Elf, der Dal-Elf ist weit,<br /> Es rauscht nicht vor uns und nicht zur Seit',<br /> Es lärmt in Lüften, es klingt wie Trab,<br /> Wie Reiter wogt es auf und ab.<br /> <br /> Es ist wie Schlacht, die herwärts dringt,<br /> Wie Kirchenlied es dazwischen klingt,<br /> Ich hör' in der Rosse wieherndem Trott:<br /> Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott!«<br /> <br /> Und kaum gesprochen, da Lärmen und Schrein,<br /> In tiefen Geschwadern bricht es herein,<br /> Es brausen und dröhnen Luft und Erd',<br /> vorauf ein Reiter auf weißem Pferd.<br /> <br /> Signale, Schüsse, Rossegestampf,<br /> Der Nebel wird schwarz wie Pulverdampf,<br /> Wie wilde Jagd, so fliegt es vorbei; –<br /> Zitternd ducken sich die zwei.<br /> <br /> Nun ist es vorüber ... da, wieder mit Macht<br /> Rückwärts wogt die Reiterschlacht,<br /> Und wieder dröhnt und donnert die Erd',<br /> Und wieder vorauf das weiße Pferd.<br /> <br /> Wie ein Lichtstreif durch den Nebel es blitzt,<br /> Kein Reiter mehr im Sattel sitzt,<br /> Das fliehende Tier, es dampft und raucht,<br /> Sein Weiß ist tief in Rot getaucht.<br /> <br /> Der Sattel blutig, blutig die Mähn',<br /> Ganz Schweden hat das Ross gesehn: –<br /> Auf dem Felde von Lützen am selben Tag<br /> Gustav Adolf in seinem Blute lag.<br /><br />And here is a rough translation:<br /><br /> <br />Swedish heath, November day,<br />Fog lay grey over the ground,<br />Over the stony field of Dalarn<br />Rumbles, stumbles a wheeled cart<br /><br />A wheeled cart, laden with grain,<br />Lorn Atterdag pulls the shaft at the fore,<br />Niels Rudbeck shoves, they take it easy,<br />The shrub grows denser, but Niels says<br /><br />“Gorse grows over the pathway here,<br />We’ve gone astray, we’ve lost our way,<br />We have confused left with right,<br />Do you hear the Dal-Elf’s rushing?”<br /><br />“That is not the Dal-Elf, the Dal-Elf is far,<br />There is nor rushing ahead of us and not to our side,<br />It’s high up in the air, it sounds like the trot<br />Of riders to and fro.<br /><br />It is like battle pressing towards us,<br />And church song sounding in between,<br />I hear in the chargers’ hoofbeats<br />“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”<br /><br />And hardly that was said, clamour and cries,<br />With broad wings it bursts,<br />Air and earth roar and boom,<br />At the fore a rider on a pale horse.<br /><br />Signals, shots and horses’ stamps,<br />The fog grows black like powder smoke,<br />Like Wild Hunt it’s flying past,<br />Trembling the two take cover.<br /><br />Now it is over… there, again with might,<br />Backwards surges the cavalry charge,<br />And again booms and thunders the earth,<br />And at the fore again the pale horse<br /><br />Like a ray of light it flashes through the fog, <br />No rider in the saddle sits, <br />The fleeing beast, it steams, it reeks, <br />Its white is dipped in scarlet red<br /><br />The saddle bloody, bloody the mane <br />All Sweden saw the horse <br />On the field of Lützen on the same day <br />Gustavus Adolphus lay in his blood.<br /><br /> <br />More about the Battle of Lützen on:<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_L%C3%BCtzen_%281632%29" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_L%C3%BCtzen_%281632%29</a><br /><br /> <br />And an image of the “Schwedenschimmel” of Ingolstadt can be wondered and marvelled at on:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.ingolstadt.de/stadtmuseum/scheuerer/museum/r-17-001.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.ingolstadt.de/stadtmuseum/scheuerer/museum/r-17-001.htm</a><br /><br /><br /><br />* the image of Streiff was taken by Göran Schmitt and found on:<br /><br /><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Streiff_(taxidermied)#/media/File:Streiff_-_Livrustkammaren_-_24363.tif" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Streiff_(taxidermied)#/media/File:Streiff_-_Livrustkammaren_-_24363.tif</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Weißenfelser Str. 18, 06686 Lützen, Germany51.24936 12.13422000000002825.727325500000003 -29.174373999999972 76.7713945 53.442814000000027tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-71949452763990617542016-10-22T18:51:00.001+02:002020-04-28T09:12:55.942+02:00"The Arabian Nights Man" - Golden Age Illustrator Edmund Dulac<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">22 October 1882, the French-born, British naturalised illustrator Edmund Dulac was born in Toulouse.<br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“… he would have chosen some dream city of the Orient for his birthplace, a Persian princess for his mother, and an artist of the Ming Dynasty for his father.” (Introduction to a New York exhibition of Dulac’s work)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--9LcS5IxXS4/WAuWi2SMWOI/AAAAAAAA4Zg/-DegLm0L1dQEnpsrCnHT5so80PGOX4sUQCLcB/s1600/Dulac%2BArabian%2BNights%2BDeryabar.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--9LcS5IxXS4/WAuWi2SMWOI/AAAAAAAA4Zg/-DegLm0L1dQEnpsrCnHT5so80PGOX4sUQCLcB/s640/Dulac%2BArabian%2BNights%2BDeryabar.png" title="Edmund Dulac: "The City of Deryabar" from "Stories from the Arabian Nights" (1907)" width="394" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edmund Dulac: "The City of Deryabar" <br />
from "Stories from the Arabian Nights" (1907)</td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">upon a time, the line was blurred between picture books for children and illustrated editions of tales aimed at an adult audience. Not that the artists who created the works of art that illuminated the medieval books of hours or chivalric romances cared one little bit about the idea of pictures in books being suitable for children or not. Neither did publishers of the mass of printed creations with their woodcuts that swept across Europe during the media revolution of the 15th and 16th century after the invention of the printing press. The gorier the better was the maxim of most. Some 100 years later though, the first educational books for children appeared in the Netherlands, Comenius’ “Orbis Pictus”, something along the lines of a pictured encyclopedia for children and reading primers with letters assigned to animals, plants and people that began to parallel compulsory education in some European countries. But it was the discovery of folk and fairy tales as cultural assets that gave the go-ahead for the appearance of the illustrated childhood treasures and the expensive gift books with the artworks of the masters of the Golden Age of Illustration. With the technological quantum leaps in printing and reproduction techniques that became commonplace towards the end of the 19th century, the enchantingly sophisticated designs of these men and women, lines and colours as well, became an integral component of the book market, a far cry from the black and white steel engravings that were the peak of reproducible illustrations not even a generation before. And the gift books that came out every autumn in time for the Christmas sale changed more and more from garishly bound and expensively slipcased luxury editions of poetry and short novels aimed at well-off, educated ladies and gentlemen rather than being aimed towards their offspring. The collections of fairy tales from the beginning of the century, usually sparsely pictured back then, reappeared together with genuine picture books, brought to life with imagery from Walter Crane to Beatrix Potter and Arthur Rackham, many of them making a living from illustrating children’s books that became crown jewels among the Christmas presents. Up to a point that they were collected and reissued for frontline soldiers when the age ended in the storms of steel and blood and terror of the Great War to give the tortured souls something to cling to, reminiscent of strong childhood memories and home. The illustrations of Edmund Dulac, the “Arabian Nights Man” were included in the “relief books”. They already had become something archetypical for dreaming oneself away, for old and young, during the 10 years since Dulac entered the scene in 1904. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KNQVzGEt3tM/WAuX5HYo30I/AAAAAAAA4Zo/NHF8kiZhm_0l3S6E9aumWXPmxW6xVFYTgCLcB/s1600/800px-Edmund_Dulac_-_The_Mermaid_-_The_Prince.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KNQVzGEt3tM/WAuX5HYo30I/AAAAAAAA4Zo/NHF8kiZhm_0l3S6E9aumWXPmxW6xVFYTgCLcB/s640/800px-Edmund_Dulac_-_The_Mermaid_-_The_Prince.jpg" title="Edmund Dulac: "The Little Mermaid" (1911)" width="510" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Edmund Dulac: "The Little Mermaid" (1911)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br /><br />Orientalism and Japanese woodprints were all the rage in Europe when Edmond grew up in Toulouse. His uncle was an art dealer and brought the lad in contact with the imagery of far-away places and Edmond's fascination grew to a point were he began to learn Arabic and Chinese, his law studies forgotten, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and finally relocated to London, the Mecca of the Golden Age of Illustrations, the world of Beardsley, Crane and Rackham. His first commissioned works were illustrations of fairy tales of a different kind, though, the tales of the Brontë sisters, first and foremost Jane Eyre. Other classics of English and American literature followed, from Shakespeare to Poe and Hawthorne, but Dulac was most influential and best loved when he transposed the imagery of the “Arabian Nights” and Omar Khayyam into his singular illustrations. It became something of a paradigm change from the sweltry salon erotica depicting harems and slave markets of 19th academic art along with virile imagery of savage oriental warriors, hunting scenes, camel races and romantically bygone glories of ancient Egypt á la Ozymandias into the floating Art Noveau-influenced dreamlike scenes Dulac created with his illustrations. French literary fairy tales along with those of Andersen provided an equally fertile breeding ground for the French artist’s imagination who became a naturalised Britisher in 1912. In the ten years between his arrival in London and the outbreak of the Great War, Dulac became one of the top artists among a set of excellent illustrators, sought after by publishers and beloved by his audience, both children and adults. The line between picture books and illustrated texts for grown-up readers were blurred again and if only by keeping the actual buyers of the quite expensive books in mind that contained Dulac’s works, the children’s well-off and usually quite cultivated parents. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Edmund Dulac "Little Girl in a Book" from "Fairies I Have Met" (1907)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br /><br />Together with Rackham, Dulac developed a sophisticated watercolour mixed method to allow for the glamorously rich tones of his works as well as Rackham’s wan greys and browns along with the nuanced lines of both artists. It was their good fortune that print technology had developed to a degree that allowed almost faithful reproduction of the intricate works Dulac created, true to his influencers, on expensive Japanese paper only to add to the enhancement of his tones and textures. The distinctive ukyio-e style that influenced the great painters of the age as well, Manet, Whistler, van Gogh, his compatriot Toulouse-Lautrec to name but a few, along with the whole Art Nouveau style made the major impact on Dulac’s creativity, together with Mogul miniatures and Chinese artworks. And even among imagery inspired by Grimm and Andersen, these elements appear, upturned slippers, turbans, floating garments, pointed domes and crescent moons, set pieces he saw in the life when he visited the Arab East before the Great War, something of a self-affirmation of the mindscape and imagination of the East he had created for Western audiences. Styles and tastes changed already during his life and times, famously, and between the wars Dulac continued to work as an illustrator, fairy tales as well as literary classics, as caricaturist and stage and costume designer, quite like the miracle workers who were responsible for the wondrous appearance of the immensely popular Ballets Russes. Commercial graphics helped to pay the rent and a last illustration helped to keep his imagery in the mindscape of the public, a stamp he was tasked to create on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. Sans turban, though. Dulac died in the same year.<br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about Edmund Dulac on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Dulac" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Dulac</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span></div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-33095808110667112382016-09-03T17:27:00.000+02:002016-09-03T20:38:05.491+02:00The painter of English Enlightenment and Industrialisation - Joseph Wright of Derby<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br />3 September 1734, "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution" Joseph Wright was born in Derby.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“So in some Engine, that denies a Vent,<br />If unrespiring is some Creature pent,<br />It sickens, droops, and pants, and gasps for Breath,<br />Sad o'er the Sight swim shad'wy Mists of Death;<br />If then kind Air pours powerful in again.<br />New Heats, new Pulses quicken ev'ry Vein;<br />From the clear'd, lifted, life-rekindled Eye,<br />Dispers'd, the dark and dampy Vapours fly.“ (Robert Savage, “The Wanderer”, 1729)</span><div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0NgZovn-xI4/V8rprJdBXVI/AAAAAAAA4F4/3RAFKRwQ7LE1ymcwdnKKUf2JnBAL7Uf_ACLcB/s1600/An_Experiment_on_a_Bird_in_an_Air_Pump_by_Joseph_Wright_of_Derby%252C_1768.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="478" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0NgZovn-xI4/V8rprJdBXVI/AAAAAAAA4F4/3RAFKRwQ7LE1ymcwdnKKUf2JnBAL7Uf_ACLcB/s640/An_Experiment_on_a_Bird_in_an_Air_Pump_by_Joseph_Wright_of_Derby%252C_1768.jpg" title="Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 - 1797):“Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump“ (1768)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 - 1797):<span style="text-align: start;">“Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump“ (1768)</span></span></td></tr>
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Change </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is always a bit scary. When the Industrial Revolution dawned upon England during the 18th century, many, and not only those who were fated to become the lumpenproletariat of Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, were plainly terrified. Art offered an escape route for some of the upper crusts of society and artists began to illustrate heirlooms, real and fancied, with images and text, picturesque nature, the Middle Ages and antiquity. Existential angst became a topic, it was the natal hour of the Gothic novel, man averted the gaze from the deteriorating landscapes that made room for the eerie factories, darkening day with hellish smoke and lighting night with a fiery glow, looked at the inside and found it equally hideous. Mad masters of hellfire sprung from imagination as well as demonic scientists playing god and turning the natural order upside down. Meanwhile, the selfsame scientists cemented the 19th century unswerving faith in progress, along with inventors and the rising class of entrepreneurs and industrials who turned scientific discovery into a profit far quicker and more thorough than anywhere else in the world. A somewhat paradoxical counterpoint to the discontent in civilisation and especially the arts. Few artists let themselves in for the magic of change and the wonders of science. Those who did were not the first ones, however. About a hundred years earlier during the Dutch Golden Age, painters had already moved away from the traditional canon of suitable subjects and began to paint progress, ships, the workhorses of Dutch prosperity, scenes of everyday life and the workshops of contemporary scientists, usually alchemists. Depicted in bright-and-dark techniques, these paintings were certainly the ideological forerunners if not the inspiration for one of the prophets of the Industrial Age, Joseph Wright of Derby.<br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<!--StartFragment--><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joseph Wright of Derby: "A Philosopher giving
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Caravaggio was a blasphemer. Using Rome’s male and female prostitutes as models for his saints, choosing the most obscure scenes from the scriptures to express violence and debauchery, highlighting all the wrong elements. And he was a master of highlighting. Chiaroscuro, the strong contrasts between light and dark, wasn’t exactly his invention. Renaissance artists already used the technique at least a century before Caravaggio created “The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew” in 1599 and became the “most famous painter in Rome”. Few mastered the drama of tenebrism, as Caravaggio’s extreme use of chiaroscuro was called, as he did, though. In 1773, when Wright came to Italy and might have seen an original Caravaggio, it certainly was something of a revelation for him. By then, he already was, in the words of his contemporary James Northcote, portrait artist, "the most famous painter now living for candle-lights" and had finished several large canvasses, depicting somewhat curious topics, usually by the light of a single candle. Wright had learned his trade from Thomas Hudson, just like Joshua Reynolds, and it was Hudson who had introduced him to Hogarth and the idea of depicting contemporary curiosities as well as the Dutch Baroque masters, first and foremost the Utrecht Caravaggisti. While working with religious subjects, the fun usually stopped for Terbrugghen, Honthorst and Baburen, though, and they highlighted the proper elements, infant Jesus, the stigmata, eyes raised to heaven, but there was more of Caravaggio in Wright, consciously or not, since he chose to illuminate experiments and scientific achievements in the way the Utrecht Caravaggisti chose faith and there were some scenes of boys fighting for a pig bladder or two girls dressing up their kitten that look quite like a perception of Hogarth with lighting nuances even Caravaggio might have approved of. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BYAKuM5ufmg/V8rrEcIqc9I/AAAAAAAA4GE/4AYOnyY5iKAQwM498jiMFDuQygkMa5l4ACLcB/s1600/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby._Two_Girls_Dressing_a_Kitten_by_Candlelight._c._1768-70.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BYAKuM5ufmg/V8rrEcIqc9I/AAAAAAAA4GE/4AYOnyY5iKAQwM498jiMFDuQygkMa5l4ACLcB/s640/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby._Two_Girls_Dressing_a_Kitten_by_Candlelight._c._1768-70.jpg" title="Joseph Wright of Derby: "Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight" (1770)" width="484" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joseph Wright of Derby: "Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight" (1770)</td></tr>
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For </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a while, Wright was the painter of English Enlightenment and Industrialisation in its humanistic and positivistic aspects. And his native Midlands didn’t lack for suitable patrons. Josiah Wedgewood was one of them and so was Richard Arkwright, “Father of the Industrial Revolution“ and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles who would shake the very foundations of the world two generations later. All three were “Lunarticks”, members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a dinner club dedicated to science, learning and intellectual discourse, and so was Wright, among other worthies who furthered progress and, naturally, they made up quite an audience for the artist and his paintings of science. The humble painter of portraits had become something of a figurehead of an age. Or at least someone who created a visible and aesthetically pleasing image of its spirit. However, his visit to Italy must have done things to him, awakening a romantically beating heart under his scientifically girdled breast. A “Grotto by the Seaside in the Kingdom of Naples with Banditti, Sunset“ appears, along with moonlit Midland landscapes, eruptions of Vesuvius and similar themes that wouldn’t look out of place in the oeuvre of contemporary and later romantically moved artists, those who abhorred the very idea of the Industrial Revolution. But, who knows, maybe Wright was something of a Romantic all along, ensorcelled by the magic of change and steam and speed like a younger, more prominent member from the ranks of British painters of the late 18th and early 19th century whose best known works hang opposite Derby’s “Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump“ in the National Gallery.<br /><br /> <br /><br />But read more about Joseph Wright of Derby on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby</a><br /><br /> </span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com1Derby, UK52.9225301 -1.474618599999985252.7693311 -1.7973420999999852 53.075729100000004 -1.1518950999999853tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-33122282720165661242016-08-23T22:37:00.002+02:002022-09-20T20:12:35.996+02:00"The idea of the victory of the spirit over secular power attracted me as a Pole" - The subversibly sensuous paintings of Henryk Siemiradzki <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /><br />23 August 1902, the Polish Academic painter Henryk Siemiradzki died at the age of 55 in Strzałków <br /></span><br />
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">“I was most drawn to Tacitus as a historian. Dwelling on his Annals I was frequently tempted by the idea of presenting, in a literary form, these two worlds in which one was the all powerful governing machine of the ruling power and the other represented only a moral force. The idea of the victory of the spirit over secular power attracted me as a Pole. Also, as an artist I was drawn to it by the wonderful forms with which the ancient world was able to cloak itself.” (Henryk Siemiradzki)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PzMhGlUIW3k/V7yxpGfU82I/AAAAAAAA3_c/2YnOkkHCCWM_Z2fh7R_0FsJfqVHKvIV6QCLcB/s1600/Siemiradski%2BNero%2527s%2BTorches.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="348" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PzMhGlUIW3k/V7yxpGfU82I/AAAAAAAA3_c/2YnOkkHCCWM_Z2fh7R_0FsJfqVHKvIV6QCLcB/s640/Siemiradski%2BNero%2527s%2BTorches.jpg" title="Henryk Siemiradzki: "Nero's Torches" (1877)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Henryk Siemiradzki: "Nero's Torches" (1877)</span></span></td></tr>
