A Tale of Two Doges

Jacopo Tintoretto

Doge Pietro Loredano (1567 – 1570)

oil on canvas (43x36.5")

NGV – Felton Bequest

For over a thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the City (and later the Republic) of Venice was elected for life and styled the Doge. Venice was a prime example of a "crowned republic" – the Doge was in practical terms a powerful monarch, with all the pomp and ceremony of high estate.

The noble Loredan (or Loredano) family of Venice exerted great power in the republic for five centuries. Today they are best known for the celebrated Capo di Stata wine. It is produced by the Conte Loredan Gasparini winery, located in Veneto, an area renowned for the production of wines since the sixteenth century. The winery was established by Count Pietro Loredan, direct descendant of the Doge of Venice Leonardo Loredan.

Among the high-flier scions of the Loredan family was Admiral Pietro Loredan, who was responsible for making Venice a dominant power in the 15th century. His greatest victory was over the Turks at Gallipoli in 1415. Sadly, he was there 500 years too soon - he might have done us a bit of good had he been there in 1915.

The foremost collector and patron of the arts in the family was Andrea Loredan. He commissioned a magnificent palazzo on the Cannaregio to designs by Mauro Codussi; it was paid for by his cousin the Doge Leonardo Loredan. By 1883 it had passed out of the Loredan family's hands and Richard Wagner, who had rented it, died there in 1883.

The palazzo now houses the Wagner Museum. It holds the the largest private collection dedicated to Wagner outside of Bayreuth, and contains rare documents, musical scores, signed letters and other heirlooms.

The Loredan family also produced three Doges: Leonardo Loredan (1501–1521), Pietro Loredan (1567–1570), and Francesco Loredan (1752–1762).

Our Doge in the NGV is Pietro Loredano, painted by Tintoretto during his brief three-year reign as leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice. He was already eighty-five-years old but the aristos of Venice found themselves in a political deadlock and he was elected as a compromise candidate.

Despite his age and physical frailty, Doge Pietro stepped up to the crease when his country needed him. By the time stumps was called three years later, he had presided over famine, pestilence, a great fire at the Arsenal, and the onset of war with the Turks over the possession of Cyprus.

This catalogue of catastrophes would have taxed a much younger man, but Pietro did his best to deal with it all. One of his strategies was to issue tickets, which functioned something like ration books,for the purchase of bread. This was an excellent measure which enabled equitable distribution.

Another and perhaps a bit less successful strategy was to do a lot of praying: there is a painting by Palma Giovane in the Palazzo Ducale which is aptly titled "Doge Pietro Loredan Beseeching the Virgin for the End of the Famine and Victory over the Turks".

He didn't get much thanks for his efforts from a sullen populace, who held him responsible, not only for the famine, the war and the fire, but also for the "spotted fever" which raged in Venice at the time. The omniscient Google tells me that the "spotted fever" is otherwise known as "Queensland tick fever". However, Google doesn't say how Queensland ticks came to be biting people in Venice in 1570. Another of Life's many little mysteries.

In "Venice: a Documentary History", David Sanderson tells us that Doge Pietro's funeral was the scene of most unseemly behaviour, the crowd shouting:"Rejoice, rejoice, the Doge is dead / Who gave us tickets for our bread!" Not unlike the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz, I couldn't help thinking. Ungrateful wretches.

Tintoretto shows his subject ruddy-faced and world-weary, giving physical expression to the weight of his obligations. His aura of vulnerabilty tempers the formality of an official portrait, although the Doge is wearing his ceremonial dress: the gold brocade, fur-trimmed robe; the ermine cape with golden harness-bell buttons and the distinctive corno dogale (doge’s hat), of which more later.

This painting was done directly onto the canvas, swiftly, in one sitting, to be used in the studio as a sketch for a formal portrait. To a modern viewer it looks complete, but it was by no means regarded as a finished portrait at the time.

Tintoretto painted two "finished" versions from it: one for the family's personal collection and another as the official portrait displayed in the Doge’s Palace. The latter was destroyed in a disastrous fire in 1577. The painting that belonged to the Loredan family, mentioned in the will of the doge’s son Alvise, is currently in the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

It is interesting to compare the two portraits side by side. Tintoretto’s technical facility is evident especially in the vigorously modeled face and the swift, sure strokes of the cape. This proficient style recommended Tintoretto to the Republic’s officials, who typically commissioned portraits upon their election. As Court Painter, he was also given a lot of portrait commissions by the Venetian aristocracy and wealthy merchants.

The NGV painting was X-rayed in 1987 and this gives an interesting insight into the working method of a great painter: Tintoterro began with his sitter in an upright, regal stance, but altered the painting several times to change the neckline, bring the head more into the shoulders and lift the waistline to increase the sense of age, revealing the tired old man within the dignified, powerful figure of “the most serene prince” of the Venetian Republic.



Giovanni Bellini
'The Doge Leonardo Loredan', 1501-4
Oil, with egg tempera, on poplar, 61.5 x 45 cm
National Gallery, London

The London National Gallery's "Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan" by Giovanni Bellini (1501) is the more famous work and the one that immediately springs to mind when a doge is mentioned. Leonardo, who reigned seventy years before our Doge, was elected at the age of 65 and remained in office until his death twenty years later.

He presided over the republic during a dramatic period in its fortunes … I won't go into his Machiavellian plots and Byzantine struggles with the League of Cambrai, the Ottomans, the Mamalukes, the Pope, the Republic of Genoa, the Holy Roman Empire, the French, the Egyptians, the Portuguese and Uncle Tom Cobley and all…

Suffice it to say that wily old Leonardo outmanoeuvred and outgunned the lot of them, and by the end of his reign Venice was Top Dog and the Papacy was forced to pay the Loredan family approximately 500,000 Ducats, an enormous sum of money.

Doge Leonardo is buried in a magnificent monumental tomb in the Basillica di San Giovanni e Paolo, which any of our members who have been to Venice will undoubtedly have seen. Doge Francesco Loredan is interred in a sarcophagus at the foot of Leonardo's monument.

Bellini's portrait of Doge Leonardo is notable for being the first frontal portrait of a reigning doge. During the Middle Ages, only sacred subjects – gods, saints and martyrs - had been portrayed in a frontal view. Ordinary mortals were always shown in profile.

The Doge is shown in his robes of state for this formal portrait, which Bellini painted in the style of the sculpted portrait busts which were popular at the time.

The ornate buttons and the weird hat are part of the official wardrobe. It has always puzzled me why a man, as soon as he assumes a position of power, also assumes a weird hat. Napoleon had that coal scuttle. Mussolini had a beanie with a huge gold eagle on the front: goodness knows why the sheer weight of the gold didn't tip it over his nose. The less said about John Howard's assorted headgear, the better. Women don't have that problem: Queen Victoria, mistress of two-thirds of the known world, wore a little lace cap most of the time.

From the 14th Century onwards, the ceremonial crown and symbol of the Doges of Venice was the "corno ducale", a unique kind of a ducal hat. It is described in the National gallery's catalogue as "a stiff horn-like bonnet, which was made of gemmed brocade and worn over a fine linen cap".

The doge had to take good care not to forget it at a friend's house or sit on it or anything, because he was only issued one every year. To get his annual new hat, he had to head a procession from San Marco to the convent of San Zaccaria where the abbess presented him with a new symbolic "corno", lovingly handcrafted by the nuns. There is an Ingmar Bergman film in this, or at the very least an Oprah Special!

"European Masterpieces" NGV Publication
"Venice: a Documentary History", David Sanderson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Loredan
https://www.kimbellart.org

A Daughter of France

François Hubert Drouais

Madame Sophie de France (1763)

The NGV acquired this charming portrait of Princess Sophie of France in 1963 under the terms of the Edward Studley Miller Bequest. François Hubert Drouais studied with François Boucher and was a sought-after portraitist at the Court of Louis XV.

