SONG SATURDAY - FRIDA BOCCARA

“As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.” - William Shakespeare
 

For Music Saturday, a blast from the past. A song by French singer Frida Boccara (29 October 1940 – 1 August 1996). Frida Boccara was born in Casablanca, Morocco. She submitted the song “Autrefois” to the French Eurovision Song Contest selection panel in 1964 but she was unsuccessful. At the Eurovision Song Contest held in Madrid, Spain in 1969 she represented France and performed “Un jour, un enfant” (One day a child) – music by Emile Stern and text by Eddy Marnay. Her song (along with the entries from Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Spain) shared first place. Boccara renewed her links with Eurovision by participating in the French national finals of 1980 and 1981. However, neither song won. She died in 1996 in Paris, aged 55, from a pulmonary infection.
 

Here is a lovely song of hers with an olden sound and feel, as delicate as porcelain and crystal. It considers the travails of love and the difficulty of choosing between one’s heart and one’s reason… The illustration above is Jean‑Honoré Fragonard’s (1732–1806) “The Shepherdess”, of 1750/52.

Il faut te décider
 

Il faut te décider, ma jolie bergère,
Je crois qu’ il faut te décider,
Roland veut t’ épouser et tu aimes Pierre,
Je crois qu’ il faut te décider.
 

Choisis l’ un ou l’ autre
Si tu n’ as pas envie de perdre par ta faute
Pierre et Roland, le dauphin du roi ou le berger.
Oui, il faut te décider.
 

Roland veut t’ épouser et tu aimes Pierre,
Je crois qu’ il faut te décider.
Roland est un berger et tu es bergère,
Un roi ne te voudra jamais.
 

Entre l’ un qui t’ aime et l’ autre
Qui ne t’ a pas vu, ni parlé même,
Pierre ou Roland, le rêve ou bien la réalité,
Tu ne dois pas hésiter.
 

Roland est un berger et tu es bergère,
Alors, il faut aller danser.
Quand vous aurez dansé une nuit entière,
Tu sauras bien te décider.
 

A travers la ronde, tu verras qu’ il vaut mieux
Que tous les rois du monde,
Celui qui a plutôt des royaumes à te donner
Une couronne à garder.
 

Il faut te décider, ma jolie bergère,
Je crois qu'il faut te décider.
Roland veut t’ épouser, tu oublieras Pierre,
L’ amour est là pour décider.
 

You Must Decide
 

You must decide, my pretty shepherdess,
I think you have to decide:
Roland wants to marry you and you love Pierre,
I think you should decide.
 

Choose one or the other
If you do not want to lose both through your fault;
Pierre or Roland, the prince or the shepherd.
Yes, you must decide.
 

Roland wants to marry you but you love Pierre,
I think you should decide.
Roland is a shepherd and you're a shepherdess,
A king will never want you.
 

Between the one who loves you,
And the one that you have not seen, or even spoken to,
Roland or Pierre, dream or reality,
You should not hesitate.
 

Roland is a shepherd and you are shepherdess…
Now you must go dancing,
And when you have danced all night,
You’ll know what you must decide.
 

When you consider all, you’ll see that
Rather than choosing any of the kings,
Rather than all the kingdoms of the world, it is better
To choose the one who gives you a wedding crown.
 

You should you decide, my pretty shepherdess,
I think you should decide.
Roland wants to marry you, you’ll forget Pierre,
Love is there to decide for you.

FOOD FRIDAY - LENTIL RISSOLES

“The wish for healing has always been half of health.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
 
It is the Winter Solstice today in the Southern Hemisphere and we have been having very cold nights but fine and mainly sunny days, with the temperature hovering around 14˚C maximum. The short days and long nights have meant going to work early in the morning in the darkness and coming back home in the dark also. Nothing like a satisfying and hearty meal to revive one’s body and spirits. These vegetarian lentil rissoles are just the thing for these winter nights.
 
Lentil Rissoles
Ingredients
 
4 slices wholegrain bread, crusts removed
100 g unsalted cashews
100 g walnuts
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup chopped coriander
3 tablespoons tahini
Olive oil to fry
Salt and pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
Pinch of curry (optional, may add more if so desired)
400g brown lentils, soaked for several hours, boiled, rinsed and drained
100 g Greek-style yoghurt
 
Method
Place the bread in a food processor and process until coarsely chopped. Add the cashews, walnuts, egg, coriander, 1 tablespoon tahini, salt and pepper, cumin, curry, and process until well combined. Add the lentils and process until well combined.

Place the lentil mixture in a bowl. With damp hands, divide the mixture into 8 portions. Roll and flatten each portion into a flat, round shape. Place on a tray lined with non-stick baking paper and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Heat a little olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Cook the rissoles in batches for 4 minutes each side or until golden. Transfer to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm.

