Something Beautiful

The Louvre

The Louvre museum site has long been a special one.  And is apparently going to get still better on about June 7th.   Wonder what they have in store for us? 

In the meantime, the place to start has always been the Collections page, and then the "Selected Works" section for each of the eight main collections.   

A good place to go first might be to the Prints & Drawings collection (5 pages).

Then, perhaps, to the Objets d'Art collection (6 pages).

And finally to the glories of the site --     
        the Sculptures collection (10 pages); and        
        the Paintings collection (13 pages).

Another approach would be to go directly to one of the four Antiquities collections --

Islamic art (1 page,n15 works)
Oriental antiquities (3 pages)
Egyptian antiquities (7 pages)
Greek, Etruscan, Roman antiquities (13 pages)

 

Chalice

Want to see something pretty incredible?  Take a look at this 12th-century chalice at the Louvre.  It is called the Alpais Ciborium, and was made from gilt brass and precious stones.

The secret of order and happiness

I found this quotation from Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) at ArtLex --

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

What gives us joy

"We should all do what in the long run gives us joy." -- E.B. White

Wise Cal

"Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good."  -- Calvin Coolidge

Pentecost

Today marks the feast of Pentecost, my favorite day in the liturgical year.   Here is what the New Testament says about this day --

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

The account continues --

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."  (Acts 2:1-11)

Illuminated depictions of this event appear quite frequently in medieval devotional works.   Using the Search page for the Huntington Library collection, we find 58 images listed.  Of those, I have identified fifteen that most appealed to me -- 

Pentecost (from HM 48)

Pentecost (from HM 1125)

Pentecost (from HM 1130)

 

Pentecost (from HM 1136)

Pentecost (from HM 1137)

Pentecost (from HM 1157) (personal favorite)

 

Pentecost (from HM 1162)

Pentecost (from HM 1169)

Pentecost  (from HM 1171)

 

Pentecost (from HM 1174)

Pentecost (from HM 1179)

Pentecost (from HM 1181)

 

Pentecost (from HM 1126)

Pentecost (from HM 1046)

Pentecost (from HM 1099)

 

The Four Evangelists

I've been cooking up this post over the past few days.   Unfortunately, it's not quite finished yet and I don't have time this morning to put those important last touches on it.   I think I will go ahead and post it nonetheless.   I want to.  I almost kind of need to, given the rather upsetting events last night at my parents' home, in which my Parkinson's-stricken father fell out of bed and my equally-aged mother spent a harrowing night trying to get him back into bed and back to sleep.

First, we go to the Huntington Library collection of illuminated manuscripts.  (If it looks familiar, it's because, yes, we have been here before.) 

For some reason I wanted to collect all the illuminated "portraits" of the Four Evangelists that I could find.   I found a total of __ sets that struck me as worth bringing to your attention.  I love these not only because of all the different colors and the skill that they reveal, but also because they portray medieval scribes at work, surrounded by all the tools of their profession -- books, desks, pens, and ink.   

Each Evangelist is traditionally shown with his individual symbol (from HM 1145).   That is, Matthew appears with an angel; Mark with a lion; Luke with an ox; and St John with an eagle. 

First, we have a set of four portraits from HM 1081, a Greek Gospel book of the 11th-13th centuries --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke
St John

Next, here is a set from HM 1124  (38 images) , an early 14th century French Book of Hours --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke
St John

 

Then, portraits that appear in six different Books of Hours from the 15th century --

HM 1100 (35 images)

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke (painting the Virgin)
St John

HM 1126 (22 images) --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke
St John

HM 1137,  (20 images) --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke
St John

HM 1141 (35 images) --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke
St John

 

HM 1143 (32 images) --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke
St John

 

HM 1173 (24 images) --

St Matthew
St Mark
St Luke (painting the Virgin)
St John

Finally, one last set of portraits, from a Book of Hours illuminated in the 15th-16th centuries --

HM 1167 (19 images) --

St Matthew 
St Mark
St Luke
St John

 

This fleeting world

From the Daily Zen site --

The vagaries of life
Though painful,
Teach us
Not to cling
To this fleeting world.

-- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Beautiful Lives

One of my favorite quotations comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking of Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men  --

Go with mean people and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us, who will not let us sleep.

(quoted on p. 1 of Edmund Grindlay Berry, Emerson's Plutarch. (Cambridge 1961)).

Plutarch himself wrote of his biographical work --

                It was for the sake of others that I first began to write biographies, but I find myself                 continuing to do it for my own.  The virtues of these great men serve me as a sort of                     looking glass in which I may see how to adorn and adjust my own life.  I can compare it                 to nothing but daily living with them . . . turning my thoughts happily and calmly to the                 noble.

Three Paintings at the Metropolitan

Today's masterpiece of the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art site is --
            *  Madame Charpentier and Children, 1878, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. 

Of course, you will want to check it out the zoom version.

 

While you're there, I recommend a quick look at the painting immediately before this one --
             *  Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1867, by Claude Monet   (zoom);

And the one right after it --
             *  The Repast of the Lion ca. 1907, by Henri Rousseau     (zoom).