250 Years Ago ... Celebrating the Founding of St. Louis at the Sheldon Art Galleries

On Friday night I attended the opening of a new exhibition at The Sheldon Art Galleries called Imagining the Founding of St. Louis.  This is part of the 250th birthday celebration which kicks off this month.

Of course there were no artists who traveled with Auguste Chouteau to the location of what would become St. Louis, hence the word Imagining in the title.  This exhibition consists of paintings, drawings, sculpture and artifacts depicting either the founding of St. Louis or the people (or groups of people) involved.

Some of the most interesting items in the exhibition are artifacts of the native Americans who lived in the area at the time:  Osage, Missouri and Illini tribes.  I was surprised by the items that came from the collection of the St. Louis Science Center.  I had no idea that the Science Center had these types of artifacts in their collection. Some of the artifacts were large. There was a shield belonging to Chief Black Dog of the Osage. 

One of the highlights of the exhibition (at least, for me) was an original page from Auguste Chouteau's handwritten memoir, lent by the St. Louis Mercantile Library.  This original document will only be exhibited during the first month of the exhibit because it is tremendously fragile.  But to see Auguste Chouteau's actual handwriting was thrilling.   A woman standing next to me seemed as awed as I was.   "It's in French?" she asked.   Yes. 

I also enjoyed seeing some of the rare books and maps that were displayed.  One of my favorite items was an early Christmas card from one of the Chouteau descendents that was sent in the 1800's that contained a depiction of the founding.

There are also a number of fairly large depictions that imagine the actual moment when Auguste Chouteau arrived to begin the building of the settlement.   The curator has helpfully included descriptions of where these depictions are and are not accurate.   They are very helpful in imagining The Moment as the exhibition calls it.  

The exhibition runs until August 23, 2014.   I recommend it.  But if you want to see the page from the Chouteau manuscript you need to get there this month.   There will be an Osage blessing of the exhibit on the actual anniversary date,  next Saturday, February 15, at 1:45 p.m.  And on that date, in honor of the actual birthday, the galleries will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.


*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.  

Tis the Season

Sorry for the radio silence around here.  The end of the year is always a little crazy for me.

In my free time I’ve been reading the Year in Reading series at The Millions in which writers talk about books they’ve read this year.  I like it because they don’t have to be new books, they just have to have been read this year.  So it’s a wide range. 

For instance, the other day Jenny Davidson (I haven’t read any of her books) posted and said that she’d read the entire Dorothy Dunnett Niccolo series and the Lymond series (which is a lot of reading) plus a lot of other books including War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  This woman is not afraid of long novels!   I figured if she liked Dunnett I might like some of the other books she liked.  I also thought I’d check out her blog but … sigh … she likes to post word count on the book she’s working on.

I’ve been spending most of my free time Christmas shopping and wrapping (yes!  Before the last minute!).  But I also found time to go to the Saint Louis Art Museum to see the current exhibition of the paintings of Joe Jones.  I had never heard of Joe Jones.  He was a local boy who became a painter back in the 1920’s and then eventually moved to New York.  During the depression he was one of the painters hired by the government to travel the country and then paint what he learned.  Here’s a link to an image gallery of some of his work.

At the exhibition we got into an interesting discussion about the fact that a financial crash and a great agricultural catastrophe happened more or less simultaneously.  Neither caused the other (as far as I know) but they both caused tremendous hardship. 

Some of his paintings were of very difficult social subjects:

In 1933, Jones turned his artistic sympathies to the suffering of the American people and declared his belief in Communism. Little escaped his barbs as he depicted lynch mobs, the Ku Klux Klan, homeless farmers and other working class struggles in paintings that attacked racial bigotry as well as religious and New Deal appeasement.

If you are in the vicinity over the Christmas holidays, it runs through January 2.

