Botticelli’s Venus and Primavera survived by having spent centuries hidden from view

You heard that Botticelli’s Venus is among the most famous Renaissance artworks. Is it really? And why is it a masterpiece?

Let’s start by revealing that until it was displayed in the Uffizi in 1815, few people knew of its existence or that of Primavera. It was only in 1873 that an art critic started to sing the praises of Botticelli’s Venus.

The critic defends ‘Botticelli, a second-rate painter’:

People have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli’s work, and his name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important.

He still describes the Venus having ‘grotesque emblems of the Middle Ages’ and a ‘Gothic manner’... Very far from ‘most famous painting of the Renaissance’ then. How can that be? One of the reasons has to do with the fact that Botticelli’s Venus had been hidden from view for centuries.

To the point that the blunt truth is that we do not even know when Botticelli painted Venus. The educated guess is that it was painted around 1485, but the first trace we have of it was 65 years later. We also have no idea as to who commissioned the artist, and even less where it was.

The reason, as we will discover, is that Venus, at the height of the Florentine Renaissance, was in grave danger. The age of Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci was also the age of the Bonfires of Vanities.

The Florentine Renaissance was an age of creation and destruction

Botticelli painted his celebrated Venus and Primavera in the 1480s, the age of Lorenzo de Medici, the peak of the first Renaissance. But it all came crashing down after Lorenzo died in 1492. Soon enough, a Dominican monk named Savonarola took over the city with his apocalyptic sermons.

The year 1500 was around the corner. The armies of French King Charles VIII were threatening Florence. The Apocalypse, the end of the world, the day of judgment, seemed like it was about to happen.

And Savonarola increased those fears with fiery sermons:

You, you vile slaves, who dwell in filth, wallow as you will: let your bellies be full of wine, your loins loose in lechery, your bodies will be scourged to a pulp, and your souls I will hand over to the everlasting fire.

Believe me, Florence, it is not I, but God, who says these things. The sword of the Lord will come upon the earth, swiftly and soon.

In most people’s minds, the Middle Ages are the age of ignorance and book burning, and the Renaissance is the age of rational thinking and book printing. But in reality, in 1490s Florence, the two opposite ideas lived alongside each other.

This is easily visible in the painting above, by Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo’s master. It shows the creator of the Dominican order, Saint Dominic, burning heretical books. And Savonarola was a member of that order.

The two Bonfires of Vanities

Once he became the effective ruler of Florence, it was time to cleanse Florence with fire:

You have your houses full of vain things, statues and disrespectable things, shameful books, such as Morgante and other writings against true faith, so just bring them with you and let us light a fire and burn these things to the honour of God!.

For the Carnaval of 1497 and 1498, a pyramid-shaped bonfire was stacked with seven levels, like the seven sins, with:

All the vanities and lascivious objects of women, disgraceful pictures and sculptures, gambling implements, books of poetry in Latin as well as the vernacular and all kinds of disgraceful reading materials, musical instruments together with their books, divided up with marvellous artistry.

Precious foreign cloths painted with very beautiful but shameless figures were arranged in such a way that it looked like the workshop of a painter.

Sculpted figures of the most beautiful women of antiquity and of the most excellent proportion, both Roman and Florentine, are portrayed by the great masters of sculpture, such as Donatello and the like.

The bonfire was

Disposed in a varied and distinctive way in order to appear delectable to the eye, and it is no wonder, for there were sculptures of great value and paintings of admirable beauty.

Guards protected the bonfire due to the “many extremely beautiful figures of outstanding craftsmanship and high value would have been stolen”. A merchant offered a fortune to purchase the vanities that were to be burnt, but he was turned down.

Joyfully torching great masterpieces

The guardians with their lighted torches then came and set fire to it, while the musical instruments of the Signory were sounded along with the trumpets and bells of the palace to give glory, and all the people exulted and sang Te Deum laudamus.

The people were in such great joy and happiness as was the greatness of the fire which consumed so many different lascivious instruments of diabolical fraud.

The two Bonfires of the Vanities did not happen in the ‘dark’ Middle Ages, but at the peak of the Florentine Renaissance. And Savonarola’s wrath was not directed only at ‘pagan’ or nude images, but also at Christian art:

You painters do badly, and if you knew the scandal that follows from it and the things that I know, you wouldn’t paint them.

You put all the vanities in the churches. You would do well to whitewash the pictures painted there so indecently. You make the Virgin Mary appear dressed like a whore.

Consider that the graceful, loving Madonnas that we admire five centuries later were ‘indecent vanities’ to the austere friar’s eyes because they were richly dressed. Once you do that, you can start to worry about the chances that ‘very beautiful but shameless figures’ would avoid being thrown on the Bonfires of the Vanities.

Masterpieces by the great masters were burnt during the Bonfire of Vanities

Need I repeat that a witness describes the burning of a Donatello masterpiece, as it was a most beautiful woman portrayed by the great masters of sculpture? And insist that Donatello was one of the Renaissance’s most important sculptors?

The person who wrote these words agreed that the statues were most beautiful, but that they were:

Devil’s instruments, that is, all the vanities and lascivious and disgraceful things collected by the children in that year as a sacrifice to God and in the odor of sanctity.

That is what happened in Florence in 1497:

At that moment, one could see everything wondrously exultant because of the abundance of joy, and so, as the flame ascended to Heaven with great praise from all the people to the honor of God and the ignominy of Satan and the confusion of his members, the whole of that triumph was consumed.

So goes the caricature of the Middle Ages as an age of darkness, and the Renaissance as an age of reason. Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and young Michelangelo lived at a time when Florence was a two-sided coin: one facet in favor of new ideas, the other fighting them.

Which begs the question, how did shameless figures such as a nude Venus survive?

Botticelli’s Primavera

Before discussing Venus, let’s talk about her ‘sister’, Primavera, Spring. It also depicts ‘pagan’ figures, and while its meaning is too complex to discuss here, this time we know a fair bit about this masterpiece.

It probably was painted in the early 1480s, after Botticelli got to paint frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, making him one of the foremost painters of the day. As the painting was in the house of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s cousin, it most likely was commissioned by a member of the powerful Medici family.

Savonarola’s reign ended in the very same spot as the Bonfire of the Vanities. Mercifully, he was strangled before the fire was lit. Soon after the stench of burnt art and human flesh was cleared, an inventory of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici’s villa in Florence was drawn. It proves beyond doubt that Primavera was half a mile from the square where the bonfires took place.

It survived the raids of the weepers, Savonarola’s disciples, weeping at the sins of the world, and barging their way around Florence in search of poetry, music, and beauty to torch. How did it survive? We don’t know.

The wood panel on which Primavera is painted is about 3 meters or 124 inches wide, and there were two more Botticellis in the villa. Primavera was likely a wedding painting, belonging to the Medici, who had been kicked out of Florence. Was it hidden behind a curtain, or deep inside an attic?

Considering that the weepers‘ raids went as far as collecting clothes, musical instruments, playing cards, and perfume, one can only give posthumous thanks to whoever had the foresight to shelter that masterpiece.

Did Botticelli burn his own art?

Now you know, dear reader, that the Birth of Venus was far from famous, we need to address another myth, that Botticelli burnt his own paintings during the Bonfire of Vanities.

Vasari, the artist who wrote about Italian masters, informs us that Botticelli was himself a weeper, abandoned painting, and became so poor that he almost starved to death. He did not say Botticelli burnt his own art, but later writers understood ‘Savonarola’s follower’ as meaning that he threw his shameless paintings in the fire.

Vasari does mention two masters who burnt their own art:

To this pile brought Baccio della Porta all his studies and drawings which he had made from the nude figure, when they were consumed in the flames.

His example was followed by Lorenzo di Credi, and by many others, who received the appellation of the Piagnoni.

Vasari does not explain who the ‘many others’ are, but there is no proof whatsoever that Botticelli did burn his own art. The evidence of the effect of the friar’s visions is in the absence: Botticelli never again painted ‘pagan’ figures, and his late work has apocalyptic undertones.

Let us not forget that even Michelangelo, sixty years after hearing Savonarola’s fiery speeches, still heard the sound of the friar’s voice in his mind. Maybe Botticelli did burn his own art; we just don’t know. What is visible is that Savonarola’s sermons darkened Botticelli’s mind and soured his heart.

The grace imputed to the Renaissance was replaced by the darkness pinned on the Middle Ages.

Where was the Birth of Venus during the Bonfire of Vanities?

What happened during the first sixty years or so after Botticelli painted it is a mystery. The first trace comes in 1550, when Vasari describes seeing in the Medici villa outside Florence both the Birth of Venus and Primavera:

In various homes throughout the city, he himself painted tondi and numerous female nudes. Two of these paintings are still at Castello, Duke Cosimo’s villa: one depicts the Birth of Venus, and those breezes and winds which blew her and her Cupids to land; and the second is another Venus, the symbol of Spring, being adorned with flowers by the Graces.

In both paintings Sandro expressed himself with grace.

By that time, the Medici had returned and were again leading Florence. It is certain, as explained here, that Primavera somehow survived the raids of Savonarola’s followers inside Florence itself, likely hidden.

Venus is slightly smaller than Primavera, and is not painted on wood, but on canvas. The theme of Venus is also likely related to a wedding, but whose, when, and where Venus was during the Bonfire of the Vanities is not known.

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, a unique masterpiece

Now, dear reader, you have discovered that for a long time, few people even knew about the Birth of Venus, and when people took note, it was to state she was by a second-rate painter and had a grotesque, Gothic aspect.

Clearly, the Middle Ages, bad, Renaissance, good caricature was very different from the times in which Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, all sons of Florence, lived.

You contemplated the odds that a nude goddess would not join the masterpieces by Donatello and other great Florentine masters into the Bonfire of Vanities. Even in the words of those cheering and dancing around the flames, they were the most beautiful women portrayed by the great masters.

Those who loathe the instruments of joy, poetry, music, and art, thinking they deserve cleansing into the fire, can use the word ‘beautiful’ for the things they burn. Art historians are wired never to use that word, ever.

Can we make an exception here? And do we have to choose between the gentle Madonnas tenderly holding baby Jesus and a goddess appearing on the shore?

Look into the goddess’ eyes, her face delicately tilting into the wind. Realize how lucky it is that she survived the contempt for joy and art, and you will have a monumental Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Studies in the History of the Renaissance Walter Pater, 1873.

Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola, Religion and Politics, 1490-1498. Translated and edited by Anne Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro.

Savonarola’s sermons from the series “Prediche sopra Amos e Zaccaria.”

Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Why is Michelangelo’s Giant marble David a masterpiece?

Half of the answer came with the first part of this story, “Michelangelo’s Giant marble David”.

The other is to discuss a simple question: ‘how long did it take Michelangelo to carve a 17 ft marble’? Looking at the Accademia Gallery’s factsheet, where the marble David is displayed, the marble David was carved between 1501 and 1504, so, about three years.

Yet, Michelangelo’s biographer wrote that:

He received four hundred ducats for this work, and finished it in eighteen months.

And that was not someone writing about Michelangelo without having ever met the artist. Quite the opposite, it was Michelangelo whispering in his biographer’s ear, about as close to an autobiography as can ever be. The artist was 78, saying that it took him 18 months to carve the marble David.

Was it the foggy memory of an old man? How come it is repeatedly stated as fact that the Giant David was carved in three years, when Michelangelo himself said it took him one and a half years? What gives?

The story reveals the answer: while Michelangelo was working, alone, on carving a 17-foot giant, he was also creating half a dozen masterpieces.

Hold on tight, dear reader, and marvel at that mad burst of energy and creativity during the less than four years Michelangelo spent in Florence, at the time he carved David.

#1 The bronze David

Yes, the Giant marble David had a smaller brother, made of bronze. The marble block constrained Michelangelo, as the space between the legs had already been carved. But in bronze, there was no limit as to what Michelangelo could do.

What is certain is that:

The David was erected in the year 1504; this statue brought great fame to Michelangelo in the art of sculpture, and, as a result, he cast an extremely beautiful David in bronze.

And, as visible in Michelangelo’s sketch above, Michelangelo wrote David with the sling, and I with the bow.

Now, you ask, where can I see Michelangelo’s bronze David? The statue was sent to France and was melted down during the French Revolution as Napoléon Bonaparte was invading Italy and needed a lot of cannons.

I regret to have to inform you, dear reader, that Michelangelo’s bronze David returned to Italy, at speed, fired from a cannon.

#2 The Bruges Madonna

For the paltry sum of 100 ducats, wealthy cloth merchants commissioned Michelangelo to carve a Madonna. The statue is about half life-size, but of course, it should be considered in relation to the Pietà that Michelangelo recently achieved.

This masterpiece is one of Bruges’ artistic treasures, stolen during the French Revolution and later by the Nazis. It is one of the most well-traveled Michelangelo statues, fortunately, having survived the adventure.

#3 The four Piccolomini Saints

Fresh from the success of the Pietà in Rome, Michelangelo gets a prestigious commission to carve fifteen marble figures for the Siena Cathedral, about 2/3 of life size.

While he agreed by contract that he would not work on any other marble, two months later, he got the offer he could not refuse, to carve the Giant David...

In plain English, Michelangelo broke off his contract to carve David. Only four of the Siena Cathedral Saints were finished, the first time that an overworked Michelangelo had to abandon a major commission.

#4 and #5 The Pitti Tondo and the Taddei Tondo

This marble tondo (a round image) is one of two small reliefs Michelangelo was commissioned to carve for two different families. His biographer described them as extremely beautiful.

These reliefs are about the size of a portrait painting.

#6 The colossal marble Saint Matthew

While the Bruges Madonna and the two tondi were ‘small’, Michelangelo also worked on the large marble you see, unfinished, above. At nearly nine feet tall, it would normally be called a colossus, yet it is half the height of the marble David...

And, in any case, it is not ‘art’ in today’s sense; when the artist does what he wants, this is a commission. Before our man got a chance to finish the Giant David, the people who tasked him to carve it thought it was a great idea to saddle him with not one, but twelve marble statues...

The contract was for the apostles to be placed inside the Duomo Cathedral and delivered one per year, thus chaining Michelangelo to the Duomo for twelve years.

The marble slab that had defeated other artists was about to become the marble David, and before Michelangelo had time to catch a breath, they wanted more. Talk about too much of a good thing!

When Michelangelo got to Rome, his workload got worse as an angry and violent Pope pushed him to his limits with the Sistine Chapel. Even if you hear it was his first fresco, that is not exactly true, as he was also asked to paint a fresco while in Florence.

#7 The Battle of Cascina fresco

That story has already been described with “The Artistic Fight of the Century”. But it is so astonishing that it needs to be told once more.

We are in 1503, and our man is working on the marble David, as well as on a bronze David, the Bruges Madonna, and the small tondi. That is a little special, but that is forgetting it was a time when Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo lived and worked a few hundred feet from each other.

And in the City Hall, the Palazzo Vecchio, there was a large room with empty walls. So, the ruler of Florence commissions Leonardo da Vinci to paint a colossal battle scene on a wall, which would end up about 60 ft wide.

But there were two issues. One, Leonardo, always the inventor, was trying new painting techniques instead of the tried and tested ones. The other was that Leonardo was a man of many talents, but speed was not among them.

So Florence’s ruler’s bright idea, since Michelangelo had had a five-minute break, now David was completed, was to commission the young sculptor to paint in that same room, on the other side.

Take a moment to consider the scene: two of the greatest artists ever, who obviously do not like each other, forced to rub shoulders. The younger one (there is about a 25-year age difference between the two) cockily completed the marble David.

Leonardo had worked on a statue that was much bigger, a 24-foot-tall bronze horse.

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo's painting duel

While the frescoes were never finished and the drawings have long been lost, this moment, the few months when Leonardo and Michelangelo were in the ring, brush in hand instead of gloves, is one of the most fascinating moments of the Renaissance.

The only single recorded conversation between the two geniuses takes place at that moment in Florence. Leonardo tries to embarrass Michelangelo, who retorts:

You made a design for a horse to be cast in bronze, and, unable to cast it, have in your shame abandonned it. And those Milanese idiots did believe in you?

There clearly was no love lost between those two. If the time machine existed, art historians would line up to travel to Florence to witness the magic moment when one could bump into Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

It would also involve bringing buckets of popcorn to watch the titanic artistic battle when Michelangelo and Leonardo were looking at each other over their shoulders, trying to outdo the other.

Now, dear reader, you get a sense of the degree of pressure on Michelangelo during this period of time, less than four years.

#8 The Giant, the marble David

While he was working on half a dozen works, Michelangelo was also carving the marble Giant… Think about it: Michelangelo arrives in Florence in May 1501 and leaves for Rome in March 1505. That is less than four years.

So, aside from the fact that Michelangelo himself said he took him 18 months to carve David, the evidence listed above proves that it must be true.

The call to Rome was that the Pope wanted Michelangelo to do a thing or two, like creating a tomb and fixing the ceiling of a chapel. Michelangelo turned 30 precisely as he left Florence for Rome.

Had he died on the way from a horse fall, there would be no Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the Vatican dome would not look the same.

Even so, at 30 years old, Michelangelo’s standing as one of the Renaissance’s most important artists was secure. Why? As a teenager, from his first attempt at sculpture, his ambition was to equal the masters of Antiquity. In his early 20s, he carved the Pietà, already staking a claim to have created a universal masterpiece.

And then, in his mid-twenties, he carved the Giant David. He entered the artistic ring against the most formidable foe, Leonardo da Vinci, ending in a draw. Is it the hold on to your socks moment? Not yet.

Michelangelo’s Giant David, forever unsurpassed

It is not that Michelangelo did indeed carve the marble David in eighteen months that makes it incomparable. We need, again, to return to the size of the Giant. A 17 ft tall marble figure, that does not even cheat physics with a ‘third leg’ column holding it.

So, why is the Giant David one of a handful of universal masterpieces?

Drum roll: In the last 500 years, no one has attempted to create a 17 ft free-standing figure out of marble.

No one found the ambition, creativity, energy, and madness needed to try. Yes, you will see in Florence a replica of the David, of the same size, also carved out of Carrara marble. And countless copies from marble to plastic all over the world.

But all are aping Michelangelo’s burst of genius. All stand in the shadow of a man who was a masterpiece machine, shining so brightly that centuries later, Il Gigante and his creator still look at the horizon at three times the height of everyone else. There’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Vasari, the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Ascanio Condivi: The Life of Michelangelo.

The anonimo Gaddiano.

Moments of Wonder

Michelangelo's Giant marble David

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Why is Michelangelo’s David a masterpiece?

There is so much to explain that it will need two stories, first, here, describing the ten years leading to the marble David. Second, ‘Michelangelo, the masterpiece machine’ to marvel at the fact that it is not true that it took three years to carve David.

I can already whet your appetite by telling you that during these three years, he was also working on half a dozen other masterpieces, so get ready to have your mind blown.

Before we get there, we need to describe what happened in the ten years leading up to the marble David.

Birth of a genius

Had Michelangelo been born in a different place, at a different time, it is unlikely we would know his name. Aside from his astonishing talent, Michelangelo’s luck was to have been born near Florence and to have met Lorenzo de Medici.

We are in 1475, in a modest palazzo in a small town up a Tuscan hill. Lodovico Buonaroti, a minor noble and Florentine official, welcomes a second son, Michelangelo. Lodovico, an impoverished gentleman, was obsessed with the family’s good name, which is the reason why he tried to beat the artistic career out of his son.

Little did he know that his son’s choice of a life as a ‘manual laborer’ would make his family’s name and fortune. That is because in the 1400s, there was no such thing as ‘art’ as we understand it today.

There were not even artists, but craftsmen, members of the guild of physicians, apothecaries, and spice merchants. Yes, preparing colors to paint was in the same category as grinding cures or spices.

There was also a guild for stoneworkers, but it had more to do with construction than art. Churches and nobles commissioned masters to paint or carve images. In the master’s studio, apprentices prepared colors for their master, and that is how they learned their craft.

Michelangelo’s talent was recognized while he was still a child

Enter our boy Michelangelo, whose father felt it was beneath the family’s good name that a Buonaroti would lower himself to actual work, or worse, manual labor.

As a child, Michelangelo’s talent as a draughtsman was noticed by a school comrade, who turned out to be an apprentice of the great master Ghirlandaio. By the time Michelangelo was 13, and his dad realized the beatings did not change his son’s mind, he decided to profit from it, agreeing to send the boy to study with Ghirlandaio, as long as he got paid.

The apprenticeship was for three years, but fate decided there was no time to waste.

A fourteen-year-old Michelangelo enters Lorenzo de Medici’s sculpture garden

The boy was born exactly 1,000 years after the fall of Rome. It has been over one millennium since anyone had the ambition to carve marble figures as the ‘pagan’ Greeks and Romans had done.

The Medici family was instrumental in bringing about a new intellectual climate in Florence, the Renaissance. One of the things that made them effective rulers of Florence was their discovery of the power of art.

Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo’s grandfather, worried about eternal damnation, such is the punishment for the greed that made the banker’s family the effective rulers of Florence.

A Pope gave him the solution: using his wealth to build a convent. Cosimo commissioned artworks and built a public library. His grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent assembled a major collection of ancient statues in a private garden in Florence.

Artists were welcome to visit and study the antiques. When Michelangelo was only about 14, he copied an ancient marble head, and Lorenzo the Magnificent was so impressed that he took the boy into his own home.

Let us take one minute to contemplate what that means: an apprentice was recognized as so gifted that he became as good as an independent master in his teens, while living like a surrogate son in the Medici palace.

Hercules: as a teenager, Michelangelo dared to measure himself against ancient masters

Lorenzo de Medici died too young, and Michelangelo had to return home to a father ashamed at his son’s career as a ‘stonemason’. What did the boy do? Remember that there is no such thing as ‘art’, as paintings and statues are only ever commissioned for churches or palaces.

Yet, Michelangelo, who had never carved a life-scale statue before, decided, at his first attempt, and ‘for his own amusement’, a statue of Hercules, at 7,7 ft high. No one asked him to do it, even less pay him to do so, he purchased a cheap, damaged marble and carved, on his first attempt, the first statue comparable to ancient masters.

A pagan god, a nude figure, in his teens, for himself, at a scale no one had attempted in a millennium... Astonished yet? The statue was sold to a French King and, sadly, destroyed.

A nude Christ on the cross

How many times have you seen a nude Christ on the cross? At about 17 or 18, Michelangelo carved for himself a marble Hercules. At 18, he had been allowed by the prior of the Santo Spirito convent to study corpses. To express his gratitude, he offered an almost life-size wooden statue of Christ on the cross.

Explaining the nastiness of Roman punishments and the reasons why a handful of nude Christ statues were carved during the Renaissance is too complex for this story. Suffice to say that the statue disappeared from view, and it is only in 1962 that an art historian literally stopped in her tracks and recognized the statue as a Michelangelo.

A forgery puts young Michelangelo on the map

Michelangelo did carve a child Cupid, the god of love, and was convinced that if weathered, he would pass as a genuine antique marble. So Michelangelo buried the statue, aging it in such a way that it looked ancient. A dealer sold it for 200 ducats, while Michelangelo got only 30.

The Cardinal who bought the ‘fake’ wanted more from Michelangelo, who came to Rome to carve a second over-life-size marble, Bacchus.

Bacchus: Michelangelo’s second marble figure

At 21 years of age, Michelangelo found himself in the Eternal City, Rome. A great illustration of the new ideas of the Renaissance is that a Cardinal commissioned the statue of a pagan god, Bacchus.