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Napoleon </span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">was never quite forgotten in Poland. Many saw his artificial silk Duchy of Warsaw as the reincarnation of the lost Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth of old. It was cut up, served and swallowed by the Russians, Prussians and the Austrians at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The next round of enthusiastic and quixotic insurgents tried their luck against their Russian overlords in 1831, to the Romantic strains of Chopin and the epic poems of Mickiewicz and Słowacki and failed gloriously. 1848 brought a short summer of anarchy and hope until the Austrian and Russian armies returned with a vengeance. Poland bred the next generation of dreamers and freedom fighters, on the barricades during the January Uprising of 1863, gunned and sabred down by the Tsar a year later. And this time, the Russian Empire really had it with the Poles and their freedom-loving stubbornness. The szlachta, the Polish nobility of old who had played an active part in all uprisings, was finally dispossessed and banished to Siberia in droves, civil servants and officers of Polish or Lithuanian descent were either dismissed or put under close surveillance of the Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery, the later Okhrana, and so were the intellectuals and everyone else who smelled even remotely of tendencies to support Polish independence. A thorough Russification followed as well as a Germanification in other parts of Poland occupied by the Austrians and especially the Prussians. But the last post-revolutionary clean sweep after the January Uprising did something to the Poles and their attitude of resistance as well. Not that they gave it up. Far from it. They still loved Chopin and read Mickiewicz, but in a quiet chamber and for themselves and instead of flying colours, sabres and desperate last stands on the barricades of Warsaw or Kraków, they backed praca organiczna, organic work, and positivism. That meant, in general terms, economic success and education, more often than not in league with the Russian and German Empires, to give a new Poland a solid fundament, whether it might come about some fine day or not. Many Polish artists followed suit and promising Polish painters were often trained in the Royal and Imperial academies of St Petersburg, Munich, Vienna and Berlin. One of them was the scion of Sloboda Ukraine’s szlachta, Henryk Siemiradzki.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b0cXZmssj5w/V7yyUo3EABI/AAAAAAAA3_k/fIS5q3kF2psN70KujQ1Yv5s-VrHzSCGiACLcB/s1600/Siemiradzki_Christian_Dirce.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="309" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b0cXZmssj5w/V7yyUo3EABI/AAAAAAAA3_k/fIS5q3kF2psN70KujQ1Yv5s-VrHzSCGiACLcB/s640/Siemiradzki_Christian_Dirce.jpg" title="Henryk Siemiradzki: "A Christian Dirce" (1897)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Henryk Siemiradzki: "A Christian Dirce" (1897) </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /><br /> <br /><br />Speaking the language of slaves is a linguistic skill many artists are forced to acquire under oppressive political regimes lest they end up in Siberia, on the wrong side of a firing squad or worse. Slave language will not call a spade a spade but <i>Piques</i> or pikes and may, if the author is so inclined, transport a world of hidden meaning. 19th century’s academic art with her limited arrangement of available sujets, usually historical, mythological or biblical scenes, often was quite adept in playing with more than the superficial meaning of images and contexts. And if only to paint naked people in oil on mammoth canvasses. A scandal if the scene showed a still from the red light district. Comme il fault if the image was labeled “Zeus and Ganymede” or “Susanna and the Elders”. Naturally, the somewhat algolagniac tales of the early Christian martyrs did provide artists with a lot more subtext for the baser instincts of the audience, especially in regards to sado-masochistic fantasies. But in Poland, edifying stories about persecution for one’s faith had a far more immediate political context. Famously arch-Catholic since Prince Mieszko was baptized back in 966, Poles had every right to feel like a suppressed minority even if their Russian Orthodox and Prussian Protestant rulers did not exactly fed devout Catholics to the lions. Bismarck might have been tempted during the “Kulturkampf”, though. Nevertheless, images of martyrdom exerted a special fascination for Poles, far more than for the Irish who were basically in the same boat. No wonder that Siemiradzki got along famously with Henryk Sienkiewicz of “Quo Vadis”-fame when the two met in Rome. The Polish painter’s arguably best known work, “Nero’s Torches” from 1877, looks indeed like a 6’ wide preliminary illustration for Sienkiewicz’ novel, who relates the tale handed down by Suetonius and Tacitus in epic breadth. Admittedly, Siemiradzki’s painting and its macabre narrative is quite epic all on its own.<br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KwpgiB5V4Is/V7yy26C4TuI/AAAAAAAA3_o/_mRs7q8MzRoxuQzQ66A-VhNWbWGYdzyRwCLcB/s1600/Funeral_of_ruthenian_noble_by_Siemiradzki.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="452" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KwpgiB5V4Is/V7yy26C4TuI/AAAAAAAA3_o/_mRs7q8MzRoxuQzQ66A-VhNWbWGYdzyRwCLcB/s640/Funeral_of_ruthenian_noble_by_Siemiradzki.jpg" title="Henryk Siemiradzki: "Burial of a Ruthenian Chieftain" (1883)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henryk Siemiradzki: "Burial of a Ruthenian Chieftain" (1883) - in 19th century terms, the Ruthenians were, by and large, the ancestors of the modern Russians </td></tr>
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During </span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">the 1880s Modern Art and more openly rebellious, if not always specifically Polish imagery took root and flourished as Młoda Polska, Young Poland, and like everywhere else, traditional Academic Art like Siemiradzki’s, national importance or not, was superseded by the Symbolism, Impressionism, Art Nouveau and what not of Ślewiński, Podkowiński and Wyspiański. Like the other great and best-selling European salon painters, with Alma-Tadema leading the way, so to speak, became a thing of the past. With his excellent research, a good eye for a gripping narrative, sensuous scenes in strong colours and a wonderfully accentuated use of sunlight, Siemiradzki’s usually large canvasses deserve to be mentioned in one breath with Alma-Tadema’s. Even so, he is by and large forgotten, even if his paintings show up every now and then when somewhat racy illustrations of days gone by are called for to get the attention of readers, viewers and buyers. Not in his native Poland, though. “Nero’s Torches” went straight to the newly founded National Museum in Kraków, an establishment tolerated by the more lenient Habsburg rulers of Poland’s south. And his contribution as an artist to preserve Polish identity in difficult times with subversive, non-violent stubbornness during the days of the praca organiczna gives his work, as outdated as it may seem these days with representationalism and narrative being anathema to visual arts, a bittersweet, revolutionary note few of his Europe’s established Academic painters cared to add. <br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about Henryk Siemiradzki on:</span></div>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Siemiradzki" target="_blank"> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Siemiradzki</a></span></div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Kraków, Poland50.064650099999987 19.94497990000002149.901503099999985 19.622256400000023 50.227797099999989 20.26770340000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-15792122364167690102016-08-13T21:49:00.004+02:002023-10-02T08:28:48.977+02:00The Battle of Havana in 1762 - How Cuba's capital became British for 11 months<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />13 August 1762, Spanish Havana surrendered to a large British invasion force under General George Keppel, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, after two months of siege.<br /><br /> </span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It would require a greater philosopher and historian than I am to explain the causes of the famous Seven Years' War in which Europe was engaged; and, indeed, its origin has always appeared to me to be so complicated, and the books written about it so amazingly hard to understand, that I have seldom been much wiser at the end of a chapter than at the beginning“ (William Makepeace Thackeray “The Luck of Barry Lyndon”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JcX0CGYsVaI/V690vG8P5EI/AAAAAAAA31U/lcmaQdl115E8j4uaJCvq4a2wnryElPW3ACLcB/s1600/Bombardment%2Bof%2BHavana%2527s%2Bfortress%2BMoro%2Bin%2B1762%2Bby%2Bthe%2BBritish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="476" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JcX0CGYsVaI/V690vG8P5EI/AAAAAAAA31U/lcmaQdl115E8j4uaJCvq4a2wnryElPW3ACLcB/s640/Bombardment%2Bof%2BHavana%2527s%2Bfortress%2BMoro%2Bin%2B1762%2Bby%2Bthe%2BBritish.jpg" title=" Richard Paton (1717 - 1791): "Bombardment of the Morro Castle, Havana, 1 July 1762" (around 1770)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">HMS "Stirling Castle", "Dragon" and "Cambridge" in action during a first attempt to take the fortress in a combined land and sea attack - <br />Richard Paton (1717 - 1791): "Bombardment of the Morro Castle, Havana, 1 July 1762" (around 1770)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was a world war. Quite in contrast to the other conflicts after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, the Cabinet Wars fought for minor territorial gains and strategic advantages on isolated theatres with a minimum of civilian suffering, at least on paper, the Seven Years’ War meant carnage from the Ohio Valley, India and Central Europe to the Russian border, involving all of the Old World’s powers, gathered either in the camp of France and Austria, the bitter Bourbon and Habsburg enemies from the War of the Spanish Succession, or in that of Great Britain and her continental allies, chiefly Prussia. After the “annus miriabilis”, the wonderful year of 1759, it seemed that King George III, who had just succeeded his grandfather on the throne, was winning, even though most of the combatants and politicos probably had long since forgotten what the war was all about in the first place. During the last stage, it was a catch-as-catch can, especially in the European colonies across the globe. In 1761 then, King Louis XV of France had mobilised the rest of the Bourbon rulers, both Sicilies, Parma and Spain. Charles III, the fourth Bourbon ruler on the Spanish throne since Utrecht, actually had troubles enough to maintain his crumbling overseas empire, but something along the lines of Bourbon Nibelung loyalty and the worry the British might attack his possessions next anyway after they had finished with the French finally brought him into the war alongside his cousin. The British, ruling the waves since their decisive naval victories at Lagos and Quiberon Bay, promptly mobilised against Bourbon Spain and moved towards key positions in Manila on the Philippines in the Pacific and Cuba in the West Indies. Back in the day, the colonies in the Caribbean usually were the crown jewels among the European colonial possessions and sugar islands like Guadeloupe or Martinique, just recently conquered by the British from France, generated more income than the whole Eastern American seaboard. Cuba, however, was a Spanish domain since the days of the Conquistadores and her capital Havana was considered to be impregnable with fortifications established and improved since more than 250 years. In 1762, Havana’s harbour was guarded by the star fort Castillo de la Real Fuerza and the Fortresses San Salvador de la Punta at the western and Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, the Morro, at the eastern entrance, besides somewhat treacherous currents and winds, by and large a death trap for a fleet under sails. Nevertheless, a squadron under Sir George Pocock sailed in March of the year from Spithead to carry General George Keppel’s 12,000 troops across the broad Atlantic to take Havana.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZsfJY-9x2dQ/V693Lk6vmoI/AAAAAAAA31k/XJwXkHaWj1Qhjb0JqctkTodk87W8jIwqwCLcB/s1600/British_fleet_entering_Havana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="424" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZsfJY-9x2dQ/V693Lk6vmoI/AAAAAAAA31k/XJwXkHaWj1Qhjb0JqctkTodk87W8jIwqwCLcB/s640/British_fleet_entering_Havana.jpg" title="Dominic Serres (1719 - 1793): "The British Fleet Entering Havana, 21 August 1762" (1775)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dominic Serres (1719 - 1793): "The British Fleet Entering Havana, 21 August 1762" (1775) - to the right is Pocock's flagship HMS "Namur" (90), flying the Blue Ensign along with the Union flag</span></td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hurricane Season had already begun when Pocock’s fleet of 23 ships-of-the-line, 11 frigates and almost 200 smaller vessels, transports, bomb ketches and what not, finally arrived off Havana. The Spanish commander Juan de Prado Mayera Portocarrero y Luna had 9 sail of the line at anchor under the guns of his fortresses and about 5,000 men to defend the city. And time was on his side. Besides hurricanes and Spanish steel and shot, a far more deadly enemy lay in wait for Keppel’s troops. Yellow fever and other tropical diseases, known to kill European troops by the thousands as soon as they set foot on a Caribbean island. In fact, there were regiments who rather preferred to get court martialled and shot than to serve out there in the West Indies. Basically, all Juan de Prado had to do was to hold out until the British besiegers began to die like flies and a hurricane shatter their fleet. Keppel knew that as well, of course, bottled the Spanish squadron in the harbour of Havana by sinking three of his own no longer seaworthy battleships in the harbour entrance and prepared to take the Moro double quick. Unfortunately for him and his men, the fortress was built on solid rock, making the usual undermining operations of its walls virtually impossible and its works and batteries sat high enough to keep them out of range of the hundreds of pieces of naval artillery of Pocock’s ships of the line. Thus, the time-consuming process of reducing the fortifications by land began. The British dug in beyond the fortress and over the next six weeks, more than 500 shots hit the Morro from field artillery, siege guns, mortars, howitzers and the heavy 32-pounders taken ashore from the battleships. A last Spanish sortie was repulsed on 20 July, the British siege works were now close enough to risk a direct assault and allowed the undermining of some bastions, Keppel offered terms for surrendering the fortress, the proud Spanish commander refused and a week later, a mine exploded under the right bastion of the Morro and in the night of 31 July, the British rushed into the breach and finally took the fortress. Keppel now controlled the eastern shore, with the guns on the Moro overlooking the city and batteries placed up to La Cabana Hill and still the city refused to surrender. On 11 August, the bombardment began, the guns of La Punta, the last fort on the eastern shore, were silenced and the British soldiers, marines and seamen were about to storm the city. Juan de Prado finally gave up. The Spanish garrison was allowed to abandon Havana with all military honours, keeping their arms and flags.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0eyk8cCEN1Q/V692Y5pk56I/AAAAAAAA31c/fEVPZxWmL58Nw7x7f-AqhaHAT0maJG21gCLcB/s1600/General_william_keppel_stormin_hi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="524" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0eyk8cCEN1Q/V692Y5pk56I/AAAAAAAA31c/fEVPZxWmL58Nw7x7f-AqhaHAT0maJG21gCLcB/s640/General_william_keppel_stormin_hi.jpg" title="Joshua Reynolds (1732 - 1792): "General William Keppel, Storming the Morro Castle" (around 1770)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joshua Reynolds (1732 - 1792): "General William Keppel, Storming the Morro Castle" (around 1770)</span></td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">feared tropical diseases caught up with the British, though. Until October 1762, “Yellow Jack” got 5,000 of Keppel’s men and Pocock’s sailors, along with the 3,000 killed in action about one third of the force sent to take Havana was lost. By then, Manila had fallen as well and the good people of Havana, allowed to keep their Catholic faith actually began to prosper under their new British masters, especially since the trade restrictions of all Spanish colonies in regards to engaging in business with heretic foreigners were over and done with. At least until the end of the Seven Years’ War and the Peace of Paris in 1763. Both Manila and Havana were returned to Spain, for a considerable compensation and the shock of having lost quite bit of status as top rate overseas empire and one fourth of its high seas fleet during the capture of the city. Somehow Admiral Don Gutierre de Hevia y Valdés had neglected to burn the nine ships of the line when Prado surrendered the place. Both grandees were court martialled, stripped of their rank and sentenced to ten years of fortress detention. Spain got off quite lightly, though. Florida remained in British hands, Minorca was ceded and that was that. France, however, was ruined, having lost almost all of her vast American and East Indian possessions while the state of Louis XV’s national finances was, in a nutshell, a disaster. The stepping stone of the revolution his son had to face some 25 years later, but not without squandering what was left during France’s intervention in the coming American War, basically to reclaim the losses of the Seven Years’ War. Not to mention the cost of about a million lives, both military and civilian, from all warring powers. On the other hand, Havana, along with the rest of Cuba and Puerto Rico, became the place that would see the eclipse of Spanish colonialism in the Americas in 1898, despite being British for some eleven months.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6y4ojQAhv2s/V695EVOLuQI/AAAAAAAA31w/9HUzYPllgBcccJ5I5YCE8FQTytwiIyHCQCLcB/s1600/Dominic_Serres_the_Elder_-_The_Captured_Spanish_Fleet_at_Havana%252C_August-September_1762.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="384" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6y4ojQAhv2s/V695EVOLuQI/AAAAAAAA31w/9HUzYPllgBcccJ5I5YCE8FQTytwiIyHCQCLcB/s640/Dominic_Serres_the_Elder_-_The_Captured_Spanish_Fleet_at_Havana%252C_August-September_1762.jpg" title="Dominic Serres: "The Captured Spanish Fleet at Havana, August-September 1762" (1775)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Dominic Serres: "The Captured Spanish Fleet at Havana, August-September 1762" (1775)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about the Battle of Havana on:<br /><br /> <br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Havana_(1762) <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com1Havana, Cuba23.1135925 -82.36659559999998222.646047499999998 -83.012042599999987 23.5811375 -81.721148599999978tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-27725684551368318872016-08-05T21:44:00.001+02:002023-09-27T21:10:03.412+02:00"Prince Eugene, the Noble Knight" - The Battle of Petrovaradin in 1716<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />5 August 1716, during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716-1718, the Austrian military genius Prince Eugene of Savoy decisively defeated an outnumbering Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Silahdar Damat Ali Pasha at the Battle of Petrovaradin.<br /><br /> <br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The Prince exposed himself to a great extent … and was in the greatest of dangers to get sabred or captured by the Turks” (Anonymous Austrian participant of the Battle of Petrovaradin, 1716)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mF_bJTourwc/V6TopFyc8sI/AAAAAAAA3vo/etMUy32R45Abk4sl4_ZtllqH5Ojyqh8PQCLcB/s1600/Jacob%2Bvan%2BSchuppen%2BEquestrian%2Bportrait%2Bof%2BPrince%2BEugene%2Bof%2BSavoy%2B%25281663-1736%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mF_bJTourwc/V6TopFyc8sI/AAAAAAAA3vo/etMUy32R45Abk4sl4_ZtllqH5Ojyqh8PQCLcB/s640/Jacob%2Bvan%2BSchuppen%2BEquestrian%2Bportrait%2Bof%2BPrince%2BEugene%2Bof%2BSavoy%2B%25281663-1736%2529.jpg" title="Jacob van Schuppen (1670 - 1751) "Equestrian portrait of Prince Eugene of Savoy"" width="448" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Jacob van Schuppen (1670 - 1751): <br />"<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #252525; line-height: 17.3186px; text-align: left;">Prince Eugene during the Austro-Turkish War." <br />(around 1720)</span></span></td></tr>
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Princess </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Palatine Elisabeth Charlotte, Liselotte von der Pfalz, was usually quite spot-on in her assessment of her fellow players at the court of the Sun King. In her own, inimitable down-to-earth manner, full of heart-warming common sense. Once she was rather mistaken, though. An “uncleanly and very debauched boy”, she wrote about the third youngest of Olympia Mancini, Countess Soissons’ eight children. The neglected, wraithlike, smallish son of Louis XIV’s poisonous mistress would never get anywhere, the worldly-wise princess concluded. The Sun King intended the lad for a career in the Church, but the very debauched boy wanted to play soldier, walked out on him and turned to Louis’ rival, the Holy Roman Emperor, and promptly ended up in the Siege of Vienna of 1683. It was the beginning of Prince Eugene of Savoy’s career as, according to Napoleon himself, one of the seven greatest commanders in history. At the same time, the epic siege of the capital at the gates of Western Europe marks the beginning of the end of Ottoman supremacy on the Balkans and in Hungary, not least because of Prince Eugene’s brilliance. The Great Turkish War would drag on until the end of the 17th century, protracted by the Sun King’s invasion of the Rhineland and the Palatine, the Nine Years’ War in the west of the Holy Roman Empire, but ended with Prince Eugene’s decisive victory over Sultan Mustafa II at the Battle of Zenta in 1697 and the humiliating Treaty of Karlowitz. It was Zenta that established the House of Habsburg as the dominant power on the Balkans and the treaty marked the first time peace terms were dictated to an Ottoman sultan by Western powers. And while Prince Eugene distinguished himself in the War of the Spanish Succession, teamed up with Marlborough at Blenheim, Oudenarde and Malplaquet and Louis XIV might have rued the day more than once when he drove the debauched boy into the arms of the Habsburgs, the Sublime Porte plotted revenge for Vienna, Zenta and Karlowitz. In 1715 then, with the Austrians still exhausted after the Peace of Utrecht and the efforts of the 18th century’s first global war, the Ottomans struck out against one of the beneficiaries of Karlowitz, the Republic of Venice and their territories in Greece. It took a papal guarantee for Austrian territories in Italy and lots of diplomatic persuasion to goad Emperor Charles VI to take a clear position against the Ottomans. The High Porte reacted with a declaration of War and mustered an army 150,000 strong at Belgrade. Emperor Charles sent Prince Eugene.<br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UpAmOloU-KU/V6Tqi4FRx3I/AAAAAAAA3v0/BuXnwcC_a50R2iCPONLkTesFP8SmYSVGwCLcB/s1600/Prinz_Eugen-Wien_1683.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="508" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UpAmOloU-KU/V6Tqi4FRx3I/AAAAAAAA3v0/BuXnwcC_a50R2iCPONLkTesFP8SmYSVGwCLcB/s640/Prinz_Eugen-Wien_1683.JPG" title="Franz Wacik (1883 - 1938): "Prince Eugene at the Battle of Vienna, 1683", illustration from Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Prince Eugene, His Life in Pictures", 1913" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Franz Wacik (1883 - 1938): "Prince Eugene at the Battle of Vienna, 1683", illustration from Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Prince Eugene, His Life in Pictures", <span style="font-size: x-small;">1913</span></td></tr>