The day I went to the exhibition it snowed here and Forest Park was a winter wonderland.  A group of us met at The Boathouse for brunch where they had a big fire roaring.  We looked over the wintry lake scene and watched the snow blow around.  Then we headed up to Art Hill where the sledders were already congregating beneath the big statue of St. Louis, King of France.  It wasn’t a great snow for sledding – too dry – but that didn’t stop the kids.  The guards at the Art Museum had brooms for people to brush off their shoes as they came through the door and were very welcoming.  Considering the weather and the fact that a few of the lower galleries are closed because of the construction going on for the new wing, there were a surprising number of people there.

I liked the snow.  But then last week we got ice and that wasn’t so fun.  The streets weren’t bad because they already had de-icer on them for the snow but the walk from my garage to my back door was treacherous.  I few of my friends had slip and fall injuries.  We’re supposed to get “weather” later this week.  I hope it isn’t ice.

Don't be Fooled Again

Near the end of May, Errol Morris published a seven part essay in the New York Times called Bamboozling Ourselves (Part One is here) that is well worth reading. He discusses two new books that have recently been published about the painter and forger Han van Meegeren. He also uses van Meegeren's story as a jumping off place to think about a lot of interesting things including the concept of people letting themselves be fooled. Not uneducated, stupid people; people who should know better.

Here is Morris' synopsis of van Meegeren's story:

Shortly after the liberation of Holland, Han van Meegeren, a painter and art dealer living in Amsterdam was arrested for collaboration with the Third Reich. He was accused among other things of having sold a Vermeer to Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring — essentially of having plundered the patrimony of his homeland for his own benefit and the benefit of the Nazis. To save his skin — the penalty for collaborating was imprisonment or hanging — Van Meegeren revealed that the painting sold to Göring and many other paintings that he had sold as works of the Dutch masters were forgeries. He had painted all of them.

Not everyone believed him. The New York Times, in its 1945 story, said:

The director of the Rotterdam Museum said the prisoner was a fantasist who had a grudge against museums and similar institutions. A painting restorer in The Hague said that if one of the disputed works which he transferred to new canvas recently, “Pilgrims to Emmaus” [“Supper at Emmaus”] was indeed a forgery, then the painter must be considered a genius in that particular line.

To prove that he, indeed, painted the paintings he claimed to have forged, the authorities actually requested van Meegeren to do one more painting under their supervision. As Morris points out, this painting was not a forgery because he wasn't passing it off as anyone's work but his own.

The series of essays is thought provoking because part of what Morris discovered about forgeries is that it is not just the forger who is perpetrating the fraud; many other people are unwittingly complicit in the fraud because they want the story to be true. The customer wants the "discovered" painting to be real and most of the time doesn't even ask that it be tested. Sometimes the authenticator of the painting has his own agenda and wants the painting to be real. And, Morris meditates, this complicity occurs in frauds other than paintings.

The essay (and the follow up blog post More Bamboozling in which he responds to comments) is well worth reading.

But I found myself, in reading about van Meegeren and his trial, thinking about a work of fiction: Robertson Davies' What's Bred in the Bone. In Davies' novel, a Canadian painter working as an art restorer in Germany before the war is asked, as an exercise, to paint a painting in the style of an old master and to do it so that no one can tell it was painted in contemporary times. The exercise is meant to help him as an art restorer - the goal of a restoration to be as un-noticeable as possible. He paints the painting and it is judged a success. He also discovers that he loves painting in this old style and where he was only a mediocre modern painter he is very good at painting in the older style. But of course there is no market for that style.

The plot turns when he is forced to flee Germany during the war and the painting is left behind to be discovered after the war when art work stolen by the Nazis was being recovered. The "exercise" painting is identified by experts as an old master. The Canadian painter does not step forward to reveal the truth but in staying silent he dooms himself to never paint again. At this point in his life he cannot bring himself to paint in any other style and he knows that any painting he does will be too revealing.

One of the questions the novel explores is whether the painting, which is judged a masterpiece when it is thought to be hundreds of years old, is not a masterpiece when we know it to be only 50 years old. What is it that makes a work of art a masterpiece?