A drunk, youthful, and nude figure... Which quickly got resold to a banker. For reasons beyond my understanding, the Bacchus is not ‘famous’, but it sets the bar for what comes later.

Bacchus, at 6,6 ft in height, is slightly over life-size, and it took young Michelangelo 12 months to carve it. Keep that in mind.

Michelangelo’s Pietà

Apologies for brushing the story of the Pietà quickly; we are drawing the context leading to the marble David. Our boy is now a man. He carved his first marble figure, Hercules, at 17 or 18. Then his second, Bacchus, when he was 21. The first was done for himself, the second was commissioned by a Cardinal and paid 150 ducats.

The next step is a commission from a French Cardinal, a Pietà, the image of a sorrowful mother, the Virgin Mary, holding the body of her son. Michelangelo is now 23, and gets 150 ducats to purchase a fine marble block, and 300 to carve it.

Yes, the Pietà deserves its own story. But allow me to say, before we fly back to Florence, that it also took Michelangelo one year to carve it. And while you probably know that the Pietà is the only statue signed by Michelangelo, it is worth explaining why.

Michelangelo overheard someone thinking his Pietà had been carved by someone else, and, offended, added the signature. As we are about to see, with over 60 years of creativity ahead of him, there was no need for Michelangelo to sign anything.

Michelangelo, aged 26, returns to Florence. A colossal piece of marble called Il Gigante, the Giant, has been waiting for him.

The Giant statue was meant to be displayed high above Il Duomo

Before Michelangelo, there was Donatello. And before the Dome was even completed, there was already the idea of twelve gigantic statues, displayed high above, 100 ft high. Donatello’s statue of the prophet Joshua, the “white colossus”, was made of clay, painted white, to look like marble.

And the size of the clay colossus was 9 braccia, which is 17 feet. The reason for the clay painted white was a ‘trial’ for a series of 12 gigantic statues of prophets. Now, I guess, dear reader, you start to see where this is going, as the size of the Giant slab of marble was 9 braccia...

Il Gigante, also known as Michelangelo’s David

The colossal marble block, also known as Il Gigante, ‘the Giant’, had already vanquished two sculptors. It meant that the marble was already carved, left in a botched and bungled state. Worse, the space between the legs was emptied, so Michelangelo could not choose how to position the legs.

To understand why this is a problem, visualize life-size marbles and realize that more often than not, they have three legs. By that I mean the figure leans on a column, a tree, or anything that provides strength to a material, marble, that is both heavy and brittle. Oh, and David weighs 5,66 tons or nearly 12,500 lbs.

And that is one of the keys to why what Michelangelo did with David is extraordinary: it has only two legs, with the help of a tree trunk up to the right knee. Which would be impressive enough when about life size, while David is taller than three acrobats on each other’s shoulders...

The contract commissioning Michelangelo plainly calls the statue Il Gigante:

That he may make, finish, and bring to perfection the male figure known as the Giant.

The Giant, before Michelangelo got his hands on it, was a mutilated and weathered slab of marble that could have been cut into pieces.

Let’s talk about size again. Michelangelo’s Hercules was 7,7 ft in height, Bacchus, 6,6 ft, and the Virgin Mary, in the Pietà, if standing, would also be about 7,7 ft high. All three were astonishingly ambitious undertakings for a young artist.

But Il Gigante was over twice the height of anything he had carved before. The man was still only 26 years old. And the contract gave him two years to carve it.

When Michelangelo turned the Giant block of marble into David

You probably know that Michelangelo did not want an army of assistants helping him, and that he made sure that no one would see what he was up to when carving the colossal marble block into David.

But that is forgetting that it was at the junction between the age of the craftsman and the age of the genius. The time, when, finally, even Popes came to realize they had to compromise with Michelangelo’s grumpy moods if they wanted their masterpiece.

In 1504, when the David was completed, the ruler of Florence came to see the Giant. He saw fit to tell Michelangelo that David’s nose was too big, a bit like explaining music to Mozart or Jimi Hendrix.

Michelangelo had woken up on the right side of the bed that morning, so he climbed the scaffold, took a small chisel and marble dust, and pretended to carve the nose smaller.

He asked Florence’s ruler if the nose was better:

‘I like it better,’ said the Gonfalonier; ‘you have given it life.’

Michelangelo then came down, feeling pity for those who, to show themselves clever, say things they do not understand.

Michelangelo, the masterpiece machine

Now, this story should already help understand why the marble David is a masterpiece, contemplating the ambition of a young man who had no hesitation in trying to rival the masters of Antiquity from the outset. That already should be a Moment of Wonder.

But that is not enough to appreciate the achievement. Michelangelo worked on the marble David during a stay in Florence that lasted less than four years, while it took him only 18 months to carve the Giant David.

Hold on to your socks then, as the second part of the story explains why Michelangelo was a masterpiece machine, revealing how many artworks he created in only a few years.

That will be next week with “Michelangelo, the masterpiece machine”.

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Sources

Vasari, the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Ascanio Condivi: The Life of Michelangelo.

Henri Rousseau, the man who became a painter by the force of will

Whenever one hears about art in the past, one tends to imagine it as we imagine it today, something that the artist does of their own accord. But no, the immense majority of art created prior to Impressionism was commissioned. A King, a Pope, paid a master to paint images to glorify his message, not for art’s sake.

To be an artist meant having spent years of apprenticeship with a master, and, if talented enough, setting up one’s own studio. There were a few amateurs, though. While the word is often understood as ‘clumsy’, in reality, it means doing something out of love. Only nobles had the means and time to make art out of their hearts.

Enter Henri Rousseau. A man born in 1844 in provincial France, in a modest family, at about the same time as photography. Had Henri been born earlier or in a different place, he would never have had an opportunity to become a major artist.

As we are about to discover, one anonymous but determined amateur painter was at the right place, and the right time: Paris in the second half of the 1800s.

Paris, the city of revolutions in art and technology

Henri moved to Paris and got a job as a toll collector. The walls circling Paris were not just defending from invaders, but also against anyone trying to sell goods without paying taxes.

That’s where his nickname ‘Douanier’, French for customs inspector, came from. A married man with nine children to feed, although only one survived to adulthood, Henri’s life was, for twenty years, made up of a tedious job but of family joy.

By 1888, his beloved wife died of tuberculosis, and their only surviving child was sent to the countryside. He only had a few years left before he could get his retirement from the toll office, in his mid-40s.

He had been a mediocre student, but got two school prizes, one for music, the other for drawing. That artistic fiber, buried deep for all these years, was about to burst out.

In the background of Henri’s life, the art world was about to forever change. In 1874, a group of painters, tired of being rejected by the official Salon, organized their own art show. The result was Impressionism.

That battle for the right to exhibit, to exist as an artist without having to respect the rules of Academic art, is going to be key to our Sunday painters’ fate. Ten years after the birth of Impressionism, in 1884, the first Salon des Indépendants was organized.

An exhibition run by artists: anyone could exhibit, no rejection, and no jury.

Discovering exotic worlds within Paris walls

Completely self-taught, our ‘Sunday painter’ secured a copyist permit at the Louvre to learn from the masters. Yet, the Louvre held no jungles.

Henri Rousseau never left France. Instead, Rousseau entered jungles and hid from big cats a couple of miles from Notre Dame cathedral, in the conservatories and the zoo of the Jardin des Plantes.

The Jardin des Plantes Menagerie

The Jardin des Plantes still has a zoo today, slightly pathetic to the 21st-century visitor, who is fortunate to have seen animals in the wild in documentaries. But in the 1880s, the only lion one would have ever seen was as a black and white engraving in a magazine.

Parents bringing their kids to the menagerie did not need to pretend to be as amazed as their children. It truly was the first time they saw elephants, antelopes, big cats, camels, and hippos.

The Human Zoos of Paris’ World Fair of 1889

To understand the world that spawned Henri Rousseau’s paintings, we must discuss the human zoos where he discovered the exotic worlds he later reinvented.

The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, for which the Eiffel Tower was built, was an immense success, being visited by the equivalent of two-thirds of the entire population of France, with 28 million visitors.

The majority of visitors had never left their regions and came to Paris for the first time.

The exhibitions allowed visitors to travel around the world, including witnessing the Wild West, with Buffalo Bill’s Show. Imagine that Indians and bison roamed the streets of Paris!

Since France controlled colonies across Africa and Asia, organizers reconstituted monuments and villages so visitors could see these faraway, exotic lands and their inhabitants with their own eyes.

In plain English: these were human zoos, little different from the cages holding monkeys. In an age when few people had even left the region of their birth, there was the official view of the colonies, wild beasts, and men and women, to ‘educate’ and delight the public.

As recently as 1994, a French Safari park established a human zoo, though public outcry forced it to close quickly.

A Sunday painter’s transformation

That was the context to understand how a self-taught ‘Sunday painter’ dreamt up exotic worlds and jungles along the banks of the River Seine.

At the Salon des Indépendants, exhibiting with Vincent van Gogh and others, Douanier Rousseau got positive reviews from the press, only two years into his new career as a painter:

A word of encouragement for Mr. Rousseau, who is not an impressionist. He is sincere and reminds us a little of the primitives. But, I must repeat that there is effort and sincerity and a little ‘je ne sais quoi’ of sympathy.

The primitives he’s compared are from early Renaissance Italy, so it’s quite a compliment. Soon after, another states that

I must, in particular, express my entire admiration and my perfect sympathy for the naive and conscientious works of Mr. H. Rousseau.

Henri Rousseau, a modern painter

While the Eiffel Tower is iconic today, it was mostly decried in its time. Would you guess who painted it the first time? Yes, our Douanier Rousseau, in the self-portrait above.

His beloved wife had died of tuberculosis, he was almost retired, yet only in his mid-40s, and the self-portrait is a statement. You see a painter, with a Rembrandt-like hat, a palette in hand.

And a journalist who cheekily states:

The artist, out of excessive modesty no doubt, has painted himself the size of a dwarf, the head too big, charged with thoughts perhaps.

While many laughed at the clumsiness and naivety of Rousseau’s paintings, others saw the absence of proper art training as an advantage.

A life-changing meeting

The self-taught artist met Alfred Jarry, a writer thirty years his junior. They were born in the same provincial town, and the writer yearned for art born out of an artist’s imagination, not slavishly copying reality. And here was a painter who never set foot into an academic school, and whose naivety was to the writer’s eyes a breath of fresh air.

That’s where being in 1880s Paris was a life-changing opportunity for a self-taught painter.

He saw exotic worlds there that prompted his dreams. With the young writer’s help, Douanier Rousseau was getting introduced to the new generation of writers and painters. The lone amateur was on the path to greatness.

The Caged Beasts

Whenever you see an ‘ism’ attached to an art movement’s name, it more often than not is an insult. Case in point, Fauvism. Fauve, in French, means ‘beast’; the word means ‘beast-like’. And our friend painting lions and tigers has, unwittingly, something to do with it.

We are in Paris, in 1905, at the very prestigious Salon d’Automne exhibition, where Rousseau displays the massive lion hunt scene illustrated above. In the next room were the paintings of Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, and others, offering such an explosion of color that a critic complained that it was “like Donatello was thrown to the beasts.”

And the quip became Fauvism, most likely inspired by Rousseau’s gigantic lion nearby. Our Sunday painter, aged 61, was getting the admiration of the new generation of painters, including one who recently arrived from Spain, Pablo Picasso.

Picasso’s banquet in honor of Douanier Rousseau

What would I give to have a time machine dropping me in Montmartre that evening of 1908! The new generation, in particular the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso, organized a banquet in Henri Rousseau’s honor.

There were poems and songs, booze, and food. He was 64 years old, and everyone else was in their 20s. Before Rousseau dozed off and was sent back home, he reportedly said to Picasso:

We both are the most important artists of this century: you in the Egyptian style, and I in the modern one.

Considering that Picasso had just painted his revolutionary Demoiselles d’Avignon, Rousseau’s thinking of cubism as ‘Egyptian style’ is marvelously funny. One may suspect that the young artists were pranking a self-important, naive, and eccentric old man.

Yet, if we look at Pablo Picasso’s life, the answer is one of genuine admiration, as not only did Picasso keep the Rousseau paintings he bought in those days all his life, but he also purchased more of his work later on. One might even argue that Rousseau’s ‘naivety’ influenced Picasso.

In any case, the wonder is the journey from self-taught artist to being celebrated by the avant-garde in his own lifetime. Unfortunately, his financial situation was catastrophic.

The last years of Douanier Rousseau’s life

Rousseau got a small pension as a toll collector and made do by teaching kids the violin and painting. But his finances were dire. The year before the notorious dinner with the avant-garde, he was thrown in prison.

His ‘naivety’, genuine or not, got him to take part in a cheque fraud. He signed and cashed the forged checks for 21,000 francs, of which he only took 1,000, potentially proving his cluelessness. But at 64 years of age, he risked being sent to forced labor.

Rousseau’s lawyer used the image of the bumbling, naive painter to save his client. The painter even brought paintings of monkeys, which provoked general hilarity in the courtroom. Little did they know the monkeys were the judges and jury... The act worked, and he was freed.

Then Ambroise Vollard bought several of Rousseau’s paintings. It did not improve his financial situation much, but it did wonders for his legacy. Vollard was the art dealer who bought Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin works when no one else did. He organized Picasso’s first exhibition.

That purchase meant that in the art dealer’s reserve, Rousseau’s canvases rubbed frames with the most revolutionary artists of the century. That put his works on a trajectory ending with the Louvre in the 1930s and major museums worldwide ever since.

Henri Rousseau, the Painter of Dreams

But it was too late. Henri Rousseau died of gangrene in a hospital, listed as ‘alcoholic’, and was buried in an unmarked grave. His friends managed to get him reburied and carve a poem on the tombstone.

A few years later, Guillaume Apollinaire wrote another poem in honor of Dounier Rousseau. It begins with:

A very small bird

On the shoulder of an angel

They sing the praises

Of gentle Rousseau

The admiration of the avant-garde was genuine, as proven by the attachment that Picasso had for his Douanier Rousseau paintings.

Henri Rousseau, an amateur painter, emerged from obscurity, taught himself, and imagined exotic worlds in zoos and conservatories. Yet, to be able to create with enough heart and imagination to create a durable impression on Pablo Picasso, there’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Henri Rousseau, Dora Vallier, 1961.

Henri Rousseau, Jean Bouret, 1961.

Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Soirées de Paris, n°23, 15 avril 1914, translated by the author.

Fernande Olivier, Picasso et ses amis, 1933.

One small step for man, four giant leaps toward eternity

Artemis II’s recent journey around the moon and the stunning images taken by the astronauts made me wonder. The result is this story about four ‘messages in a bottle’, the Pioneer plaques and the Voyager Golden Records, from an art historian’s point of view.

In past stories, we used a virtual time machine to travel the world and the past. The farthest we traveled was in a museum, as far back as 500 million years. This time, we travel distances that are beyond imagination. For example, Voyager 1, nearly fifty years into its odyssey, is 15.78 billion miles from Earth.

Artemis II’s crew achieved the furthest distance ever traveled by humans, with a ten-day journey. If Artemis II’s journey is one step, then Voyager is 6 million steps ahead.

Another way to make sense of the distance is that while you have just done one step in New York, Voyager is in San Francisco, about to cross the Pacific Ocean. So, hold on tight, dear reader, as this story takes us into the unimaginable expanse of the universe.

Harvesting human genius toward one goal

We start the journey with the pyramids of Egypt. Whenever I hear someone doubting that Egyptians could even build such colossal monuments 4,500 years ago, I always respond, “Look at JFK and NASA.” The same can be said about Roman monuments or medieval cathedrals.

From where I stand, History, good and bad, is steered by a few men. The Egyptian peasant did not dream of pyramids; a Pharaoh did. Even if Pharaoh had tens of thousands of peasants at his disposal, he also needed great minds to help him make his vision a reality.

Enter Imhotep, the genius architect of the first colossal stone monument ever built, the Step Pyramid. In this story, Pharaoh Djoser is JFK, and Imhotep is NASA. In the short-term attention span of our times, Kennedy’s speech is reduced to:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

That’s not all he said. Unlike an Egyptian King who could do as he pleased, JFK was trying to get Congress’ approval to spend money on one bold idea. Crucially, he explained that the resources to go to the moon were not just financial, but human:

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon—if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation.

A human adventure, not just a technical challenge

While giving the figures of the staggering sums needed, JFK still reiterated that it was beyond money:

New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could, in fact, aggravate them further—unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.

Pyramids, cathedrals, and space adventures exist because not only one politician decided so, but because, from the Egyptian or French peasant to NASA’s technician, people believed in the mission.

The Egyptian peasant had faith in the divinity of Pharaoh, and the French peasant hoped the cathedral would help secure the salvation of his soul. With JFK and NASA, it was a different kind of belief, asking taxpayers and engineers to dream big.

Like it was with Imhotep and the cathedral architects, there was a perfect set of circumstances: the political will, the talent, and the blank cheque to turn an ambitious idea into reality. Eight years after JFK’s speech, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Three years to design, build, and launch Pioneer

A few months before the moon landing, a seemingly less impressive decision was made in haste. There was an opportunity to catch, now or never, a rare planet alignment that offered a free sling into the vast universe.

To understand the ‘slingshot effect’ urgency, Artemis II benefited from one by being slung back toward Earth. That was the opposite goal: to catch a far bigger slingshot, with Jupiter as the launchpad to catapult probes far into the universe.

No pressure, there were just three years for NASA to design, build, and launch Pioneer 10 and the following year Pioneer 11 into space.

A chance encounter three weeks before launch sparked the idea to send a message to eternity

Now, if three years to design and launch a spacecraft feels like intolerable pressure, what about three weeks? Yes, three weeks between the idea of adding a message to the spacecraft and the launch. Here is what happened.

While looking through the porthole as Pioneer was getting tested, the exact view in the photo above, a British science journalist named Eric Burgess got a lightbulb moment. What about adding a message to the first human object to leave our Solar System?

Burgess shared the idea with other journalists present that day in California, and all were enthusiastic. And by a complete accident of fate, only one hour drive away, Dr. Carl Sagan was visiting a lab for a completely different mission. He had just done a conference, along with Dr. Frank Drake, to share their designs for a message that might be used to communicate with an alien intelligence.

The decision was taken in no time, as the launch was in three weeks! Three people were involved in designing the message: Carl Sagan, Linda Salzman Sagan, and Frank Drake.

Launching message bottles into the cosmic ocean: the Pioneer Plaques

The plaque was meant to convey where and when the spacecraft originated from, and who built it. Carl Sagan explained the rationale behind the couple:

The original drawings of this couple were made by my wife and were based upon the classical models of Greek sculpture and the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.

Sagan explained that we inherited the wisdom of the Greeks, and that Leonardo was both an artist and a scientist.

Sagan did not mention the drawing above, but it is hard to believe this is not the one he thought of. But what is it about? It is an architectural drawing. Yes, only one art book from Antiquity survived the tragic loss of knowledge at the end of Antiquity. That one surviving book is authored by Vitruvius, and it’s called ‘On Architecture’.

That sketch illustrates Vitruvius’ explanation that the proportions of architecture are modeled on those of man.

Why Man and Woman are naked?

As for nudity, both in the Pioneer plaque and Leonardo’s drawing, there is a lot more to say. When Linda Salzman Sagan drew inspiration from classical Greek sculpture, she may well have had the sculpture below in mind.

Now, why did the ancient Greeks represent figures of man and gods in the nude? The first answer is their ideal of kalos kagathos. Kalos means beautiful, and agathos means good.

In plain English, the outer beauty reflects the inner virtue. A healthy mind resides within a healthy body, expressed by the grace and symmetry of the naked form.

Second, Plato wrote about the gymnasium, a word that means ‘place to be naked’. It is a conversation about whether it is disgraceful or not to have women exercising in the nude, and the response is:

It is not long since the Greeks thought it disgraceful and ridiculous, as most of the barbarians do now, for men to be seen naked.

That’s Plato quoting Socrates, two of the great thinkers of mankind. The argument is that when nude, man and woman are taking on the clothing of virtue. That barbarians find nudity disgraceful. For the rational mind, there is nothing shameful about the human figure.

To understand further why nudity was more than appropriate for a message to the universe, we have Rodin’s take:

Man’s naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

Wear clothes and belong to a specific time, place, and role in society. To become eternal, one needs to discard one’s clothes and reveal the universal, what mankind looks like.

The Voyager Golden Records, humanity’s time capsule

While the Pioneer Plaques were akin to postcards, the next idea was far more ambitious. A time capsule, a snapshot of who we are, what we humans sound like, and the sounds of nature. A record with a selection of musical pieces, as varied as drums to Louis Armstrong and Mozart.

Photos were included, like this example below:

Now, consider the pyramids of Egypt, which are a paltry 4,500 years of age. And contemplate how many monuments and artworks were conceived to last eternity, and which will likely make it there.

The answer is four small objects: the two Pioneer Plaques and the two Golden Records. In Murmurs of the Earth, the creators of the record explain:

Billions of years from now, our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder.

But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving a murmur of an ancient civilization that once flourished—perhaps before moving on to greater deeds and other worlds—on the distant planet Earth.

The two Voyager spacecraft will keep traveling the silent immensity of space without any help. And the gold records are built to last, containing an ultra-pure sample of Uranium-238, which has a half-life of 4.468 billion years.

Of all humanity’s achievements, from colossal pyramids to music, all that will exist in billions of years is four tiny metal plaques.

Pioneer and Voyager, four messages in a bottle journeying into the vastness of space and eternity

Although Cassini took the magnificent photo above, it mimics a lesser quality image taken by Voyager 1, at Sagan’s request. Why not turn the spacecraft back toward Earth for a last view of our planet?

That faint blue speck is us, Planet Earth. Apparently, the only habitable ship for humans, animals, and plants within a vast and cold universe. Which puts all the wars on each other and on our planet in perspective, doesn’t it?

If there is no light pollution where you live, put on Dark Was the Night by Blind Willie Johnson tonight, and look at the stars.

One of the bright lights out there may be one of the four Moments of Wonder disappearing far into their interstellar journey toward eternity.

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Sources

A Message from Earth; Carl Sagan, Linda Salzman Sagan and Frank Drake; Science, Feb. 25, 1972, New Series, Vol. 175, No. 4024 (Feb. 25, 1972), American Association for the Advancement of Science

Pioneer: First to Jupiter, Saturn, and Beyond; NASA SP-446; Richard O. Fimmel, James Van Allen, and Eric Burgess, 1980.

Carl Sagan, Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, 1973.

Plato, The Republic, V-452.

Anthony Mario Ludovici, Personal Reminiscences of Auguste Rodin, 1912.

Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Carl Sagan, Frank D. Drake, Jon Lomberg, Linda Salzman Sagan, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris (1978).

Moments of Wonder

Museums are time machines going back 500 million years

How far back in time can we go in a museum…

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7 months ago · 11 likes · Moments of Wonder

Nadar, a dozen visionaries squeezed into one man

A man like Nadar could never have been invented by a Hollywood script writer, even with the help of psychotic drugs. Above, in this self-portrait, at a time when photography was barely 25 years old, he attempts a ‘photosculpture.’

The twelve poses reflect Nadar’s multiple facets: a writer, journalist, caricaturist, scientist, secret agent, photography pioneer, balloon flight pioneer, who visited the moon (at least in fiction), and an entrepreneur. Bonus points for the walk-on part in the story of the birth of Impressionism.

Nadar was born Félix Tournachon in 1820. His real name, filtered by Parisian slang, became Tournadar, shortened into Nadar.