The elegance and delicacy of the picture is typical of the rococo style of the period, with its muted palette of apricot and creamy pink, powder blues and soft greys. The princess looks up from her book with a confident and serene expression.

In the aristocratic style of the day, her silk dress is encrusted with three-dimensional flowers, and she wears a little posy of them in her powdered hair. Ironically, Madame Sophie's portrait bears close comparison with François Boucher's contemporary portrait of her father's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who was cordially detested by all the princesses. The Marquise also looks up from an open book and wears a similarly flower-strewn dress.

Princess Sophie Philippine Élisabeth Justine (1734 - 1782) was a French princess, the eighth child and sixth daughter of Louis XV of France and his Polish Queen consort, Maria Leszczyńska. As the daughter of the king, she held the rank of a Fille de France, and was initially known as Madame Sixième, in keeping with her sisters, who were Mesdames Première, Seconde, Troisième, and so on. (Not unlike the Chinese nomenclature of Second Daughter and Third Uncle!)

It becomes a bit complicated because each time one of the sisters died, all the younger ones had to move up from being called Madame Fourth to Madame Third, as the case may be. In the end they were all called Madame Sophie or whatever their first name was, except for the eldest daughter, who was "Madame Royale" or just "Madame".

The three eldest daughters and their brother, the dauphin, Louis, were raised at Versailles, but the younger princesses were sent to live at the Abbey of Fontevraud.

Madame Sophie was very close to her two older sisters Adélaïde and Victoire. The three princesses were born in successive years and grew up together at Fontevraud. They, together with their siblings, tried unsuccessfully to prevent their father's liaison with Madame de Pompadour and later with Madame du Barry. They were keenly conscious of the influence of their father's mistresses in keeping him from his family and causing the Queen a great deal of humiliation and distress.

The three princesses found a great deal of solace in music and in each other's company. Madame Adélaïde, the oldest of the three, had a forceful nature and was their leader. Madame Victoire was considered to be the most beautiful of the King's daughters, while our Sophie had a shy, reserved nature, and was thought to be ugly and uninteresting.

I don’t think she was ugly at all, despite the rather heavy Bourbon jaw (the despised Madame de Pompadour described her as "in profile as like the King as one drop of water to another") and the unfortunate coiffure. Reminds me of the time Dame Edna asked a lady, who had had the bad judgement to book a seat in the front row: "Who does your hair, Dear? The Council?"

The other premier portrait painter of the day, Jean-Marc Nattier, painted her twice, both charming portraits of a serenely pretty young lady. Court painters tend to flatter, so I don't suppose we'll ever really know exactly what Madame Sophie looked like … in 2006, she was played by the very lovely Scottish actress Shirley Henderson in the movie "Marie Antoinette" which starred Kirsten Dunst as the eponymous queen.

Despite being pretty and a princess, she, like all her sisters except the eldest, remained unmarried. The youngest, Louise Marie, became a nun. Elisabeth, Madame Royale, married the younger son of the King of Spain, cementing military and political alliances between the two countries. Theirs was an unhappy marriage.

Perhaps the reason for this regiment of spinster princesses was that very few suitors were considered good enough for them: Madame Henriette, the King's second daughter, fell in love with her cousin Louis Philippe, the Duc de Chartres and heir to the House of Orléans, but the King was outraged by the idea of a marriage between a Fille de France and a minor Bourbon prince with no hope of inheriting a throne, so nothing came of it.

Sophie was one of four royal sisters to survive their parents. The Queen died in 1768 and the King six years later in 1774. Much to the delight of the sisters, the Marquise de Pompadour's successor, Madame du Barry, was given short shrift and sent packing by the new king.

During the reign of their nephew Louis XVI, the Filles de France became the Dames de France and were allowed to remain in their apartments at Versailles. They often stayed at the Château de Bellevue which was put at their disposal – ironically, as this small, exquisite chateau was built for their nemesis Madame de Pompadour, as a retreat where she and the king could enjoy private trysts.

Madame Sophie died in 1782, a bare seven years before the Revolution. She was buried in the royal tomb at the Abbey of Saint-Denis which was plundered at the time of the French Revolution.

Her sisters Victoire and Adélaïde remained together and toured the country with their entourage, travelling in lavish style and staying in luxury, all of which helped fan the flames for the revolution. After the storming of Versailles, they took up residence at Château de Bellevue for two years, until they were allowed to leave for Rome in 1791. They stayed with aristocratic relatives in various Italian cities, until 1799 when Victoire died of breast cancer in Trieste. Adélaïde died a year later in Rome. The bodies of both princesses were later returned to France by their nephew, King Louis XVIII, and buried at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

Judging a Book by its Cover

This page is about recommending books our members might like to read – allow me to diverge from the norm and mention a few books you don't have to read!

Each year we eagerly await the winners of the prestige literary prizes: the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, the Miles Franklin. My favourite annual literary prize is one awarded by The Bookseller magazine: the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. Unlike the Booker winners and their ilk, you don't have to rush out and buy the book, much less read it.

The author wins a magnum of champagne … and, of course, increased publicity for his book. This year's winner is "The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais" by Philip M. Parker. Shortlisted were "Cheese Problems Solved", "The Large Sieve and its Applications", "Curbside Consultation of the Colon" and "Strip and Knit with Style".

Among previous winners have been "The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling", "The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History, and Its Role in the World Today", "Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality" and "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification". I also liked last year's winner: "If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs". Sage advice, but how do you fill 250 pages on the subject?

You see what I mean about the advantages of not having to read the book!

I Dream of Janey

Edward Haytley
The Brockman Family At Beachborough c.1744

Temple Pond with Temple in Right Foreground

oil on canvas

The Brockman Family At Beachborough c.1744
Temple Pond with Temple in the Distance at Left
oil on canvas

Edward Haytley was an English portrait and landscape painter of the 18th century. He was first recorded working as a flower painter and also produced some life-size portraits; however, his skill proved to be for carefully observed topographical landscapes. Few of his works survive, but he appears to have specialised in the "conversation piece" form popular with the landed gentry of mid-18th century England: a group portrait against an idealised backdrop of the subjects' estates.

In 1743 he began preparatory drawings for two outdoor conversation pieces which show the Brockman family relaxing in their ornamental garden, whose design is enhanced by the landscape surroundings and more distant rolling hills. (He was also employed by the family for miscellaneous tasks such as picture mending.)

These two delightful pictures by the little-known Haytley are among my favourite pictures at the NGV. I know they were painted forty years before Jane Austen was in her heyday, but they could have served as illustrations for one of her elegant and slyly satirical comedies of manners, depicting as she did minor landed gentry, country clergymen and their families.

The paintings show the Brockman family estate at Beachborough in Kent, with members of the family enjoying a pleasant afternoon in the gardens with friends and neighbours. Thanks to Mrs Elizabeth Robinson who was in the habit of writing gossipy letters to her daughter, we know who those friends and neighbours are:

"Mr Haytley is come back from my Neighbours where he has been drawing a landskip from ye life: it is a veiw of his pond & his Temple that is to be built … with some figuers to adorn it the principle of which are ye Squire and Miss Molly. She is sett on a stool and drawing & he is smiling very graciously on her … all this to be put into a Picture and painted by Mr Haytley."

At the time that Haytley painted these "veiws", the Temple had not yet been built – he put it in from the architect's drawings. The Squire was very proud of his "temple" which is modelled on the Rotunda in the magnificent gardens at Stowe.

Mrs Robinson's quaintly-spelled letter goes on to identify all the other "figuers" for us: the Squire's cousins Mary and Elizabeth Brockman (Miss Molly and Miss Betty); the local parson, the Rev Edmund Parker; Miss Susanna Highmore and Mr and Mrs Henckle with their little daughter. A very suitable cast of characters for a Jane Austen novel!

