You may or may not know that Sondra and my intention, now that I am fully retired and she should be as well before summer, is to take a 3 week vacation, twice a year, in the spring and the fall. Soon after my 80th birthday, we plan on taking one week in London, one week in Paris and one week in Israel, where we plan to visit with Sondra’s family and our son, Kenny, living there.
Please note ~~ ‘plan on’ ~~ 90 y/o judge ~~ no longer buy green bananas — it’s implied in every sentence
Please note ~~ ‘plan on’ ~~ 90 y/o judge ~~ no longer buy green bananas — it’s implied in every sentence — works in WORD!
-Cambridge is a university city located approximately 55 miles north of London, on the River Cam. (The town grew up around a bridge over the river, hence the name.) The city is most famous as the home of the University of Cambridge, which was founded in 1209 and consistently ranks among the best universities in the world.
-Cambridge is at the heart of England’s high-tech ‘Silicon Fen’, (instead of ‘Silicon Valley’; both names describing lowlands but ‘fen’ is wet and marshy, thus more typically English). It contains industries such as software and bioscience and many start-up companies born out of the university connection. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus, located here, is one of the largest biomedical research clusters in the world and includes the headquarters of AstraZeneca.
-Cambridge is the home of some world shaking events. In 1848, a group of students wrote up the rules for a game they called ‘Foot — Ball’, (i.e., ‘soccer’). These rules became the basis for the most popular game on the globe. The first games were played in a grassy park, 4 blocks long, that is still called ‘Parkers Piece’. (We may be walking by Parker’s Piece on the way back to the station.)
-Today, mostly, we will expect to see on our tour an 800 year old history-soaked town that overwhelms us by the beautiful Gothic architecture that seems to be everywhere!
Garret Hostel Bridge
-This bridge is known to students as 'Orgasm Bridge' as the steep incline of the Bridge's arc gives to the cyclist upon the passing of its summit such a feeling as to resemble that of an orgasm.
Great St Mary’s Church —> [stop and play]
-The church has a close relationship with Cambridge University – in fact, it is still required that undergraduate students live within three miles of the church. Inside, you can enjoy the quiet atmosphere under wooden beamed ceilings.
King’s College Chapel —> -[stop and play inside the chaple]-
-King’s College Chapel was completed in 1531 during the reign of King Henry VIII, when the vivid stained glass windows were finally installed. Inside, look up at the intricate, lacy ceilings. Walk along the bold black and white marble floor to the altar, where you can view The Adoration of the Magi by well-known Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens.
-The Adoration of the Magi -[stop and play in front]-
-We now stand before “Adoration of the Magi”, a very large painting by the Flemish (or Belgium) artist Peter Paul Rubens, who completed it in 1633. It’s been around for almost 400 years and during that time passed through many hands. In 1959, it was purchased from a Duke’s estate at Sotheby's by a real estate magnate for a record price of one-quarter million pounds. Two years later he gave it to King's College, Cambridge.
-I’m now going to tell you what I think is an interesting story. It might take a little while, so I hope you’ll be patient and feel rewarded for your patience. This painting is part of an extraordinary coincidence, which directly involves Sondra and Arnold Rosen. You see, Rubens painted ‘two’ “Adorations of the Magi”, of which, this is the second. The first was painted 22 years earlier, and it was taken to Spain, where after a number of intervening events, including the owner’s ‘fall from grace” resulting in his execution, it was purchased by the Spanish King and ended up in the King’s palace; and of course, like most of the royal Spanish art collection, ultimately it found it’s way to the Prado.
-So coincidence #1, Rubens painted ‘two’ very large canvases with the same name. Coincidence #2, Sondra and Arnold visited the sites where these paintings hung, in the same calendar year! I would like to tell you that the Prado’s “Adoration of the Magi” was one of the 14 paintings that we selectively went to study to the exclusion of everything else. It wasn’t. But I have gone back and reviewed the map of our route through the Prado, and I can safely say that if we did not pause in front of it as we passed, we certainly stopped within one hundred feet. If the Prado painting were radioactive, we would have received a hefty dose of gamma rays; if it was a Wi-Fi router, we could have called home or at minimum, checked the market.
