Too many Madonnas....

Tricks of the light....

Hi there.... Mi chiamo Pennyfeather. Richard Paul Pennyfeather. And, subsequent to a rather sticky start to an academic career, here I are in north-east Italia, intending to compose a book about Italian art and its history.

People in boxes, with a baby in the middle

Please don't ask why..... Margot wouldn't want you to know.....

She has always been quite reserved about her business, but she does dress well, and her son has grown now.... Anyway, here I am in Verona,

Where the air is full of Madonnas, with their bambinos.....  though some have been scribbled on.  I understand that this is a sign of affection.....

Which makes me wonder why some don't seem to have been autographed....

Meantime I am amazed how many of these young women there are....  They are all over the place, yet they all seem different.  Could there have been thousands of Marys, all at the same time?  Or are they just inaccurate portraits?  And how - forgive me - did they all give birth to such big babies with their heads in bubbles? 

They are so popular, however, that people come from all over the world to see them.  And in this museum, where I was hoping to view the very best, the interest was so intense I couldn't even get near......

So I went back in time.  To the Romans.  Who apparently loved opera.  Here in Verona, even now, people flock to worship the memory of the Casta Diva, that goddess of chastity - once the norma in those distant giorni bellini......

My education was, sadly, perforce, cut short - an excess of Bollinger affecting my trousers and causing me to take up a position at Arnold House, where things were not really as they seemed.  It was, if you like, a window that opened before me, the drapes billowing ineffectually around me.....

And so, briefly, and superficially, I attached myself to the Beste, and studied a bridal room, Mantegna's 15th century Camera degli Sposi, which Harold had recommended to me, all finery and servants:

What I didn't appreciate, however, was the eye of heaven, where - don't look - little children with bare bottoms play carelessly above your head:

This was Mantova - Mantua to you - a city plagued by market stalls and people who sit and talk over spritzes.....  

I repaired to a quiet palace for some Te, 

Only to find it chaotic in unexpected ways.  As a student of Art History all I can say is, WTF?

Not that I wasn't impressed. Giulio Romano done good, and the giants are good fun. 

But I seek tranquility, so journey to Arquà Petrarca to pay my respects to Petrarch, and the Euganean hills. Aaah..... With delicious wine, local porchetta and fresh jujube fruits (giuggiole dei Colli Euganei) it isn't hard to imagine why the poet wasn't in love here - this is the view from his house:

But we have to move on.  Padova awaits.  More madonnas....  Giotto et al.  

More madonnas (though these are real.....)......

Even in three dimensions, though we are restricted to a frontal view of Giovanni Pisano's seven-hundred-year-old girl-mother and child:

Then from Padova, it is but nothing to Venice for a fishy lunch at da Romano on Burano, in amongst the pastel shaded houses and the lace......

Refreshed, back in Padova, multi-domed S Antonio excites:

Not just from the outside, but also with its various contents, like this street scene (has someone  been hit by a passing ox-cart?):

And these, where a bystander becomes part of the theatre:

I am becoming sated.  Art is all over the place, and it doesn't stop at pictures, or statues.  Near Vicenza there is the Villa Caldogno Nordera which is attributed to Andrea Palladio, the sixteenth century stone mason who became one of the world's most influential and celebrated architects......

In its own right, this villa is not that exciting,(despite a speleological exhibition in the basement) but it was used by the German army as a hospital between 1941 and 1944, and they built a Bunker here:

Which is a maze of spooky concrete corridors and chambers, 

Which then surprises with bold and graphic information on the effects of the war on Italy and on the locality:

Complete with a facsimile of the cockpit of an American bomber:

I begin to feel out of my depth and wonder what Gibbons and Spengler would make of it.  So, we retreat to the predictable, the well-known, the obvious. The Villa Rotonda never fails to inspire, whichever way you look at it:

And the neighbouring Villa Valmarana ai Nani isn't much less impressive:

And then, in Vicenza itself, there is the Teatro Olimpico, the first ever enclosed stone-built theatre, designed by Palladio and constructed between 1580 and 1585:

And, if you climb to the Santuario della Madonna di Monte Berico you get a wonderful view back over Vicenza, with the vast copper-clad roof of the Basilica Palladiana in the middle of the city.... 

But that's enough Madonnas. My yen to become an Art Historian is flagging.  

I think I shall grow a moustache and change my name to Scone.....

Too many Madonnas.....  

I'll take the light as it declines and falls......

And what is the use of knowing many things if, when you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the measure of the seas, the courses of stars, the virtues of plants and stones, the secrets of nature, you still don’t know yourself?

Francesco Petrarca

*****

For those who travel with me......

*****

Good news from Aix....

Last tango in Aachen

History does not record whether Charlemagne (aka Karl der Große, Karel de Grote, Carolus magnus rex, et al) was a Hoofer, nor whether he spent his weekends Jack Palancing, but, 1212 years after his death (at the age of 66), his capital city is alive with the shuffle of kicking and prancing.....

As you can see, I am a little clunky....

But after a few partners, I begin to get the hang of it, and almost only one of my feet is left....

But that's a digression.... Here I was in Aachen, whose name, according to Wiki, is a modern descendant, like southern German Ach(e), German: Aach, meaning river or stream, from Old High German ahha, [Pace, Alan Partridge - Ed.] meaning water or stream, which directly translates (and etymologically corresponds) to Latin Aquae, referring to the local mineral springs, which figures in Aachen's Roman name Aquae granni, which meant waters of Grannus, referring to the Celtic god of healing who was worshipped at the springs. This word became Åxhe in Walloon and Aix in French, and subsequently Aix-la-Chapelle to distinguish it from Aix-en-Provence after Charlemagne had his palatine chapel built there in the late 8th century and then made the city his empire's capital.