Miss Molly and Miss Betty Brockman were the daughters of the Squire's uncle, Henry Brockman, who lived at Cheriton Manor nearby. In the painting which has the temple in the right foreground, Henry Brockman is seated between his daughters.

In the other picture, we see Miss Molly, who kept house for her bachelor cousin at Beachborough, at her easel, where she is painting the famous "temple". Beside her are the Squire and Mrs Henckle, whose husband is walking beside the pond on the left of the picture.

The lady walking with the parson is Miss Susanna Highmore, the daughter of the painter Joseph Highmore. In a previous WASP we discussed Highmore's work, including his self-portrait and a portrait of that same Susanna, which are both in the NGV. Little Miss Henckle is animatedly talking to Miss Betty Brockman whose elegant blue riding habit indicates that she may be planning to take her horse for a canter.

The Brockman family has a long history as "Squires" in Kent. They were armigerous gentry and entitled to use the "esquire" title. (Isn't "armigerous" a cool word? I have always wanted an excuse to drop it casually into the conversation! It means being entitled to a coat of arms from the Royal College of Heralds.)

Three and a half centuries before these two pictures were painted, John Brokeman was a staunch supporter of King Richard II in his power struggle with John of Gaunt. In 1390, the King granted Brokeman arms, a motto, a grant of land and made him Collector of Customs for the Cinque Ports (the five port cities in Kent immediately opposite the upper French coast). Within one generation the name had changed from Brokeman to Brockman.

The Brockman family featured prominently in the social and public life of Kent. John's descendant Henry Brockman bought Newington Manor, Cheriton Manor and Beachborough Manor around 1500. The Brockmans served as magistrates, parliamentarians, sheriffs and soldiers: Sir William Brockman was a notable combatant against Cromwell in the English civil war.

Branches of the family emigrated to other countries where they also distinguished themselves: in the USA, they became a powerful Democratic political family in the South. Actress Talullah Brockman Bankhead was a descandant on the distaff side – her father was Speaker of the House of Representatives and her uncle a senator.

The Brockman family also have a long and distinguished history in Western Australia, to which three of their scions emigrated in the early 1800s. Their number include pastoralists, poets and politicians: author and historian Henrietta Brockman, Brigadier-General Edmund Brockman who was a veteran of both World Wars. He served with distinction at Gallipoli, later became a Senator in the WA parliament and finally Chief Justice of the arbitration court in WA. Sir Thomas Brockman K.B., D.F.C. was also a long serving Senator and a minister in the Fraser Government.

The Squire in the paintings was the last male heir of the Brockmans of Kent – he died unmarried in 1767. He bequeathed his estates to his cousin, the Rev. Ralph Drake, on condition "that Drake took the Arms and Surname of Brockman".

If only Squire John were a Jane Austen character, he would have died surrounded by a loving wife and numerous progeny – remember the opening lines of "Pride and Prejudice" : It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.

"Painting and Sculpture before 1800" – NGV Publicationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beachborough_Manorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brockman#Australian_Brockmanshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Brockman

Bride of the Wind

Alma Mahler, the Bride of the Wind

Serendipity is a wonderful thing … Columbus discovered America when he was looking for India, Osterloh discovered Viagra when he was looking for an anti-angina drug, and I discovered Oskar Kokoschka when I was looking for Gustav Klimt.

I went to the Leopold Museum in Vienna especially to see Klimt's "Death and Life". I was particularly keen to see the painting in the original, because when one sees reproductions of it, it is usually a detail: only the "Life" part is shown. Fair enough: the intertwining figures and Klimt's trademark "mosaic look" makes a beautiful composition on its own, but without "Death" leering at the oblivious group, the whole painting rather loses its point.

The Leopold Museum was established in 2001 with the private art collection of Rudolf and Elizabeth Leopold as its nucleus. It houses a magnificent collection of Austrian Expressionist art, including the world's largest Egon Schiele collection. I found "Death and Life", and I had a great time looking at lots more exquisite Klimts. Then I spent an hour overdosing on Schiele's disturbing prepubescent nudes and angst-filled self-portraits.

An hour of Egon Schiele has the same effect as a hefty dose of caffeine or sticking your fingers in a power point: eyeballs spinning and nerve ends twanging, I staggered towards the museum caff and a soothing cup of herbal tea, only to be brought up short by Oskar Kokoschka's huge "Bride of the Wind".

To one in my already debilitated state, the thing had the stopping power of a .375 Magnum. My whole hard drive went into overload and I stood there frozen like a rabbit in the headlights.

Enclosed in a shell of storm clouds, the couple seem to be adrift on the waves of a cosmic ocean. She is at the centre of the vortex, luminously pale and serene among the indigo and purple whirlwinds, slashed with crimson, that rage around her. She seems strangely remote from the male figure clasping her while his sunken eyes gaze into the distance with a sense of doom.

The canvas just explodes with dense, voluminous, frenzied strokes: the emotional tension erupting into vibrant whorls kept screaming "Van Gogh!" at me. I had to keep telling myself this can't be Van Gogh: the frenzy is there, but the colours are all wrong … and besides, this is clearly about the woman. Van Gogh's insane angst is not sexual.

But what woman had the power to inspire this desperate, tempestuous passion?

She was born Alma Schindler in 1879, and was the belle of fin-de-siècle Vienna. She was a fabled femme fatale of her era, but she was not merely a pretty face. She had a gift for music and was a noted composer and poet in her own right.

Before she was eighteen, she had an affair with her music teacher, the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, which ended when she took up with Gustav Klimt. Klimt fell in love with her beauty and painted her many times before the affair petered out.

After queening it in Viennese society for three years, she married Gustav Mahler, 19 years her senior, when she was 22. Mahler insisted that she give up her music and stop composing. He was extremely possessive, and she soon started an extra-marital relationship with the famed Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius.

After Mahler's death in 1911, she had a fierce three-year affair with the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka, but she threw him over to marry her former lover Gropius. She divorced Gropius in turn, to marry the acclaimed writer Franz Werfel, best known for his "Song of Bernadette".

Along the way she found time, in her fifties, to have a fling with Enrico Caruso, "close friendships" with Giacomo Puccini and Maurice Ravel and an intense relationship with a 37-year-old Catholic theologian, Johannes Hollnsteiner, who was, at the time, the frontrunner to be Vienna's next cardinal. Clearly Alma wanted no truck with losers: whoever wanted to enjoy her favours (and clearly, many did!) had to have a top-of-the-line CV.

Johannes Hollnsteiner was also the author of the impressively titled "The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages: The Popes During the Carolingian Empire, Leo III to Formosus", which is today a valuable antiquarian collector's item.

Alma rented a small apartment where they could meet in private for matinéé performances of her skills, which were undoubtedly virtuoso if not virtuous. His employers certainly took a dim view, because Johannes didn't score a red hat after all. However, there must have been keen competition among the clergy for the job of being his confessor: whenever word got out that Johannes was on his way to the confessional, there would have been sharper elbow work than at the Myer Boxing Day Sales to get to the absolution-dispensing side first.

If you could bottle and sell whatever magic it was that Alma had in such abundance (even in middle age and after four children!), you could knock Bill Gates right off the top spot. Always provided Alma didn't get to him first – nothing she liked better than the top-spot guy! Contemporaries cattily called her "The Widow of the Four Arts", referring to music, architecture, painting and literature: she had certainly dealt herself four aces in those fields. The composer Gustav Mahler loved her too much, painter Oskar Kokoschka was unable to get over losing her, architect Walter Gropius was putty in her hands, and poet Franz Werfel wrote: "She is one of the very few magical women who exist!"