Curious about some of the similarities in the stories I did a little quick and dirty research on Davies' novel and discovered that, indeed, the story of van Meegeren was in Davies' mind when he was writing the novel and one of the characters is indeed based on van Meegeren. Davies' alludes to the question that van Meergen asked at his trial: "Yesterday this picture was worth millions of guilders. Art lovers from around the world paid money to see it. Today it is worth nothing and people would not cross the street to see it for free. It is the same picture. What has changed?"

Morris says that it is the change in provenance that matters. Davies thinks it is the fact of fallibility that changes the perception of the art. Davies says that fakes scare us because experts "of all kinds are our modern priests and we want to think them infallible."

Morris is fascinated by the idea that high priests can be fallible. He isn't interested in the common man but in people who should know better and who allow themselves to be fooled. As Morris writes in Part Five of his essay, we see what we want to see despite masses of information to the contrary:

We live with a glut of information. More information than ever before. And yet, we see so very little. The same human mechanisms that operated thousands of years ago still operate today. If we don’t wish to know something, if we prefer to believe something that’s false is true, there is little that prevents us from doing so. Invariably, we prefer fantasy to the truth.

As part of his essay, Morris interviewed the authors of the two new books and then followed up with e-mails. One of them, Jonathan Lopez, e-mailed the following:

We now live at a time when a lot of smart people have fallen prey to expertly packaged lies … I think that the Van Meegeren story has unusual resonance at this particular moment for that reason. I think, actually, that this is why we have two books coming out on this subject at the same time. There’s something false in the air.

Ultimately, I believe that it’s extremely important to understand how reasonable people can be led into misjudgments — even truly awful ones … That’s why I ended “The Man Who Made Vermeers” with Göring’s quote to Gustave Gilbert at Nuremberg.

Morris gives us the quote from Göring:

Why, of course, people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war… That is understood. But it is the leaders of the country who determine policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along… The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

It is to the complicity of the collective that Morris finally turns in his essay, raising questions about the Dutch population during the war and what he calls the Alice in Wonderland like aspect of the accounts of what happened that were written after the war.

As I say, it is a thought provoking essay not only about art but about life. I recommend it.

So, you've always wanted to be an artist ...

The brain is an amazing organ.  49 year old Alan Brown had a stroke.   Here's what happened:

...Brown was still recovering from his surgery when he realized that his doodles, once limited to stick men, had become strikingly more realistic.  Brain surgery can cause significant changes in behavior and abilities. Luckily for Brown, his change was for the better. He began painting (examples of his work can be seen here) and eventually quit his day job to open a gallery, where he displays and sells his art.

His art is dark.  But definitely not stick figures.  Click that link and see.

Sunday in the Park

I spent this evening in Forest Park, a 1,293 acre jewel in the heart of St. Louis. Larger than Central Park in New York, it is the area of St. Louis that was the site of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

For a few weeks each May/June it is the site of, among other things, the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis which this year is presenting The Merry Wives of Windsor. More on that in a later post perhaps.

For those who live in urban areas there is nothing better than spending time in a park. It is a time honored tradition. As I looked at the Sunday crowd gathered in the park I was reminded of Georges Seurat's famous painting that now hangs in the Chicago Art Institute: Sunday on the Island of La Grand Jatte. Here is is:

This little reproduction doesn't do it justice. It is a HUGE painting and it is composed of millions of tiny little dots of color. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off there is a scene at the Art Institute that involves this painting and shows the detail:

It is possible to stand in front of the painting and imagine all the people in it as they were in real life when Seurat took his sketch pad to the Island on a summer afternoon and watched the people of Paris taking their leisure. Stephen Sondheim imagined it so well that he created an entire musical theater piece, Sunday in the Park with George, out of it. And that seems appropriate too because whether it is Shakespeare in the Park in New York or the Shakespeare Festival here in Forest Park, the tradition of gathering in parks, under the trees, for music and theater is also a time honored tradition.

