May 9 – Vienna, Austria Today we are on our own until 6pm when we meet our group for orientation and dinner. We’ve decided to go to the Kunsthistor Museum (Art History Museum) because they have a very good collection of paintings. They were collected by Habsburg royalty and donated to start the museum. They include van Eyck, Rubens, Raphael, Vermeer and best of all three canvases by Caravaggio, my personal favorite. Those of you who have read my journal before know how carried away I can get over art and architecture. I’ll try to restrain myself but there are no guarantees. Art, especially religious art is often so full of symbolism and metaphor that you can peel the layers of meaning like an onion, one inside the other and completely invisible until the previous layer is pierced. My problem is sometimes I keep looking for more layers when there are none.
There’s a taxi stand just outside the hotel and we caught a cab to the Museum Quarter. It’s a wonderful collection of museums in beautiful buildings. It’s like the Smithsonian in Washington DC, you could spend days seeing all of them. We are going to attempt to see one, the Art History Museum.
There are three collections here, four usually but one is closed for renovations. There’s the Coin Collection on the 2nd floor. Because the coins were collected by the Habsburg royalty there’s an emphasis on coins from that that empire but there are coins from all over the world. The oldest coin they have is a large stone from the island of Yap. Some of the coins are little works of art, the engraving is absolutely fantastic. In addition to coins they have a collection of European medals both military and civilian awards, as well as commemorative medals from the history of the Habsburgs.
I hate to admit it but one of the most impressive is a large coin from Canada. It’s a modern coin, struck in 2007. What makes it unique is its size, 100 Kg (220 pounds). The face value is stated at 1 million dollars but anytime the price of gold goes over $284 per ounce it’s worth much more. I don’t know exactly what that price is right now but it’s way over $284. To picture the size of it, think of a 50 Kg weight plate for a barbell, since gold is heavier than steel (I can’t remember its atomic number or I could figure out how much heavier) it may actually only be a little bit larger. They look pretty close to the same size to my eye.
My favorite medal was the wedding medal of Karl I and Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel from 1728. Don’t you just love the names of royalty? ‘Bawn’sshweyeg-Volf’ enbootell, now that’s a name worthy of an emperor’s wife.
The coins were very interesting but I was chomping at the bit to get to the paintings, especially the Caravaggios. The visit did not disappoint. They have some wonderful paintings here. Quite a few great ones and that’s surprising because the collection is not that large. The Caravaggios were titled ‘David with the head of Goliath’, ‘Madonna of the Rosary’ and The Crowning with Thorns’. All three are wonderful in their own right but are not the best of his work. He painted the David and Goliath theme about three times. This one is the most straight forward. David has a very melancholy look, not at all excited or exhilarated as one might expect after such a stunning and unexpected victory. He is holding Goliath’s sword, which he used to sever his head. He is dressed as a plain shepherd boy, which of course he was. He’s still got his makeshift sack on his back. Clearly he is not taking any credit for the victory but is acting like not much unusual has happened. From his point of view it hadn’t. He was acting in God’s will and trusted in Him for strength. He was not at all surprised when God delivered. David knew he would. Scripture describes David as a ‘Man after God’s own heart’ and here he is demonstrating the truth in that statement.
The most surprising paintings for me were those by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His ‘Tower of Babel’ is a masterpiece, not only in its execution but also in its symbolism. At first glance the building project seems to be doing very well. The workers look like ants compared to the massiveness of the structure and the amount of activity is also appropriate to an anthill. The building is on a high plateau with a large city to its left in the valley. Upon closer examination several design and production flaws become apparent. The building is being built in tiers like a wedding cake but one side of each tier is shorter than the other. The building is curving in that direction and if it continues that way it will eventually reach its tipping point and wind up falling into the city below. While the upper tiers are seemingly doing well, the very lowest tier is showing signs of stress and parts are beginning to crack and crumble. In the lower left foreground you can see the King with his entourage, totally oblivious to the pending disaster his plans will cause. This illustrates the Biblical point that unless you build on a firm foundation your building will not last. The project is doomed to failure by the futility of man’s activity without God, the inadequacy of human wisdom and the folly of human pride. You have to remember that Scripture tells us that the people started the tower to ‘make ourselves a name’. Simply put, pride. I promised I wouldn’t go on and on so I’ll stop at that layer of the onion.
After giving the picture gallery a good going over we went down to the first floor to view the ancient artifacts rooms. Here they have two collections, Greek and Roman plus Egyptian and Near Eastern. The most surprising was a room with a collection of gold and silver artifacts from the Dark Ages. Some of the workmanship was remarkable. One necklace of gold and silver was gorgeous.
I’m intrigued by all things Egyptian and while the collection here is small there’s one item that really stands our. It’s a very well crafted blue ceramic hippopotamus. It’s decorated with black line drawings of lotus leaves and blooms in various stages of opening. High on its back is a drawing of an ibis. Remarkable!
When we left the museum we headed back to the hotel. We have a 6pm meeting with our tour guide and the rest of our group with dinner to follow. Our tour guide’s name is Mike Geisberg and he’s from Frankfurt, Germany. Our driver is Fabritizio and he’s from Italy. Most of the guests are from the USA with three ladies from Texas. We also have one Australian couple and one French Canadian couple. Seems like a good group, no one too weird.
Dinner was in the hotel and was fine but nothing special. Then it was to bed because we have an early morning city tour of Vienna tomorrow AM with a free afternoon for independent studies.
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