News
Centuries-Old
Dutch Renaissance Faces Make Hilarious New iPhone Emoji
There’s a
real art to finding the perfect emoji, image, or GIF to respond to a text. And
for Molly Young, there is no better source than early Netherlandish portraits.
“If you
can find a person in a Breugel painting who reflects your current mood, it’s
very satisfying,” says Young, a copy director at Warby Parker and a writer.
“They’re just so much more expressive than these little yellow smiley faces.”
Young is
now sharing that unique sense of satisfaction with a new iOS app called Rejoinders, which she created with her partner
Teddy Blanks, a founder of the Brooklyn-based design studio CHIPS. The idea for
the app was seeded when Young became obsessed with the strangely mature face of
a baby in a 16th century painting after seeing it up for auction at Sotheby’s….
Complete
article and images:
Medieval
and Renaissance Study in Italy
The University of Arkansas Rome Campus and the
Medieval and Renaissance Program are offering two opportunities to study in
Rome in 2017.
During Summer Session 2, students can take two
3000-level courses for a variety of humanities credit. During fall semester,
students can enroll for 15 (or more) hours of credit.
For more information contact professor William
A. Quinn, director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 575-5988,
wquinn@uark.edu.
Scarborough
Renaissance Festival
Scarborough Renaissance Festival® has announced
that Barbara Geary has been named its new Entertainment Director. Barbara
will take over the reins of Entertainment Director in January, 2017 in
anticipation of Scarborough’s 37th season.
Ms. Geary has an extensive background within
the Renaissance Festival community including tenures at Sterling, Colorado,
Maryland, Kansas City, Texas, Pennsylvania, Sarasota and Florida Renaissance
Festivals along with a performing stint at Scarborough. In addition
Barbara has a tremendous background in performance, teaching, directing,
costuming, stage production, film & television and theater
management. Barbara is also a talented artist.
From
the The Advertising Specialty Institute:
From August through October, Mount Hope Estate
& Winery in Manheim, PA, transforms into an Elizabethan-themed village.
Each season, the grounds come alive with jousting knights, serenading
minstrels, parading royalty, traditional artisans and thousands of visitors
cloaked in period costumes.
It’s the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire – one
of the many large Renaissance festivals that provide fantasy fun for revelers
and opportunity for distributors.
Fairs that run for at least two weekends or
more are found across the country. The Texas Renaissance Festival in Todd
Mission, TX, the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha, WI, the Northern
California Renaissance Faire in Hollister, CA, and the Florida Renaissance
Festival in Deerfield Beach, FL, are just a few of many similar standout
events.
There’s certainly a great chance you can find a
festival in your neck of the woods as well – and at all times of the year
depending on your locale.
And that’s good news, as this entertaining
niche harbors ample sales potential. To maximize the possibilities, try the
following:
Provide Fair Swag:
Attendees often want to buy fair-branded
merchandise. Be the one to provide these items. T-shirts and drinkware like
pint glasses can prove popular. So can more historically-themed quaffing
vessels: This past season, for example, the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire had
ceramic ale mugs and chalices for sale, as well as cool T-shirts.
To get the orders going, head to festival
websites and do some social media searching to identify organizers. After
making contact, consider creating virtual samples that show unique artwork that
ties into the themes and performance storylines of the festival.
Connect Merchants With Branded Gear:
Festivals typically host a variety of merchants
and artisans selling everything from clothing, candles, jewelry and scents to
pottery, paintings, woodcrafts, glasswork, toys and more. All are potential
clients.
Possible products include eco-friendly totes,
gift boxes and branded gift-with-purchase items that relate to the character of
the business. Retailable items are an option, too. A candle maker, for
instance, might want to sell organic cotton T-shirts and lighters or matches
that bear the business’s branding. Remember, also, that festivalgoers spend a
lot of time outside at what can be crowded events. As such, inexpensive
giveaways like sunscreen, lip balm with SPF and hand sanitizer can win vendors
points with attendees.
Help Performers Build Their Audience:
Festivals directly employ staff that can
include performers, but there are also independently contracted performers that
range from musical groups to acrobats who delight crowds. Attempt to turn the
contracted acts into customers. For instance, a band specializing in Irish
music may come to perform at Celtic-themed weekends. Seek to provide such an
act with concert-style merchandise like tees, vinyl stickers, pub caps, buttons
and even tech items like earbuds...
Complete article:
Past Faires
Alabama
Renaissance Faire
The Alabama Renaissance Faire took place Oct.
22–23..,
There were several new features this year, such
as archery, group participatory dancing and a medieval woodworker…
Visitors
had a chance to shoot a crossbow and two or three long bows made in
medieval fashion.with blunt arrows of course,” Warren said.