In the Sixties, the iconoclastic Tom Lehrer had a bit of fun writing a rather cheeky song about Alma's fatal charms:

The loveliest girl in Vienna
Was Alma, the smartest as well
Once you picked her up on your antenna
You'd never be free of her spell

Her lovers were many and varied
From the day she began her beguine
There were three famous ones whom she
married
And God knows how many between

Alma, tell us
All modern women are jealous
Which of your magical wands
Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz …

(If you want to read the whole thing, just Google lehrer alma lyrics)

Oskar Kokoschka, whom she refused to marry, was obsessed by his passion for her. His intense feelings for her found expression in a series of paintings, often including himself, the most important of which is "Bride of the Wind". She was never as committed as he was to the relationship, and he was devastated when she aborted their child rather than marry him.

In 1913, just in time for WW1, Kokoschka joined the army in the aftermath of his break with Alma and rapidly advanced to officer's rank. Sadly, he came close to death on the Russian Front, shot in the head and with a pierced lung. After a period of convalescence in Vienna, he was sent back to the front and returned from his second tour of duty suffering from severe "shell shock", or what we now call post-traumatic stress. He moved to Dresden to recuperate in a peaceful milieu.

He needed to recuperate from more than the effects of the war: he was still suffering from the traumatic stress of Alma's rejection as well. His behaviour became quite unhinged and he skirted close to insanity. He commissioned a life-sized doll in the likeness of Alma Mahler, complete down to the most intimate anatomical details. Bizarrely, except for the face and pubic area, the skin of the body was not smooth, but made of polar bear pelt. He dressed the doll in fashionable clothes, used her as a model and took her to the theatre and restaurants, his maid Hulda carrying her and moving her limbs.http://www.alma-mahler.at/index.htmhttp://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,311987,00.htmlhttp://www.gseart.com/artists.asp?ArtistID=66

At last he came to his senses and no longer needed the doll – as he told an interviewer in 1932:
"Finally, after I had drawn her and painted her over and over again, I decided to do away with her. She had managed to cure me completely of my passion. So I gave a big champagne party with chamber music, during which my maid Hulda exhibited the doll in all its beautiful clothes for the last time. When dawn broke - I was quite drunk, as was everyone else - I beheaded it out in the garden and broke a bottle of red wine over its head.” Small wonder that he was nicknamed Der tolle Kokoschka (Crazy Kokoschka)!

Alma and her Jewish husband, Franz Werfel, emigrated to America just ahead of the Nazi anschluss. Werfel became a succcessful screenwriter in Hollywood, and died there in 1946. Alma bought an apartment in New York, where she continued to move in cultural and artistic circles and had many friends among the foremost artists and musicians of the day, including Thomas Mann, Eugene Ormandy and Leonard Bernstein. She died in her New York apartment in December 1964, at the age of 85.


"Kokoschka", edited by Klaus Albrecht Schroder and Johann Winkler, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, 1991
"Art in Vienna 1898 - 1918" by Peter Vergo, Phaidon Press, 1993

A Daughter of Denmark

Hans Holbein

Christina of Denmark - Duchess of Milan (1538)
Oak 179 x 82.5 cm

National Gallery, London

Last month we looked at the NGV's Princess Sophie, a Fille de France. The confident Princess Christina, en Datter af Danmark, had a very different life from the shy Sophie, who died a spinster. As a Victorian lady so famously remarked while watching Sarah Bernhardt portray Cleopatra: "How very, very different from the home life of our own dear Queen!"

Holbein's arresting portrait of Princess Christina is, sadly for us, not to be spotted at the NGV – it hangs in London's National Gallery, opposite his other fascinating masterpiece, "The Ambassadors", which we discussed in an earlier WASP.

In 1538, Henry VIII was window-shopping for a fourth wife, Jane Seymour having died in childbed after presenting him with a son. Christina, at sixteen the recently widowed Duchess of Milan, was one of the most eligible brides in Europe: the daughter of the Danish king and niece of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, she was of impeccable royal lineage, tall, blonde, beautiful and very wealthy. Henry became particularly interested in Christina after receiving a despatch from Cromwell's envoy in Brussels describing her: " She is of the age of sixteen years, very tall for that age — and a goodly personage of competent beauty, of favour excellent, soft of speech, and very gentle in countenance. She weareth mourning apparel, after the manner of Italy. The common saying here is that she is both widow and maid. (Her late husband was old and crippled, and the couple had no children: there was speculation that the marriage was unconsummated.) When she chanceth to smile, there appeareth two pits in her cheeks, the which becometh her right excellently well. She resembleth much one Mistress Skelton (Anne Boleyn's cousin Mary Skelton, who had been a great favourite with the King) She useth most to speak French, albeit it is reported that she can speak both Italian and High German."

Holbein, who had been appointed court painter to the Tudor king, was despatched forthwith to Brussels to paint her portrait. Christina graciously granted him a three-hour sitting, wearing her mourning clothes.

Henry insisted on a full-length frontal portrait in order that no blemishes should be concealed from him. Not that that helped him much, because he later married Anne of Cleves on the strength of a frontal Holbein painting, and look how that turned out! When he actually met her, he blenched at the sight, called her a "Flanders mare" and refused to consummate the marriage, which may well have been a blessing in disguise for Anne.

The king was charmed by Christina's portrait and vowed that he would marry the Duchess even if she came to him without a farthing! An ambassador to the Court of Saint James reported that “since he saw [the portrait] he has been in much better humour than he ever was, making musicians play on their instruments all day long".

Henry was not Christina's only suitor: many of the Great and the Good sought to ally themselves with the Emperor through a marriage to his niece. The king of France proposed his son, the Duc d'Angouleme; the Pope put in a good word for his niece's son, Count Bosia Sforza; the Scottish Ambassador opened negotiations on behalf of King James V; the Duke of Cleves pressed his suit, and the Prince of Orange also threw his hat into the ring.

King Henry VIII duly sent a proposal of marriage via the English Ambassador. Christina told the Ambassador that if she had two heads, she would gladly put one at the English King's disposal, but meanwhile she would prefer to keep the one she had. Derek Wilson suggests her portrait should be subtitled "The One That Got Away"!

It is fortunate for generations of viewers who have shared Henry's infatuation with this engaging portrait, that she sat for it, even though she had no intention of marrying him. She is a serene figure, confidently aware of her rank and wealth. Holding a pair of gloves, she stands out against the plain but brightly coloured background relieved only by shadows. Since the black mourning dress carried no ornament, Holbein stressed the three-dimensional modelling, creating enlivening patterns from the reflection of light on the folds of the silken robe.

Christina was much praised for the elegance of her hands, and in this area of the painting Holbein suggests the different textures of linen, velvet, fur, leather, gold and gemstone to set off the delicate beauty of her slender fingers. Christina's faint smile seems at once demure and intimate.

Princess Christina was born in 1522, the daughter of Christian II of Denmark and Isabella of Burgundy. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was her maternal uncle and she counted among her ancestors such interestingly nicknamed luminaries as Joanna the Mad, Philip the Handsome, Charles the Bold and John the Fearless. Charles the Bold is a fine figure of a man, but you'd never cast Philip the Handsome as a leading man – his choice of hat alone would cause more sniggers than swoons. As for John the Fearless, he looks a right wimp: I suspect those nicknames were ironic!

King Christian II of Denmark was an early Lutheran sympathiser who lost his throne in 1523. The three royal children, Prince John, Princess Dorothea and Princess Christina were sent to be brought up in the Netherlands at the court of their great-aunt, Margaret of Austria, who was Governess of the Netherlands.
Sadly, the little Prince died young, of a fever. Bidding was brisk among the royal houses of Europe for the hands of the two young princesses: their Uncle Charles realised their worth as pawns in the game of politics. He settled on the Duke of Milan as the most suitable husband for Christina, which of course meant the most advantageous for himself.