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Peterwardein, </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the fortress of Petrovaradin, was known as the Gibraltar of the Danube for a while. During the Great Turkish War, Habsburg wasn’t able to reach out as far down the river as Belgrade, since the late Middle Ages the key fortification on the great river beyond the Great Hungarian Plain. The need for a bridgehead drove the Austrians to extend the works they captured from the Turks in 1687 some 60 miles up the river. They did build a state-of-the-art complex that held out against a first siege in ’94, became the key position of Habsburg’s Military Frontier and the first target of the Ottoman advance up the river. Silahdar Damat Ali Pasha, Grand Vizier and commander of the Turkish army who had taken the Morea, the Peloponnese, from the Venetians during the previous year, arrived on 2 August 1716 before Peterwardein, skirmished with Austrian cavalry, ordered his troops to dig in and lay siege to the fortress. It might have been up to 200,000 men, women and children in the siege lines and Silahdar Ali Pasha’s camp. At least half of them made up the customarily immense Ottoman baggage train, the rest were fighting troops. Field Marshal Prince Eugene arrived with the main body of his army, about 80,000 men, a day later on the left shore of the Danube, crossed the river on a bridge of boats, a breakneck manoeuvre in the middle of the night, and on the next morning at 7 am sharp, with a short prayer, “Mon Dieu!”, eyes raised to heaven for a blink, a curt nod and ”Avancez!“, the Battle of Petrovaradin began. The Ottoman right flank was rolled up immediately, Silahdar Ali Pasha’s Janissaries put up a stiff resistance in the centre, counter-charged, drove the Austrians, Eugene committed his reserves, the Austrian centre held, Eugene seemed to be everywhere at once, always in the thick of it, a timely cavalry charge into the Ottoman flank closed the sack, the battle was won and the slaughter began. The Grand Vizier stood to the last, holding the green banner of the Prophet, an Austrian bullet struck him in the head, the 50,000 survivors of his army took his body back to Belgrade where he was buried. His tomb can be seen to this day. His pompous tent, captured with the rest of his baggage train, is exhibited at the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, the Museum of Military History in Vienna.</span><div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Franz Wacik: "Eugene's Last Days and the Lion of Belvedere" (1913)</td></tr>
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In </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a day and age when European warfare often resembled a kind of brutal minuet, with ritualised marching and countermarching to protect supply lines and achieve strategic goals and bit of distrust against new-fangled weapons like flintlock muskets and bayonets, few commanders really manoeuvred and fought for decisive actions on the battlefields. Prince Eugene stands out as a tactical and logistic genius who, more often than not, personally risked life and limb. He was wounded nine times in battle and during sieges and maybe his personal commitment won him Petrovaradin. It certainly did at Belgrade, a year later, his arguably greatest victory against impossible odds and circumstances. Frederick the Great of Prussia, who personally met his great model in his youth, called Prince Eugene the actual Emperor of Austria and well into the 1720s, he was at least one of the most influential men at the court of Vienna and in the whole of Europe. Along with being one of the richest men on the continent. Other than his Habsburg masters, Eugene of Savoy knew quite well how to be economical. Neither was he above feathering his own nest with the spoils of war and war bonds. And it was quite a nest he built for himself, several palaces in Vienna, a large library, today known as the Eugeniana, the core part of the Austrian National Library, adorned with works of art collected from all across Europe and beyond. He remained a “Mars without Venus” though, as a ditty sung in the side streets and the new coffee houses of Vienna had it. Whether Eugene was homosexual, asexual or simply shy in regards to personal relationships never became quite clear, but he wouldn’t be a Viennese hero without a proper neurosis or three. It seems, however, that he never recovered emotionally from his loveless childhood and lived a loveless life, a fate he shares with his admirer, the other of the two greatest commanders of the 18th century, Frederick the Great. However, there is a legend, handed down by the Austrian Knight of the Neurosis Hugo von Hofmannsthal, that Prince Eugene was at least bewept by the lion he kept in his menagerie in the park of his summer residence, the Belvedere. He, the toothless lion who was driven out to war for the third Habsburg emperor he served in his seventieth year and finally made a mess of it, wasn’t seen by his beloved pet for three days. Eugene lay dying, his lion refused to eat, and then, in the night of 21 April 1736, the lion began to roar, about 3 o’clock in the morning. The animal keeper who went out to ensure that everything was in order, saw, all of a sudden, the lights coming on in every room of the palace and heard the death knell ring. “And so he knew”, Hofmannsthal says, “that his master, the great Prince Eugene, had died within this hour.” <br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about the Battle of Petrovaradin on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Petrovaradin" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Petrovaradin</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Petrovaradin, Serbia45.2360972 19.88617260000000945.1466397 19.724811100000007 45.325554700000005 20.047534100000011tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-62017071652739535812016-08-03T21:38:00.003+02:002023-03-27T21:27:25.739+02:00“Try to be civil, Marlow“ - On Joseph Conrad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span face=""helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br /><br />3 August 1924, the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad died aged 66 in Bishopsbourne, England.<br /><br /> <br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif">“Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which is art.“ (Joseph Conrad)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sir William Rothenstein (1872 - 1945) "Portrait of Joseph Conrad" (1903)</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif">There is a white man’s grave in Yambuya on the upper reaches of the Aruwimi, a tributary of the Congo River. Yambuya once served as the base for Morton Stanley’s relief expedition to bring back the German-born condottiero Emin Pasha, one of Gordon of Khartoum’s paladins, governor of Egypt’s Equatoria province, besieged by Mahdists. The white man’s name was Major Edmund Barttelot, commander of Stanley’s rear column, and even the Bula Matari Stanley, an infamous martinet himself, called him a disgrace for treating native porters and workers quite beastly. Besides completely messing up Stanley’s base camp because the man obviously was unable to organise more than having people beaten and tortured to death by the dozen. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, in the hell of King Leopold II’s so called Congo Free State, but Barttelot was shot dead by the husband of a woman he had tyrannised, in July 1888. Two years later, a Polish-born captain of a riverboat steaming up the Lualaba towards the Belgian government station at Kisangani below the Stanley Falls had heard the tale of a bad man gone to worse in the heart of Africa and it might be that the sea- and river-faring aspiring author listened to the enthralling voice of Mr Kurtz for the first time. Nine years later, the author had combined the madness of Barttelot with the cruelty of another one of King Leopold’s worthies at Stanley Falls, Léon Rom, who decorated his flower beds with severed heads, adding a layer of the merchant empire the Zanzibari slave and ivory trader Tippu Tip had established in the region, and the popularity of the Bula Matari himself, the “breaker of stones” Henry Morton Stanley. But beyond taking the mendacity of King Leopold and his minions’ allegedly humanitarian and civilising mission in the Congo ad absurdum, Mr Kurtz had received the superstructure of a Nietzschean Übermensch, the psychological abyss of Dostoevsky’s outré protagonists and Captain Ahab’s hubris. And founders in the Heart of Darkness, the distorting mirror Africa had become for Europe’s cloud-cuckoo-land at the end of the long 19th century. The only remedy against things falling apart, the centre that might hold, were the seamannish virtues of the tale’s narrator, idealised by its author, Joseph Conrad. But he always was a novelist who went to sea instead of a seaman who became an author.</span><div>
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<span face=""helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br /><br /> <br /><br />Few, if any of Poland’s poets and authors, revered at home, are known beyond their motherland’s borders. Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz, of “Quo Vadis” fame, was an exception, at least for a while, making Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Joseph Conrad, the best known of all of them in the whole wide world. And he famously wrote in English, ranking tops among the English-speaking novelists and not only of his day and age. A phenomenon, since he learned the language not before his early twenties when he decided to join the British Merchant Navy. However, many of his tales might look like tarry, rough handed sailors at first acquaintance, but they soon take on the guise of Marlow, Conrad’s alter-ego and oftimes narrator, sitting on deck of the Nellie riding at anchor in Gravesend, spinning his yarn, with “sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards,” resembling “a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower“ or comforting aspects beyond the “bond of the sea” and British civilisation. Not of the “White Man’s Burden” type of Kipling, whom Conrad despised, but of common decency, discipline and the quiet but infrangible endurance that once was associated with the Empire. At least sometimes. And from far away. Consequently, Conrad seldom deals with the British from close up at home, only with their seafaring minority, and at heart, his motifs are deeply Polish, of peoples and individuals in their struggle for freedom and finding or preserving their identity. Even his nom de plume resounds with Adam Mickiewicz’ epic poem “Konrad Wallenrod”, a highly influential, inspiring and patriotic piece in the days when Poland had all but disappeared from the maps. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T9UJc7-xUPM/V6JHBKjYdwI/AAAAAAAA3uE/LLt2yJD4dp02Gvb6X4ZMMQqjRNZfh7C0QCLcB/s1600/Joseph%2BConrad%2527s%2Bbark%2BOtago.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T9UJc7-xUPM/V6JHBKjYdwI/AAAAAAAA3uE/LLt2yJD4dp02Gvb6X4ZMMQqjRNZfh7C0QCLcB/s640/Joseph%2BConrad%2527s%2Bbark%2BOtago.jpg" title="The barque "Otago", Captain Joseph Conrad's command 1888/89 and the cover image of Conrad's "Mirror of the Sea" (1906)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The barque "Otago", Captain Joseph Conrad's command in 1888/89 and the cover image of Conrad's "Mirror of the Sea" (1906)</td></tr>
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Personal </span><span face=""helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif">experience, things he had seen and done or had seen done while he was in foreign climes, whatever that meant for a wanderer between the worlds, trivial novels, politics of the day, from abroad, mind you, not in England, where he lived since 1894, were the sources from which Conrad drew the ideas of his tales, or rather prose poems. Again, at first glance his narrative is straightforward like a naval log until the reader realises he has been drowned in seas of imagery, nautical and otherwise, while being held in thrall by Conrad’s narrators and their perceptions and their single-minded insights. His psychological depths have been compared to Dostoevsky’s, Conrad despised him even more than Kipling, mostly for being Russian and an advocate for Russian imperialism, Pole that he was. And for indulging himself in the abyss of the human soul that is seen and heard in Conrad’s work but never voiced in single arias with all highs and lows, standing out from the choir of highly polyphonic arrangements, like Dostoevsky’s. It’s a horror, and that’s that. With a surprisingly simple remedy: “Try to be civil, Marlow“, despite the tragédie humaine Conrad usually narrates. And while his matchless prose with all its Gallicisms, Polonisms and artificially wonderful word and grammar structures and creations no native speaker could come up with remains unrivalled, his influence, at the very least through his rich images, is felt to this day, in novels, movies and even computer games and a journey up a river is never the same again after reading Conrad, whether the stretch of water flows up into a foreign country or down into one’s own Heart of Darkness.<br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about Joseph Conrad on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Canterbury, UK51.280233 1.078908899999987651.2007715 0.91754739999998769 51.3596945 1.2402703999999876tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-48147762381805580652016-08-01T07:00:00.001+02:002021-08-02T00:58:50.337+02:00"Away with the Fairies" - The Victorian Painter Richard Dadd<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /><br />1 August 1817, the Victorian painter Richard Dadd, noted for his highly detailed scenes of fairy paintings and spending most of his life in psychiatric hospitals, was born in Chatham, Kent.<br /><br /> <br /><br />“He's a fairy feller<br /> The fairy folk have gathered round the new moon shine<br /> To see the feller crack a nut at nights noon time<br /> To swing his ace he swears, as it climbs he dares<br /> To deliver...<br /> The master-stroke“ (Queen, “The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke“, 1974)<br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K9iUx5P6Lwg/V57UfOY_6mI/AAAAAAAA3q4/8W6b2rUBlek6A7drqt-h6IGeszS9n1hEACLcB/s1600/Richard_Dadd_-_The_Fairy_Feller%2527s_Master-Stroke_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K9iUx5P6Lwg/V57UfOY_6mI/AAAAAAAA3q4/8W6b2rUBlek6A7drqt-h6IGeszS9n1hEACLcB/s640/Richard_Dadd_-_The_Fairy_Feller%2527s_Master-Stroke_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" title="Richard Dadd: "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke" (1855-1864)" width="460" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Richard Dadd: "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke" (1855-1864)</span></td></tr>
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There </span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">is a dragonfly in the upper left playing the trumpet, just as if it had walked in from a Hieronymus Bosch painting after sounding the fanfare for an apocalypse there. The rest is quite Shakespearian in a Midsummer Night’s dreamscapish way. Oberon and Titania are there, the royal fairy couple watching the drama of getting the coachwork for rival royalty’s vehicle prepared, Queen Mab’s, the fairy midwife, of “and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate-stone / On the fore-finger of an alderman“-fame. And since the old hazelnut that was her chariot apparently had its day, a new chariot is on the stocks and a fairy feller is about to strike his master-stroke, cutting a hazelnut exactly in two halves. A feat that draws all kinds of English otherworldy denizens, some in Elizabethan garb and period beards, some dressed-up in last season’s dandy attire, two voluptuous maids with legs like Soviet shot-putters and a satyr-like creature peeking under their skirts. Good Queen Mab is present herself, of course, looking a bit oversized for a chariot made from the shell of a hazelnut and casting a cold glance at Titania’s stern post instead of the faery feller’s feat. The elfin woodsman is posed to strike, waiting for the word of the Patriarch wearing his triple crown that grows vegetational extensions with Mab’s conveyance riding on it, “Drawn with a team of little atomies / Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; / Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs, / The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, / The traces of the smallest spider's web, / The collars of the moonshine's watery beams, / Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, / Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat“. And up in the right-hand corner are the seven figures from the children’s counting rhyme that foretells boys their future trade and girls their prospective husbands’, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, ploughboy, apothecary, thief, dressed up in the fashion of the artist’s own childhood in the 1820s. In regards to possible future trades, the rhyme leaves out “artist” as well as “schizophrenic patricide”, but that was the painter’s fate. When Richard Dadd had almost finished his own opus magnum, “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” in 1864 after nine years of meticulously painting enchanted details quite apart from contemporary art trends and styles, he was about to be transferred from the criminal department of Bethlem Royal Hospital, Bedlam, where he was kept since 1843, to Broadmoore Hospital in Berkshire for the rest of his life. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aKrzd0oeX-Y/V57VQptZ4GI/AAAAAAAA3q8/ApHw0KtPl4cF5XMFQyI1gpMCYGdqpsswQCLcB/s1600/Richard%2BDadd%2BTitania%2BSleeping%2B1841.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="532" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aKrzd0oeX-Y/V57VQptZ4GI/AAAAAAAA3q8/ApHw0KtPl4cF5XMFQyI1gpMCYGdqpsswQCLcB/s640/Richard%2BDadd%2BTitania%2BSleeping%2B1841.jpg" title="Richard Dadd: "Titania Sleeping" (1841)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Richard Dadd: "Titania Sleeping" (1841)</span></td></tr>
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Milton</span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">, Spenser, Shakespeare, the Romantic Movement had not only resurrected and firmly established the Victorian appreciation of the giants of English 16th and 17th century’s literature but put their fairy worlds into the limelight of popular taste. William Blake and Henry Fuseli were artistic forerunners before the industrial revolution began in earnest and the demand for staged as well as painted counter-drafts, otherworlds, grew into a market catered by the Georgian and early Victorian pop artists like William Etty, John Martin and even Edwin Landseer when he didn’t do dogs, horses and the Highlands and so did the famous satirist George Cruikshank. Not that the sujet was completely trivialised, though. Turner, a true-blue Romantic, painted fairyscapes and the Pre-Raphaelites took to it like the lads to strong drink on stag night. But most of the illustrated fairy tales where just that and wouldn’t look odd gracing biscuit tins or chocolate boxes. Many did. When he was a promising young artist and one of the youngest members of the Royal Academy, Richard Dadd had already created a few fairy paintings à la mode, remarkable only to connoisseurs of the genre, but back then good enough to get him hired as draughtsman for the politician and entrepreneur Sir Thomas Phillips’ expedition to the eastern Mediterranean world by recommendation of the Scottish painter David Roberts, who certainly was an authority on depictions of scenes out east from the life. Greece, the Near East and Egypt did things to young Richard, however. Not that he didn’t do the job he was hired for. Young Richard actually drew some rather remarkable scenes of picturesque sights seen en route, but all of a sudden, he began to let Sir Thomas’ entourage know that he was illuminated and influenced by Osiris, no less. Sunstroke was the diagnosis and he was sent home to recuperate. Unfortunately, Dadd’s disease picture was far worse than the effects of going out in the midday sun in tropical climes. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8HvXwFwBW_0/V57V7xdQ7FI/AAAAAAAA3rI/hD7qYQdukX86RBfcBa1OQQi1wqP4vPsRQCLcB/s1600/1024px-Richard-Dadd-1817-1886.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="612" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8HvXwFwBW_0/V57V7xdQ7FI/AAAAAAAA3rI/hD7qYQdukX86RBfcBa1OQQi1wqP4vPsRQCLcB/s640/1024px-Richard-Dadd-1817-1886.jpg" title="Richard Dadd working on Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854/1858)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Richard Dadd working on Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854/1858)</span></td></tr>
