July 14-15 -- Vienna
Morning on the Opernring
Tuesday I spent a fair amount of time at the conference, with a little bit of the Kunsthistoriches Wien (Art History Museum Vienna) in the middle there. Attended a handful of talks, one of which was relevant enough to my current project for me to email my advisor about the findings, so maybe that’s sufficient to call this a ‘working vacation’.
Another beautiful day at Konburg Palace, modest winter home of the Hapsburgs.
Please tell me this is a Fern Gully reference.
It started raining heavily during one of the talks. The rain running down the slanted windows was hypnotizing. I was also falling asleep at this point.
That evening we met with one of Mike’s Poke-friends and his girlfriend for dinner. Heindl’s is in a side street a little off Stephensplatz and serves various savory-like crepes. It was good. Before we left I asked the front desk guys for a screwdriver, as Mike’s computer had taken on water in the rain and needed to dry out internally, and they offered me a corkscrew, so I had to look up the German word for screwdriver. The younger guy got embarrassed and covered his face and said “This is a slapstick.” Their English is otherwise flawless and ‘screwdriver’ isn’t exactly an everyday word in the hotel business, so I see no reason for embarrassment, but my experience is native-German-speakers don’t consider their English proficient unless they are native-level fluent. I don’t think they understand how rare it is for a native speaker of English to even approach their average level of proficiency in any second language. No, I am not calling myself an exception, and it causes me no small amount of shame.
Wednesday I spent most of the day at the Kunsthistoriches Wien, and even with probably eight hours between the two days I did not get through the entire museum in detail. It is a magnificent collection. I experienced significant sensory overload which is a shame as it is a collection of hundreds of pieces of incredible artistry and splendor. It would take weeks to fully absorb and appreciate everything. It’s been difficult to select only a few pieces to share but I encourage checking out the museum website, at least, for good pictures of several of their finest works, and they also have an online photo gallery (German). My iPhone does none of the works justice, but I felt a weird compulsion to take my own pictures for my log anyway.
The current special exhibition in the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection is the reconstructed coffin of the priestess But-Har-Chonsu, with an exhibit on the reconstruction process.
The museum has a fantastic collection of sarcophagi, coffins, mummies, canopic jars, and other funerary relics.
One of the Egyptian halls.
A wooden coffin with mummy peeking out.
Linen-wrapped mummy with beadwork.
The interior of a black marble sarcophagus, with scenes from the trip to the underworld.
A fine headdress, beaded necklace, and armband.
Looking out into a courtyard.
An exquisite backgammon and checkers board. I love old game boards. You may be able to see that beneath the rock crystal squares on the droughts side of the board there are small carved figures, depicting various chivalrous a courtly ideals. You can see the origin of the box-as-gameboard design we still use today. Here is the museum entry.
An altar of the Madonna and Child by Donatello. I considered not even posting this blurry picture as it doesn’t do a fraction of justice to the gentle, almost sketch-like carvings in the ivory portion of the altar. It looks more like a fine drawing than something chiseled into rock.Here is the museum entry.
A fine cameo. Note the fine working of the various layers of rock. The detail is hair-thin.
Rosary, with each bead as a locket depicting a portion of the story of Christ in cameo form. I couldn’t find a better picture.
The saliera by Cellini, one of the most famous of the cabinet of curiosities collection. It is incredibly detailed and has a small temple by the goddess of the earth (Terra? I forgot precisely who) for pepper, and a basin by Neptune for salt. Here is the museum entry.
A cameo of the myth of Leda and the Swan.
The Knustkammer collection had some incredible automatons, which were famous for a while as ways for princes to entertain guests. The museum had iPads in each room where one could watch videos of the automatons in motion and their inner workings. Utterly stunning. It was hard to choose a favorite but I am fond of this table automaton of Diana riding on a centaur.
One of her dogs moves its head, the other its lower jaw, and Diana herself moves her head while the entire contraption moves about a table on wheels. The centaur’s eyes roll. It was designed for a drinking game; at the end of the sequence, the centaur fires his arrow, and whomever it landed closest to was to drink. Some things never change. Here is the museum entry, and here is a video of the device in action. If you’re interested in these old clockwork devices (V, I’m looking at you), you should watch the rest of the museum’s youtube.
Book cover of gold, enamel, and garnets. Couldn’t find a better picture.
In the foreground, a flask made of narwhal tusk, then thought to be unicorn horn. In the background, a cup made from a bezoar. They were both thought to offer some protection against poison, which wasn’t a completely unfounded fear for an emperor to have. Cups like these were worth far beyond their weight in gold for their protective properties. Here is the bezoar cup, and here is the narwhal horn cup.
Altar with Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well. The frame is solid rock crystal and was made and embellished with secular imagery some time before the inner contents, the background of which is a mosaic of cut rock (not a painting). The well itself is solid emerald. It is the work of several expert artisans over years. This is a fine example of stonecutting and goldsmithing. Here is the museum entry.
Note to self: “kleiner Kaffee” means espresso, at least at the museum café.
The museum closed at 6. I didn’t even get to the expansive painting collection; it’s quite a sizable museum. Also did not get to the royal treasury across the street, which I do still want very much to see.
I sat in Maria-Theresien-Platz for a while next to an old couple who were feeding birds bits of their apricots. Managed to get an action shot of this guy with his prize:
Took a short nap and had kebap from a street vendor.