Nadar was also a brand and a family of creative geniuses. This story is about Félix Nadar, the flying photographer. So, dear reader, hold on tight as we climb aboard Nadar’s hot-air balloon.

Nadar, the caricaturist

Nadar had, by his early 30s, already experienced hard labor in a German prison, as Nadarsky, trying to fight for Polish independence. He returned for a fruitless attempt at spying on Russians, then earned his living with his pen as a journalist and famous caricaturist.

A sure sign of intelligence is to be able to laugh at oneself, so above we have a self-portrait of Nadar dangling up in the air from a balloon.

As we will see, Nadar was a pioneer in both the fields of photography and human flight. Let’s start with the talent for which he is most famous, photography.

Nadar elevated portrait photography to art

In 1857, photography was barely 20 years old, and a very long way from being accepted as an art form in its own right. And here we have Nadar brushing away the ‘mechanical reproduction’ of photographic portraiture:

Photographic theory can be learned in one hour, and the first notions of practice in one day. What cannot be learned, I tell you, is the feeling of light, the artistic appreciation of the effects produced by varied days combined.

What can be taught even less is the spiritual intelligence of your subject, that intuitive touch which puts you in communion with the model and allows you to provide, not an indifferent physical reproduction within reach of the lowliest lab assistant, but the most familiar and favorable likeness: the intimate resemblance.

This is the psychological side of photography; the word doesn’t seem too ambitious to me.

Quite the statement, and worth contemplating how valid it is 170 years later.

Nadar, the photography pioneer: electrical light, underground, and balloon photography

Just after Nadar told us that photography technique can be learned in a day, it is also worth recounting how much of a pioneer he was. He is most famous for his portraits, which were taken with natural light.

Nadar was a restless polymath and author of several milestones in the new technology of photography: the first aerial photos, above Paris, in 1858. Imagine the noxious gases escaping above his head, to prevent the balloon exploding, which had the effect of ‘burning’ the photos...

Then, he used electrical light in both portrait photography and underground, in the sewers and catacombs of Paris.

Nadar became a brand, and he built and opened a photo studio a stone’s throw from the future Opéra Garnier, below.

With a great talent for publicity, the facade was decorated with a ‘Nadar’ brightly lit red sign. The studio relied on sunlight, but to avoid cooking the clients posing in summer, an ingenious air-conditioning system was created, using double-glazed windows sprayed with water to cool down the interior.

If that sounds fiendishly complex and expensive, it was. In 1874, Nadar moved out and rented the space. A motley band of painters, tired of being constantly rejected by the official Salon, rented the studio.

Their names? Monet, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Degas, and many more. That was the ‘walk-on part’ in the history of the birth of Impressionism, as it is in Nadar’s studio that the movement got its name.

Nadar, a cornerstone of aviation history

It’s been eighty years since the Montgolfier brothers were the first humans to go up in the air. It may sound obvious to us, in an age of jumbo jets, that the solution to human flight is to be heavier than air, but we are in 1863.

Nadar created a company to promote aerial locomotion with heavier-than-air devices. Below is his photo of a prototype of a steam-powered helicopter.

He financed the Giant, the world’s largest hot-air balloon, at nearly 200 ft in height. It definitely was heavier than air, with a two-story basket able to carry up to 15 people, with a photographic dark room and a printing press...

The French word for daredevil is casse-cou, literally meaning ‘break neck’, which is what almost happened to Nadar, his wife, and the Giant’s passengers. The flight was successful in that the hot-air balloon flew to Germany, but it ended in a nasty crash and numerous injuries.

Flying from a balloon to the moon

You probably heard of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and its author, Jules Verne. He also wrote From the Earth to the Moon, in the 1860s, one hundred years before NASA succeeded at sending men to the moon. And Jules Verne wrote about a rocket launch from Florida, in a rocket that returns on Earth by splashdown...

One of the three persons in the journey is Michel Ardan, an anagram of Nadar. The engraving above leaves little doubt that a real restless polymath, Nadar, is the inspiration for the mad genius of fiction.

So, at least on paper, Nadar went as far as the moon! See, you cannot make this up. Of course, there is more.

The first postal and reconnaissance flight

The Prussians, soon to be Germans, blockaded, bombed, and starved Paris in 1870. And what did Nadar do? At his own expense, he created the Compagnie des Aérostatiers to fly a balloon from Montmartre.

It was the first reconnaissance flight in history, as well as the first airmail service, as Nadar’s balloon carried letters so that starving Parisians could send news to their families behind enemy lines.

Nadar had several balloons made during the siege, so his many ventures up in the air should be regarded as the birth of aviation, 45 years before the Wright brothers.

A Giant balloon that crashed, financing new techniques and balloons during the siege of Paris, it should not come as a surprise to learn that Nadar, a restless genius juggling with debts, was brought down to earth by bankruptcy not long after the Prussian war.

Nadar returned to a career as a photographer, with another world’s first in store.

Nadar and the first photographic interview

In 1886, Nadar produced the first photography interview ever published, of Eugène Chevreul, on his 100th birthday. The great chemist was also the scientist whose work on the theory of color had an immense influence on painting, and the Impressionists in particular.

Would you agree, dear reader, that even if a script writer had dreamt up such a character, no producer would ever finance an unbelievable story?

Now we have set the stage for Nadar’s genius, to conclude our Moment of Wonder, let’s peer into the spiritual intelligence of some of Nadar’s models.

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Sources

The majority of the photos are courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France / Gallica.

Mémoire à Consulter et consultation pour Félix Tournachon dit Nadar Contre Adrien Tournachon jeune et compagnie, Cour impériale de Paris, 1857, translated by the author.

The word Queen doesn’t even exist in the ancient Egyptian language

With ‘Talk like an Egyptian’, we’ve already discovered the cultural misunderstanding behind using Greek words for Egypt. We still say Pharaohs were buried inside gigantic pastries (pyramids), and that coffins were supposed to eat flesh (sarcophagus means ‘flesh-eater)...

Here, we burst the myth of the great Queens of Egypt, with a simple but powerful realization: there was not even a word for Queen. There was only ever a King’s wife, a King’s Mother, and a King’s daughter for a princess. However powerful she may have been, a lady was always a ‘plus one’.

It is not like relegating a woman to being her husband’s ‘plus one’ is a thing of the past. In the Musée d’Orsay, a masterpiece by Renoir is still titled ‘Madame Georges Charpentier’, her husband’s name. She only exists as the accessory, yet she was called Marguerite, merci.

So we are entering a time machine and traveling across three millennia along the Nile. While up to 350 people sat on the throne of Egypt, worry not, it is going to be an interminable story. You only need one hand, dear reader, to count how many stops we need.

Yes, at best, only five women sat on the throne as Pharaohs of Egypt. This is their story.

What is a Pharaoh, to begin with?

Forget about the word per-aa, Pharaoh, which means ‘big house’, as it only started being used long into the three millennia of Pharaonic history. The first rulers of the lands along the Nile, over 5,000 years ago, were called Horus.

Yes, Horus, the falcon god. They were the incarnation of the god who inherited the Earth from the dawn of time. The illustration above, one of the earliest royal inscriptions of Pharaonic Egypt, is almost 5,000 years old and is easy to read: there are only three hieroglyphs.

The falcon is Horus, the snake is the name, Snake, and the walls represent a royal palace. So, it reads Horus Snake, as plain as reading King Louis.

The title of the person on the throne of Egypt is always masculine

All the words used to describe the ruler, Lord of the Two Lands, He of the Sedge and the Bee, and He of the Two Ladies (the vulture and cobra goddesses), master, majesty, and so on, imply a man.

Oh, and the person seated on the throne was not only the son of the gods, but he was also a good god.

In plain English, take a Pope, a King, a general, the owner of all the land, someone who is the son of gods, and the living presence of Horus, the god-king, all rolled into one, and you have a Pharaoh.

An important little trick to know is how to turn a masculine word into a feminine one. Take the duck, which you read SA, and means ‘son’. Add a loaf of bread hieroglyph, a T, and SAT becomes ‘daughter’.

And since a Pharaoh was partly human and partly divine, the word for god was netjer. And if you add the T of the feminine, it becomes netjeret, ‘goddess’.

What is the difference between a King’s Wife and a Female Pharaoh?

Look at an ancient Egyptian statue, and it is not exactly difficult to work out whether the figure is male or female. But as we try to understand the difference between ‘King’s Wife’ and a Pharaoh who happens to be a lady, we must discuss grammar.

That little piece of bread hieroglyph is not a detail at all, as we are about to discover.

Before meeting the few Female Kings of Egypt, we need to take stock of how much of Egypt’s history has vanished. The best example is Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, the biggest stone monument ever built.

What do we know of his life story? Nothing. Absolutely nothing is known of Khufu, the person and his achievements, beyond that immense pyramid and one tiny ivory statuette representing the mighty Pharaoh.

That’s the challenge, combing through the Sahara desert sand, in search of fragments, where one or two hieroglyphs make the difference between hundreds of ‘King’s Wifes’ and a handful of Female Pharaohs.

Merneith, the first female ruler of the ancient world?

The couple of hieroglyphs missing is precisely the issue for candidate number one, Merneith, who was a King’s Wife at the time of the Horus Snake we saw earlier.

Abydos is one of the most important sites of Egypt, where the first Kings were buried. Petrie, the great Egyptologist, found a royal tomb there in 1900. The inscriptions and the size of the tomb meant he assumed that it was a King’s tomb.

To make his and our lives more difficult, it is worth remembering that these inscriptions are about 5,000 years old, and these are early hieroglyphs. Today, knowing it is a feminine name, we would read it Merytneith, (she) beloved by the goddess Neith. Note the addition of the missing T that turns the name feminine.

And there is more. She had not one tomb, but two. A very potent piece of evidence is that she is named on the Palermo stone, one of the rare and highly important lists of Kings of Egypt...

Frustratingly, the stone is broken precisely at her name... Underneath is another royal inscription, this time her name is written on the right, next to King Snake, but it is written Mut Nysut (King’s mother), so Merneith, mother of King Djet (the Horus Snake we saw earlier).

Above is another piece of evidence, her name written alongside that of Kings, but as Merneith, King’s Mother.

Being present on King’s list implies that she may have been more than a King’s Mother, but, lacking a ‘smoking hieroglyph’ writing in plain Egyptian that she was the King of Egypt, we cannot be sure if Merneith was the first female ruler of History.

Khentkaus I

Our time machine got stuck in the sands of Abydos, 5,000 years ago. We now fly 500 years into the future, in Giza, near the ‘smaller’ of the three pyramids.

Enter candidate number two, Khentkawes. There are far more than three tombs in Giza, but thousands, from colossal to minuscule. One step tomb was so big that some early archeologists called it ‘the fourth pyramid’.

Its owner is known very clearly by the inscription above the door, below:

The inscription, as visible above, ends with her name, Khentkaus. The top of the inscription is repeated above to help answer the question: King’s mother, or King?

The translation above is clear; line 1 means King, and line 2 means Mother of the King. But, a very big but, there are two ways to read the inscription. One means she is King, the other, ‘Mother of the two Kings’.

Unfortunately, our time machine is only poetic, and because we cannot ask a scribe from 4,500 years ago to clarify the subtleties of ancient hieroglyphs, we are still stuck in the sand.

Was Khentkaus a Female King or a King’s Mother? We don’t know.

Neferu Sobek, the first Female Pharaoh

Drum roll: that grammatical navigation was to ensure our time machine landed in the right time and place. We are now around 3,800 years into the past, and have found the few fragments that reveal who the first Female Pharaoh was.

Look at the photo on the left. Even broken, you see the nemes headcloth that only Pharaohs wear. Her bust and dress tell you she is a woman. Her belt tells you her name. As it is easier to read with the seal on the right, let’s do that now.

Like a small version of the Horus Snake inscription, we have Horus, a name, and a royal palace. The tiny but mighty difference is the loaf of bread, a T, after the falcon. It is a she falcon, a Female Horus!

Now, her name: three signs, the sun, Ra, a hoe, Mr (beloved), and another piece of bread, which reads Meret Ra. The other side mentions her other name, Neferu Sobek.

In plain Egyptian, Female Horus, Meret Ra, Lady of the Two Lands, (she) beloved of Ra, Daughter of Ra, Neferu Sobek. That’s how much difference a little loaf of bread makes. Neferu Sobek was not a King’s Wife, but a Female King.

Pharaoh Neferusobek had a short reign; little is known about her, but, significantly, she was not depicted as a male. There was no room for interpretation; she was depicted as female and used the feminine for her title, that of the first woman Pharaoh of Egypt.

The Queen who became Pharaoh, Hatshepsut

We now follow the breadcrumbs through the sands in search of more loaves of bread next to that of Kings’ names. On television, you see documentaries about Queen Hatshepsut.

She was indeed, for a time, a Queen, which, as you know, means ‘King’s Wife’ Hatshepsut. But one day, she made a bold move. Pharaoh Thutmose III was still too young to rule, and she was nobody’s wife. That lady, whose name, Hatshepsut, means ‘Foremost of the noble ladies’, was not content being a ‘plus one’.

She wanted more, so she did something unprecedented, and more astonishing than adding a few Ts here and there. Remember, there was a Pharaoh already.

It is not like she sat on an empty throne while no one was watching; it was a conscious move, becoming a Female King, meaning there were two Pharaohs, one called Hatshepsut, the other Thutmose III.

The great Champollion, who visited her magnificent temple in Luxor, wrote :

I was surprised, reading inscriptions, to realize they talked about that bearded King, in usual Pharaoh attire, employing words and verbs in the feminine, as it was about a Queen.

Champollion, the first person able to read hieroglyphs in 1,400 years, had good reasons to be surprised. The female, bearded Pharaoh in question had been thoroughly erased from the record, as visible above, her name, on the left, was chiseled.

Pharaoh Neferneferuaten

The short period when Amenhotep IV and his Great King’s Wife, Nefertiti, reformed religion is fascinating. But it is important to realize that once more, it had been intentionally erased, which is worth a future story.

Suffice to say, you are aware already, dear reader, of a famous Queen named Nefertiti. As, by now, you do realize the importance of looking at tiny breadcrumbs through the sand of Egypt, then let’s discuss the name of the famous Queen for one minute.

Her name was not Nefertiti. It was Nefer neferu Aten Neferet Iti, which means ‘Beautiful are the Beauties of Aten, the Beautiful one has come’. Which is why Nefertiti is easier to pronounce!

Now, notice the first part of that name, Nefer neferu Aten. It happens to be the name of a Pharaoh who reigned after Akhenaten and just before young Tutankhamun became Pharaoh.

See where this is going? Digging through the sand, a few pieces tell us about a Pharaoh whose name was Nefer neferu Aten akhet en hyes, the same name plus “effective for her husband.”

Nefer Neferu Aten was a Female Pharaoh, probably Nefertiti, although very little is known about that King.

Now, our time machine did five stops indeed, but only three of the ladies we witnessed were with certainty Female Pharaohs, even when we know little about Neferusobek and Neferneferuaten. There are two further candidates on the list of Female Pharaohs, Tausret and Cleopatra VII.

If you did enjoy this time travel already, then the time machine will pursue the exploration to reveal more about Tausret, Pharaoh Cleopatra, and whatever fascinating bread crumbs we find in the Egyptian desert.

In the meantime, I trust that realizing that a single loaf of bread changed a woman's role from ‘King’s Wife’ to Female Pharaoh was a Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

William M. Flinders Petrie, The royal tombs of the first dynasty (Part I): 1900.

Selim Hassan Excavations at Giza (1932–1933). Vol. 4.

Champollion le jeune, Lettres écrites d’Égypte et de Nubie, Quinzième lettre, 18 Juin 1829, translated by the author.

Moments of Wonder

Talk like an Egyptian

Two millennia spent seeing ancient Egypt through a Greek lens…

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2 months ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · Moments of Wonder

Two millennia spent seeing ancient Egypt through a Greek lens

Would you use New York’s subway map to navigate Paris’ metro? Or take a German conversation guide to visit Spain? Yet, this is what we all do, and have done for over 2,000 years, as most of the words we use to describe Egypt and its monuments are Greek.

We owe the Greeks of Egypt a great debt of gratitude, as it is thanks to Greek-Egyptian documents, like the Rosetta Stone, that Champollion found the key to hieroglyphs.

But now that we have overcome a 1,400-year gap in understanding what the Egyptians wrote, we do not need to ask a Greek person about Egypt; we can ask the ancient Egyptians directly.

With this little time travel, we will marvel at how easy it is, as today, to misunderstand another culture.

Picture this, dear reader. You bring your beloved dog to a restaurant. The chef points at your pet and the kitchen. What a nice gesture, you think, he noticed that my dog needs to be fed. An hour later, the chef proudly returns with your dog cooked in sauce...

There’s going to be a lot of food-related cultural misreading in this story, starting with the worst example of misunderstanding, the sarcophagus.

A sarcophagus’s job is to eat bodies, not preserve Egyptian mummies for eternity!

Sarcophagus is the Latin version of sarkophagos, which in Greek literally means flesh-eater. Yes, really:

It is a well-known fact that dead bodies, when buried in this stone, are consumed in the course of forty days, with the sole exception of the teeth.

Which is exactly what the ancient Egyptians tried to avoid! For at least three millennia, they went to a lot of trouble to mummify the dead so they would remain intact as a vessel for eternal life.

So, what would an Egyptian say instead of sarcophagus? He would say neb-ankh, which means Lord of Life.

That is what we see in the photo above: a Greek person named Dioskourides, but living in Egypt. He was a high official at the time of Pharaoh Ptolemy VI, during the three centuries when Egyptian Kings were Greek.

While the Greek afterlife was not exactly enticing, the Egyptian one, to remain alive for eternity, was far more attractive. This stone container looks completely Egyptian; there is not one Greek word inscribed on it, but the person inside spoke Greek.

That is why, when his time came, Dioskourides’ luck was that the embalmer, unlike the chef at the restaurant, understood what was going on.

Instead of stuffing poor old Dioskourides in a sarcophagus so only his teeth remained 40 days later, they spent 70 days preparing him for eternal life. That is what you see, a man inside a Lord of Life stone coffin, with that nice eternal smile. Phew.

Is the Great Sphinx a female monster or a lion with the head of a Pharaoh?

Now we get into the heart of the matter, the Great Sphinx, and sphinxes in general. Carved from the bedrock, in front of Khafre’s pyramid, most likely at the same time, the giant we call the Sphinx existed 1,800 years before the Greeks even wrote stories about sphinxes.

Since Sphinx is a Greek word describing a Greek monster, let’s first explain that. The myth is about a female, winged lion. A hungry monster that will eat anyone who fails to answer its riddles.

Like our visitor trying to make his way in Spain with a German conversation booklet, around 2,500 years ago, the Greeks visited Egypt as scholars or tourists. And they wore Greek-made tinted spectacles.

One of them, in front of the giant lion statue at Giza, wonders what it could be. And remembers the story of a winged female lion monster, and ta da: chorizo becomes sauerkraut!

Seriously, though, sphinx, although a Greek word, may even have an Egyptian origin. This time, our Greek visitor is a historian, and he tries his best. In front of the giant lion, he asks, “What is the name of this”?

The Egyptian answers Shesep ankh (more on that in a minute). To Greek ears, the strange word Shesep ankh may have been transformed into ‘sphinx’.

Explaining what an Egyptian sphinx actually represents will be for another story, but Shesep ankh is Egyptian for ‘living image’.

All images, from hieroglyphs to statues to the mummy itself, were ‘receptacles for life’, which is why when you see an Egyptian statue with its nose chopped off, it has been killed.

Are pyramids nothing but giant wheat and honey cakes?

Like Paris, Texas, and Paris, France, using the same word for two very different things creates confusion. The Egyptian lion-headed statue appeared nearly 2,000 years before the Greek sphinx. The City of Light appeared 2,000 years before the Texan version; it does not mean two places using the same name are the same thing!

Now, the pyramid. With the very same tinted glasses, the Greek visitor asks about the word for the colossal monuments behind the Sphinx. He’s told by the Egyptian that it is called mer. That is it, two letters, an M and an R, pronounced mer.

But the monuments look like a Greek cake, a pointed wheat and honey pastry. That is why we keep repeating that ancient Egyptian Pharaohs loved wheat and honey so much that they built the biggest pastries ever, still standing 4,500 years later...

And the food-related cultural misunderstanding keeps going.

Obelisks are not cooking implements!

Our hard-of-hearing, ravenous Greek visitor struck again. When he saw one of the giant ‘needles’ pointing at the sun, he asked what they were. The answer was tekhenu, and that word went into one ear and straight out of the other.

It was lunchtime, so it seems, as one underfed guy had images of barbecue in his mind. To him, the shape of these stone monuments to the sun, weighing several hundred tons, looked like obeliskos, skewers.

Not just metal bars to cook meat, but iskos means small, so ‘small skewer’. Think about it for a minute, the biggest obelisk weighs 450 tons, and one hungry Greek saw a small skewer.

One stomach changed the world, as ever since, we talk about the famous ancient Egyptian wheat and honey cakes and barbecue accessories...

The Colossi of Memnon are not a Greek hero, but Pharaoh Amenhotep III

One exception to Egyptian words passing through one Greek man’s stomach is the famous Colossi of Memnon.

Memnon was Greek, the son of the goddess Eos, who died during the Trojan War. His mother, the goddess of dawn, wept so much that her tears were the morning dew. Needless to say, Memnon never set foot in Egypt.

But one of these two colossi, damaged by an earthquake, made a sound in the morning, like a complaint, probably due to thermal expansion. That got Greek visitors to name it ‘Memnon’ and ancient tourists to carve graffiti on the statues.

Roman Emperor Hadrian visited, and the graffito states that Memnon spoke to the Emperor. But no Greek hero was speaking to a Roman Emperor, but a great Pharaoh, Amenhotep III.

A Labyrinth in Egypt?

One puzzling thing for those who read Greek or Roman accounts of Egypt is the labyrinth. Herodotus, the Greek historian who travelled to Egypt about 2,500 years ago, tells us:

I have myself seen it, and indeed no words can tell its wonders.

Though the pyramids were greater than words can tell, and each one of them a match for many great monuments built by the Greeks, this maze surpasses even the pyramids.

He describes a monument with 3,000 rooms. And if you go to the Fayum Lake region today, with a translation of Herodotus and the other Greek and Roman descriptions, you will worry that you are lost.

In front of the ruined pyramid of Amenhemat is a gigantic waffle shape visible to the naked eye, covered in sand, partially cut by a canal. Is that it? Yes, it is what remains of the Labyrinth, the site Herodotus said was more impressive than the pyramids of Giza.

Such is the peril of navigating Paris’ metro with a New York subway map. Looking at Egypt through a Greek filter is bound to create misunderstandings and disappointments.

The very word Egypt is a Greek misunderstanding of an Egyptian name

Now, this time, dear reader, you are in the time machine and land in what is Cairo today, but do that around 4,000 years ago.

Completely stunned at the sight of what used to be one of Egypt’s most impressive temples, you ask a priest what the name of that place is. He tells you Hwt-ka-Pth, which roughly sounds like Hut Ka Ptah.

To a Greek speaker, that sounds like Aegyptos, from which the word Egypt comes. The fun fact is that the last two letters, PT, are almost the word PTH, the god Ptah, whose temple in Memphis is the source of the word Aegyptos, Egypt.

A smart Greek philosopher realized how young Greece was compared to Egypt

Few people have changed the world with their ideas as Plato did. Since intelligence is to realize how little one knows, Plato wrote about a Greek priest visiting Egypt. That priest is having a conversation with a wise Egyptian priest about how ancient their civilizations are.