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</span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">According </span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">to his contemporaries, Richard loved his father dearly and the old man, a chemist by profession, accompanied his son to Cobham, hoping that the very un-Osirian surroundings would cure him from his delusions. One fine August evening in 1843 then, while they walked in Cobham Park, Richard, all of a sudden, drew a knife and stabbed his father to death. He believed, as he later confessed, that he was the devil in disguise. It obviously wasn’t a spontaneous act, since Dadd already had his things together and managed to escape to France. He was finally caught when he tried to slash a fellow passenger in a coach with a razor. Under the influence of demons, as he later confessed, when he was sent back to England, tried as a patricide and found to be a criminal lunatic to be locked away for life in Bedlam. Later, he confessed he had wanted to kill the pope as well when he saw him on St Peter’s Square back in ’42 en route back home to England, but found him too well guarded for an attempt and a tourist in the Vatican Museum escaped a grisly fate as well, probably while staring at some painting depicting a Freudian primal scene. The corridors were quite well monitored even back then. Dadd’s sunstroke might have been a form of paranoid schizophrenia, not that the symptoms were recognised as such, at least not before Bénédict Morel described “démence précoce“ in 1860. However, Dadd was allowed to paint in Bedlam and later in Broadmoore. More than 60 drawings, watercolours and oil paintings came about during his more than 40 years in closed institutions, one of his doctors, William Charles Hood, collected them, since they did have a considerable artistic value, they were even sold to the outside world. All of his works are highly detailed, at least in their depictions of floral elements, to a degree of pedantry, while Dadd’s human and fairy figures are usually slightly distorted and wear either outdated or historical costumes, as one cut off from the outside world might remember them, along with a typical fixed stare and tons of detail for psychological interpretation. Even if the artist himself wrote "You can afford to let this go /For nought as nothing it explains / And nothing from nothing nothing gains" in his epic-length doggerel “Elimination of a Picture & its Subject—called The Fellers' Master Stroke” accompanying his own master-stroke. He died in 1886, aged 68, “from an extensive disease of the lungs". His legacy as an artist, some of it still at display in Broadmoore Hospital, remained an insider’s tip for lovers of fairies and fairy tales, especially those with a Gothic nuance, ever since. From Octavio Paz and Angela Carter to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and Freddy Mercury.<br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about Richard Dadd on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dadd" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dadd</a><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span>Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Monks Orchard Rd, Beckenham BR3, UK51.3826234 -0.02659330000005866251.3727134 -0.046763300000058662 51.3925334 -0.0064233000000586613tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-51836969415647196982016-07-27T22:44:00.005+02:002023-10-02T08:06:04.348+02:00"That Day" - The Battle of Maiwand<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">27 July 1880, 45 miles west of Kandahar during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, an Anglo-Indian army under Brigadier General George Burrows was cut up by Afghan forces under Mohammad Ayub Khan at the Battle of Maiwand.</span><br />
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">“Good Luck to you. It’s all up with the Bally Old Berkshires” (a private of the 66th Berkshire Regiment of Foot to the teams of E Battery / B Brigade, Royal Horse Artillery, galloping away)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CubQNf-RmEo/V5kZxrLR_jI/AAAAAAAA3oc/qwi4SsGj980Gzv8KzW6hLcKBZPi0xBSkgCLcB/s1600/Royal_Horse_Artillery_fleeing_from_Afghan_attack_at_the_Battle_of_Maiwand.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="440" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CubQNf-RmEo/V5kZxrLR_jI/AAAAAAAA3oc/qwi4SsGj980Gzv8KzW6hLcKBZPi0xBSkgCLcB/s640/Royal_Horse_Artillery_fleeing_from_Afghan_attack_at_the_Battle_of_Maiwand.jpg" title="Richard Caton Woodville (1856 - 1927): "Maiwand: Saving the Guns" (1883)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Richard Caton Woodville (1856 - 1927): "Maiwand: Saving the Guns" (1883)</span></td></tr>
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A </span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Graveyard of Empires. Afghanistan had acquired a somewhat colourful reputation over the centuries. However, while a manageable number of empires was actually buried there, the lay of the land and the doughty warriors she bred proved to be a tough nut to crack for conquerors from the days of the Persian Empire 2,500 years ago to this day. And Afghanistan’s geostrategic position on the crossing between the Middle East, Central Asia and India drew them like flies. During the 19th century though, after Afghanistan’s very own attempt at empire building had ended in 1823, the Emirate with its capital in Kabul that succeeded Ahmad Shah Durrani’s kingdom played more or less the role of a buffer state in the Great Game between the Tsars and British India. A first attempt to bring Afghanistan completely under the heel of the Raj and nip Russian incursions into the Hindu Kush in the bud, famously failed miserably when Elphinstone’s Army of the Indus was cut to pieces in the passes near Gandamak during the infamous Kabul retreat of 1842. Thirty-five years later, open conflict between Russia and Great Britain was avoided at the Congress of Berlin, but a proxy war broke out in Afghanistan when Sher Ali Khan allowed an embassy of the Tsar in Kabul and turned the ambassadors of the Viceroy back to Calcutta at the border. The next round of Lord Lytton’s representatives at the Khyber Pass were the Generals Frederick Roberts, Donald Stewart and Sam Browne, accompanied by an army 50,000 strong and made up from the creme of the Bengal, Marahti, Baluchi, Punjabi, Sikh and Gurkha troops of British India, bolstered by British Army regiments, arranged in three marching columns, bent on invasion. Sher Ali Khan went to Moscow with a plea for help that fell on deaf ears. He returned to Afghanistan, died in Mazar-i-Sharif in February 1879 to be succeeded by his son Mohammad Yaqub Khan while the British had achieved their military goals in a couple of hard-fought actions and Sir Louis Cavagnari, the envoy of the Queen, met the new emir in Gandamak to settle the casus belli: establishing a British embassy in Kabul. “All is well in the Kabul embassy”, read Cavagnari’s last telegram to Lytton in the September of the year, a few hours before he, his escort and his staff were massacred in an uprising of the locals who didn’t quite accept the emir’s ceding of border territories to the Raj and letting the British into Kabul. The Second Anglo-Afghan War went into its second phase. Kabul was occupied by “Bobs” Roberts after defeating an Afghan army at Charasiab four weeks later and promptly, Bobs had his hands full with getting besieged by the locals at the Sherpur Cantonment. And then, Ayub Khan, Mohammad Yaqub’s younger brother and lord of Herat, threatened Kandahar on the border of British India, some 300 miles to the southwest. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Peter Archer's (1946- ) imagination of the last moments of the 11 survivors of the 66th in the garden outside of Khig, including Bobbie the Dog * </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <br />“With a drop of my sweetheart's blood, / Shed in defence of the Motherland, / Will I put a beauty spot on my forehead, / Such as would put to shame the rose in the garden”, young Malalai sang. It was her wedding day and both her father and her fiancée had already fallen and when the Afghan colour-bearer was shot and the flag fell, she used her veil to encourage Ayub Khan’s regulars and the thousands of Ghazis to charge into the British lines. The veil became her winding sheet, she was shot and became a national heroine, revered in Afghanistan and beyond to this day. Brigadier George Burrows and his 2,500 infantry, artillery and cavalry were sent to counter Ayub Khan in the beginning of July and they had already suffered a major drawback before the battle even began. 6,000 Kandahari regulars, mobilised by their pro-British Wali to support the defence of the province, had mutinied and went over to join Ayub Khan who had now up to 25,000 or, at the least, 12,000 men at his disposal, most of them irregulars, Ghazis, but combined with his state-of-the-art artillery park more than a match for the heavily outnumbered British. Burrows wouldn’t believe the numbers to the last moment, though, made a mess out of breaking camp and getting his army underway on the morning of the battle to find himself on a dusty plain, in scorching heat, with Ayub Khan’s army approaching from all sides from the hills. E Battery / B Brigade of the Royal Horse Artillery opened up on the enemy, far too deep out in the open, Burrow’s infantry hurried to cover the guns, the Afghans returned fire and inflicted considerable casualties on the 1st Bombay N.I. Grenadiers on the British left, while the 66th Berkshires in the centre and 30th Bombay N.I., known as Jacob’s Rifles, on the right, found at least some cover on the field. From the Afghan shells. Not from the sun, though, and after an artillery duel of three hours, the Afghans began to close in. The 30th Bombay’s Sniders and the 66th’s Martini-Henrys held them for a moment, forced them even to retreat, Ayub Khan’s artillery advanced while the RHA ran short of shells and then the 1st Bombays broke under a massed cavalry and infantry charge, the battle was lost and the slaughter began. The Bombay Grenadiers on the right ran next and the lines of the 66th dissolved, leaving the Berkshires to defend themselves in small groups retreating in the chaos. The RHA’s guns fired until the charging Afghans were only a couple of yards away, limbered up and ran, four teams even made it away, one was captured and by then, what was left of Burrow’s army was in an all-out rout. The remnants of the left wing fled towards the village of Mundabad, some 100 survivors of the 66th and the Grenadiers ended up a ravine in an orchard on the outskirts of a village called Khig, Malalai’s birthplace. They made a stand there, fired until they ran out of ammunition, the last 11 survivors charged out in the open with their bayonets and were shot down.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">The Queen awarding Bobbie the Dog and other survivors of the 66th with the Afghan War campaign medal at Osborne House</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <br /> Almost half of Burrows' army was killed at Maiwand, the rest made its 45-mile retreat to Kandahar. Ayub Khan’s cavalry was just to busy plundering the British baggage train and refrained from pursuing the broken British. The Afghan casualties amounted to 3,000 dead and Ayub Khan contented himself with besieging Kandahar, giving Roberts the time to lead his relief force from Kabul over 320 miles straight through Afghanistan in just four weeks. Ayub Khan was soundly defeated on 1 September and the Second Anglo-Afghan War was over. Maiwand, however, left a sound impression on the Victorian mind. From Bobbie the Dog, the regimental mascot of the 66th, who survived the last stand at Khig and the war and was awarded by the Queen with the Afghan War campaign medal, to the sheer disbelief of another native force trashing the world’s best infantry, just a year after Isandlwana. And there was the 66th’s surgeon, wounded in the shoulder by a Jezail bullet at Maiwand, who left the Army to set up shop at 221B Baker Street, St, Marylebone, London NW1, one Dr John H. Watson. But it was Rudyard Kipling, who summed it up, “That Day”, in his Barrack-Room Ballads:<br /> <br />"There was thirty dead an' wounded on the ground we wouldn't keep -<br />No, there wasn't more than twenty when the front began to go;<br />But, Christ! along the line o' flight they cut us up like sheep,<br />An' that was all we gained by doing so.<br /> <br />I 'eard the knives be'ind me, but I dursn't face my man,<br />Nor I don't know where I went to, 'cause I didn't 'alt to see,<br />Till I 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as 'e ran,<br />An' I thought I knew the voice an' - it was me!<br /> <br />We was 'idin' under bedsteads more than 'arf a march away;<br />We was lyin' up like rabbits all about the countryside;<br />An' the major cursed 'is Maker 'cause 'e lived to see that day“<br />An' the colonel broke 'is sword acrost, an' cried."<br /> <br /> And more about the Battle of Maiwand on:</span></div>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maiwand" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maiwand</a></span>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">* the image was found on: <a href="http://www.britishbattles.com/second-afghan-war/maiwand.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.britishbattles.com/second-afghan-war/maiwand.htm</a></span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Maiwand, Afghanistan31.6230363 65.05424599999992131.5689493 64.973564999999923 31.677123299999998 65.134926999999919tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-64502708951497891252016-07-22T23:09:00.001+02:002023-09-27T21:08:56.152+02:00"Bulla Turcorum" - John Hunyadi, the Siege of Belgrade and why the Noon Bells ring in Church<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br />22 July 1456, The Ottoman siege of Belgrade ended with a victory of the Hungarian warlord John Hunyadi and John of Capistrano’s crusaders, commemorated to this day with ringing the noon bells in church. <br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"... the Pope praised Hunyadi to the stars and called him the most outstanding man the world had seen in 300 years." (Jacob Calcaterra, Milanese ambassador to the Holy See)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ecljuRR5sz0/V5UqEudgi0I/AAAAAAAA3lM/33TPyIvUIrUOQJ43mN-f8QPrIDwcgxkmgCLcB/s1600/Battle_of_Nandorfehervar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="508" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ecljuRR5sz0/V5UqEudgi0I/AAAAAAAA3lM/33TPyIvUIrUOQJ43mN-f8QPrIDwcgxkmgCLcB/s640/Battle_of_Nandorfehervar.jpg" title=""The Battle of Nándorfehérvár"" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"The Battle of Nándorfehérvár" as Belgrade was known in Hungarian, mid-19th century painting by an unknown Magyar artist, showing John of Capistrano in the centre and John Hunyadi on horseback to the left. </span></td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fall of Constantinople in 1453 is seen often enough as the end of the Middle Ages. However, the printing press was already invented and so was gunpowder, rich trade cities and their burghers and merchant princes challenged the nobilities’ privileges just as pikemen and archers had broken their superiority on the battlefields, the Bible was translated in national languages and the interpretational sovereignty of the church questioned by the precursors of the Reformation, but the utterly medieval idea of Crusades and fighting the infidel was efficacious still, somehow. Not quite with the upper echelons of society like 300 years before, though. One was far too occupied with fighting Hundred Years’ Wars, getting to grips with the idea of a national state and what not. But since the Ottomans as the new emerging superpower on the intersection between Europe and Asia began to campaign deep into the Balkans, quixotic Western chivalry, usually from the same mould as the ones who charged into the arrow storms of Crecy and the burghers’ pole arms at Courtrai believing in their own aristocratic invincibility, along with professionals from the still existent chivalric orders and incited hoi polloi crusaded against the Turk. While the states east of Vienna fought for their very survival against an invader with well-led, well-equipped and highly motivated armies that usually wiped the floor with crusaders and locals alike. When the news of Sultan Mehmed’s capture of Constantinople reached the West, however, a few weeks before the last battle of the Hundred Years’ War was fought at Castillon, the Holy Roman Habsburgs were just about to recover from their devastating conflict against the Hussite heretics in Bohemia and the Borgia popes in Rome along with the powerful Italian city states preferred to be at each others’ throats, panic began to spread. The threat was real enough. With his new capital established in Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II, already known as Fatih, the Conqueror, prepared for his big push into Central Europe along the Danube. In his way lay the Hungarian fortress city of Nándorfehérvár, Kriechisch Wyssenburg, Belgrade. With an army of 70,000, an artillery park of 300 pieces and a river fleet of 200 vessels at his command, the Conqueror began the siege on July 4, 1456. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Belgrade (Kriechisch Wyssenburg, <i>Greek White Castle)</i>, from Sebastian Münster's "World Chronicle" (1545)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /> <br /><br />Fifty years earlier, during a momentary lapse in Ottoman power, the Serbian Prince Stefan Lazarević had led his new capital on the junction of the rivers Sava and Danube into something of a Golden Age and established a New Constantinople in more than an Orthodox Christian sense. By the end of his rule in 1427, the White City housed about 50,000 people and Stefan’s biographer Constantine the Philosopher praised her buildings “as mighty as Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem” shadowing her surroundings like “the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens”, the “most Tsar-like of all cities”, along with the state-of-the-art fortifications of the upper and lower city. However, Stefan’s successor Đurađ Branković had to cede her to the Hungarians and in 1455, the warlord John Hunyadi, anticipating where his old enemy Mehmed’s first major blow would fall, gave the fortress the finishing touches. 50 years old by then, Hunyadi had fought the Ottomans for almost 20 years with varying success, to say the least, but assembled a hard core of professional soldiers, cavalry, infantry and artillery, presaging his son Matthias Corvinus’ Black Army of Hungary, and he knew how to worry the modern Turkish soldiers on the battlefield. On the other hand, he worried the local Hungarian, Croatian and Serbian lords enough with his internal power play that they feared him more than the Turks. And left him, more or less, on his own. The westerners, fearing the advance of the Ottoman Turks on a more insubstantial level, practically followed suit. Already in 1453, Pope Callixtus III had preached a crusade that fell on deaf ears. And even the fire and brimstone hatemonger John of Capistrano couldn’t entice the princes of the Holy Roman Empire to take the cross at the Diet of Frankfurt two years later. He had more success in the southeast, in Bavaria and Austria, and finally in Hungary, where the Ottoman threat was already manifest. Thus, he managed to gather several ten thousands of peasants, bolstered by German knights and led them to Hunyadi as the crusaders of the “Soldier Saint”, as he became known. Pope Calixtus III donated a considerable amount of money from the alms bag for Hunyadi’s war chest and gave ideological support. Allegedly by issuing a papal bull against the foreboding appearance of Halley’s Comet and by ordering the whole of Christendom to ring the church bells at noon time and pray for the crusader’s victory at the Siege of Belgrade. By then, the defenders of the White City under Hunyadi’s brother-in-law Michael Szilágyi already fought for their lives.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HMqHFOY4uEg/V5UsiMeeaHI/AAAAAAAA3lY/LOQ5mRt2e3I0w5j1iE-TaB-7oL4aduVqACLcB/s1600/Dugovics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HMqHFOY4uEg/V5UsiMeeaHI/AAAAAAAA3lY/LOQ5mRt2e3I0w5j1iE-TaB-7oL4aduVqACLcB/s640/Dugovics.jpg" title="Alexander von Wagner (1838 - 1919) "Titusz Dugovics Sacrifices Himself" (1859)" width="560" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Alexander von Wagner (1838 - 1919) "Titusz Dugovics Sacrifices Himself" (1859) by grabbing the first janissary over the wall , wresting the regimental colours from him and dragging the wretch down with him over the fortifications of the upper city on 21 July 1456.</span></td></tr>
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For </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ten days, the White City lay under artillery barrage like Constantinople three years earlier. But this time, Mehmed Fatih had three times the ordnance at his disposal and concentrated the fire on an area of about one tenth of the fallen Roman capital. Szilágyi held, though, with the people of Belgrade getting the worst of it. On July 14, Hunyadi’s advance guard finally arrived on the scene. The old warhorse had scraped together a river flotilla from God knows where and managed to strike his first decisive blow against the highly professional Ottoman navy on the Danube. His ragtag vessels manned by Danube boatmen and a contingent of his experienced and well-equipped mercenaries-turned-marines sank three of Mehmed’s war galleys and destroyed or captured the bulk of his guard and supply vessels, cutting the besieger’s communication lines with the capital and allowing Hunyadi to get supplies and reinforcements into the city. A week later, the relief army arrived on the scene, made up from Hunyadi’s hard core of about 5,000 professional soldiers and Capistrano’s crusader rabble of some 50 – to 60,000 men and Mehmed ordered an all-out assault on the fortifications of Belgrade. The under city fell in the night of July 21, but Szilágyi held the upper town against the crème of the Ottoman army in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The next day started with something of a surprise when Capistrano’s crusaders, probably about to loot the depleted Ottoman camp against Hunyadi’s express orders, were suddenly engaged in melee with Mehmed’s household cavalry. The Kapikulu Sipahis were swamped by the mob before they could properly deploy and charge and Capistrano saw his chance, followed up with several thousand more and pushed the Ottomans back into their camp. Now Hunyadi stepped in and led his professionals against an equal number of Mehmed’s lifeguards who desperately tried to stem the tide and bring something resembling order into the chaos of the battle in the camp. Hunyadi threw them, Mehmed himself was wounded in close combat, the Janissaries, who still fought in the streets of the lower and upper city were cut off, cornered and slaughtered. The battle and the siege were over and John Hunyadi had won against the odds. Mehmed withdrew what was still left of his force back to Constantinople and the Kingdom of Hungary, along with Central Europe, was safe for the next 70 years from Ottoman incursions. The news of the victory at Belgrade reached the Pope on August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration. By then, John Hunyadi and John of Capistrano both lay on their death beds with the plague that had broken out in the crusader’s camp. Hunyadi died on August 11, Capistrano followed in October. Pope Callixtus’ order to ring the noon bells to pray for the defenders of Belgrade became a celebration, though, and a commemoration of victory over the Turks carried on to this day, even if the actual reason for ringing the noon bells every day is, by and large, forgotten. <br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about the 1456 Siege of Belgrade on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Belgrade_(1456)" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Belgrade_(1456)</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Belgrade, Serbia44.786568 20.44892159999994944.426118 19.803474599999948 45.147018 21.09436859999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-23822069697832168652016-07-16T18:14:00.000+02:002016-07-16T18:14:07.954+02:00"In Moorish lands a maiden fair" - Mozart's "Il Seraglio"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />16 July 1782, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” (The Abduction from the Seraglio) premiered at the Vienna Burgtheater with the composer conducting.<br /><br /> </span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“All our endeavour ... to confine ourselves to what is simple and limited was lost when Mozart appeared. Die Entführung aus dem Serail conquered all, and our own carefully written piece has never been so much as mentioned in theater circles.“ (Goethe)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7sW8HXkkPNY/V4pbAZMjs3I/AAAAAAAA3iI/1amMKswY5Yw7rPNfkdGeCZcnuNtFxwmUACLcB/s1600/Anton%2BHickel%2BRoxelana%2Band%2Bthe%2BSultan.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7sW8HXkkPNY/V4pbAZMjs3I/AAAAAAAA3iI/1amMKswY5Yw7rPNfkdGeCZcnuNtFxwmUACLcB/s640/Anton%2BHickel%2BRoxelana%2Band%2Bthe%2BSultan.JPG" title="Anton Hickel: "Roxelana and the Sultan" (1780)" width="456" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Anton Hickel: "Roxelana and the Sultan" (1780)</span></td></tr>
