A few nice facts about animals images I found:
Stato della Città del Vaticano
Image by Oggie Dog
Vatican Museums - Sistene Chapel - This is Michelangelo’s masterpiece and one of the most important painting cycles in the world, covering 800 sq metres of wall with “good fresco” painting. It was begun in May 1508, and then stopped for about a year between September 1510 and August 1511. The chapel was solemnly inaugurated by Julius II on November 1st, 1512. The vault’s iconography is linked to the themes chosen for the side walls, representing humanity’s long wait for Christ, the prophecies foreseeing his coming and scenes from the Genesis. All the figures are set in a massive, architectural painted background, which is superimposed to the real vault. Interpretation of the paintings can be divided into three parts: The first part: Christ’s Ancestors according to Matthew’s Gospel (1:1-17) are in the triangular webs and lunettes above the Windows. Men and women, representing humanity in general and generations succeeding one another, are crowded into a narrow, shallow space, awaiting the great event of Revelation in different poses and attitudes: they look tired, exhausted, in fact, prostrated and often in great pain caused by their inactivity, exasperated by the interminably slow passage of time before the birth of Christ. The painter’s extraordinary technical ability is particularly noticeable in some of the figures, such as Mathan (above the original entrance)
or Josaphat (in the central part of the vault, near the episodes from the life of Christ), rapidly frescoed with quick brush strokes and very fluid colours. The four pendentives are painted with scenes alluding to the Salvation of Israel’s people. Beginning from the part over the ancient entrance are the following:
- on the right, “Judith and Holofernes”. The Babylonian king Nabucodonosor had ordered his Assyrian general Holofernes to attack the Israeli army; Judith, a young Jewish girl, got Holofernes drunk and then killed him. The scene shows Judith giving his head to her maid (Judith 13:8-10).
- on the left, the episode with “David and Goliath”. During the war between the Jews and the Philistines, young David fought Goliath, a giant who had sworn that he would reduce the Jews to slavery if he defeated their army (1, Samuel 17: 41-51). The pendentives towards the Last Judgement wall represent:
- on the right, the “Brazen Serpent”, alluding to the Biblical episode in which the Lord sent the reptiles against the Israelites. During their journey to the Promised Land, they became discouraged with the hardships endured, incurring the wrath of both God and Moses (Numbers 21:8). They repented for their behaviour, however, and were pardoned. God then told Moses to make a serpent in bronze: looking at this bronze serpent could save anyone bitten by one of the reptiles;
- on the left, the “Punishment of Haman”, an episode from the Book of Esther. A young vizier named Haman issued an edict against the Jews, ordering that anyone refusing to bow down to the king would be killed. Esther, the wife of a Persian king, managed to have the edict annulled, thereby saving the people of Israel and causing the death of the vizier Haman. Above these pendentives are symmetrical bronze nudes and “bucrani” (ox skulls), classical decorative motifs alluding to sacrificial rituals.
The second part: splendid figures of the seven Prophets of the Bible and of the five pagan Sibyls, seated on massive thrones, outlined by naked, monochrome naked puttos resting on plinths. The Prophets and Sibyls both predicted the coming of Christ. Each figure is accompanied by angels or puttos who underline the personage’s specific role. They are all caught in the act of reading a book or unrolling a parchment scroll, absorbed in an extraordinary physical and spiritual effort. The most beautiful figures are probably the Delphic Sibyl and the prophets Ezekiel and Jonah. Jonah is shown next to the whale inside which he remained for three days - the same amount of time that Christ stayed in the sepulchre before his Resurrection.
The third part: the rectangles in the middle have nine scenes from the Genesis, four of them large ones and five small ones. Three of these episodes describe the Creation, three the story of Adam, and three deal with Noah. Michelangelo started painting the vault with the Noah episodes, probably intending to paint the scenes with the Creator at a later moment.
The three scenes of the Creation start with the “Separation of Light from Darkness”(Genesis 1:3-4), showing God wrapped in pink drapery and occupying most of the scene, which has an extremely complex perspective. Recent studies done after the fresco was cleaned have proved that Michelangelo painted it in just one day. Next is the extraordinary “Creation of Celestial Bodies and Plants”, divided into two asymmetric parts, each one containing the figure of the Lord. On the right He faces outwards, creating the shining sun and the pale moon with one sweeping gesture, while on the left the Lord has his back to the viewer as He creates plant life (Genesis 1:12-16). The third panel, with the “Separation of Land from Sea” (Genesis 1: 7-9), shows a completely new perspective and is equally beautiful.
