Madonna of the Yarnwinder by Leonardo DaVinci? Oil on wood panel, c. 1501.

Good news! While you most likely haven't read or heard about it anywhere, they've recovered Madonna of the Yarnwinder! In fact, it's a good bet you weren't even aware that it was gone. But it was! And now it's back! Yay!

You would think that Madonna (also known as Madonna with the Yarnwinder, Madonna of the Spindle, or Madonna with the Distaff) would have gotten more press coverage considering it's possibly a DaVinci - whether or not it is depends on who you ask. According to the FBI and Interpol, heck yes it is. According to everybody else... eeh. We know DaVinci painted a Madonna of the Yarnwinder. However, there are currently a few of them floating around - some sources I've seen suggest two, while others say there are "several". All scholars are prepared to say for certain is that they all came from his workshop - Leo painted the original, then his assistants painted some copies. Does Leonardo's original still exist? We don't know. To complicate matters, Leonardo probably gave his assistants a hand when they made the copies - there are some brush strokes on these paintings that definitely look like they came from him, but it's possible he was just painting onto a copy something his assistants couldn't do right themselves. Here is one of the other Yarnwinders, the Lansdowne Madonna of the Yarnwinder:

The two paintings have significant differences in color, in the landscape - they're unique enough that you might not even call them copies. Go ahead, pick a favorite, I know you probably have already. The one favored by most scholars is the one that was just recovered, called the Buccleuch Madonna (that would be the darker one, up at the top) - if any of the copies that exist today is the original DaVinci, that one's it. But hey, they're all rather attractive, aren't they? It's not like being given a painting from the DaVinci Workshop when you'd wanted a DaVinci is a big letdown. Quit obsessing.

Anyhow, DaVinci or not, the Buccleuch Madonna was stolen from its home in Drumlanrig Castle, Scotland, on 27 August, 2003. I have to tell the story, because it's pretty funny. Drumlanrig is open to the public - it's pretty much its own little museum. You visit the house, you pay your money, you take a tour and see all the cool stuff. Two men posing as tourists went to the room where the Madonna was, used a knife to overpower a poor student tour guide, then pulled the painting off the wall. As the alarms started going off, the men climbed out the window and down the wall and started running for their getaway car. It so happened that two tourists from New Zealand were outside with their cameras watching all of this happen. As they ran past, one of the thieves said, "Don't worry, love, we're the police. This is just practice." Oooh boy. I have a hard time hating these people just because that's so funny. Of course, once the Madonna was stolen everybody had to come up with an estimated value to make the press "ooh" and "aah". Generally the value given was $65 million. (For you British, the estimate was about 30 million pounds.)

Of course, that's what the painting might have fetched at auction. If the thieves had managed to sell it - mind you, it would have to be to someone very shady because any buyer would know that it was stolen property - they might have been lucky to pull $1 million. Not sure how that worked out, but the painting was found in a lawyer's office in Glasgow on 4 October. Four men were arrested, but if any of those four men are the men originally involved in the theft, who knows? Interestingly, it looks like the painting never left Scotland. Let's hope that's a sign that security measures were tight enough that taking it anywhere else would have been impossible.

Oh, and if you didn't notice before the painting is of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child, and the yarnwinder is in the shape of a cross so it's prefiguring the Passion and all of that. Really, though, I'm sure that when he painted it, Leonardo wanted us to focus not on its reverent subject matter but on who painted it, who stole it and how much it's worth.

Madonna by Edvard Munch. Oil on canvas, 1894-1895.

Well I just learned that a friend of mine reads my blog, so I figured I'd better get off my butt and update this thing so I don't look like a loser. A few exciting things have been going on in the art world lately, but the biggest news has been the return of the stolen Edvard Munch paintings. I wrote a little bit about the missing paintings back in this post. In summary, two of Munch's paintings - one of his paintings of The Scream and one of his versions of Madonna - were stolen from Oslo's Munch Museum on August 22, 2004. In May of this year, three guys with awesome Norwegian names - Bjoern Hoen, 37, Petter Tharaldsen, 37, and Petter Rosenvinge, 34 - were found guilty of stealing the paintings, which still hadn't been recovered. There were some who speculated that Madonna and The Scream had both been burned in order to destroy the evidence. But that would have really sucked. Especially for the thieves. You put in so much effort to pull of a once-in-a-lifetime heist like that, and then you just burn what you stole? I mean, that puts you in the red, what with the money you spent on gas for the getaway car, and the guns to threaten the museum employees, and then the matches to start the fire. That's no way to make a living.