Visitors also had the chance to buy handcrafted
items made out of iron while people watch
They Faire’s standard features included Kazoky,
performing their sword fighting routine…
Complete article
Also see:
Also see:
Maryland
Renaissance Festival
Article and Video: http://tinyurl.com/jmnql75
Pennsylvania
Renaissance Faire
Video:
SCA
Knights
in shining armour strive with sword and shield
Picture a meadow ringed with bright pavilions,
with pennons flying overhead. Noble lords and ladies watch the center of
the meadows, where knights in armour strive with sword and shield.
Minstrels play lutes and harps, singing songs of love or battle…
The SCA is an international non-profit
educational organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and
skills of pre-17th-century Europe. The SCA’s “known world” consists of 19
kingdoms, with over 30,000 members residing in countries around the world.
Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events
which feature tournaments, royal courts, feasts, dancing, various classes,
workshops, and more….
The arts and sciences brings authenticity to
what members do in the SCA. The clothing they wear, the encampments they sleep
in and the items they use…
Rapier was a form of fighting that came about
in the later years (about late 1400’s) and was more of a courtly style of
fighting, and is more comparable to the Three Musketeers. Unlike armoured
combat, it’s fought to the touch and is not based on force. It is fought with
steel swords and is based on honour and chivalry. Like armoured combat, a
winner is decided between the fighters not a judge and there are tournaments, small
wars and large wars to participate in...
The Shire of Ramsgaard will be holding
celebrations and competitions in 2017 in Barriere at the North Thompson
Agriplex on Apr. 28-30, and Oct. 13 - 15. Find out how you can join and
participate by going to: http://ramsgaard.wixsite.com
Complete article and picture: http://www.starjournal.net/ourtown/397542191.html
ARMA -
Association for Renaissance Martial Arts
…A study
group meant to delve headfirst into the age-old tradition of swordsmanship and
sizzling prizefighting, ARMA is unique in its ability to blend practical
application with verifiable study of the topic.
“It is
the study of the fighting arts of the Renaissance and late medieval Europe,”
said study group leader Ben Morgan. “We aren’t a live-action role-play group or
a cult — we have materials that we study and techniques that we develop.”
The
Medieval Art of Swordsmanship, a textbook of sorts, is according to Morgan the oldest
complete manual showcasing the skills of age-old knights...
The edges
and points of the metal swords used by ARMA have been dulled for the safety of
members and any possible bystanders, though the capacity for injury still
remains.
Morgan
demonstrates elements of the combative stances, holding his tools as he would
in preparation for a sparring match — in one hand a sword, and in the other a
small shield known as a “buckler.”
“Most of
the time, when people think of a shield, they think of this big frame for
blocking,” he said. “A buckler is meant to be used as a weapon as well — it’s
really just a big metal fist...”
Group
members meet every two years in Houston for their ARMA International
conference, where members from around the globe come together to appreciate the
history and the romantic culture behind an art form largely lost to time.
“The last
one was in July 2015,” Morgan said. “So the upcoming event should be at that
time in 2017.”
Morgan
added that the group does its utmost to stick with the same methods and tactics
that were used hundreds of years ago, though it does alter certain aspects of
the martial art.
“The only
real deviation is the head and facial protection that we use,” he said. “Even
the swords that we use are exact replicas of the ones used in that time, weight
and everything.”
Complete
article: http://www.dentonrc.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20161030-group-practices-europes-martial-arts.ece
Renaissance Faire People
Nigel
Sade and Sarah Wilkinson
Head east through the grounds of the Texas
Renaissance Festival, past the King's Arm Feast Hall, and you'll walk past a
little cottage whose walls are adorned with prints of intricately painted,
skeletal women and images of the Doctor Who Tardis swirling through space.
That's the booth of artists Sarah Wilkinson and Nigel Sade, who are the rarest
type of artists: the non-starving kind...
Artists are taught to wait to be discovered,
Sade said, not to forge their own business plan for commercial success – which
is what he and Wilkinson have done, through a combination of working with
licensed properties and selling original work, often by traveling to attend
conventions and events like renaissance fairs. This is their first year at the
Texas RenFest…
Wilkinson and Sade's art will be on display and
for sale every weekend of the Faire. Wilkinson and Sade will attend the RenFest
in person during the weekends of November 5, November 12 and November 26.
Complete article and pictures: http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/two-successful-texas-renfest-artists-who-dont-do-fairies-or-dragons-gasp-8899313
Lee
Freeman, Alabama Renaissance Faire
During Roundtable meetings of the Alabama
Renaissance Faire, it is a tradition to reserve a portion of the gathering for
trivia on that period of history.
As part of that, Lee Freeman, who has worked
with the Roundtable for years, often distributes a list of terms and
definitions pertaining to the Middle Ages…
The lists prompted Roundtable members to ask
Freeman if he'd ever considered compiling the terms into a book…
The book, "Medievalspeak," has
quickly become popular with fans of the Renaissance Faire, which was last
weekend.
The book is $11.99 with 50 percent of the
proceeds going to the Renaissance Faire. Freeman said it was important to him
to give to the event.
