All posts for the month May, 2013

North and South Rose Windows, Notre Dame, Paris

From the outside, the south transept window in the side of this massive cathedral is impressive enough. But from the inside, oh boy, it’s a spectacular masterpiece, and one of the reasons why this cathedral has so many millions of visitors every year.

The south rose window of Notre Dame Cathedral seen from the outside

This huge window is nearly 13 metres across, and it was made in 1260 AD. And, unlike so many of the windows in European cathedrals, most of the panes in it still have their original glass. It has gone through several restorations, and the panes have been jumbled up and not put back into their original positions, yet, it has survived, when so many others were destroyed by war, fire, vandalism, and fashion.

The south rose window of Notre Dame, Paris, seen from the inside. Built in 1260 AD

The south rose window of Notre Dame, Paris. Built in 1260 AD

Then, when you think it doesn’t get any better than this, you spin around, and there, in the north transept is, if anything, an even more spectacular window.

The north rose window of Notre Dame, Paris, seen from the inside. Built in 1250 AD

The north rose window of Notre Dame, Paris. Built in 1250 AD

Not even chocolate can give you a rush like seeing these two amazing and gorgeous windows.

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by Peter Bull on May 3, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Cathedral, Christian, Paris, Stained Glass

Posted by Peter Bull on May 3, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/southern-rose-window-notre-dame-paris/

Inspecting the work in progress

This scene, painted in 1896 by French academic painter Édouard Debat-Ponsan, is a fairly ordinary Salon painting of its time. But I like it because it illustrates clearly that so much of the wonderful art produced until very recently was not the result of the personal efforts of our modern day idea of ‘Artists’.

It was instead a product made to order by skilled craftsmen and women (but mostly men, of course, opportunities for women in most of the arts were typically very limited), who were lowly workers employed by the wealthy and powerful. And the richest and most powerful were very often the religious leaders, as in this painting.

A bishop inspects the progress of a sculpture being worked on by three stone-carvers

A bishop inspects the progress of a sculpture he has commissioned that is being worked on by three stone-carvers

It also reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where John Cleese, as the Pope, is berating Michaelangelo for exercising his artistic license by painting a Last Supper that has 28 disciples, and not one, but three, Christs.

Michaelangelo protests, “But it works, mate, the fat one balances the two skinny ones.”

“Look here”, shouts the angry Pope, “I want one Christ, twelve disciples, and no kangaroo, by Thursday, or you don’t get paid!”

Eric Idle, as MIchaelangelo, responds “You don’t want an artist, mate, you want a bloody photographer!”

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by Peter Bull on May 3, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by Peter Bull on May 3, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/inspecting-the-work-in-progress/

Morris & Co eye candy

This lovely late Victorian stained glass window of St Paul was made for the Chapel of Cheadle Royal Hospital, Manchester, England. It was designed by Edward Burne-Jones in 1892, the decorator was William Stokes, and it was manufactured by the firm founded by William Morris, the designer-artist-craftsman-poet and champion of the Pre-Raphaelites, who was the driving force behind the Arts & Crafts Movement in late Victorian England.

Stained glass window showing St Paul standing holding an open book, looking off to one side

This window was designed in 1892, but not manufactured until 1911, after William Morris himself had died.

It’s not often that you can get close enough to a stained glass window to see its details clearly. Happily, though, the hospital chapel that housed this piece was deconsecrated in 2001 and this window was taken out and sold to the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, which is where I got the chance to take these close-up pictures of not only how it was constructed, but how each coloured glass leadlight panel was decorated.

If you click on these pictures to enlarge them, you can see how beautiful the workmanship is in this very fine window.

Close up of stained glass head of St Paul designed by Edward Burne-Jones

Head of St Paul. This detail from the window has a very pre-Raphaelite feel to it, even though that Brotherhood was no longer active.

Close up of Stained glass window detail, St Paul's hands holding a book.

The decorator of this window was William Stokes, and you can see that it has been carefully and richly detailed.