Next to it is the celebrated “Creation of Adam”, where the focal point, the two loosened hands of the protagonists, is slightly offcentre. Adam’s body is magnificent. God is wrapped in pink drapery, and wingless angels with an expression of amazement on their faces, support His impetus. It is interesting to note that the two figures of God and Adam were actually painted using a single preliminary cartoon, as if Michelangelo were confirming what is written in the Bible: “God created man in the image of himself” (Genesis 1:27).
The “Creation of Eve” is next. It should be noted that in Michelangelo’s fresco Eve is born from living rock and not, as the Bible says, from Adam’s rib. The sixth panel is occupied by the “Original Sin” (left) and the “Expulsion from Paradise” (right). The two scenes are divided by the tree of good and evil, with the serpent coiled around its trunk and the Archangel Gabriel above it. The tree is slightly off-centre, marking the transition from lush countryside to an arid landscape, expressing how the human condition has changed. Even our ancestors’ bodies change after the Sin, seeming to age, which proves that physical appearance for Michelangelo also represents inner spirituality. The seventh episode, “Sacrifice of Noah”, shows the Patriarch thanking the Lord after the flood. The offering of a ram’s entrails can be seen in the foreground: “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it” (Genesis 8:20). The “Flood” in the eighth panel is largely taken from the seventh and eighth chapters of the Genesis. A tent, where the terrified future victims of the flood are taking shelter, is on the right. In the centre, Noah carries the few survivors to safety on a boat, taking them towards the arc in the upper left of the painting, which symbolises the Church. The scene of Salvation is painted diagonally in the foreground: after the inundation, the waters have retreated and the survivors can settle down on dry land, along with the few possessions they have saved. Sixty people crowd into this scene, standing out against a light background in a deep landscape. This was probably the first episode painted by Michelangelo: afterwards he preferred larger images, daringly foreshortened and the composition became complex. Unfortunately, part of the sky collapsed in 1797 when Castel Sant’Angelo’s gunpowder depot exploded; 16th century prints show that a thunderbolt was painted in the collapsed area.
In the ninth panel over the original entrance to the Chapel is the “Drunkenness of Noah” (Genesis 9:20-23), showing life and agricultural activities resuming on earth. “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told that to his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness”.
The Genesis scenes are surrounded by “Ignudi”, extraordinary naked male figures; their powerful bodies probably represent male beauty, created in God’s image. They sit on marble blocks in “spiralling” poses, holding festoons or ribbons with large bronze medallions painted with scenes from the Old Testament. Their role in the composition is an important one, because they break up the structure’s regularity, visually connecting the Genesis panels. It has been observed that “their presence on each of the four relieves very naturally frames the smaller scenes, and their function in the sequence of the nine panels is therefore essential” (R. Pane, 1964). This function is particularly noticeable between the first and second scene, where part of the fresco over the arch collapsed in 1797.
Other important painting effects are the following: the way the painter enlarged the naked male figures and the figure of Christ towards the altar; his diversified use of colour, which is applied thickly in the Moses scenes and with rapid brush strokes in the last scenes.
Finally, the images in the foreground have clear, sharp outlines, while those in the background have softened outlines painted with fluid brush strokes, a technique which Michelangelo had probably learnt from his contemporary, Leonardo.
In 1532, twenty years after Michelangelo finished the ceiling, Clement VII (1523-1534) asked him to paint the far wall of the Sistine Chapel. Work began only under the next pope, Paul III Farnese (1534-1549), and the magnificent fresco was finally unveiled during an official ceremony on October 13th, 1541. The painting also symbolised the Papacy’s regained supremacy, after the tragic events of 1527, when the Lansquenets, German mercenary troops, sacked Rome, and the Lutheran crisis which had undermined the Roman Church’s authority. First of all, Michelangelo lined the wall to be painted with a layer of brick. To prevent dust from settling on it and improve the perspective, this new surface was angled slightly outwards at the top (26 cm). Some 15th century frescoes were thereby lost and so were the lunettes Michelangelo painted. Although Michelangelo was inspired by the Bible, particularly by the Revelation, and by Dante’s Divine Comedy, his own tragic philosophic vision prevails in this work. Christ, in the middle of the fresco with the Madonna beside him, decides the inevitable afterlife destiny of each human being with a simple gesture of his arms: some are saved (the figures on the left, rising to Heaven), but most are damned (the naked people on the right, plunging into Hell).