Here is what the Egyptian priest said:

You Greeks are always children: there is not such a thing as an old Greek.

And on hearing this he asked, “What mean you by this saying?”

And the priest replied, “You are young in soul, every one of you. For therein you possess not a single belief that is ancient and derived from old tradition, nor yet one science that is hoary with age”.

By the time Plato wrote these lines, the pyramids were over 2,000 years old. Today, they are over 4,500 years old. Plato shows the way: ask locals if you can, something we can do thanks to Champollion.

Hieroglyphs, sacred carvings, the words of gods

A broken clock is correct twice a day, and there is one Greek word about Egypt that is sort of correct, hieroglyph. In Greek, it means ‘sacred carving’. The Egyptian equivalent is medju-netjer, ‘word of god’, about the same thing.

Thanks to Champollion, after 1,400 years of silence, the meaning of the strange images carved from floor to ceiling on temple walls or inside tombs finally made sense. They are indeed the ‘words of gods’, addressed to divinities in the hope of eternal life.

Unbeknownst to our gluttonous Greek, they do indeed talk about honey cakes, bread, honey, beef steak, and roasted duck! All tombs’ inscriptions list food, beer, and bread. Even the gods get their share, as visible on temple walls, where Pharaoh offers a god bread and wine.

And not just as images, at their peak, major temples employed thousands of workers to store and present piles of the finest foods to the statue of the god. To ancient Egyptians, a statue and a mummy very much needed to eat food.

For the mummy, one’s ka, the life force, remained inside the mummified body and needed sustenance for one’s eternal life. Living Egyptians, sharing bread and beer, would say ‘to your ka’ as equivalent to cheers! To your health!

Even our hungry Greek visitor can manage to say it in Egyptian: to a man, you say n ka k, to a woman, n ka t. Cheers!

There’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Pliny, Natural History (Naturalis Historia), Book 36, Chapter 27.

Herodotus, The Histories, Book II, Chapter 148.

Plato, Timaeus, 22b.

When Velázquez, the painter’s painter, stunned Rome

We are in Rome in 1650, about 140 years after one magical moment, when Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael were shoulder to shoulder. It was as unlikely as seeing on stage, at the same time, the Beatles, Stones, and Jimi Hendrix. Just the mention of their names prepares one’s mind for a Moment of Wonder.

This time, our story is about a Spaniard who comes to Rome on behalf of the King of Spain. He’s here to purchase art, is a painter, and his name is Velázquez. Maybe not as famous as the others, although you probably know of Las Meninas.

As we will see, the word ‘stunned Rome’ at the beginning of this story is not hyperbole at all.

This is the story of two masterpieces painted months apart in Rome: Velázquez, the slave, and the Pope.

Velázquez, Spanish court painter

Art during the Renaissance and beyond was not art as we understand it today, something that artists do of their own accord. The vast majority of the masterpieces we admire were financed either by the Church or a King. None of it was done on a painter’s whim.

Enter Velázquez, whom another painter, Manet, called ‘the greatest painter that there’s ever been’; the reason why Velázquez is known as ‘the painter’s painter.’

Think of Jimi Hendrix, backstage with the Beatles and Stones. He may fiddle with his guitar alone in one corner, but the other guys just know. That’s Velázquez fiddling with his brush.

By 1650, Velázquez has been the court painter for a quarter of a century. He is one of Europe’s towering artists, soon to become Chamberlain, the person running the royal palace, and a Knight.

He lives in the Royal Palace, and, as a painter, his studio includes enslaved artisans. In the 1600s, Spain’s arts and crafts economy relies on slavery. One of those slaves is Juan de Pareja.

Juan de Pareja, the slave who became a painter

Pareja was Moorish, meaning he had Northern African origins. The reality is that we know very little about Pareja’s early life, but, in the context of the time, either he was ‘inherited’ or purchased by Velázquez.

All master’s workshops had assistants grinding colors and preparing canvases for their master. The strange situation we have here is that in Spain, free and slave labor mingled. And the word master, which should only mean an artist running a studio, also means master, as in slave owner.

In Spanish, there were two very different words used: maestro, a painter leading a studio, and amo, the owner of slaves. As we will see, Pareja became a maestro, and the unusual situation led to the birth of a legend, that Pareja secretly learned from Velázquez.

As the painter lived in the Royal Palace and had daily visits from the King, the slave sneaked in a painting in plain sight. That prompted the King to declare, “The man who has such talent could not be a slave”.

And that was how Pareja gained his freedom. Aside from the fact that there is about zero chance that a slave assistant could paint his own masterpiece without his master noticing, this romantic story is a complete myth, as we will see.

Velázquez got accepted into the most prestigious Roman artistic circles

To understand the extreme rarity of what comes next, by 1650, only a handful of non-Italians had ever had the privilege of a face-to-face sitting with a Pope. Velázquez had been to Italy before, to learn from the great Italian artists. But that year, he was in Rome on royal business to purchase art for the King’s collection.

Velázquez also got accepted into Rome’s artist guilds, the Saint Luke academy, and the even more prestigious Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon. That is key, as not only was it a prestigious and new artists’ association, as the name implies, its headquarters is the Pantheon.

And its members could exhibit their art on its portico, for all to see, in one of Rome’s most celebrated monuments. And what Velázquez chose to display there? Not a painting commissioned by anyone, a painting he did for himself.

The portrait of his slave, Juan de Pareja.

Juan de Pareja’s portrait stunned Baroque Rome

Here is what happened:

When Velázquez determined to draw the Picture of the Holy Father, he thought fit to prepare himself beforehand, by way of Exercise, in painting some Head from the Life; for which purpose he drew that of Juan de Pareja (a Slave of his and an ingenious Painter) with such Similitude and Liveliness that, having sent it by the same Pareja to some Friends to pass their Judgment on it, they stood a while looking sometimes on the Picture and sometimes on the Original, with Amazement and even a sort of Terror, without knowing which they were to speak to, or which was to answer them.

Of this Portrait (which was a half-length) Andreas Schmidt (a Flemish Painter who was then at Rome) relates that it being a custom on St. Joseph’s Day to adorn the Cloister of the Rotunda with capital Paintings, ancient and modern, this Portrait was not only placed, with universal Applause, among them, but in the Opinion of all the Painters of different Nations, all the rest looked like Painting, but this alone seemed to be a Reality.

Plain English translation: like it was with Leonardo da Vinci in particular, Pareja’s portrait had the terrifying presence of life.

The image of a sort of Terror is, again, not hyperbole. To begin with, the awe was in having the subject of the portrait holding that very portrait. That was Velázquez quietly demonstrating how his brush could spark life.

Juan de Pareja’s portrait gets art historians to lose their marbles

All the quotes in this story come from art historians and artists. One must realize that it has been drilled into art historians’ heads that ‘beautiful’ is an opinion. It is a meaningless word that has no place whatsoever in the vocabulary one uses to describe an artwork.

The Metropolitan Museum acquired the portrait in 1970. The directors called it ‘one of the most important acquisitions in the Museum’s history, a work of genius’. The chief curator of the Met wrote that it is:

Among the most beautiful, most living portraits ever painted.

Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X

Painting a Pope is one of the most prestigious works a painter can ever do. When doing someone’s portrait, one puts the sitter in the best light, particularly if a King or Pope. So the issue is how to idealize the subject. And in real life, Innocent X’s physical appearance was described by those who knew him as beastly, vulgar, and frightening...

What is a painter to do? If the artist is Velázquez, the very same who, months earlier, painted Pareja’s face as Reality itself, with this sort of Terror, then the result is above. Now, a few painters’ reactions: Joshua Reynolds called it the finest painting in Rome and among the first in the world. Francis Bacon said:

I’ve always thought that this was one of the greatest paintings in the world.

And since we’ve discovered that art historians tend to lose their marbles when talking about these two portraits, allow me to lose mine for a minute:

Standing in front of Velázquez’s Innocent X certainly does provoke a sort of Terror, as if standing in front of Hannibal Lecter. The tension comes from knowing that, even tied to a chair, if you get too close, he will chew off your face.

Pareja and Innocent X’s portraits by Velázquez, as well as the Screaming Popes series that Francis Bacon did after Velázquez, are at the top of the list of artworks that took my breath away.

Phew. And there is more.

Juan de Pareja was freed and became a maestro, a master painter

Away from romantic tales, the fact is that a few months after exhibiting Pareja’s portrait and painting a Pope, Velázquez freed Pareja, “a servant for whom he has much esteem.”

But it still was the 1600s, and the clause stated the contract would not take effect until four years later. So, free on paper, but giving away four more years to Velázquez, as maestro (master painter) and amo (slave owner).

Buying or being granted freedom was not exceptional for a slave. To become a maestro, a master painter was unprecedented.

But this is not Hollywood. Pareja stayed with Velázquez, living in the master’s home, and when Velázquez died, stayed with the former’s son-in-law. We do not know why. Was it for having forged genuine family bonds? Or because a maestro with dark skin, a former slave, was a bit too much for potential clients, Church or royalty?

Part of the answer is the last painting of this story.

Juan de Pareja’s self-portrait in The Calling of Saint Matthew

The portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velázquez stayed in Italy, then travelled to Britain, mostly out of view, until being sold at a record price to the Metropolitan Museum. The life of Juan de Pareja, the painter, was forgotten. Or was it?

The Calling of Saint Matthew is an ambitious Biblical painting, about 11 feet wide. We don’t know who commissioned it, as documents are missing, but the painting was displayed in a monastery just in front of the royal palace, where many royal weddings and funerals took place.

Less than a century after Pareja painted it, the painting crossed the street from the monastery to the Royal Palace, entering the King’s art collection, which became the Prado. And whom do we see, standing in the left corner, with a sword at his side, as befits a hidalgo, a gentleman? He holds a piece of paper, which states Juan de Pareja Ft 1661.

Did you recognize him? There he is, a man born into slavery, an assistant to one of history’s greatest painters, who rose until he got to be an independent master, good enough to end up in the royal collection. Once a master, he confidently paints himself looking at the royals and clergy walking past.

Now, dear reader, the bad news is that even a high-quality photo does not convey the fearsome life presence of the original canvas. The good news is that if you have a chance, go to the Metropolitan Museum, the Prado, or the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, and check for yourself why so many art historians and artists lose their composure when trying to describe these masterpieces.

That will be a Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Juan de Pareja: Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez; by David Pullins, Vanessa K. Valdés, Metropolitan Museum.

Antonio Palomino, An account of the lives and works of the most eminent Spanish painters, sculptors and architects, 1739.

Juan de Pareja by Diego Velázquez, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 29, No. 10, June 1971

David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1975.

Moments of Wonder

The Jimi Hendrix Effect in visual arts

Dear reader, when listening to music, your ears notice when a tune sounds like one by another artist. This is not plagiarism but influence. Every artist learns from another, so it is an homage, and the same effect is visible in paint…

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a year ago · 7 likes · Moments of Wonder

Was Tutankhamun really the most famous Pharaoh of Egypt?

About 3,300 years ago, two babies entered the world at around the same time, but were born into opposite social classes. The first was born a prince in a palace and sat on the throne as an 8-year-old child. He was King for about ten years, until an accident claimed his life.

The second child was welcomed into a commoner’s family. Yet he managed to climb all the military echelons from stables to Prime Minister. He was Pharaoh’s right-hand man at almost 50, and had a son and grandson, both laymen. Of course, dear reader, you recognize the prince’s name, Tutankhamun.

But were you aware that Pa-Ramessu, the commoner who became Prime Minister, was Pharaoh Ramses I, the grandfather of Ramses II? In plain English, the mighty Ramses II was born a nobody, about 20 years after the Boy King’s death.

Tutankhamun could not have been more legitimate, the tenth generation of a dynasty of Kings. Young Ramses was born in a military family without a drop of royal blood. Yet, if Ramesses II could talk to us today, he would look at us with utter contempt if we questioned whether there was a King more famous than he.

If anyone insists, “What about Tutankhamun?”, the Great Pharaoh, would say “Tut-ankh-a-who”? There has never been any King of that name in Egypt!

There go two myths in one go: Tutankhamun was very far from being the ‘most famous Pharaoh,’ and the mighty Ramses II was born Mr. Nobody.

Tutankhamun’s name was intentionally erased from history’s pages

Now he was on the throne, about to become a god in his own lifetime, it became Ramses’ interest to brush Tutankhamun under the carpet. What happened?

The photo above helps you visualize it: the famous Abydos list of Kings, drawn by Ramses I’s son Seti, standing next to his son Ramses II, who was about ten years old or so.

The list excludes two names: those of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. In the three decades following the Boy King’s death, successors smashed statues, leveled temples, and chiseled away every trace of these two Pharaohs.

Why? Payback for Akhenaten’s religious reforms. And why go to the trouble of chiselling names? Because, to an ancient Egyptian, the name is the cornerstone of eternity. The name is the ‘switch’ that turns on the magic, providing the breath of life and sustenance to a mummy.

If we could take a time machine and ask Cleopatra, who had access to royal archives and could read hieroglyphs, to tell us about her famous predecessors, she certainly wouldn’t have picked up Tutankhamun. Not just for the short reign, but also for the fact that he had completely vanished from history.

Far worse than a complete absence of fame, it meant death. No name, no eternal life.

From Champollion’s decipherment, Tutankhamun’s name hid in plain sight

After 3,200 years without being read or spoken, Tutankhamun’s name slowly resurfaced thanks to Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs. And the genius went to Egypt in 1827, just when objects bearing an unknown Pharaoh’s names turned up.

To make our lives difficult, Pharaohs have up to five different names, and Tut’s main names were Nebkheperure and Tutankhamun. Champollion purchased a modest-looking object found near the Valley of the Kings, a scribe’s palette bearing the name of an unknown Pharaoh named Nebkheperure. In plain English, the Boy King.

For those paying attention, more objects bearing these names turned up, often carrying the chisel marks of intentional erasure. And in 1905, the nearly intact tomb of King Tut’s great-grandparents, containing fabulous treasures, was discovered.

The archaeologist who found it believed there was nothing else to find in the Valley of the Kings. Little did he know, but he was a few meters from Tut’s tomb...

The odds for Carter were about to find an intact royal tomb

The Valley of the Kings is a colossal haystack covered in millions of stone fragments, so one can easily be overwhelmed if trying to find a needle there.

Plus, an archaeologist knows the odds of finding an intact royal tomb: over three millennia and nearly 350 Kings, 99% of Egypt’s royal treasures have been plundered.

It is not just due to greed, but a massive conceptual failure of the afterlife in ancient Egypt: there was no inheritance. One went to the tomb for an eternal journey with all of their possessions, furniture, makeup, clothing, and everything.

Plunder was the only way to prevent all the riches of Egypt from forever being locked up underground. It is no surprise, then, to discover there are many examples when it happened not long after the burial. Even before burial, as proven by the intact tombs found with mummies already relieved of their jewels...

There are examples of Royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings that were looted 15 years after burial, as we will soon find out.

Howard Carter and Tutankhamun’s fates met

Carter was, in many ways, an exceptional man; in others, as we will see, not so. He was born a commoner and never really had formal schooling, aside from his father, a painter. Young Howard inherited the paternal talent to the point that at only 17, the Egypt Exploration Fund hired him to copy reliefs for archaeologists.

But the young man was a quick learner, as at 25 years old, he was named Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Luxor’s region. At 30, he was in charge of Lower Egypt, which included the pyramids, when an incident derailed his career.

A rowdy group of French tourists argued with the Egyptian guards during a visit. Carter defended them and refused to apologize when the incident became diplomatic, which caused him to lose his job. A few years later, he was introduced to Lord Carnarvon.

Fruitless years combing through the rubble of the Valley of the Kings

The wealthy aristocrat financed excavations, and Carter became a seasoned archaeologist. Carter was the employee of a private expedition, which entitled Carnarvon to half of the discovery.

Carnarvon got a permit for the Valley of the Kings, but Carter spent years combing through thousands upon thousands of tons of debris without finding anything shiny. The determined Carter drew a map, square by square, and there was only one spot left to comb through, the ruins of a workers’ hut above the entrance of an existing royal tomb.

It seemed like the least likely place to find anything. Yet, in the winter of 1922, a 12-year-old water boy needed a stable spot for his heavy load, and he saw a flat piece of stone: a step. The entry of a seemingly untouched tomb.

Carter found that the tomb of Tutankhamun had been looted twice

Contrary to the legend, the tomb of Tutankhamun was not discovered intact. Carter soon realized the multiple signs of two robberies. The first was looting oils and perfume, the second, gold:

Robbery being indicated by the broken fragments of jewellery dropped while passing through the breach in the rubble and doorways.

He could easily ‘see’ the thieves at work:

In the Antechamber there had been some sort of an attempt to tidy up after the plunderers’ visit, but here everything was in confusion, just as they had left it. Nor did it take much imagination to picture them at their work.

One—there would probably not have been room for more than one—had crept into the chamber, and had then hastily but systematically ransacked its entire contents, emptying boxes, throwing things aside, piling them one upon another, and occasionally passing objects through the hole to his companions for closer examination in the outer chamber.

He had done his work just about as thoroughly as an earthquake.

Once he did the inventory of the tomb, he estimated that 60% of the jewellery had been stolen.

Now we need to address the famous gold mask, revealing how Carter got Tut out of his solid gold sarcophagus and mask. Hold on tight, dear reader.

Carter’s rough treatment of Tutankhamun’s body

The issue was that Tut’s body was solidly ‘glued in’ inside his solid gold coffin. The various oils and resins poured inside the coffin spent three millennia turning into a hardened pitch sealant. How does one get to the shiny stuff when gold and corpse are fused?

In Carter’s own words:

It was decided therefore that the best plan of attack was, if possible to raise the lid, remove the contents, before applying any such drastic methods.

The drastic methods were:

After removing the outer layer of wrappings, it was still found impossible to withdraw the mummy from the mask & coffin, the pitch-like material having collected in large quantity underneath.

It was found that this pitch-like material could be melted under great heat, and that was really the only means of successfully getting the coffins and mask apart.

Thus, so as to apply sufficient heat as was necessary without causing damage to those wonderful specimens of ancient Egyptian arts & crafts, the third coffin was completely lined with plates of zinc which would not melt under a temperature of 500 centigrade.

We then reversed the coffins by turning them upside down upon trestles, covered the outside (second) coffin with heavy wet blankets for protection against fire, and placed under the hollow of the third coffin primus paraffin lamps burning at full blast.

The temperature was naturally carefully watched so that it did not exceed the melting point of the zinc plates.

In plain English, poor old Tut was barbecued to get the pitch like oils to melt.

Tutankhamun’s mummy has been treated as a rag doll

And how did Tutankhamun’s head get separated from the mask?

It was found that like the body of the king the back of the head was stuck (in this case) to the mask - so firmly that it would require a hammer chisel to free it. Eventually we used hot knives for the purpose with success.

The Boy King was cooked, cut into pieces, extracted from his coffin with crowbars and hammers. Then, during WW2, thieves returned and took apart Tut’s chest to steal the necklace glued to his ribs. One gouged Tut’s eyes.

After 3,200 years of eternal slumber, coming out of his gold coffin would have felt like being thrown into a cement mixer.

The more we say Tutankhamun’s name, the more we help him on his eternal journey

Tutankhamun, the myth and the reality. If Tutankhamun could speak to us, he would blush at the idea of being the “most famous Pharaoh”. A teenager wondering how he could be compared to his grandfather, the mighty Amenhotep III, or even his father, Akhenaten.

The gold treasure? Magnificent, of course, but it was partly stolen, and like nearly all Pharaohs of Egypt, the cause of his mummified body’s destruction.

Yet, look into the eyes of the gold mask, and consider Tutankhamun’s viewpoint. The inscriptions on the mask, which are words Tut hoped to hear in the afterlife, came from Anubis, placing his hands on the solid gold coffin:

Hail beautiful of face, lord of sight, bound by Ptah-Sokar, raised by Anubis
your right eye is the Evening Boat, your left eye the Morning Boat
You are at the fore of the Osiris Tutankhamun, so he may see by you.

These eyes, according to the prayer above, have gained the ability to see. Hence, it is not poetic license to explain that from the Egyptian point of view, the mummy inside the mask sees outside. The gold masks’ eyes express that Tutankhamun is looking at us, not us at him.

Even from a photo, but even more so in real life, the calm exuded by these eyes is astonishing. Tutankhamun is looking at eternity. It is partly the mastery of the royal sculptor, partly the point of Anubis’ words; all it takes to spark the gift of eternal life to Tutankhamun is to say his name.

That is why, famous or not, the more we say his name, the more he gets to live forever.

And there’s the Moment of Wonder.

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The tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen discovered by the late earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter. 1 / by Howard Carter and A. C. Mace, 1923.

Notes on the robberies. By Howard Carter, Alfred Lucas and Lord Carnarvon

Howard Carter’s account of the examination of Tutankhamun’s mummy
by Dr D. Derry and Dr Saleh Bey Hamdi,and his drawings of items found on it, November 11-19, 1925

Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation. Howard Carter’s diaries. The fourth excavation season in the tomb of Tutankhamun. September 23, 1925 to May 21, 1926

Salima Ikram, Tutankhamen’s Missing Ribs, KMT 18, 2007.

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Judith Leyster, the North Star that shone brightly and quickly faded

We’ve already discovered how major artists, like Caravaggio and Vermeer, fell into the dustbin of history, only to be rediscovered.

The Italian was so highly regarded that, even as a low-born murderer, he was knighted. He transformed European art, yet vanished from history. The Dutch painter, Vermeer, was reasonably successful in his time, but died bankrupt, and was so lost to memory that Girl with a Pearl Earring sold for the equivalent of $35.

If oblivion could engulf artists as monumental as Caravaggio and Vermeer, imagine the odds for a woman. Not a noble lady painting for leisure, but a working artist, running a studio, taking on apprentices, finding her voice in the Dutch Golden Age.

The North Star reference throughout this story is not poetic license, but her name, Judith Leyster. It means Leid (leading) and Ster (star), Leading Star, Pole star, or Northern Star.

Female painters throughout history

It is worth setting the clock back in time to the very origin of Western art, since it was a woman who made the discovery that prompted the birth of painting.

In his encyclopedia written two thousand years ago, the Roman author Pliny explained how painting had been invented by tracing lines around the human shadow.

It was through his daughter that he made the discovery; who, being deeply in love with a young man about to depart on a long journey, traced the profile of his face, as thrown upon the wall by the light of the lamp.

Upon seeing this, her father filled in the outline, by compressing clay upon the surface, and so made a face in relief, which he then hardened by fire along with other articles of pottery.

A woman invented the art of painting!

In plain English, it was the potter’s daughter who first realized how to trace the outlines of a face. There’s a lot to say, of course, with the fact that her name is not recorded and that it was her father who took the idea and developed it.

Pliny also named six famous female painters. One of them, Iaia of Cyzicus, was so highly regarded that her portraits sold for more than those of men, and she was known to have done a self-portrait.

Don’t race to try to see one of her masterpieces, like almost the entirety of the artworks Pliny describes; they are all gone.

Female artists during the Renaissance: a small introduction

We now do a quick detour by the Renaissance. One book lists all the Most Excellent Italian artists, with Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo at the top steps. There is one female artist in the list, Properzia de’ Rossi, a sculptor.

It is extraordinary that in all the skills and pursuits in which women in any period whatever have, with some preparation, become involved, they have always succeeded most admirably and have become more than famous, as countless examples could easily demonstrate.