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It’s </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">not quite without irony that Mozart’s opera about hareem fantasies and lustful Turks premiered on the anniversary of the Tyrkjaránið, the Turkish abductions in Iceland. 155 years before, a flotilla of Atlantic-going Barbary pirate xebecs under the renegade Dutch privateer Murat Reis, née Jan Janszoon of Harlem, raided in the far north and herded together a couple of hundreds of islanders and carried them away to be sold on the slave markets of North Africa and the Middle East. Similar slave catching raids took place in Ireland, Murat Reis’ Sallee Rovers even established a permanent base in the Bristol Channel and the threat of slave catchers from North Africa led by Muslim converts like Simon de Danser, John Ward and Jan Janszoon continued well towards the end of the 17th century when the Royal Navy began to rule Atlantic Waters in earnest. In the Med, however, Barbary pirates continued to raid the Spanish and Italian coastal villages to stoke up the slave markets with white goods until the broadsides of battleships of a combined Anglo-Dutch squadron under the British naval hero Sir Edward Pellew finally put an end to it in 1816. Never the less, the whole subject had inspired an entire genre of “Christian-abducted-by-the-Corsairs” tracts and erotic penny dreadfuls that climaxed in the Orientalism of 19th century high art and the treatment in Voltaire’s “Candide” and Mozart’s “Il Seraglio”. By then, the high-water mark of Ottoman expansion on the Balkans was exceeded since a hundred years with the Siege of Vienna itself, the last wars between the Sublime Porte and the Habsburgs had been fought along the so-called Military Border at the back of beyond in Bosnia two generations before and during the 1770s and ‘80s, a fashion of Turquerie was firmly established in the Austrian part of the Danube Monarchy, à la mode in the whole west of Europe at that time. From Turkish tobacco and coffee, long caftan-like morning coats worn by the upper sets and architectural elements like kiosks to entire mock mosques, the mortal fear of the Ottoman conquerors was replaced by a fascination with the fashionable exotic. And even if Mozart himself stated that Ottoman music was “offensive to the ears”, he had already composed his famous “Alla Turca”, the Turkish March from his Piano Sonata No. 11, and various others pieces of so-called “Janissary Music” and when Emperor Joseph II ordered a national Singspiel to be composed to rival the dominant Italian operas, Mozart pulled the strings of contemporary pop culture together and composed what was to become arguably the first German opera.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dw61nDpqtfg/V4pcEv7mA-I/AAAAAAAA3iQ/7yOTxcOR7k4y2_LJ3a6IV_4bxDRAhVU3QCLcB/s1600/17th%2Bcentury%2Bslave%2Bmarket%2Bimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="376" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dw61nDpqtfg/V4pcEv7mA-I/AAAAAAAA3iQ/7yOTxcOR7k4y2_LJ3a6IV_4bxDRAhVU3QCLcB/s640/17th%2Bcentury%2Bslave%2Bmarket%2Bimage.jpg" title="A 17th century imagination of Europeans sold on an Oriental slave market" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 17th century imagination of Europeans sold on an Oriental slave market</td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">story of “Il Seraglio” is quickly told. Konstanze, a young girl from Spain, is abducted by Barbary pirates, along with her English maidservant Blonde and her bethroted Belmonte’s servant Pedrillo. They are sold to Bassa (Pasha) Selim and transported to the Turk’s palace by the sea. The girls go straight to Selim’s harem while Pedrillo manages to draw his former master to the set of the plot with a letter. Start of the performance. Pedrillo persuades Bassa Selim to employ the young Spaniard as an architect and Belmonte plans to abduct his beloved Konstanze and her hangers-on from the clutches of the Turk. While Konstanze and Blonde have to fend off the overtures of Bassa Selim and his Man Friday Osmin respectively, Pedrillo introduces said poor Mussulman to the allurements of forbidden alcohol, the Anglo-Iberian quartet manages to flee, they get caught again, and while Osmin is all for slaughtering the lot with stereotypic oriental cruelty, Bassa Selim turns out to be a bit of a surprise. Actually a Spaniard himself, the Pasha was forced into exile by Belmonte’s father, the Governor of Oran, turned renegade quite like the historical corsairs Jan Janszoon or John Ward, and now sees a chance to get even with his old enemy by putting the governor’s junior and his beloved to the sword. The Pasha lets the young couple wriggle for a while until he decides that magnanimity would be a far more delicate revenge and sets them free along with Blonde and Pedrillo. "Nie werd' ich deine Huld verkennen" – "Your noble mercy passes measure“ is the appropriate name of the opera’s final. End of the action and a remarkable parallel to Lessing’s liberal Muslim Sultan Saladin and the sage Jew from “Nathan the Wise”, premiering a year later in Berlin. A message from the Age of Enlightenment in an otherwise witty but somewhat trivial libretto with character stereotypes who are far more than they appear at first glance.</span><div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UuNf_aO36F0/V4pck6iZCoI/AAAAAAAA3iY/m94V1R-MOtAPKcZeoXlI81Wtl1r-EYzmQCLcB/s1600/800px-Entfuhrung_aus_dem_Serail484.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UuNf_aO36F0/V4pck6iZCoI/AAAAAAAA3iY/m94V1R-MOtAPKcZeoXlI81Wtl1r-EYzmQCLcB/s640/800px-Entfuhrung_aus_dem_Serail484.jpg" title="Mozart (the small one in the centre) attending a performance of "Il Seraglio" in Berlin (1789)" width="520" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mozart (the small one in the centre) attending a performance of "Il Seraglio" in Berlin (1789)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /><br /> “Il Seraglio” was not only among the first German operas but lifts the curtain to Mozart’s mature masterworks. The start of his career’s climax with a Janissary drumbeat was slightly marred by the fact that the Salzburgian genius had simply commandeered one Christoph Bretzner of Berlin’s libretto known as “Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail“, published during the previous year. He and his librettist Gottlieb Stephanie reworked the whole thing completely, without asking Bretzner’s permission, naturally, and made it into an intricately woven, timeless masterpiece, copyright infringement or not. And intricately woven enough to make its enlightened absolutist commissioner Emperor Joseph II complain “Zu schön für unsere Ohren, und gewaltig viel Noten, lieber Mozart!", too beautiful for our ears and a mighty lot of notes and dear Mozart answered to his sovereign and eternity: “There are just as many notes as there should be.“ His Habsburg Majesty remained an ardent supporter and patron regardless and appointed Mozart as his “chamber composer” a couple of years later. A job that famously didn’t pay very much, just as the salary for writing “Il Seraglio” amounted to a rather manageable amount. The two opening performances in Vienna alone yielded three times of the 100 Imperial Ducats he was paid, about 10,000 Euros in today’s money, and Mozart saw nothing of it, neither did he earn something from the several booked-out performances staged already during his life and times across Europe. 100 Imperial Ducats, however, was about one third of an annual Viennese middle class income and not half bad for an artist in his twenties on the brink of his great breakthrough and most of the good people of Vienna lived from hand to mouth anyway. Meagre, admittedly, from an economic viewpoint for one of the most popular operas of all times.<br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Entf%C3%BChrung_aus_dem_Serail" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Entf%C3%BChrung_aus_dem_Serail</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Vienna, Austria48.2081743 16.3738189000000647.8696338 15.728371900000059 48.546714800000004 17.019265900000061tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-24783908645100482382016-07-10T13:38:00.001+02:002023-10-02T08:12:13.527+02:00“Forget the war as a passing cloud” - The Battle of Svensksund and Sweden's greatest Naval Victory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />10 July 1790, During the climax of the Russo-Swedish War, the Battle of Svensksund ended with a nearly complete Swedish victory in one of the largest naval engagements ever fought. </span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Different Kinds of Arms are required in a Battle by Land, but many more in an Action by Sea, and also Machines and Engines like those used in the Attack or Defence of Places. What can be more terrible than a Sea Fight, in which both Fire and Water both unite for the Destruction of the Combatants” (Flavius Vegetius: “De Re Militari”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3gP645_ySk/V4IvzDqyFEI/AAAAAAAA3fw/gWQo8HNs3-oa8JpoTr6pKLQ-b3zriu4xACLcB/s1600/Johan_Tietrich_Schoultz_ma%25CC%258Alning_Slaget_vid_Svensksund.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3gP645_ySk/V4IvzDqyFEI/AAAAAAAA3fw/gWQo8HNs3-oa8JpoTr6pKLQ-b3zriu4xACLcB/s640/Johan_Tietrich_Schoultz_ma%25CC%258Alning_Slaget_vid_Svensksund.jpg" title="Johan Tietrich Schoultz (1754 - 1807): "Slaget vid Svensksund" (The Battle of Svensksund, 1791)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Johan Tietrich Schoultz (1754 - 1807): "Slaget vid Svensksund" (The Battle of Svensksund, 1791)</span></td></tr>
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Sometimes</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, the Age of Enlightenment grew somewhat strange blossoms. King Gustav III of Sweden, for example, once decided with scientific zeal to prove to the world how harmful beverages like tea and coffee were. A pair of criminal twins, sentenced to death anyway, were given liberal doses of said hot potables every day, one several cups of tea, the other the same amount of coffee while the monarch and his staff of naturalists and medicos impatiently waited who of the two would peg out first. The twins survived the treatment and both lived to a ripe old age, much to Gustav’s dismay. But the enlightened despot wasn’t one for corporeal punishment, torture and death sentences anyway. He abolished them, by and large, promoted the arts, wrote plays himself and was caught between two stools, that of the party harkening back to the constitution he abolished by coup d’etat, in 1772 and the Hattarna, the “hats”, named after the tricornes worn by nobles and officers who demanded a more aggressive Sweden, ruled by their faction with all the aristo privileges, naturally. To keep them quiet after quelling a mutiny in 1789 and hide some effects of a depression in his otherwise quite successful new national economic policy, the monarch decided to start the 18th century’s last Cabinet War. In contrast to the incredibly savage religious wars of the 17th and the national wars of the 19th century about to bloodily dawn on Europe, Cabinet Wars, named after the war cabinet absolute rulers of the age gathered around them in case of conflict, were waged with limited, manageable military goals usually for minor territorial gains and with minor suffering of non combatants. At least in theory. King Gustav, however, enlightened as he was, looked for a proper casus belli to pick a fight with his neighbour, his cousin Catherine the Great, Empress of all the Russians, who was obligingly occupied with fighting the Turks who tried to recapture the Crimea and other former Black Sea possessions lost 30 years before. Dressed up in Russian uniforms made by tailors of the Royal Swedish Opera, founded by Gustav himself, Swedish soldiers staged an attack on their own outpost of Puumala on the Russian border on 27 June 1788 and Sweden went to war.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J2ip1bfCMWs/V4Iwx4VAO2I/AAAAAAAA3f4/BwTZi4sEDFskArDV1H2CT8R1Tq1Y7Sv-ACLcB/s1600/Desprez-Swedish_war_preparations_1788.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="298" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J2ip1bfCMWs/V4Iwx4VAO2I/AAAAAAAA3f4/BwTZi4sEDFskArDV1H2CT8R1Tq1Y7Sv-ACLcB/s640/Desprez-Swedish_war_preparations_1788.jpg" title="Watercolor by Louis Jean Desprez (1743-1804) depicting Swedish warship being fitted for war in 1788." width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Swedish warships of the örlogsflottan and the skärgårdsflottan are fitted out in Stockholm on the eve of war, by Louis Jean Desprez (1743 - 1804) </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">True </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the doctrine of the Cabinet Wars, Gustav’s plan was, by and large, to defeat the Russian regiments stationed along the border in Finland, gain the upper hand at sea, land troops near St Petersburg and force Catherine to sign a favourable peace and return Russian territorial gains from wars fought earlier in the century. And while Denmark, Russia’s ally, entered the conflict and brought Sweden into the same dilemma of having to fight a war on two fronts just as Russia, the conflict on land went so-so for Sweden, nine major battles were fought in Finland, some won, some lost without going anywhere, mostly, but worse things happened at sea. Several naval engagements ended indecisive over the course of the war, the Swedish high seas fleet finally found itself bottled up in Vyborg Bay, about a hundred miles northwest of St Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland, cut off and blockaded by a considerably larger Russian squadron under Admiral Chichagov. Trying to run the “Viborgska gatloppet”, the Viborg gauntlet, through the skerries and into the broadsides of the 29 Russian ships of the line, the Swedes suffered a major battering on 4 July 1790. Gustav had lost one fourth of his battle fleet and drew Chichagov’s squadron towards Helsinki in pursuit. And there, the other part of the Swedish Navy lay in wait, the so-called Archipelago Fleet. The coastline of the northern and eastern Baltic shores is famously dotted with small rocky islands, sometimes forming downright archipelagos, geological formations with waterways impossible for large-drafted ships to navigate. Thus, during the course of the 18th century, both the Swedes and the Russians developed fleet arms consisting of shallow draft gunboats, galleys, known as udemas and pojamas, and Baltic oddities, such as broadside-armed, rowable ships the size of a small frigate, inspired by Mediterranean xebecs. These skärgårdsfregatter, "archipelago frigates", turumas and the over 100’ long hemmemas were ideally suited to move oar-powered through the channels of the archipelagos with far too less offing for a large sailing ship and take to the open seas of the Baltic as well. Along with being ideally suited for close inshore work and joined operations with the army. A week after the Swedish disaster of Vyborg, the Russian archipelago fleet closed in towards Helsinki and the Swedish fortress of Sveaborg where the örlogsflottan, the high seas navy, sheltered for repairs. At Svensksund, some 80 miles east of Helsinki, Gustav and his skärgårdsflottan made their stand. At eight o’clock on 9 July 1790, the Russian admiral Nassau-Siegen’s flagship “Sviataia Ekaterina” signalled “general advance” into the Svensksund. One of the greatest naval battles in history had begun. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-atf7Jyb0-XA/V4Ix0j_WzVI/AAAAAAAA3gE/F0gpXOGxquI8X51Hide86QcIPmP0VUvDwCLcB/s1600/Aivzovsky%2BRussian_victory_vyborg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="422" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-atf7Jyb0-XA/V4Ix0j_WzVI/AAAAAAAA3gE/F0gpXOGxquI8X51Hide86QcIPmP0VUvDwCLcB/s640/Aivzovsky%2BRussian_victory_vyborg.jpg" title="Ivan Aivazovsky: "Russian Victory at Viborg" (around 1880)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ivan Aivazovsky: "Russian Victory at Viborg" (around 1880)</span></td></tr>
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With <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">several hundred vessels involved on both sides, from the Swedish 5 skärgårdsfregatter and 9 Russian rowing frigates to small gunboats, carrying more than 2,000 often considerably large calibre cannon and 25,000 fighting men, the engagement in the sound resembled the Battle of Lepanto of 1571 far more than contemporary naval battles fought on the high seas. There were no fancy manoeuvres involved, no battle lines to speak of, just brutal close combat, boarding and firing into each other at point-blank range. In the afternoon, the Swedes managed to engulf the Russian vessels from all sides, around sunset Nassau-Siegen signalled to break off the engagement, few were able to or wanted to heed the call, fighting continued all through the night and ended when the Swedes had rounded up what was left off the Russian coastal fleet on the following morning. It was an unprecedented disaster for Russia. By and large, their entire coastal fleet was destroyed with hardly any Swedish losses to speak off and there was nothing left to prevent a well-planned Swedish amphibious assault on St Petersburg. That was a bit too much and Catherine of Russia initiated peace negotiations. Gustav was all too ready to comply and four weeks after the Battle of Svensksund, the Treaty of Värälä was signed and the Russo-Swedish War was over. “Forget the war as a passing cloud”, Gustav poetically wrote to his cousin and the status quo ante bellum was re-established while Europe prepared to fight revolutionary France in the War of the First Coalition and a new era in the history of the world was about to begin, as Goethe mentioned after the Battle of Valmy two years later. King Gustav III, a figurehead of the old world order, wouldn’t live to see it, though. He was assassinated in March 1792 during a fancy dress ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, dramatically at midnight by black masked conspirators.</span></div>
</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /> <br /><br />And more about the Battle of Svensksund on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Svensksund" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Svensksund </a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Kotka, Finland60.4665666 26.94594029999996159.9651756 25.655046799999962 60.9679576 28.23683379999996tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-49306526445933596322016-07-01T22:14:00.001+02:002023-10-02T08:18:39.633+02:00King Totila's last Battle at Busta Gallorum and the end of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br />1 July 552, after more than twenty years of death struggle between Eastern Rome and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy during Emperor Justinian’s attempt of reconquering the lost Western Empire, the Byzantine General Narses decisively defeated King Totila’s Goths in the Battle of Taginae in the Apennine Mountains, some 120 mile northeast of Rome.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“…the king exhibited in a narrow space the strength and agility of a warrior. His armour was enchased with gold; his purple banner floated with the wind: he cast his lance into the air; caught it with the right hand; shifted it to the left; threw himself backwards; recovered his seat; and managed a fiery steed in all the paces and evolutions of the equestrian school.” (Edward Gibbon, “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">King Totila, as imagined in Luca Signorelli's (1445 - 1523) Renaissance vision of "Benedict Discovers Totila's Deceit" (around 1500)</span></td></tr>
