The Pride Of Flanders

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Rubens remained little more than six months with his cousin, who was a landscape artist. His next teacher, Adam van Noort, was a figure-painter, but it is unlikely he learnt much from this morose and often drunken boor. In 1590 he found a more congenial master in Otto Vaenius (1558-1629), who was a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of the world, though as a painter he was even duller and stiffer than his own master, the Venetian Zucchero (c. 1543-1616), well-known in England by his numerous portraits of Queen Elizabeth. One thing that Vaenius did was to fire his pupil with enthusiasm for Italian art, and two years after he had come of age and had been admitted a member of the Guild of St. Luke, Peter Paul Rubens arrived in Venice. Here the admirable copies he made of paintings by Titian and Veronese attracted the attention of Vincenzo I, Duke of Mantua, into whose service Rubens almost immediately entered. With the Duke he was at Florence for the marriage of Marie dé Medici to Henri IV (by proxy), and in 1603—after he had visited Rome, Padua, and other Italian cities—Rubens was sent by Vincenzo I on a mission with presents of horses and pictures to Philip III of Spain.

Though not then entrusted with any work for the Spanish monarch, Rubens painted several pictures for his prime minister the Duke of Lerma before he returned to Italy. After working for his patron at Mantua, Rome, and Genoa, Rubens in 1608 was recalled to Antwerp by news of his mother’s serious illness. Too late to see her alive when he reached his native city, the grief-stricken painter remained for several months in strict seclusion, when he was drawn by the rulers of Flanders, the Stadt-holders Albert and Isabella, who, conscious of his growing reputation, persuaded Rubens to leave the Mantuan service and become their Court Painter. In accepting this position Rubens was permitted to live at Antwerp instead of with the Court at Brussels.

His brother Philippe had already married the daughter of his chief, the Secretary of Antwerp, and it was probably at their house that Rubens saw his sister-in-law’s niece Isabella, daughter of John Brant, whom he married in 1609. The following year the artist designed a palatial residence in the Italian style, and had it built on the thoroughfare now known as Rue de Rubens: there he took his young and beautiful wife, and there he settled down to found the School of Antwerp. The ensuing ten or twelve years were the most tranquil and probably the happiest in life of Rubens. An example of Ruben’s first manner is the portrait of ‘Rubens and his First Wife,’ painted when he was about thirty two and his newly married wife Isabella Brant little over eighteen. During this period he executed the works on which his fame most securely rests, notably his supreme masterpiece, ‘The Descent from the Cross,’ in Antwerp Cathedral. This work, executed in 1612, marks the beginning of Ruben’s second manner, just as his ‘Elevation of the Cross,’ also in Antwerp and painted in 1609-10, concludes his first or Italian manner.

The late R A M Stevenson, a most penetrating critic, has pointed out how much more original and softer is the later pictures:

It started the Antwerp School, and beyond its ideal scarce any contemporary advanced. The forms are less muscular, the gestures less exaggerated, the transitions suaver, the light and shade less contrasted than in the first period, but the pigment is still solid, and the colors are treated as large, unfused blocks of decorative effect.

The growth of Rubens was gradual, but the extraordinary number of his collaborators makes the tracing of that growth a task of infinite difficulty. Apart from other contemporary evidence, the letters of Rubens himself show the number of artists he employed to work from his designs. The truth is he established a picture-factory at Antwerp, and not only engaged assistants to help him carry out gigantic decorations for churches and palaces, but also farmed out commissions for easel-pictures, landscapes, and portraits. In addition to ‘Velvet’ Brueughel, his collaborators and pupils at one time or another included Snyders (1579-1657), Jordaens (1593-1678), Cornelius de Vos (1585-1651), Antony Van Dyck (1599-1641), David Teniers (1610-90), Jan Fyt (1609-61), and score of others. A good example of the ‘teamwork’ accomplished in the Rubens studio is ‘Christ in the House of Martha and Mary’. In this picture, now in the Irish National Gallery at Dublin, the figures are by Rubens, the landscape by ‘Velvet’ Breughel, the architecture by Van Delen, and the accessories by Jan van Kessel. Yet all is so controlled by the master hand that to any but an expert the whole appears to be the work of one man.

The Pride Of Flanders (continued)

I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the gem industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

My principal in Paris was only six years older than I. At the time of which I write, that is, he was twenty eight. At the early age of sixteen he had been pitchforked into Spain by a Spartan father with nothing more than a letter of introduction to a friend’s on who was in a small way of business as a dealer in antiques, or pseudo-antiques, in Madrid.

The young man had what is termed ‘his head screwed on the right way’. In other words, he started making money from the word ‘Go’. He was taken into the Madrid business and within a short time became a full partner. One day he happened to attend a public sale of an Estremaduran hidalgo’s effects. An ancient chest took his fancy and he bid successfully for it. When he got it home its extraordinarily heavy weight made him look it over very carefully, with the result that he found a number of secret drawers crammed with gold doubloons.

Being naturally of an aggressive nature, his early success in life had made him even more self-confident, and it was one of his patent maxims that treading on other people’s toes before they have a chance to tread on yours is one of the secrets of success, and moreover, saves the possessor of big feet a lot of pain. He was not particularly to save my feelings, at any rate, and was over-fond of calling me the French equivalent of ‘bloody fool’. One day he said it once too often and I picked up a heavy inkstand with intention of slinging it at him. Fortunately someone seized my arm, but, of course, the affair left me with no alternative other than handing in my resignation. In fact, I was just able to say very quickly: ‘I’m getting out of here,’ before he could utter: ‘You’re fired.’

Now, I had saved nothing out of my small pay, for I had been helping a younger brother who was serving his apprenticeship to a goldsmith in Paris. There was nothing for me back in Vienna and in any case I had too much pride to return there a failure. I decided to become a gem broker in Paris on my own account.

There are two kinds of broker, the broker attitré and the freelance broker, in Paris. The first is attached to one firm as a kind of commercial traveler working on a commission basis only, but he is usually permitted to have a drawing account which tides him over bad patches. The freelance, on the other hand, works for any firm that will entrust him with goods. He has no drawing account to fall back on.

Before casting myself on the turbulent and shark-infested waters of Paris gem trade, I sought to secure for myself a raft. I asked my ex-principal if I might be one of his accredited brokers with a drawing account. But although he permitted me to to so attach myself, there was no drawing account, and various incidents thereafter forced me to conclude that he had no intention of forgetting the inkstand episode. I cast myself off into complete independence and have remained in that state ever since.

Life as a freelance broker taught me much and I do not regret the bitter lessons of those days. There is no better schooling for one who intends to blossom into a trader on his own account than a long apprenticeship as a broker to the trade. It is always the buyer who is the professor, for he is ever alert to point out what is undesirable in the merchandise you submit for his considerations and to compare your prices with those of your competitors. It is the buyer who puts you on your mettle; it is the buyer you must study if you want to be a success. Please him and you have pleased yourself. From my buyers I have learned to discriminate between the bad, the middling, the good and the exquisite, and from the seller—how to make the most of the least.

I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’ (continued)

Travel-inspiring Movies 2007

(via Budget Travel): Travel-inspiring Movies 2007

1. The Bourne Ultimatum
2. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
3. Ratatouille
4. The Assasination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
5. Into The Wild
6. The Darjeeling Limited
7. Atonement
8. Enchanted
9. Lust, Caution
10. Once

Useful link:
www.budgettravel.com

Fabergé

It has been reported that Fabergé, owned by Pallinghurst Resources will be venturing into top-quality colored stones + it is perceived that the famous Fabergé name will add value to the gemstones, with each stone laser-engraved to ensure authenticity + the company is in a situation to emulate De Beers' mine-to-market model + they also plan to extend the Fabergé name into the luxury goods sector.

Useful links:
www.faberge.de
www.faberge.com
www.pallinghurst.com

Exotic Procedures in Far Places: Aged, Monsooned And Luwaked Coffees

Kenneth Davids writes about the world's more exotic coffee types + differences between better and poorer samples of monsooned and aged coffees + authenticity issues + other viewpoints @
http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?ID=139

I see intriguing parallels between coffee classification + authenticity issues with colored stone, diamond, wine, chocolate, and tea grading + it's technically complex/subjective.

U2

Paul David Hewson known as Bono, is the lead singer and principal lyricist of the Irish rock band U2 + U2 has collaborated and recorded with numerous artists + almost all U2 lyrics were written by Bono with political, social and religious themes + Bono is also widely known for his activism concerning Africa, including the AIDS pandemic + he co-founded DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) + he is perceived as someone who has been making a difference in the world + I love his music.