Vasari, the author, goes on to list women’s achievements in the fields of knowledge both in Antiquity and in Renaissance Italy. He mentions women’s:

Tender and lily-white hands, in the mechanical arts between the roughness of marble and the harshness of iron in order to attain their desire and to earn renown, just as Properzia de’ Rossi has done in our day.

A young girl from Bologna, she was not only skilful in household duties like other women, but in countless fields of knowledge, so that not only the women but all the men were envious of her.

Truly, women have excelled indeed in every art to which they set their hand

Vasari ends his chapter about the only female artist worthy of being excellent with a famous poem:

And truly women have excelled indeed

In every art to which they set their hand,

And any who to history pay heed

Their fame will find diffused in every land.

If in some ages they do not succeed,

Their renaissance is not for ever banned.

Envy their merits has perhaps concealed

Or unawareness left them unrevealed.

Now, let’s discover Judith Leyster’s life story.

Judith Leyster's early life and career

There are examples of women painters born into an artist’s family, or taking up painting thanks to a higher education. That is not the case here, as in 1609, a little girl was the eighth child of a Haarlem family.

Her father, Jan, a weaver, had moved to the Dutch Republic in search of a better life. He became a brewer when Judith was 15. The painting above shows us the setting of the family’s brewery. The house had a stone tablet above the door, which stated Ley-ster, North Star.

That’s how Leyster became the family’s name. Unfortunately, the ‘star’ did not shine on Jan’s business, which went bankrupt within a year or so. The family moved to a village away from creditors.

How did Judith Leyster become a painter?

Very little is known about how she became a painter, but when she was 17, we have this mention:

Whoever saw a painting by a daughter’s hand?

Here painted another with a good and bold hand and mind*.

*Judith Leyster.

It is a clue that her talent was recognized early on. Furthermore, a bankrupt family would have sent her to work to help pay the bills. Instead, it seems she undertook an apprenticeship with a master painter, something that the student usually has to pay for.

Where did she learn? Either she apprenticed with the other female painter of Haarlem, Maria de Grebber, whom the previous testimony referred to. Or, she apprenticed in the studio of the major artist of the time, Frans Hals.

If little is known about her early career, how do we know that Hals may have taught her? One answer is above, in comparing Hals’ Jester and Leyster’s copy of the former, done when Judith was about 24 years old.

Hals and Rembrandt in the Dutch world, Caravaggio in Italy, there are artists whose style is so innovative and powerful that it influences others. Even more so if they learned from a master.

Master is more than a word used to praise a painter’s talent; it is a professional title.

Judith Leyster, the first Dutch master painter?

Major Dutch cities had a Guild of Saint-Luke, a sort of artist’s corporation, as it was still a time when artists wanted to be differentiated from mere craftsmen.

During the Golden Age of Dutch art, there were a dozen female painters, of whom only three became masters. In Haarlem, one female painter entered the Guild two years before Judith Leyster. Her name is Sara van Baalbergen, and since not a single work of hers survives, that is all we know.

Now, Judith Leyster was praised at the age of 17 for having a good and bold hand and mind. How bold a mind? When she entered Haarlem’s Guild of Saint-Luke as a master, aged 24, it is quite possible that the painting she presented as her ‘entry exam’ was her self-portrait.

She then took on three pupils, an unusual situation: a female master teaching male students.

Let’s consider the boldness of a 21-year-old representing herself in the act of painting. Not only is the statement about the status of the artist, but she confidently smiles. The smile may not be a big deal to modern viewers, but it is.

I took the liberty to count how many smiles adorn the walls of the Louvre museum: out of 35,000 works on display, there are about 15 or so smiles. As we will soon discover, one of them was painted by Leyster.

Judith Leyster's short career

Vermeer’s career lasted twenty years, and only 37 of his paintings survive. With Judith Leyster, the number of surviving paintings is between 20 and 35 works, but her career was shorter.

She was most productive for the six years or so before her marriage to a fellow painter, Jan Miense Molenaer. While few works are known to have been painted while she had a family to care for, she had done enough to benefit, when she was 39, from that praise:

There have also been many experienced women in the field of painting who are still renowned in our time, and who could compete with men.

Among them, one excels exceptionally, Judith Leyster, called ‘the true leading star’ in art.

She is the wife of Molenaer, another renowned painter born in Haarlem, and well known in Amsterdam.

Judith Leyster died aged 50 in 1660. Her husband followed her eight years later. Unlike the Vermeer household, which ended bankrupt, the Molenaer family was, on paper, wealthy, owning multiple properties that were rented out.

But the husband had a fondness for debt and booze. At his death, the notary recorded paintings by the wife, or, once, by Judith Molenaer.

Four years later, Louis XIV invaded, and the economic collapse that ensued put an end to the Golden Age.

Judith Leyster’s disappearance happened in her own lifetime

When both Hals and Leyster were alive, this engraving added a well-known name, Hals’, to a Leyster painting. In plain English, her name was being removed from her work in her own lifetime.

As she painted genre scenes (interiors with everyday scenes) with the bold hand that got praised when she was young, her name lived in Frans Hals’ shadow, the great master of that style.

Frans Hals went out of fashion. Judith Leyster did not even survive as a footnote and was truly forgotten. For the next 200 years, her work was sold as Hals, or even listed as JL, without knowing who JL was.

Judith Leyster’s accidental rediscovery

In the late 1800s, a newfound interest in Hals’ work made his work valuable. And as Judith Leyster’s work looked like it could pass as if it were by Hals, her paintings were sold as being by the famous name.

And that is how the Carousing couple, long known as a Frans Hals, resurrected her name. In 1892, a buyer purchased the work as a Hals, but upon noticing the JL* monogram, sued. It was settled by lowering the sale price, indifferent to the identity of the artist behind the initials.

It was an art historian, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, who resurrected her name and career, exactly as others had previously done with Caravaggio and Vermeer.

Her signature JL* is a play on Judith Ley-ster, ‘leading star’. The painting entered the Louvre in 1914 thanks to a generous gift. As her signature is not available online, I went there to photograph it for this story. And since the Louvre does not translate its description into English, here it is:

Painting highly influenced by Frans Hals and Jan Miense Molenaer (even before Judith Leyster’s wedding to the former in 1636).

Judith Leyster was 21 years old when she painted it. If she indeed were Hals’ student, it would be understandable to say her master influenced her. But influenced by a man of the same age, while both were pupils, six years before marrying him?

If a label written 100 years ago dismissed her voice like this, it would be 'of its time'. However, since the museum updated that description in 2019, I let you be the judge, dear reader, if it is fair.

JL*, Judith Leyster, the Northern Star

The time travel was to contemplate Pliny mentioning six great female painters, Vasari mentioning one great Italian female artist, and the poet Ariosto writing about:

Their renaissance is not for ever banned.

Envy their merits has perhaps concealed

Or unawareness left them unrevealed.

A dozen stars in the night sky do not turn darkness into a constellation, so why add shade? Let’s instead marvel at the brightness of the North Star, Judith Leyster.

There’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Frima Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster, a woman painter in Holland’s Golden Age.

Pliny, Natural History, Book 35, An account of paintings and colours.

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Properzia de’ Rossi.

Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, Canto XX, translated by Barbara Reynolds (Penguin Classics).

Samuel Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem, 1628.

Theodorus Schrevelius, Harlemias, ofte, De eerst stichtinghe der stad Haerlem, 1648.

Musée du Louvre, Judith Leyster, La Joyeuse compagnie, 1630

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How to time-travel back to Pharaonic Egypt?

In the movies, all it takes to travel back in time is to set a year, press a button, and ta-da, we end up in ancient Rome or Egypt. Although this is poetic time travel, Moments of Wonder’s time machine sails close to the actual reality.

This virtual journey means to see for ourselves the big names of ancient Egypt. We will travel to the pyramid age, attempt to see Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, jump in the future to other great Pharaohs like Hatshepsut, Ramses the Great, and more.

Our problem is that while Egyptians carved and painted hieroglyphs all over temple and tomb walls, they did not do history as we know it. By Cleopatra’s time, Pharaonic Egypt was well over 3,000 years old, but her calendar did not state ‘Sunday, 8th of March 3026.’

Instead, it stated ‘Year 20 of Cleopatra’, which is not great news. That was when she died, making her the last Egyptian Pharaoh. About 400 years later, the light of ancient Egypt was turned off for good. For the last time, after 3,700 years of hieroglyphic writing, a priest carved the last hieroglyphs onto the walls of a temple.

For 1,400 years, until Champollion, a linguist doubling as a code-breaker, no one could read hieroglyphs. Now we can, we need a navigator to check out for clues as to when we are by reading Pharaoh’s names.

And that navigator is you, dear reader, the lookout peeking outside the time machine, to ensure we arrive at the right place and time.

Finding the correct timeline

Before we start fiddling with switches on the jetliner-style dashboard of our time machine, let’s discuss flight plans. Beginning with the timeline issue, starting with Khufu, as far back in time as we intend to go.

If we set our machine to “Year 5, third month of winter, day 8 of Khufu,” we still don’t know when we’ll arrive. Depending on whom you ask, and which list they use, Khufu became Pharaoh in 2609 BC, or 2509 BC, or even 2470 BC.

On paper, being a few years off for events that are 4,500 years old is not an issue. But who wants to be inside a tin can travelling machine and land in the Egyptian desert 140 years from one’s destination?

Since the only way to be sure when we are is to check Pharaoh’s names, the navigator’s main job will be to peek out of the window in search of inscriptions. You can’t read ancient hieroglyphs, you say? Not to worry, that is the point here, to explain to you how to read King’s names.

The name of the Kings is written inside an oval, a cartouche

If our time machine landed at Edfu’s temple, whose walls are covered in millions of hieroglyphs, even the best ancient Egyptian scribe might faint in front of so many signs. But we do not need to worry about that.

Furthermore, crew members doing preflight checks in the time machine don’t have the years of learning necessary; they are itching to go. All we want is for our navigator, you, to be able to spot the Pharaoh’s names we need quickly. And good news, it is not that difficult.

To begin with, they are encircled, and hieroglyphs within this ‘cartouche’ shape are almost always the king’s names. That allows one to pick up a King’s name in a matter of seconds on a wall or statue.

Then, although each hieroglyph can be many different things at the same time, for the most part, Pharaoh’s names are written as letters. Yes, about the same as the letters used for this story, that is, sounds.

Which is why you can quickly gain the time machine navigator qualification via this crash course story.

Khufu (Kheops), the builder of the Great Pyramid

Today, the modern traveller about to land in Cairo is greeted by the majestic view of the pyramids of Giza from the plane’s window. In our time-travelling tin can, we get the same amazing view, but our navigator’s problem (which is you) is what year we are travelling to. Around 4,500 years ago is the outer range of our time-travelling device.

So, we land in Pharaonic times. To everyone’s surprise, although the pyramids are covered in smooth stone, signs of destruction abound: broken temples and statues! Did we land at the wrong time?

Entering the Great Pyramid of Giza

The mighty pyramid is already pierced with robber tunnels. At night, when no one’s watching, we crawl inside and see nothing inside the vast space. Not a single necklace bead or broken pot, the thieves hoovered up the treasures held there, after throwing the Pharaoh’s body to the desert wolves.

We have strong lights, but they do not help: the walls are blank. There are hidden inscriptions, which are only visible if using dynamite, which is not a great idea.

Someone at the back suggests making a detour 300 miles south, to Abydos, the oldest royal cemetery of Egypt, and to take out toothbrushes. A mountain of sand against one toothbrush? Indeed, as this is the only way to discover the one and single object that helps us, an ivory statuette the size of a palm.

It has two inscriptions, one of which is:

As promised, it was not that difficult to read. The first hieroglyph is a KH, the chick is a U, and the snake is an F, Khufu. It is pronounced ‘Rufu’.

That tiny inscription is proof that we had arrived at the right place, and the right time. It also made us wonder at the unlikely contrast between having built the biggest pyramid and only be known by the tinest statue...

Some of you asked why there were no inscriptions inside the Great Pyramid. A good question, which is answered with the next stop.

Pharaoh Unas and the first Pyramid Text

The magic formulas for eternal life were most likely read before the tomb was closed, but not yet carved in stone. That important step happened 200 years later, near the first pyramid in Saqqara.

It is again easy to find, looking out the window, as the step pyramid is visible when flying above the Great Pyramid. But the navigator is puzzled at the fact that our destination is nothing but a pile of rubble.

It so happens that the stone heap was once a pyramid, and it hides one of the most important treasures in the world: the oldest religious text on earth.

Once inside, we found ourselves surrounded by hieroglyphs; some still have their original color. So, now you know that ovals are for King’s names, what do we have here?

The hare is a W, the water an N, the reed plant an I, and the folded cloth an S, Wnis, also known as Pharaoh Unas.

The thieves smashed the stone coffin already, and ransacked the burial chamber; there’s nothing left. But at least we arrived at the right time and stood inside a colossal stone book.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut and Pharaoh Tuthmose III

It would be like flying from a balloon over Luxor today, finding the marvelous temple that Hatshepsut had built to ensure her eternal life, is easy and striking. We pause for a moment to realize that it was built 1,000 years before the Parthenon in Greece.

As the navigator, you, dear reader, seek inscriptions of King’s names, we stumble upon this puzzling wall inscription there:

It is obvious that there were two mirrored Pharaoh’s names here, one of which had been chiseled off. The lower cartouche tells us the remaining name: Thot - Ms, that is, Thutmose III. And on the left was the name of another Pharaoh, Hatshepsut:

The reason why Hatshepsut’s name has been erased has a lot to do with the immense difference between a Queen and a King. Hatshepsut was a Queen, in that she was married to Pharaoh Thutmose II, who had a son with another wife, the future Thutmose III.

But Hatshepsut, around half a dozen years after, did something that had never been done before: she switched from ruling on behalf of a Pharaoh too young to rule, to becoming a full-fledged King in her own right.

That is why she was Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and not Queen Hatshepsut, not a minute grammatical detail, but the difference between pulling strings in the shadows and sitting on the throne.

For fifteen years, there were two Pharaohs in Egypt, the reason for the twin inscription above. Around twenty years after she died, nearly all traces of Hatshepsut’s name and images were erased—a fascinating story for another day.

Tutankhamun

Poor old Tut died a teenager, his tomb was ransacked by thieves soon after his burial, and his name was chiselled off almost entirely. The reason why is for another story, but for our poetic time travel, our navigator managed to arrive in Luxor just before mentions of his name were erased.

The photo above from his tomb shows us his names intact (Pharaohs have up to five names). We look at the one on the left:

While it reads almost as letters, hieroglyphs are in reality very complicated, and the name IMN, for Amun, is written first out of respect. It reads Tut-Ankh-Amun, which means ‘Living Image of Amun.’

Tut’s astonishing gold treasure may not be the only gold Pharaoh’s tomb treasure discovered, but it certainly is astonishing and one reason Tutankhamun is famous. Our next King would certainly be offended at the thought that a teenage King should be more famous than he is!

Ramses II

For Khufu, builder of the biggest stone structure ever built, our navigator had to work really hard to find a single written mention of his name. For the famous Boy King, it was also a struggle.

This time, it could not be easier. It is no exaggeration to say that from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to Sudan, 900 miles away, there is one name our lookout will see on about anything, walls and statues, that of Ramses II.

The legend he built was that of a great conqueror. His real achievement was peace, prosperity, and stability. And to have been key to Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs...

Pharaoh Alexander the Great

Our poetic time travel will end at the time of the Greeks for today. One thing that puzzles the traveller today is that many of the Pharaohs on Egypt’s temples were Greek and even Roman ones.

The cultural mix between ancient Egypt and the Greeks is the happy reason why eventually Champollion cracked hieroglyphs, and our lookout can navigate through the past.

Around 2,300 years ago, a mighty conqueror added Egypt to his victories, from Macedonia, North of Greece, as far as India. Like all conquerors before him, Alexander the Great was awed by the scale and achievements of the Egyptian civilization.

Rather than try to impose his religion and culture, he became Egyptian. That is why, on the other side of the Nile from Hatshepsut’s temple, in Luxor, we have the relief above for our navigator.

Above the King, the cartouche on the right writes A - L - K - S - I - N - D - R - S, for Alexandros, known to us as Alexander the Great.

Time-travel to Egypt today

We travelled together almost three thousand years with the poetic time travel machine to the age of the pyramids, Hatshepsut, Ramses II, and Alexander the Great.

It is no exaggeration to say that visiting Egypt today is as close to actual time travel as feasible. The sailboats you see on tomb walls look a lot like the feluccas photographed above, near identical still today.

Venture into a field, and it is quite likely that the farmer is ploughing the very same furrow as his ancestors had done for millennia. Away from the news that depicts real tragedies, feluccas still sail up and down the Nile, time-travelling slowly and safely.

Do not sacrifice an opportunity to enjoy a lifetime memory for TV ratings that strike fear. Come to Egypt and enjoy a lifetime Moment of Wonder.

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The cartouches were adapted from a very useful website listing all the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt's names in hieroglyphs.

Discover ancient Egypt and how hieroglyphs work during a private guided tour of the Louvre Museum.

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Mona Lisa wore a mustache even before she was stolen

Mona Lisa’s journey as a lady sporting a mustache started long before being stolen, as the first sighting of a bearded Mona Lisa was recorded in a French newspaper in 1870.

Why did caricaturists pick on her? Of the thousands of masterpieces in the Louvre that they could choose from, why this one? Is it because she is the only Renaissance portrait that smiles, and one of a handful of smiling faces in the biggest museum in the world?

What is certain is that it was one seemingly innocuous decision, protecting the painting with a glass cover, that put her on track for a stratospheric rise to fame and to become the subject of countless pranks and memes.

The Louvre employed outside workers to put glass in front of most masterpieces. In 1910, one of them, a man with a mustache, was entrusted with adding protective glass to the smiling lady.

He was poor and dreamt of becoming rich.

Man with a mustache steals the Mona Lisa

Vincenzo Peruggia, a competent decorator painter, was entrusted to work as a contractor for a glazier company commissioned by the Louvre Museum to protect its paintings.

That is how he got to change the glass of the box-like frame that supposedly protected the Mona Lisa. As he knew the Louvre like the back of his hand, one summer of 1911, he tried his hand at gaining a great fortune.

Dressed in a worker’s white smock, he just walked through the employees’ door and made his way to the Italian masterpieces section. He planned to shove a painting under that smock, only to realize that it would not fit.

On the spur of the moment, he realized that the painting next to it, that of a lady smiling at him, was just about the size of his blouse. As he knew exactly how to open it, in no time, the man with a mustache hid the smiling lady under his coat.

The image of Mona Lisa with a mustache above is a caricature of a Louvre guard seeing his own reflection in masterpieces.

Peruggia was no great mastermind, but he was bold and extremely lucky. He found a painting the same size as his blouse. One door stopped his exit, but an employee kindly unlocked it for him.

Once in the courtyard, there was still the main door leading to the street. It was open, its guard was nowhere to be seen, so the man with a mustache found himself in the street with Mona Lisa under his blouse.

Steal the Mona Lisa? It’s like thinking someone could steal the towers of Notre-Dame!

This time Mona Lisa has a full beard, that of Théophile Homolle, then director of the Louvre, who boasted to the press:

Steal the Mona Lisa? It’s like thinking someone could steal the towers of Notre-Dame!

One imagines he regretted his overconfidence when his summer holiday was ruined by a phone call: the towers of Notre-Dame were still standing, but the Mona Lisa was missing.

L.H.O.O.Q, Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee

Another seemingly simple act: Marcel Duchamp took a cheap postcard of la Joconde, as she is known in French, and drew a mustache, a goatee, and the letters L.H.O.O.Q.

Which means nothing in French, until you read it out loud. The polite translation is “there is fire down below”, but in reality, it is a crude but funny pun.

And not the first time that Mona Lisa was satirized, as visible below, in a 1887 caricature of the Mona Lisa smoking a pipe.

Why did Duchamp add a mustache and goatee to the Mona Lisa? Who was he laughing at, the painting? The fame? Or something altogether different?

A painter with a mustache enters the conversation, Salvador Dali

Before Marcel Duchamp got a chance to explain his gesture fully, Salvador Dali made a joke about the joke. He had his face added to that of the Mona Lisa, as well as the gold coins Mona Lisa holds (in another version, she holds banknotes).

Ten years later, the shaven Mona Lisa travelled to Washington DC and New York, then Tokyo and Moscow.

When in New York, on the busiest day, visitors who had queued outside for hours in the blizzard had an average of four seconds to look at the smiling woman. The size of the disappointment is one of the reasons why there are two Mona Lisas today.

One is the fame, and, underneath, the painting. So, is adding a pipe, a mustache, or a beard to the Mona Lisa laughing at the painting, or is it a lot deeper than this?

What did Duchamp mean by adding a mustache to Mona Lisa?

Marcel Duchamp drew the mustache in 1919, the 400th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death. But 1919 was just after the First World War, during which a revolutionary art movement called Dada was born.

Let’s hear now Marcel explaining, forty years later, why he put that mustache on Mona Lisa’s face:

In 1919, when Dada was in full blast, and we were demolishing many things, the Mona Lisa became a prime victim. I put a mustache and a goatee on her face simply with the idea of desecrating it.

And that it was a reaction to the war:

We were also very pacifist. We saw the stupidity of the war. We were in a position to judge the results, which were no results at all. Our movement was another form of pacifist demonstration.

So, that mustache’s meaning was a lot more than being a prank. Four hundred years apart, there is a direct link between Duchamp and Leonardo, as both artists agreed on what painting is about.

Looking at a painting with one’s mind instead of one's eyes

Leonardo da Vinci lived in the age of the craftsman, trying to elevate himself to the status of artist. Duchamp is the artist who stated that art was whatever the artist decided it was.

So, a little game for you, dear reader. Guess who said what below, one statement is by Leonardo, the other by Duchamp:

Painting should not be only retinal or visual; it should have to do with the gray matter of our understanding, not alone the purely visual.

If you say that sciences are not mechanical but cerebral, I say to you that painting is cerebral.

The grey matter quote was Duchamp, and the cerebral one Leonardo da Vinci, saying that painting is a thing of the mind.

In the caricature above, Leonardo is shown photographing Lisa del Giocondo. Human eyes will forever be more powerful than any camera, as they have a fancy processor, the human brain.

And on that, Duchamp and Leonardo da Vinci were on the same wavelength. In fact, Duchamp meant to tickle one’s brain with Mona Lisa’s mustache.

And there is another link between the two, in that Leonardo very much could take a joke.

A painter with a beard sketched Monna Vanna, or the ‘nude Mona Lisa’

Now the joke here is that while we do know with near certainty who the Mona Lisa is, what about her twin, the ‘nude Mona Lisa’?

It is a cartoon, a drawing on paper that a painter sketches in preparation for a painting. Assistants then pierce the cartoon like a connect-the-dot style outline, so the master’s sketch can be transferred to a painting.

Leonardo da Vinci never signed his works. Known as ‘Monna Vanna’, this puzzling sketch has long been accepted by specialists as being from Leonardo’s workshop, but the big question has always been, was it by his hand, or his assistants?

In 2017, the sketch, which is almost the same size as the Mona Lisa, underwent a thorough study. And it was discovered that a left-hander drew parts of the sketch. To art historians, it was like the sky opened, and the birds sang in unison: drawn by Leonardo da Vinci’s hand, as Leonardo was left-handed.

In any case, the other clue was the quality of the drawing. Even with his assistant’s modifications, this is a Leonardo drawing of a ‘nude Mona Lisa’, although we do not know anything about whom or what it is supposed to represent.