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The</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> very meekest cannot rest in quiet, unless it suits with his ill neighbour's humour, as William Tell once put it in Schiller’s eponymous play. Not that the word “meek” would suggest itself in regards to the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great. The Germanic condottiero had led his tribal followers into Italy during the last quarter of the 5th century and managed to carve out a kingdom from the ruins of the Western Empire. A couple of years later, the Eastern Roman emperors in Constantinople recognised Theoderic as de facto successor of their bygone western counterparts and even the ambitious Merovingian Franks were kept at bay with a successful combination of military action, threat and high quality diplomacy while the petulant Roman inhabitants of the peninsula by and large accepted and prospered under the certainty of the law under the benign Gothic overlordship. Not half bad for a ruler who had started out as a bare-arsed, louse-ridden barbarian chieftain as some of the contemporary Roman sources and imperial die-hards described him. His death at the age of 70-something in 526 without a suitably adult male heir left the Gothic kingdom in Italy in something of an impasse, though, especially since in Constantinople a new emperor came into the purple who had a vision of resurrecting the lost western part of the Roman Empire. Justinian. And after having settled his internal affairs and concluded an admittedly fragile peace with the Sassanid Empire, the next-door superpower east of the Euphrates, Justinian had his hands free to put his idea of restauratio imperii into action. The Vandal kingdom in North Africa was in for it first and fell after a lighting campaign led by the rather brilliant General Belisarius. The Gothic Kingdom of Italy was the next in line. Their royal infighting over the past years provided Justinian with the pretence he needed and in 535, Belisarius landed in pro-Roman Sicily with a small but highly professional army, occupied the place, rolled up the south of Italy, sweeping away all Gothic resistance until Naples and finally Rome fell in December 536. And then, things went completely pear-shaped for the conquerors. Even while the Goths changed their leaders more often than their shirts, resistance began to form in earnest, the Roman offensive foundered in the north, the plague broke out in Constantinople and the Sasanians declared war again in the east. Rome herself became a battlefield and while the Eternal City had somehow survived the turmoil of the 5th century and the Visigothic and Vandal sacks, her remaining 100,000 inhabitants of 536 had either fled or were killed when the Gothic king Totila recaptured the city for the last time. Belisarius was recalled from the Italian theatre, Justinian feared intrigue and his general had demanded reinforcements and more supplies once too often anyway. Now Narses was mobilised to give the Goths the coup de grace with an army of 30,000 and almost every imaginable resource Belisarius had clamoured for in vain.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An imagination of charging Gothic heavy cavalry</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /> <br /><br />Narses, an elderly Armenian eunuch and actually an accountant by trade, had already seen some fighting in Italy earlier in the Gothic War and became Belisarius’ bitter rival, especially since he seemed to enjoy Justinian’s full confidence and that of the bustling Empress Theodora who had significantly contributed to Belisarius’ demise. The Armenian took his time, marched his army through Illyria until a Byzantine fleet managed to bring Totila’s warships to bay and annihilate them off Ancona. With his supplies lines secure, Narses finally pushed into Italy and marched down the old Via Flaminia to meet Totila. The armies clashed at a place known as Busta Gallorum, the burial mounds of the Gauls, once defeated and buried there after Brennus, of vae victis fame, was thrown out of Rome under Camillus some 800 years before. A good omen for a Roman army, though, and Narses proved to be far more than a pen pusher and Imperial favourite. He knew how to fight as well. Totila had rushed the famous Gothic heavy cavalry forward, dragging his infantry levies behind. He chose a narrow valley to offer battle and Narses accepted. He anticipated the cavalry charge, let most of his men dismount, positioned them in a half circle with his experienced archers on the flanks, quite like the English at Agincourt 850 years later. Totila knew that his lancers wouldn’t stand half a chance if they were exposed too long to the withering fire of the Romans and opened the battle with a charge against the archers on one of the wings. The arrows fired from the Byzantine composite bows that already had stopped Sassanid heavily armoured cataphracts in their tracks were still overwhelming. The Gothic charge was pushed away to the Roman centre, lost its momentum, the Roman infantry reserves charged and broke the Goths. Then Narses’ own cataphracts came over both wings and rode what was left of Totila’s disorganized ranks into the ground. The king himself was mortally wounded and died soon after, his coat and bejeweled hat were later presented to Justinian and Narses’ had decisively defeated the Ostrogoths with almost no losses of his own. Their rule in Italy was virtually over. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S1_k_EidEZw/V3bXMFwBTkI/AAAAAAAA3VY/oatktg0AXDERvA-mGAArixOfH4z7oRRvgCLcB/s1600/Mons_Lactarius.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="484" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S1_k_EidEZw/V3bXMFwBTkI/AAAAAAAA3VY/oatktg0AXDERvA-mGAArixOfH4z7oRRvgCLcB/s640/Mons_Lactarius.jpg" title="Adolf Zick (1845 - 1907): "Die Gotenschlacht am Vesuv" (The Goths' Battle at Mount Vesuvius, around 1900), depicting King Teia's last stand at the Battle of Mons Lactarius near the Vesuvius" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Adolf Zick (1845 - 1907): "Die Gotenschlacht am Vesuv" (The Goths' Battle at Mount Vesuvius, around 1900), depicting King Teia's last stand at the Battle of Mons Lactarius near the Vesuvius</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br />They crowned one last king, Teia, and Narses defeated him and the last of the Ostrogoths at a place known as Mons Lactarius in Campania in the November of the same year. Teia died fighting and what was left of his people was allowed to leave and withdraw beyond the Alps and into legend. The dream of an Ostrogothic Italy was over. The Franks sniffed their chance, tried to invade the heap of ruins the peninsula had become over the last twenty years of war and Narses defeated them as well. Italy had found the peace of the grave for a while. Narses remained as exarch, did his best to restore at least something resembling a civil infrastructure until he simply disappears from the records towards the end of the 560s. The next wave of invaders, the Lombards, already sharpened their battle axes and were about to knock at the door. In 568 they migrated into Italy under their King Alboin, tens of thousands of them, along with various other tribes and they would rule most of the place for the next two hundred years, locked in a continuous struggle with Eastern Rome. By then, Theoderic, Totila, Teia and Belisarius had entered the realm of legends just as the tribe of the Ostrogoths did and they lived and fought on in heroic epics well into the 20th century. Narses, arguably the most brilliant commander of them all and certainly the most unheroic figure, was duly forgotten outside of Byzantine historiography, though.<br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about the Battle of Taginae on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taginae" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taginae</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Via dei Salesiani, 50, 06023 Gualdo Tadino PG, Italy43.23378 12.78323999999997817.711745500000003 -28.525354000000021 68.7558145 54.091833999999977tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-65479763914841425022016-06-26T15:21:00.007+02:002023-10-02T08:28:03.311+02:00Day of the Greasy Grass - The Great Sioux War and Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /><br />26 June 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, or Battle of the Greasy Grass to the Lakota, finally ended after the death of Lt Colonel George Armstrong Custer on the previous day and the attacks on Benteen’s and Reno’s position ceased with the confederation of Lakota, Cherokee and Arapaho leaving the area. <br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">“Directly below us the placid river wound in great loops between fine groves of trees in a broad valley bottom. On our side the valley was enclosed by the bluffs on which we stood, although to our right the bluffs became a ridge, running away for a couple of miles into the hazy distance. From the bluffs to the river the ground fell pretty steeply, but from the crest of the long ridge the slope was much more gentle, a few hundred yards of hillside down to the river with a few gullies and dry courses here and there. It’s like any other hillside, very peaceful and quite pretty, all clothed in pale yellow grass like thin short wheat, with a few bright flowers and thistles. All ordinary enough, but I suppose there are a few old Indians now who think of it now as others may think of Waterloo or Hastings or Bannockburn. They call it the Greasy Grass.” (George MacDonald Fraser: “Flashman and the Redskins”) </span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Charles Marion Russell (1864 - 1926): "The Custer Fight" (1903)</span></td></tr>
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It is not quite without irony that General Phil Sheridan became one of the foremost promoters of establishing the Yellowstone National Park. He even used the army to protect the area and its wildlife from encroaching settlers, hunters and prospectors about the same time he ordered flamboyant Custer to lead an expedition into the Black Hills to direct as much public attention on the rich local mineral deposits as he could. And gold was found, in August 1873 in the soil near French Creek and with the close newspaper coverage of the Black Hills Expedition, there was no holding back in the east. Gold seekers flocked in droves to Bismarck, North Dakota Territory, to try their luck in a region that was actually given to the Lakota under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. Said agreement was grudgingly concluded when protecting the Bozeman Trail to the recently discovered gold fields in Montana from the raids of the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho became simply too costly. Ending what was known as Red Cloud’s War, named after a prominent Oglala chief, the treaty gave the Lakota and their allies legal control over the Powder River country and most of the Black Hills. At least to those “good Injuns” who would give up their traditional way of life and cooperate with the agencies established in the region. Those who didn’t were dubbed “hostiles”, but since General Sheridan, Head of the Department of the Missouri, was of the opinion that the only “good Injuns” he ever saw were the dead ones, the distinction didn’t make much of a difference anyway. And since the US Army was obviously powerless to stop Americans from going to where they damned well pleased on American soil, settlers and prospectors soaked into the Black Hills in droves. A calculated provocation, since the Powder River country was not only one of the last areas where herds of buffalo still roamed after Sheridan encouraged hunters to exterminate them in their millions on the Great Plains. To feed railway workers, for sport and to systematically destroy the livelihood of the Native American Plains Nations. Ȟe Sápa, the Black Hills, had become hallowed ground for the Lakota ever since they wrested the region from the Cheyenne about a hundred years earlier and Sheridan was dead certain the mass incursion of gold seekers would drive more and more of the Treaty Lakota under basically cooperative chiefs like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, rather miffed over the desolate combination of corruption and general incompetence of the agencies anyway, into the arms of the Hostiles around the Hunkpapa holy man Sitting Bull. And that they would fight, providing Sheridan with the opportunity to eradicate the last free nations on the Great Plains that stood in the way of progress, the Northern Pacific Railroad and America’s Manifest Destiny. An eleventh hour attempt of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail in May 1875 to persuade President Grant to honour the existing treaty failed, the governmental counter-offer to pay the Lakota a compensation for quitting the Black Hills, far below any reasonable economic worth of the region, almost drove them to hysterics and in the winter of the year, the Department of the Missouri issued the order to all Lakota and Cheyenne to report to the nearest agency until the end of January or else.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WXBTumnvSpM/V2_Qsg2-_gI/AAAAAAAA3SQ/2Glrw5pMO_EL83qdd-srkM-_KTcppuQlQCLcB/s1600/Wagon_train_passing_through_Castle_Creek_valley%252C_by_Illingworth%252C_W._H._%2528William_H.%2529%252C_1842-1893.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="328" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WXBTumnvSpM/V2_Qsg2-_gI/AAAAAAAA3SQ/2Glrw5pMO_EL83qdd-srkM-_KTcppuQlQCLcB/s640/Wagon_train_passing_through_Castle_Creek_valley%252C_by_Illingworth%252C_W._H._%2528William_H.%2529%252C_1842-1893.jpg" title="W.H. Illingworth's (1842 - 1893) photograph of the wagon train of Custer's 1873 Black Hills Expedition passing through Castle Creek Valley" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">W.H. Illingworth's (1842 - 1893) photograph of the wagon train of Custer's 1873 Black Hills Expedition passing through Castle Creek Valley</td></tr>
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"Or else” began in the spring of 1876, when no one came, unsurprisingly in the middle of a harsh Montana and Wyoming winter. In a so-called “three-pronged approach”, the army was supposed to pin down the hostile Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho, eradicate any resistance and drive the survivors back to the reservations. The Great Sioux War had begun. And since all US Army commanders involved occupied themselves with how to catch the Injuns, expecting anything but a stiff resistance, the first real contact with the enemy on Rosebud Creek in Montana on 17 June came as a bit of a surprise to General Crook’s northbound column. A more or less equally strong contingent of Lakota and Cheyenne braves under the Oglala war chief Tȟašúŋke Witkó, Crazy Horse, had fought the advance of Crook’s 1,000 army regulars and Crow and Shoshoni allies to a standstill, putting his column out of action. The commanders of the Dakota and Montana column, General Alfred Terry, Colonel Gibbon and Terry’s cavalry leader Lt. Colonel Custer met on 21 June on board of the supply ship “Far West” on the banks of the Yellowstone River and discussed their further proceedings. And, basically, Terry let his subordinate Custer off the leash. The ex-“boy general” of the Civil War certainly had the most experience of the the three as an “Indian Fighter”, if massacring the inhabitants of Cheyenne Villages and fighting fruitless skirmishes was taken into account. However, Custer had served on the Plains for ten years and saw the campaign as his last chance to win fame, glory and promotion. He opted for leaving infantry support behind, along with a battery of Gatling machine guns, and headed his 7th Cavalry straight for the Bighorn River where scouts had located a large Indian encampment. Just how large nobody could say for certain, but Custer was anxious they might still escape him and pressed ahead into the Powder River Country. Terry basically had given him permission to act and, if necessary, fight on his own initiative and that was exactly what Custer was about to do, basically to get at the non-combatants in the village to force the supposedly retreating braves to come back and either fight it out or surrender. Unfortunately for Custer, the up to 2,500 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors opposing the 647 men of his unsupported cavalry regiment had no intention to withdraw.<br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-67FXJgMi6lk/V2_TCUNUfvI/AAAAAAAA3Sk/G9kuPqpn6C4dqfKzAXhUhLIfYo8Bua7hQCLcB/s1600/Kicking%2BBear%2BCuster%2527s%2BLast%2BStand.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="324" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-67FXJgMi6lk/V2_TCUNUfvI/AAAAAAAA3Sk/G9kuPqpn6C4dqfKzAXhUhLIfYo8Bua7hQCLcB/s640/Kicking%2BBear%2BCuster%2527s%2BLast%2BStand.jpg" title="Oglala veteran of the Greasy Grass Chief Matȟó Wanáȟtake's (Kicking Bear, 1846 - 1904) recollection of Custer's Last Stand (1898)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Oglala veteran of the Greasy Grass Chief Matȟó Wanáȟtake's (Kicking Bear, 1846 - 1904) recollection of Custer's Last Stand (1898)</span></td></tr>
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</span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In </span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">the morning of 25 June his scouts reported to Custer the arguably largest assembly of Indians that had ever gathered on the plains. Still unperturbed, Custer split his regiment into three parts, one under Major Marcus Reno, one under Captain Frederick Benteen and one to be lead by himself. Reno’s three companies charged around 3 pm into the southern part of the Lakota village and Chief Gall promptly answered with a fierce counter charge, forcing Reno to retreat and the retreat was turned into a rout. With what was left of his command, Reno managed to reach a hillock and dug in. Joined by Benteen’s three companies, the two decided to hold out there instead of joining up with Custer, who was about to get cut up farther north. What happened there up on the banks of the Little Bighorn River became the stuff of legends, for both sides. In all probability, Custer charged with his roughly 200 men across the river at Minneconjou Ford right towards the middle of the Cheyenne encampment, probably believing it was the northern end of the whole village, was pushed back, again the retreat became a running battle, then a rout until the last survivors were killed on what is now known as “Last Stand Hill” and no man of Custer’s detachment lived to tell the tale. Reno and Benteen held out in their position and watched the thousands on the river banks strike their tents and withdraw. The day after, on 27 June, Terry and Gibbon arrived on the scene, finally relieved Reno and Benteen and began to take account of what was the US Army’s greatest defeat in the Indian Wars. The news reached the East Coast a few days after the grand United States Centennial Celebration and caused a major shock, the Battle of the Little Bighorn became an American myth, especially with Custer’s outspoken widow, by fingerpointing at Reno and Benteen, trying to preserve the memory of her husband as a hero and not as the rash, glory-seeking self-promoter that he was, traits that had caused his death and that of his men on the Day of the Greasy Grass. The Great Sioux War was over within a year, most bands surrendered, joined the agencies or fled to Canada. The offer of recompensing the Lakota for giving up the Black Hills still stands, though. The money wasn’t touched to this day. <br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about the Battle of the Little Bighorn on:<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn </a><br /><br /> </span>Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Crow Agency, MT 59022, USA45.6041414 -107.4645277999999845.5152689 -107.62588929999998 45.693013900000004 -107.30316629999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-8489977218566745042016-06-16T06:00:00.002+02:002023-06-11T08:39:18.690+02:00The Birth of Frankenstein and the ancestor of Dracula in a fateful night at the Villa Diodati<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />16 June 1816, in eighteen hundred and froze to death (1816), both Frankenstein and the ancestor of Dracula were conceived during a writing contest at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva by some of the most famous authors of the Romantic Age and Gothic fiction.<br /> </span><br />
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> “I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; / Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, / And men forgot their passions in the dread / Of this their desolation; and all hearts / Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: / And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, / The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, / The habitations of all things which dwell, / Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, / And men were gather'd round their blazing homes / To look once more into each other's face; / Happy were those who dwelt within the eye / Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: / A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; / Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour / They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks / Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.“ (Lord Byron “Darkness”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">An atmospheric print of Villa Diodati with Byron in the foreground, stretched out decoratively á la Goethe in the Campana by an unknown artist, probably from mid-19th century*</span></span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <br /> By and large, 1816 was not a really good year. True, the wars that shook Europe and many other places all over the world for almost a generation had ended a couple of months before. But the country was, more often than not, still marked by strife. Unemployment of soldiers, sailors and marines retuning home skyrocketed. Civil unrest did not take long to wait for and to top it all, the volcano Mount Tambora had erupted between April 5 – 15, 1815 on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia. What sounds like a rather remote affair unfortunately had global consequences. The eruption of Mount Tambora was later rated as “mega-colossal” on the open-scaled Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). One of the 4 eruptions that were indexed as “7” in historical times, with Vesuvius in 79 CE getting a “5” and Krakatoa in 1883 a “6”. After four somewhat weaker eruptions across the globe between 1812 – 1814, all rated at least at index “4”, Mount Tambora made the catastrophe complete. In 1816, land temperatures dropped about 1° C on the average, harvests failed all over the world, causing massive famines, riots, migrations and a generally apocalyptic mood.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEWWnrkhRdo/V2IpUQ-pkRI/AAAAAAAA3JM/BWtyvlqcWi4HhWg9S5jUUlEEKSBHxSqmwCLcB/s1600/Chichester_Canal_%25281828%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="290" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEWWnrkhRdo/V2IpUQ-pkRI/AAAAAAAA3JM/BWtyvlqcWi4HhWg9S5jUUlEEKSBHxSqmwCLcB/s640/Chichester_Canal_%25281828%2529.jpg" title="J.M.W. Turner: "Chichester Canal" from 1828" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">J.M.W. Turner: "Chichester Canal" from 1828. Turner's spectacular sunsets and the light with its characteristic yellow tinge might have been caused by the high level of tephra in the atmosphere after the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Tambora, still making its presence felt 12 years later </td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <br /> A general state of “tenebrae factae sunt” came to the fore in Lord Byron’s ill-fated marriage as well during the spring of 1816. Public scandal that accompanied his separation from Annabella left him almost no choice but to leave England for good and in May, Lord Byron rented a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, because, as the shrewd landlord claimed, Milton had once lodged there – even though Villa Diodati was built 40 years after Milton’s death in 1674. However, Byron was probably in the right Gothic mood during the Year Without a Summer and when the Shelleys, along with Byron’s ex-lover, Mary Shelley’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, paid him a visit there, the course was set for one of the most consequential events for popular fiction. Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, Claire and Byron’s private physician John Polidori, something of a writer himself and paid by Byron’s publisher John Murray to keep a diary on the events, often couldn’t leave the house because of the awful weather but would meet every night, discuss, besides politics and philosophy, especially spiritism and occult phenomena, read German ghost stories and drink laudanum, an opium tincture dissolved in brandy and wine – and one fine evening, his lordship proposed that everyone present should write a Gothic story.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Frontispiece of Polidori's "The Vampyre" in a penny dreadful look & feel, <br />attributing the novelette to his master Lord Byron</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></td></tr>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <br /> Shelley and Byron more or less weaselled out of the agreement, Shelley’s ghost stories remained fragmentary at best, Byron drafted a “Fragment of a Novel”, a vampire story that, in return, inspired Polidori to borrow the name of Lord Ruthven, Byron’s alter ego from his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb’s rather malicious exposé novel “Glenarvon”, published a few weeks before, and write a vampire novel of his own. “The Vampyre” became a bestseller soon after its publication, Goethe himself thought it was the best of Byron’s works so far, Byron himself, as well as Polidori, denied the authorship, rather half-heartedly on Polidori’s side as soon as he saw that he was simply unable to step out of the shadow of his former master before he committed suicide two years later. However, it was Polidori’s undeniable achievement to have condensed the vampire myths of the 18th century into a coherent novel for the first time and to have created the progenitor of all subsequent literary vampires after the model of Lord Byron, most notably “Dracula” and all the 20th and 21st century’s successors of Stoker’s undead count. Mary Shelley, in the meanwhile, wrote her own novel from that night onwards that would stand out through the ages of Gothic fiction, popular novels and movies: “Frankenstein”, published for the first time in 1818.</span></div>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">* The image was found on: <a href="http://staff.washington.edu/cgiacomi/courses/english497/finals/websitem/Sceneoverviewsetting.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://staff.washington.edu/cgiacomi/courses/english497/finals/websitem/Sceneoverviewsetting.html</a> <br /> <br /> And more about Villa Diodati on:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Diodati" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Diodati</a><br /> <br /> and the Year Without a Summer on</span></div>