"We're a poor kingdom," he said
jokingly. "We could always use a little more in the coffers. And I really
don't care if I make money off this. If I break even, that's fine. If I don't
even do that, that's fine."
He said it is important to himself to educate
people about the Middle Ages…
The book mainly serves as a glossary of terms.
The pages aren't numbered but the phrases are alphabetical. Freeman said when
he turned in the document, it was a Microsoft document that was 70-80 pages,
with about 15-20 terms and definitions per page.
"It's mostly medieval terms, but also
includes saints from during that time who were important to the church,
different parts of armor, terms dealing with jousting, and fashion of the
day," he said.
John Givens, a volunteer with the Renaissance
Faire, posed in a plate armor harness and also allowed other aspects of his
collection, such as various swords, to be photographed for the book. …
Complete article: http://www.timesdaily.com/news/local/book-describes-renaissance-terms/article_bb9820de-32eb-51f4-9bd6-35596015eff1.html
Art
The
Botticelli rooms at Florence’s Uffizi gallery have reopened
The Botticelli rooms at the Uffizi gallery in
Florence have just reopened to the public after a $1m renovation. With better
lighting, air quality and visibility, the new spaces show off works from one of
the greatest artists of all time in a whole new light…
The renovations give more breathing space to
all the works featured in the seven rooms, including pieces such as Primavera
and the Portinari Triptych by Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes, both of which
visitors will have a better view of, and can really take their time to study.
The galleries will also be getting a new
addition: an Annunciation painted by Botticelli for the Hospital of San Martino
in Florence’s via della Scala, which is nearly six metres wide...
Complete article and pictures: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/travel/article/botticelli-rooms-uffizi-florence-renovation/
Renaissance
Architecture
...When King Francois I of France invaded
Milan, he saw how the Renaissance culture had produced great works of art with
humanist views of life and individual encouragement. He brought many Italian
artists and architects back to the Loire Valley to work on his Chateau de
Chambord. Among those eager to go was Leonardo da Vinci — with his Mona Lisa in
hand.
Chambord was the largest chateau in the world
until Chateau Versailles surpassed it in the 17th century. It became a blend of
French Medieval and Classical Renaissance architecture. The interior layout was
an early example of grouping rooms into self-contained suites. The centerpiece
was a spectacular, open, double spiral staircase that ascended three floors
without ever meeting, and was illuminated from above by a light house, of a
sort. The chateau was surrounded by massive formal gardens, mostly edible, and
fountains.
Without any symmetry in mind, 11 types of
towers and three types of chimneys were built and framed by four massive towers
at the corners. King Francois wanted Chambord to look like the skyline of
Constantinople (written about in an earlier column)…
François was not the only king fascinated by
the Italian Renaissance. The first Tudor king, Henry VII, ushered in the
English Renaissance (and ushered out the Gothic era) but with more interest in
music and literature than art and architecture. It wasn’t until Queen
Elizabeth’s reign that the English Renaissance reached its height.
What about the great Renaissance cities of
Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Brussels in the north? They were actually under the
control of the dukes of Burgundy in France, so you could say they were part of
the French Renaissance. However, since they were not closely located to Greece
and Italy, they drew less upon Classical Antiquity and more on medieval
traditions like oil painting. They developed glazes (thin paint), which, paired
with the thickness of oils, were able to create texture, depth, and light.
These were perfectly suited to represent the material reality that had been so
important to Italian artists....
Two
Terra-Cotta Works Said to Be by Donatello and Verrocchio
The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo presented two
little-known 15th-century terra-cotta sculptures as the possible work of
Donatello and Verrocchio (with, perhaps, the help of Verrocchio’s erstwhile
assistant Leonardo da Vinci), proposed attributions that are expected to stir
debate in Renaissance art scholarship...
A bust was attributed to Donatello by the
Renaissance sculpture scholar Francesco Caglioti after a decade-long
investigation on stylistic and documentary grounds that was published in the
specialist magazine Prospettiva two years ago. He wrote that it was created by
Donatello around 1440, for the tympanum of a parish church in Borgo San
Lorenzo, north of Florence..
In the case of the terra-cotta relief, the
attribution is based on the strong similarities with a panel of the same
subject done by Verrocchio for the so-called Silver Altar, which was
commissioned by the cloth merchant’s guild for the Baptistery of Florence.
A comparison between the terra-cotta relief and
the Silver Altar, which are exhibited side by side, might help shed some light
on the question of whether Leonardo may have been involved in modeling some of
the figures, a hypothesis recently raised by some scholars...
Complete article and pictures:
Renaissance
Artifact Collections
At the beginning of the Renaissance, in the
16th century, aristocrats and scholars began to fill rooms with exotic
artifacts from far-flung territories — horns said to have belonged to unicorns,
brilliant red coral, animal skeletons, chalices made of silver or coconut
shells — often displayed among Old Master paintings and sculptures.
Over time, the practice of collecting items for
one’s “wunderkammer” (“cabinet of wonders”) became more and more elaborate.