The Scream and Madonna were safely recovered - unburned - just about a week ago, on August 31st. They were slightly damaged - The Scream had taken a hit to one of its corners, and Madonna had some loose paint and a hole in its canvas, but restorers at the museum have said that repairing the paintings shouldn't be a problem. They're back home, and all's well that ends well, though it's not yet certain when they'll be back on display. And the Munch Museum spent about $6.4 million on a security upgrade a little while ago, so hopefully the new bulletproof glass and metal detectors will keep everything safe for the future.

A funny little side-note: After the paintings had been missing for a few months, the city of Oslo offered a $300,000 reward for the return of The Scream. (Madonna really gets the shaft in this story, because to most people, when compared with The Scream it's pretty worthless.) Well just last month an even better reward was offered - Mars, Inc. offered 2 million dark chocolate M&Ms for The Scream's return. According to Mars, that's about 40,000 bags of M&Ms, worth about $22,000 total. M&M's says the offer still stands, should the Oslo police decide to collect on it. I would if I were them - those dark chocolate M&Ms are dang good.

A few links for those who are interested: you can read my previous posts on Munch here and here. Check out the Munch Museum's website for a little more info on the paintings as well as some other Munch artwork. Go to the FBI's Art Theft website to see a list of their Top Ten Art Crimes, and go here to see what the crap dark chocolate M&Ms have to do with The Scream. Here's a hint:

The Great Stupa at Sanchi, India. Sandstone, circa 50 BC to 50 AD.

Today I want to get into some Eastern art, because Eastern art is super cool. And while art history books might make you think otherwise, not all good things come from Greece and Italy. Like mandarin chicken. Or Gandhi. Or, uh, bird flu. Plenty of awesome things come from our Eastern brethren. Fireworks, Toyota, DDR... you get the picture. So today's featured work of art is the Great Stupa at Sanchi, India. Wait a minute, you say - aren't stupas Buddhist? Yup. Wait again, you say - aren't Indians, like, Hindus? Yes, you are correct again. (You're so smart.) According to Wikipedia (which may not be 100% reliable, but is 100% free) about 80% of Indians are Hindus. (Wiki also says that that's about 900 million people - that's about three times the population of the US. That's not really important to know, I just think it's kinda cool.) Less than 1% of the current population of India is Buddhist. Wait again, you say - what the crap is up with that? Well hold on and I'll tell you.

While India has almost always been predominantly Hindu, there was a period during which Buddhism flourished, thanks primarily to Ashoka, a powerful monarch who converted and built Buddhist monuments all across India to spread the religion. Ashoka lived from 304 to 232 BC, and it is during this time that the stupa at Sanchi was originally built. It was rebuilt between 50 BC and 50 AD, and made about two times larger than it had been previously. It's now about 120 feet in diameter, and 54 feet high.













Let's talk a bit about stupas. As you can see, I've made you this fine diagram of the major parts of a typical stupa. (There are other, probably better diagrams available, but they're copyrighted, and not so colorful.) Stupas are essentially mandalas, or models of the universe. Now I'm not going to try to explain Buddhism to you, because I'm not nuts. I could write a book on Buddhism as big as the Oxford English Dictionary and still not fully explain it, so I'm just going to give you the basics you need to know to understand the Great Stupa. The main body of the stupa, or anda, represents the world mountain, which rises through the center of the Buddhist universe. The yasti, which rises through the top of the anda, symbolizes the axis mundi, the point at the center of the universe that connects heaven and Earth. The three stone disks on the yasti, called chhatraveli (or chatras for short) represent the three jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), the Dharma (the Law) and the Sangha (the monastic community). They're sometimes also called the Teacher, the Teaching and the Taught. (Pretend you're with me so far.) The yasti is surrounded by a small fence called the harmika. In Buddhist tradition, fences are used to gate off sacred areas. (That's why the entire stupa is surrounded by a fence.) The part of the stupa surrounded by the harmika is a square area that represents the domain of the gods. Finally, there are four gateways leading into the stupa called toranas, which are aligned with the cardinal directions.