Useful links:
www.u2.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bono

His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday (1940)
Directed by: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur (play The Front Page); Charles Lederer (screenplay)
Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy

(via YouTube): His Girl Friday Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-Rx6FrjX5k

His Girl Friday 1/11 (1940)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApDSNJ-yZQY

His Girl Friday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgfhbHw6gXY

His Girl Friday 3/11 (1940)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZxsn_U6ymw

A romantic comedy. I enjoyed it.

Chronicler Of A Floating World

(via The Guardian) Adrian Searle writes about Hiroshige's masterful prints of 19th-century Japan + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2229609,00.html

Joy In Mudville

Ira Berkow writes about LeRoy Neiman's colorful paintings and screen prints + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=726

The Pride Of Flanders

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

The Art Of Rubens, Van Dyck, And The Flemish Portrait-Painters

Painter, courtier, scholar, and diplomatist, Peter Paul Rubens is one of the most picturesque figures in European history. In origin he belonged to the upper middle class, for though his grandfather had been a tanner of Antwerp, his father John Rubens (1530-87) had taken his degree at an Italian university and subsequently attained considerable civic importance in Antwerp. At that time Flanders was under Spanish rule, and trouble with the authorities over political and religious matters drove the Protestant John Rubens and his family into exile at Cologne. There he became the intimate counselor of William the Silent, and unfortunately, too intimate with his patron’s wife, the Princess of Orange. Their love affair was discovered and Dr John Rubens was thrown into prison, from which he was only released after the Prince had divorced his wife. He did not long survive his imprisonment, and died at Cologne in 1587.

All this had its influence on young Peter Paul, who was born at Siegen, Westphalia, in 1577, one year after the death of Titian. Political complications had already driven his father from Antwerp, and so the boy spent his early childhood in exile. He was only ten years old when his father died, and then his mother returned to Antwerp, taking her three children with her, Blandina the eldest, a young woman of twenty-three, Philippe a boy of thirteen, and Peter Paul the youngest. By a curious coincidence, just as only one year separated the birth of Peter Paul Rubens from the death of Titian, so again one year divided the death of John Rubens from that of Paul Veronese (1588), whose art his son was destined to develop and glorify.

After her daughter’s marriage in 1590, the widow Rubens was able to say in a letter that both her sons were earning their living—so we know that their schooldays in Antwerp were short: Philippe obtained a place in the office of a town councillor of Brussels, while Peter Paul was Page of Honor to the Princess Margaret de Ligne-Aremberg. This gave the future diplomatist his first experience of court life; but it was short one, for already he felt art to be his true vocation, and in 1591 the lad of fourteen was allowed to begin his training as a painter in the studio of his cousin Tobias Verhaeght.

Here it may be well to recall that since the death of Mabuse in 1533 there had been no painter of the first rank in Flanders. Lucas da Heere (1534-84), a capable portrait-painter, though born at Ghent, worked chiefly in France and England. Returning to Flanders he could get little employment, and he died in poverty at Paris. A more successful portrait-painter, Antonio Moro (1519-78), better known as Sir Anthony More, also began his career in Ghent, but found more appreciation of his art in England and Spain. The most important of the immediate predecessors of Rubens were two families of artists, the Pourbus and the Breughels. Peter Pourbus (1510-84), a Bruges painter of portraits and religious subjects, had a son Frans Pourbus (1545-81), who settled in Antwerp. He in turn had a still more famous son, Frans Pourbus the Younger (1570-1622) who painted portraits not only in Antwerp but also at the Court of Henri IV in Paris. Young Pourbus, seven years older than Rubens, was one of the few of his contemporaries in Antwerp who not only never worked for Rubens but may have had some influence on his early style.

The founder of the Breughel family was Peter Breughel (c. 1525-69), whose dramatic ‘Adoration of the Magi’ was secured for the National Gallery in 1921. Another interesting example of his forcible but primitive style, ‘Sacking a Village’ is at Hampton Court. This painter had two sons, Peter, known as ‘Hell’ Breughel (1564-1638), because of his choice of subjects, and a younger, Jan, nicknamed ‘Velvet’ Breughel (1568-1625), on account of the softness of his painting. The father made Brussels his headquarters, but the sons settled in Antwerp, where, notwithstanding his seniority, Jan Breughel eventually became an assistant to Rubens.

The Pride Of Flanders (continued)

From Gothic To Baroque Rose Cuts

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

The early Gothic types of flat-bottomed diamonds gradually gave way to a new design inspired by the Baroque style in art and architecture. The early type was simply called ‘faceted’. The new style was described as Rose Cut, a term which was then applied to both the Gothic and the Baroque flat-bottomed diamond. The name “Rose’ was used, confusingly, both for these flat-bottomed single gems and for the combinations of pave-set small diamonds. My suggestions for updating the terminology of the sequence from basic forms to full-cut designs are as follows:

1. Chips or Splinters: These were used only for the most primitive, poor quality, flat-bottomed gems. Because of their flatness and the small number of irregular, randomly distributed facets, they lacked the fascination demanded of a diamond and consequently seldom found a market. During the Gothic period they were usually rejected altogether and often simply ground into powder.

2. Chiffres: These are still used for inexpensive jewelry, but only in small sizes. Slight polishing gives them the form of a flattish triangular pyramid with rounded edges. If thick enough, they can be rounded by bruting into three-facet Roses. This form is also still in use.

3. Six-facet Roses: If these had hexagonal outlines they kept the same form as they had in earlier days. If they were very flat they were often called mode-roses (vlakke or vlake Moderoozen in Dutch). Like the Chiffres, they were occasionally rounded. More often they were crowned, becoming, in fact, kruinige Moderoozen, an intermediate step on the way to full cut Crowned Rose Cuts.

4. Crowned or Twelve-facet Roses: The twelve-facet Rose represents the initial stage of the Baroque Rose, an innovation which radically changed the design of flat-bottomed diamonds. This basic shape was found to produce some brilliance but, like the modern single-cut diamond, there are only sufficient facets if the stone is very small. The facets are stepped to produce a Crowned Rose with a brilliance superior to that of trihedral Roses, but with no fire.

The great center for the manufacture of this type of diamond was Antwerp, but it was also produced in Brabant, where cutters who had left Antwerp to escape taxation had established themselves. Another center was Charleroi, to the south of Antwerp. Twelve-facet Roses were often named after Antwerp or Brabant, and occasionally after Charleroi.

Twelve-facet Roses were usually further fashioned into:
5. Eighteen-facet Roses: These were originally produced in Amsterdam and were fairly popular during the nineteenth century but are now considered to be incomplete Rose Cuts, comparable to the old ‘double-cut’ diamonds defined under Complementary Cuts.

6. Twenty-four facet Angular and Regular Full Rose Cuts: The former are called ‘angular’ because no rounding has been done, so that they retain a twelve-sided outline with a knife-sharp girdle. In other words, they are completely fashioned apart from rounding. Since Roses are hardly ever absolutely circular and their outline is, in any case, hidden by the setting, the angular type is included only to indicate that Full Rose Cuts are not always properly finished.

The earliest documented piece of jewelry which contains Full Rose Cuts is the ‘Fellowship Pendant’ in the Grϋnes Gewölbe, Dresden. Originally there were three pendants belonging to the ‘Fellowship of Fraternal Love and Friendship’. Established in 1594 by Frederick William, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, Administrator of the Electoral House of Saxony for the three youngest sons of Christian I. The only surviving pendant (the other two were probably handed over to the Wettinian family in 1924) is in such perfect condition that it looks as if it has never been worn. The Full Rose Cut diamonds are certainly not later replacements and therefore probably date from as early as the end of the sixteenth century. There are three Roses, one at the top and one on each side of the frame. The square-cut diamond below the pendant is a Mirror Cut. The diamond close to the eyelet is simply a fragment of what might have been a basically faceted Gothic Rose. Thomas Cletscher (c. 1625) reproduced an enormous number of illustrations of these ‘modern’ Full Rose Cuts, undoubtedly achieved by cleaving. The earliest reference to cleaving, however, as Eric Bruton says, appears to have been made by Tavernier in the original French edition of his book published in 1676.

At first, full Rose Cuts tended to be rather flat, because thicker rough was fashioned into the contemporary Taille en Seize. Only when the latter went out of fashion did Rose Cuts become higher, often very high. Examples can be seen on the crown of Queen Louisa Ulrica of Sweden, dating from 1751 and all set with Regular Full Rose Cuts; on the epaulette of the French King Louis XV, and on the shoulder knot of Augustus the Strong.