She was only eleven years old at the time, and her aunt Margaret wrote an impassioned letter to the emperor asking him to postpone the marriage by a few years, as the bride was so young and the prospective bridegroom a middle-aged man. Margaret expressed her fear that Christina would, like so many child brides of the time, die in childbed while her body was still insufficiently developed to give birth to a full-term baby.

Charles, however, was adamant that the marriage should go ahead immediately, and the Duke of Milan's friend and proxy, Count Massimiliano Stampa, set out for the Netherlands, to wed the Princess in his name. He arrived after a journey of two months, but Margaret managed to delay the ceremony for six months, by claiming she had urgent government business in other parts of the Netherlands. The Count was left to cool his heels in Brussels.

When the ceremony was held at last, Christina had passed her twelfth birthday. Margaret managed to delay the new Duchess' meeting with her husband by still another six months, by insisting that the long journey to Milan was too arduous in the winter and the Duke would have to wait until spring to welcome his bride.

As it turned out, The Duke of Milan was a kind and indulgent husband and their marriage was a very happy one. They were married for only eighteen months when the Duke died, leaving his Duchess Christina a very wealthy widow at 14 years of age. As the Duke died childless, the Duchy of Milan reverted to Christina's uncle, the Emperor, with the exception of the city of Tortona and the town and Castello of Vigevano, which were bequeathed to her outright.

Christina remained in Milan, where she was very popular, for a couple of years before returning to her aunt in Brussels. People lined the streets to see her when she ventured forth; she broke with Royal tradition by being very accessible to her subjects – she would press a hand, pat a shoulder, hug a child. She took an interest in the common people, did a great deal of charitable work, and enjoyed the adulation of the populace … she was the original People's Princess, an early version of Diana!

She remained with her aunt in Brussels while the Emperor wheeled and dealed with all her noble suitors, until he eventually made a deal with the Duc de Lorraine for Christina to marry his son François, the Duc de Bar. They were married in 1541 and François succeeded his father as Duc de Lorraine in 1544. He died a year later, leaving his Duchess-Consort Christina to be Regent of Lorraine on behalf of their two-year-old son Charles.

Christina was also left with two little girls: one-year-old Renata and newborn Dorothea. She had produced three children in the four years of her marriage, so maybe it was just as well that the Duke popped his clogs when he did. No surprise that she declined to marry again!

During Christina's regency Lorraine became a pawn in her uncle the Holy Roman Emperor's ongoing conflicts with France. It must have been a relief to her when her son, the young Duke Charles III, became old enough to take over the reins. In due course he also made a very advantageous marriage: his bride was Princess Claude de Valois, the daughter of Henri II of France and Catherine de Medici.

Duchess Christina died in 1590 at age 68, and is buried at Nancy, in the unostentatious 15th century Church of the Cordeliers, the burial church of the ducal family of Lorraine.

http://www.archive.org/details/christinaofdenma00adyj
http://thepeerage.com/index.htm

Lina Bryans: The Babe Is Wise

William Frater
The Red Hat (1937)

Lina Bryans
The Babe is Wise (1940)

"The Red Hat" stopped me in my tracks on my very first visit to the NGV, back in the days when the Australian collection still lived at St Kilda Road. New to Australia, I had never heard of Lina Bryans. (I had never heard of wombats or Vegemite either – there were many treats in store for me in my new country!)

I made a mental note to look up who this cool, elegant young woman with the self-assured gaze was … a little later I knew at least that she was a painter, when I came across "The Babe Is Wise": her striking, iconic portrait of Jean Campbell.

Lina Bryans (néé Hallenstein) was born in Hamburg in 1909, while her Australian parents were touring Europe. They had arrived in Germany from Italy, where they had climbed the Dolomites and hiked across the craggy uplands. During the last stages of pregnancy I was more inclined to put my feet up and read a novel than clamber up mountains (and foreign ones at that), but I daresay Lina's mum was a woman of more fortitude than I.

Be that as it may, the Hallensteins, a prominent and wealthy Melbourne family, returned to Australia none the worse for wear and Lina grew up in privileged circumstances, along with her sister Margaret. She attended St Catherine's School where one of her classmates was Elisabeth Greene, who later became Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and was a life-long friend.

Mrs Hallenstein took her daughters on regular trips to Europe, where they attended the races at Ascot and Longchamps, shopped at the couture houses and explored London, Paris and Venice. They visited all the great art galleries. Lina was especially entranced by the pure colours and decorative style of Ucello in the Louvre, but a lot of the art she saw and admired, influenced her later work.

Back in Melbourne, the family observed the rigid social code of etiquette that prevailed in their circle. Lina spent a short time at Melbourne University, but hankered for independence from the constraints Society placed upon young women of her class. In her late teens, she took a first step towards independence by moving to Sydney to stay with relatives. Here she started to paint for the first time.

Her aunt must have been a bit of a lackadaisical chaperone, because soon 19 year old Lina took the radical step of moving into a flat of her own, and getting a job in a bookshop cum tea room. She also sold bags and ties in unusual designs, which she made on a handloom she had bought in France. After a couple of years of asserting her freedom, she was pressured into returning to the family fold in Melbourne.

She dutifully conformed to the social whirl of parties and balls, and gratified her family by marrying Baynham Bryans at the age of 22. Her son Edward was born in the following year, but by the time he was two years old, the couple had separated and Lina moved to a flat in South Yarra with the little boy. She formed a close friendship with the watercolourist Iain MacKinnon, who painted her portrait and inspired her to take her own painting seriously.

She learnt a lot from MacKinnon, but in 1936, when she was twenty-seven, her life changed when she met artist and stained-glass designer William "Jock" Frater. He spurred her on to become a fulltime artist, and gave her the use of his city studio while he was away for a few weeks. On his return, she showed him an abstract in greys, pinks and mauves, which he liked. Using this canvas and leaving bits of her painting to form the background, Frater painted his first portrait of her:"The Black Hat". This picture is currently in the National Portrait Gallery.

"The Red Hat", painted in the first flush of their close relationship, reveals Frater's attraction to the liberated spirit and sophisticated elegance of this woman, twenty years his junior. It is a very striking portrait, with its muted tones, the sitter's milk-white skin warmed by the cherry red hat. Dressing her in a working painter's smock in contrast with the fashionable hat, he indicates her dual persona as an artist and a stylish, independent woman.

Over the next few years he painted her at least five more times. I would have liked to see "The Blue Dress", acquired in 1945 by the Tasmanian Art Gallery, which is described by Gillian Forwood as "a remakable piece of portraiture in which the swirl of the dominant blue colouring flows evenly through the flesh tints in daring and astonishing harmony". Sounds great, doesn't it?

Sadly, the Tazzie Art Gallery's website is unique among those of the other Australian States in that they don't have any part of their collection online, not even a catalogue of their holdings! You can read all about their opening hours and you can order a calendar or a tea towel online, but if you want to know what they actually have hanging on the walls, never mind take a look at it, you have to pop a couple of Dramamines and brave the Bass Strait.

However, I was able to find two more of Frater's homages to Lina : The National Gallery in Canberra holds "Portrait of Lina Bryans" (1936), a head study in which the sitter's slightly smiling, sensual mouth belies her cool, somewhat imperious gaze.

One that I like even more, is simply titled "Portrait of Lina" - a dramatic and somewhat exotic picture, the barely restrained passion evoked by the blazing, sunlit background and the swirling skirt having the air of a Picasso about it. However, the sitter's half-swooning expression and the hand at her breast makes her a much softer and more yielding figure than the haughty Lina of the other portraits.

Their unconventional relationship caused a certain amount of turmoil as Frater had by then been married for 12 years to Winifred Dow, and had four children. During their affaire, which was to last for ten years, they always had separate studios, but were seen everywhere together and were regarded as a couple.

