I went to the Cleveland Museum of Art yesterday to view an exhibit of reliquaries. It was quite marvelous and very crowded. It took me forever to get through because I wanted to read every blurb about everything at which I was looking so I could know something about it. Every piece of art was beautifully rendered and astonishing in its craftsmanship. It constantly amazes me how sophisticated some of these works are despite their antiquity. I forget sometimes that there were techniques I often think of as modern that have been around for thousands of years. What's truly amazing is the fact that they lacked magnification and ways to correct poor vision like we have now. I wear trifocals and without them, I cannot see a thing up close or mid-range without them and even distances are beginning to be a bit of a problem now as I age. Back then, they didn't have that luxury, nor did they have artificial illumination after dark as we have now. So they were limited in doing their work by natural daylight, meaning they had to be able to work in a place that received plenty of it. Astonishing. These works of antiquity never fail to positively amaze me, no matter how many times I see them. But what bothers me in particular about reliquaries is the fact that one cannot know for certain whether the remains of an actual saint are inside of them or whether they are mere animal bones or bones of just some ordinary person that was dug up in a cemetery or taken out of a catacombs or what. Reliquaries were big business back in the Middle Ages. Purporting to have even a tiny piece of a saint's remains in a town could bring plenty of tourists and pilgrims, meaning they'd spend money and enrich the town and thereby the church or cathedral therein. There are also reliquaries purporting to have a piece of the True Cross, but in all reality, I doubt that it was preserved after Jesus's death. It was probably chopped up and used for firewood or whatever it was they did with old crucifixes back in Roman times. There are reliquaries claiming to have a piece of the spear that pierced the side of Jesus, again, probably not preserved or known to be important at the time. Some claim to have a piece of fabric of clothing from the Virgin Mary (as if any of that was preserved!) and other outrageous claims. I doubt if any of this is true. During Jesus's life and after his death, I rather doubt that anything of significance was preserved, and even if it was, there are too many reliquaries that claim to have pieces of the True Cross out there to where, if you put them all together, they'd probably turn out to be of different types of wood from different places and time periods. And it'd be interesting to run DNA analyses of all those bones housed in reliquaries. I'm willing to bet that some of them are animal bones. Whatever the case, people venerated those things as if they were the real deal, so I suppose it all boils down to what you believe. I'm enough of a skeptic to question the validity of claims of remains housed in those reliquaries as being genuine. But it was still very cool to look at them, for what it was worth.
Another exhibit I went to see at the museum was one on illuminated manuscripts, a favorite thing of mine. The pieces on display are from the museum's permanent collection, so I can go see them any time I want, provided that they are on display somewhere. No matter how many times I look at these fabulous works of art, they never fail to amaze me. I do manuscript illumination as a hobby and I know how hard it is for me using modern tools and materials, artificial illumination after dark and trifocal glasses. What has slowed me down in recent years is arthritis in my hands and increasingly poor eyesight as I grow older. I don't have the fine motor control I had in my youth. I don't have the dexterity I used to have. I don't have the ability to see to do super fine work anymore. I also don't have the stamina I once had to spend hours hunched over a piece to work on it. I tire faster than I did, my back and neck get achy and my hands and eyes hurt after doing it for a few hours. About the most time I can work on a piece is about two hours before I get too tired. So it takes me far longer to complete a work than it did several decades ago when I first learned how to do it. It bothers me to no end that this is the case, but I am 53 now and will turn 54 this spring. Maybe when I retire in a few years and have more free time, I will get back to doing it again, but for now, since I still work full time and due to funding cutbacks I am doing a lot more work than I once did, I am far more tired at day's end when I come home and the last thing I want to do is more work. So I don't do illumination like I once did and am content now to go to a museum and admire works from the past. It was truly a wonderful day spent around great art even though it plum wore me out. It was worth it to spend a day in one of Cleveland's great cultural treasures!
I went to the Cleveland Museum of Art yesterday to view an exhibit of reliquaries. It was quite marvelous and very crowded. It took me forever to get through because I wanted to read every blurb about everything at which I was looking so I could know something about it. Every piece of art was beautifully rendered and astonishing in its craftsmanship. It constantly amazes me how sophisticated some of these works are despite their antiquity. I forget sometimes that there were techniques I often think of as modern that have been around for thousands of years. What's truly amazing is the fact that they lacked magnification and ways to correct poor vision like we have now. I wear trifocals and without them, I cannot see a thing up close or mid-range without them and even distances are beginning to be a bit of a problem now as I age. Back then, they didn't have that luxury, nor did they have artificial illumination after dark as we have now. So they were limited in doing their work by natural daylight, meaning they had to be able to work in a place that received plenty of it. Astonishing. These works of antiquity never fail to positively amaze me, no matter how many times I see them. But what bothers me in particular about reliquaries is the fact that one cannot know for certain whether the remains of an actual saint are inside of them or whether they are mere animal bones or bones of just some ordinary person that was dug up in a cemetery or taken out of a catacombs or what. Reliquaries were big business back in the Middle Ages. Purporting to have even a tiny piece of a saint's remains in a town could bring plenty of tourists and pilgrims, meaning they'd spend money and enrich the town and thereby the church or cathedral therein. There are also reliquaries purporting to have a piece of the True Cross, but in all reality, I doubt that it was preserved after Jesus's death. It was probably chopped up and used for firewood or whatever it was they did with old crucifixes back in Roman times. There are reliquaries claiming to have a piece of the spear that pierced the side of Jesus, again, probably not preserved or known to be important at the time. Some claim to have a piece of fabric of clothing from the Virgin Mary (as if any of that was preserved!) and other outrageous claims. I doubt if any of this is true. During Jesus's life and after his death, I rather doubt that anything of significance was preserved, and even if it was, there are too many reliquaries that claim to have pieces of the True Cross out there to where, if you put them all together, they'd probably turn out to be of different types of wood from different places and time periods. And it'd be interesting to run DNA analyses of all those bones housed in reliquaries. I'm willing to bet that some of them are animal bones. Whatever the case, people venerated those things as if they were the real deal, so I suppose it all boils down to what you believe. I'm enough of a skeptic to question the validity of claims of remains housed in those reliquaries as being genuine. But it was still very cool to look at them, for what it was worth.
Another exhibit I went to see at the museum was one on illuminated manuscripts, a favorite thing of mine. The pieces on display are from the museum's permanent collection, so I can go see them any time I want, provided that they are on display somewhere. No matter how many times I look at these fabulous works of art, they never fail to amaze me. I do manuscript illumination as a hobby and I know how hard it is for me using modern tools and materials, artificial illumination after dark and trifocal glasses. What has slowed me down in recent years is arthritis in my hands and increasingly poor eyesight as I grow older. I don't have the fine motor control I had in my youth. I don't have the dexterity I used to have. I don't have the ability to see to do super fine work anymore. I also don't have the stamina I once had to spend hours hunched over a piece to work on it. I tire faster than I did, my back and neck get achy and my hands and eyes hurt after doing it for a few hours. About the most time I can work on a piece is about two hours before I get too tired. So it takes me far longer to complete a work than it did several decades ago when I first learned how to do it. It bothers me to no end that this is the case, but I am 53 now and will turn 54 this spring. Maybe when I retire in a few years and have more free time, I will get back to doing it again, but for now, since I still work full time and due to funding cutbacks I am doing a lot more work than I once did, I am far more tired at day's end when I come home and the last thing I want to do is more work. So I don't do illumination like I once did and am content now to go to a museum and admire works from the past. It was truly a wonderful day spent around great art even though it plum wore me out. It was worth it to spend a day in one of Cleveland's great cultural treasures!
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