Category: Europe
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Liberation Day
Liberation Day For the 75th time this year. Every year on the 5th of May we celebrate the end of the occupation by Nazi Germany. On the 7th of May 1945 the allied forces drove through this street, then called the Noorder Amstellaan, into Amsterdam, cheered and applauded by its inhabitants. A year later the…
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Oswiecim
Oswiecim Conceived at the end of the war and born in an again free Netherlands, the horrors of the Second World War have entered my consciousness through poignant images and stories. One morning in 2007, in the train from Krakow to Prague, we made a stop at Oswiecim. For us just a stopover; for 1.5…
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Auschwitz
Auschwitz (…) Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng (…) (…) he yells play sweeter for death Death is a German-born master…
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Resurrezione
Resurrezione Crocifissione, Deposizione, Resurrezione … that’s the order of events. He is rising up there, behind the clouds. Up to heaven, invisible, but radiating his light in all directions. Photo of the week: Gubbio, Italy 2018
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Deposizione
Deposizione And here we look at the Madonna figuring in a polychrome wooden sculpture of the Deposition of Christ. Tears are dripping from her eyes. A beautiful example, as so many Romanesque Madonna’s, of truly great art. Photos of the week: Bottega (workshop) altotiberina, Gruppo della Deposizione (Deposition of Christ), detail of the Madonna, c.…
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Crocifissione
Crocifissione What I wrote in last week’s post applies to this fresco of the crucifixion as well. Especially the figure on the left of the painting – Mary I presume – is touching, with her deeply bowed head and the sadly resigned expression of her face. Photos of the week: Maestro di Montemartello (?), Crocifissione,…
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Crucifixion
Crucifixion During Lent, the weeks before Easter, I happily bring out the oratorios by Handel (Messiah), Caldara (Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo) and of course Bach (St. Matthew and St. John Passion) to immerse myself in magnificent music that recollects among other things the life and Passion of Christ. Does ardent faith play a part…
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Palazzo del Podesta
Palazzo del Podesta When you look back from the steps of the Palazzo dei Consoli in Gubbio you see at the other end of the Piazza Grande the façade of the Palazzo del Podesta. The irregular distribution of the differently sized windows in the huge wall is fascinating. It invited me to make this composition.…
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Greek Madonna
Greek Madonna This Madonna, painted on cloth, appeals to me. I think it is the expression of her longish face that made me look at her intently. I feel in it a tinge of sadness. There runs a scarcely perceptible fold through the hanging cloth as a result of which the left half of her…
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Flesh
Flesh Is this then what became of man after the expulsion from paradise? (See last week’s post). A pile of flesh on what looks more like a table than a bed. Edmondson nicely calls his painting ‘Sleeping Arrangements’. We can recognize some human limbs, but can’t easily make out to which body they belong. We…
καιρός remembered 