Hey, I went to Philadelphia! (Medieval style)

Yep, this is Philadelphia. I went to see the Van Gogh exhibition - completely sold out - and ended up browsing the Medieval section of the museum. Atmospheric, no?

I made a friend a few inches tall carved in ivory. She seems nice and devout. I quite like her.

But there's another side to her - a darker side reminding one of death as much Medieval art does. 

There were some extraordinary works of art. There were also sea monsters.

Of course the sea monster here is a woman. Just like blaming Eve for that whole apple incident. I feel sure that there are an equal number of male and female seamonsters, but when do you ever see the male portrayed?

This picture depicts a typical angel crowning going on in the main room (you know how it is). 

However, who is the mystery man in boxer shorts at the door? Why is he included in this picture of St. Veronica and her husband being crowned by angels when he seems to be delivering wood? That's what I like about these Medieval artists: You know they are going be absolute fanatics about details, so you get a sense of what it was truly like the day Veronica was crowned.

Dragon.

I also enjoyed the portraits of highly unattractive people.

Outside the museum, a fog hung low over the city.

Play Your Cards Right

The Cloisters in Fort Tryon park, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is displaying a lovely set of fifty-two Medieval playing cards that constitute the only known complete deck of illuminated ordinary playing cards (as opposed to tarot cards) from the fifteenth century. The face cards are especially fun.

The Met says that their "exaggerated and sometimes anachronistic costumes suggest a lampoon of extravagant Burgundian court fashions." Perhaps, but I think they look charming. The real question is: how did they survive this long?

Weird Earthly Delights: From Ensor to Bosch

Ensor's show at MoMA reminded me of yet another comparison: a similarly weird, awkwardly- figured, semi- allegorical/demonic painter: Bosch. Ensor's work is deliberately bizarre as a method of self- fashioning, while Hieronymus Bosch-- well, is anybody's guess, but mine would be he couldn't help himself. He was truly odd.

If you want a fun trip around the world, take Google Earth over to the Prado Museum in Spain where you can see Bosch's masterful triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights in which a "religious" imagination runs riot.


Things are fairly normal on the left hand side, where God creates Adam and Eve. Hell is still recognizable in the right hand panel. In the center, the garden of earthly delights is full of nude cavorting men, women, birds and monsters who stick things in odd places rather than the more innocent pleasures of, say, board games and ice cream.

Check out some of Bosch's earthly delights:




Each of these scenes are supposed to have an individual moral meaning, but they all seem centered on the pleasures of the flesh. Although the triptych form suggests it was intended as a altarpiece, the bizarre acts of the nude figures have convinced most art historians that it must have been intended for a lay person. (Or a swinging monastery perhaps??)


The difficult symbology of the central panel has often been interpreted as a warning over life's temptations, and what a warning it is. Symbolism of this work is certainly open to interpretation and this worked in Bosch's favor. Amazingly considering the subject matter, this panel was popular enough to generate many copies and Bosch flourished even under the sway of the Medieval Church. While I'm not sure of the particulars, I know what the works says to me:


Look at me! Look at all these happy, nude cavorting figures exploring their sexuality. What fun, with fruit and water and flowers and other naked people! This is so much more interesting than those two smaller, boring panels to the side. Wouldn't you like to live here?

Another Kind of Bird: Erasmus's In Praise of Folly

Glutton for edification (or punishment) that I am, I finished Erasmus's In Praise of Folly yesterday. Oh, you might say, the humorous points of that 15th century thinker's wit shouldn't be so difficult to follow (discounting the shifts in language usage, ignorance of medieval theological debate, or amount of interest in people speaking in the persona of minor Roman deities)? But I will reply, I was suffering from such extreme sinus pressure I couldn't even remember the name of 'that thing you take a temperature with'* when I was describing my awful pain to my doctor.** I was too fuzzy-headed even to post!

But Erasmus was a fascinating man:

Exhibit A: The bastard child of a monk, Gerrit Gerritszoon renamed himself 'Desire Desire,' first in Latin and then Greek (Desiderius Erasmus). That's excellent.

Exhibit B: When Martin Luther led the Reformation and others defended Catholicism, Erasmus stood alone. Erasmus was one of the greatest critic of the Catholic Church, yet thought it should be reformed from within, and part of that was to translate the scripture as accurately as possible from the original Greek, leading to his Latin version of the New Testament. Erasmus wanted it to be free of corrupting Medieval theology. (Martin Luther found his translation useful when creating a German version of the New Testament.)

Written in 1509 and dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas Moore, In Praise of Folly would no doubt have been more funny to me if satirical portraits of princes and monks struck home. He is unrelentingly witty, saying of theologians, in the persona of Folly: 'That short-tempered and supercilious crew is unpleasant to deal with. . . . They will proclaim me a heretic. With this thunderbolt they terrify the people they don't like. Their opinion of themselves is so great that they behave as if they were already in heaven; they look down pityingly on other men as so many worms." Erasmus leaves no one out, including the Pope, so you can see why the Catholic church prohibited this, and all his other works, from being read.

A freethinker whose only allegiance was to books, he was also a witty correspondent to some 500 of the most important individuals of his day. He died in Basel still at odds with the majority of the world. When Erasmus was accused of having "laid the egg that Luther hatched," he is said to have replied that he did, but he "had expected quite another kind of bird!"




*A thermometer.
**Apparently, I don't even have a sinus infection like I thought, so I feel like a wimp. ; (