Now this will sound funny, but you can't actually enter the stupa. The anda isn't hollow - there's no doorway leading inside. It's a solid mound of dirt, and contains relics of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. Basically, you go through a torana and you've entered the stupa. Buddhists worship at the stupa by circumambulating it. Circumambulate is a fancy word for "go around in circles." Muslims do the same thing at the Kaaba in Mecca. So you enter the stupa and go around it in a clockwise direction. Then you go up the stairs and do the same thing on the upper walkway. By circumambulating, you follow the path of the sun, and become in harmony with the universe.















Back to the Great Stupa. Sanchi is most well-known for its toranas. The toranas provide the main instructional areas, because they are covered with carvings of religious scenes and tales of the Buddha. Unfortunately this next photo is of the back of a torana, so most of the figures are backwards, but you can see the volutes (the spiraly things) on the ends of each of the three architraves (the horizontaly things). That's because each architrave represents a scroll - you unroll the scroll and you see the pretty stories inside. A lot of them depict major events in the Buddha's life, while some depict what are called jataka tales, or events from the Buddha's previous lives. (Remember, Buddhists believe you are reincarnated until you reach Enlightenment.)

One final note about the Great Stupa - it is carved with the names of over 600 people who originally donated to its construction. One-third of those are women's names. That's just kinda cool. Go girl power.














I'm throwing in this last photo because it's really pretty, and it shows you what the land surrounding Sanchi looks like. Speaking of girl power, these photos were all taken by Eileen Delhi, another wonderful person who posted her photos on Flickr for people like me to use for free. You can see more of her photos here. Thanks Eileen, you rock.

Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, by the Limbourg brothers, et al. Ink on vellum, circa 1410-1490.

Well I was browsing Wikimedia Commons today when I saw that they have an awesome collection of images from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. I don't speak French, but I'm told that translates roughly as The Very Sumptuous Hours of the Duke of Berry. Now let's start with some definitions so you know what I'm talking about.

The most important book in the early Christian church was, naturally, the Bible. In the days before the printing press, not many people could own Bibles because they were so expensive - it takes a lot of time and labor to copy an entire Bible, and make it all pretty with pictures and that fancy Gothic handwriting. (I don't know this from experience, but if you don't believe me, try it yourself and let me know how it goes.) So if people wanted to own a religious manuscript of some kind, they had to find something a lot shorter. So a new book was put together especially for the common, everyday church members: the Psalter, so-called because the only book of the Bible it contains is the Book of Psalms. Psalters contain a few other important things as well, like calendars and special prayers.

Well, people got tired of carrying around all the Psalms, so manuscript makers started leaving those out, and making books that just contained the prayers and the calendar. And they called it: The Book of Hours. (Ta da.) It's called the Book of Hours because the most important prayers it contains are the Hours of the Virgin, special prayers that are said throughout the day to the Virgin Mary. It also contains the Office of the Dead, a prayer that is said to help dead friends get through purgatory faster, and the Penitential Psalms, which are recited to help people resist temptation to commit one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Some Books of Hours were specifically designed for children, to help them learn to read. These books were given the nickname "primers," because the first hour that you were supposed to say a prayer to the Virgin was the hour of Prime (which was roughly around 6 AM).