The figures move in a kind of vortex, against the background of a blue sky without any architectural structures. The dead, seen on the lower left, are woken from their long slumber by angels’ trumpets, and their skeletons gradually transform back to being bodies. These angels in the middle of the painting have no wings and hold up two books: the smaller book held by the Archangel Michael records the names of the blessed, while the larger book is a list of the damned. On Christ’s left are Saint Andrew, seen from the back with his cross and Saint John the Baptist with a powerful physique, who might represent Adam. Lower down are Saint Lawrence with a ladder, symbolising his martyrdom on a grate over hot coals and Saint Bartholomew, holding a fleshless human skin (some consider it a portrait of Michelangelo).
On the right are Saint Peter, actually a portrait of the commissioner, Pope Paul III, holding a silver and a gold key; below Peter is Saint Blaise, with the iron combs used to torture him and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the toothed crescent-knife of her martyrdom. These two figures, particularly Saint Blaise, were heavily repainted in 1565 because they were thought indecent. Saint Sebastian kneels beside them, with arrows in his hand. Slightly below this, on the right, is the famous figure of a damned man who, frightened by the terrible sight, covers one eye. In another significant scene, the mythical boatman Charon, who ferried the damned in Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Divine Comedy, actually pushes sinners out
of his boat towards Hell, abandoning them to their dramatic fate. Biagio da Cesena, a well-known papal master of ceremonies at that time, is at the end of this group. He criticised Michelangelo’s work, saying that it was worthy of a bath or tavern, and Michelangelo took revenge by using Biagio to represent Minos, one of the Underworld judges in Greek-Roman mythology, wrapped in serpents’ coils that indicate to what circle of Hell the damned are destined. At the very top of the fresco the symbols of Christ’s passion can be seen: the cross, the crown of thorns, the dice used by the guards, the Flagellation column and the sponge with which he was wet. Here Michelangelo’s style is quite different from that in the ceiling, and expresses his changed attitude towards life: God is the severe judge whom none can question, not even the Virgin Mary, and certainly not man. This is why the bodies seem heavy with grief, as if they carried traces of their experiences on earth, which weighed them down. The colours stand out against an intense and dominating blue, generally changing from a whole gamut of reds to green, brown and black tones, which stress a tragic way of interpreting events. Only the background behind Christ and Mary, who has a light blue cape, is enlivened by an intense yellow that emphasizes the power of Christ’s raised arm. The Council of Trent, ended in 1563, decreed that art works in sacred places had to be modest and completely respect the Scriptures. Because of this, the “Last Judgement” frescoes were somewhat repainted in 1565 by one of Michelangelo’s pupils, Daniele da Volterra, who covered the figures’ nakedness with famous veils and loincloths, earning the nickname of “il Braghettone” (the maker of breeches). Other repainting was done for the same reason in the late 16th century and during the next two centuries.
Michelangelo’s painting technique and the Sistine Chapel restoration
When the painting was restored, scholars debated intensely whether or not to remove these “dry” additions to the fresco, and argued on the one hand that Michelangelo’s original work should be brought to light, and on the other that the additions were part of the frescos’ life-story. Finally, they decided to keep only Daniele da Volterra’s additions as the tangible expression of a historical era, and to remove all subsequent additions. This was because, as John Paul II said during the mass held when the Chapel was re-opened after restoration on April 8th 1994, “the Sistine Chapel is really the temple of the human body’s divinity” and, “it bears witness to mankind’s beauty as created by God, male and female”; in this beauty, Christ expressed “the whole mystery of the visibility of the invisible.”
The Sistine Chapel’s accurate restoration was done between 1980 and 1994 by a group of experts from the Vatican Museums, coordinated by Director Carlo Pietrangeli. Professor Fabrizio Mancinelli, art historian, supervised the work and Gianluigi Colalucci was chief-restorer. The Ceiling frescoes were cleaned between 1980 and 1992, while the “Last Judgement” took four years of intense work, ending in 1994. A new, completely forgotten Michelangelo emerged from the restoration. The candle smoke and even previous restorations (which consisted in painting over the frescos or retouching the colours to “brighten” them, which however deteriorated with the passing of time, thus making the frescoes even duller) had blackened the surface, so that in the past Michelangelo was commonly thought to be more interested in figures than in colour. After the cleaning, much art criticism on the artist had to be revised, or even completely re-written.