Kings would gift extraordinary objects to other rulers to impress them with
their wealth, such as a windup automaton that poured wine or a boat carved of
gold and set with hundreds of precious stones.
Perhaps one of the world’s greatest
collections, which still exists, is the Green Vault, the treasure chamber of
August the Strong, which reopened to the public in Dresden in 2004 and contains
thousands of objects, from a cherry stone carved with over a hundred faces to
the largest green-hued diamond in the world.
In the last few years, wunderkammers, and the
objects found in these collections, have become exceedingly fashionable with
contemporary art galleries and collectors. A leading hunter and expert of
wunderkammer objects is Georg Laue of the Kunstkammer in Munich, a dizzying
Aladdin’s Cave of rare historic pieces. Among them: a Renaissance-era trunk of
carved ebony with secret drawers and a 17th-century automaton clock of a Moor
with a dog and a monkey. (When the hour strikes, the dog jumps.)…
Complete article and pictures
The
Art of Clara Peeters
The 200-year-old Museo del Prado in Madrid
unveiled its first exhibition dedicated to a female artist today, 25 October
(until 19 February 2017). The Art of Clara Peeters,,,
The modest one-room show reflects a slender,
scantily documented oeuvre. Born in the late 1580s in Antwerp, Clara Peeters
was a contemporary of the Jan Brueghel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony
van Dyck. She is named by a number of historical accounts as a painter based in
Antwerp, though she was not a member of the city’s official guild. Only 11 of
the 39 works attributed to Peeters are dated, the earliest of them to 1607 and
the latest to 1621. She was, however, a pioneer of the still-life genre—the
first artist to depict fish and hunting game as a main subject, according to
the Prado—who sold her paintings through dealers to collections in Rotterdam,
Amsterdam and Madrid. …
Complete article: http://theartnewspaper.com/news/news/it-only-took-200-years-prado-s-first-show-dedicated-to-a-female-artist/
The late Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist who
set his murder mystery "The Name of the Rose" in a 14th-century
Italian monastery, would have loved the Cleveland Museum of Art's new
Focus Gallery exhibition on its celebrated French Gothic table fountain…
Standing slightly over a foot high, the table
fountain, made largely in gilt silver with colorful panels of enamel, is a
delicate, glittering mash-up of a Gothic cathedral and a Crusader castle
configured in several tiers with pointed arches, finials, crenellated
battlements and gargoyles…
Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures
Boxwood prayer beads, rosaries and miniature
altarpieces made in Northern Europe during the early 1500s demonstrate the
limitless potential of human artistic practice. These tiny masterpieces, small
enough to fit in the palm of the hand, depict complex scenes with elegance and
precision. Without fail, they inspire viewers to ask how a person could have
possibly made them, a question that can only be answered today. The Art Gallery
of Ontario (AGO) has joined forces with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to focus on these spectacular objects.
Debuting in Toronto on Nov. 5, 2016, Small
Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures, for the first time brings
together more than 60 rare boxwood carvings from institutions and private
collections across Europe and North America. The exhibition offers new insight
into the methods of production and cultural significance of these awe-inspiring
works of art. Highlighting the cutting edge technology used by curators and
conservators in their search to understand these miniature sculptures, the
exhibition runs until Jan. 22, 2017.
The Thomson Collection of European Art at the AGO
is home to the world’s largest collection of 16th-century boxwood carving. The
exhibition includes ten prayer beads and two miniature altarpieces from the
Thomson Collection, the study of which has been ongoing.
Featuring both boxwood miniatures and related
objects, several works in the exhibition have never before been seen in North
American venues. Originally owned by Henry VIII, the magnificent Chatsworth
Rosary (c. 1509–1526), makes its North American debut.
An online catalogue raisonné will provide
generations of students and scholars unlimited access to these intricate and
fragile works of art. Including the first ever comprehensive photographic
campaign of these works of art by AGO photographers, the catalogue will launch
in tandem with the exhibition allowing visitors the opportunity to view the
works in unprecedented detail. Featuring a discussion of how these works of art
were used, as well as technical analysis of their mechanics and design, this
extensive online publication will include essays written by leading scholars,
curators and conservators.
Following its debut at the AGO, the exhibition will
travel to New York to appear at the The Met Cloisters at The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Feb. 21, 2017, before travelling to the Rijksmuseum on June 15,
2017.
Renaissance
Maiolica: Painted Pottery for Shelf and Table
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
October 20, 2016–May 29, 2017
This exhibition of Renaissance maiolica from
The Met’s world-renowned collection celebrates the publication of Maiolica,
Italian Renaissance Ceramics in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Timothy
Wilson. As Wilson has written, “Painted pottery, at its most ambitious, is a
serious form of Italian Renaissance art, with much to offer those interested in
the wider culture of this astoundingly creative period.” This creativity was
applied to a vast range of practical objects. Renaissance Maiolica: Painted
Pottery for Shelf and Table explores the relationships among decoration,
function, and display so critical to maiolica and yet so different from those
of canvas or panel paintings of the same period. It includes tableware and serving
vessels, desk accessories, storage containers, devotional objects, as well as
sculpture, all made in painted and tin-glazed earthenware.