In the nineteenth century most of these high Roses were refashioned into Brilliants. Rose Cuts as principal gems lost their great popularity, but the demand for small, flat and therefore inexpensive Roses increased enormously. These were mainly designed to embellish informal jewels.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

But modern prospectors have failed to rediscover the emerald mines of the Incas. It is known that before the conquest of Peru by the Incas the people of that country obtained huge quantities of emeralds; and even long after they had lost their independence they were still able to obtain the precious gems by some means. In Prescott’s Conquest of Peru there is an account of how the Spaniards under Pizarro came to the province of Quito and found ‘the fair River of Emeralds, so called from the quarries of the beautiful gem on its borders, from which the Indian monarchs enriched their treasury.’ But modern adventurers have not found those quarries, though the emerald deposits from which in our own day the best stones come are also in South America, near Bogota, capital of the Republic of Colombia.

Siberia also produces emeralds. Comparatively recently they were discovered—in company with aquamarines and alexandrites—in the Ural mountains, on the River Takovaya, some sixty miles N.E from Ekaterinburg. Other localities in which the gem has been found—not always of anything like first-rate quality, however—are the Salzburg Alps (Habachthal), and in Norway and New South Wales. In the U.S.A they are found in the hiddenite workings at Stonypoint, Alexander County, N.C.

Hernando Cortes, conqueror of Mexico, was given, or otherwise obtained from Montezuma, large quantities of emeralds which he dispatched to the Spanish Court. But there were certain gems which he reserved as a gift for his bride, notably several emeralds carved in the shape of a fish, a hunting horn, a bell and a small cup.

These gems excited the admiration of the Court ladies, says Prescott again (this time in his Conquest of Mexico), and, perhaps unfortunately for Cortes, the desire of his queen, Isabella. ‘The queen of Charles the Fifth, it is said—it may be the idle gossip of a Court—had intimated a willingness to become proprietor of some of these magnificent baubles; and the preference which Cortes gave to his fair bride caused some feelings of estrangement in the royal bosom, which had an unfavorable influence on the future fortunes of the marquess.’

Feelings of estrangement are easily produced in royal bosoms, and it is therefore not impossible that emeralds brought about the downfall of the conqueror of Mexico, just as in his time they lured on the conqueror of Peru.

There is a footnote to this mention of Pizarro in Peru. The morning after I had written the foregoing passage I opened my morning paper and read this letter from a correspondent:

‘Sir,
Your correspondent is wrong in believing that the Inca treasure designated ‘Big Fish’ is buried beneath Cuzco. In 1575 a direct descendant, or cacique, of the Chimu dynasty, which was destroyed by the Inca conquerors 200 years before, still lived in the ancient Chimu capital near to what is now known as Trujillo on the coast. A young Spaniard, trading as a pedlar between Lima and Trujillo, became so attached to the cacique that he became godfather to two of the cacique’s children.

‘The cacique took him one day to a cave among the ruins of the ancient city and showed him an immense wealth of idols and other articles of gold. In the center of the room was a table of silver, upon which was a model of a fish, the body of gold and the eyes formed by two splendid emeralds.

‘The Spaniard was stupefied at the sight and the cacique said; ‘This is all yours. Today I give you the Peche Chico or Little Fish. If you fulfil the vows you have made to me to devote one-fourth to the Church and look after the poor, I will one day take you the Peche Grande, or Big Fish.’

‘The amount realized on the Peche Chico must have been enormous, because the fifth which went to the Royal Treasury of Spain, according to the old records, was 85000 castellanos of gold. The young Spaniard went to Lima and in a few years dissipated his wealth in luxurious living. He returned to the old cacique for the Peche Grande, but met with stern refusal for not having kept his vow. Many efforts have been made, and seven syndicates have been formed, to explore the ruins, but with no result.’

Daily Telegraph, April 22nd, 1938.

Burmese Ruby Vs Consumers

This is the real story. Many consumers don't see the link between Burmese rubies and human rights abuses in Burma. Those who are aware of the problems in Burma can't make up their mind, especially the gem trade, because rubies are special and more than 90% come from Burma, with treatments done in Thailand, at an affordable cost. Consumers love cheap but beautiful rubies.

Many consumers are even confused with gem lab reports on origin and treatments. What's surprising to me is that there are many gem schools + labs at all major cities in the world + the internet provides free info on gemstones, treatments, synthetics, human rights issues, mining, child labor and so on, and yet when you talk to consumers on important issues related to high value gems such as rubies, especially Burmese, you see 'momentary autism'. They just go blank--inert. Sometimes it's yes yes, no no situation. It looks like no one knows how to connect the dots.

What do you think?

King Christian’s Crown

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

A masterpiece in gold and colored enamel, the crown was made for the coronation in 1596 of Christian IV of Denmark by Dirk Fyring and Corvinianus Sauer. It was set with pearls and with 294 diamonds—large Table Cuts, numerous Gothic Roses with both basic and trihedral faceting, and two diamond Rosettes.

Sauer, a well-known creative goldsmith, was born in Augsburg but learned his trade in France and Venice. He was employed by Fyring, a master goldsmith from north Germany, and came to Odense some time before 1581 to work for the Danish royal family. A number of his drawings are incorporated in a book of designs by Jacob Moore, now in the Hamburg City Library. Moore redesigned Sauer’s creations and therefore the diamonds may not all be correctly reproduced in his book.

Venom

(via New Yorker): In my view, the New Yorker magazine article titled 'Spider Woman' (March 5, 2007 issue, "A Reporter at Large" segment) provides a interesting 'blink' when you analyze the concept in the gem/art market perspective. I have heard gem/art dealers describing 'Venom Syndrome' with various interpretations. Then I came across the article + it makes sense. 'A single spider can inject its victims with as many as two hundred compounds: proteases that dissolve flesh, gelatinases that dissolve connective tissues, neurotoxins that short-circuit nerves, slow the heart, and freeze the limbs. A spider's venom offers a window onto its evolution, Bindford says — a chemical record of its most successful experiments at killing prey.'

Heard On The Street

News follows price. Gem/art markets are good predictors of events.

The World's 10 Most Polluted Places 2007

(via Forbes): The World's 10 Most Polluted Places 2007

1. Summit, Azerbaijan
2. Lin-fen, China
3. Tianjin, China
4. Sukinda, India
5. Vapi, India
6. La Oroya, Peru
7. Dzerzinsk, Russia
8. Norilsk, Russia
9. Chernobyl, Ukraine
10. Kabwe, Zambia

A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Directed by: Richard Lester
Screenplay: Alun Owen
Cast: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr

(via YouTube): The Beatles - A Hard Days Night Trailer Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XVCCiix7So

A Hard Day's Night Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkKra3_pfBY

A Hard Day's Night Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42toNH3W_hA

A unique pop musical + funny + joyous + good songs. I enjoyed it.

Great Paper

Economist writes about a Magna Carta, the most famous document in history, which was originally issued by Britain’s King John in 1215 + this comment (David Redden, a resident scholar at Sotheby's): 'This is a very deep market with very deep pockets. I'd say that the estimate of $20m-30m for Magna Carta is, if anything, conservative' + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10312722

(via BBC) Charting Out The Magna Carta
The latest chapter in the history of the Magna Carta is the sale of one example of it, sealed by King Edward I and dating from 1297, which has been sold at Sotheby's in New York for £10.6m ($21.3m).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7150403.stm

Art 2.0: A Mashup Of Techniques

Art 2.0: A Mashup Of Techniques
http://fastcompany.com/multimedia/slideshows/content/alex-ostroy.html

Brilliant!

Making Waves

Rosa Lowinger writes about Kcho, the quintessential Cuban artist of the 'special period' + the concept of travel and migration in the context of his country's recent history in his work + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=725

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Never did that sovereign do a wiser or a better thing for himself than when he made Holbein his painter. Not only did the artist present that king to posterity in a manner that mitigates our judgement of his cruelties, but he has made the whole history of that period live for us, as no previous period in English history lives, by his series of portraits and portrait drawings of the English Court. Mr Ford Madox Hueffer has pointedly observed:

How comparatively cold we are left by the name, say of Edward III, a great king surrounded by great men in a stirring period. No visual image comes to the mind’s eye: at most we see, imaginatively, coins and the seals that depend from charters.

Mr Hueffer truly argues that Henry VIII and his men would be just as lifeless without Holbein, and the way he has made them live in our imagination is a tribute not only to Holbein but also to the preserving power of art.

