Something Beautiful

Chateau de Chambord

Now here is one fine-looking building -- the Chateau de Chambord,  1519-1547, by Domenico da Cortona, at Chambord, France.   

These five additional photographs show it off from different angles and viewpoints.

Chinese porcelain

Chinese porcelain was in centuries gone by considered the finest in the world.  This ewer, ca. 1720, gives us an idea why.    (Actually, I'm not sure this piece really qualifies as "beautiful," but it is so handsome I am unable to resist posting it here.) 

Warwick Castle

At first glance, this drawing of Warwick Castle, 1752, by Canaletto (pen and brown ink, with gray wash) looks ordinary enough.  On exploration, though, using the zoom feature, its quality begins to become apparent.  Peace descends, one's muscles relax.   That is, for me, one of the main signs of art, of beauty -- the physical effect on the body. (It is one of the main things I look for in choosing works for this site.)   

Living, dying (Sandburg)

A brief but magical poem on how to live, and how to die, by Carl Sandburg --

 

Stars, Songs, Faces

Gather the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.
And then . . .

Loosen your hands, let go and say goodby.

Let the stars and songs go.

Let the faces and years go.

Loosen your hands and say goodbye.

St Veronica

Have you ever seen this statue of St Veronica, ca. 1630, by Francesco Mochi?  The sculptor has so successfully conveyed the sense of motion and urgency. 

American sculptures

As a rule, I don't think of American sculpture as anything particularly special.  And then I happened across five (5) nineteenth-century works in marble at the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and all that changed --

Genius of mirth, 1842, by Thomas Crawford

California, ca. 1855, by Hiram Powers

Cleopatra, ca. 1860, by William Wetmore Story

Venezia, ca. 1866, by Latkin Goldsmith Mead

Hiawatha, ca. 1872, by Augustus St Gaudens

Two more surprises were these moving works in bronze, by John Q. A. Ward --

The Indian Hunter, ca. 1860

The Freedman, ca. 1865

 

Comets

A recent entry at the Astronomy Site of the Day shows Comet Schwassmann Wachmann 3, May 2006, just as it is breaking up.

Seeing a comet brings back memories of these two marvelous comets from the late 1990s -

Comet Hyakutake, 1996
Comet Hale-Bopp, 1997

There have been some noteworthy examples already in the twenty-first century -

Comet LINEAR, early 2004
Comet Bradfield, April 2004 (animation: 3 views)
Comet Pojmanski, Narch 2006

Turning to the very distant past, Phoebe, a rather peculiar moon of Saturn, might have started out as a comet.

Francis I, medal

Francis I, king of France, was not a handsome man, but an artist managed to create a beautiful medal using his silhouette.    There is something about the intensity of this small piece, combined with its clarity, that gives me a lift every time I look at it.