The maiolica tradition flourished from the 15th
to the 17th century. Italian potters transformed techniques that they owed to
the Islamic world into something entirely unprecedented, and in turn laid the
foundations for other tin-glazed pottery traditions in Europe. Renaissance
potters and pottery painters exploited innovations of the Renaissance
goldsmith, sculptor, and painter in what was a relatively humble medium. That
it was owned by the social elite of Italy testifies, however, to its artistic
value.
Renaissance Maiolica explores how the different
functions of painted pottery dictated the ways it was seen and decorated.
Groups of objects are installed in displays suggestive of their use. An
assembly of storage jars give a sense of a pharmacist’s shop. Among the tableware
on display are istoriato plates and dishes—their surfaces covered with scenes
from mythology and ancient history—from important services commissioned by
leading Italian families. The exhibition also shows maiolica-makers using
ceramic, glaze, and pigments to compete with other art forms, including a
Madonna and Child that imitates a framed panel painting. Also on view is a
stunning Lamentation sculpture that likely once functioned as an altarpiece. It
is the largest known example of sculptural maiolica to survive and has not been
on public view in recent years.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication,
Maiolica, Italian Renaissance Ceramics in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by
Timothy Wilson, with an essay by Luke Syson, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman
of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met. Timothy
Hugh Wilson is Barrie and Deedee Wigmore Research Keeper in the Department of
Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Professor of the Arts of the Renaissance,
and Professorial Fellow (Garlick Fellow) of Balliol College at the University
of Oxford. He has published widely on many areas of Renaissance art, including
metalwork, prints and drawings, iconography and heraldry, and is above all a
leading scholar of Renaissance ceramics, particularly Italian maiolica.
Also see: http://tinyurl.com/jb845tf
Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery
Victoria
& Albert Museum London
1
October 2016 - 5 February 2017.
Masterpieces
of English medieval embroidery from the V&A’s world-class collections are
reunited with works returning to England for the first time since they were
created 700 years ago, in the largest exhibition on the subject in half a
century. Due to the age and extreme fragility of these dazzling embroideries,
the show, which runs until 5 February 2017 at the Museum, is probably the last
time an exhibition of such scale will ever be staged.
Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces
of English Medieval Embroidery displays over 100 exquisite hand-made objects
associated with some of the most notable figures of the Middle Ages, from
Edward I and his Queen Eleanor of Castile to Edward the Black Prince and the
sainted martyr Thomas Becket. Latin for ‘English work’, the phrase ‘opus
anglicanum’ was first coined in the 13th century to describe the highly-prized
and luxurious embroideries made in England of silk and gold and silver thread,
teeming with elaborate imagery.
The
V&A holds the largest collection of these works in the world, and for the
first time, the exhibition sheds significant new light on the materials and
makers behind these sumptuous embroideries, both men and women, many of whom
were based in the City of London – medieval England’s creative hub.
From
the 12th to the 15th centuries, England enjoyed an international reputation for
the quality of its luxury embroideries, which were sought after by kings,
queens, popes and cardinals throughout Europe. The exhibition presents an
outstanding range of rare, surviving examples – both ecclesiastical and secular
– from this celebrated period in England's artistic production, to highlight
their exquisite craftsmanship and to explore the world in which these works
were created.
Magnificent
embroideries, the earliest a seal-bag dated to 1100 - 1140 made to contain the
seal from a foundation document of Westminster Abbey, are displayed alongside
related works in other media from the period, including panel paintings,
manuscripts, metalwork and sculpture to show connections in artistic
production.
Glyn
Davies, exhibition co-curator, said: “As
a historian, the opportunity to see all these objects, normally scattered
across museums and cathedral treasuries in Europe and North America, together
in one place is thrilling, and a privilege we are unlikely to have again. We
are grateful to all lenders who have generously agreed to lend works to enable
us to stage such an ambitious exhibition. Medieval England enjoyed an
international reputation for the quality of its embroidery. This exhibition
shows English art on a European stage.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a new
publication co-published by the V&A and Yale University Press. The book is
a complete introduction to the design, production and use of luxury
embroideries in medieval England.
·
A number of embroidery-focused events,
short courses and practical workshops complement the exhibition.
· The V&A holds the world’s largest collection of medieval
English embroidery, both on display in the Museum’s Medieval and Renaissance
Galleries and available for study by appointment at the Clothworkers’ Centre
housed in Kensington Olympia.
The exquisite attention to
detail in these embroidered works makes them not just impressive examples of
craftsmanship and luxury materials, but also vivid glimpses of life both in
reality and in the medieval imagination. From the grim torture of martyred
saints to a mother’s tender swaddling of her new-born baby, scenes are depicted
with a meticulous precision that the sophisticated embroidery techniques made
possible.