According to an anecdote told by Murray Bail at the opening of an exhibition of Lina's work in 1995: "As a young student, John Brack watched Frater promenading down Collins Street with the beautiful Bryans on his arm. It was at that moment that Brack decided to become an artist." Presumably so that he, too, could have a Lina on his arm! She must indeed have been a femme of world-class fataleness to cause such an epiphany.

I thought that kind of thing only happened in fiction! I went to dig out my yellowed old Penguin paperback copy of Ernest Bramah's "Golden Hours of Kai Lung", so I can accurately quote his description of a young man who was similarly overcome by a woman's beauty: "After secretly observing the unstudied grace of her movements, the most celebrated picture maker of the province burned the implements of his craft, and began life anew as a trainer of performing elephants." Fortunately for us, Bracks turned to the palette rather than the ankus.

Bryans and Frater gathered around them a coterie of artists, writers and thinkers. In 1937, when young Edward was six years old, Lina emancipated herself still further by packing him off to a "preparatory boarding school" (I refrain from comment) and moving into Oxford Chambers, Bourke Street.

Embracing the bohemian lifestyle as a New Woman of the Thirties, complete with married paramour, was a very courageous step. It is difficult for us to understand how much it went against the grain of acceptable standards – she incurred the shocked disapproval of the upper echelons of Melbourne society and her parents never visited her.

Many Melbourne artists moved to the country: Heidelberg, Warrandyte, Eltham, Ivanhoe, Heide … and Darebin, which had the advantage of being within spitting distance of metropolitan Melbourne while still being countrified. In 1940, Lina took a room in Darebin Bridge House, where Ada May Plante also lived.

The house was an old hotel which had been converted into a rooming house. On the death of her parents, Lina came into an inheritance which enabled her to buy the house. She renovated it, painted the outside pink and it became known as The Pink Hotel.
Frater converted a big garden shed on the premises into a studio for himself. His family lived nearby at Alphington, which made for a bit of an awkward situation, especially as his children were very fond of Ada May Plante and frequently came to see her.

Darebin House became the hub of an artists' and writers' community – Lina gave intimate dinners and threw parties for upward of fifty people in the three downstairs living rooms. She was related by marriage, through the Baillieu family, to Sunday Reed and the Reeds invited her to join their Heide group. She was attracted to the more advanced and experimental spirit of Heide, but decided to stay within the establishment with the more conservative Darebin group, largely because of the conditioning of her background, and her strong affiliation with Frater.

She painted nearly a hundred portraits during her career, nearly all of them of friends. Very often she gave the portrait to the sitter. Her most frequently reproduced painting, on cards, posters and even a postage stamp, is "The Babe is Wise", which captures the vibrant personality of her close friend, author Jean Campbell. The title of the picture was inspired by that of a novel by the sitter.

Campbell had taken her title from a poem by Edwin Arnold: "The babe is wise that weepeth being born ..", but to me the cool, self-assured young woman, with the jaunty hat, is the epitome of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler's "babes" of the era, who hold their own with the wise guys and the gumshoes. What has been called her "insouciant chic" would not be out of place in Sam Spade's office nor in Walter Burns' newsroom.

Lina gave the portrait to Jean Campbell, who later donated it to the NGV. It is this portrait and the one of Adrian Lawlor which Lina Bryant herself regarded as her best. The Lawlor portrait was entered in the Archibald Prize in 1964, but to the indignation of many, no prize was awarded that year. The portrait is now in the National Library of Australia.

Lina Bryans also painted some marvellous landscapes, which became more abstract towards the end of her career. They will not reproduce well in black and white, but I'll put some on the WASP blog in colour, with this article, in which I have scarcely scratched the surface of Lina Bryant's long, colourful and fascinating life. For anyone who would like to know more, (and there is a lot more to know!) I can warmly recommend the biography by Gillian Forwood: "Lina Bryans: Rare Modern 1909-2000", from which I gleaned a lot of my information.

Farinelli and Friends

The Singer Farinelli and Friends by Jacopo Amigoni
Oil on Canvas; painted between 1750 and 1752
National Gallery of Victoria

This is one of my favourite portraits at the NGV and well worth a visit. The delicate colors and curving forms of Amigoni's rococo style seems very suited to the slightly melancholy subject of a little group of intimate friends about to part.

The friends are in Madrid: Farinelli sits in the centre, his pageboy and pet dog off to the right. Beside him is his close friend and pupil, Teresa Castellini, the prima donna of the Madrid Opera. She and Farinelli had a very close relationship and she was popularly believed to be the love of his life, an impossible love in the light of his physical circumstances: he was the most renowned of the castratos.

Behind Farinelli is the artist himself, who met the singer in Paris in 1736 and became a good friend. He is dressed in his painterly smock and turban, and holds a handful of brushes. His dress is remiscent of that of Joseph Highmore, a painter of the same era, whose selfportrait in the NGV we looked at in a previous WASP.

I always find it interesting when an artist includes a self-portrait in a group painting - two others spring to mind: Tiepolo in one of his versions of "Cleopatra's Banquet" (see the article on "Cleopatra's Banquet" in a previous WASP), and Frans Hals, who placed himself among the "Officers and Sergeants of the St George Civic Guard Company".

But back to Farinelli and friends: On the far left is Pietro Metastasio, the famous "opera serie" librettist and Farinelli's lifelong friend. The paper that Farinelli is handing to Teresa is a poem by Metastasio, describing the sadness of a lover's departure.

Teresa was about to leave Madrid, but the symbolism of the poem has a wider meaning: the artist is referring to the inevitable separation of four friends who are in essence itinerant professionals. In this painting he immortalises their companionship and the capacity of true friendship to rise above physical absence.

Carlo Broschi Farinelli (1705-1782) was the most famous singer of his century : he had an exceptional voice, although his androgynous beauty clearly contributed to his success. He enjoyed a quasi-mythical status, even in his own life-time, perhaps because, (like Shane Warne!) he retired at the height of his fame and powers.

Contemporary accounts are full of praise for the beauty of his sound, the breadth of his range and the purity of his intonation. It has been recorded that the range of his voice covered more than three and a half octaves, that he could produce 250 notes in a single breath and sustain a note for more than a minute.

Farinelli was born Carlo Broschi, to a minor noble family in Naples in 1705. He had one brother, Riccardo, eight years his senior, who composed several operas for him. Riccardo was very ambitious for his talented brother and may have pushed for him to be castrated at the age of seven: the prevailing method was to drug the boy with opium and immerse him in a bath of warm water before severing the ducts to the testes.

Carlo studied under Porpora, the famous teacher of castrati. During his musical studies in Naples, he became the protégé of the Farina brothers and adopted, according to the custom of the time, the name of 'Farinelli'.

He met the poet Metastase when he was fifteen years old, at the Palace of the Prince of Torella, when he had a role in "Angelika and Medoro," an opera whose libretto was written by Metastase. They became close friends, corresponding until Farinelli's death in 1782.

Farinelli performed at all the main courts of Europe and even sang privately for King Louis XV of France at the Queen's apartments, for which he received a portrait of the King embossed with diamonds, and a fee of 500 livres.
He was 32 years old when he gave his last public performance, retiring from the limelight so he could sing exclusively for King Philip V of Spain who was known to have suffered severe depression. The singer's remarkable Spanish career spanned more than two decades in the service of Philip V (1700-46) and Ferdinand VI (1746-59). He became a prominent and influential courtier: Private Counsellor to the King, receiving foreign guests, reorganizing the Madrid Opera, and directing music at the royal chapel. In 1750, he was knighted in the order of Calatrava.

He remained a legendary success in the public imagination, since his fans had to rely on their memory of his prowess unless they were on the Royal guest list. Today we have to turn to the music critics of his time, since he was born 200 years too early for a CD of his greatest hits to be easily obtainable from your friendly local ABC Shop.