While the patties are cooking, combine 2 tablespoons of tahini and yoghurt.

Place the patties on serving plates. Serve with the sauce and a simple seasonal salad.
 

This post is part of the Food Friday meme,
and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

LET'S HAVE SOME MUSIC!

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.” - Ray Charles
 
A bit of a heads for tomorrow! June 21 has been designated as World Music Day, an occasion when the whole world can celebrate the wondrous gift of music. The commemorative day originated in France when, in 1976, American musician Joel Cohen, proposed an all-night music celebration to mark the beginning of the summer solstice and since then, it has become a worldwide phenomenon with over 32 countries worldwide joining in with their own celebrations regardless of the season.
 
It is a day of free music, where musicians - local and amateur - are allowed and encouraged to perform their music in public spaces without any restriction. It is an important opportunity to actively celebrate the spirit of music in all its forms.
 
Music is the art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. Something like the simple folk song or the highly complex electronic composition belong to the same activity, and can be classified as music. Both are humanly engineered; both are conceptual and auditory, and these factors have been present in music of all styles and in all periods of history, Eastern and Western.
 
Music in one form or another, is part of every human society and one could argue that it is satisfies an innate human need. Modern music is heard in a bewildering array of styles, many of them contemporary, others engendered in past eras. Music is a protean art, lending itself easily to alliances with words, as in song, and with physical movement, as in dance. Throughout history, music has been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion.
 
Popular culture has consistently exploited the inherent possibilities of music, most conspicuously today by means of radio, film, television, and the musical theatre. The implications of the uses of music in psychotherapy, geriatrics, and advertising testify to a faith in its power to affect human behaviour. Publications and recordings have effectively internationalised music in its most significant, as well as its most trivial, manifestations. Beyond all this, the teaching of music in primary and secondary schools has now attained virtually worldwide acceptance.
 
Celebrate World Music Day tomorrow by listening to, playing, performing or composing some music! Here is Franz Schubert’s (1797-1828) Unfinished Symphony in B minor, No.8, D.759, performed by the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (conductor) in 1967

NICK VUJICIC

“For every disability you have, you are blessed with more than enough abilities to overcome your challenges.” - Nick Vujicic
 
I came across a mention of Nick Vujicic today and I remembered having read about this extraordinary person some time ago. Presently 30 years old Vujicic was born limbless in Australia in a Serbian immigrant family. He is now renowned for his work as an evangelist and motivational speaker. He also holds a degree in Financial Planning and Real Estate from Griffith University. He and his wife Kanae married in 2012 and have just shared the news of the birth of their son, Kiyoshi James.
 
Nick, who is mainly torso, still manages to play football and golf, he swims, and surfs, and has a normal life, enjoying what many of us have no inclination or willingness to try. He has a small foot on his left hip, which helps him balance and with which he can kick. He uses his one foot to type, write with a pen and pick things up between his toes. His father was a computer programmer and accountant and he taught his son how to type with his toe at just 6 years old. His mother invented a plastic device that enabled him to hold a pen and pencil.
 
Nevertheless it wasn’t easy. When he was born, his shocked father left the hospital room to vomit, while his distraught mother (herself a nurse) couldn’t get herself to hold him until he was four months old. Although his disability was a sporadic occurrence, an unexplained congenital malformation, due to unknown causes, his mother still blamed herself for it.  Despite the risk of bullying, his parents insisted Nick attend mainstream school. Nick, was teased and bullied, had an electric wheelchair for mobility, and a team of carers to help him. But understandably, he was deeply depressed and when he was eight years old he went to his mother crying and told her he wanted to kill himself. At ten he tried to drown himself, but fortunately, he did not succeed. Growing up, with the help of his family, friends and his faith, Nick managed to pull through to become an international symbol of triumph over adversity.
 
Some time ago I overheard a conversation on the train where two “normal” people were discussing someone with a “disability” and I was rather appalled by their assessment of his predicament. His physical “disability” was equated with a “mental deficiency” and his company was shunned because of this perceived physical and mental handicap. I was appalled by the insensitive, crass, prejudiced and short-sighted attitude that was based on ignorance.
 
The International Classification of Functioning (ICF) defines disability as “the outcome of the interaction between a person with an impairment and the environmental and attitudinal barriers he/she may face.” Personally I have always regarded someone with a disability as a “differently-abled” person. We all know the stories of blind people having much more acute senses of hearing and touch, we all know of people who have lost their arms or hands making a wonderful career as artists, handling the brush most ably with mouth or foot and producing stunning artworks.
 