Now that I done learned you about Books of Hours, let me tell you about the Very Sumptuous Hours of Jean, the Duke of Berry. Jean was a wealthy dude - his brother was French king Charles V. And Jean liked to collect books. He owned about 14 Bibles, 16 Psalters, 18 Breviaries, 6 Missals and 15 Books of Hours. (A Breviary is a special prayer book designed to be used only by the clergy, and a Missal contains all of the words of the Mass.) The Very Sumptuous Hours is regarded as the highlight of the Duke's collection. Now Les Très Riches Heures is a group collaboration - the best parts are credited to the three Limbourg brothers, Paul, Hermann and Jean. But all three Limbourg brothers died in 1416, before the book was finished. (They were probably killed by the plague.) So Très Riches Heures was finished by a bunch of other artists, primarily by Jean Colombe. (I guess back then everybody and their dog was named Jean.)

I'm not sure, but I believe the only part of the Sumptuous Book of Hours that was finished by the Limbourg brothers is the calendar - it's usually pictures from the calendar that you see in art history books, primarily the illustrations of the twelve months of the year. The picture I posted up at the top is the illustration for the month of September. Each monthly illustration shows people engaging in activities that were primarily done during that month. In September's picture, we see peasants harvesting grapes and carrying them into the Chateau de Saumur, a castle owned by the Duke.

The months are nice, but I think the rest of the book is just as beautiful, especially the pages with text. To the left is one of the text pages of the calendar. (This is the page for Janvier, aka January - you can see the illustration for Fevrier, or February, is on the reverse side.) Medieval calendars are pretty complex - this was made before the Gregorian calendar came along and made everything easy to understand. The text that is in the center column, the longest line, gives the names of all of the different religious holy days. Because this is a very sumptuous Book of Hours, the L bros could get really lavish and write all of the words in red and blue. In your standard Book of Hours, though, most of the days were written in black or brown, with red reserved for the really special feast days - this is where we get the term "red-letter day." (Pretty cool, eh? Share that with the next good-looking person you meet, and see how easy it is to score a date tonight.) I won't spend time trying to explain the rest of the calendar, but see that second column, the one that lists the letters A-G over and over again? Those are the Dominical Letters, and were used to tell what day of the week it was. For example, during the year 1410, the Dominical Letter was E, which means each day with the letter E next to it was a Sunday.

I'm going to throw in a few more random pages because I think they're pretty. If you think these pictures are cool, click on that "Wikimedia Commons" link that I've so helpfully placed in the bar to the right, search for "Les Très Riches Heures" and take a look at some of the other pretty pages. If you want to know more about the Book of Hours, visit the Hypertext Book of Hours, or find yourself a copy of Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, a great book by Roger S. Wieck that really explains all of this stuff well, and has some beautiful illustrations from books owned by The Pierpont Morgan Library.

This is a lovely picture of Christ in Gethsemane. (Yes, it's supposed to be that dark - this isn't just a bad photo.) I think the gold, especially the stars in the sky, looks really nice against the dark blue.












This image shows the Coronation of the Virgin, and really shows off the awesome, bright colors that were used. That blue is made from crushed lapis-lazuli - the color it makes is gorgeous, but it's also really expensive. (The Arena Chapel, painted by Giotto, also uses blue made from lapis.)






This last one is of Judas hanging himself. I mostly include it because I think the embellishment around the text is amazing. I suppose I also enjoy the fact that it's slightly grotesque.

Gardens of Glass: Chihuly at Kew by Dale Chihuly. Glass, exhibited May 28, 2005 through January 15, 2006.

Well today I reached into my big bag of art and decided to pull out a favorite artist of mine, Dale Chihuly. (I guess he was in the bag with the art.) Sorry, I'll try not to use an introduction as pathetic as this again. And it's sad that this introduction should be so pathetic, because Dale Chihuly is so totally awesome. Why is he so cool? Many reasons. First, he is from Tacoma, Washington. (Still lives there, I believe.) Second, he wears an eyepatch. (He lost vision in one eye in a car accident. Even if you'd lost your vision in one eye, would you have the guts to wear an eyepatch? I doubt it.) And third, he works with glass. He also has a great last name. I wish my last name was Chihuly. If you're curious about the pronunciation, it's "chi" as in chip, "hu" as in hula, and "ly" as in manly. Don't know why those words were the first examples to come to mind, but there you go.