While preparing the way for his advancement in England, Holbein did not neglect the connection he already had on the Continent, and three years before his appointment as Court Painter he sought to widen and enhance his foreign custom by painting another show piece: ‘The Ambassadors’ was painted deliberately to force an entry into diplomatic circles as the ‘George Gisze’ had been to secure him the custom of the men of commerce. This remarkable group of Jean de Dinteville, Lord of Polisy, on the left, wearing the French Order of S. Michel, and of Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, in doctor’s cap and gown, on the right, fascinates all beholders by the brilliance with which the accessories are painted, the globe, the turkey rug, the tiling, the mandoline, the astronomical instruments and in the foreground the anamorphosis (or distorted representation) of a human skull. Many keen imaginations have set their wits to work to find an inner meaning to this curiously elongated death’s-head, but the most plausible explanation is found in the fact that Holbein’s own name means ‘skull’ in his native language, and this devise may consequently be regarded as a fanciful way of putting his seal or cipher on his work. Another interpretation is that here, as in other portraits by Holbein, the skull is introduced to reinforce the lesson of the ‘Dance of Death’, that to this all must come. Whatever the painter’s original idea may have been, his work is a complete success; he painted it to create a sensation, and it has created a sensation for centuries. It may be added that this elongated skull completes the design, by paralleling the line from the one ambassador’s hand (holding the dagger) to the head of the other ambassador.

After the death of Jane Seymour, when Europe was searched for marriageable princesses to console the royal widower, Holbein in February 1538 was sent to Brussels to paint his matchless portrait of King Christian’s daughter ‘Christina of Denmark’, who, fortunately for herself, escaped Henry VIII and afterwards married the Duke of Lorraine as her second husband. One of Holbein’s last works, this is by many accounted his greatest. Here he has painted no show-piece, but set forth with divine simplicity the grace and dignity of meditative girlhood.

From Brussels Holbein went to Burgundy, where he painted other portraits, and in December of the same year he returned to London. Almost exactly five years later he caught the plague. In November 1543 Holbein died in London, a victim of the same disease that had already killed Giorgione in his youth and was destined, thirty-three years later, to carry off Titian in his old age.

Just as Durer and Holbein had no great forerunners, so they had no great successors, and Europe had to wait thirty-four years before another great master of art was born, outside Italy, in the person of Peter Paul Rubens.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

I soon discovered that my employer had not been guided by altruism. For this office contained a safe, and the safe often contained gems worth many millions of francs. Such a fortune could not be left unattended for many hours at a time and so he had been constrained to stay at home in the evenings to look after it. This did not suit his natural habits. As my bed was placed flush with the thin partition separating me from the safe, once I was installed I became automatically the guardian of all his treasures, and my boss no doubt assumed that any attempt at tampering with the safe would awaken me and at once bring me rushing to its defence.

He was soon undeceived. One night he came home rather sick because of some exotic food he had eaten, and wanting either sympathy or help from me, he tried to wake me up. He found that short of breaking down my door he could not disturb my sweet slumbers. So another night he determined to give me a scare. He came home on tiptoe, went straight to the office and fumbled noisily with the combination of the safe. It woke me up and I called him by name. No answer. I called again. A raucous voice answered this time and told me to keep quiet if I valued my life. I did value my life.

Next morning my principal reproached me bitterly for not reacting to his trick. I retorted that his joke was in bad taste, and that if he wanted me to work by day and be on sentry go at night, he might at least provide me with an alarm bell and a pistol. He might even raise my salary, too. He merely sneered and invited me to feel his biceps.

A few weeks later he found fault with me again on another account. I woke up and heard him come in in the small of hours of the morning—with a lady. Instead of retiring quietly like respectable people, he and his companion carried on a lively conversation in the drawing room, and presently I heard the popping of champagne corks. Then I heard footsteps outside my door, followed by a loud insistent knock. I got out of bed and opened to him. There he stood, holding out a brimming glass of wine.
‘Drink that to my health,’ said he. ‘It’s my birthday. And get into your dressing gown and join us in the drawing room.’

Orders is orders. When I had splashed the sleep out of my eyes and put on a dressing gown, I went into the drawing room and found that my boss’s friend was Margot, of the Casino de Paris. She was a tactful girl in the ordinary way, and if she had not dined and wined a little too lavishly she would instinctively have sized up the situation and not let it be known that we had already met. Certainly she would not have followed her impulse. She would not have drawn me up tenderly to her and kissed me with a fervor which roused the anger of my boss.

But I will draw a veil over the scene that followed. There resulted one of those piquant little affairs, now that Margot knew where I lived, in which woman is all the huntress and man the hunted. She was not content to leave me alone. Somehow, because I was simply not interested in her, she became more and more determined. She wrote me little billets-doux and bribed the concierge to act as go-between. But it wasn’t any use, and to this day I marvel that such a charming creature should have bothered over a poor awkward cold youth like myself.

Yet, though I never became her customer, she was to be mine in the end. Some years after my Paris days, when all memory of her had faded from my mind, I met her again. No, not in rags in the gutter, but as radiantly beautiful as ever and ‘settle down’—that is, she was being kept by a wealthy and generous Argentinian and had quite make up her mind to be true to him, because she was tired of the gay life. She was after more emeralds and had heard that I had exceedingly fine Colombian emerald for sale. I sold it to her, and as we parted, I with a bow, she put on a hand and laid it on my arm. ‘You know, mon ami, that my grand passion was and is for one who scorned me. I should hate you for it. But no, I remain your friend. I will even pray for you when I come to my second childhood and take no religion.’

But if I had been Margot’s grand passion, I at least shared her heart with emeralds. When I think of that strange unruly woman I think of the green stones, and whether for this or another reason they are by far my favorites among gems. From the point of view of hardness it is inferior to the ruby (8.5) and the sapphire (9), being only 7.5. It is therefore much softer than either of the other two precious stones, but I do not consider that this in itself is sufficient to assign the emerald to third place. And if you consider beauty and rarity, it is second to none.

The emerald is a variety of beryl. All beryls have the approximate hardness of 8, but they vary somewhat, some being much softer than others. Both the aquamarine and the euclase belong to this family of stones. But whereas the aquamarine, as its name reveals, is sea-green and the euclase varies from yellow to something like sea-green, due to the presence of small quantities of oxide of iron, the color of the emerald is a bright lustrous green, derived from its chromium content.

Speaking historically, emeralds were already being mined in Upper Egypt in 1650 B.C and the Greeks, in the days of Alexander the Great, were still tapping the same source of supply. Cleopatra, extravagant queen and lover of the exquisite, reveled in the emeralds of Egypt, and some of her famous gems were dug from Egyptian soil.

The name for emerald in many languages is a mispronunciation of the Arab ‘Zummurud’. Spanish ‘Esmeralda,’ French ‘Emeraude’, German ‘Smargd’, English ‘Emerald,’ are all lovely variations on a name that is pure music. Emeralds have been loved and prized throughout medieval and modern times as much as in the ancient days, but it was only in 1817 that a Frenchman named Caillioud rediscovered the remains of the extensive emerald workings of Egypt in Northern Etbai. Cleopatra’s mines are located in Jebel Sikait and Jebel Zabra, near the Red Sea coast east of Aswan, and the emerald crystals found there were embedded in mica and talc schists. In nine cases out of ten all the beryls, emerald, aquamarine and euclase, are to be found in schists of this character.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds (continued)

Heard On The Street

When it comes to buying gems/art, feeling counts every bit as much and often more than thought. Passions overwhelm reason time and again. Practice impulse control + persistence.

Italians Crack Open DNA Secrets Of Pinot Noir

Ben Hirschler writes about breakthrough in the genetic make-up of Pinot Noir by Italian scientists (hardier vines/cheaper fine wines) + other viewpoints @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071219/sc_nm/genetics_wine_dc

Useful link:
http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0001326

It's A Gift

It's A Gift (1934)
Directed by: Norman Z. McLeod
Cast: W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard

(via YouTube): It's A Gift--Carl LaFong Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBFLn8zvsjY

It's A Gift--Carl LaFong Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCg9Lr6G8VE

It's A Gift Clip 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5C8XnZ8qwI

A W C Fields classic + comic. I enjoyed it.

The 20 Most Earthquake-Vulnerable Cities 2007

(via Forbes) The 20 Most Earthquake-Vulnerable Cities 2007

1. Kathmandu, Nepal
2. Istanbul, Turkey
3. Delhi, India
4. Quito, Ecuador
5. Manila, Philippines
6. Islambad/Rawalpindi, Pakistan
7. San Salvador, El Salvador
8. Mexico City, Mexico
9. Izmir, Turkey
10. Jakarta, Indonesia
11. Tokyo, Japan
12. Mumbai, India
13. Guayaquil, Ecuador
14. Bandung, Indonesia
15. Santiago, Chile
16. Tashkent, Uzbekistan
17. Tijuana, Mexico
18. Nagoya, Japan
19. Antofagasta, Chile
20. Kobe, Japan

Lonely Landscapes

(via BBC) Lonely Landscapes . Josef Hoflehner's scenes of solitude.