I am humbled by people like Nick Vujicic. When I realise what can be achieved by people with severe physical handicaps, my own feeble efforts pale into insignificance although I am fit, able-bodied and healthy. The achievements of Helen Keller, Stephen Hawking, Christy Brown, John Nash, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Sudha Chandran and Nick Vujicic are towering monuments to enormous reserves of inner strength that resides in each and every one of us. How much we are capable of is revealed by these people who are differently abled, who have been empowered by their disability to achieve so much.
 
What better example of a different sort of ability than Stephen Hawking, who says: “It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven’t done badly. People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.” And this is how most people with a disability that I have met (and I have met with quite a few!) live with that disability. They get on with their lives and make the most of it, using their other (often super-abundant) abilities.
 
Whenever I discuss “therapeutic” abortions with people, a lively argument ensues. Most people find themselves in a bind when they consider the ethics of considering what constitutes an “acceptable” child and an “unacceptable” one. And yet, with some people the choice is easy: Any potential child will be accepted and given the ideal of unconditional love, whatever the disability or handicap it may carry. For these people, an abortion is simply not an option. Most others would prefer not to have that unconditional-love relationship with a certain subset of children. True enough, every person would prefer health over sickness, fully abled over partially abled, but the situation becomes extremely complex with what our definitions of “healthy” and “desirable” and “fully able” are.
 
Our world is enriched by people like Nick Vujicic and through his contribution to society, through his interaction with others, he makes the world a better place. La Rochefoucauld remarks that “It is a great ability to be able to conceal one’s ability.” I think that many “disabled” people do precisely that and live a balanced life. We the fully abled ones wish to flaunt our own ability so much, that instead we exhibit glaringly our own disabilities…

THE FLIGHT OF LOVE

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” - Henry David Thoreau
 

A Marc Chagall painting, “The Promenade” (La promenade), of 1917-18 (Oil on canvas. 169.6 x 163.4 cm. State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg, Russia) has been provided by Magpie Tales to function as the creative spark for all who will take up her challenge. Here is my offering, with a slightly modified image (with apologies to Mr Chagall!).
 

The Flight of Love
 

When first we touched,
My heart sang and my spirit rose;
Pink madder tinting my dreams,
And colouring my reality crimson.
 

When first we touched,
Our thoughts coalesced;
Droplets of water fusing,
Our emotions merging seamlessly.
 

When first we touched,
You flew up high, soaring;
A bird with wings spread wide,
Carrying me with you, effortlessly.
 

When first we touched,
Our flesh melded, amalgamated;
As gold dissolves in mercury,
A precious blend of our uniquenesses combined.
 

When first we touched,
It was but our fingers, intertwining;
And yet our souls commingled too,
And our hearts beat to the same rhythm,
And our bodies could hardly wait
To become one flesh.

ART SUNDAY - GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

“My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.” - William Allen White
 

Georgia O’Keeffe was born on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on November 15, 1887. Between 1905 and 1916 she studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Art Students League of New York, University of Virginia, and Teachers College of Columbia University. Her intention was to become an art teacher, and between 1908 and 1917 she taught studio classes at schools in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina. In 1916, O’Keeffe’s drawings first came to the attention of Alfred Stieglitz (the important photographer and influential promoter of modern art), whom she married in 1924. Until his death in 1946, he regularly exhibited O’Keeffe’s paintings and drawings at his New York galleries, which helped establish her reputation as a leading American artist.
 

For more than seventy years O’Keeffe painted prolifically, and almost exclusively, images from nature distilled to their essential colours, shapes, and designs. Prior to 1929 she derived her subjects from her life in New York City (buildings and city views) and from long summers in the country at Lake George, in upstate New York (flowers and landscapes). After 1929, when she made the first of many extended trips to New Mexico, her interest shifted to objects and scenery that characterised the American Southwest (bones and mountains). In 1949 the artist moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she resided until her death at age ninety-eight on March 6, 1986.
 

O’Keeffe’s early pictures were basically imitative, but by the early 1920s her own highly individualistic style of painting had emerged. Frequently her subjects were enlarged views of skulls and other animal bones, flowers and plant organs, shells, rocks, mountains, and other natural forms. O’Keeffe delineated these forms with probing and subtly rhythmic outlines and delicately modulated washes of clear colour. Her mysteriously suggestive images of bones and flowers set against a perspectiveless space inspired a variety of erotic, psychologic, and symbolic interpretations.
 

“Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills” (1935), exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum, is a typical painting of O’Keeffe’s highly personal style. This painting features an enlarged ram’s skull and antlers hovering emblematically over landscape and sky; the flower is an addendum that contrasts life with death, softness with sharp hardness. The organic lines and complex orifices of these nearly abstract forms conjure associations both phallic and feminine. Sexuality was a complicated issue for O’Keeffe. She famously denied that her landscapes or flower paintings were allegories of the female form, yet their lineage is obviously physical. In both cases, she asserted her own vision of the female body, camouflaged with protective layers of meaning.
 

In the 1930s, when this painting was executed, artists, musicians, and writers were interested in developing an indigenous American art form. It was an idea strongly supported by Stieglitz and his circle of artists, who sought to develop an American style of painting, rather than depictions of American subjects as produced by the Regionalists and the Social Realists. The painting is symbolic of America as O’Keeffe saw it, represented by the New Mexico desert and its relics.

MUSIC SATURDAY - MERCADANTE

“Everyone who plays the flute should learn singing.” - James Galway
 

Severio Mercadante was a prolific composer of opera during the nineteenth century, and was influential in his day for his “reformed” operas of the 1840s. Reacting to excesses in both bel canto style and grand-opera effects, he purposely restrained himself from those tendencies to arrive at a more effective drama on stage. These reforms were critical for the kinds of operas Verdi pursued early in his career.
 

Mercadante was born in Naples and studied with Niccolò Zingarelli between 1816 and 1820. While some of his earliest music was for various instrumental ensembles, he began to compose operas around 1819. With an opera buffa in Rossini’s style, Elisa e Claudio (1820), his seventh opera, Mercadante achieved notice in Italy, and he followed that work with many others.
 

From 1829 to 1830, Mercadante lived in Spain and Portugal, where he continued to compose. With no long-term contracts emerging at the time, Mercadante returned to Italy. He served as maestro di cappella at the Cathedral in Novara from 1833 to 1840, and it was then that Mercadante reconsidered his approach to opera. His “reformed” style begins with his most famous opera, Il Giurnamento. In this work he avoided any effects that did not serve the drama directly, and purposely varied the forms used in set pieces. This prevented his resorting to strings of da capo arias or diva-based scenas. Such self-imposed restrictions were part of Mercadante’s style for the rest of his career.
 

In 1839 Mercadante became director of the Liceo musicale in Bologna, and in 1840 he was offered the post that his teacher Zingarelli had held in Naples. He took the post in Naples and remained there for the rest of his life. While his compositional output during the latter part of Mercadante’s career lessened, it was nonetheless impressive for the workmanship present in the later works. For a while Verdi associated with Mercadante, but the two parted company soon after Mercadante assisted the younger composer with finding singers for a production of Macbeth in Naples in 1848. Soon Verdi’s career eclipsed that of Mercadante, and the dramaturgy that Verdi pursued was regarded as more effective than that of the older Mercadante. While Mercadante’s reputation declined, his operas are nonetheless interesting for the quality of the music in them. Mercadante also was a prolific composer of religious music, and is well-remembered for some of his flute concertos, and those compositions bear consideration for their refined and elegant style.
 

Here is his E minor Concerto for Flute and Strings played by the Turkish flautist Şefika Kutluer: 1) Allegro Maestoso; 2) Adagio; 3) Rondo Russo (Allegro Vivace Scherzando).

VEGETARIAN GRATIN

“Go vegetable heavy. Reverse the psychology of your plate by making meat the side dish and vegetables the main course.” Bobby Flay
 
Vegetarianism has been proven to be by much research to be a healthful eating option, and even if one is not a fully committed vegetarian, it is worthwhile reducing one’s meat intake to a minimum. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of fresh vegetables available throughout the year and one can eat a wonderful array of seasonal produce cooked in an interesting manner. As well as being healthful, vegetarian dishes can be tasty and appealing to the eye.

Vegetarian Thyme Gratin
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
500 g ripe red tomatoes, cut into 0.5 cm slices
2 green zucchini, cut diagonally into 0.5 slices
2 golden zucchini, cut diagonally into 0.5 slices
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1-1/4 cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
Freshly ground black pepper to taste 

Method
In a medium frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté, stirring frequently, until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low if they’re browning too quickly. Add the garlic and sauté until soft and fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Spread the onions and garlic evenly in the bottom of an oiled 2-litre, oval shallow gratin dish and let cool.
Heat the oven to 190˚C. Put the tomato slices on a shallow plate to drain for a few minutes and then discard the collected juices. Sprinkle with some thyme. Place in an oiled baking pan and put into the oven until they are soft. You may turn them over to ensure they are done well, then lay aside.
In a medium bowl, toss the zucchini and squash slices with 1-1/2 tablespoons of the olive oil, some thyme, and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt. Reserve half of the cheese for the top of the gratin.
 