I would like to go completely crazy with this post and show you everything Dale Chihuly has ever made. Instead, I'm going to restrain myself and focus on Gardens of Glass, an installation he did at Kew Gardens last year. That way, I can still pull out multiple photos and give you a better idea of the scope of his work. Kew Gardens (or Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) is located in Richmond, England, about ten miles from London. Chihuly designed a number of pieces for Kew, meant to compliment the surrounding plant life. All of Chihuly's work is very organic, which lets it blend into the gardens well. With some of his work, the only way to tell you're looking at glass and not a living plant is by the color. Chihuly uses really vibrant colors - they remind me of stained glass windows.

That first photo I posted is of Herons. Below is Thames Skiff.















It's really thanks to Chihuly's work that glassblowing is accepted as a museum art today. There's always been a big debate as to whether glassblowing should be categorized as an art or a craft, but Chihuly's work has been displayed in dozens of art museums. And since he's an American artist, you can currently find his work in 42 of the 50 states. (Apologies to Alaska, Idaho, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. I guess your states suck.) To locate the Chihuly exhibit nearest to you, go here.

Below is Walla Wallas (they're the bulbs floating in the background). Walla Wallas are actually a kind of sweet onion that's really popular in the Pacific Northwest. Walla Walla onion rings = delicious.















Next up is The Sun, followed by a detail shot that really lets you see the texture of the glass.



















To see more of Dale Chihuly's work, I highly recommend you check out his awesome website, which has hundreds of photos of his stuff. His site also has a lot of great videos, including one on his exhibit at the Kew. There isn't much dialogue, but you hear a little bit from Chihuly on why he chose the project, and you get to see some great shots of the gardens. You also get to see him and his awesome eyepatch.















Is that not amazing? It's so easy to enjoy Chihuly's work. You don't need to know his personal philosophy or spend a few hours trying to figure out just what it is that you're looking at and what it means. The first art exhibit I ever went to was of Dale Chihuly, and I don't remember thinking much except, "Oooh, look at the pretty colors." That was about a year ago. Ha! Just kidding. Though when I look at Chihuly's stuff now, that's still pretty much the first thought that runs through my mind.

Finally, I want to give a quick thanks to Simon Bisson, this dude who posted his photos on Flickr with a Creative Commons license. All of the pictures I've used today are his, because he was kind enough to share his photos with the world. You go, Simon. To see more of his photos, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbisson/. And for more info on Creative Commons, visit www.creativecommons.org. Remember, kids, sharing makes the world a better place.

The Nashville, Tennessee Parthenon. Reinforced concrete, 1921-1931.

Now that we've done the Parthenon, I thought I'd show you one of those bizarre tourist attractions that can be found only in America. We really have no great ancient art of our own, so we have to copy other people's instead. This is the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. A perfectly natural place for a full-scale replica of the Parthenon, don't you think? It is the world's only other Parthenon, and I suppose we can brag about the fact that ours is in better condition than the one in Greece.

So just how does Nashville end up with a Parthenon? Well, in 1897 Nashville hosted the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, a celebration of Tennessee's 100th birthday. Now for some reason, Nashville was known as the "Athens of the South." I have no idea why this is. I actually think it's pretty funny. You might as well call Phoenix the "Venice of the Southwest." But I digress. The point is, someone came up with the crazy idea to make Nashville even more like Athens by building a replica Parthenon in honor of the Centennial Exposition. And apparently a bunch of people thought this was a stellar idea. It was originally meant to last only a year, but Nashville's citizens loved their Parthenon so much that they decided to keep it. It was rebuilt as a permanent structure in the 1920s.

This is all pretty nutty, I know, so it comes as something of a surprise that Nashville's Parthenon is so accurate. Architects were sent to Athens to study and make measurements of what was left of the original Parthenon, and a lot of the statuary was made from casts of Britain's Elgin Marbles. Parts of the Parthenon that no longer existed were re-created from drawings made by French artist Jacques Carrey back in 1674 (before the unfortunate explosion wrecked the place). Really the only major difference between their Parthenon and our Parthenon is in the materials used - Nashville opted not to go for marble, and built their Parthenon out of reinforced concrete instead. Nashville's Parthenon now even has its own 42-foot sculpture of Athena.