The
exhibition explores the different phases in the technical, artistic and
economic development of English medieval embroidery across three centuries. One
of the most spectacular objects is the exquisite Toledo Cope from Toledo’s
Catedral Primada de Santa Maria, which has returned to England for the first
time since it was created 700 years ago. The piece is richly embroidered with
foliage, masks and birds, as well as the Virgin Mary and saints, some of whom
are shown trampling their tormentors.
Some
of the earliest embroideries from the period survive today because they were
interred during the burial rites of bishops and abbots. Highlights of these
include an embroidered vestment associated with Thomas Becket, as well as other
masterpieces produced for his friends and successor bishops at Canterbury.
Becket’s imagery was disseminated widely, and the exhibition showcases some of
the earliest examples demonstrating the popularisation of the Becket cult. The
sumptuous Hólar Vestments depicting Icelandic saints, originally from the
Cathedral church at Hólar in Iceland, are early examples of foreign bishops
obtaining embroideries from England and travel from The National Museum of
Iceland. Objects on display include stoles, maniples and episcopal stockings.
The
exhibition also explores Westminster and the Royal Court between 1250 and 1325.
Art produced at court during this period was incredibly influential. Treasures
from the V&A’s collections, such as the Clare Chasuble, commissioned by
Margaret de Clare, a member of one of England’s most powerful families, shows
that wealthy women were also active patrons of work of this kind. The V&A’s
richly-worked Jesse Cope depicting the Tree of Jesse – a vine springing from
the body of Jesse, and sheltering prophets and ancestors of Christ –joins an
intricately-decorated cope adorned with statuesque saints and angels from the
collections of the Vatican Museums in Rome.
The
heart of the exhibition focuses on the monumental embroidery created in the
first half of the 14th century, when English embroidery achieved its greatest
popularity and status in Europe. On display are some of the most complex and
ambitious copes (ceremonial cloaks) ever made for use in church services. The
Daroca Cope, which portrays scenes from the Creation of the World and Fall of
Adam and Eve is one such unique survival, as Old Testament iconography was
rarely depicted in English medieval embroidery. The cope has travelled to
London from Madrid’s Museo Arqueológico Nacional.
Although
documents show that many embroideries were made for secular use at the time,
very few survive today as they were either worn out or became unfashionable and
were discarded. On display are a few precious survivals, some of which are
linked to Plantagenet kings of England, including part of a luxurious red
velvet horse trapper probably made for Edward III’s court from the Musée de
Cluny in Paris. An embroidered tunic worn by Edward the Black Prince, renowned
for his role in the defeat of the French army at the Battle of Crécy, also
features, on loan from Canterbury Cathedral. Also on show are embroidered seal
bags linked to English monarchs, including Edward I.
The
exhibition also explores the period from 1350 to the English Reformation of the
1530s. It considers the damaging impact of the Reformation on English
embroidery, which led to the destruction of many precious embroidered church
vestments. Those that survived were either altered to suit the new religious
requirements; were taken abroad or were hidden by Catholic families concealing
their faith. The growth of interest in medieval art during the 19th century is
also explored. The movement championed by the V&A led to the rediscovery of
opus anglicanum, admired for its quality and beauty. Here, a fragment of a
vestment revered as a relic of Thomas Becket displayed in a 19th century
reliquary case from Erdington Abbey brings the exhibition full-circle.
View individual pieces in the
exhibition here:
Music
Blackmore's
Night
Blackmore's Night: Ritchie Blackmore,
Candice Night, Earl Grey of Chimay, Bard David of Larchmont,The Scarlett
Fiddler, Lady Lynn, and Troubadour of Aberdeen...
Night was working at a local New York rock
music radio station. When she first encountered Blackmore she asked him for an
autograph. The two started living together in 1991. Both shared a passionate
interest in Renaissance music...
In 1997 the project started as being a pun of
their own names, which would consist of themselves plus session musicians.
Their debut album Shadow of the Moon was a musical success...
Over time, Night has increasingly participated
instrumentally as well as singing the vocals, and is competent in a wide
variety of Renaissance instruments.
The group performs internationally, mainly in
historical venues including castles theaters and opera houses for an audience
dressed largely in period costume...
Amy
Haworth - The Tallis Scholars
IT is hard to think London-based soprano Amy
Haworth has much free time in her schedule. The Cambridge University graduate works as a
chartered accountant for Deloitte LLP when she is not touring with British
Renaissance vocal music ensemble The Tallis Scholars.
In fact, her time management skills were tested
immediately when an invitation to fill in as a last-minute replacement for a
Tallis Scholars concert in 2005 came the same weekend she started back at her
office job after a two-year hiatus to concentrate on her singing.
“I hadn’t expected to be travelling as much as
I am when I asked for my job back, but I’m very lucky that they’re very good
about it,” Haworth said. I also happened to move into my new flat the same
weekend as my first Tallis Scholars concert as well.”