Leonardo sketched it in Rome, while he was brushing shoulders with Michelangelo and Raphael. He was not a dour old man; in his 60s, he amused himself with the practical jokes he pulled on friends.

The ‘nude Mona Lisa’ was sketched by a painter with a beard who could make and take a joke.

The two Mona Lisas, the mustachioed myth and the masterpiece

Which brings us back to the two Mona Lisas. Is it ok to draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa? On the myth, absolutely. On the painting, not at all.

Desecrating it, as Duchamp said he did with the moustache, is in throwing rocks, acid, paint, or soup at the painting.

Desecrating it is when ‘archaeologists’ dug tombs in a Florentine convent in the hope of finding Monna Lisa del Giocondo's remains for their fifteen minutes of fame.

Marcel Duchamp, the very man who gave her a mustache, wondered about the cost of Mona Lisa’s fame:

The poor Mona Lisa is gone because no matter how wonderful her smile may be, it’s been looked at so much that the smile has disappeared.

I believe that when a million people look at a painting, they change the thing by looking alone. Physically.

Duchamp said this just before Lisa travelled to Washington, D.C., and New York. Since that journey, nearly 400 million people have looked at that smile.

Duchamp is wrong about the disappearance of Mona Lisa’s smile. She indeed suffocates under the massive weight of fame, having to shelter from flashlights and physical assaults behind bulletproof glass.

Yet, glowing in that temperature-controlled box is a living and cheerful face. No need to take my word for it. Leonardo da Vinci just entered the room, took the keyboard, and typed his thoughts on the science of painting frenetically:

O, marvellous science, you keep alive the transient beauty of mortals and you have greater permanence than the works of nature.

Behind the fame, mustache, and memes, and even after millions of stares, Mona Lisa still smiles.

And there’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Marcel Duchamp, in James Johnson Sweeney Conversation with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day, W W·NORTON & Co. New York, 1958.

Marcel Duchamp, The Afternoon Interviews with Calvin Tomkins, 1964.

Marcel Duchamp, "Dada." Interview by Herbert Crehan. WBAJ-FM Radio, New York, 1961. Transcribed by Robert Cowan. Published in Evidence, no. 3 (Fall 1961).

Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo Da Vinci, with a Selection of Documents Relating to His Career as an Artist.

"La Joconde nue", catalogue sous la direction de Mathieu Deldicque.

Trois cartons et un report de carton de Léonard de Vinci et de son entourage : le Portrait d’Isabelle d’Este, La Joconde nue, la Tête d’enfant de trois quarts, La Vierge aux fruits.

Mona Lisa, The Story Behind The Fame.

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The long journey for the Impressionist train to arrive at the Gare d’Orsay railway station

It had been a long train ride. Not only the forty years since the Musée d’Orsay opened, but 150 years since Impressionist paintings were dismissed as daubs painted by monkeys.

Today, visitors from all over the world admire those colored smudges, now considered the most important Impressionist collection ever assembled, a legacy we explored in ‘Origins of the Musée d’Orsay’.

With Wonders of the Musée d’Orsay, we first explore the story of the Gare d’Orsay railway station, and then share practical advice on how to experience Impressionist masterpieces today.

The Gare d’Orsay station, a modern building wearing a classical suit

One way to understand why Impressionism was rejected before ending up in the Gare d’Orsay is to first contemplate the staggering social, technological, and artistic changes of the 1800s.

Let’s consider Monet and Rodin, both born in 1840. Their parents were born during the age of candlelight, when the technology was not that different from that of Roman citizens at the time of Julius Caesar.

Fast was the speed of a horse, and monuments were only as big as stone would allow. To reminisce over loved ones, one had to employ an artist to paint or sketch them. But from the time when Claude and Auguste were babies, it all went into overdrive.

The train left horses in the distance, the Eiffel Tower touched the clouds, and photography could capture faces and landscapes accurately and cheaply. Electricity started to replace gas lights in the streets, and the telegraph allowed fast communication over long distances.

The world had changed beyond recognition and kept evolving with the thundering pace of a locomotive. It was exhilarating, but also terrifying. When Monet painted a railway station, he was embracing change instead of fighting it.

Paris, 1900, and the Exposition Universelle

Only three years before the 1900 Exposition Universelle world fair, two seemingly unrelated events occurred, at nearly the same time and a very short distance away.

The very first Impressionist room in a museum opened. Critics were horrified that daubs were elevated to the realm of museums, the very same that are the heart of today’s Musée d’Orsay.

The second event was, in preparation for the World Fair, architects were preparing design proposals for a new railway station, the Gare d’Orsay.

The Eiffel Tower was a temporary structure built for the 1889 fair. For the Exposition Universelle of 1900, the new railway station would use nearly twice as much metal as the Eiffel Tower, but it would be covered in stone.

Victor Laloux, the architect selected to design the railway station, was the pure product of the very same Academic mindset that deemed Impressionism a war on beauty. He was, of course, absolutely correct in saying that since the station was a stone’s throw from the Louvre, it had to fit.

Yet, compare the TWA Flight Center at JFK airport, sixty years later, completely embracing the jet age, to the Gare d’Orsay, the most modern railway station of the age. Forget about the noises and smells of steam engines; this was the first major electric train station.

It was only ten years since London opened its electric subway, and Paris would open its own for the 1900 fair.

The Gare d’Orsay was a technological leap: while the Eiffel Tower was made of iron, it was instead made of steel, the very material that allowed skyscrapers to be the tallest structures ever built.

The Gare d’Orsay, a Versailles-like luxury hotel

The Gare d’Orsay’s impressive modernity hid under layers of classical-looking stone. It comprised a hotel and restaurant, which cosplayed the grandeur of Versailles, with its gilded ballroom.

The decor was fancy from a distance, as long as one did not look too close, as scratching one’s fingers on the marble revealed it was painted plaster.

That fake grandeur embodied the weird, psychotic dance of the age: one foot in the past, the other into the future. It was like a robot wearing a wig and fancy dress, illustrating the inability to choose between an ideal classical past and a fast-moving present.

Since this is poetic time travel, it would be quite funny to see the horrified reactions of most passengers if their electric train travelled from 1900 to the 21st century, only to see the beautiful station ruined by these blurry smudges.

From fishing inside the Gare d’Orsay station to gradual abandon

In 1910, the Gare d’Orsay was submerged by the Seine flood, and as the photo above shows, some Parisians took advantage of the situation to fish.

By 1935, the station started to overplay its use; the trains were becoming longer and larger, and could not fit inside the Orsay station.

In 1945, it was the main reception center for Nazi camp survivors and war prisoners. For the next 30 years or so, the Gare d’Orsay was gathering dust, part suburban train station, theatre, car park, auction room, and movie set.

The Gare d’Orsay station almost suffered the same fate as Penn Station

Hold on to your train ticket tightly, dear reader. In 1901, Alexander Cassatt visited his sister Mary Cassatt in Paris. As he was in the train business, he visited the most modern train station of the age, and a lightbulb lit over his head.

His problem was coal smoke in the New York tunnels. Inside the Gare d’Orsay, he saw the solution, electric trains, and the result was Penn Station. It is not the only link between the two: in the early 60s, both were earmarked for destruction.

Yes, the decision had been taken, the Gare d’Orsay was set to be destroyed and replaced by a large hotel. The difference is that in 1971, the Minister of Culture stepped in and forbade its destruction.

The Impressionist train, which was waiting on the other side of the river, at the Jeu de Paume museum, could prepare to cross the bridge for its new home, the Musée d’Orsay.

1986, a railway station becomes the Musée d’Orsay

The Impressionist train finally found its home in 1986, when the former railway station was refurbished into a museum dedicated to the 19th century, not just Impressionism.

It is a few minutes’ walk away from the Louvre, which housed Impressionism before the war. The Musée d’Orsay is a continuation of the Louvre, in that it spans up to 1850, from where the Musée d’Orsay takes over.

If museums could talk to each other, the Louvre would shrug at the paltry number of paintings on display at the Musée d’Orsay, over 1,000 at any given time.

But that still is more than enough to overwhelm anyone, but the sort that derails instead of wondering at the passing landscape. So that calls for the practical advice now.

A practical guide to visiting the Musée d’Orsay in the age of mass tourism

This story promised a practical visit guide for the age of mass tourism. The mass tourism part is one of the key words here, as there is a wide gap between expectation and reality.

Maybe you have a poster of Monet’s ‘Poppy field’ in your living room. It means you are really on intimate terms with a masterpiece, and you’ve long dreamt of seeing the real thing, as the poster colors faded with time.

If that is the case, your goal is to see for yourself the largest concentration of Impressionist masterpieces. But how do you go about finding yourself alone in front of the iconic Moulin de la Galette, like the lucky person above?"

Disclaimer: these lines were written by an art historian who happens to know the Musée d’Orsay corridors as if a second home.

As it says on the cover, the goal here is to gain a Moment of Wonder. Not just crossing oceans to tick boxes, but meeting your heroes, making it worth your while when you’ve dreamt for years to see a particular Monet or Renoir.

Be overwhelmed by your museum visit rather than be underwhelmed by masterpieces

Easy to say, but how to do that in real life? Allow me to lay out what you should consider when you’ve long dreamt of visiting the Musée d’Orsay.

Take your time

The Musée d’Orsay might be ‘small’ compared to the neighbouring Louvre, but it is still a museum with five floors, and around 3,000 artworks, paintings, statues, and objects on display.

Particularly if it is your first and probably only visit, to meet expectations, find your way around, and see the artwork you wanted to see, there is no other means than having time.

And when you found the masterpiece you’ve waited years to see, to slow down.

How much time is needed? A minimum of two hours, ideally a good three, so set aside half a day, so you do not have to worry about having to rush elsewhere.

Photo or no photo?

As is obvious here, I myself take photos in museums. And there’s a but coming: paintings are behind protective glass, making it impossible to take a decent photo.

Plus, as you will discover with Poppy field, that painting is small. Likely a lot smaller than you imagined, as it often is impossible to understand a painting’s size, big or small, from a photo.

Think of a beautiful sunset. Yes, the photo you take will be nice, but never as powerful as the real thing. Like that sunset, disappearing while you look at it, trying to be in awe in front of a masterpiece is down to time.

The average time people look at paintings in museums, as proven by several studies, is 30 seconds.

So, make these 30 seconds count, as you would for the sunset. Be in the moment, and give the painting a chance to deliver the Moment of Wonder you’ve long waited for.

Let the painting do the talking

Here is the link to the Musée d’Orsay online collection, every artwork is photographed, and you can easily get a high-quality photo of the painting that tries to overwhelm you.

- Link to the Musée d’Orsay online collection.

Compare the official photo to the real thing, and realize that with Impressionism in particular, the brush movement and color are lost in the photo.

It is like a photograph of a sunset: it can never be as bright or as emotion-inducing as the real thing.

Do yourself a favor, take your time, and look at a masterpiece as you would look at the sunset. Seize the opportunity as if it were the sun about to disappear over the horizon.

Basking in the glow of a masterpiece creates the condition to feel awe, and avoid the risk of being underwhelmed.

Practical considerations for visiting the Musée d’Orsay

Book your ticket in advance.

Nowadays, most museums impose timed entry. While it does ruin the idea of spending one’s holiday following the mood of the day, it is an unavoidable reality. So, book your ticket from the Musée d’Orsay directly, and never from resellers.

Forget about visiting on a Tuesday.

On Tuesdays, nearly all Parisian museums close, and the only major museum still open is the Musée d’Orsay... One may have thought someone would try to do something about this, but the plain reality is that on Tuesdays, the museum is packed from morning to afternoon, so don’t bother.

Plan a coffee or lunch break during your visit.

Do like the happy people depicted in the Moulin de la Galette, sit down, get a coffee or lunch, and relax. Both the restaurant, on the first floor, and the cafeteria, on the fifth floor, are lovely places to stop by.

Overtourism and crowds: Is there a secret to avoiding crowds?

Yes and no. This story was illustrated in February, during the Thursday evening late opening, till 9.30 pm. It was the lowest of the low season, and was photographed mostly in the last half-hour, when most visitors had left.

On a Tuesday or during school holidays, the Musée d’Orsay will be crowded. But if you favor the late opening of Thursday evening, ideally off-season, there is a good chance it will be quieter.

In any case, crowded or quiet, the main condition to give yourself a chance to be in awe in front of a masterpiece is to take your time.

If you do, there’s a good chance the Impressionist train will transport you to Montmartre or Normandy in the 1870s.

There’s the Moment of Wonder.

Art Journey private guided tour of the Musée d’Orsay.

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Before a railway station became the Musée d’Orsay, there was Gustave Caillebotte

The train carrying the biggest Impressionist art collection ever assembled did not pull into the station ‘Musée d’Orsay’ for the 1986 museum opening.

Nor in 1900, when the first passengers alighted at the Gare d’Orsay, the railway station that would one day become a museum.

It left the station in 1876, and the painting above, which just entered the Musée d’Orsay collection, is its key.

Without Gustave Caillebotte, here painting himself with his friend Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette behind him, there would be no Musée d’Orsay as we know it today.

Why? If anyone were trying to purchase, at today’s value, all 40 paintings of the Caillebotte collection that form the heart and soul of the Musée d’Orsay, the cost would run into billions.

Yet, in 1876, Caillebotte, a young painter, friend and benefactor to his fellow Impressionists, wrote a will meant to give his entire collection to French museums for free.

Today, the scene would be straight out of an Agatha Christie murder mystery. A Simplon-Orient-Express carries curators and collectors from all over the world heading to Paris, and only one would be left standing to sign Caillebotte’s generous offer.

Instead, 150 years ago, Caillebotte’s will mentions:

A lapse of time is needed before the execution of this clause, until the public admits, if not understands, this style of painting. That may take twenty or more years.

Why the need to give people twenty years to contemplate the possibility of accepting the biggest Impressionist art collection ever assembled for free?

The impression given by Impressionists is that of a cat that walked on a piano keyboard, or a monkey that grabbed a paintbox

These words were printed on the front page of a major newspaper. We are in 1875, and the previous year, young artists rented their own exhibition space. A journalist turned the title of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, into an insult, Impressionism.

Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, and others did not display their art for art’s sake, but to sell and put food on the table. The exhibition was a financial catastrophe, which is why an auction to cover its losses took place.

The police intervened to calm the mob, trying to prevent the sale of unworthy daubs.

The front page monkey insult was about that auction, so it is not surprising that Renoir got an average of 110 francs per painting, roughly the cost of two gilded frames.

This is why Caillebotte knew it would take time for the public to stop seeing Impressionism as a war on beauty.

Caillebotte was indeed prescient. About 20 years later, he collapsed in his garden, aged only 45 years old. By then, 1894, his collection amounted to 70 Impressionist masterpieces.

Trying to offload the biggest Impressionist art collection ever assembled, for free

Before our train stopped at the negotiations for the bequest of the largest Impressionist art collection, it made a quick stop in 1892. Renoir is now in his early 50s, and French museums still do not display any of his paintings.

But his friends successfully campaigned for a Renoir be finally purchased for French museums. The sum, keep the number in mind, was 4,000 francs.

An auctioneer valued the collection: Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Millet, Pissarro, Sisley, and, of course, Renoir.

He listed 63 paintings, for a total of 40,000 francs. Which is 600 francs per masterpiece, far from the 4,000 francs paid for one Renoir.

In any case, these numbers were meaningless; it was not a purchase, but a bequest. Was there a catch in Caillebotte’s will?

But I require that this gift be accepted in such a way that the paintings do not go into an attic nor a provincial museum, but to the Luxembourg museum and later the Louvre.

Daubs painted by monkeys in the Louvre?

And that was the catch. In truth, most of the people in charge of the culture ministry had smelled café au lait and understood it was time for Impressionism to enter state museums.

The main stumbling block was a lack of space, and the idea that Impressionism would enter the Louvre one day.

The Louvre was only for dead artists. You had to be dead for ten years to enter the Louvre, and Renoir, Monet, and others were still going strong, thank you very much.

There was a museum for living artists, the Musée du Luxembourg, which did not have enough room by then to display Caillebotte’s treasure.

Yes, today you would think that building a museum extension in exchange for the biggest Impressionist collection was an easy choice to make. But in 1894, we are still only twenty years from the ‘monkeys going to war against beauty’.

Art officials knew that the sight of Impressionism in museums might cause an epidemic of heart attacks in the ranks of academic painters.

The sticking point was that Caillebotte did not want his collection to be shelved; he aimed high, the Louvre as the ultimate terminus for the Impressionist train.

There was no available railway station for that train yet, so, in the end, 40 of the 70 paintings were accepted.

Missed opportunities

In the late 1920s, thanks to a large supply of café au lait, officials tried to get the Caillebotte family to give them the rest. By then, the answer was no. In 1931, one of the paintings listed on the donation was offered for the equivalent of five times the estimate of the entire collection.

Officials balked at paying so much for something they could have gotten for free, so Dr. Barnes purchased it and is now in Philadelphia. Almost 40 years after being offered the entire collection, it was too late; French museums had missed the train.

Impressionism squeezed into a small museum room

It took three years of negotiation and building an extension to the Musée du Luxembourg for the Caillebotte donation to be revealed to the public.

Although the building had more in common with a garden conservatory than a museum, the new room was cramped and dark. Camille Pissaro, coming to see his own painting in a museum, describes the scene:

Screaming crowd, I’m told. Besides, dismal room, narrow, badly lit, ugly frame and stupid hanging.

One room, everything piled on top of each other. But even that one room, then the only museum in the world displaying Impressionist works, caused consternation in the press. An art newspaper describes the Caillebotte room as:

An ugly and shameful lair, as repulsive as a museum of pathological specimens.

On the first page of a newspaper, THE CAILLEBOTTE AFFAIR:

The public, surprised by the abundance of studies and daubs in a national museum, laughed, slightly upset, to accept, in the end, the decision.

The badly lit, small room nevertheless became the Signal Light for the new generation of painters, crowding the platform to board the train toward modernity.

Finally, Impressionism enters the Louvre

In theory, artists had to be dead for ten years to enter the Louvre. An art collector, Isaac de Camondo, made such an important donation that an exception to the rule was made.

By the time they were about 80 years old, both Renoir and Monet got a chance to see their art in the Louvre. Sadly, there was no fly on the wall that day to witness their reaction. But Renoir had said this about the Louvre:

It took me twenty years to discover painting. Twenty years to look at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

Needless to say, both artists went to the Louvre as young painters to learn from the greats. Now, they measured the distance from struggling monkeys dabbing with paintbrushes to rubbing frames with the old masters.

By 1929, all the paintings donated by Caillebotte were in the Louvre. But soon after, a failed painter had realized his sole talent was politics, and was about to set the world on fire, and to organize the biggest art theft in history.

He had the same taste as the academic artists who hyperventilated at the sight of anything blurry and colorful.

Escaping Nazis, the museum exodus lorry train

Before the Germans arrived, the Louvre director had organized for the treasures of the Louvre be sent to safety, packed and shipped in a convoy of 200 lorries. They spent the war in castles, but not without danger.

In 1944, when German troops threatened to torch two castles protecting museum masterpieces, only the bravery of curators prevented the unthinkable.

After the war, the lorries returned to the Louvre and carried the Impressionists to a small museum around the corner, the Jeu de Paume.

Impressionism in transit at the Jeu de Paume

During the war, the Jeu de Paume was the central point for the Nazi art loot. The Reich top brass used it as their own private art gallery, expecting no one would witness what they did. They were wrong.

In that museum was a harmless-looking, unpaid assistant curator who decided to save the beauty of the world, risking her life every day, for four years. She stopped the last art train to Berlin and became the number one source for rescuing the stolen art.

The name of the heroine? Rose Valland, the art spy.

For forty years, the Impressionist train was stationed at the Jeu de Paume. There was an abandoned railway station on the other side of the Seine River, about to become the terminus.

Caillebotte’s gift is the root of the wonders of the Musée d’Orsay

Before the train arrives at the Orsay railway station, in the second part of this story, it is worth contemplating the astonishing generosity of those who gave their collections for free.

If one looks at the top masterpieces of the Musée d’Orsay, one realizes that three individuals gifted about two-thirds of the collection.

The root of it all is Gustave Caillebotte. Beyond the fact that 150 years later, the part of his gift that State museums accepted is worth untold billions, there is another facet to his altruism.

It is not just that he helped the very existence of Impressionism by helping financially artists and organizing exhibitions. He was himself a painter, but never tried to push his art into museums; he promoted his friends, not himself.

His brother added two of his paintings to the gift. His art was hidden from view, and, for most people, the name Caillebotte was that of the money man behind Impressionism.

The artist was forgotten. In 1994, 100 years after his death, a major Caillebotte exhibition was held in Paris, Chicago, and Los Angeles, revealing that he was also one of the major Impressionist painters.

Now that his self-portrait just entered the Musée d’Orsay collection, we can ponder on one man’s elegance and self-effacement.

And realize that without him, the Musée d’Orsay would look more like a railway station than the first Impressionist art collection in the world.

There’s the Moment of Wonder.

Part 2 will be Wonders of the Musée d’Orsay:

A practical guide to the Musée d’Orsay: how to navigate the world’s greatest Impressionist collection and escape the crowds.

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Sources

The art collectors who generously gave their collections are Gustave Caillebotte, Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, and Isaac de Camondo.

Gustave Caillebotte’s 1876 will, translated by the author.

Le Figaro, 24 Mars 1875, translated by the author.

Le Journal des Artistes, 18 Septembre 1898, translated by the author.

Le Siècle, 14 Mars 1897, l’affaire Caillebotte, translated by the author.

Renoir, par Jean Renoir, 1962, translated by the author.

Camille Pissarro, Lettres à son fils Lucien, 14 février 1897, translated by the author.

Le Musée du Luxembourg : les peintures de l’école française; par Léonce Bénédite, 1923.

Caillebotte et les Impressionnistes: Histoire d’une collection, by Fanny Matz, Paul Perrin, Sadekova Souria, Stéphane Guégan.

Private visit to the wonders of the Musée d’Orsay.

Moments of Wonder

When Impressionism was seen as 'hideous daubs'

Dear reader, we climb aboard the time machine and land in 1874. Walking the streets of Paris, we soon realize that what we hoped to see, masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, and Degas, are nowhere to be seen…

Read more

a year ago · 4 likes · Moments of Wonder

Moments of Wonder

Impressionism's Unsung Master, Caillebotte

Dear reader, you may not know Caillebotte's name, and you are forgiven. It is hard to pronounce in English, as it sounds like Key - eye - bot…

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a year ago · 8 likes · Moments of Wonder

Moments of Wonder

Jacques Jaujard, the quiet hero who organized the largest art rescue operation ever.

Jacques Jaujard, the hero who saved the Louvre from the Nazis…

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a year ago · 4 likes · Moments of Wonder

Moments of Wonder

Art historians' minds against Nazi guns: how curators faced the Nazis to save the treasures of the Louvre.

The untold stories of the heroes who saved the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory from being burned by the Nazis…

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a year ago · 4 likes · Moments of Wonder

Understand the Wonders of Egypt

Egypt is the perfect example of the close relation between art and travel. Most people go on vacation there due to childhood memories of Tutankhamun’s treasure. Or they ponder whether the monuments of ancient Egypt really are as colossal as they appear to be.

Wonders of Egypt is a compilation linking to a dozen previous stories about Egypt. It is curated by an art historian who spent over 25 years venturing up and down Egypt, from Alexandria to the Sinai, from desert lakes to Abu Simbel.