It's beautiful.

Catch Some Rays

(via The Guardian) Anthony McCall's 'solid light' projections @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2226665,00.html

It's brilliant.

Useful link:
serpentinegallery.org

Beauty & The Bimbo

David Kirby writes about John Currin's style: a combination of Renaissance grace + kitsch quality + an emerging painter + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=702

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

The careful reader will have observed that no paintings are given above for the years 1523 to 1525, and indeed these were bad years for all painters. When Guilio de’ Medici was elected Pope as Clement VII in 1523, he found, as a historian has said, ‘the world in confusion, a great movement going on in Germany, a great war just begun between the three most powerful Christian monarchs—a war to which he himself was pledged.’ Two months after he had signed the treaty of alliance, Francis I of France was defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia, and Emperor’s troops—thousands of Protestants among them—headed for Rome. All the diplomatic wiles of the Pontiff were unavailing, and in May 1527 a horrified world beheld Christian troops, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians, engaged in the sack of Rome.

Basle, then a city of the Empire, though not exposed to the full force of the currents of war, was not untouched by these events, and Holbein, like a shrewd man of the world, began to look out for a shelter from the storm that was convulsing Europe. His native Germany was out of the question, for there paintings already in existence were being destroyed by zealots desirous of ‘purifying’ Protestant churches. During this time of waiting, when commissions for pictures were scarce, Holbein began that series of wood-engravings which have done as much as any of his paintings to make his name illustrious.

No works of Holbein have held a more lasting place in the popular imagination than his little woodcuts illustrating ‘The Dance of Death’. As remote in its origin as the ‘morality play, this picturing of the fact that all living beings must die was probably in its beginning a monkish device to compel those who could not read to realize their inevitable fate. This lesson was driven home by the universality with which the theme was expounded. In the older prints of this subject the highest and lowest in the land were shown each dancing with a dead partner of the same rank and calling, a king dancing with a dead king, a bishop dancing with a dead bishop, a merchant with a dead merchant, a laborer with a dead laborer. Whoever you were you could not escape death, that was always dancing at your heels. This was the age-old theme to which Holbein gave new life, and if his versions of the Dance of Death has eclipsed all other versions it is because Holbein was the first to present Death as an abstraction, common to all prints in the series, and because no other treatment of the theme has excelled his in the pictorial elements of design. Each of these prints is itself a perfect little picture—see how beautiful is the landscape with the setting sun in ‘The Husbandman’. As for its value as preaching, Holbein’s series serves a double purpose, emphasizing by the skeleton that accompanies all alike, Pope, Cardinal, Miser, Husbandman, and what not, the equality as well as the universality of death. Holbein’s message is not only that ‘all flesh is grass’; but also that under their skin ‘the colonel’s lady and Judith O’Grady’ are very much alike.

In 1526 Holbein found the haven for which he had been looking in England, an isle remote from the European storm center. It is probable that he had become known through Erasmus to Sir Thomas Moore, and so was invited to come; his painting of ‘The Household of Sir Thomas Moore’ was one of the earliest and most important paintings executed by Holbein during his first stay in England. In 1528 he returned to Basle for three years, and having dispatched thence his gorgeous portrait of ‘George Gisze, Merchant of the Steelyard’ to show what he could do in portraiture, he returned to England in 1531.

This handsome and exceedingly ornate portrait of a young merchant in his counting-house was a deliberate showpiece which had exactly the effect the painter intended. In troublous and uncertain times princes and great nobles were unreliable patrons; at any moment they might be dethroned, killed or executed. Like a prudent man Holbein wished to establish a connection with a steadier, yet equally rich stratum of society, namely the great merchants. Therefore he cleverly set his cap at the wealthy German merchants settled in London, and showed them in this portrait that he could make a merchant look as splendid and imposing as any king or noblemen. He delivered his sample, and human vanity did the rest. The German ‘Merchants of the Steelyard’ as this Corporation was styled, flocked to his studio in London. Three years later his first English patron, Sir Thomas Moore, was sent to the scaffold by Henry VIII because he declined to declare the nullity of that royal reprobate’s first marriage with Catherine of Aragon.

To have been the friend of Moore was at this time no commendation to the favor of the Court; nevertheless, Holbein was not the man to miss any opportunity of ‘getting on’ for want of a little tact and diplomacy. Firmly based on the support of the German merchants, he tried another method of approach. Very soon we find him painting his splendid portrait of ‘Robert Cheseman, the King’s Falconer’, painting first the minor and then the great courtiers, till at last, in 1536, he achieved what no doubt had been his aim from the first, and was appointed Court Painter to King Henry VIII.

The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

Presently a tall graceful blonde, radiantly beautiful, exquisitely gowned, completely sure of herself, tapped Monsieur Gotin with her fan. ‘Comment vas-tu, Coco?’ she said, addressing him familiarly.
‘Ah, Margot, te voici,’ he replied, ‘I thought you were in the South of France with your sugar millionaire. Is he tired of you or you of him?
‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ said she calmly. ‘Both of us like variety. You know I tire of any man after a month. Tiens, who is your young friend? I like the look of him. Why don’t you introduce him to me? You know my weakness for unspoiled youngsters.’
With no very good grace he introduced us. I bowed. She took my hand in hers. ‘I hope we shall be very good friends,’ she said.
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Monsieur Gotin decidedly. ‘I am in charge of this young man’s morals. Besides, Margot, I must reveal to you that he has no money to speak of and cannot pay for luxuries you are accustomed to. He has to work for his living.’
She pouted her lips and acted like a child to whom a favor has been denied. ‘With your permission,’ she said, and seated herself at our table. It was then that I noticed more closely the jewels she was wearing, a fine emerald ring, a fine golden chain round her neck which supported a piece of filigree with another large emerald in the center, two emeralds in her ears. No other jewelry.
‘Coffee?’ asked Monsieur Gotin.
‘A bottle of champagne,’ she said without hesitation.
‘You shall have what you want, Margot,’ he shrugged, ‘particularly as nothing could have been more calculated to put my young friend off you than that?’
‘How is that?’ she said, powdering her nose, and looking at me out of her great eyes, her large rather prominent eyes that looked so strangely childlike.
‘A friendship based upon champagne cannot be an alluring prospect for a young man who has just arrived in Paris with his way to make,’ said Monsieur Gotin smugly.
‘But I only make those pay who have the money,’ she replied, ‘and whose only attraction is a well-stuffed pocket book. You know, Coco, that when it suits me I can be generous, and for the time being I have no amant.’
Whereupon she started to talk to me in great good humor, asking me about myself and drawing me out marvelously. ‘You speak very good French,’ she said graciously.
‘You flatter me, mademoiselle,’ I said. ‘My French is school French and I am not fluent, I fear.’
‘That is just why you should at once adopt the only method of acquiring real fluency in our beautiful language,’ she said slyly.
‘What method is that?’ asked I, thinking of Ollendorf.
‘To sleep with your teacher,’ she said.
‘That will do,’ said Monsieur Gotin severely.
‘It will indeed,’ said Margot, ‘since you are determined to frustrate me, Coco. But all the same, I tell you that your young friend shall become my friend. But now I must leave you, messieurs,’ she said, rising. ‘I must go and find someone willing to part with ten louis for the pleasure of my company from now until breakfast time. I’m absolutely broke.’ She pressed into my hand her ivory card and disappeared with a wave of the hand among the milling crowd.
‘A delightful woman,’ said Monsieur Gotin, leaning over and taking the card out of my hand before I knew what he was doing. ‘Not the ordinary putain. She comes of excellent family and had a convent education. But,’ he added dispassionately, ‘she is passionate’—he tapped the table—‘unaccountable’—another tap—‘restless’—tap—‘and fearfully extravagant. She has ruined at least two fils de famille and will doubtless ruin more. I am not going to have her play with you, my young friend.’
‘But you introduced me to her?’ I said, bewildered.
‘Precisely. Hence it is my responsibility that you should go no farther with her.’ He tore the little card into tiny pieces.
‘The emeralds,’ I stammered, for their luster had been more on my mind than the beauty of their wearer. ‘They are lovely. And she says she is broke.’
‘Ah, the emeralds,’ he said. ‘They are Margot’s true passion. She would not part with one of them if she were starving, I believe. And she never wears anything but emeralds. She is a good judge and makes her admirers buy her the best.’
However, I was less interested in the handsome Margot than in her emeralds, and less interested in emeralds than, at the moment, finding my feet in Paris and holding down my job. My principal occupied a six room bachelor apartment in the vicinity of the Grand Opera. One room served him as an office, and when I entered upon my new duties another was assigned to me as a bedroom. It was really no more than a boxroom and I could scarcely turn round in it, but as the arrangement save me at least fifty francs a month, I was not dissatisfied.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds (continued)

Franschhoek

Franschhoek is considered the food and wine capital of South Africa + Le Quartier Français is one of the World's 50 Best Restaurants.