Spread the zucchini on an oiled baking dish and bake until they begin to shrivel – don’t cook right through. Repeat until all zucchini is prepared and lay aside.
Sprinkle some thyme over the onions in the gratin. Starting at one end of the baking dish, carefully lay a row of slightly overlapping tomato slices across the width of the dish and sprinkle with a little of the cheese.
Next, lay a row of green zucchini, overlapping the tomatoes by two-thirds, and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat with a row of golden zucchini, and then repeat rows, sprinkling each with cheese, until the gratin is full.

Season lightly with pepper and the remaining 1/2 tsp. salt.
Drizzle olive oil over all. Combine the reserved cheese and breadcrumbs with a little thyme and sprinkle this over the whole gratin.
Cook until well-browned all over and the juices have bubbled for a while and reduced considerably, 55 to 60 min. Let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving.
 

This post is part of the Food Friday meme,

and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

ERT IS DEAD...

“Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.” - Thomas Huxley
 

The global financial crisis is a fact and many countries around the world are facing enormous economic, social and development problems as the world economies contract, financial markets become uncertain, unemployment rates increase and austerity measures by governments are now a commonplace policy as governments reduce spending. Perhaps nowhere have the effects been as widely publicised as in the Southern European member states of the European Union. The financial woes and economic trials and tribulations of Greece, Spain and Portugal, especially are constantly appearing in news reports. But not only – the world economy can be influenced by the fiscal health of a relatively small stakeholder in the EU, hence the heavy-handed approach to budgetary constraints, financial policies and imposed cuts and austerity measures imposed by the EU powerbrokers and the notorious International Monetary Fund.
 

The most recent controversy has been the decision taken a few days by the conservative Greek government, to shut down ERT, the country’s public broadcaster. This is one of the most drastic measures yet to reduce spending on Greek public institutions as part of the widespread and unpopular austerity measures. It is a move that has angered the journalists, politicians and unions, not to mention the long-suffering populace.
 

ERT has not been a massively popular TV service over its long history (presently having less than 20% of the Greek TV viewing public), and sure enough its administration has not been exemplary. The government has characterised the broadcaster as a rotten apple, suffering from chronic mismanagement, lack of transparency and waste. Even ERT employees admit that ERT had a questionable past, being used for political appointments and offering exorbitant pay to a few handpicked reporters, executives and advisers. It appears, however, that these were the exception and it is unlikely that the 2,700 employees who have been laid off by ERT were all on sinecures and had all been political appointments. Apparently, government sources, maintain, that one of the many sins of ERT was that not a single employee had been hired transparently or on merit – which is hard to believe...
 

ERT radio service has been on air since 1938. It is sad to observe that was not silenced during the German occupation of Greece in WWII, or during the military junta in the late 1960s. On June 11, 2013, ERT was switched off and thousands of people suddenly were unemployed. Furthermore, as well as the broadcasting having ceased in Greece, all international transmissions were also stopped. We received the ERT international service, here in Australia, and it was a reassuring, dependable and familiar service for us Greeks of the Antipodes. Turning the TV on and tuning in to ERT, one could maintain links with the mother country, hear the Greek news first hand, watch the religious programs, enjoy some well-produced documentaries and travel programs, and every now and then some entertainment value programming. Sure enough there were a lot of programs that were of little value and a waste of time and resources – but isn’t that the case with any TV broadcaster, public or private?
 

Greek Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, has stood by his move describing ERT as “the symbol of waste and lack of transparency”. He continued in a public address by saying that: “We are not closing down public radio and television. In fact, it is only now that we are going to get proper public radio and television.” The Opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, urged President Carolos Papoulias to cancel an executive order closing ERT, however, the President responded by saying that he was powerless to do so. The situation became further complicated by protest rallies being held in support of laid off ERT staff, with thousands rallying outside ERT’s headquarters in Athens, and unions organising strikes.
 

This unprecedented draconian and remarkably rapid move by the Greek government has created world-wide interest and a tsunami-like response through social media, internet news sites, newspapers, radio and TV. The closure of ERT may precipitate a political crisis in Greece, whose fragile governing tripartite coalition is already in a precarious leadership position. Meanwhile, the government is reassuring the public by unveiling plans to open a slimmed down version of ERT in August, with an employee base of around 1,200, appointed on merit and without consideration of political affiliations. This has given rise to much skepticism and disbelief amongst the population, given the manner in which ERT was closed down.
 

The director general of the BBC, Tony Hall, has asked the Greek government to reopen the state broadcaster immediately condemning its sudden closure as “undemocratic and unprofessional”. In a petition to the Greek prime minister, the directors general of 50 European TV and radio broadcasters including the BBC urged him to see sense pointing out that “public service media and their independence from government lie at the heart of democratic societies”. The other signatories included the heads of German, French, Swiss, Danish, Spanish and Italian TV. This is likely to fall on deaf ears, as the closure of ERT was a rapid way of fulfilling the International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank’s demands that public sector staff numbers be shrunk by 2,000 by the end of the summer...
 