The fabric designs that St Paul is wearing are certainly not contemporary with the early church, they are Victorian fabric patterns designed by William Morris

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by Peter Bull on May 2, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Christian, Stained Glass

Posted by Peter Bull on May 2, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/morris-co-eye-candy/

Christ’s ‘Bris’

Around the outside of the choir stalls in Chartres Cathedral is a sculpted frieze containing depictions of several dozen events in the life of Jesus Christ. The eleventh scene is this one, which shows Christ’s ritual circumcision – in Hebrew, his ‘Brit Milah’ or ‘Bris’. Joseph holds the baby Jesus up for the mohel – the circumcising rabbi – who is slicing off the tip of Christ’s penis. Mary kneels holding up a cloth, presumably to bandage the wound, and an attendant next to the mohel holds a pitcher of water to wash away the blood.

Sculpture from Chartres Cathedral showing the ritual circumcision of the Jewish baby Jesus

Antisemitism within Christianity was well-entrenched by the time Chartres Cathedral was built. Jews were demonised as ‘Christ-killers’, and accused of the most barbaric rituals, including drinking the blood of Christian babies. By the time the monumental screen around the choir stalls was completed in the early 18th century, the cult of the sainted Virgin Mary had become even more central to Catholicism, and cultural and economic antisemitism had reduced the general status of Jews in Europe still further. Periodic persecutions, both religious and political, sometimes involving massacres of entire Jewish communities, were common.

This sculpture is therefore something of a curiosity. It is the most explicit acknowledgement that I have ever seen inside a Christian church that the key figures in Christianity were not actually Christians, but Jews. That may seem self-evident when you think about it, but Christian congregations were not usually so explicitly reminded that both Jesus Christ himself, and his holy mother, Mary, were both otherwise hated Jews.

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by Peter Bull on May 2, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Cathedral, Chartres, Christian, Sculpture

Posted by Peter Bull on May 2, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/christs-bris/

The faces in the towers

At first glance, Bayon Temple, at the centre of the old city of Angkor Thom in Cambodia, doesn’t look too different from many of the other semi-ruined ancient temples that pepper the countryside in the old Khmer kingdom.

Wide view of semi-ruined Khmer temple at Bayon with face towers

Mahayana Buddhist temple of Bayon, Angkor Thom, Cambodia, 12thC

Until, that is, you look up at one of its crumbling stone lotus-bud towers and see a face smiling down at you.

Closer view of several towers at Bayon, showing smiling faces looking out in all directions

There are four faces on each of the 49 towers at Bayon

And then another, and another. Suddenly there are dozens (actually hundreds) of beaming smiles facing you, and you realise that this particular temple is unique.

Closer view of one of the smiling Bayon faces

The faces were carved into the sides of the towers after they were built.

Most Cambodian Khmer temples were built for Hindu worship, but the 12th century King Jayavarman VII was a Buddhist, so this is a Buddhist temple. Many scholars are of the opinion that every one of the four faces on each of the 49 towers are the image of the Buddha. Others note a striking resemblance between this face and contemporary portrait sculptures of the King himself. Perhaps it is a happy King smiling benevolently down on all his people, perhaps it is a blissed-out Buddha figure, or perhaps it is intended to be both. As the Khmer king was also considered to be semi-divine, perhaps this ambivalent likeness identifies the king as a bodhisattva, an enlightened one.

Close up of the details of a smiling Buddha-King face

Every face at Bayon temple has the same benign smile.

Either way, it’s nice to be in a place of religious worship and to be surrounded by gentle smiling faces. It’s certainly nicer than being surrounded by multiple images of someone being tortured to death, which is what you mostly get in Christian churches.

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by Peter Bull on May 2, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Bayon, Buddhist, Cambodia

Posted by Peter Bull on May 2, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/the-faces-in-the-towers/

Ivory Icons

Long before anyone in Christendom had actually seen a live elephant, ivory was used for carving precious religious figures because of its durability. There are some other sources of ivory, from other animals with large horns or tusks, but elephant ivory has been valued and traded since well before Roman times.