[So now you know - Ed.]

Robert Browning had a thing or two to say (about this and that....):

How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;

‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

But, like the decorations in the Palatine Chapel, all this is phoney.  

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace

Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,

Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,

Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.....

Robert Browning

He made it all up..... There was no news - there were no riders - and the mosaics and decorations are 19th and early 20th century (the stained glass is post WWII). Pshaw! 

Aachen Cathedral is Germany's first UNESCO World Heritage site and received about 1.25 million visitors in 2025, with over 5,300 guided tours.

And so why the flocking hordes of foreign bodies? Is it the cult of the man?

Or his legacy?

Europe - Cornerstone of Peace

Don't get me started.  As Tony Hancock once said, Did Magna Carta die in vain?

Forgive me whilst I slake my Wurst.....

So.  What is Aachen, and why was I here?

Aachen was Charlemagne's capital and subsequently the coronation site for 30 Holy Roman Emperors.  It is a city with a population of about 250,000 (roughly the same as Southampton or Derby), the 27th largest city in Germany, but it is the westernmost, near the borders with Belgium and the Netherlands.  It was the first city to fall to Western Allies in 1944, but was very badly damaged - though the Cathedral and the Rathaus were not destroyed.

It is a busy, friendly place.  I found that almost everyone spoke better English than me (my Deutsch is dastardly) and the atmosphere was calm and disciplined - for example, everyone waits for the green man when crossing roads, even if there is no traffic at all.....  It is also noticeable that cyclists, perhaps misguidedly eschewing helmets and lycra, adhere religiously to cycle paths instead of careering along footpaths and jumping red lights..... What is wrong with these people?

 

The Sunday morning flea market in the Katschof is a popular teeming event, though I notice a distinct absence of dogs....  Again, what are these people thinking?  

It's the same in restaurants: nowhere are their bowls of water on the floor to trip over, pots of biscuits on the counter, nor paw prints on the seats..... How can folk live like this?

Even outside the restaurants.....  Is there some kind of extreme regulation (draconian law) that has taken over the minds of ordinary citizens?  Is this what the AfD really stands for?

We are, after all, only 61 kms from Cologne, where the Odour is strictly Colonial:

Anyway, you may construdel this in your own way.....

To be honest [?? Ed.] I am here for two things.  One is arrrrt....  And in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum the only thing that disappoints is that the top floor is currently off limits, so I am deprived of Otto Dix and Max Liebermann et al. But alongside pictures by Cranach, Rembrandt and Zurbarán.... 

There is a wonderful collection of medieval sculpture.....

Most extraordinary, in a way, is that, while the Germans may not be best known for their sense of humour, I cannot help but be arrested by certain works on display in this otherwise sedate (and under-visited) collection. Here is Michael Triegel (born Erfurt, 1968)'s 2008 painting, Verkündigung (Annunciation)....

Perhaps I should not suggest that there is humour here, but then consider this:

The picture on the left, Portrait of a Man, 1660, by Johann Wilhelm Pottgießer:

Is a serious, traditional portrait, whereas the one on the right....

Is a 2024 photo collage, one of a series of Hidden Portraits, in which Volker Hermes (born 1972) reinterprets historical paintings through a modern lens. Using only elements from the original work, Volker visually manipulates famous Old Masters portraits, exploring expression when the face is obscured. The “Hidden Portraits” series examines the context of art as a means of representation and the relationship between image and individual.

Across town, in the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, light streams in through the windows of what was once an umbrella factory, built in 1928:

It is a marvellous space, and it houses a collection of some 3,000 artworks from the last sixty years or so, including pieces by Jeff Koons:

Jean-Michel Basquiat

And Andy Warhol and Duane Hanson:

But for me a second major attraction to Aachen lies within the Carolus Thermen complex:

Where you can swim in warm mineral waters, or relax in any of fifteen saunas and steam baths, literally stripping away all the trappings of daily life, enjoying the well-being of typical German nudity.... [No photos please....Ed.]

And then, suitably purified, I walk back through the Stadtgarten,

Sprinkle myself with Cologne:

And get back on the dance floor in the Neo-classical Elisenbrunnen pavilion (originally built in 1827 but reconstructed after WWII) where I now feel completely at home.....

There is no doubt, this is a civilised and attractive place, and I have barely scratched the surface in my furtive weekend.

The news is good here, and I shall, quite possibly, be back....

How I Brought the Good News from Aix to Ghent (or Vice Versa)

I sprang to the rollocks and Jorrocks and me,

And I galloped, you galloped, he galloped, we galloped all three…

Not a word to each other; we kept changing place,

Neck to neck, back to front, ear to ear, face to face;

And we yelled once or twice, when we heard a clock chime,

“Would you kindly oblige us, Is that the right time?”

As I galloped, you galloped, he galloped, we galloped, ye galloped, they two shall have galloped; let us trot......

ENVOI

So I sprang to a taxi and shouted “To Aix!”

And he blew on his horn and he threw off his brakes,

And all the way back till my money was spent

We rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled

And rattled and rattled—

And eventually sent a telegram.

W C Sellar and R J Yeatman

All we need is music, sweet music (sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet music)

There'll be music everywhere (everywhere)

There'll be swinging, swaying (swaying)

And records playing (playing)

Dancing in the street, oh

Marvin Gaye, William Stevenson 

and Ivy Jo Hunter

Dancing in the Street