Attempts by governments or government agencies to financially stimulate an economy are a standard practice. An economic stimulus is the use of monetary or fiscal policy changes to kick start a lagging or struggling economy. Governments can use tactics such as lowering interest rates, increasing government spending and quantitative easing, to name a few, to accomplish this. It seems that the EU is forcing upon struggling economies of the Southern European countries directives and policies that have the opposite effect of economic stimulation. The closure of ERT is another of these counterproductive measures, which is causing hardship, discontent, increasing unemployment and the opposite effect to economic stimulation. The problems are deep and chronic, economic policies worldwide are not working and globalisation is having unfortunate and deeply problematic effects…

PHILIPPINES INDEPENDENCE DAY

“Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most.” - Thucydides
 
Today is the anniversary of the birthday of:
Johann Georg Ahle, German organist (1651);
John Augustus Roebling, bridge builder (1806);
Charles Kingsley, author (1819);
Egon Schiele, Austrian artist (1890).
Djuna Barnes, author (1892);
Anthony Eden, British PM (1897);
Leon Goosens, English oboist (1897);
Normal Hartnell, coutourier (1901);
Irwin Allen, movie producer (1916);
George Bush, US President (1989), (1924);
Vic Damone (Vito Farinola), singer (1928);
Anne Frank, diarist (1929);
Rona Jaffe, author (1932);
Jim Nabors, actor (1932);
Chick Corea (Armando Anthony Corea), musician (1941); 
Bert Sackman, German Nobel laureate (1991), physiologist (1942);
 
The pear tree, Pyrus communis, is the birthday plant for today.  It symbolises satire and the language of flowers ascribes the meaning “do not forget” to the pear.  Pear trees grow slowly, as the rhyme suggests: “Plant your pears for your heirs.”
 
Today is Independence Day in the Philippines (since 1898). The Philippines was a Spanish colony from 1565 to 1898 when it was ceded to the USA. It became fully independent in 1946. It is an archipelago in the Western part of the South China sea with three main island groups, with an area of 300,000 square km and a population of 62 million. The capital is Manila with other centres being Cebu, Quezon City, Bacolod, Davao and Zamboanga. It is subject to earthquakes, volcanic activity and typhoons.
 
Much of the Philippines is covered by rainforest thriving in the tropical monsoon climate. Fishing and farming on a small scale domiante the economy with rice and copra being the main produce. Textile production, electrical manufactuirng and forestry are becoming increasingly important economically but unemployement and emigration are still high in this developing country.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY, PHILIPPINES!

Dying on this day: In 816, Leo III, Pope of Rome; in 1842, Dr Thomas Arnold, English educational reformer; in 1982, Dame Maria Rambert, ballerina; in 1983, Norma Shearer, actress.

THE ISLAND AND THE GARDEN

“Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes
 

Magpie Tales has provided the image above. Followers of her blog are invited to write a creative piece stimulated by her prompt. Here is my poem related to this image of a Charleston door lock.
 

The Island and the Garden
 

Alone.
None talks to me,
None to listen.
Untouched, unkissed
Unloved, unyearned for
I am that island
That no man is.
 

Alone.
None searches for me
None has found me.
Unseen, unlooked for,
Unwon and undiscovered.
I am that island
That still holds its secret.
 

Alone.
None needs me
None cares for me.
Unused, unfrutiful
Untended and unhappy
I am a secret garden
Amidst the desert sands.

Alone.
None takes my key
None opens wide my door.
Unopened, unexposed
Unsearched, unsolved.
I still cling to my mystery,
All alone.

MOVIE MONDAY - HEADHUNTERS

“Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.” - Lao Tzu
 

There have been some wonderful films out of the Scandinavian countries in the last few years and they have been refreshingly original, although often confronting and sometimes unpleasant to watch as they are raw and violent. We saw another of these films at the weekend, Morten Tyldum’s 2011 film “Headhunters” based on the novel by Jo Nesbø, and starring Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Synnøve Macody Lund. No, the film is not about Amazonian primitive tribes hunting for heads to shrink, but rather it is about a man who works in an employment recruitment agency and who lives beyond his means – this of course, gets him into all sorts of trouble.

I should warn the faint-hearted that this film is extremely violent and contains some very gruesome scenes. This is often the case with many of these films (I am reminded of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) with the violence depicted, although excessive and unpleasant, forms an integral part of the plot. So it is with “Headhunters”, one of these new wave Norwegian films.
 