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<span face=""helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer" target="_blank"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer</a><br /><br /> </span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Villa Diodati, Chemin de Ruth 9, 1223 Cologny, Switzerland46.2202195 6.183327400000052920.698185 -35.125266599999946 71.742254 47.491921400000052tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-72168056475695025112016-06-12T08:00:00.000+02:002016-06-12T09:39:30.412+02:00“Everything is dead while it lives.“ Wiener Moderne, Neuritic Novels and the Expressionist Egon Schiele<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />12 June 1890, the expressionist painter Egon Schiele was born in Tulln in Austria.<br /><br /> </span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Everything is dead while it lives.“ (Egon Schiele)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gQTOQN_cmj0/V10N8uzC4VI/AAAAAAAA3Cs/zCt9TokZEFQ7GrExOhogZkAO31Xm8o6XQCLcB/s1600/1280px-Egon_Schiele_012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="536" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gQTOQN_cmj0/V10N8uzC4VI/AAAAAAAA3Cs/zCt9TokZEFQ7GrExOhogZkAO31Xm8o6XQCLcB/s640/1280px-Egon_Schiele_012.jpg" title="Egon Schiele: "Tod und Mädchen" (Death and the Maiden, 1915)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"...figures like a cloud of dust resembling this earth and seeking to grow, but forced to collapse impotently." - Egon Schiele: "Tod und Mädchen" (<i>Death and the Maiden</i>, 1915)</span></td></tr>
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"Fin de siecle," murmured Lord Henry. "Fin du globe," answered his hostess. "I wish it were fin du globe," said Dorian with a sigh. "Life is a great disappointment.", Oscar Wilde had his circle of decadents trade barbs and witticisms on the edge of the abyss towards the end of long 19th century over existential despair in 1890. The good people of Vienna were about to go one better by then. Some ten years later, in the voltage field of the cosmopolitan capital of a dying empire and its anachronistic structures, delicacy, moribund sensuousness sense and neurotic sensibility exploded into the rampant growth of all art forms of the “Wiener Moderne”, the Viennese Modern Age. It was a Golden Age, or at least a gilded one, with gold foil covering decay and Angst and the artistic sublimation of life’s great disappointments. A world counteracted by the establishment with well understood Wagnerianisms, misunderstood Nietzsche, too bright uniforms and sabre rattling. A world of coffeehouse literati and neuritic novels, “Nervenroman”, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Trakl at the Café Griensteidl and Café Central, the music of Bruckner and Mahler, the overripe flowers of Art Nouveau with Klimt as its somewhat unsavoury high priest and Sigmund the Great and his students sleuthing the psychic life with a metaphoric magnifying glass. Oscar Kokoschka already depressed the dying “Jugendstil” into more expressive lines, distorting form into a radically subjective effect. And between the two, Klimt and Kokoschka, a young, wild, nervous man, having just arrived from the back of beyond in the glittering capital, began to make a name for himself, Egon Schiele.<br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"The picture must radiate light, the bodies have their own light <br />which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from outside" <br />- Egon Schiele "Weiblicher Akt" (<i>Female Act</i>, 1910)</span></td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ground was prepared for a new generation of artists who took it personal and transformed their own experience and surroundings into works of art like the Impressionists did a generation before. Admittedly, under rather different auspices. It was the next step beyond the processing of classical and historical allegories with an erotic note, ensembles still recognisable and intelligible by the public, into something more individual, far less accessible. Schiele’s early work was heavily influenced especially by Klimt with even stronger erotic overtones. Along with the visualised Nervenroman, though, far less eye-pleasing and appealing than anything Klimt had ever done. Fascinated by Eros and Thanatos without being overburdened by scholarly bookishness, Schiele’s females contort, tangle and twist, seemingly made up from nerves, looking half-starved, or muscles alone, not always with complete limbs, with eyes straight from a Hofmannsthal play, either dead, deadly sensuous or completely bewildered. He promptly served a prison sentence, for producing pornography, since court couldn’t prove the accusation of him having seduced minors. He moved his sujet into more remote and darker imagery afterwards, still in his early twenties, he lived the Vie de la Boheme, always bordering on revisiting the clink for allegedly painting and drawing smut and his lifestyle, of course. And then the world was turned into something far worse than the moribund visions of the fin de siècle had envisioned on 1 August 1914 and the catastrophe of the 20th century began in earnest.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IrFLUQ_-h70/V10QKSnvviI/AAAAAAAA3DE/Yuk7mVO89L8fFapXi1IsVyYPJ8eRoQKnACLcB/s1600/Schiele-tote-stadt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IrFLUQ_-h70/V10QKSnvviI/AAAAAAAA3DE/Yuk7mVO89L8fFapXi1IsVyYPJ8eRoQKnACLcB/s640/Schiele-tote-stadt.jpg" title="Egon Schiele "Tote Stadt III" (Dead City III, 1911)" width="510" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Art cannot be modern, art is timeless." - Egon Schiele "Tote Stadt III" (Dead City III, 1911)</span></td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">outbreak of the Great War changed everything. Again. While he was allowed to drop out of the Austrian Army due to his poor health pretty soon, necessity, attrition and hardship sharpened the somewhat poetic fascination with decay and death society and artists already had in the pre-war years into the real thing. Schiele’s work ripened during this years, technically as well as in terms of his topics, ironically returning to the more archetypically shaped images Klimt might have chosen ten years before. But death is omnipresent, bodies rearing up in spasmodic contortions, in defiance and despair, bodies cling to each other, rather in exasperation than making love and even the rows of houses Schiele depicted look like a painted ossuary. He was a painting, threatening moralist, in a sense, as a Viennese newspaper put it back then, his visions of vice truly having nothing tempting to offer, nothing seductive, he indulges himself in the colours of decay. The early-ripened, overripe Schiele died at the age of the 28 in Vienna during the major flu epidemic that swept across Europe in autumn 1918, just a few days after his wife Edith, 6 months pregnant, succumbed to the disease that cost the lives of millions just after the hecatombs of the Great War. Schiele remains one of the foremost representative visual artists of “Wiener Moderne” and pre-war Expressionism and became increasingly popular since the second half of the 20th century, when another fin de siècle was snored away, somehow, and one had to live on memories of the gilded age of the “Wiener Moderne”.</span><div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-olfIHW6tTq8/V10Q6vgPl9I/AAAAAAAA3DQ/2sTEX3d0YvckU9MHJV0NMsnij3BeaeQNACLcB/s1600/EGON_SCHIELE_1890_-_1918_LIEBESPAAR_%2528SELBSTDARSTELLUNG_MIT_WALLY%2529_%2528LOVERS_-_SELF-PORTRAIT_WITH_WALLY%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-olfIHW6tTq8/V10Q6vgPl9I/AAAAAAAA3DQ/2sTEX3d0YvckU9MHJV0NMsnij3BeaeQNACLcB/s640/EGON_SCHIELE_1890_-_1918_LIEBESPAAR_%2528SELBSTDARSTELLUNG_MIT_WALLY%2529_%2528LOVERS_-_SELF-PORTRAIT_WITH_WALLY%2529.jpg" title=" Egon Schiele "Liebespaar - Selbstdarstellung mit Wally" (Lovers - Self-Portrait With Wally, c. 1915)" width="420" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"To Confine the Artist is a Crime, It Means Murdering Unborn Life." -<br /> Egon Schiele "Liebespaar - Selbstdarstellung mit Wally" <br />(Lovers - Self-Portrait With Wally, c. 1915)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /> <br /><br />And more about Egon Schiele on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> </span><br /> </div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Wien, Austria48.2033369 16.35861660000000548.1980454 16.348531600000005 48.208628399999995 16.368701600000005tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-89535277840811715072016-06-11T12:00:00.001+02:002021-08-04T22:13:39.338+02:00"But You know Landscape is my mistress" - On John Constable's 240th Birthday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br /><br />11 June 1776, the English Romantic painter John Constable was born in East Bergholt, in the Stour Valley of Suffolk.<br /> </span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> “But You know Landscape is my mistress — 'tis to her that I look for fame — and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.“ (John Constable)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sc5x0foy5zI/V1wLn0i4RXI/AAAAAAAA3AE/iwBWwZIIwQQIHTidhsL7f6z6NficeQbKACLcB/s1600/John_Constable_-_Salisbury_Cathedral_from_the_Bishop%2527s_Garden_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="504" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sc5x0foy5zI/V1wLn0i4RXI/AAAAAAAA3AE/iwBWwZIIwQQIHTidhsL7f6z6NficeQbKACLcB/s640/John_Constable_-_Salisbury_Cathedral_from_the_Bishop%2527s_Garden_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" title="John Constable (1776–1837): "Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden" (1826)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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In </span><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">April 1336, Petrarch climbed the Provençal Mont Ventoux, looked down from the summit and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape spreading out below. The letter to his former confessor describing the poet’s night on the “Bald Mountain”, so to speak, is often enough quoted as the starting shot of a paradigm change in the artistic perception of nature itself. Admittedly, minnesingers and troubadours did take notice at least of nature’s sublime beauty about a hundred years before already, but the fine arts used a landscape as stylised background at best since antiquity. Until Petrarch climbed form his mountain. About the same time, painters of the nascent Renaissance began to recognise the intrinsic artistic value of a landscape and depicted it. Maybe with a whiff of euphemism and apotropaic magic, since Mother Nature still was seen as having a somewhat cruel streak and maybe it was scientific interest to get a grip at and behind the appearance of things, but landscapes were there to stay as part of the Western canon of figurative painting. The Dutch masters of the 17th century excelled in it and even bequeathed the term upon the English language, landschap, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain took it from there and finally established the groundwork of landscape painting. Regardless, landscapes still ranked quite low in the hierarchy of paintings while historical, biblical and other mythological scenes and portraits were on top and the latter gaining mythological qualities with the Grand Manner of English 18th century artists like Reynolds and Gainsborough. And while Gainsborough actually loved to paint landscapes, he was forced to use them as allegorical backgrounds for his famous portraits since they sold better. One of Gainsborough’s admirers though took heart and decided to become a landscape artist and developed the genre to iconic quality, a Suffolk lad from the Stour valley named John Constable. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cImZqrIEvVM/V1wM90nmdbI/AAAAAAAA3AQ/V2Agrk8lPLA8IkSWUVLZUR4f814oJp3_QCLcB/s1600/John%2BConstable%2B%2522The%2BHay%2BWain%2522%2B1821.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="398" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cImZqrIEvVM/V1wM90nmdbI/AAAAAAAA3AQ/V2Agrk8lPLA8IkSWUVLZUR4f814oJp3_QCLcB/s640/John%2BConstable%2B%2522The%2BHay%2BWain%2522%2B1821.jpg" title="John Constable "The Hay Wain" (1821)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Gracing cookie boxes these days with the picturesque tranquillity and the assumed essential Englishness of the Suffolk countryside, Constable’s works were revolutionary once upon a time. Even though Constable today is one of the best known English painters, he struggled most of his life for his breakthrough as an acknowledged artist who could live by his art and feed his family of seven. Not that he had to, since he came from a solid middle class background and his wife brought money into the family, but nevertheless, it’s always nice to make a living from doing what one loves. Constable tried portrait painting and hated it, attempted religious pictures and failed abysmally, gave drawing lessons and somehow managed to visit Suffolk’s green and pleasant lands and capture a fleeting moment of the seemingly ordinary places of his youth and created something eternal. In the almost 40 years of his active period, John Constable later found his inspiration in monuments like Stonehenge, Old Sarum and Salisbury Cathedral but mostly under “every hedge, and in every lane, and therefore nobody thinks it worth picking up“ and painted it in broad, revolutionary strokes, the turmoil his perception created well hidden under a seemingly plain exterior. For most of his active period, it was his native Stour valley and the good folks populating it that provided Constable with inspiration. To get at least some visibility at the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy where the works of non-members like him usually hung in corners or under the roof far above eye level, he expanded his canvasses to at least 6’ and these six-footers allowed him to render the scenes he sketched during the summers spent in Suffolk with lots of endearing details arranged into a harmonious big picture. The plan took off, Constable was recognised and the six-footers even began to sell for decent amounts. But since the prophet has hardly any honour in his own country, it was the French Romantics who really fell over themselves in admiring his paintings with essentially English subjects like the weather and the clouds that made the “Wild Swiss” Henry Fuseli exclaim “I like de landscapes of Constable; he is always picturesque, of a fine colour, and de lights always in de right places; but he makes me call for my great coat and umbrella.”<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UTC3dftU4xA/V1wN7a04WEI/AAAAAAAA3Ac/Vc2jk6Ir0K08lDMZe54_XmvlW2tAcM8vQCLcB/s1600/John_Constable_-_Stonehenge_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UTC3dftU4xA/V1wN7a04WEI/AAAAAAAA3Ac/Vc2jk6Ir0K08lDMZe54_XmvlW2tAcM8vQCLcB/s640/John_Constable_-_Stonehenge_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" title="John Constable "Stonehenge" (1835)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Constable "Stonehenge" (1835)</td></tr>
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The <span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">death of his beloved wife and mother of his seven children from tuberculosis at the age of 41 in 1828 dealt him a heavy blow. Constable, in his early 50s by then, only wore black afterwards and the weather in his paintings grew considerably worse. He always felt that there was empathy between nature and her spectator and few managed to convey these affectivities on the canvas like he did. His contemporary and a bit of a rival Turner could, of course, admittedly in a somewhat more churning manner and it might be a case of keeping up with the Joneses, but towards the last phase of Constable’s creative period, one is inclined to reach for a sou’wester instead of an umbrella. The magic of his paintings was still fed by the tension of exact observation and subsequent neglect of the line in favour of colours and the colour effect. Like a good Romantic painter should. But his sujets grew more sombre and the neglect of lines sometimes assumed an almost expressionist quality. Like Turner, Constable had no real successor to his monolithic body of works, both artists stood out as insular singularities on a magnificent scale, far ahead of or rather beside their times. Constable did influence the painters on the continent and especially in France and while Géricault and Delacroix reduced his dramatic landscapes to backgrounds again for topics they had in focus, the English landscape artist already had become one of the primal fathers of the School of Barbizon, late 19th century art, especially Impressionism and consequently modern art – and stands out in landscape painting by creating supratemporal things of beauty that convey the feeling of a place more than most descriptions could. Even on a cookie box.</span></div>
</span><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <br /> <br /><br /> <br />Small monographic shows of Constable's works can be found here:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/John_Constable?uselang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/John_Constable?uselang=en</a> <br /><br /> </span><div>
<span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">and here<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/john-constable" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/john-constable</a><br /> <br /> and more on:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable</a></span></div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Gaston Street, East Bergholt, Colchester, Suffolk CO7 6SF, UK51.9760992 1.016248200000063751.9748767 1.0137267000000636 51.9773217 1.0187697000000637tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-84736010525092424202016-06-03T22:36:00.000+02:002016-06-05T22:37:45.604+02:00“The Greatest German Living” - Master Entertainer and Polymath Matthias Buchinger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />3 June 1674, the 29’’ tall polymath and contemporary show star Matthias Buchinger was born in Ansbach, Bavaria.<br /><br /> <br />“He is the wonderful Little Man of but 29 inches high, born without hands, feet, or thighs, June the 2[nd], 1674, in Germany, in the Marquisate of Brandenburg, near to Nuremburg. . . . This Little Man performs such wonders as have never been done by any but himself. He plays on various sorts of music to admiration, [such] as the hautboy, [a] strange flute in consort with the bagpipe, dulcimer and trumpet; and designs to make machines to play on almost all sorts of music. He is no less eminent for writing, drawing of coats of arms, and pictures to the life, with a pen; he also plays at cards and dice, performs tricks with cups and balls, corn and live birds; and plays at skittles or nine-pins to a great nicety, with several other performances, to the general satisfaction of all spectators.” (Matthias Buchinger, describing himself in an advertisement)<br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_xR1m1cm8tw/V1SIsX-Ud9I/AAAAAAAA26Q/AUPSDXuUONAxFxMEoq7vXPP-BAFhk5LOgCLcB/s1600/Matthewbuchinger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_xR1m1cm8tw/V1SIsX-Ud9I/AAAAAAAA26Q/AUPSDXuUONAxFxMEoq7vXPP-BAFhk5LOgCLcB/s640/Matthewbuchinger.jpg" title=""Matthias Buchinger" self-portrait from 1723" width="414" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Matthias Buchinger" - a self-portrait from 1723, <br />along with the advertisement quoted above</span></td></tr>
