Browsed by
Tag: history

Competition in Ancient Greece

Competition in Ancient Greece

Comments 0 Comment

20170917_173938

Marble statue of a discus thrower. Second century A.D. copy
of a fifth century B.C. Greek original. Said to have been found
in Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli. The Emperor Hadrian had quite a
thing for beautiful young athletes. His favorite youth, Antinous,
was immortalized in numerous statues. Antinous didn’t have
those awesome deltoids, though.

It’s autumn, and that means here in Madrid the summer art shows are wrapping up and the autumn exhibitions are upon us. Madrid has several fine galleries and world-class museums to choose from, and the line-up this year is looking pretty good. Stay tuned for some fun shows here on Black Gate.

In the meantime, one of the last of the summer shows to finish is Agon! Competition in Ancient Greece at the Caixa Forum, a private gallery owned by one of the big Spanish banks. The show brings together dozens of objects from the British Museum in London, some of which are usually on permanent display there and others that I’ve never seen before.

…

Read More Read More

Visiting Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, England

Visiting Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, England

Comments 1 comment

20170812_154639

Minster Lovell Hall with St. Kenelm’s Church to the left

As usual in the summer, my family and I are in Oxford, where I ensconce myself in the Bodleian Library and research my books. It’s been a rainy summer, in stark contrast to last month’s frying heat of Lanzarote, and so we haven’t been able to get out and about much. Good for my wordcount, bad for my travel addiction.

So when the clouds finally broke last weekend we rushed out onto an easy six-mile country ramble along the River Windrush to visit Minster Lovell Hall, a 15th century manor house set in the lovely English countryside.

…

Read More Read More

How Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk Immediately Became My Favorite War Movie (With Reservations)

How Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk Immediately Became My Favorite War Movie (With Reservations)

Comments 2 comments

dunkirk-647_072117021757

I went to see Dunkirk here in Oxford with a bit of trepidation. Having grown up on war movies, both American and British, I’ve grown weary of the thinly veiled propaganda and nationalism that most of these movies are. I do like a good war movie, but I always find myself squirming in the seat at some of the politics.

Unfortunately there was quite a bit of that in Dunkirk, and yet it is a brilliant film nonetheless. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception, The Dark Knight Trilogy) has made a film that’s not so much about fighting as it is about the reaction of various individuals to violence and the threat of death. Zeta Moore has already reviewed this film for Black Gate, but I wanted to add my two cents.

…

Read More Read More

El Castillo de San Gabriel in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

El Castillo de San Gabriel in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Comments 1 comment

20170630_113454

The fort as seen while approaching along El Puente de Las Bolas,
“the Bridge of the Balls.” Cannonballs, that is.

As I mentioned my last post on Lanzarote’s Piracy Museum, Spain’s Canary Islands are dotted with historic forts. As a stopover on the way to and from the New World, these islands off the west coast of Africa naturally became a target for piracy. Every port had at least one fort to protect it.

…

Read More Read More

The Piracy Museum in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

The Piracy Museum in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Comments 0 Comment

20170701_122602-EFFECTS

Last summer I went to visit some of my in-laws and the World’s Coolest Nephew in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, and disappointed our dear editor John O’Neill by missing the Piracy Museum.

Well, I just got back from another trip to Lanzarote, and this time I made it there! The Piracy Museum is housed in the 15th century Castillo de Santa Barbara and is a delightfully cheesy tourist trap. You get cardboard cutouts of pirates, a mock up of a ship complete with a cabin boy taking a dump, televisions playing old pirate movies, and of course a big Jolly Roger. You even get a bit of history.

…

Read More Read More

The Queens’ Pyramids at Giza

The Queens’ Pyramids at Giza

Comments 0 Comment

DSC_2495

The pyramid of Menkaure (2532-2504 BC) and
its three Queens’ Pyramids, looking east

We’ve all seen the pictures. Tucked beside the massive pyramids at Giza are a few little pyramids. They are generally described in one line as the “Queens’ Pyramids” or “satellite pyramids” and not mentioned any further. They seem like such an afterthought to the awe-inspiring pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, not to mention the Sphinx, that they get all but forgotten. But why were these monuments built? And who were they for?

…

Read More Read More

King Tut’s Treasure: The Items You Don’t Usually See

King Tut’s Treasure: The Items You Don’t Usually See

Comments 2 comments

20170220_160845

Ivory headrest. This is used as a pillow in many African
cultures if you want to preserve your hairdo. How you’re
supposed to actually get any sleep is beyond me

King Tutankhamun (1336-1327 BC) was a short-lived 18th dynasty pharaoh who was obscure and little studied by egyptologists until Howard Carter discovered his nearly intact tomb in 1922. Since then his most elaborate burial goods have been photographed countless times, and the whole world is familiar with images of his famous death mask, sarcophagi, and other golden treasures.

But these are only a small fraction of all the finds in the tomb. A total of 5,398 artifacts were retrieved, and on a recent visit to the Egyptian Museum during a writing retreat in Cairo, I had the privilege to see some of the ones not often reproduced in books.

…

Read More Read More

Etruscan Treasures in Bologna

Etruscan Treasures in Bologna

Comments 0 Comment

dsc_2059

The two stone boxes are Etruscan ossuaries

On a recent trip to Bologna in northern Italy, I got to admire the city’s famous medieval towers and beautiful churches. The city’s medieval and Renaissance history is everywhere. What is less apparent is that it was a major center for Etruscan civilization. No Etruscan monuments survive in the city itself, so it’s fortunate that the Museo Civico Archeologico has an excellent Etruscan collection. This is thanks to several pioneering archaeologists in the 19th and early 20th century who excavated numerous Etruscan buildings and tombs and carefully preserved their findings.

…

Read More Read More

Visiting the Two Towers in Bologna

Visiting the Two Towers in Bologna

Comments 0 Comment

dsc_2029

The Garisenda Tower on the left measures 48 meters high.
The Asinelli Tower soars to 97.2 meters. Both now stand at a slight tilt

Happy 2017 everybody! I spent the last few days of 2016 with my family in Bologna, exploring a part of Italy I had never visited. The most prominent landmarks in the city are a series of tall medieval towers, the tallest of which you can climb to get a beautiful vista of Bologna and the surrounding countryside.

Rich families in Bologna began to build towers in the 12th century, both for defense and to show off their wealth and power. Bologna wasn’t the only city where people did this — Rome had some lovely examples — but Bologna may have had the most towers. Historians estimate that by the 13th century, there may have been as many as 180 of them. Others make a more modest estimate of “only” 80-100.

…

Read More Read More

Medieval Treasures on Display in Madrid

Medieval Treasures on Display in Madrid

Comments 0 Comment

estuche-para-espejo-1370-1400-francia-marfil-c-the-trustees-of-the-british-museum-2016-all-rights-reserved

Mirror case, France, 1370-1400. Ivory. It depicts a love scene in a
garden where the happy couple hold a heart as cupids hover
overhead holding a shield and a hooded figure looks on.

One of Madrid’s leading private galleries is hosting a major exhibition on medieval art. The Pillars of Europe: Middle Ages in the British Museum brings together more than a hundred objects ranging from 400 to 1500 at CaixaForum’s Madrid branch.

The exhibition aims to show through objects and images how Europe transformed from the fragmentation after the fall of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages and into the emerging nation states at the beginning of the Renaissance. An excellent map shows how borders shifted over the century, and a slideshow gives period depictions of Europe’s cities as they grew and became more prominent. The objects are grouped into four themes: Royal Power, Heavenly Treasures, Courtly Life, and Urban Life.

…

Read More Read More