The plot revolves around Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie), who is one of the most powerful headhunters in a top employment agency in Norway. He has an extravagant lifestyle, a beautiful wife and an expensive mortgage. To support his lifestyle of the rich and famous he is also a part-time art thief, which he does in cahoots with his friend, the gun aficionado Ove Kjikerud, who work in a security company. Once they rob the art works, they replace the originals with forgeries, which go undetected at least until the trail back to the thieves goes cold. Brown is cool, calm and collected and he works hard to build a reputation as a top professional. However, this masks his insecurities, fuelled by his short stature at 1.68 metres.
 

Roger Brown feels that wealth and power are the only way to make his mark in the world and to get what he wants. He has a trophy wife, the beautiful art gallery owner Diana Brown (Synnøve Macody Lund). Roger seems to like the thought of what Diana represents more than Diana herself and he denies her what she most wants – a baby. Brown also he has a mistress on the side named Lotte. Diana introduces her husband to Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a successful and handsome businessman. Clas Greve seems to be the perfect candidate for the CEO position at Pathfinder, a high tech company, for which Roger is currently recruiting.
 

Greve is also in possession of a priceless Rubens, which if Roger and Ove can steal, would be by far their most lucrative art theft to date. Although Brown and Kjikerud steal the painting without hitch, things start going wrong for Roger. He find out that Diana is having an affair with Greve and that someone is trying to kill him. He learns that it is Greve, who seems to know his every move. The remainder of the film is a cat and mouse game with Brown and Greve crossing swords and secrets being uncovered...
 

Both Aksel Hennie and Nicolai Coaster-Waldau are perfectly cast and Synnøve Macody Lund does a good job in her debut-role. The rest of the cast is excellent in supporting roles and the direction is faultless, as one would expect of someone of Morten Tyldum’s stature. The editing is wonderful and punchy and the action rolls on relentlessly, keeping the viewer on tenterhooks throughout the length of the movie. Upon its release, the film was sold to over 50 countries - a record for any Norwegian film. Summit Entertainment bought the rights to produce an American remake of this film, even before its initial release. This seems a pity, given the calibre of the original.
 

We enjoyed the film, although as I said earlier, the violence is quite confronting and some of the scenes are quite gruesome. The morals of the story (and especially the ending) may be questioned by the puritan viewer, however, there are quite fundamental transformations that occur in the characters, the message being that redemption is not beyond the reach of any of us, not even the most hardened criminal. If you can stomach raw and violent scenes on screen, watch the movie and you will be enthralled.

ART SUNDAY - VINCENZO FOPPA

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” - Maya Angelou
 
Vincenzo Foppa (1430 – 1515) was a Renaissance painter from Northern Italy; an elderly contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519). He was born at Bagnolo Mella, near Brescia in the Republic of Venice. He settled in Pavia around 1456, serving the dukes of Milan and emerging as one of the most prominent Lombardy painters, eventually returning to Brescia in 1489.
 
His style shows affinities to Andrea del Castagno (1421 – 1457) and Carlo Crivelli (1435 – 1495). Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574) claimed Foppa had trained in Padua, where he may have been strongly influenced by Andrea Mantegna (1431 – 1506), who was an innovative perspectivist painter. During his lifetime, Foppa was highly acclaimed, especially for his skill in perspective and foreshortening. His important works include a fresco in the Brera Gallery of Milan, the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, and a Crucifixion (1435) in the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo. Many of his works have been lost. In addition to major fresco cycles and altarpieces, he also painted touching images of the Madonna and Child for private devotion.
 
Foppa was influential in the styles of Vincenzo Civerchio (1470 – 1544) and Girolamo Romanino (1484 – 1562). His work now in the Uffizi Gallery, Madonna and Child with an Angel, has been said to reveal the artist’s “complex cultural personality” (Kren and Marx, Web Gallery of Art). It shows an influence from Northern European painting, specifically Flemish, additional to his Italian traditions.
 
“The Young Cicero Reading” of about 1464 is a delightful work of Foppa’s, showing the Roman philosopher as child reading (rather anachronistically) a book. It is the only surviving fresco from the Banco Mediceo, Milan. In 1455 Francesco Sforza gave the Palazzo to Cosimo de’Medici, who had it lavishly restyled. Foppa, the leading Lombard master of the quattrocento period, was commissioned to fresco the courtyard. The “Young Cicero Reading” may have been intended to accompany the Virtues as an emblem of Rhetoric, one of the Liberal Arts. Set in the open courtyard for four hundred years, the fresco was removed, c.1863, framed and extensively retouched, which explains some of the compositional inconsistencies which are now apparent. It is now exhibited in the Wallace Collection in London.