Twilight Sounds

Last November I viewed a traveling exhibition of American Abstract Expressionism that was briefly at the St. Louis Art Museum. I wrote about it here. One of the works I really liked was called Twilight Sounds, painted by African American artist Norman Lewis. I included an image in my post, click through to see it.

Time Magazine art blogger Richard Lacayo also likes that work. He uses an image of it in his recent post Art Goes to the Obama White House. According to Lacayo

... First Families are free to choose whatever works they like for the White House residence and offices, including the Oval Office. As for the public areas, the president and his family can make proposals for what to show there, but those have to be approved by the White House curator and something called the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, which sounds like it was formed to protect the place from Damien Hirst's shark. Works can be lent by museums, galleries or private collectors, or drawn from the 450-piece White House permanent collection. When a president leaves office, the loans are returned.

So those are the rules, and within them you more or less express your tastes, though obviously with an eye to whatever political statements your tastes are making. So choosing a painting for the White House is a bit like picking a justice for the Supreme Court, except that it doesn't have to go through a Senate confirmation hearing.

The Obamas have been choosing works over the last few months and have been choosing many abstract and modern works including works by minority artists.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The Obamas are sending ripples through the art world as they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House. In a sharp departure from the 19th-century still lifes, pastorals and portraits that dominate the White House’s public rooms, they are choosing bold, abstract art works.

Lacayo approves of this and even makes a suggestion. It seems that Lacayo saw the same exhibition that I saw and was also struck by Lewis' painting. He recommends that the Obamas look at Lewis' work.

If the Obamas are interested in work by African-Americans and abstractionists, Lewis would be somebody worth a look, if they haven't been tipped to him already. (And I shouldn't have to say this but just so we're clear — I have no connection to — and have never even spoken with — any gallery owner, collector or even any curator who has any connection to Lewis or his work.)

I agree.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve my dad's extended family gathers together. It's the only time all year that we all try to get together. Sometimes it happens for graduations and weddings and other big events, but not always. But everyone tries to get to Christmas Eve. Not everyone is successful. This year my cousin Mike won't make it in from California and, since he's one of my favorite cousins, I'll miss him. Every once in a while one of the teens or college kids has to work and can't make it. But mostly everyone is there.

My dad came from a family of seven kids. Six of them are still alive. Two of them didn't have kids - my Aunt Muggs became a nun and my Aunt Kathy never had any kids. But the other five had kids (me, my sisters and cousins) and now our generation has its own kids. And last year one of my cousins' daughters got married. I think there are about 45 of us if no one brings dates.


A long time ago we started the tradition of having mass together in the home. My dad and his brothers have strong connections to the Jesuits and there were priests who were friends of the family willing to come celebrate mass with us. Most people show up for mass, even those who have fallen away from religion. That's because it's low key and ... nice. And how can you go wrong with the story of the nativity?

There is so much about the story of the nativity that I like that has nothing to do with religion. For one thing, it is timeless. A pregnant young woman. Her husband is not the father of the child. But he is a good man who is committed to the relationship and willing to raise a child that is not his own. They are subject to a governmental bureaucracy that doesn't hesitate to put ordinary people to a great deal of trouble for purely administrative reasons. They encounter travel problems: too many people traveling all at the same time, leading to the ancient equivalent of being stuck in the airport. The wife goes into labor at the most inopportune time but delivers a beautiful, healthy child. And although they are far from home, the couple is surrounded by nice people - ordinary working people who take time out of their days to come by and offer their congratulations and assistance.

And from a spiritual sense, I like the message. Salvation doesn't come in the form of a powerful being who solves all your problems. It comes in the form of a helpless person who needs you to help solve his or her problems. What is the most helpless type of person in the world? A newborn baby. In my opinion, Joseph is the hero of this story because he epitomizes the message. He volunteers to become responsible for this little baby and his mother - two people in need. And like many people who spend their lives helping those in need, the spotlight often misses Joseph. He's not center stage - he's off to the side.

I always think it is a story that can be appreciated for what it is even if you don't believe in it as a religion. And during this Christmas season I honor all the people in the world who help the helpless - especially men who take care of children, their own and other people's.

