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                                          Mysteries of Life (Tea)

1. Tea by George Dunlop Leslie

2. The Serving Girl, Emil Brack

3. “Tea Time” (Henry Salem Hubbell, 1909) 

4. Eva Gonzales (1849-1883) - “Le Thé”

5. Charles Bittinger Afternoon Tea (1912)

6. At The Fireplace “ Delphin Enjolras“

7. Henry Salem Hubbell (1870 – 1949) “Ladies Having Tea”

8. Portrait of a Woman in a Turkish Costume by Jean Baptiste Van Loo

9. Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta- “Portrait of a Lady”

10. James Francis Day (American, 1863-1942) - Afternoon tea

Reggia di Caserta fountains:

Fountain of Venus and Adonis

Fountain of Diana and Actaeon

Fountain of Diana and Actaeon

Fountain of Ceres

Fountain of Aeolus

Fountain of the dolphins

What are your favourite pieces of classical music?

 I don’t have the slightest musical education so my apologies for the possible abuse of the term “classical” but lately I’ve grown a special affection for the following pieces:

Bach-Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother- (the way it starts as a grave farewell and then becomes light reminds me of Catullus 65) Cello Suite No.1 and Concertos for Oboe

Corelli- La Follia (or Vivaldi’s version, if I’m feeling extra extra)

Monteverdi- Zefiro Torna, Lamento della Ninfa and many of his madrigals

Jean Baptiste Lully- Armide

Franz Schubert- Serenade, Fantasy in F Minor

Frédéric Chopin- Nocturne, Funeral March, La Polonaise (reminds me of dziady!)

 Felix Mendelssohn- Midsummer Night’s Dream

 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky- Rococo Variation, Pas de deux from the Nutcracker

I’m in love with the Impressionists: Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin was the first work to make me interested in classical music, and I also love Jeux d’eau, Daphnis et Chloe, Introduction and Allegro, String Quartet- Assez Vif

Claude Debussy: Suite Bergamasque

Erik Satie:  Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes (for cloudy Sunday mornings)

Sen noci svatojánské (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) (1959) dir. Jirí Trnka “In the past, just as today, the stars were shining in the sky. It was in 1594, and the poet William Shakespeare was writing a comedy about slumber on a summer night.”

Cravat-a-licious! This is a word that exists out there, right? It has to…

Giovanni da Udine (1487-1561) - Dettaglio del finto pergolato con festoni di frutta e fiori che incornicia le Storie di Amore e Psiche, ciclo realizzato da Raffaello e aiuti nella Loggia di Psiche, Villa Farnesina, Roma.

Tra i tanti capricci realizzati da Giovanni si notano una serie di composizioni basate su zucchine, cetrioli ed altre verdure lungiformi, che prendono la forma di falli e che si pongono quali elementi apotropaici di fertilità e di buon augurio. Il più notevole, ricordato anche dal Vasari, è il capriccio posto sopra Mercurio ed indicato dalla stessa divinità.

“…sopra la figura di un Mercurio che vola ha finto per Priapo una zucca attraversata da villucchi, che ha per testicoli due petroncioni, e vicino al fiore di quella ha finto una ciocca di fichi brugiotti grossi, dentro a uno dei quali, aperto e troppo fatto, entra la punta della zucca col fiore, il quale capriccio è espresso con tanta grazia, che più non si piò alcuno immaginare”

Giorgio Vasari, vita di Giovanni da Udine.

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《Mad Hatter》

A story about little hatter I drew last year.

Detail of Shirin, Queen of the Sassanian Empire, bathing. The hooves of the horse of King Khosrow can be seen at the top right. From the Kashmir Manuscript, 1791.

Shirin was the wife of Khosrow II, the shahanshah, or King of Kings, of the Sassanian (Persian) Empire. Her exact cultural/ethnic origins are debated; some sources say she was Roman (at her time that was the Byzantine Empire who considered themselves Roman) and others say she was Aramean, a non-Persian from the areas of Assyria and Babylonia.

What is known is that she was a Christian and Khosrow was Zoroastrian and that such a relationship was considered forbidden. Through all the turmoil in their lives, Shirin and Khosrow remained together. During that time she was able to gain support for the Christian minority in the empire.

Her and Khosrow’s lives and romance are retold, with fictional elements, in the Persian epic poem Shahnameh, the romance Khosrow and Shirin by the famed poet Nizami Ganjavi, and even in One Thousand and One Nights. 

~Hasmonean