Useful links:
www.franschhoek.org.za
Cape Grace
12 Apostles
Ginja
Bukhara
Baia at the Waterfront

DTC Sightholders

The most complete unofficial list is on the Rapaport Web site.
http://www.diamonds.net/news/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=20030 .The companies that have been selected as DTC sightholders will be offered rough diamond supplies from DTC London + DTC South Africa (wholly owned + joint-venture DTC operations around the world). The contract period for the sights will run three years (2008-2011).

Useful link:
Diamond Trading Company

Why We Recognise The Smell Of A Scent

(via ANI) Here is an interesting study by researchers on 'dynamic connectivity', which explains why, when we notice a scent, the brain quickly sorts through input and determines exactly what that smell is + other viewpoints @ http://in.news.yahoo.com/071217/139/6oinl.html

I see intriguing parallels between the smell of scent and colored stone/diamond grading + wine/tea/coffee/chocolate tasting.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Screenplay: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach

(via YouTube): The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Opening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGIelcG0r3s

The Good The Bad and the Ugly Finale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXldafIl5DQ

A Clint Eastwood classic + humorous + tragic + good story. I enjoyed it.

Top 10 Movies 2007

(via Time/Richard Schickel): Top 10 Movies 2007

#1. Michael Clayton
#2. No Country for Old Men
#3. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
#4. After the Wedding
#5. Black Book
#6. Breach
#7. The Savages
#8. In the Valley of Elah
#9. There Will Be Blood
#10. Dan in Real Life

The New Breed

Robyn Meredith writes about a new generation of art collectors + parallels between the tech industry and the contemporary art world + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/1224/072.html

The Undiscovered O'Keeffe

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp writes about the unknown Georgia O'Keeffe's works on paper + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=685

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

2

After Durer’s death many carried on the tradition he had bequeathed to his country as an engraver—the prints of Aldegraver, Beham, and other followers are still treasured by collectors—but none of them won great fame in painting. Matthew Grunewald, Durer’s contemporary, had a pupil Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), who was much esteemed by his fellow citizens of Wittemberg and was appointed Court Painter to the Protestant prince Frederick of Saxony; but we have only to look at the doll-faced ‘Portrait of a Young Lady’ by him in the National Gallery to see how far Cranach’s art fell below that of Durer.

Only one other painter of German origin beside Durer has so far succeeded in capturing the world’s attention, namely Hans Holbein the Younger, who when Durer died in 1528 was a young man of thirty one, painting in England. No more than twenty six years separate the birth of Holbein from that of Durer, yet within the space of that one generation so great had been the revolution in men’s minds that the two artists seem to belong to different ages. Holbein grew up during the greatest Wonder-Time in world’s history. We who have benefited by and taken for granted the astounding discoveries made during what is known as the Epoch of Maximilian (1493-1519), which approximates to the opening of the reign of our Henry VIII, find it difficult to realize the crash of old ideas and the bombardment of new ones which filled the world during this epoch:

That time (as Lord Bryce has told us)—a time of change and movement in every part of human life, a time when printing had become common, and books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing the face of war—was especially marked by one event to which the history of the world offers no parallel before or since, the discovery of America....The feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm plain of the earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an insignificant globe which, so far from being the center of the universe, was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least of its countless systems.

Nothing but an appreciation of these historical facts can teach us rightly to comprehend the essential difference between the art of the two great German masters: for as the ‘feeling of mysterious awe’ with which all his work, whether painted or engraved, is impregnated, makes Albert Durer the last and supreme expression of medievalism, so an inner consciousness of man’s insignificance and a frank recognition of material facts makes Holbein the first exponent in art of Modern Science.

The great Hans Holbein was the son of an artist of the same name, Han Holbein the Elder, a poor and struggling painter of religious pictures in the flourishing city of Augsburg. Here Hans Holbein the Younger was born in 1497. There was never any doubt as to his calling, for he belonged to a family of painters. Not only his father, but his uncle and his brother were painters also. His father, who was chiefly influenced by the Flemish painter Roger van der Weyden, had little to teach the son, and when he was seventeen or eighteen young Hans left his father’s house in company with his elder brother Ambrosius, and began a foreign tour which eventually ended as Basle. Owing to the lack of any exact records and the constant confusion of the two Holbeins, father and son, the details of Hobleins early life are still a matter of conjecture and controversy. Some hold that the elder Holbein with his family moved from Augsburg to Lucerne about 1514, but the one thing certain is that young Holbein was at Basle in 1515, where he at once found work as a designer with the printer and publisher Frobenius. Through Frobenius he came to know Erasmus, who had recently left France and now graced Basle with his universal fame as a scholar; and soon the young artist found plenty of employment both as a book illustrator and portraitist. One of the earliest and most loyal of his patrons was the Basle merchant Jacob Meyer, whose portrait and especially the splendid sketch for the same foreshadowed the future greatness of the artist as a portrait painter. About 1516 or 1517 Holbein the Younger was in Lucerne, where he decorated a house, and it is conjectured that about this time he also traveled in Italy; but there is no sure proof, and we can only guess at his movements till he reappears at Basle in 1519. Though but twenty two, he is now a man and a master. In 1520 he became a citizen of Basle—a necessity if he wished to practise painting in that city—and about the same time he married a widow with two children.

He was a master, but a master of another order to Durer. Holbein was a pure professional painter, anxious to do a day’s work and do it as well as he possibly could; but he did not attempt to show how life should be lived or to penetrate its mysteries: he was content to paint what he saw, paint it truly and splendidly, but like the wise child of a sophisticated age he refrained from a futile endeavor to dig beneath the surface. Holbein can show you the character of a man, as in his portrait of Jacob Meyer; but Durer would have tried to read his soul.

In 1521 he painted his masterly, though to many unattractive picture, ‘The Dead Man,’ horribly realistic some would say, yet in truth it is not morbid. For this outstretched corpse is painted with the calm detachment of a student of anatomy; it is a manifestation of the sceptical, inquiring, but unmoved gaze of Science confronted with a Fact. In 1522 he painted ‘Two Saints’ and a ‘Madonna’ in the following year a ‘Portrait of Erasmus,’ in 1526 a ‘Venus’ and a gay lady styled ‘Lais Corinthiaca’ and in 1529 he painted a great ‘Madonna’ for his friend Jacob Meyer.

The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)

The Agraffe Of Maximilian I

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

A most unusual agraffe was made in 1603 by the Augsburg master goldsmith Hans Georg Beuerl (now in the Schatzkhammer der Residenz, Munich). Set with 245 diamonds, it is an enormous jewel, weighing 410 grams and measuring 17.5 cm in height. It represents a trophy of weapons, with cuirass and helmet, set all over with diamonds, with six pearls adorning the upper part. The composition is dominated by large Table Cuts of exceptionally fine make, but it also contains a whole collection of different contemporary cuts, all beautifully fashioned, including trihedrally faceted lozenges.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

My chance to get away from Vienna came at last when a letter I had written to the head of an important firm of precious stone dealers in London (who was a relation of mine) brought me the welcome offer to join their Paris branch.

I was over the moon. My mother, although she was in great distress at the thought of losing me, refused to stand in my way, and so the great day came when with a good wardrobe, a little money I had saved up and the with the most wonderful plans for the future, I set out for Paris.

At first I was terribly disappointed with the city of whose beauty and charm I had heard and read so much, and during the first weeks I was so despondent that it would not have taken much to lure me back to Vienna.

One of my letters of introduction was a passport to the acquaintance of a certain Monsieur Gotin whom I had met at the home of my principal in Vienna. He was a bachelor in a good position, and my old chief had thought him a good parti for his daughter and had gone to great lengths to entertain him every time he went to Vienna.

It was Monsieur Gotin who first offered to introduce me to the night life of Paris. He would take me to dinner and then on to a show, he said. I was full of anticipation, for I had as yet seen nothing but office, street and boulevard-café life. I soon found that this Monsieur Gotin was a rare hypocrite, a smug fellow who had been lauded by the old gentleman in Vienna as a model of what a God-fearing young man should be. Dinner over, he suggested a visit to the Casino de Paris.