The “re-discovered” colours are actually light, vivid and bright, very skilfully blended to reduce the flattening effect inevitably produced on the figures by distance. The use of “bright colours” is particularly interesting. This means using a combination of strongly contrasting colours (such as in the Delphic Sibyl, the Prophet Daniel, or even more obviously in the pendentives and lunettes) to increase volume and emphasize the impact of the masses. Michelangelo used very thin, transparent colours on the Ceiling, sometimes applying them with quick, sure brush strokes that leave the background visible. The figures in the foreground generally have sharp outlines, while those in the background are shaded and more sketchily coloured in, achieving the effect of a lens focusing on the nearest objects. Michelangelo used only very high quality pigments for the colours and because of this the frescoes have lasted in time: ochre (earthy varieties of ore) provided the reds and yellows, iron silicates were used for the greens and lapis lazuli powder for the blues. The lilac is “morellone” (produced by a plant with purple flowers), and Michelangelo used what is commonly known as “Saint John’s white” and charcoal for black. This restoration attracted worldwide interest.
After some extremely careful lab tests, the first phase of restoration consisted in washing the frescoes with distilled water; then a mild solvent was applied to remove the layers of dirt, maintaining the frescoes’ thin protective coating made up of a layer dust which deposited itself on them right after they were painted.
The Sistine Chapel is now climate controlled with air-conditioners and a sophisticated monitoring system verifies and checks the environmental conditions in the Chapel.
Day 7 - On Safari
Image by Kevin H.
Wednesday January 20, 2010
Selous Game Reserve
As happened on pretty much every day of my trip, I woke up between 5 and 6 a.m. on my first day at the safari lodge. I couldn't see the sunrise from the veranda of my cabin, but as it got lighter out the various animals and insects of the jungle started serenading the sun. It is just about as loud as it sounds in the Tarzan movies.
My cabin was numbered 14, although it was actually number 13 and was just called 14 to appease the superstitious. It was off by itself down a lengthy trail and consisted of canvas stretched over a wooden frame with a thatched roof. There was a solar panel on the roof to power the lights. The bathroom was attached and had thatched walls with about a footwide gap at the top that was open to the air. The gap let in bugs and lizards. In particular there was a lizard that liked to cling to the thatched wall and watch me while I brushed my teeth in the morning. There was also a lizard hang out in the cool dark toilet bowl when I lifted the lid one day. The shower was a large open space that occupied one end of the bathroom. You could've fit an entire baseball team into it.
My bed was enormous and covered with mosquito netting, a necessity in tropical areas due to the fact that the mosquitos that carry malaria come out after dark. We were all taking anti-malarial pills every day, but we still slept under the mosquito nets as well. The veranda of my cabin had a table and a pair of camp chairs and overlooked a small watering hole (I never did see any animals at it), the jungle, and a range of blue mountains in the distance.
It was about a five-minute walk to reach the restaurant/bar/pool area of the lodge and at night you had to bring a flashlight along for the walk. This morning marked the first of four straight days of having fruit, eggs, bacon, toast, juice, and tea for breakfast. The only variable was how the eggs were prepared. At breakfast, Michel informed us that he'd spoken to our driver Rama and he'd said he was willing to take a chance and try to drive up to the lake that was used for boat safaris. If it proved impassable, then he would take us to another lake we could drive around but not go out on.
We were all excited at the chance of getting to go on a boat safari after all and quickly agreed to Rama's plan. After breakfast, Shelley, Donna, Roger, Ruth and I, along with Matthias and Margot, piled into an open sided Land Rover with a canvas top and rows of bench seating for a game drive en route to the lake. Rama would be both our driver and our guide. He was a very nice fellow and an experienced bushman who'd been guiding parties in the Selous Game Reserve for seven years.
Each day we entered the confines of the park we would have to check in and out at a ranger station so they keep track of the people visiting and make sure they all came out safely again. Some days we also saw animals before we reached the gate to the park. Today we spotted our first animals, a pack of wild dogs (also known as hunting dogs) while driving to the park gate. Rama told us they were quite rare and the dogs spent a while laying in the grass and looking at us before they finally got bored and trotted off.
We'd had a bet going as to the first animal we'd spot. Ruth had picked dogs, so the first round of drinks back at the lodge that night was on her. Because we were going on a boat safari I'd guessed hippos, but it was a fairly lengthy drive to reach the lake so we ended up seeing a lot of animals before we reached it. We saw tons of impalas, zebras (which the British pronounce "zebb-ruhs" rather than "zee-bruhs"), lots of elephants (including a baby one nursing and one that had been rolling in the mud), warthogs, buffalo, wildebeest, giraffes, elands, and a lot of different birds with exotic names like trumpeter hornbill and lilac-breasted roller.
It was a bit bouncy riding in the truck but when we were moving there was a nice breeze blowing and you could see quite well from up there. At one point I sat in the front seat next to the driver and although that seemed like it would be more fun it wasn't. You couldn't see as much and the windshield blocked the breeze so you cooked in the heat. Rama got that truck to go places I didn't think it could possibly go. It was like we were filming a Land Rover commercial. It convinced me that if I ever need a vehicle to cross some tough terrain, I'm taking a Land Rover.