In this age of mass tourism, for travel to deliver on lifetime expectations, one needs both the knowledge of an ancient Egypt specialist and the experience of a very experienced traveler.

Combining the two creates the dual expertise required to organize private tours in Egypt and write stories that prepare you to understand what you see when you stand in front of colossal monuments.

You can see for yourself that the pyramids are big. Understanding what you see makes ancient Egypt even more fascinating and ensures that you do not miss out on these childhood dreams.

These stories preview an ongoing book, “Understand the Wonders of Egypt”, part explainer of the ancient civilization, part practical guidebook on visiting all the major sites of Egypt.

As you should when traveling up the Nile, each article is a journey at contemplative speed, as you can browse and return to each article at your own pace.

The only Pharaohs’ treasures ever discovered intact

We start this Wonder Journey by bursting a few myths: no, Tutankhamun’s treasure is not intact at all. Howard Carter found what was left after two break-ins in Antiquity, when thieves ransacked the boy King’s tomb.

Yet, the intact treasure of three Pharaoh’s tombs filled with gold and silver wonders still gets ignored by all tour companies and most visitors.

In the old museum, the gold mask illustrated above, along with silver sarcophagi and masterpieces in gold, was displayed a few meters from Tutankhamun’s treasure. Even so, the majority of visitors did not bother walk a few steps to find out what it was. How can this be?

One reason is mass tourism, making visitors run from one site to the next, without having the time to discover the rarest treasures of the ancient world. The other is that the Treasure of Tanis is not famous.

And the Indiana Jones comparison is not even poetic license, as the fictional Dr. Jones walked in the footsteps of a real archaeologist, at the same site, and at the onset of the Second World War.

Click on the button below to discover how three Pharaohs’ tombs were found intact, filled with treasure.

Three intact Pharaoh's tombs discovery

How a few Pharaoh’s mummies survived millennia and thieves

That first story is about ensuring that you do not miss out on a treasure as amazing as Tutankhamun’s.

The second is about the few surviving royal mummies. Building pyramids visible from long distances acted as a giant “gold here” advertisement for thieves. As a result, all pyramids were broken into.

There’s a lot more than pyramids, as the Pharaonic civilization lasted 3,000 years, which means almost 350 Pharaohs, hence as many royal tombs, not counting the queens and princes. This means hundreds of royal mummies covered with gold and jewelry from head to toe. How many survive to our time, and how?

If you think of Tutankhamun, then, sorry to say, Howard Carter treated Tutankhamun according to the ancient fashion: shred mummies for gold. The boy King came out of his solid gold sarcophagi looking as if he had been thrown into a spinning concrete mixer.

Ramses II? Yes, absolutely, the great Ramses is one of about twenty lucky Pharaohs who somehow survive to our time. How? And what happened when thieves from the 1880s found the deep shaft where kings, queens, and princes’ bodies were hidden?

The story involves archaeologists doing undercover work, posing as wealthy collectors to try to outwit the plunderers.

How archeologists outsmarted thieves

The ‘hidden treasure’ of the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Seti I

A royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings cannot possibly be a hidden treasure, you logically say. Even more so when all Nile cruises depart or end in Luxor?

That is precisely the question: how does one enjoy discovering Egypt’s treasures in an age of mass tourism?

• Time: when you have one day to visit a site that is seven times as big as Rome, it becomes a certainty that you will miss out on lifetime memories. Not a typo; Luxor’s monuments are seven times as large as Rome’s archaeological sites.

  Since all Nile cruises give barely a day to visit the largest site of Antiquity, it means a sweaty marathon, only seeing crowded marvels with the stress of the clock ticking. Even a simple thing like witnessing the sunset is impossible.

  The risk is being disappointed like a child let loose in the candy store, told he can get all he wants, but for five minutes only.

• Fame, or lack of: Everyone knows about Tutankhamun, but Seti?

• Premium access: due to the fragility of the painted walls, it is essential to limit the number of visitors in the tomb of Seti. As a result, the premium to pay is about $50, but if you have dreamed of Egypt since you were a child, is it not a worthy spend?

Now, enough blathering, there is so much to say about Egypt’s most beautiful tomb that it took two stories to describe it:

Visit the tomb of Seti today

The circus strongman and Seti's tomb

The wonders of the Grand Egyptian Museum

After a very long wait, the Grand Egyptian Museum finally opened. This story is a first-hand report after spending an entire day visiting Egypt’s new museum.

A glance at the photo above should already transport you there: scorching out desert outside, cool air inside. It possibly is the best museum view in the world, but the GEM is a lot more than this.

Discover the Grand Egyptian Museum

Daydreaming about the Great Library of Alexandria

What if actual time travel were possible? Travelling to Egypt is as close to a journey back in time.

Case in point, twin stories written while in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great, 2,300 years ago. Except for the pyramids of Giza, all of the Seven Wonders of the World are gone.

But Alexandria not only had one of the seven, but was a strong candidate for the Eighth Wonder, the Great Library of Alexandria. What is left of it? What happened to it?

Library of Alexandria Facts and legends

Daydreaming of time travel, looking for Alexandria's Lighthouse

Walking along the shore of Alexandria is the perfect site for daydreaming of time travel. On one side of the bay is the New Library of Alexandria, to ponder the loss of the original one.

And on the other side of the bay, the actual site and fragments of the Lighthouse, the second of the Seven Wonders in Egypt.

Both stories prove that with the luxury of time, it is possible to discover the impressive remains of Alexandria.

Searching for Alexandria's lost wonders

Cooling down, Ottoman style, in Cairo’s most beautiful historic home

If you are still dubious that it is possible to visit pyramids, temples, and royal tombs without crowds, dear reader, hear that tip.

The majority of ancient Egyptian temples are on the World Heritage List, as one expects. But did you know that Old Cairo, the City of a Thousand Minarets, is a World Heritage Site?

If you were to walk a single mile, you would have 33 World Heritage monuments to choose from! And of course, it is highly unlikely you will bump into another tourist if you push one of these doors.

So, in two stories, we daydream together in the marvels of Old Cairo. First, an amazing house entirely conceived to cool down the air.

Cairo’s most beautiful historic home

Sheltering from the scorching sun, Egyptian style

Can it be hot in Egypt? You bet. But it has been five millennia by now that Egyptians have learn to deal with that, and, as luck would have it, walking the streets of Old Cairo is the perfect way to shelter from the sun, while discovering World Heritage Sites.

Discover the wonders of Old Cairo

Ramses’ true love letter to Nefertari

Another great example of the link between art and travel is the story of Nefertari, Ramses II’s Great Wife.

This Wonder Journey in Egypt started by bursting the myth that Tutankhamun’s tomb is intact, when it is not. And Tutankhamun, the most famous Pharaoh of Egypt? Ramses II wants a word...

In fact, all over the internet and social media are words Ramses II supposedly wrote in a letter to his wife, saying “she stole away my heart”. Sorry to burst the myth again, this is entirely made up.

Yet, he very much did, in his own way, write a love letter. And it is so beautiful that my hands were shaking when taking the photos illustrating that article.

Ramses’ love letter to Nefertari

When Ramses II became a living god

This follows the story of Nefertari and Ramses II in Abu Simbel. You already know it is big, impressive, and that twice a year, like at many Egyptian temples, there is a solar phenomenon.

As if it were the Mona Lisa, most people tell you Abu Simbel is famous. Fine, but why? Did you know that the Great Ramses was born a nobody? This is not a typo; he was not born a prince at all and had no chance to make his mark on history.

Until his grandfather, who was equivalent to the Prime Minister, was offered to succeed his childless King. When Ramses I sat on the throne, his young grandson was put on the springboard to greatness.

And did he seize the opportunity with both hands! Discover how Abu Simbel embodies the moment when Ramses II became a living god.

When Ramses II became a living god

The greatest archaeological rescue operation of all time

An ideal journey to Egypt ends in Aswan, in the South of Egypt, where one can discover two of the wonders of Pharaonic Egypt.

The first, illustrated above, is Philae. It had the misfortune of spending all flood seasons underwater, and when the new Aswan Dam was to be completed in 1970, it was to be forever lost.

The second is Abu Simbel, about 4 hours drive away. In the 1960s, alarm bells rang: 22 temples were about to be forever lost to the rising waters. Fortunately, for once, humanity put ancient rivalries out of the door, and an international rescue operation achieved the feat of saving the temples of Nubia.

Saving Abu Simbel and Philae

How did Champollion crack the Rosetta Stone code?

No, Champollion never did see the Rosetta Stone, and it is not the only document he used to crack hieroglyphs.

In fact, to understand the achievement, it is useful to discuss how one cracks codes. Discover how Champollion did it.

How did Champollion crack hieroglyphs?

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Time travel to Montmartre with Renoir in the 1870s

In the summer of 1876, Renoir set up his easel in the garden of a guingette on top of Montmartre. Every day or so, he returns to paint what will become, by the end of summer, the Bal du Moulin de la Galette.

To give you, dear reader, an accurate impression of that magical moment, as 150 years ago is both close and far away, this story brings you rarely seen photos of Montmartre in the 1870s.

Better still, one of the figures in the painting, the man in the right-hand corner, will be our guide from the past to the present. His name is Georges Rivière, a painter, writer, and defender of Impressionism from its birth.

English-speaking readers have, for 150 years, been deprived of that first-hand witness. This story translates, for the first time, his recollections into English. All the quotes here are his words, a direct link to the Moulin de la Galette garden.

Everything here is deeply grounded in historical facts and research, but wrapped in the poetry and wonder befitting of a summer afternoon in Montmartre as seen by Renoir.

Montmartre in the 1870s had undergone tragedies

Georges looks at us, 150 years into the future. After the shock at realizing that the Montmartre he knew has vanished, that Impressionist paintings decorate chocolate boxes and sell for unimaginable sums, he feels the need to explain what it was really like.

In the photo above, taken around 1850, Montmartre was outside Paris. It was the countryside at Paris’ door, a windmill-covered hill, as well as market gardens, and derelict houses. In 1860, at the stroke of the pen, it became part of the City of Light.

Only five years before he posed for his friend, Montmartre was a City of Darkness, surrounded by German troops blockading and starving Paris.

Then, during a popular uprising, the Commune, the people of Montmartre took their guns against the government for better rights and lives, and were slaughtered by the thousands.

Montmartre was a village within Paris

Georges hopes the people of the 21st century realize that when he and Renoir climbed Montmartre, there was no Moulin Rouge, and no Sacré Coeur. The hill was a place of poverty and revolutionary spirit, with the smell and sounds of the countryside.

He feels that telling you about the dark background behind the painting helps you understand that where you see gentle faces daydreaming under dappled sunlight, most in his day saw a subversive and badly painted daub.

Renoir moves to the top of Montmartre

That summer of 1876, Georges helped Renoir find a place to rent in the ‘village within Paris’. They stumbled upon a decrepit old house that had its own hidden green oasis, and a “furnished rooms to rent” sign at the door.

Renoir was overjoyed. He had never hoped to find anything in Montmartre that even approached this marvel.

The next morning, an old porter hauled up to rue Cortot all the painter’s equipment, including a beautiful white canvas destined for the execution of the large painting.

The Moulin de la Galette Bal

Every day or so, Georges and Renoir pick up the large canvas from the stables where it spent the night to walk five minutes away to the Moulin de la Galette.

Georges knows that modern readers may be confused by this business of mills. He explains that it had been a while since millers realized they could charge Parisians a few cents to climb up their moulins for the commanding view of Paris.

Adventurous millers saw an opportunity to set up a guingette at the foot of their mills. Since the word guingette cannot be translated into English, Georges proposes a simple image: take old, worm-eaten fences, and turn them into tables.

Clear up your old barn, entice musicians and punters with wine so cheap you could disinfect floors with it. Get your spouse to cook some food, et voilà, you’ve got yourself a guingette.

A miller's family, who turned their windmills into a guinguette, sold galettes, pancakes, which is how the place became Moulin de la Galette, the ‘pancake windmill cabaret’. Georges now paints a picture for us:

At the back of that room, a stage was reserved for the orchestra, composed of around ten poor devils, condemned to blowing into their discordant instruments for eight hours every Sunday.

Behind the orchestra stage was a garden, a courtyard, planted with shrivelled acacias, filled with tables and benches. The ground, covered with gravel, was sturdy and flat enough so that one could dance there at the same time as the dancehall, which was then open on all sides.

Who were the sort of people hanging out at the Moulin de la Galette in 1876?

The Moulin was the ordinary meeting point of the laborer families of Montmartre. Parents and the little children sat at tables, ate pancakes, drank wine or beer, while young ladies danced frantically until dinner time.

The female element of the Moulin was not only composed of these honest young ladies. There were young women whose profession did not require virtue, but they were there, as the others, for the pleasure of dancing, without any other intention.

It was also the dance that attracted the majority of the youth to the Moulin de la Galette. Among them are a few laborers. The habitual clientele of the Moulin was predominantly composed of neighborhood employees, many artists from Montmartre, and a few students.

The young men and women who came to the ball were always the same; they all knew each other, more or less, and a certain camaraderie was established between them.

The Moulin’s crowd was an interesting little world. Rigid virtue was uncommon among the ball guests, but vice took no more space than virtue.

Love was generally altruistic, and most of these little working-class ladies, who easily gave away their hearts, would never have agreed to sell it. Morals were neither shy nor dissolute. In that corner of Montmartre, all these families knew each other, as do villagers.

The Moulin de la Galette, a laughing spectacle that Renoir dreamed of painting

Worries and misery stopped at the ball’s door. The ballroom, always filled with a young and joyous crowd, animated with dancing, offered a laughing spectacle that Renoir dreamed of depicting in an important painting.

Renoir did not want professional models in his canvas, but the usual guests of the Moulin. It was an enterprise filled with difficulties. Nevertheless, favorable circumstances were reunited against all odds, and the work was joyously completed.

Our days passed cheerfully, shared between the old dwellings rue Cortot and the Moulin, where Renoir worked during the afternoon on his large Bal canvas.

We transported this canvas, every day, between rue Cortot and the Moulin, as the painting was entirely done there. It did not go without difficulties, as when the wind blew, the large frame threatened to take off, like a kite, above Montmartre.

The hidden story behind the Moulin de la Galette painting

Aside from the tragedies of war and uprising that happened only a few years before the painting, there is a poignant tale behind the apparent careless abandon we wonder at today.

When he lived rue Cortot, Renoir got opportunities to enter the familial homes of his models and witness the miserable state of the newborns.

He always felt the greatest tenderness for children -the abundance of children in his work proves it- and was profoundly moved in the presence of the neglected, not to say abandoned, little ones.

Badly fed, badly cared for, confined to unhealthy dwellings, many of them died in their first months. He could not accept the idea of living near these unfortunate without alleviating their pain.

He knew these one-room spaces where families of four or five lived. The homes where his models lived, beautiful young ladies, neatly and elegantly adorned with insignificant trinkets beloved by the young Parisian laborers.

Seeing it up close, Renoir felt for that misery a strong feeling of pity. It did not mean the inhabitants of these slums were sad and seemed to suffer from their poverty. On the contrary, they were of a joyous nonchalance.

In all these homes, one only heard songs and laughs. Sadness, worry for tomorrow, were only fugitive impressions dissipated by the slightest favorable event.

The refuge for fugitive impressions of joy was the Moulin de la Galette, where one left worries and harsh realities at the door.

Renoir used the Moulin de la Galette to fundraise for a nursery

That summer, Renoir was almost as broke as his models, 35 years old, unmarried. But he dreamt of fundraising for a pouponnat, a nursery.

To get the seed funds, he thought of giving an extraordinary theatrical representation at the Moulin de la Galette.

Summer was about to come to a close, the ‘Ball’ painting was almost completed, and rain, now more frequent, gave some free time to the painter. Once the Moulin party was decided, we all went to work.

The evening was extremely joyful. The Montmartre crowd was not difficult to please and applauded frenetically. Even with this success, the proceeds, unfortunately, only left a very mediocre benefit.

So lasted, in the depths of old Montmartre, a summer that beautiful weather did not abandon. For Renoir, it was a period of joyous labor, during which he painted most of the canvases of the 1877 exhibition.

Thanks to the help of wealthy clients, the pouponnat eventually became reality.

Renoir meant, with the Moulin de la Galette, to give an impression of joy and happiness

Georges Rivière painted with his words how the summer of 1876, compressed into a flickering instant in the iconic Moulin de la Galette, felt like.

In the ball, the sun added the gaiety of its light to the joy of the dancers. The play of the rays of the sun adds, in Renoir’s work, an element of joy.

Renoir tried to give an impression of joy, of happiness even, to his paintings. He had the desire to inspire that feeling in the viewer because he despised the spectacle of ugliness, misery, and suffering.

Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette, a quietly revolutionary painting

Georges wants the people of the 21st century to know that while Renoir and the other Impressionists exhibited their work to try and sell, the best reactions were laughter.

He vividly remembered the time when a banker loudly giggled that he and his friends had been duped into paying 50 cents to see daubs and wanted to be reimbursed.

Yet, that same banker, today, if the Moulin de la Galette were offered for sale, would not hesitate to crush all auction records for that daub. That is where the Moulin de la Galette is a lot more than a charming afternoon of joy.

Georges did not wait 150 years to explain why that is; he already did that during the 1877 exhibition.

No one before him ever thought of depicting daily life in such a large canvas. It is a historical painting. Mr. Renoir and his friends understood that history painting is not the laughable illustration of tales from the past.

They opened a path that others will follow. May those who want to do history painting do the history of their time, instead of shaking the dust of past centuries.

And there you have it. What makes the painting cute today is how harmless-looking it is, with these smiling faces. Yet this is precisely what made it revolutionary: the absence of a sermon on morals, or calls to follow a leader into war.

The viewer is not told what to think, and doesn’t need to know history or scripture. Instead, one is offered the visual soundtrack to a daydream.

Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette is groundbreaking for being the first ever depiction of pure, unfettered happiness.

There’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources:

Georges Rivière, Renoir et ses amis, 1921. Translated and edited into English for this story by its author.

Georges Rivière, L'Impressionniste, journal d'art, 6 Avril 1877. Translated and edited into English for this story by its author.

Moments of Wonder

When Impressionism was seen as 'hideous daubs'

Dear reader, we climb aboard the time machine and land in 1874. Walking the streets of Paris, we soon realize that what we hoped to see, masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, and Degas, are nowhere to be seen…

Read more

a year ago · 4 likes · Moments of Wonder

Moments of Wonder

Masters Shoulder to Shoulder: Monet and Renoir By The River

Two starving artists, Monet and Renoir, share bread and work together…

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8 months ago · 5 likes · Moments of Wonder

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Learn to recognize a Monet from a Renoir

A practical guide to distinguish a Monet from a Renoir…

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8 months ago · 8 likes · Moments of Wonder

Like a fly on the wall, witness Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael in Rome within one mile of each other

Have you ever dreamt of being a fly on the wall when Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel? If so, dear reader, you are in luck, as this story follows a fly that has time-travel abilities.

Our fly’s name is Moschetta, and she doubles as an art detective. She suggests that while it may be a little-known fact, not long after Michelangelo finished the Sistine Chapel, all three Renaissance geniuses were there.

For three years, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael lived and worked in or near the Vatican. Moschetta wants to grab the chance to tell you what she saw with both wings.

As she buzzes past the three geniuses, she acts like the art detective she is, interviewing eyewitnesses and scouring historical records to present us with the evidence of what she saw.

The Sistine Chapel revealed to an amazed and speechless world

Our little flying detective witnessed that Michelangelo was roughed up by an impatient Pope, Julius II, and the artist didn’t like being pushed. Here is what happened when the Pope tried to sneak in:

Michelangelo once concealed himself, and dropped some planks when the pope entered the chapel, not thinking about who it was and forcing the pope to leave in anger.

Let it suffice to say that in one way or another, Michelangelo was angry with the pope, and then afraid of him, and had to run away.

The angry Pope then:

Threatened that if Michelangelo did not finish quickly, he would have him thrown down from the scaffolding.

Raphael did sneak inside the Sistine Chapel as Michelangelo painted it

Michelangelo did not want to paint the Sistine Chapel and kept making excuses. But Julius II was not the sort of Pope to take no for an answer, and forced his hand. The sculptor reluctantly did the work, but did not like it when anyone hovered around, even less threatened him, as the Pope did.

The discreet Moschetta silently witnessed that:

Since Bramante held the keys to the chapel, he showed it to his friend Raphael so that he would be able to understand Michelangelo’s techniques.

Years later, after Raphael had died, a bitter Michelangelo complained:

Everything he knew about art he got from me.

Moschetta reminds us that when Michelangelo painted the Sistine ceiling, the younger Raphael was painting the Pope’s apartments around the corner. In Michelangelo’s mind, Raphael was there to ‘steal’ from him.

Of the relation between Leonardo and Michelangelo, there is only one recorded encounter between the two. It was in Florence, when Leonardo tried to embarrass the younger Michelangelo, who turned the humiliation back by reminding Leonardo of his notorious inability to complete anything he had done...

What would happen when one year after the completion of the Sistine ceiling, the Vatican became an artistic coop with three roosters spreading their feathers?

Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael together under the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling

The magic moment lasted three years, from the fall of 1513. Within a mile or so, we have Leonardo, who got a job offer from the Pope’s brother to stay in the Vatican, to work on mirrors, engineering, and botanical studies.

Raphael works a few meters from the Sistine Chapel, painting the walls of the Pope’s apartments.

Michelangelo carves the marble statues like Moses for his tormentor’s tomb two miles away, but is a regular visitor to the Vatican. He is there to prepare Julius II’s tomb inside the basilica, and in any case, is expected to take part in the religious and diplomatic life of the Vatican.

Moschetta could not sneak in a spy camera and photograph all three awkwardly sitting next to each other. But she estimates that there were easily over twenty ceremonies each year when they were expected, plus the diplomatic and special events.

That is why the buzzing detective estimates, over three years, about 80 or so instances when all three sat under the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.

As she does not possess mind-reading abilities, she is unable to share what they thought. Yet, as a detective, she presents us with clues.

What did Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci think of the Sistine Chapel?

Leonardo, in his advice to painters, warned:

The others, in order to appear as great draughtsmen, make their nudes wooden and without grace, so they seem to look like a sack of nuts rather than the surface of a human being, or, indeed, a bundle of radishes rather than muscular nudes.

It was written before the Sistine Chapel, but Moschetta is confident it reveals what Leonardo thinks of Michelangelo’s nudes, nothing but wooden sacks of nuts or bundles of radishes...

Our little flying detective points out that the two geniuses’ styles are opposites. One paints masculine, dynamic, and often nude figures, while the other prefers graceful, androgynous, and gently smiling figures.

As to Raphael, Moschetta noticed that there was a noticeable style change after he saw the Sistine Chapel. Raphael’s figures become more muscular and sculptural, and it is not difficult, she believes, to guess where he got that from.

While both Raphael and Michelangelo were in their thirties, Leonardo was in his early sixties, which was a ripe old age during the Renaissance. That probably brings visions, dear reader, of the iconic old wise man image of Leonardo we are used to.

A prankster named Leonardo da Vinci walks the corridors of the Vatican

Moschetta saw Leonardo in action, and she selected for us testimonies to provide a better picture of the real Leonardo:

He was of a beautiful person, proportioned, graceful and of a beautiful aspect. He wore a rose-colored tunic that reached the knee, whereas long garments were then in fashion.

He had a beautiful head of hair, flowing in ringlets and reaching down to the middle of his breast, well combed and curled.