With the death of Ferdinand VI, he returned to Italy and settled in Bologna where died in 1782 and was buried at his request on a hillside in Bologna. His original tomb no longer exists today: it was destroyed by Napoleon's army, but his remains were reburied on the family estate.

Castration was banned in the 19th century, and the last castrato in the Western World died in 1922. Castrati were virtuoso musicians, exceptionally talented and trained. Due to their unique physical attributes, almost nothing in their repertoire can be performed nowadays.

They were particularly known for their unique timbre: their voice did not change with puberty. Upon adulthood, they combined the lung capacity and physical stamina of a grown man with the sweet high voice of a boy soprano. They had, as a consequence, great vocal power, and some were able to sing notes for a minute or more. A small, flexible larynx, and relatively short vocal chords allowed them to vocalize over 3 and a half octaves.

They received decades of rigorous musical training and were cast in heroic male roles, alongside another new breed of operatic creature, the female prima donna. The rise of these star singers with formidable technical skills spurred composers to write increasingly complex vocal music, and many operas of the time were written as vehicles for specific singers, of whom Farinelli is perhaps the most famous.

The castratos were the superstars of their day: as theatrical celebrities, they reigned supreme and commanded large salaries. On the stage, they were the undisputed stars. A composer was merely hired help who labored at the castrato’s pleasure. If the arias written for a castrato did not please the singer, he could demand -- and receive -- a complete rewrite.

Their popularity began to wane by 1760, when new composers like Gluck and Mozart used tenors to play the hero instead. Rossini and Weber insisted that their arias be sung as written and there was no more room in opera for star tantrums. Now instead of the singer being the king of the stage, it was the composer who ruled the kingdom. Farinelli was the last of the great operatic castrati and I do wish I could have heard him sing!

An interesting footnote to the Farinelli story is that his remains were exhumed with the permission of his great-niece, so that scientists at the University could study the effects of castration on the human frame. (Why do they need to know this? Is there a sinister conspiracy among opera directors to resurrect the famous performances? Choirboys around the world, don't accept opium from strangers!)

Painting and sculpture before 1800, NGV Collection.
http://wa.essortment.com/castratihistory_rzna.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_seria
http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/farinelli/about/ffarinelli.html

Some Interesting Churches of Europe

Some of the greatest works by the Old Masters are to be found in cathedrals and churches round the world, but I am always enchanted by the unusual and interesting things that are to be found in them apart from the magnificent artwork.

One of my favourite churches is the St Bavokerk in Haarlem, near Amsterdam. Frans Hals lived in Haarlem all his life and is buried in St Bavo.

The church boasts a magnificent organ, built in 1735 by the famous German organ builder Christiaan Muller. He was to the organ what Antonio Stradivari was to the violin.

The organ has five thousand pipes, the smallest the size of a pencil, the largest ten metres (three stories!) high. It is gilded and embellished with exquisitely carved wooden statues: a life-size King David with his harp, Asaph the Psalmist holding a scroll, and a whole host of angels and seraphs.

Twice a week professional organists give free recitals during the day, as they have done for upward of two centuries. It is a sought-after privilege to play the St Bavo organ, and organists from all over the world book sessions months in advance. Handel travelled from London to Haarlem to play the organ, and during their concert tour of Europe in 1763, the Mozart family made a special overnight trip from Amsterdam to Haarlem so that ten-year old Wolfgang Amadeus could try it out. I wonder if his little legs could even reach the pedals. However, three years later, in 1766, he was back to have another go. This time he stayed three days, so he must have liked it.

St Bavo is a huge church with lots of side chapels, the most interesting of which is the "Hondeslagerskapel", or Dog Whipper's Chapel, beautifully carved with reliefs of dogs. Members of the congregation brought their dogs to church with them. The dog would sit at its owner's feet. Should a dog bark or fidget, the official Dog Whipper, employed by the Church Council, would emerge from his side chapel and chase the dog out. If the Dog Whipper was absent or the position wasn't filled, the chief choir boy was the pinch hitter and had to do dog chasing duty between hymns.

Sadly, in 1813 they banned dogs altogether from the church. I reckon the Dog Whippers' Union would have had something to say about that - I hope the incumbent got a good retrenchment package.

In Gouda, there is a really lovely chapel in the St Catharina Gastehuis, which may be called a "gastehuis" or guest house, but is in fact the city museum and was formerly a hospital and before that an orphanage, but never a guest house. I failed to find out why it is called a guest house, but I found the large, beautifully proportioned chapel on the ground floor extremely interesting when my daughter and I visited the inappropriately named Gastehuis.

The chapel was used by the 17th century French Huguenots, who fled Catholic persecution. They found sanctuary in the Protestant Netherlands, from where many of them went on to the Cape and became my ancestors.

The chapel now houses a collection of religious art: a bit light on the Mother-and-Child and heavy on the Martyrs - I moved briskly past the 2 depictions of St Cath chained to the wheel, one of St Lucia carrying her eyes on a little platter as she is wont to do, and three of St Sebastian, each with different numbers of arrows and different amounts of gore. I daresay the hagiography is not clear on the finer details of St Seb's death, so the painters had to add blood and arrows to taste.

There were various other martyrs whose particular sufferings I could not immediately associate with a name, not being of the Catholic persuasion and less than au fait with the Saints and Martyrs. I think the one being grilled over a bed of charcoal is St Lawrence, but I may be wrong. That may have been St Barbie.

Continuing the House of Pain theme, on the far side of the chapel there was a door which intriguingly said "Cells and Torture Implements", so we pushed it open and peered in. It gave onto a narrow spiral stair which misleadingly didn’t look too sinister due to lots of whitewash and good lighting. At the bottom, however, we discovered a row of really nasty little windowless cells furnished only with leather handcuffs fixed to the walls by rusty chains and, across the corridor, a well-equipped torture chamber complete with all the tools one has heard about, plus a few pointy implements that I couldn't put a name to, but which no doubt came in handy when dealing with a difficult case. All thankfully pretty rusted now and obviously in disuse.

Makes you wonder who the customers or torturees were, considering the place was occupied over the years by (a) hospital patients (b) orphans and (c) devout Prostestants on the run. Maybe the orphans were very naughty.

Still in the Netherlands, Jan Vermeer is buried in Delft, in the Oude Kerk, which dates from the 12th century. There he lies, under a worn paving stone with only his name and dates on. You can walk on it. Five yards away, there is the ornate and imposing gilded marble sarcophagus of the Dutch naval hero, Admiral Tromp: the Netherlands' answer to Horatio Nelson.

I am always indignant about Vermeer getting a mere flagstone and Tromp a tomb fit for a pharaoh. They should swap places. Oh, well … the paintbrush has turned out to be mightier than the sword, hasn't it. Admiral Who? We all know who Vermeer is.

The Protestant churches in the Netherlands are full of interest, but if you really want more bang for your buck, the great Catholic cathedrals of Europe is where you will hit the jackpot. Each of them is home to priceless masterpieces in paint and sculpture.

Apart from the conventional works of art, I am always fascinated by the contents of the "Treasure Chambers". You pay an admission fee to these Aladdin's Cave-like crypts but it is invariably worth every penny. The vestments, the gold and silver chalices and the reliquiries are stunning. Often they are embellished with jewels the size of postage stamps. Many of them are centuries old. Some of those jewel-embroidered bishops' vestments are better than the Royal wedding gowns you see in Palace museums. The designs and the fine hand-stitching are unbelievably beautiful.

The jewelled reliquiries are real works of the goldsmith's art, although I tend to be dubious about their alleged contents, many of which are said to have been brought back from the Crusades. The Crusaders must have spent more time shopping than fighting.