Anyway, here is my favorite painting of the beautiful story of the nativity. The artist is Hugo van der Goes. The painting hangs in the Uffizi in Florence. The thing that I particularly like about this painting is that almost all the people in this painting have stylized faces and look vaguely similar -- except for Joseph and the shepherds. Joseph, as usual, is off to the side. Not in the spotlight. But Joseph just glows and, unlike Mary, he looks real. And the shepherds? Look at the shepherds. You can almost smell the sweat on them. They've come straight from work and after this strange interlude they will go back to work. See the looks on their faces. The curiosity. They've been told to come see something that will change their lives and what do they find? Not a great warrior. Not a liberator. Not Ed McMahon telling them they've won the lottery. But a little baby who couldn't possibly do anything for anybody. Here's a link to a larger version. Look at those faces.

It's a nice story. Mary Doria Russell said about her novel A Thread of Grace: "What I have written is not real, but I hope they will find it true." Whether or not we know or believe a story really happened, we can still find truth in it.

This and That

I'm still looking for suggestions in the post below.  While you think ...

• Sometimes you just need a holiday chuckle -- and this one is at someone else's expense.  But I can't help it, I lauged. If you need a laugh then click here to hear the worst ending to Handel's Messiah evah.   For those of us who have sung it many times ... it's one of those funny but thank god it wasn't me moments.  (h/t Inside the Classics)
• If any multi-millionaire was out looking for a Christmas gift for me, I hope he (or she) picked me up an original EH Shepard Winnie the Pooh Drawing.
• Majel Barrett-Roddenberry has died.  The computer is speechless.  And Deanna Troi is mourning.
• I'm thinking of making Cranberry Sorbet this weekend.  Unless I feel too cold.   My sister and I are baking cookies and I figure we'll need a palate cleanser.  Which reminds me that I need to dig out a cookie recipe for Toni's Cookie Exchange.
• As I sit here amidst ice and some snow, feeling very cold, I'm very jealous of my friends Meg and Adam who are spending six months in South America.  They were my inspiration for starting a blog in the first place.  But while they are now blogging in summer clothes, while drinking Argentinian wine and eating Argentinian steak, I'm in my bunny slippers and an oversized sweater shivering.   ::sniff::
• Haven't finished your holiday shopping yet?  Books make great gifts.  At least, that's what America's book publishers think.  And they've done a youtube that says so ( I particularly like Jon Stewart's reasoning):

Expressionism

On Sunday I went to see the current exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum which they call Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976. We rented the ipod audio guides that went along with the exhibition so that we could learn more about the art on display. Surprisingly the narrative turned out to be as much about Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, art critics from the time, as about the artists and their work.

The museum made clear that the exhibition was not intended as a survey of American Abstract Expressionism. It was, the web site proclaimed, "thesis driven". The works were chosen so that Expressionism could be re-examined taking into account the perspective of influential, rival art critics [Clement] Greenberg and [Harold] Rosenberg.

This is the second time in the last two years that I've gone to an exhibition and discovered the narrative was not about the artist. The first was an exhibition of Picasso in which the works were chosen to reflect the influence of the art dealer who promoted his work.

This exhibition took that tactic to a whole new level. One portion of today's exhibition involved no actual art works but instead displayed cases filled with art journals and magazines and even video of the chimpanzee from the Today Show creating 'art' back in the 1960's.

In magazines as diverse as Partisan Review, The Nation, ARTnews, and Vogue, Greenberg and Rosenberg wrote incisively about seismic changes in the art world, often disagreeing with each other vehemently. Their advocacy propelled the artists and their art to the forefront of the public imagination, and by the late 1950s, Pollock and de Kooning were virtually household names. Their reputations were cast not only in the rarified milieu of the New York art world, but also were well-known in the popular culture, thanks to the reach of television and publications such as Life magazine.

I suppose this is a valid way to look at art history. After all, many artists exist but few become famous. And talent alone will not necessarily lead to fame. One always needs a patron. But it was a bit disconcerting; imagine going to an exhibition of Michelangelo only to have the ipod tell you mostly about Pope Julius.