When we reached the lake, Rama pulled the boat motor out of the back of the truck, threw it over his shoulder, and set off to find the boat. We all took a jungle bathroom break and stood around the truck and looked out across the lake. We could see hipppos eyes popping up from the water a ways away and Donna spotted what at first we thought were chunks of wood floating along. Eventually, however, we realized they were crocodiles. That led some of the ladies to decide to climb back up inside the truck to wait. The guys weren't sensible enough to do that.
While we were waiting I noticed what looked to be a hippo emerging from the far side of the lake and walking up on to the bank. I started taking shots of it with my zoom lens and then noticed a baby hippo following his mom up out ofthe water and onto the shore. It was pretty damn cool. Rama informed us later that it was rare to see a hippo leave the water during daylight. Typically they only emerge from the water to go ashore and feed.
The boat we were taking hadn't been used in several weeks due to the torrential rains the area had experienced and it took Rama quite some time to bail it out (and remove the fish that had jumped into it), attach the motor, and pilot it around to where we were waiting. It was just a small metal jon boat but it held us all easily. The first stop on our boat safari was to the far bank where several dozen crocodiles were sunning themselves or laying in the shade.
They were all pretty good-sized, about as long as our boat, and many had their mouths open. Rama explained that this was one technique they used to cool themselves and let out heat given that they are coldblooded reptiles and can't sweat. As the boat would approach the bank, the crocodiles would get spooked and come clambering out of the brush to crawl into the water where they felt safer. This had the unintended effect of making it look like they were coming right at us and some of the ladies got a bit nervous at this point.
I was fine with the crocodiles but I will admit to getting a bit twitchy when we motored over to where the hippos were hanging out. I was aware that hippos are very territorial and touchy and are responsible for killing more people in Africa than any other animal. Because they can submerge, they often pop up unexpectedly, capsize boats, and chomp on the passenger with their large tusks. Hippos are vegetarians so they won't eat you, but they aren't opposed to chomping several large holes in you.
The hippos we saw were fine, however. They glared at us suspiciously and made noises, but kept their distance and we kept ours. There were quite a few of them, at least a couple dozen, and they were fascinating to watch. We also saw some pelicans, storks, Egyptian ducks, and had a fish eagle fly overhead at one point. After the boat safari we drove over to a nice shade tree, pulled out some camp stools, and sat down to enjoy the pack lunch we'd brought along with us. It was lovely.
After finishing up our lunches, we went for another game drive and saw more of the same sorts of animals we'd seen earlier. At the end of the drive when we were on our way back to the lodge, however, we spotted two new types of animals we hadn't seen. The first was a group of baboons who were sitting on a fallen tree a little ways back from the road. Then we spotted a group of rare sable antelope, the animals for which our lodge was named.
Donna added them to the list of animals we'd spotted that she'd been maintaining and we headed back to the lodge to shower, relax a bit, have some drinks, eat dinner, and go to bed. It had been a very productive day. We had seen more animals than we'd expected to see. No lions yet, though, and we were all hoping to see them. We heard from some of the other groups that were at the lodge who'd been out on safaris that day and had seen lions. If we wound up going the whole time without seeing any lions we were going to feel a bit like safari failures, but we still had hope and two more days at the lodge. It wasn't over yet.
Highland Farm B&B , aka the Hammerstein Mansion
Image by JARM13
Sorry about the poor picture , it was 22 F with a 35 mph wind , I just wanted to get back on my bicycle and ride .
The beautiful Highland Farm is over 260 years old. When it was first built in the 1740's, the house stood tall over more than 40 acres of rolling farmland. While the history of the house is itself interesting, it is the tale of its residents and guests that make for true story-telling lore. At the turn of the 20th century, the Lenz circus family bought Highland Farm and housed many of their animals here. In fact, you can still find the baby elephant pool that Mr. Lenz used to bathe his little pachyderms.
In 1941, during a lull in his career, Oscar Hammerstein II and his wife, Dorothy, came to Bucks County looking for a retreat from New York City. While driving up the hill to Highland Farm, Dorothy spotted a rainbow and sensed this would be a magical place for her professionally floundering husband and their family. The move proved immensely wise as the bucolic countryside truly inspired Mr. Hammerstein. Legend is told that he was so moved by the views of cattle and corn fields in the early morning that he was inspired to write, "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," the opening song for Oklahoma!, on the front porch. Arguably, his most famous works were written while residing at Highland Farm including South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music.