In the Domkerk in Cologne they have a large gold sarcophagus purporting to contain the bones of the Three Wise Men, brought back from the Holy Land, of course, by Crusaders. Silly me, I always took it that the Three Men were Wise enough to go back home after they had made the "gold, frankincense and myrrh" home delivery, but no, I was wrong. Obviously they stayed on till they died, and were all buried together in a clearly marked grave, so their bones could be retrieved by a Crusader a thousand years later.

The sarcophagus is a very beautiful work of art. It was designed by the famous medieval goldsmith, Nicholas of Verdun, who began work on it in 1180 or 1181. It has elaborate gold sculptures of the prophets and apostles, and scenes from the life of Christ.

Most relics consist of the fingers, toes or vertebrae of some venerable abbot, bishop or saint, but in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in Germany, I also saw a lock of John the Baptist’s hair (Germanic blond, strangely enough for a Semitic middle-easterner), as well as the armbones (radius and ulna both) of Charlemagne. The bits of the Baptist and Charlemagne are the star attractions in the Aix cathedral, but they have heaps of supporting-act relics there too: pieces of bone and body parts of assorted holy men, all in gorgeously bejewelled golden reliquaries.

The question that leaps to mind is: how did they obtain the bits of skeleton? The mind fairly boggles. It could have been a nice little earner for a medieval abbey, mind you: the minute the venerable abbot dies, the ‘phone starts ringing off the hook:

"Hallo, this is Father Baldwin calling from St Marzipan’s in Tuscany … I hear the abbot passed … deepest sympathy … any chance of a relic?"
"Yes, certainly, Father, they are boiling him down in the backyard as we speak. Shall I put you down for a nice femur?"
"Oh, dear no, we can’t afford a femur! I was hoping for something more modest – maybe a few vertebrae or a finger?"
"No worries, Father, I can give you your choice of an index finger or two metacarpals."
"That is very kind, we’ll take the index finger. Is the right one still available?"
"Half a sec, Father, I'll just check the allocation register … OK, the entire left hand went to St Lenin's. We'll FedEx the right index finger to you as soon as your cheque clears."
"Many thanks, Brother, I'll have Brother Benvenuto make a start on the reliquary right away. Pax vobiscum to you and the lads."

Little Red Riding Hood

Gustave DoréLittle Red Riding Hood c.1862Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 81.7cm

The painting of "Little Red Riding Hood" is a rendition in oils of one of the illustrations for Perrault's book of fairy tales, and was a gift to the NGV by Mrs S. Horne in 1962.

Paul Gustave Doré saw his first illustrations in print in 1847, when he was 15 years old. He was also a painter and sculptor: the famous statue of Alexandre Dumas in Paris is his work. However, his first love was wood and steel engraving.

He started out by illustrating Rabelais, Balzac, and Dante for Parisian publishers, but his international career took off in 1853 when he was commissioned to illustrate the works of Lord Byron. He was overwhelmed with commissions from British publishers, the most important of which was a new English Bible in 1866. This was a huge success and in 1867 there was a major exhibition of his work in London. He became the most famous and highly-paid illustrator in Europe, despite never having had an art lesson in his life.
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Doré really had no peer as an illustrator – he illustrated editions of all the classics: Poe, Milton, Tennyson, Dante … the list goes on. His depiction of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza has become entrenched in the zeitgeist and has influenced subsequent artists, stage and film directors' ideas of how the two characters should look. Even in the eponymous ballet, the Don and Sancho have the Doré "look".

Charles Perrault was a French author who "invented" the fairy tale as a new literary genre, with his somewhat bowdlerised versions of traditional folk and fairy tales. Doré's illustrations of the 1862 de luxe edition of Perrault's fairy tales contributed in large measure to its success. Having just completed the rather harrowing task of illustrating Dante's "Inferno", Doré enjoyed creating the required forty plates for the fairy tales.
Our heroine, Red, has come a long way since her story was an oral folk tale, probably first told in the days when we lived in caves and still dragged our knuckles a lot of the time.
The earliest known version was a cautionary French folk tale known as ''The Story of Grandmother"; no mention of a red hood or cloak. It is meant as a warning to young girls of the perils of succumbing to male advances.

This original story is full of bawdy allusions, and blatantly sexual and violent: the wolf gives Red some of her grandmother's flesh to eat before seducing her. It was first published in Paris in 1697, (nearly a century before Perrault) and the accompanying engraving shows a nude girl, lying in bed beneath a wolf. The tale ends with her death in the beast’s jaws - her just desserts for her immoral behaviour. In the French slang of the day, when a girl lost her virginity it was said that elle avoit vû le loup – "she’d seen the wolf".

Perrault's version was intended for aristocrats at the court of Versailles and is considerably less crude: the original elements of the story that would have shocked Society are left out. As "Little Red Riding Hood", it appeared in his 1697 collection of fairy tales.

He still presents the tale as a moral warning against wanton behaviour: he was the first to cloak the heroine in red, suggesting the girl’s sin and foreshadowing her bloody fate. In Perrault's version, there is no woodsman who comes to the rescue: Little Red Riding Hood still dies at the end of the story, emphasising his point about the dangers of encouraging male advances. ("Men only want One Thing!", my Auntie Beatrice used to say darkly when I was a teenager. She never said what the One Thing was, but I somehow didn't think it was a kind word and a cup of tea.)

Anyhow, Perrault ends his story with this verse:

"Little girls, this seems to say
Never stop upon your way,
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you're pretty, so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Handsome they may be and kind,
Gay or charming -- never mind!
Now, as then, 'tis simple truth --
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!"

In the 19th century Red Riding Hood, as befits a Victorian maiden, grew more discreet and also acquired a man to look after her. A woodsman rescues Red from the beast and gives her a second chance to get back on the straight and narrow in “Little Red Cap,” published in 1812 by the German brothers Grimm. This is the version most people know today.

The Grimms, in a story acceptable in the social landscape of Victorian Europe, suggested spiritual rather than sexual danger, even though she still got into bed with the wolf. They eliminated all sexual suggestion and changed the ending of the story to teach a moral about learning from one's mistakes. They invented the fatherly woodsman, who represents patriarchal protection of submissive womenfolk.

Amusingly, in 1990 a particular edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales was banned in two California school districts because of an illustration showing Red’s basket with a bottle of wine as well as fresh bread and butter. No complaints about Red disrobing and climbing in bed with the wolf, but the wine, they said, might be seen as condoning the use of alcohol.

In the 20th century, Red was emancipated at last: no longer did she have to be the poster girl for symbolic warnings against the female libido: in 1953 Max Factor promised, in a full-page Vogue ad, that their “Riding Hood Red” lipstick would “bring the wolves out.” Stories and movies alike reinvented her as the aggressor: in The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter, Red turns the tables on her lascivious stalker and becomes a wolf herself; in the 1996 movie Freeway, Reese Witherspoon plays a tough lady in a red leather jacket who is more than a match for the serial killer she meets while hitch-hiking to grandma’s trailer park.

Roald Dahl, in his "Revolting Rhymes", sees to it that the wolf doesn't get to first base with his intended victim. When he tries to sleaze on to Red, he gets his comeuppance quick smart:

" …The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature's head
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, "Hello, and do please note

My lovely furry wolfskin coat.''

The poor old wolf has mislaid his machismo: I love the Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon that shows the beast on a psychiatrist’s couch, in a floral granny nightgown. “It was supposed to be just a story about a little kid and a wolf,” he says, “but off and on I’ve been dressing up as a grandmother ever since.”

I'll let James Thurber have the last word: the moral of his story has summed the modern Red up perfectly …

The Little Girl and the Wolf
by James Thurber

One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.

When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

(Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.)

Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahlhttp://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/danceswithwolves.asp
"My, What Big Morals Our Fairy Tales Weave" NYTimes, December 4, 1996http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/ridinghood/themes.html
"19th Century Paintings and Sculpture", NGV Publication