THE HOLE TRUTH

Have you ever wondered what they do with the bits of Polo that get removed when they make the holes?

The answer: they sell them to the Italians...

BLACKED OUT!

If, in future, I am going to use Flickr as my new source for uploading pictures to Blogger I am going to have to be a little bit careful...

A few weeks ago, I posted the snap on the left from my old photograph album.

At a cursory glance, you might suppose that it shows a young man wearing nothing other than a rather natty hat...

Of course, the cognoscenti will correctly identify it as probably the most famous example of fifteenth-century sculpture: a bronze figure of the Biblical Patriarch (and juvenile Philistine-slayer) David by Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c 1386–1466), better known as Donatello.

Dates for Donatello's David vary from the 1430s to the 1460s. It is, for example, recorded as being the centerpiece of the first courtyard in the Palazzo Medici during the wedding festivities of Lorenzo de' Medici and Clarice Orsini in 1469, but some have argued that it was commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici in the 1430s to be the centerpiece of the courtyard of the older Medici house on the Via Larga. Anyway, whatever the truth, it is one of the world's great art treasurers currently housed in the Bargello Museum, Florence.

So much for David's antiquity and cultural standing, I had scarcely uploaded the photo onto flickr when someone left a comment saying that it had been blacked out. Soon afterwards, all my flickr images were hidden from view...

...even this one of a fully-clothed, outsize, Cinderella-mouse in Disneyland...

Anyway, two days of being blacked-out was finally resolved when I successfully manged to re-classify Donatello's David as a 'resticted' image (as, indeed, it remains!) and got Flickr to lift the ban on my other less potentially offensive photos! Thanks, Flickr; apologies, Donatello!

Naturally, it will be some while before Michelangelo's David finds his way onto this blog!!

PICK OF THE PIX: BOY WARRIOR

The first in an occasional series of posts featuring a favourite photo from my flickr photostream.

Today: Donatello's bronze statue of David (circa 1440s) Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, Italy...

ECCE HOMO

On this day...






Images: Passion scenes from the bronze door panels of the Duomo, Milan, Italy.
© Brian Sibley 2009

BUONA NATALE

WISHING YOU

JOY, LOVE and PEACE

at

CHRISTMAS

Image: Nativity from the bronze door panels of the Duomo, Milan, Italy.
© Brian Sibley 2009

MAGNETIC ATTRACTIONS

I seem to have gathered rather a lot of fridge magnets over the years and looking at them the other day, I realised that they represented a kind of saga of my life (and the lives of my friends) over the last decade or two.

Click on images to enlarge

So I thought I'd make a small, but representative, selection of the dozens of magnets currently on display, relieve them of the notes and out-of-date vouchers they normally keep in place and share with you their origins which turn out to be quite international...


Top Row (left to right): A pair mini-clogs featuring Miffy, the rabbit created by the Dutch artist and writer, Dick Bruna.

Cartoon of David by a caricaturist with whom he worked at some corporate dinner. She caught something of his character really rather well: the impish twinkle, perhaps, just before he produces your chosen card!

One of Oscar Wilde's cleverisms purchased in the shop at London's National Portrait Gallery on a trip there with our friends Val and Michael..

I'm not sure where I got the ceramic dodo, but I've always had a kind of empathy with these absurd, hapless birds so cruelly condemned to extinction by unthinking Man.

Second Row: Ena Sharples (a memorable early character in Coronation Street, played by Violet Carson) from the shop at Granada Studios in Manchester, during a visit there with my best mate, radio producer, Malcolm Prince, when we were making a series about soap operas. Alas, the Studio Tour is now sadly closed to visitors.

Las Vegas bottle opener brought back from the Strip by my old pal, Irascian. Decorative and functional - the gift, I mean, although the same could also be said of the giver!

Souvenir of The Living Seas pavilion in EPCOT Center, Walt Disney World, Florida, the opening of which I attended with my good friend and fellow Disney historian, Richard Holliss. You won't find Mickey Mouse there these days as it's been re-vamped as The Seas with Nemo & Friends. Hmmm...

Keepsake from Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California, the fabulous, fanciful home of William Randolph Hearst who was the original inspiration for Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. It was bought on a unforgettable visit with the aforementioned Malcolm Prince when we were driving from San Francisco to LA during the making of a radio series about Walt Disney.

Kangaroo decorated by an aboriginal artist bought in The Rocks Market, Sydney Harbour, en route to New Zealand on Rings business.

The Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz, although I'm not sure where she came from -- other than the West, obviously!

Third Row: Rocket from the Tintin adventures Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon bought at a Hergé exhibition which David and I visited at the Centre George Pompidou, Paris.

John Tenniel's Humpty Dumpty (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass) bought from that Carrollian cornucopia in Oxford known as Alice's Shop.

A stylised representation of the classic Doric architecture of Paestum, brought back from Italy for us by Richard and Chris Holliss. A reminder that whilst we know Venice like the back of our hand, most of Italy is, well, a foreign country to us...

"Aah, Bisto!" The classic 'twenties advertisement featuring the Bisto Kids by cartoonist Wilf Owen. This came from the nostalgia section of the shop in the Imperial War Museum. Not being a great lover of planes, tanks and guns, I'm afraid I spent most of my time in the shop!

100% Toro from Spain, courtesy of our own dear Polkadotsoph. Like all great logos, it's 100% simple and effective.

Bottom Row: Edinburgh Festival poster from our last visit in 1997 - goodness, is really that long ago?

One of a set of magnets given away with Findus frozen products in 1992 when Disneyland Paris had just opened and was still known as EuroDisneyland. Of course I have the complete set (God knows how many packets of fish fingers I had to get through!) but this magnet is of my favourite section of the park, Fantasyland, and features Peter Pan.

E H Shepard's Pooh and Piglet (though manufactured under license from Disney, naturally!) with a caption that I used to try and heed when approaching the fridge in the days of my diet! I must start looking at it again!

Athena's Owl from a tat-shop in the Plaka, Athens. True, the head is too big - but then maybe that's due to all the wisdom crammed within!

Memento of the Jurassic Park attraction at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, visited during yet another American jaunt with Mr Prince. "Was this work?" you ask. Well, let's just say it was research!

This is, believe me, only a fraction of the stuff on our refrigerator. I'll give you a further tour another day.

In the meanwhile, why not tell me - or show me - what's on your fridge?

*

Oh, yes, and happy birthday greetings today to Sibley-blog regular, Boll Weavil...

Many Happy Returns, Boll!

...CAN SPRING BE FAR BEHIND?

The Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence is vast: an exhausting labyrinth of passageways, corridors and rooms, adorned with what, at some time or other, has been rated as Great Art, though in truth it ranges from the dull and mediocre via the curious and passably interesting to works of masterful brilliance like Sandro Botticelli's famously iconic, Birth of Venus...

Click image to enlarge

...and his equally delightful (and similarly allegorical) Primavera...

Click image to enlarge

In case you wondered, here's (basically) what's going on...

Venus, , the goddess of love, is standing in the centre of the picture, set slightly back from the other figures. Above her, Cupid is aiming one of his arrows of love at the Charites or Three Graces who are dancing a rondel and who are, from youngest to oldest, Aglaea (Beauty), Euphrosyne (Mirth) and Thalia (Good Cheer).

The garden of Venus is guarded on the left by Mercury, who stretches out his hand to part the clouds of winter and make way for spring. From the right, Zephyrus, the god of the winds, is forcefully pushing his way in, in pursuit of the nymph Chloris (who, according to mythology, he raped but later, in a mood of contrition for his volent crime, married the wronged ladyand made her the goddess of flowers. Botticelli shows Chloris transforming into Flora who scatters flowers before Venus.

What I love about this picture is the fact that it's packed with stuff happening, crammed to the edges with activity: the scene is dense with detail (the flowers springing from Chloris' mouth as she turns into Flora, not to mention every leaf, bud and blade of grass) and everything is obviously laden with significance, such as the halo of foliage that frames the head of Venus.

Looking at this crowded scene, it's also amusing to realise that there are times when even the gods can be a bit cramped for space!

Anyway, I was reminded of Boticelli's masterpiece not long ago when saw a young pavement artist painstakingly recreating the picture in coloured chalks on a sidewalk on London's South Bank.


Whether hanging in one of the most prestigious art museums of the world or drawn on paving stones where it will be walked on and rained away, all art is really transient and, perhaps, that very vulnerability is part of it's power and beauty...

Image: Brian Sibley © 2008

ROMAN GAIETIES

We went to see the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum where an exquisite bust of Hadrian's Greek male lover, Antinous, provided a stunning centerpiece...