‘I am in your hands, monsieur,’ said I, wondering a little, for I thought it a queer place to be taken to by a model of propriety. The revue which was then being staged had the name of being one of the best of its kind for many seasons, but for all that, most of the audience seemed to be paying no attention whatever to the performance. In fact, the house was divided into two parts: the auditorium and the ‘promenoir’, and of the two the promenoir was the most important, because few of the men to be found there bothered to step beyond it. Instead they sat at small side tables on raised platforms where refreshments were served, and surveyed in comfort the moving crowd of well-groomed men and elegant demimondes who formed the concourse. Buy why should I describe at length what every traveled Englishman and American who has been in Paris probably knows by heart?

Even as a raw youth I, too, had seen painted vice on the trottoirs of Vienna’s mean streets and had fled from it as one flees from the plague. I had encountered it, too, in the fashionable thoroughfares of my home city in more alluring guise, but they were still street women all, to be passed by with disdain and fear if one’s upbringing had been as mine.

But here, openly unashamedly, in full view of many ‘good’ women who had come from all parts of the world to see Paris night life, were men young and old, some so decrepit that they could scarcely walk with aid of two sticks, buzzing around the graceful scented cocottes like bluebottles attracted by a morsel of decaying meat. We joined the promenaders. Monsieur Gotin and I, and I noticed that he had a friendly smile and a wave for several of the ladies who for the moment were seated alone at one or other of the little raised tables. Sometimes he would stop for a moment to exchange badinage with sundry female habituées, and finally he suggested that we, too, should take our seats. He ordered coffee and liqueurs and leaned back at his ease, pointing out to me those among the promenaders who were men of note. To me they all looked alike, personages of importance, well-groomed adventurers, blackguards, guides, pimps and procurers, except that perhaps often the gentlemen looked the least gentlemanly.

The scene was brilliantly lit, the orchestra played ceaselessly, the atmosphere was heavy with a medley of scents. There was a great buzz of voices, much senseless laughter, a gaiety somewhat forced: the picture of Pleasure with a capital P.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds (continued)

Heard On The Street

In order to trade effectively, one has to understand that gem/art markets are filled with large number of market participants (with/without knowledge) + hopes + fears + thoughts. It’s the people + their thoughts + their expectations that create sometimes strange behavior + inefficient markets + mispriced gems/art = opportunities to make money.

We Are The Music Makers

A nice poem.

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844 - 1881): We Are The Music Makers

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

The Services Imperative

(via Knowledge at Wharton) Stephen Brown + Mary Jo Bitner's views on the future of business services + the impact in the global economy + other viewpoints @ http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewfeature&id=1517

Top 10 Movies 2007

(via Time/Richard Corliss): Top 10 Movies 2007

#1. No Country for Old Men
#2. The Lives of Others
#3. Killer of Sheep
#4. Atonement
#5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
#6. Persepolis
#7. No End in Sight
#8. In the Valley of Elah
#9. Waitress
#10. Beowulf

The Fly

The Fly (1986)
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Screenplay: David Cronenberg, George Langelaan, Charles Edward Pogue
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis

(via YouTube): The Fly (1986 Movie Trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7xoyu08xNE&feature=related

The Fly (1986) - Behind the Scenes_Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Knr9GrYbQ

The Fly (1986) - Behind the Scenes_Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbMT2v4vV0&feature=related

A unique metamorphosis + love/loss concept + the special effects, I loved it.

That's Amore

Bernard Condon writes about the art of smoking a Cuban stogie + Salvatore Parisi + the Pelo de Oro plant + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/1224/086.html

This comment: 'Smoking a Havana cigar is like having sex with a real woman. If the parallel seems ridiculous, you don't know Havanas--or you don't know real women.'

Brilliant!

The Genetic Esthetic

Barbara Pollack writes about artists using cutting-edge medical technology--from X rays and MRIs to DNA diagnostics--as part of their art-making practices + obtaining images of their insides + pushing the boundaries of self-exposure, subjecting themselves to painful scrutiny on many levels + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=679

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

It was in 1517 that Martin Luther sounded the tocsin for the Reformation by nailing his ninety five theses on the nature of papal indulgences to the great door of the Church of Wittemberg. It was in the following year that Durer received kindness and attention from his imperial patron, the Catholic prince Maximilian I. The artist was in a difficult position, but though he took no definite side in the great controversy which ensued, his sympathy with the Reformers is shown in this picture by the fact that each of the four Apostles is holding and studying a Bible. It is significant to note that this painting was not a commission, but was painted by Durer to please himself and for presentation to the city of his birth. Here is the letter which accompanied the gift to the Council of Nuremberg:

Prudent, honorable, wise, dear Masters, I have been intending, for a long time past, to show my respect for your Wisdoms by the presentation of some humble picture of mine as a remembrance, but I have been prevented from so doing by the imperfection and insignificance of my works, for I felt that with such i could not stand well before your Wisdoms. Now, however, that I have just painted a panel upon which I have bestowed more trouble than on any other painting, I considered none more worthy to keep it as a remembrance than your Wisdoms.

Therefore, I present it to your Wisdoms with the humble and urgent prayer that you will favorably and graciously receive it, and will be and continue, as I have ever found you, my kind and dear Masters.

Thus shall I be diligent to serve your Wisdoms in all humility.

Possibly it was a remembrance of this picture in particular which prompted Luther, in his consolatory letter to the artist’s friend Pirkheimer, to pen this memorable epitaph on Albert Durer:

It is well for pious man to mourn the best of men, but you should call him happy, for Christ illuminated him and called him away in a good hour from the tempests and, possibly, yet more stormy times: so that he, who was worthy only to see the best, might not be compelled to see the worst.

The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)

Trihedrally Faceted Gothic Roses

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

This term is used for a design in which each basic triangular face has been replaced by a flat three-sided pyramid—that is, by three triangular faces raised to a low point. This is one of the very oldest faceting patterns, originally applied only a triangular rough. As in the case of six-facet Rose, the crystal shape which inspired the early cutters was likely to have been a cleavage with three natural faces. Such roughs may have been cleaved accidentally off a well developed trisoctaheral face, or they may have been a corner of a cuboid crystal.

Once the triangular rough had been fashioned into the simple pattern with three facets, an optical illusion caused by internal reflection made the Chiffre look as though it had nine facets, and this may have inspired cutters to apply trihedral facetings on the faces of rounded octahedrons, which was much easier to achieve than perfect plane facets. The subdividing of often numerous triangular faces into small facets was considered attractive and provided a popular alternative to Table Cuts, with their large, severe facets and strict geometry. Trihedral faceting was soon applied to flat-bottomed diamonds of every possible outline. It was most popular for angular shapes, but was also fairly common for diamonds with rounded outlines.

Not all diamonds with trihedral faceting are flatblacks. Some have pavilions of varying depths, difficult to distinguish in the closed settings of historical jewels and almost impossible to see in photographs. Most pavilion based diamonds (at least until the middle of the seventeenth century) were fashioned into Burgundian Point Cuts or Pointed Star Cuts.

In addition to Chiffres and six facet Roses, the Gothic Rose Cut included flat-bottomed diamonds of every conceivable outline, produced by economically minded cutters striving to save weight while achieving certain decorative effects as well as maximum display. Facets were applied at random, though usually in combinations of triangular facets. Perfect symmetry existed in the minds of artisans and designers only as an ideal and not necessarily as a practical goal.

The cube or hexoctahedron, is extremely rare in gem quality stones, but cube faces appear frequently in crystal combinations. The corners of a cubic formation can easily be cleaved off and produce excellent forms for further fashioning into Rose Cuts.

The kite-shaped diamond in the Dresden Cross Pendant clearly shows its trihedral faceting partly because of its unusual height (at the blunt end the face edge stands at an angle of 45º to the flat bottom) which makes it an outstanding feature. The soiled and damaged ancient foiling makes it impossible to analyze color or clarity adequately. The diamond is now yellowish and inclusions can be seen even with the naked eye. The choice of such a stone indicates that the jeweler was more interested in creating something beautiful than in producing a valuable piece of jewelry.

The Case Of The Nun’s Ruby

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

Jacob nodded his head up and down several times, but went away unmoved. When I saw him next he brought out of his pocket a crimson bottle-stopper of no ordinary size, and after pledging me to strict secrecy—confided to me that no king or emperor in the world possessed a finer ruby than that which he then held in his hand. For the time was several months later and poor Jacob was in a mental home where they were treating him very kindly. But he never recovered from the result of his shock when he discovered that he, the infallible Jacob W., had been the victim of his own faulty judgment and this five thousand pound ruby was laboratory grown.

