Category: Europe
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Stigmata
Stigmata When the shopkeeper in the little town of Deruta, known since mediaeval times for its quality production of majolica earthenware, was dressing his shop-window he must have thought: let’s have something for everyone. Photos of the week: Ceramics shop, Deruta, Italy 2018
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Cute couple
Cute couple Two lovers in a compromising embrace. The woman is on the alert for being caught in the act. Even though it’s almost 2000 years ago, the scene is timeless, and funny at that. Photo of the week: Roman mosaic, Villa Romana del casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Italy 2000
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David
David In last week’s post we could find a tiny plastic David at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Here he is a full-size bronze copy of the original marble sculpture, overlooking Florence from the elevated Piazzale Michelangelo. For a stone replica we have to descend into town to the Piazza della Signora. And if we…
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Fontana di Trevi
Fontana di Trevi Except for Mary with her dead son on her lap, Venus, David, the Sabine woman … I think they all would rather like splashing about in the fountain under the watchful eye of Oceanus. I miss Anita Ekberg, she would have fit in nicely among them. Photo of the week: Souvenir stall,…
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Selinunte
Selinunte This photo tells a similar story as the one of last week, through its subject as well as its composition. Here we are in an ancient Greek city, not in western Turkey but on the south coast of Sicily, Italy. And the temple in the distance on the left is not of Ionic but…
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A ray of sunshine …
A ray of sunshine … … just enough for the museum guard to bask for a moment in its warmth. A quiet, peaceful scene, for a considerable part due to the inventive architectural design of Daniel Libeskind, with its sober interplay of lines, light and colours. We are in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, where…
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The encounter
The encounter Light reflections make for intriguing pictures. I like posting them on my blog now and then (look for them under Reflections tag). In the 3-dimensional world we often see reflections without really noticing them. Our brain immediately filters them out; we look through them. But on a photograph they clearly show up. The…
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Musers
Musers The musings of the stone figures are focussed on the child at their feet that goes its own way. The large head in the back is looking in the same direction but seems engrossed in his own thoughts. This musing in unison is contagious, I feel like joining them. Photo of the week: Berlin,…
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He who laughs last, laughs best
He who laughs last, laughs best “There was a time when the staging of skeletons of the saints, installed in astonishing postures, was intended to defy death and to show victorious martyrs, therefore to vivify the faith of believers. Each parish had to have a recumbent figure, or at least relics of saints, often taken…
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Sainte Quintienne
Sainte Quintienne The nuns of Montorge didn’t make only wax heads of angels (see last week’s post), also of saints, preferably saints that had come to a violent end while defending their Faith. The nuns would meticulously carve and paint the wounds on the pale faces of the martyrs, showing the suffering they had gone…