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There </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">is the old superstition that pregnant women should not look at ugly or unpleasant people or animals, lest the child they carry takes on their resemblance and becomes ugly too. “Maternal Imprinting” was the terminus technicus. Thus, the freak was forbidden to show his tricks to everyone out in the open of the Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt but had to appear in a pub with a primarily male audience in the winter of 1708. Ironically enough, the highly gifted man they called a freak or a monstrosity back then sired at least 14 children with his eight wives and a lot more out of wedlock. But that was after he left the Holy Roman Empire and went to the court of King George I. The German-born monarch wouldn’t see him either, pregnant or not, the Little Man from Nuremberg went on to Dublin to perform his skills and had his breakthrough in Dublin in 1720, finally. “The Greatest German Living” stood just 29’’ tall, was born without feet and hands, his arms ended in flipper-like appendages, but never the less, Buchinger was an accomplished stage magician, marksman and knife thrower and a one-man-orchestra on top of it. He played the trumpet, bagpipes and, even without fingers, flute, oboe and dulcimer. Somehow, eyewitness reports remain silent about how exactly he managed to do it, but it seems he constructed mechanical contrivances for the purpose. Along with a considerable amount of charisma, Buchinger was a perfect showman and it seems almost as wonderous that it took the world 45 years to realise that. But after a performance in Glasgow in 1722, the British Isles lay at his feet, from Prime Minister Walpole to the nobility and hoi polloi. Even decades after his death, “Buckinger’s Boot” was a code for the primary female sex organs. He was a man of many talents indeed. Only the king wasn’t quite enchanted.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-we70h8vo1AY/V1SLvnYU-VI/AAAAAAAA26c/qwm6_kMXs4kTSFpbQiWHy0-TGKClPXIoACLcB/s1600/Queen%2BAnne%2Bby%2BMatthias%2BBuchinger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-we70h8vo1AY/V1SLvnYU-VI/AAAAAAAA26c/qwm6_kMXs4kTSFpbQiWHy0-TGKClPXIoACLcB/s640/Queen%2BAnne%2Bby%2BMatthias%2BBuchinger.jpg" title="Matthias Buchinger "Queen Anne" (1718)" width="522" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Matthias Buchinger's micrographic portrait of Queen Anne from 1718, <br />signed with "This is drawn and written by me, Matthew Buchinger born June 3, 1674. <br />Without Hands & Feet in Anspach in Germany"</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Born </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as the last of nine children, Matthias was grateful to his parents throughout his life that they treated him quite like the rest of his siblings and did not sell him to a travelling freak show or something along these lines, not an unusual fate, obviously. He had the time to develop his talents, like learning to walk with the help of a floor-length, apron-like leather shell he propelled forward by shifting his weight. When his parents died, Matthias voluntarily joined the travelling showmen’s trade to make a living and to further hone his many skills and to entertain far beyond the mere display of his curious appearance like many of the folks did who somehow looked out of the ordinary. And there was another self-taught skill of Buchinger’s that would last beyond his certainly grandiose performances on the stage or during privately held shows. He was an accomplished visual artist as well. And as though it was not enough to be an accomplished draughtsman with two flipper-like appendices instead of hands, Buchinger did not only earn good money by drawing highly detailed family trees for the aristocracy but excelled in a rare form of calligraphy as well: micrography. Also known as microcalligraphy, micrography basically is the art of drawing by making up the lines with miniature writing, in Buchinger’s case usually bible verses. There’s even the possibility that he was a “quick-drawer” or “lightning draughtsman. Nobody knows how exactly he did it, but he did, his wonderful micrographic drawings survive to this day and along with his stage magician acts, his somewhat esoteric artworks brought him the reputation of being a true-blue wizard. With the sum of Buchinger’s talents being even more than the parts, a notion that is not very hard to follow. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JikXo77PRnQ/V1SMxrpSzKI/AAAAAAAA26o/MaWp95QIRW8oY9wEXGDn5hJN6NIKpztHwCLcB/s1600/Matthias_Buchinger%252C_a_phocomelic%252C_with_thirteen_scenes_repre_Wellcome_V0007014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JikXo77PRnQ/V1SMxrpSzKI/AAAAAAAA26o/MaWp95QIRW8oY9wEXGDn5hJN6NIKpztHwCLcB/s640/Matthias_Buchinger%252C_a_phocomelic%252C_with_thirteen_scenes_repre_Wellcome_V0007014.jpg" title="Matthias Buchinger, a phocomelic, with thirteen scenes representing his performances Iconographic" width="434" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A contemporary German broadsheet showing Matthias Buchinger <br />exhibiting some of his show acts and many talents</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /><br /> There is no hint, though, that Buchinger was a member of one of the more popular magical or secret societies of his day, like the Rosicrucians or Freemasons but he created a magical world of his own regardless. And there is the obvious suspicion that he didn’t work alone, at least not all the time and with every trick he managed to entertain his audience with. He was a master showman regardless as well as a polymath and did not only overcome his physical disadvantages but developed them into an art form. Buchinger finally settled down in Ireland and died in Cork in 1740 at the age of 65 as one of the most exceptional and extravagant individuals in modern European history.<br /> <br /><br /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And more about Matthias Buchinger on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Buchinger" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Buchinger</a><br /><br /></span><br /> </div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com091522 Ansbach, Germany49.3004246 10.5719357000000449.1347156 10.24921220000004 49.4661336 10.89465920000004tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-60101308695824745722016-05-21T22:54:00.001+02:002023-12-16T16:32:35.557+01:00"She sells seashells on the seashore" Fossil Hunter Mary Anning<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">21 May 1799, the fossil hunter and early palaeontologist
Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis on the Dorset Coast of England.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
So if she sells seashells on the seashore</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.” </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></span></span></blockquote>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(Terry Sullivan’s 1908 tongue twister
that probably references Mary Anning)</span></span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Geologist and palaeontologist Henry de la Beche’s (1796 – 1855) idea of life in ancient Dorset based on fossils found by Mary Anning (1830)</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The idea of these funny shellfish-formed
stones being actually petrified marine life instead of snakes turned to stone
by some Northumbrian saint or something similar was actually not quite new. The
Ancients, most notably Pre-Socratic Xenophanes of Colophon, already
philosophised around 500 BCE that there once was sea where now was dry land and
the fossils he found had been its inhabitants. 1,500 years later, Avicenna took
it from there, the Chinese had developed resembling theories about the same
time, Leonardo da Vinci elaborated on it and they all came up with the idea
that the Earth had looked quite different in olden days and the beasties populating
it did as well. It was not until the Age of Enlightenment though, that these
theories were formulated in earnest beyond mere speculations. Beginning with
the idea that the fossilized remains of ancient pachyderms found in Europe
proved a significant climate change and ancient species did go extinct ages
ago, like, for example, the mastodon, the seeds were sown for a scientific
approach on bygone creatures and their environment. George Cuvier’s name stands
out in the earlies of paleontology, before the discipline was even properly
named, by comparing fossils with the remains of contemporary species,
identifying the Mastodon and the Megatherium and what not, until he came across
the first proper dinosaur in the Netherlands in 1808, the Mosasaurus. He speculated
the giant aquatic lizard would have been alive long before the “Age of
Mammals”, along with the Pterodactyl he identified from drawings made in
Bavaria, a revolutionary, or rather evolutionary idea that rang in the 19th
century’s “Age of Reptiles”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“... an animal of the Lizard Tribe of
enormous magnitude” the obstetrician Gideon Mantell speculated about the former
owner of the giant teeth his wife Mary Ann had found while he was seeing a
patient in Cuckfield, Sussex, in 1822. And since the dental remains looked
quite like those of an iguana, a reptile native to the Americas, he dubbed the
scaly Methuselah “Iguanodon”, iguana-toothed. Mrs Mantell never got the credit
for her discovery and her fellow fossil-hunter Mary Anning almost suffered the
same fate. She was a strange one, young Mary was. Born into a poor
working-class family in Dorset, she was the only survivor of a lightning stroke
at the age of just 15 months that killed the four grown women who were with her
at the time and little Mary was reported never to be the same again afterwards.
Whatever that means in regards to a toddler aged 15 months. However, her father
boosted the meagre salary he earned working as a carpenter by collecting and
selling the petrified shellfish he found down at the beaches and cliffs of the
Anning’s picturesque home, Lyme Regis, and little Mary accompanied him and
showed a remarkable skill at finding and cleaning the fossils. During the late
18th and early 19th century, collecting fossils had become a gentlemen’s hobby
and with the help of young Mary, Richard Anning could keep his family afloat.
Mary’s old man died, though, when she was just 11 years old and she and her
brother Joseph now had to earn the keep of the family. The siblings did so, by
collecting fossils and selling them in a comparatively large scale. And just a
couple of months later, Mary hit a mother lode, so to speak, when she
discovered the 4’ long skull of a petrified beast that was later known as
Ichthyosaurus, “fish lizard”. The thing sold for £23, more than 1000 Pounds in
today’s money. A storm hit the cliffs of Lyme Regis shortly afterwards and Mary
found the rest of the presumed ancient crocodile’s remains in its wake and her
Ichthyosaurus became the first known complete Mesozoic fossil. Her discovery
did not go unnoticed by the scientific authorities of the day, but one does not
discover an ichthyosaurus every day, unfortunately, and without any major finds
over the next ten years, fossil-hunting Mary, though main breadwinner of the
Anning family, remained destitute until a rich fossil enthusiast, Thomas Birch
of Lincolnshire, decided to auction off his ample collection for the benefit of
her family. The discovery of the remains of a plesiosaur in 1821 and a
pterodactyl in 1828 did not only increase her fame but made her enough money to
finally buy a shop with a glass front in Lyme Regis instead of having to sell
seashells by the sea shore as she did for more than 20 years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1TMkDIEjGVw/V0IcHQdOOQI/AAAAAAAA2s8/SUV87yyUaHI4fR_3NtqGD8bOggL-eDSwwCLcB/s1600/Mary_Anning.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="620" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1TMkDIEjGVw/V0IcHQdOOQI/AAAAAAAA2s8/SUV87yyUaHI4fR_3NtqGD8bOggL-eDSwwCLcB/s640/Mary_Anning.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A sketch by Henry de la Beche showing Mary Anning hunting fossils at Lyme Regis.</span></td></tr>
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<span face="'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mary Anning died at the age of 47 and even
Charles Dickens felt compelled to obit: “The carpenter's daughter has won a
name for herself, and has deserved to win it.“ She was soon enough forgotten,
though, and was not re-discovered until well into the 20th century. Not even a
dinosaur was named in her honour until 2012 when Vincent and Benson called a
genus of plesiosaur found recently at Lyme Regis “Anningasaurus”. However, her
discoveries did prove that species had gone extinct ages ago and that Earth
looked quite different than it does today, back then during the Age of Reptiles,
as Gideon Mantell dubbed the Mesozoic Era in 1831, and, finally, the Royal
Society, who refused her attendance on grounds of her gender back in the day,
included her in a list of the ten British women most influential in science
history. More than a hundred years after her death. Her hunting grounds, now
known as the Jurassic Coast, had become a World Heritage Site long since.</span><span face="'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And more about Mary Anning on:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK50.725156 -2.936639000000013850.7050535 -2.9769795000000139 50.7452585 -2.8962985000000137tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198661085050220222.post-4657649613972349022016-05-15T13:11:00.001+02:002023-10-07T09:49:14.324+02:00"... victorious Hellenes should dance again in India" - Alexander the Great and the Battle of the Hydaspes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">15 May 326 BCE, or around this date, during his attempted conquest of India, Alexander the Great defeated King Porus of the Paurava Kingdom at the Battle of the Hydaspes in present-day Pakistan.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos.” (Plutarch “On the Fortunes of Alexander”)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KqI7B7VeLEQ/VzhU5WlniTI/AAAAAAAA2ls/QngnBLSOGF0lJWpr1ArWg_nyvzBILD2VgCLcB/s1600/ALEXANDER%2527S_BATTLE_WITH_PORUS_ON_THE_JHELUM..png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KqI7B7VeLEQ/VzhU5WlniTI/AAAAAAAA2ls/QngnBLSOGF0lJWpr1ArWg_nyvzBILD2VgCLcB/s1600/ALEXANDER%2527S_BATTLE_WITH_PORUS_ON_THE_JHELUM..png" title="Battle of the Hydaspes - T. H. Mannerhow's "Peeps at History", Illustrated by Allan Stewart (1911)" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Alexander in the thick of it - the Battle of the Hydaspes, <br />as imagined in <span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #252525; line-height: 21.28px;">T. H. Mannerhow's "Peeps at History", Illustrated by Allan Stewart (1911)</span></span></td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">drunken god. The mischievous priests serving at the Ammonium in Siwa, the oracle out in Egypt’s western desert, confirmed what mother had told him all the while. Not grumpy, blustering, boorish Philip was his father but Zeus himself, the king of the gods, known as Amun in Egypt. And while Freudian exegetes would have had a field day, Alexander, the brilliant young commander with an Oedipus complex, who had already conquered half the Middle East and Egypt in a lightning campaign, began to behave as if he had already one foot in divine spheres. He adopted Persian court ceremonials, demanded the proskynesis, full prostration, even from his former mortal companions, his grumpy, blustering, boorish Macedon soldiery. And then, one night in Maracanda, the fairytale-like provincial capital of Bactria, while feasting in Eastern splendour, someone put the Indian bee in Alexander’s divine bonnet. India. A half-mythical place of untold riches beyond the borders of even the Persian world empire Alexander had just conquered in a quasi coup de main. His half brother Heracles failed to conquer it back in the days of the Heroic Age before the Trojan War, his other sibling Dionysus wandered there in his Hera-induced madness, subdued India and returned to the West in triumph in a chariot drawn by panthers. Was there a final frontier for a deity like Alexander himself? Not on this earth. Let’s go. It might be then and there that one of his cavalry generals, grumpy, blustering, boorish Cleitus the Black, in his cups himself by then, had asked him to bring his Macedonians back to life if he was a god, those fallen at the Granicus, at Issus, the siege of Tyre, at Gaugamela and during the endless skirmishes fought since they began their conquest of the world. The deity grabbed a spear from one of his life guards and hurled it into the heart of the man who had saved his life at the Granicus and henceforward, nobody dared to blaspheme against the god anymore or question his decisions. And off they marched, in the spring of the year 327 BCE, with 40,000 foot and 7,000 horse, his heavies, the hetairoi, companions, among them as well as light horse, mostly archers recruited in the Middle East, onwards through the Caucasus Indicus, the Hindu Kush, and further, across the Indus to the Land of the Five Waters, the Punjab. <br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J4fSB4_L1vA/VzhWN1j4sZI/AAAAAAAA2l0/B_yhxHBNvL8GdOvQr5INq4qVEFRDKms0wCLcB/s1600/800px-Alexander_victory_coin_Babylon_silver_c_322_BCE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J4fSB4_L1vA/VzhWN1j4sZI/AAAAAAAA2l0/B_yhxHBNvL8GdOvQr5INq4qVEFRDKms0wCLcB/s640/800px-Alexander_victory_coin_Babylon_silver_c_322_BCE.jpg" title=""Victory coin" of Alexander the Great, minted in Babylon c.322 BCE, following his campaigns in India" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A silver victory coin minted in Babylon in 322 BCE, <br />
showing Alexander crowned by Nike, goddess of Victory above <br />
and Alexander charging King Porus on his war elephant below</td></tr>
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The </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">northern part of the Indian subcontinent was, by and large, a conglomerate of several warring states in the early 320s BCE. The ancient kingdom of the Pauravas might have been one of the more powerful and its lord, Porus, literally stood out as being over 7’ tall and maybe he was the scion of an ages-old Vedic clan, the Puru. However, he had assembled a mighty army himself, 30,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, 300 chariots and, most notably, up to 200 well-trained war elephants. It was a bit early for the monsoon to set in, but one of the eponymous rivers of the Punjab, the Hydaspes, was swollen, and rain bursts changed with extreme heat. Alexander began to look for a suitable crossing while Porus would defend his riverbank and had everything he needed to turn a Macedon crossing into a bloodbath. Now Alexander came up with a rather clever ruse de guerre, leaving a small part of his troops behind, ordered them to create lots of noise, march up and down the river and light fires to give the impression that the whole army was entrenched there and about to sit it out until the monsoon season was over. Porus obviously fell for it, Alexander’s main battle crossed the Hydaspes further upstream, at night, in heavy rain, and rushed his men towards the position of the Pauravas. Porus was alerted when day broke but had no idea yet about how large the approaching Macedon force was. He sent his son with the chariots and cavalry to reconnoitre, the lad and his men where caught by Alexander’s horse archers, trampled into the ground by his heavies, Porus junior fell and the skirmish’s survivors gave his old man the news that the Macedon obviously had managed to cross the river in force. Porus left a contingent behind to watch those on the other side of the Hydaspes and turned the rest of his army to meet Alexander. The Battle of the Hydaspes had begun in earnest. It is, generally speaking, not a very bright idea, to chase one’s already exhausted heavy cavalry, what after a nightly river crossing and a hard-fought skirmish in somewhat inclement weather, back and forth across a battlefield swimming in mud to deceive the enemy, but that’s exactly what Alexander did. And wondrously enough, after riding hard from the left flank around the rear of the Macedonian phalanges to the right and back again, they crushed into Porus’ horse, drawn out and forward by the Macedon manoeuvres, right to the point where Alexander wanted them and there the hetairoi rode them into the ground. With their flanks safe from enemy cavalry, the now nearly invincible Macedon phalanx pushed the 20’ long steel hedgehog of their massed pikes forward into Porus’ elephants and infantry. The pachyderms were driven to madness by arrows and javelins shot into their vulnerable eyes, stampeded and ran back into the lines of the Pauravas while the heavy rain obviously stopped Porus’ own archers to fire mass volleys into the advancing Macedonians, the nightmare of every infantry formation. The phalanx pushed on, crashed into the dissolving enemy lines and turned the battle into a bloody rout. Porus was soundly defeated and Alexander had supplied a tactical masterpiece. At least according to reports that were written hundreds of years later. None of the original eyewitness accounts of the so-called Alexander Historians have survived.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uGOYkNj9nbE/VzhXJ0qXDNI/AAAAAAAA2mA/BuLKFpmcp6AjLsw0HsbfwzZMpxCU7f2aQCLcB/s1600/Le_Brun%252C_Alexander_and_Porus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="276" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uGOYkNj9nbE/VzhXJ0qXDNI/AAAAAAAA2mA/BuLKFpmcp6AjLsw0HsbfwzZMpxCU7f2aQCLcB/s640/Le_Brun%252C_Alexander_and_Porus.jpg" title="Charles Le Brun (1619 - 1690): "Alexander and Porus" (1673)" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles Le Brun (1619 - 1690): "Alexander and Porus" (1673)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Porus</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, or so the story goes, was captured and brought before Alexander. The god-king admired his defeated enemy’s bravery and tenacity, allowed him to rule as his vassal and marched on towards the banks of the mighty River Ganges and the borders of the Nanda Empire, stretching far to the east into Bengal. And then his men simply had it. By the river Hyphasis, a tributary of the Sutlej, they refused to go any further and Alexander grudgingly ordered the retreat back to Babylon. It was the end of his Indian adventure. And since a god is not denied with impunity, he decided to march his mutinous men back through the Gedrosian Desert that stretches from the mouth of the Indus to the Strait of Hormuz. Many died of exposure until they finally reached Persia in 324 BCE, two years after their epic march began in Bactria. Alexander finally ascended to Olympus after his mortal veil died in Babylon a year later, leaving the mortal world with one of the greatest stories ever told. Greek civilisation, though, had gained a sphere of influence from the western edges of Europe to the Ganges valley and would remain a prominent identity-establishing cultural factor for centuries. And while Alexander’s successors in the Middle East, most prominently the Seleucid dynasty and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, along with the tribes and horse nomads of Central Asia, were at each other’s throats, another young adventurer used the power vacuum left behind by Alexander in Northern India as a chance to carve out his own domain: Chandragupta, founder of the Maurya Empire who unified much of Greater India into one state for the first time. <br /><br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t6YyeZmzQkY/VzhYVbIlPxI/AAAAAAAA2mQ/Rj6erEV93v0kAkAppHyLEmv_uhyMpptPgCLcB/s1600/PtolemyCoinWithAlexanderWearingElephantScalp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="616" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t6YyeZmzQkY/VzhYVbIlPxI/AAAAAAAA2mQ/Rj6erEV93v0kAkAppHyLEmv_uhyMpptPgCLcB/s640/PtolemyCoinWithAlexanderWearingElephantScalp.jpg" title="Ptolemy Coin With Alexander Wearing Elephant Scalp" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A 3rd century BCE Ptolemaic coin celebrating Alexander's victory in India posthumously, attributing the conqueror with a symbolic elephant scalp</span></td></tr>
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And </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">more about the Battle of the Hydaspes on:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes </a></span></div>
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Dirk Puehlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13947281581543664643noreply@blogger.com0Bhera, Pakistan32.4816761 72.90766689999998132.4548866 72.867326399999982 32.5084656 72.94800739999998