Today the Parthenon is primarily used as an art gallery, although it also houses a gift shop and some office space in the basement. (I wish I worked under the Parthenon.) I highly suggest you visit this website at Columbia University, which offers a number of 360 degree views of Nashville's Parthenon, in case you can't make it there in person.

Sculpture of The Parthenon. Athens, Greece. Marble, sculptural decoration 438-432 BC.

Okay, I lied. I'm not done with the Parthenon. I wanted to abandon it, because there's so freaking much I want to say that I'll end up going nuts trying to do it, but I'm going to grit my teeth and do this thing. And it's all for you. I hope you're grateful. In fact, today I'm gonna have to pull out multiple photos - it's like Christmas in June!

So today, in as few words as possible, I'm going to tell you about the Parthenon's sculptural decoration. All of the sculptural work was overseen by Pheidias, one of the greatest sculptors of classical Greece. His greatest contribution to the Parthenon is probably the giant statue of Athena he made for the interior. This statue is also called the "chryselephantine" statue of Athena- people call it this a) to signify that it was made of ivory and gold, and b) to make everyone else around them feel stupid. The statue stood about 40 feet tall, and was so large that the dimensions of the Parthenon had to be altered to make her fit. She had a spear in one hand, a Nike (a goddess of victory) in the other, and had a helmet and a big old shield. You notice I'm speaking in the past-tense. Athena was looted by some emperor and taken to Constantinople, and it's there that she was destroyed. So no pictures of her.

The photo I've posted above shows what once was the location of two more important elements of the Parthenon: the pediment sculptures and the metopes. See, back in 1801 this Brit named Lord Elgin came to Greece and got special permission to make drawings and casts of the Parthenon, and remove some sculpture from nearby buildings. Well, Lord Elgin interpreted this as, "Help yourself, buddy!" So he basically looted the whole thing. Most of the Parthenon's sculpture is now in the British Museum - these pieces have been dubbed the "Lord Elgin Marbles." Naturally, Greece wants them back, but the Brits have refused. There was a really big effort to reclaim the marbles in time for the Athens Olympics, but no dice.

So, let me explain what is missing from this photo. The triangle at the top is part of a pediment - you remember pediments, right? I just talked about them yesterday. So some really nice work was sculpted and put into these pediments. Below is a photo of some of the surviving pediment sculpture (in the British Museum, of course). Believe it or not, these statues were originally painted, in really bright, pretty garish colors. Most traces of paint have been removed by restorers who thought they shouldn't be there, which is really a shame.












But back to the photo at the top. In addition to the pediment, you can also see where the metopes were. See those groupings of three lines? (I can't think of a better way to describe them, sorry.) Those are called triglyphs. Those squares in between the triglyphs? Those are the metopes. As you can see, they're pretty much gone, and what wasn't looted has pretty much been destroyed by acid rain. Below is one metope from the Parthenon that shows a fight between a Lapith and a Centaur. In mythology, Centaurs are horse-men, and Lapiths are sort of their distant cousins. This is a scene of a big fight the two groups got into while they were attending a wedding. Honestly. But then, weddings make me pretty irritated, too.



















And finally, we come to the Panathenaic Frieze. This frieze surrounded the exterior walls of the cella. This thing is bigger than you might imagine. It's 3 feet, 5 inches tall, and 524 feet long. It's not certain, but it's thought that the frieze represents the Panathenaic Procession, sort of a big parade that honored Athena and was held every four years. What makes this unique is that it depicts normal human beings - almost all Greek sculpture is of mythological figures or great heroes, not old Joe Blow walking down the street. Below is a photo of the frieze on display in the British Museum.















And that concludes my very short tour of the Parthenon. If any of this has piqued your interest, I suggest you go to Wikipedia, or find a book or something that gives you some greater detail.