Here is what Leonardo, in his 60s, was up to in the Vatican:

To a very strange lizard, found by the gardener of the Belvedere, he fastened some wings with a mixture of quicksilver made from scales scraped from other lizards, which quivered as it moved by crawling about.

After he had fashioned eyes, a horn, and a beard for it, he tamed the lizard and kept it in a box, and all the friends to whom he showed it fled in terror.

As the genius he was, he found other ways to prank priests:

Often he had the guts of a steer purged of fat, and they came out so small that they could be held in the palm of one hand.

And he had placed in another room a pair of smith’s bellows to which he attached one end of these guts so that by blowing them up he filled the entire room, which was enormous, so that anyone standing there would have to move to one corner.

Moschetta insists that Leonardo was no old bore, and wonders how many kids would love to have such a creatively amusing grandfather!

The genius with a butterfly-like mind

Our winged detective tells us there is more:

He created an infinite number of these mad inventions and also experimented with mirrors, and he tried out the strangest methods of discovering oils for painting and varnishes for preserving the finished works.

Twenty years earlier, trying out one of his ‘strange methods’, that is, in painting the Last Supper, a monk witnessed that Leonardo either spent days painting without eating, or dropped his work midway:

I have also seen him, as the whim took him, go at midday, when the sun was at its height, and without seeking any shade, go from the Corte Vecchia, where he was working on that stupendous clay horse, to the Grazie, to add a stroke or two to the ‘Last Supper,’ and then return immediately.

Our little fly insists on the fact that during his Vatican stay, Leonardo’s apartment was a few steps away from the Pope’s collection of ancient marble masterpieces. Yet he preferred studying the gardens, creating mirrors, and practicing anatomy rather than marveling at ancient masterpieces, like Michelangelo and Raphael.

Moschetta suggested comparing Leonardo’s mind to that of a butterfly, as she witnessed how enthralled he was observing the flight of birds, to then switch to whatever invention he was cooking up in the studio.

An elephant, a fly, and three geniuses in the Vatican

Moschetta is an art detective and does not mind when her evidence gets questioned. So, if you wonder, dear reader, how we can be sure, even with her having witnessed the many opportunities for all three to be in the Sistine Chapel, that they did actually rub shoulders?

After all, the Sistine is big enough for the three roosters to stay as far as possible from each other. That is absolutely correct. But there is one unusual story where all three were most likely not only in attendance, but in close vicinity.

Pope Leo X received an exotic gift from the King of Portugal, an Indian elephant named Hanno. When the elephant arrived at the Vatican, in a lavish procession, all members of the Papal court were there. Leonardo, in fact, lived almost next door to the Pope’s elephant.

Our little flying detective insists that, yes, that tale of an elephant, a fly, and three geniuses in one place is true.

Leonardo da Vinci rarely finished anything he started

The little detective could list all the works Leonardo never completed, but worries it would take all day. So, she reports what happened when the Pope tried to commission Leonardo for a small painting:

It is said of Leonardo that when the pope commissioned a work from him, he would immediately begin to distil oils and herbs for the varnish; as a result, the pope exclaimed:

‘Alas, this man is never going to do anything, for he starts to think about finishing the work before it is even begun!’

Considering how violent the impatient Julius was toward Michelangelo, one wonders what he would have done to a man who could spend years refining a painting and was now getting rusty.

Three years, three geniuses in the Vatican, how did the highest concentration of talent in one place end?

Moschetta reminds us that:

There was great animosity between Leonardo and Michelangelo, and as a result, Michelangelo left Florence on account of this rivalry.

Leonardo packed his strange inventions, paintings, and notebooks to go to France. Michelangelo left Rome to work in Florence. In 1516, by the time the others left town, Raphael was a lot more than a painter. He was:

• Architect of Saint Peter.

• Prefect of marble and stones, in charge of all the stone works for the Vatican.

• Commissary of Antiquities, meaning the Pope’s curator.

• Writer of briefs, an administrative position, but a great cash machine.

With the stage all to himself, Raphael was equivalent to an arts minister and a close court member.

That astonishing achievement came to an untimely end. Doctors, believing he had a fever, ‘cured’ him by bleeding him to death. He expired on his birthday, at only 37.

Little Moschetta brought you, dear reader, all the facts about that astonishing concentration of talent in one place. She hopes it helped you realize that if artistic power could be turned into electricity, these three could have lit all of Renaissance Italy.

As she flies off, she trusts that the evidence she shared that Leonardo was a creative prankster, Michelangelo a grumpy genius, and that Raphael quickly rose to their level proves that art history is far more fascinating than fiction or memes.

There’s the Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo da Vinci, Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker, Yale University Press, p. 130.

Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

The Anonimo Gaddiano.

Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo.

Le lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti, CDXXXV.

Matteo Bandello, Novelle.

Il diario di Leone X di Paride de Grassi: dai volumi manoscritti degli Archivi Vaticani della S. Sede.

Image of Saint Peter, circa 1550.

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Wonder Journeys, a new thematic series

This article inaugurates a new series, called Wonder Journeys, which are thematic ‘treasure map’ stories, since there often is a thread tying past articles to each other.

After over one year of writing on Substack, it was way past time to curate articles by theme, like Impressionism, Renaissance, Egypt, and so on.

For new subscribers, it is an opportunity to discover the wealth of past stories, and for long-time readers to navigate through past stories.

Before diving into the Middle Ages, a small introduction to what the Moment of Wonder stories are about.

Art and travel stories

Moment of Wonder articles are not meant as newsletters that vanish into the internet void; they form part of a growing Book of Wonder. Half about daydreaming about the past, half practical advice, preparing you to experience these marvels in real life:

• Many of the stories are conceived as small guidebooks to a monument to visit in person one day. They don’t tell you it is famous or list meaningless facts, but share that background as an art historian and travel curator to explain why this monument is unique, and how to see it in peace.

• In this age of AI content and travel ‘experts’ who’ve never been to the places they tell you about, every story is about monuments and artworks the author knows intimately, and often has photographed himself.

• As a French native, most stories are based on texts he translates from French, offering authentic and genuinely unique content.

And Moments of Wonder double as virtual time travel, coming face to face with Leonardo da Vinci or Ramses II.

A note of gratitude to readers

To paid subscribers - Thank you very much! Your support makes the deep-dive research and the travel needed to produce these stories possible. Subscribing means you are collecting, chapter by chapter, your own permanent Book of Wonder.

To free subscribers - Thank you for reading, sharing these stories, and for your comments.

Consider that the stories provide authenticity instead of AI slop, where you get the fascinating reality of art history, and benefit from a genuine travel experience.

All of this is delivered in a poetic, “coffee-break” sized read, a ten-minute shot of wonder, where you gain insider knowledge that will turn future travels in France, Italy, or Egypt into unique journeys and lifetime memories.

If you do enjoy daydreaming via these journeys, please consider upgrading your subscription to become a partner in the research and travel needed for more Moments of Wonder.

We begin the ‘Wonders of the Middle Ages’ recap of past stories with a perfect mix between art and travel: there is in France a cathedral twice as big as Notre-Dame.

Amiens, the Largest Cathedral of France, twice as big as Notre-Dame de Paris

Can you see the tiny, single visitor in the largest cathedral of France, twice as big in volume as Notre-Dame?

No? How can it be so empty? Amiens cathedral gets, in one year, the same number of visitors that Notre-Dame de Paris gets in three weeks!

It is not like Amiens is difficult to access, in the middle of nowhere or on top of a mountain, by train or car, it takes about 2 hours to get there.

There is so much fascinating to explain about Notre-Dame of Amiens (yes, many cathedrals are called Notre-Dame in France), that it took two articles to describe the cathedral.

First one, how is it the biggest cathedral of France? And part two, how it survived time, and two world wars.

Discover Amiens cathedral

Notre Dame: A Story Of Genius, Survival And Wonder

This is not the same old story about Quasimodo, but a love letter from a Parisian art historian.

• Did you know that Notre-Dame is the first Iron Lady of Paris, as the entire cathedral had been conceived, from the start, to be reinforced with iron?

• What do we know of its architect?

• How did Victor Hugo save Notre-Dame from destruction?

• Did you know that during the First World War, German planes bombed Notre Dame?

• How close was the cathedral to disaster during the 2019 fire?

Discover the answers with the story of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Notre Dame: A Story of Wonder

Unicorns galore! Unicorns in New York, and a real unicorn horn in Paris!

A story that ties New-York and Paris, with among the rarest treasures that survive from the Middle Ages, the Unicorn tapestries series.

Not only will you discover why they were in fashion, and find that you get, in bonus, a ‘real’ unicorn horn displayed in the Musée Cluny, along with the Lady with the Unicorn tapestries, but there are two further bonuses:

• Enjoy a translation from Old French of “The Animal Book of Love” to understand what this business about unicorns and senses is about.

• Discover the lady’s name! We discuss who the Lady likely is, so she goes from nameless to being an actual person.

Making sense of the quality and cost of tapestries during the Middle Ages opens the door to the largest narrative tapestry in the world.

Meet unicorns in Paris and New York

The Apocalypse of Angers, the largest narrative tapestry in the world

After discovering a cathedral twice as big as Notre Dame and nearly empty of visitors, there is a genuinely unique treasure.

If you get amazed by the Unicorn tapestries, imagine then being alone in a room with 450-foot-long tapestry...

It is so big that it does not fit into one photo frame, but two. To understand why it is unique, the story also reminds the reader of the fact that it was cut off to warm animals and trees in winter...

Imagine cutting off paintings; who would do that? Yet, tapestries are woven paintings, and were more expensive than paintings.

It is once more a unique treasure, really with no equivalent anywhere in the world, that can easily be accessed from Paris, in only 1 1/2 hours, and can be enjoyed alone or nearly alone.

And in terms of world-level monuments, what about France’s hidden wonder, just 30 minutes from Paris?

The Apocalypse of Angers

Saint-Denis Basilica: Rub Shoulders With French Kings and History

For the largest cathedral of France, the yearly number of visitors is equivalent to three weeks of that of Notre-Dame.

How can it be that barely 30 minutes away, a monument that arguably is one of the most important in the world, not just in France, gets the equivalent of four days' worth of visitors in one year at Notre Dame?

One of the most important monuments in the world, you say. How? Imagine under a single roof, rubbing shoulders with 43 Kings. The monument itself represents 1,400 years of French history.

This is nearly twice the number of Kings anywhere on earth, be it Westminster Abbey, the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, or any European royal or imperial necropolis.

Saint-Denis Basilica is so important that it needed two stories. The first one explains the necropolis side.

The second is why it is a milestone in world architecture.

The Royal Necropolis of Saint-Denis

Birth of ‘Gothic’, the Architecture of Light at Saint Denis Basilica

Gothic, the word used to describe Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, and thousands of marvels created during the Middle Ages, is an insult.

It means ‘designed by Goths’, the barbarians who sacked Rome and are blamed for the Dark Ages.

Discover how silly that label is, with the story of the birthplace of ‘Gothic’, Saint-Denis Basilica.

Birth of the Architecture of Light

The Sainte-Chapelle, the only jewel-monument ever built

After discovering the meaning of the word Gothic, the illustration that it is the exact opposite, the Architecture of Light.

Discover how with another unique wonder, the only jewel-monument extant, the Sainte Chapelle.

What makes the Sainte-Chapelle unique

The amazing resilience of cathedrals when faced with tragedy

There is another way to feel wonder when visiting France’s cathedrals, which is to realize how many were burnt by accident or due to war.

Far from being a sad story, it is the precise opposite. Cathedrals that were bombed and burnt are still standing. It makes the genius of the architects and stonemasons who built them even more astonishing.

And like Notre-Dame de Paris, which illustrates that medieval cathedrals are not just stone monuments. The firefighter general in charge of saving Notre Dame during the 2019 fire said:

It’s very curious. I participated in rescuing dozens of buildings, but it is the first time I feel this: I almost feel that Notre Dame is alive.

Wonder how cathedrals survived tragedy

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS

This is a new, additional series, probably once a week, for about ten weeks.

The Moments of Wonder stories keep coming on Mondays.

A bientôt,

Guillaume

Champollion, the linguist who outsmarted the code breakers

Standing in front of the Rosetta Stone in real life feels like being in the presence of a civilization-defining artefact. I apologize in advance, dear reader, for revealing the less romantic truth: Champollion never laid eyes on it.

That certainly isn’t saying the Rosetta Stone is not important; it is. The point here is to realize the challenge faced by Champollion in trying to crack the Rosetta Stone, and how he succeeded at reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs where others failed.

To do that, let’s first discuss the difficulty of code cracking.

What ‘cracking a code’ actually means: the Enigma machine

The Nazis devised what they thought was an unbreakable code, the Enigma machine. It allowed, with the 4 rotor model visible in the photo above, 158 quintillion combinations, and for the 5 rotor version, 18 sextillion.

In plain language, the machine above has more variations than there are grains of sand on Earth. The 5 rotor version has about the same as there are stars visible in the universe... Astronomical numbers indeed!

Yet, Enigma, thanks to the genius of Alan Turing and many others in the war effort, was broken. But there was one code during the Second World War that remained unbroken, due to a seemingly simple barrier: language.

Language is the harder code to break

With code breaking, the starting point is to know what language the enemy is using. With Enigma, it was German, so once the fiendishly complex mathematics were resolved, understanding the message was easy.

The Indian Code Talkers’ strategy was that if the enemy did not know the language used in the code, he would not break it. The genius idea was suggested by the son of a missionary who spoke fluent Navajo.

Few people spoke Navajo; there were no Japanese-Navajo dictionaries, therefore it was most unlikely that any Japanese knew the Navajo language.

How the Navajo code was almost as difficult as Egyptian hieroglyphs to understand

The Navajo men who devised the code went further than just talking to each other in their language.

The system they created was based on sounds and ideograms, which literally means ‘writing an idea’.

• sounds: the sound A for the letter A, but in English, translated into Navajo. For example, wol-la-chee, Ant, be-la-sana, Apple, or tse-nill, Axe, words that have nothing to do with A in the Navajo language, were code for A.

• ideograms: here the Navajo Code Talkers invented from scratch a system, where ‘egg’ meant bomb, ‘iron fish’ was a submarine, ‘turtle’ a tank, and so on.

Even if you somehow spoke Navajo, good luck understanding what went on. The Japanese realized they had a Navajo prisoner, so they tortured him to crack the code. Joe Kieyoomia described:

They wrote Navajo words in English and asked what they meant. So, I told them: ‘This means bird, this means turtle, this means water”.

The torture was completely useless, as, aside from the fact that he refused to help, he “didn’t know about the code.”

The code was unbreakable; a mix of sounds and ideas, not unlike the puzzle carved on the Rosetta Stone.

Reading and understanding are vastly different things, case in point: Etruscan

Navajo is a living language, so now imagine the difficulty of cracking ancient inscriptions that have not been understood for millennia. Etruscan is not even that far, as it was at the dawn of the Roman era, in Italy, as the Etruscans lived in today’s Tuscany.

Their inscriptions used a Greek-based letter system, so it is easy to read Etruscan. But fiendishly difficult to understand.

There are still five millennia-old writing systems waiting to be deciphered

History began over 5,000 years ago with the invention of writing in Iraq, Egypt, and Iran. The tablet below was discovered in 1901 in Iran. It is about 5,000 years old, an accountancy document, but we understand nothing beyond that.

To crack it, one would need another Rosetta Stone and a new Champollion.

Jean-François Champollion cracked codes on his birthday, as you do

It had been 1,400 years since the last Egyptian priest who knew how hieroglyphs were written died. The Rosetta Stone contained a known system, Greek, and two different scripts, demotic and hieroglyphic, both in the language spoken by ancient Egyptians.

For 20 years, the most brilliant minds of the age treated the Rosetta Stone as a mechanical cipher (a bit like Enigma) and were therefore wrecking their neurons on the black stone. Then came an unconventional genius, Jean-François Champollion.

It is almost Christmas 1821, Jean-François’s 31st birthday. The man spends his birthday thinking of the Rosetta Stone, or at least the paper copy, as he never saw the actual stone in real life.

For all these years, a very simple mathematical fact was staring at everyone in the face, including the brilliant Thomas Young, but no one saw it.

Champollion asked himself, how many Greek signs, and how many hieroglyphs are on the stone? With a pen and paper, he wrote down:

• 486 Greek letters.

• 1,419 hieroglyphs.

Everyone was stuck on the idea that one hieroglyph = one idea, or one letter. That simple tally meant it was mathematically impossible. Champollion was no Alan Turing; he was a linguist, but what he did on his birthday was equivalent to breaking the mathematics of the code.

As luck had it, he already had within him the second key to the code, language.

Champollion, the man who spoke Coptic all alone to himself

Exactly as Latin is for Catholics, Coptic is the ceremonial language of Christian Egyptians. Before the Rosetta Stone was discovered, it was already known that Coptic was most likely the language spoken by the end of the Egyptian civilization.

At 11 years old, Champollion first got to see hieroglyphic inscriptions and vowed to dedicate his life to breaking them. At 16 years of age, he was fluent in a dozen languages. He met a Coptic priest in Paris, and teenage Champollion declared:

I wish to know Egyptian like my French, because on that language will be based my great work on the Egyptian papyri...

I find in it the greatest joy, as it is quite something to speak the language of my dear Amenophis, Sethosis, Ramesses, Thutmosis.

I dream in Coptic. I do nothing but that, I dream only in Coptic, in Egyptian... I am so Coptic that, for fun, I translate into Coptic everything that comes into my head.

I speak Coptic all alone to myself, since no one else can understand me. This is the real way for me to put my pure Egyptian into my head.

Breaking Enigma took, from Marian Rejewski, Alan Turing, and the thousands of people at Bletchley Park and beyond, 12 years of work. Now that Champollion started to unlock the mathematics of the code, he would decipher hieroglyphs within 11 months.

Champollion, from cracking a code to reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs

To be fair, Champollion was not alone; he steered a tandem bicycle, while his elder brother Jacques-Joseph helped from the second seat. Weeks after his birthday, Champollion used three bilingual documents:

• The Rosetta Stone, with its PTOLMYS (Ptolemy) cartouche.

• The Bankes’ obelisk, with a hieroglyph and a Greek inscription to read CLEOPATRA.

• The Casati Papyrus, in demotic and Greek, to confirm the reading of CLEOPATRA.

By spring, Champollion was able to read Greek names, under the assumption that hieroglyphs had to be used as letters, like our own letters, for Greek Pharaohs.

The Dendera Zodiac arrives in Paris

Champollion came to see it, and, once again thinking out of the box, noticed that all the little figurines, which had to be stars’ names, had 𓇼 hieroglyphs.

A lightbulb lit over the brilliant mind: Egyptians use ‘silent’ hieroglyphs, signs that are not meant to be read at all. When you write a man’s name, you add a ‘little man’ sign, and when you write a star’s name, a ‘little star’, and so on.

The rotors inside Champollion’s brain were unlocking, one after the other. But by summer’s end, the last one was still stuck at the Greek Egyptian stage. It is all well and good to be able to read Cleopatra’s name, but there were 3,000 years of civilization before her that were still in darkness.

Studying Abu Simbel’s inscriptions from Paris

Champollion had never seen the Rosetta Stone, let alone visited Egypt. But a friend of his did, an architect named Jean-Nicolas Huyot. While Napoléon’s scientists had, 20 years earlier, copied at length inscriptions, their depictions were unreliable.

Hence, Champollion badly needed new material. This is exactly what his friend’s detailed sketches of the temples of Abu Simbel and Amada provided. Fifteen years of Coptic study were about to come to fruition.

The date was the 14th of September 1822, and, seated at his Parisian desk, Champollion inspected from afar the carvings of Nubian temples.

Champollion broke the code by reading it in the language of the Egyptians: Coptic

Drum roll. For 23 years, the Rosetta Stone had shortwired the combined brainpower of several geniuses. Champollion could read Greek names, but the genius moment was wondering what would happen if reading Egyptian Pharaoh’s names in Coptic.

𓇳 𓄟 𓋴 𓋴

First example, from Abu Simbel and other Nubian temples. From the Rosetta Stone, he was able to guess that 𓋴 was an S.

The circle 𓇳 was painted red; it was the sun. In the Coptic language, the sun is ‘re’.

The middle letter 𓄟 looked like an M. From the Rosetta Stone, where it talks about ‘birthday’, Champollion could guess that the sign was used for ‘birth’, and Coptic for birth is ‘mise’, a word that begins with an M.

Champollion then read out loud the result 𓇳 𓄟 𓋴 𓋴 Re - M - S - S, Ramesses! The very first Egyptian word read out loud after a 1,400-year silence was that of Ramses II.

𓅝𓄟 𓋴

One imagines that for the second name, Champollion was trembling, sensing that he was about to shine light into a 1,400-year-old mystery.

He already knew that the ibis bird was linked to the god Thot. All he had to do was read the word aloud: Thot - M - S, Thotmes, Thutmosis, another famous Egyptian Pharaoh.

Mike drop.

Jean-François excitedly ran to his brother’s office, screamed ‘I’ve got it’, and fainted from emotion and exhaustion. Two years later, in his Egyptian grammar, he explained that:

Hieroglyphic writing is a complex system, a script simultaneously figurative, symbolic and phonetic, in one and the same text, in one and the same sentence, and, I should say, almost in one and the same word.

Champollion, the genius who resurrected an entire civilization

Champollion, explaining that one hieroglyph can be a sound, or a symbol, or an idea, illustrates that breaking the Egyptian code was like battling with a three rotor Enigma machine.

Another way to express the achievement is with a confession, dear reader. I spent years studying ancient Egyptian, and it fried my brain. Once, I asked my professor:

I do not understand how Champollion did it. I have a grammar and a dictionary, both as thick as a phone book.

Yet a single sentence sometimes takes me hours to translate. One problem can get me stuck for days. How did he do it?

My professor’s response was:

He spoke the language.

Thanks to his language skills and unconventional genius, Champollion did way more than crack the Rosetta Stone. He wrote the ancient Egyptian grammar and dictionary.

In one stroke, he added three millennia to mankind’s history, as until then, the past only went as far as the Greek and Roman world.

It was also a marvelous gift to ancient Egyptians, as, from their point of view, when someone reads aloud their names, it grants them eternal life.

Champollion revived an ancient civilization and hundreds of thousands of people at once, a unique Moment of Wonder.

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Sources

Navajo Code Talkers, World War II Fact Sheet.

Joe Kieyoomia: Neither Navajo captive nor code was broken.

Navajo Code Talkers’ Dictionary.

Richard Parkinson, Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment. University of California Press.

How Champollion Deciphered Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

Le voyage de Jean-Nicolas Huyot en Égypte (1818-1819) et les manuscrits de Nestor Lhote. In: Bulletin de la Société française d'égyptologie, n°32, 1961.

Léon de la Brière, Champollion inconnu, lettres inédites.

Papyrus Casati.

Grammaire égyptienne, ou Principes généraux de l'écriture sacrée égyptienne appliquée à la représentation de la langue parlée, par Champollion le jeune.

Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique / par J.-F. Champollion le jeune ; publ. d'après les manuscrits autographes,... par M. Champollion Figeac.

Hermine Hartleben, Jean-François Champollion, Sa vie et son œuvre.

Robert Solé, Champollion.

Moments of Wonder

The greatest archaeological rescue operation of all time

The first time mankind got together to solve an upcoming disaster was to save ancient Egyptian monuments…

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Moments of Wonder

When Ramses II became a living god

This story follows "Ramses' love letter to Nefertari…

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a year ago · 4 likes · 4 comments · Moments of Wonder