One small section that I found particularly thought provoking was a display about how abstract expressionism was attacked as un-American during the 1950's because it didn't reflect American "values". This seemed unfathomable to someone like me who is an advocate for freedom of expression. And yet, I found the counter idea that this work should be defended as VERY American equally difficult to fathom. Mostly because I doubt that most Americans like it or understand it.

The idea that art is representative of the values of the body politic seems misguided to me. Art is representative of the artist and, to a certain extent, the person who pays for the art. The art of David should not be seen to represent French peasants but certainly might represent the views of the existing French government who paid for the works. Likewise, it seemed to me that this art represented the artists who created it and the art "kings' of the day - Greenberg and Rosenberg. But certainly not "America". Only if all of America was buying it could it approach being representative of "America" and maybe not even then.

I'm glad that I went, although Expressionism is not my favorite type of art. I tend to feel that an art form that still needs lots of explanation 60 years later has some inherent problems. And although it was interesting to hear about Greenberg and Rosenberg's theories of modern art, I still feel that there is a bit of PT Barnum behind some of exclamatory adulation of this type of modern art. I liked the stories of the artists who refused to care about Greenberg and Rosenberg's criticism even though I didn't necessarily like the art they created. Like them, I reserve the right to ignore the critics and like what I like. And dislike what I dislike even if the critics tell me it is a masterpiece. But even when I don't like something, I'm always willing to learn about it.

I hesitated about finding some images for this post because reproductions don't really do this style of art justice. After all, a digital image of the black-on-black painting is likely to come out as just ... black.

But here's one from the exhbition that I really liked called Twilight Sounds, by American artist Norman Lewis, from the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum - you should go see it in person:

Mr. Arnolfini

This painting by Jan van Eyck hangs in the National Gallery of London and is one of my favorites. It is famous, partly because it is one of the first wood panel paintings on which the artist used oil based paint rather than tempera (where the color is suspended in egg). Van Eyck layered on the colors so that it just shines. And, although it is an interior scene, the light from the window is pure.

It also is famous for the symbols in it.

The bride to be has placed her right hand into the left hand of her fiancé to symbolize their intention to wed. Some of the other symbols: a dog symbolizes love and fidelity, a pair of white slippers in the lower left symbolize the sanctity of marriage, fruits on the windowsill symbolize fertility and original sin, a candle burning in daylight acknowledges faith in God as well as his all-seeing eye.

And if you look closely in the convex mirror on the back wall you will see there is a third person in the room. Here's a link to a bigger version. Some say that the third person is van Eyck, the artist himself. In any event, on the wall above the mirror is an inscription in Dutch that says "Jan van Eyck was here. 1434." Although the woman appears to be pregnant, art historians say that this was simply the style of dress at the time.

The National Gallery acquired the painting in 1842. It now hangs in a place of honor in the new Sainsbury Wing. But before the new wing was built it hung in a small room in the original building. In 1991, during my first trip ever to London, I was wandering by myself through the National Gallery when I came upon that small room. I looked to my right and stopped in my tracks. "oh. my. god. I didn't know that was here!" I don't think I said it aloud, but I might have. I stood looking at it for a very long time hoping that the guard wouldn't think I was planning to steal it or harm it. It isn't very big (32 1/4 x 23 1/2 in) and you have to get very close to see the detail.

"Hello, Mr. Arnolfini," I said. "It's nice to see you." I feel as if I know Mr. Arnolfini, not like an old friend but as you know someone who is an important personage in your town. Certainly not someone that I would be on a first name basis with. This feeling comes from reading Dorothy Dunnett, a historical novelist who can make me feel like I am there (wherever there is) like no other historical novelist.

Her novel Niccolo Rising is set in 15th century Bruges, one of the principal trading cities of Renaissance Europe. The background for her tale of Claes, the dyeyard apprentice, is peopled with real life Renaissance merchants who were stationed in Bruges at the time. Merchants from all over Europe: Genoa, Portugal, the German Hanse, Florence ...