There is a footnote to manufactured rubies: manufactured alexandrites, which are a variety of chrysoberyl, first discovered in 1833. Alexandrites are found in the Ural mountains and were given their name to celebrate the coming-of-age of the young Tsar Alexander II. When faceted and polished they are translucent and lustrous, but they are distinguished from all other gems by the intriguing way in which their blue or dark green daylight color changes into raspberry red in artificial light. (Footnote: Alexandrites are also produced in Ceylon,but not such good ones as in the Urals. For a long time the Ceylon gem dealers thought they were green sapphires until a specimen was consigned to London where it was tested by experts. The Ceylon Observer of January 11th, 1887, has an account of an alexandrite of immense size, 1876 carats—being a carat for almost every year of the date. Its owner refused 10000 rupees for it and it was eventually cut into small pieces).

Good alexandrites of any considerable size are extremely rare and fanciers are willing to pay high prices for really fine specimens. It was I who, more or less unwittingly, was responsible for the introduction of synthetic alexandrites to the world’s markets. The idea would never have occurred to me ordinarily, for most of my career has been spent with real gems and not with imitations and artificial stones. But there used to come to my office in Hatton Garden every month or so an analytical chemist, an exiled Russian resident in Paris, who specialized in the manufacture of high-grade scientific rubies. If I never bought anything from him it was not his fault, for he was an excellent salesman for one who had divided most of his life between laboratory and classroom.

Now I often regretted never being able to reward with a small order the pleasant half-hours I used to enjoy with this scholarly and cultured man. One day when he was unusually anxious to book an order, I pointed to a small alexandrite lying on my work table.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘It is a compatriot of yours,’ I said, ‘but unlike you, it is a turncoat.’ Then I explained to him the peculiar property of the stone.
‘Show me,’ said he, so I took him into a dark corner, lit a wax vesta, and like an unfailing miracle it was red stone and now lay in my hand and not a green stone.
‘Very intriguing,’ he said.
‘Now if you could only turn our scientific alexandrites,’ I suggested, more than half in jest. ‘Why, you could book me for a bushel of them.’
‘I shall have a good try,’ he said soberly, and said no more about it. I had completely forgotten the incident when three of four months later he turned up and without ado laid a small parcel of stones on the table. It did not take long to discover that he had succeeded in what I had thought to be impossible. But I was more surprised still when he quoted me a price per carat extremely moderate. I bought all he had with him, and subsequently arranged to take his entire output. It was my idea to corner the market; but alas for such hopes, secrets of that kind are hard to keep, and within the year others were turning out scientific alexandrites in such quantities that it became unprofitable to handle them in Europe.

I managed, however, to arouse a wide interest in these ‘funny’ stones in China and Japan, and the quantity these two markets absorbed was amazing. While it lasted I had no cause to complain. There was, and I believe still is, a shop in Hong Kong kept by two Chinese brothers where I frequently met a number of prominent Cantonese, both Government officials connected with Dr Sun Yat Sen’s administration and also not a few military officers of higher rank.

Several of these officers were, as the Americans say, ‘tickled to death’ with alexandrites, the stones that could change sides as effectively as any Chinese brigand general. All of them bought these scientific alexandrite novelties of me; not single specimens, but by the handful. Among these friendly customers was a close-cropped military man who one day, not so many years later, would acquire a news value as great as that of the Austrian house painter’s or the Swedish cinema star’s. His name was Chiang Kai Shek.

Heard On The Street

Keep moving. That is the best way to stay in business. Hard work + flexibility + stamina = Solid strength.

Central Statistical Organization, Burma

Here is an interesting statistics via Burma's Central Statistical Organization on foreign investment + I believe the main investors in Burma are from China, Russia, South Korea, Singapore, India, Thailand, Malaysia, United Kingdom, to mention a few.

Useful link:
http://www.csostat.gov.mm/S11MA02.asp

Rare Wine Auctions Titillate Tipplers

Dominique Schroeder writes about rare wine auctions in Paris + the new trend among the wealthy international buyers, especially from China and Russia + other viewpoints @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071215/lf_afp/lifestylewineauction_071215033214

Useful links:
www.idealwine.com
www.conseildesventes.com
www.artcurial.com

Next-Gen Travel Sites + Better Deals

(via Wired/John Brandon): These startups search airline and travel-booking sites to find the best deal + hand you off to the site offering that fare when you're ready to buy.

FareChase
http://farechase.yahoo.com

Farecast
www.farecast.com

SideStep
www.sidestep.com

Kayak
www.kayak.com

The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (1959)
Directed by: François Truffaut
Screenplay: François Truffaut, Marcel Moussy
Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy

(via YouTube): Criterion Trailer 5: The 400 Blows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYCD1IBzzC0

François Truffaut / Les Quatre cents coups(400 Blows)trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUSMbawWUIo&feature=related

Realistic + experimental + a good story. I enjoyed it.

Under The Hammer

Tim Kelly writes about a renaissance in Japanese art + Japan's leading art auction house, Shinwa Art Auction + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/1224/068.html

Yang Yong And The Four Elephants

Jonathan Napack writes about the emerging avant-garde of China’s Pearl River Delta + a unique urban laboratory + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=665

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

In a letter to his friend Pirkheimer, Durer relates how the Doge and the Patriarch of Venice came to see his picture, and still more interesting in his account how the veteran Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini praised the picture in public and further proved his admiration for the work of the Northern painter. Bellini, Durer wrote, ‘wanted to have something of mine, and himself came and asked me to paint him something and he would pay well for it. All men tell me what an upright man he is, so that I am really friendly with him. He is very old, but is still the best painter of them all.’ It was at this time that the incident about the paintbrush already narrated occurred.

Altogether this visit to Venice was a success. It definitely established Durer’s reputation as a painter, his small panels sold well, and later he went to Bologna, where he received a great ovation, but even the flattery of a Bolognese who declared he could ‘die happy’ now he had seen Durer did not turn the artist’s head, and he returned to Nuremberg the same modest, conscientious artist he had always been.

The succeeding years were very fertile in paintings, his principal productions being the ‘Crucifixion,’ now at Dresden, the ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ in which he tried to give his ideal of beauty of form, and the important altarpiece which he painted for the Frankfurt merchant Jacob Heiler.

But the artist still found that painting did not bring him in so much profit as engraving, and after he had completed his great ‘Adoration of the Trinity’ in 1511 he gave most of his time to engraving, continuing the first ‘Passion’ series and the ‘Life of the Virgin.’ It was after the death of his mother in 1514 that he produced his famous print ‘Melancholia’ a composition full of curious symbolism in which a seated female figure is shown brooding on the tragedies of existence.

Equally famous and still more difficult wholly to understand is the copper engraving known as ‘The Great Fortune’ or ‘Nemesis’. It is supposed that this engraving was suggested by a passage in Poliziano’s Latin poem, which may be thus translated:

There is goddess who, aloft in the empty air, advances girdled about with a cloud....She it is who crushes extravagant hopes, who threatens the proud, to whom is given to beat down the haughty spirit and the haughty step, and to confound over-great possessions. Her the men of old called Nemesis.....In her hand bears bridles and a chalice, and smiles for ever with an awful smile, and stands resisting mad designs.

No work has aroused more controversy than this design; some have regarded it as a splendid rendering of the physical attributes of mature womanhood, but others have pronounced the ugliness of the figure to be ‘perfectly repulsive’ while others again have found it hard to reconcile the extreme realism of the woman’s form with the fanciful imagination shown in her environment.

But however many opinions there may be as to the success of this engraving as an illustration, there is only one view about its merits as a decoration. Mr T Sturge Moore, himself an expert and gifted engraver, has well emphasized this point by reminding the readers of his book on Durer ‘that it is an engraving and not a woman that we are discussing: and that this engraving is extremely beautiful in arabesque and black and white pattern, rich, rhythmical and harmonious.’ If the experiment be made of turning the print upside down, so that attention is no longer concentrated on its meaning as an illustration, its extraordinary ingenuity and interest as a pattern will at once become apparent.

In 1518 Durer again resumed his activity as a painter: in that year he was summoned by the Emperor Maximilian to Augsburg, where he was employed in painting portraits of the emperor and of many of his nobles. In 1521 he visited the Netherlands and received much attention in Brussels and Antwerp; though he drew and painted several portraits during his travels, he took up engraving again when he returned to Nuremberg. The series he then began is known as the ‘Second Passion’; this set he did not live to complete. He died in 1528. Two years earlier he painted his celebrated ‘Four Apostles,’ which have a peculiar interest not only as Durer’s last effort in picture making, but also as an indication of the artist’s attitude towards the Reformation.

The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)