-With that introduction and your consent, I would like to give a brief exposition of both paintings, displaying them side by side and giving a very brief account of what they convey and how they might be contrasted.
-I now position my phone to show both paintings side by side, so we shall pause.
What follows is an ‘art lecture’ that can only be accomplished by sondra and I SITTING side by side with my phone propped up normally in front of us, with both painting displayed after starting the audio.
[Magi -2] -[stop, push play, display the ‘2 pictures’ image below]-
-Now you should see both paintings on my iPhone, with our present ‘Chapel version’ on top, and the earlier Prado version on bottom. The Prado painting is wider and dark, with grays and blues predominating. In contrast, the Chapel version is hot, with reds and pinks as the major colors. The Prado is much busier with hordes of men in the frame; some dressed as aristocrats, some almost naked and straining under heavy loads, and some dressed as soldiers holding flaming torches. Horses and camels peek out from the background. Everything is crisply focused and precise, almost as painted in Hi-Def, with richly brocaded clothing displaying every last golden thread. The Chapel version, while rendered almost as precise, is nonetheless somewhat looser, the background brush strokes almost impressionistic, but because it is stripped of any ancillary characters, more narrowly focused.
-In both paintings, the 5 major characters — the 3 Kings, baby Jesus and Mary — are are illuminated and prominently present in the foreground. They also have identical features and are dressed alike from painting to painting. Mary is probably wearing the same red dress in both, but in the Prado, it is largely covered by a blue robe, blue being her traditional color. [And here we will pause a moment to take a more close up view of these images to illustrate my points.]
[Magi -3] -[stop, play and display the ‘2 pictures’ image; then with the <pause> after ‘Finally’ ~ move down to the second ‘10 heads’ image below]
-The biggest difference between the two versions, I would argue, stems from the position of the artist surveying the scene. In the Prado, Rubens is painting from ‘within’ the stable, looking out at the grandeur of the sky and the columns adorning the adjacent building; thus Mary is on the artist’s left. In the Chapel version, Rubens is on the outside, looking in at humble roughly hewn furnishings; thus Mary is on the right. I don’t think this was accidental, 22 years can change your perspective on things.
-Finally - - - through digital manipulation, I have ‘flipped’ the Prado version, so we can inspect the 5 characters’ images from the same perspective, with the Chapel on the left and the Prado on the right. The most prominent contrast of course is how baby Jesus is portrayed. In both, Rubens has captured a new-born’s difficulty with head control. However, in the Prado, Jesus is like an electric lamp, with an incandescent halo illuminating his surroundings. In the Chapel, he is more normalized; perhaps there is a hint of a halo at the back of his head.
-We have now come to the end of my art lecture, entitled ‘Rubens, the Two Magi, and the Rosens’. Thank you for your patient attention.
On the other side of the Cam, go down to view the river and the punts along the shore.
Some Punting Trivia
-For 100 and fifty years, punts have been used on the Cam River by both students and tourists. A punt is a flat bottom boat and the ‘punter’ shoves the boat along the surface by pushing directly on the river bed with a long pole. One end of the punt is open and the other end has a flat platform called the ‘till’, as in a cash register. There are two ways to punt a boat, and it all depends on whether the crest on your blazer signifies Oxford or Cambridge.
-Two rather different traditions have grown up in these two colleges and have become ingrained as part of their culture and identity. In Cambridge, punters stand on the till, the platform end, and pole the craft forward in the direction of the open end. In contrast, in Oxford, everything is reversed. The punter stands a little inside the boat, in front of the open end, and poles the boat in the direction of the till. One college is simply ‘ass backward’, when compared to the other. In the calm narrow river beside each college, these variations in punting custom are of little practical importance. Nevertheless, the traditions are strongly held, and through the years, uncounted bottles of ale have been broken on the heads of various punters, vociferously extolling one practice over another. All this brings me back to the ‘theme’ of today’s day trip to Cambridge, which merely echoes the little discussion we had in King’s Chapel examining Rubens and his two Magi paintings: so much depends on where you stand, and how it shapes your perspective.