These three Christian carvings are all somewhere around a thousand years old, and all of them contravene the second of the biblical Ten Commandments – “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image“. These images are definitely , and very nicely, ‘graven’ (carved).

Mary standing, holding the toddler Jesus in her left arm

Mary with the Christ Child, Byzantine, 11th-12thC

This tall and elegant depiction of Mary with the Christ Child was probably carved in post-iconoclasm Constantinople (now Istanbul), the centre of the Greco-Roman Byzantine Empire, somewhere between 950-1050 AD. This pose, where Mary supports the baby, or in this case, the toddler Jesus in her left arm, was a very popular one in Byzantium at that time.

Half-portrait of Christ facing out, holding Gospel book and blessing with right hand

Christ Pantokrator, Byzantine, 11th-13thC

This icon of Christ Pantokrator (Lord of All), is also Byzantine, from somewhere between 1000-1200 AD. He may be giving you a blessing, but this is no namby-pamby ‘peace and love, man’ kind of hippy Jesus, this one is an extremely stern and forbidding ruler, with a very impressive and intimidating hairstyle.

Christ on the road to Emmaus and meeting Mary Magdalene, Spanish, 12thC

These two comics-style story panels are Spanish, from about 1115-1120 AD. They illustrate two post-resurrection events in the bible. The top one shows Christ revealing himself to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In the bottom one Christ encounters Mary Magdalene, who, as soon as she recognises him, tries to touch him. But Catholic tradition has it that he says “noli me tangere”, which is Latin for “don’t touch me” – even though if there was a Jesus at all, he more likely spoke Aramaic.

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by Peter Bull on May 1, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Byzantine, Christ Pantocrator, Mary, Orthodox, Sculpture

Posted by Peter Bull on May 1, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/ivory-icons/

Inside the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

The second of the Old Testament Ten Commandments is a prohibition against idolatry. It says that the making of a carved image, or any other ‘likeness’ of anything, is strictly forbidden, and so is bowing down and worshipping that iconic image.

From time to time, the Christians have gone through iconoclastic upheavals, tragically destroying most of their artwork, burning all of their figurative depictions of God, Christ, Mary, and everything else because of this commandment. For the last 1200 years or so, however, they’ve pretty much given up on observing Commandment No.2, and figurative art, including very realistic images of the crucifixion itself, has become a central trapping of that religion. How Christian believers square that disobedience with their consciences, I’m not sure.

Islam, the third great Abrahamic religion that shares the Old Testament, has always taken this commandment completely literally, and there is no figurative representation at all in any of their mosques or in their scriptures. But far from limiting their visual imagination and their ability to enhance their places of worship, instead Islam developed a rich tradition of wonderful abstract decoration, much of it centred around elaborate calligraphic contortions of their key texts written in their flowing Arabic script.

Looking up into the domes inside the Blue Mosque, covered in colourful decorative patterns.

The highly decorated interior of the multi-domed main mosque of the Ottoman sultans

Richly decorated detail of the capital of a column and the vaulting above

These intricate patterns often have organic forms derived from nature, but they are careful not to depict specific plants or flowers.

The central boss in the main dome is surrounding by a design based on an Arabic text

The central boss in the main dome is surrounding by a gorgeous design based on an Arabic text

Arabic text from the Q’uran forms a frieze around the top of a massive main column

I think that the inside of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the primary mosque in the Ottoman empire, is sublimely beautiful. Almost every surface of the walls and domes is covered in intricate colourful designs, surrounding and supporting gold-on-blue calligraphy of verses in the Q’uran glorifying Allah. So pretty, and so happy.

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by Peter Bull on May 1, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Islamic, Istanbul, Mosque

Posted by Peter Bull on May 1, 2013

https://enthusiastical.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/inside-the-blue-mosque-istanbul/