”And the Lucchese, with Giovanni Arnolfini and his long pallid face, who knew the Duke’s taste in silks and had a few private commissions worth a groat or two.”

It is just a mention. But enough to make an art lover pause. It isn't until 100 pages later that she confirms your suspicion. The apprentice Claes arrives at the house of the Lucchese merchant on an errand, with a bruised face.

Messer Arnolfini said, “My dear Claes! What have you done to your face?”

It was becoming, no doubt, a tiresome question. One might ask the same, if one were unkind, of Messer Arnolfini. It was twenty-five years since Jan van Eyck had painted that pale, cleft-chinned face with its hairless lids and drainpipe nose ribbed at the tip like a gooseberry. Giovanni Arnolfini, hand-in-hand with his future bride.

Well, Monna Giovanna , to be sure, still sported horns of red hair of a sort, but Meester van Eyck was dead, and Messer Arnolfini half-dead by the look of him. All that was the same was the convex mirror, though one of the enamels was recent, and the silver guilt chandelier overhead with its six candles burning politely.

Well, what do you know? That was van Eyck's Arnolfini.

That's why I love Dunnett. She introduces you to characters (major and minor) the way you meet people in real life. You may see them in a crowd, but you don't start to know the details about them until they really enter your life. Then, once you meet them, you feel that you know them well enough to say hello when you run into them in the National Gallery in London.

The Amber Room

One of my reading groups chose The Amber Room by Steve Berry as this month's book. A thriller set in Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia, Belarus and Atlanta, it involves the typical "ordinary man/woman" who gets caught up in a complicated situation including threats to their lives by professional killers.

I feel that I should review it, but all I can say is that I've read better thrillers. I'm usually able to suspend disbelief while reading these types of novels, but not this time. Maybe because the main characters were a judge and a probate lawyer. I've never liked novels with lawyers as main characters because I always notice the things that would never happen in real life. And if you are already noticing those things it's hard to suspend disbelief in the rest of the story.

But I did like learning about the Amber Room - the object that the characters in the novel are searching for. The Amber Room really existed. It was a room in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg with walls paneled in carved amber, backed with gold leaf and mirrors. The photo above is one of the few extant photos of the original Amber Room.

The Catherine Palace was looted by the Nazis during World War II and the Amber Room was dismantled and shipped to Germany. Many of the panels had originated in Germany and had decorated the walls of a room in Charlottenburg Palace in Prussia until the early 1700's. Friederich Wilhem I presented the panels to Tsar Peter the Great of Russia, who had admired them. Peter himself did nothing with the panels, but his daughter Elizabeth installed them first at the Winter Palace and then later at the Catherine Palace, where she brought in craftsmen to add to and enlarge them due to the scale of the palace. By the time she finished, the room contained six tons of amber.

The Amber Room survived the Russian revolution and, like other tsarist palaces, the Catherine Palace became a museum. During the German invasion of World War II, the museum curators covered the panels with wallpaper in the hope the Nazis would overlook them. That didn't work.

German soldiers disassembled the entire room and transported it to Konigsberg. At the end of the war Konigsberg was heavily bombed by the allies. Some people believe the Amber Room was destroyed in the bombing. Others believe that the panels were moved, along with many other art treasures, before the bombing began. But whether it was destroyed or hidden, the Amber Room has never been seen again.

Treasure hunters continue to search for the Amber Room. In my googling I found a news story from February 2008 involving a search for the Amber Room.

In the meantime, helped by a large grant from a German company and utilizing the few black and white photos in existence, beginning in 1979 the Russians began to recreate the Amber Room at the Catherine Palace. In 2003 the recreated Amber Room was dedicated by Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder as part of the 300 year anniversary of St. Petersburg .

Here is a portion of the recreated Amber Room:


To get more information you can either read the novel or check out the wikipedia.

(Original photo from alexanderpalace.org. New photo from amberjewelry.com)