Details of Antinous' relationship with Hadrian are sketchy: according to one account Hadrian encountered Antinous when he and his entourage were accompanied him on his many journeys through the empire. A somewhat more romatic version tells how Hadrian (who was, incidentally married to Vibia Sabina, the grand-niece of his predecessor, Trajan) had the empire searched for the most beautiful youth, and chose Antinous.

The circumstances of Antinous' death during an imperial visit to Egypt are also vague: in October 130, according to Hadrian, "Antinous was drowned in the Nilus," but it is not known whether his death was the result of accident, suicide, murder or some kind of religious sacrifice. Whatever the truth, Hadrian was inconsolable and his grief for the loss of his lover and subsequently approved his deification.

Thus are - or were - gods born...

Talking of Roman emperors: overheard by David in the exhibition:

"You know Jane? Well, she's got Marcus Aurelius
in her conservatory..."

Stuffed?

And here's Buttons' (somewhat limited) view of the exhibition.

LOOK-SEE

Nicolas Roeg's 1973 film, Don't Look Now, based on Daphne Du Maurier's short story, suggests that Venice is not the place to go if you are - as they used to say on the cinema posters - of a nervous disposition.

As for us, whilst we've never once spotted Mr Roeg's dwarf in the red raincoat, wandering through the streets of Venice has stirred memories of another film: that last, dreadful offering from the late Stanley Kubrick - for Venice is truly a city filled with "eyes wide shut..."

Indeed, Stan sent his prop-buyer there to get Tom's mask and we came across at least half-dozen mask shops boldly sporting signed testimonials to that effect from no less an authority than Mr Cruise himself.

Anyway, dwarfs aside, we did, quite often, get the feeling that we were being WATCHED --- albeit by largely unseeing eyes...
















Images: © Brian Sibley and David Weeks, 2008

VENETIAN BIZARRE

Every city in the world has it oddities, curiosities and grotesqueries, but dear, lovely, Venice certainly has its fair share (or perhaps, being a small city, they are just more concentrated) - which is, of course part of it's unique and utterly delightful charm.

In Venice, for example, you can get just about anything made out of glass, but while glass balloons are one thing...


...glass balls of wool with glass knitting needles and pots of glass paintbrushes with glass tubes of paint...


...is probably going a bit too far! Especially when it's obviously perfectly easy to make a wooden vase of wooden paintbrushes on a table with a wooden tablecloth!


Naturally, such a table needs to be accompanied by a paint-brush-shaped chair...


...but, if you prefer, you can have one made out of books that are made out of - er - wood, of course!


Mind you, if you're an animal lover, you'd probably prefer to sit on a chair that sits on the back of giant, bling-encrusted tortoise...


...while attending to your toilette in front of a zebra-print chests-of-drawers!


And when you're finally ready to go out and face the day... well, you can choose from a wide selection of glass shoes --- made out of Coca-Cola bottles!



Images: © Brian Sibley & David Weeks, 2008

CLICHÉ-RIDDEN

"I never take pictures of gondolas," the Photographer told me as I eyed-up a shot of one, "they are such a cliché!"

Click on any image to enlarge

Well, I thought, as I pressed the shutter, to be absolutely honest, there's not much that you'll ever see through your view-finder in Venice that can't be dismissed as a cliché!

Click!

The way we see it is if you're in Venice then there will come a point - sooner or later (and probably sooner) - when you just have to take a photograph of a gondola...

Or two...


Or three...



Or, possibly, more...



Of course, what was once the chief means of transportation in a city built upon water -- in the 18th century, gondola traffic on the canals of Venice ran to several thousand -- is now an overpriced tourist attraction much loved by the Japanese.



Nevertheless, there is something inherently beautiful and photogenic about the gondola: it's poise and weightlessness, its grace and elegance: a black and silver swan gliding effortlessly and silently across the mirror-waters of Venice's canals.



Every aspect of the gondola is appealing to the eye...





Perhaps, the most famous aspect of the gondola is the ferro - the iron ornamentation on the prow which serves as a protection for the craft, a decoration and a counterweight for the gondolier standing on the back of the boat.

It's distinctive shape symbolizes the six sestieri (areas) of Venice and the Doge's hat...



...occasionally embellished with the Lion of St Mark.



Then, of course, there are also the gondoliers!



Sorry for the digression!

Anyway, back to the gondolas... So ubiquitous is the Venetian gondola that it's distinctive shape can be found even where you'd least expect to find it - for example, in an optician's window...



OK, so that is a cliché!

But gondolas? We can't snap enough of them!




Images: © Brian Sibley & David Weeks, 2008