The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is
magnificent, but there are a lot of things you can't buy there. I've
found a few on my travels, so here's my top-twenty Wish List if somebody has the
power to grant these things.
1. Any one of these little prehistoric
figurines in the Israel Museum. Unfortunately I've lost the
sketchbook in which I wrote down the details, but you can see what they are.
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| Prehistoric figures - Israel Museum, Jerusalem |
2. Only about 60cm high, so will fit on
the mantelpiece nicely. The Greeks adopted
figures like this from the Near East in the seventh century BC, and they
were popular guardians on funerary monuments. I'll be in that. But
not for a few years yet.
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Sphinx-shaped finial of a funerary
stele –
Attica (Greece), Marble 410-400BC. Altes Museum, Berlin |
3. What is it about things with wings?
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| Vase - Altes Museum, Berlin |
4. Ivory with ebony inlay; figures battling
a dragon. I think it's from the early seventeenth century. And it's
part of the Wuerth Collection in the Bode Museum in Berlin
5. Actually a bit bluer
than this. Lead glazes are difficult, so pieces are rare. But I can
imagine this sitting among the mugs in my kitchen. According to the
postcard I bought it has an inscription that roughly translates as
“Buy and Use”.
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6. And moving right along, to a Vanitas
from France or Netherlands. This is supposed to remind you that life is fleeting and you should be thinking of spiritual things rather than earthly.
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| ivory; early sixteenth century Bode Museum, Berlin |
7. Some time in the
last five hundred years the child has gone AWOL but I don't really
mind. The workmanship is beautiful and I just love the draperies. Rather smaller than it appears here; less than a metre high.
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| Virgin and child Niclaus Gerhaert or associate - Strasburg about 1465 Bode Museum, Berlin | . |
8. An old and battered piece of wood-carving
in the Bode Museum
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Fragment of a Crucifix , Giovanni Pisano 1305,
Tuscany. Bode Museum, Berlin |
9. Another
goddess – Artemis from the temple at Ephesus. There are a lot of
depictions of her about. This is one of three in the Ephesus Museum.
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| Diana of Ephesus. Ephesus Museum |
Way back in prehistory wooden cult
figures standing in temples were decorated with jewellery, and a set
of large gourd-shaped amber beads formed a type of breast-jewellery
in the eighth-century BCE at the Great Temple of Ephesus. Contrary
to popular opinion, Diana/Artemis doesn't have any more breasts than
anyone else; the amber beads just got bigger and bigger over the
years. Which is not to say there might not be a certain amount of symbolism here . . .
She was in charge of hunting, wildlife
and fertility. The Greeks called the ancient Ephesian figure Artemis,
but to the Ephesians she was always something special and different
from all the other Goddesses of the same name.
10. So here is one of the other Dianas – sorry about the reflections, but they will put these things in glass cases where I can't get at them. It's silver, set with rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls.
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11. Although this is called the Berlin
Goddess, she's really a funerary statue from the grave of a wealthy Greek lady. I particularly liked the
stylised planes of the face, and did some nice drawings of it for
future reference. The red colouring is a trace of the original
paintwork.
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12. And while we're on the subject of
goddesses, here's a lovely big granite statue of Sekhmet.
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| Sekhmet - granite. Thebes. 18th Dynasty (about 1360 BCE) |
There are two of them, one each side of a doorway.
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| in the Neues Museum, Berlin |
13. Particularly liked the anthropomorphised face. It's only a sandstone copy of a
Ptolomaic lion in Rome, but quite good enough for me. A warning,
though: it's pretty big.
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| Neues Museum, Berlin |
14. Everyone has lions of some sort, and I
found plenty to admire and desire. But cats?
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| Bridge decorations Baumgartenbruecke, Germany |
These bronze cats were produced in 1910
to guard the first, steel, Baumgartenbruecke in Germany.
The bridge was
blown up on 30 April 1945 and the cats followed the Russians home.
They were returned in 1994 and set up here, beside the rather boring
new, concrete, bridge that replaced the old one.
The cats were lucky.
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| marble portrait of Acellino
Salvago Antonio della Porta; Italy; 1500 Bode Museum, Berlin |
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| before the fire; from a photograph very high up on the wall |
15. This was one of
the works of art transferred to the Flacktower at Friedrichshain for
safe-keeping during WWII. Shortly after the war officially ended a
mysterious fire broke out in the bunker, and most of the works were
destroyed.
A few were salvaged, and the remains of three are on show
in the Bode Museum, with photographs of their original appearance.
And that's all I'm going to say about the war.
16. Who wouldn't want this? I found it at the Artbanka Museum Of
Young Art exhibition in the Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace in Prague.
It's definitely worth looking at their website:
http://www.amoya.cz/en/ if you
can't get to Prague to see the exhibition.
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| Male Nude; Barbora Mastrlova, 2010 Artbanka Museum of Young Art, Prague |
17. Still in Prague, at the Veletrzni
Palace where the National Gallery of Prague has its 19th
and 20th century and Contemporary Art collections.
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| Ales
Vesely (B 1935) "Usurper" 1964 (chair) and "Enigma
III", 1965 metal and mixed media; National Gallery of Prague |
18. More 19th - 20th
century art from Prague. Gorgeous gargoyles on St Vitus Cathedral. It
took 600 years to build the cathedral, and the western facade was
designed in the mid 19th century. It was completed in time
for the St Wenceslas jubilee in 1929. Mucha designed one of the
wonderful stained glass windows.
This facade is described as Gothic
Revival, but it is not so much revival as a beautiful completion of a
Gothic building.
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| Western facade; St Vitus Cathedral, Prague |
19. This, however, is unashamedly Pretend
Gothic in the grounds of Schloss Babelsberg near Potsdam.
It was erected by Friedrich Wilhelm IV
after the March Revolution of 1848 in memory of fallen Prussian
soldiers. The red sandstone archway is a copy of one in the cemetery
in Karlsruhe; the statue of the Archangel Michael defeating the
“dragon of revolution” is from the workshop of August Kiss.
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| Michael Denkmal; Schloss Babelsberg, Potsdam |
20. If we're
going for Pretend Gothic, why not just have Schloss Babelsberg
itself? Apart from its history, which you'll have to look up for
yourself, it's a jolly nice building, having been designed by Karl
Friedrich Schinkel (who may well be my favourite architect) based on
the English Gothic style, with a few Tudor elements and extended in
1849 by Friedrich Ludwig Persius, one of Schinkel's students.
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| Schloss Babelsberg, Potsdam, Germany |
It's being renovated at present, but
I'll have it when the builders have finished, thankyou.
nice pictures.
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Bode Museum, Berlin is wonderful anslo i like ephesus museum www.theephesus.com
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