Haworth began singing in the church choir when
she was four, a natural development since her dad was the vicar and her mum the
choir conductor, and she continued from there.
“I’d always done a little bit of renaissance
music while growing up and when I went to university the director of music did
a lot of renaissance music,” she said. …
Haworth will tour Australia with The Tallis
Scholars in November, where a Perth performance at St Mary’s Cathedral will
feature collaborating with members of the Perth Chamber Choir for Spem in
Alium.
It will be her fourth trip to Australia, second
with The Tallis Scholars and first to Perth, where she is looking forward to
presenting another Thomas Tallis piece Suscipe quaeso...
Complete article:
Peter
Phillips and the Tallis Scholars continue their complete survey of Josquin's
Masses
As a Renaissance specialist I have always put
Josquin at the centre of my musical world. To have the opportunity to perform
any of his music is the greatest privilege, but his masses represent something
apart. In them he worked out – and perfected – his response to a particular
compositional problem: how to set the words of the five movements of the Mass
Ordinary, rather as Beethoven explored the possibilities in the traditional
movements of a symphony. Mass setting was central to all the composers of the
Renaissance period, and Josquin was determined to outshine everybody. He did
this by repeatedly coming back to the challenge – his masses come from every
period of his career - and by restricting himself more or less entirely to four
voices, to concentrate his technique. In these masses the greatest composer of
his age audibly matured.
I chose to record all Josquin's masses partly
because the Tallis Scholars have been associated with his music for their
entire career; partly because his masses make the best possible recording
project; and partly because 2021 will mark the 500th anniversary of his
death. Nineteen masses over nine discs is substantial but manageable, whereas
107 by Palestrina is not. And they represent something of an ultimate challenge
both intellectually and technically to any group of singers that wants to
perform Renaissance polyphony. The intellect is challenged by the often
mathematically-based writing – canons, augmentation, inversion and so on; the
technique by the unusually wide vocal ranges and unexpected stylistic twists
and turns, which were the result of a composer experimenting over 40 years. Yet
every Mass has its own individual sound world. And in that lay the excitement
of recording them all...
Complete, fascinating article: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/blog/gramophone-guest-blog/performing-josquins-music-is-the-greatest-privilege
Piffaro,
the Renaissance Band
Piffaro, the Renaissance Band based at the
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, opened its 2016-17 season Oct. 8 and 9 by
celebrating “The Musical World of Don Quixote,” the immortal character created
by Miguel de Cervantes in what is universally considered the first modern
novel. Published in two parts in 1605 and 1615 under the full title of “The
Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha,” the novel tells the picaresque
tale of a Spanish knight errant seeking adventure just as knighthood’s chivalry
was seen to be becoming a part of the past...
Brilliantly assembled by Piffaro’s Grant
Herreid, “The Musical World of Don Quixote” was the most ambitious and
successful concert I’ve ever heard Piffaro give. Not only was the playing and
singing both superb, but Herreid’s concept efficaciously projected not just the
title character as a man of great honor but his creator, Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra, to be the Spanish-language equivalent of William Shakespeare in his
ability to understand the most profound aspirations of the human soul as it
struggles to survive the trials and tribulations of life.
Herreid assembled and ordered “The Musical
World of Don Quixote” to follow in broad strokes the narrative of Cervantes’
novel. We began with “The Madness of Don Quixote” and “Don Quixote Becomes a
Knight Errant” and learned how he prepared his armor and steed, chose a lady,
sallied forth and chose his squire, experienced many an adventure, finally
experiencing “The Death of Don Quixote.”
Amid a plethora of purely instrumental and
often anonymous pieces, Herreid interspersed nuggets of gold composed by the
Renaissance’s leading lights such as Francisco Guerrero and Tomas Luis de
Victoria. Songs and dances filled in those broad strokes with telling details
of the life lived by Don Quixote and his fellow Spaniards, both happy and sad,
both boisterous and intimate.
The playing throughout the concert set and held
an amazingly high standard of polish and passion. The Medieval and Renaissance
instruments spoke in tart tones that were securely projected. But it was in
those works that featured the singing of New York Polyphony and soprano Nell
Snaidas when the concert’s finest music making was heard. Snaidas sang with a
palpable connection with and commitment to the texts of her songs...
Piffaro will return to Chestnut Hill for its
holiday program, “La Noche Buena,” Saturday, Dec. 17, 7:30 p.m., in the
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Visit www.piffaro.org.
Complete article: http://www.chestnuthilllocal.com/2016/10/20/renaissance-reborn-at-hill-presbyterian-church/
Trio
Mediæval - a female threesome from Norway
…The trio (whose concert was funded by
philanthropist Anthony B. Creamer) was heard at the so-called Portal to the
Cloisters section of Philadelphia Museum of Art, an arch dating back to
12th-century France, and with acoustics that, as one listener commented, seemed
to make the stones sing. Nearby tours unrelated to the concert were a momentary
distraction, but mainly, these superbly controlled singers - whose sound is
cooler and more precise than Anonymous 4 - achieved remarkable effects,
including the final notes of the hour-long concert that suggested the sound was
spatially receding into the distance.
Titled "Aquilonis: A musical journey from
Iceland to the Mediterranean," the program was drawn from the group's 2014
ECM-label album of the same title, with the group's trademark
three-voices-singing-as-one feeling more effortless and as articulate as ever
in a series of chants, carols, and folk songs, with much of the sacred music
associated with the 12th-century St. Thorlak. Words aren't projected as
specifically as in 19th-century opera, but Trio Mediæval - whose members are Anna
Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth, and Berit Opheim - have an alternative
sense of rhetoric.
Within the relatively narrow expressive range
of medieval music, the singers revealed worlds of details that follow their own
modal paths - one much freer than the codified major and minor scales of our
time - as well as subtle dissonances that constantly change the complexion of
the music.
The sound envelope was varied, with the singers
occasionally accompanying themselves on fiddle, chimes, and something called a
shruti box (sort of a prayerful hurdy-gurdy). The skillful sequencing had the
hushed English carol "Ecce quod natura" followed by the solo-voice
"Alleluia a newe werk," then giving way to a celebratory psalm
setting…
Complete article and beautiful picture:
The
Boston Camerata
Camerata's musical performances are well known
for their blending of spontaneity and emotional commitment with careful
research and scholarship. With its distinguished roster of singers and
specialists in early instruments, Camerata produces an intown concert series
for audiences in the Greater Boston area. The Boston Camerata also tours
regularly in the US and all over the world. These live performances present
vital, historically informed performances of European music of the Medieval,
Renaissance and Baroque eras, and of early American music, sacred and secular.
Upcoming concerts –see complete schedule here: http://www.bostoncamerata.com/blog/upcoming/
Puer Natus Est:
A Medieval ChristmasA glimpse of Christmas
spirituality from Medieval France, Italy, England, and Provence, including
music of the church and songs of private devotion around the joyous theme of
the Nativity. Included are songs to the Virgin Mary, processionals from Saint
Martial of Limoges, hymns, lyrics, and miracle ballads sung in Latin, Old
French, Old Provençal, and Saxon, interlaced with Medieval English texts of the
Nativity. The cast features an extraordinary trio of women’s voices with harp
and vielle.
In Dulci Jubilo:
A German ChristmasIn the European North, the
forests are deep; the nights are dark and long. Perhaps this is why, in
reaction, the early Christmas music of the German-speaking peoples is so
intensely joyful, so profoundly rich. Our program explores the marvelous music
of German Christmas festivity through chants and chorales, simple carols,
grandiose polyphony, and instrumental fantasias of the 15th to early 17th
centuries. This new program will feature the stellar Boston Camerata Wind
Ensemble and an expanded consort of voices and early instruments.
Treasures of Devotion:
Spiritual Song in Northern Europe 1500-1540 Music
of personal devotion from the early Renaissance, reflecting the spirituality of
homes, family circles, and small chapels in an age of intense religious
renewal. Prayers, songs, chants, including music for the Virgin, meditations on
the cross, and astonishing reworkings of the day’s popular melodies to sacred
texts by Josquin, Agricola, Compère, Senfl, Clemens non Papa, and others.
Daniel:
A Medieval Masterpiece Revisited This powerful,
highly-praised production returns to Boston in 2017 as part of a national tour.
The themes of justice, and of truth spoken to power, are once again front and
center as the Jewish captive Daniel confronts the tyrannical Belshazzar. The
magnificent musical play of Daniel, composed eight centuries ago in Beauvais,
France was newly transcribed from the original manuscript source and powerfully
staged for modern audiences by Anne Azéma.
History
Middle
Ages and Renaissance anniversaries
This year is a significant one for Middle Ages
and Renaissance anniversaries. It has been 1,000 years since the Danish
conquest of England in 1066, 800 years since the death of King John (of Magna
Carta fame) in 1216, and 400 years since the deaths of both William Shakespeare
and Miguel de Cervantes in 1616.
15
Same-sex Romances
of the Renaissance Era
Some of the greatest thinkers, artists, and
royals in European history had same-sex relationships.
The affairs of King Edward II have delivered
gossip fodder for centuries. The historical rumors get famously used (in a very
historically inaccurate fashion) for homophobic propaganda in Mel Gibson’s
Braveheart. But the true love of Edward’s life wasn’t a military adviser thrown
from a window. It was the first Earl of Cornwall, Piers Gaveston. King Edward
I, a.k.a. “Longshanks,” first assigned Gaveston to serve his son. But when the
relationship grew too close, Gaveston was exiled. After Longshanks's death,
however, Gaveston returned to “advise” King Edward II. Historians document a
tremendous love between the two men, though it’s one that ended when enemies,
upset at Gaveston’s preferential treatment, hunt him down. He was eventually
run through with a sword and beheaded...
Complete long, fascinating article and
pictures;
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