SCHUBERT FOR SATURDAY

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

For Music Saturday a really beautiful chamber music piece by Schubert. This is his String Quintet in C major D956 op posth. 163, played by the Villa Musica Ensemble. This quintet was composed in the summer of 1828, just two months before Schubert’s death. Its first performance was on 17 November 1850 at the Musikverein in Vienna. It was not published till 1853. The work is considered by some to be one of the greatest compositions in all chamber music. 

The work is the only full-fledged string quintet in Schubert's oeuvre. It consists of four movements:
 
1) Allegro ma non troppo;
2) Adagio;
3) Scherzo. Presto – Trio. Andante sostenuto;
4) Allegretto.
 
It stands out for its somewhat unconventional instrumentation, employing two cellos instead of the customary two violas, the example set by Mozart. Schubert, like Luigi Boccherini before him, replaced the second viola with a second cello for richness in the lower register. However, Schubert’s use of the second cello is very different from Boccherini’s, who uses the additional cello to create an additional viola line.
 
The violinist Joseph Saunders had the second theme of the first movement carved on his tombstone. Arthur Rubinstein’s wish was to have the second movement played at his funeral. For John Reed the work appears to anticipate Schubert’s death mere months after its composition, ending as it does with D-flat followed by C, both in unison and octaves. As Browning’s Abt Vogler put it: “Hark, I have dared and done, for my resting place is found, The C major of this life; so, and now I will try to sleep.”

STRAWBERRY CUPCAKES

“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
As Helena last week requested another strawberry recipe, I am happy to oblige by giving this Strawberry Cupcake recipe that produces deliciously sweet and moist cupcakes, all the more delightful if you use ripe and juicy home-grown strawberries.
 
Strawberry Cupcakes
Ingredients
1 ½ cups fresh strawberries
1 ½ cups flour
1 ½ tbsp baking powder
½ cup unsalted butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp cream
Icing
400 g mascarpone cheese
2 cups icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp cream
White chocolate, grated (optional)
 
Method
Preheat the oven to 180˚C and line some muffin tins with paper cupcake liners. Rinse and hull strawberries, drying them with paper towel. Mash strawberries until lightly macerated.
In a bowl sift flour and baking powder.
Beat the butter and sugar in the mixer bowl and add the vanilla extract, until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined (don’t overmix). Scrape down the mixture from the sides of the bowl and mix in half the flour, turning in well. Add the milk and the rest of the flour and mix.
Add the strawberries and cream, folding in by hand.
Pour the batter into the cupcake liners, about ¼ of a cup into each one. Bake for 25 minutes.
Cool on a rack for 10 minutes, take cupcakes out of pan and cool completely.
Using a mixer, combine all of the icing ingredients except for the chocolate. Pipe the icing on each cupcake and top each cupcake with a strawberry and the grated white chocolate, if desired.
 
This post is part of the Food Friday meme,
and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

ARAM IN SWEDEN AMONGST THE DATURAS

“They are able because they think they are able.” - Virgil
 
The birthday of:
Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez, artist (1599);
Pierre Corneille, writer (1606);
Nathan Hale, American revolutionary (1755);
Alexander Sergeyevitch Pushkin, poet (1799);
John Turnbull, artist (1756);
John Stainer, composer (1840);
Henry John Newbolt, poet/historian (1862);
Robert Falcon Scott, Antarctic explorer (1868);
Alexandra, last Russian czarina (1872);
Thomas Mann, author (1875);
Ninette de Valois (Edris Stannus), ballerina/choreographer (1898); 
Arthur Bowden Askey, actor (1900);
Achmed Sukarno, Indonesian independence fighter (1901);
Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer (1903);
Maxine Kumin, poet (1925);
Billie Whitelaw, actress (1932);
Dalai Lama, religious leader (1935);
Chantal Akerman, film-maker (1950);
Bjorn Borg, tennis player (1956).
 
The thorn apple, Datura stramonium, is the birthday flower for today.  It symbolises deceitful charms, a most suitable meaning for a poisonous, although sweet-smelling and beautiful flower (datura means “angels’ trumpet”).  It was a plant supposedly used by the priests of Apollo in Delphi to induce hallucinations and evoke the prophecies of the Oracle.  Superstition says that even to fall asleep under this plant would cause death.  Astrologically, it is under the dominion of Jupiter.
 
Here is a beautiful piece by birthday boy, Aram Khatchaturian (1903-1978). It is his Masquerade suite: 1. Waltz; 2. Nocturne; 3. Mazurka; 4. Romance; 5. Galop. With John Giorgiadis, violin and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stanley Black.

Sweden (today celebrating its Constitution Day, since 1809), is one of the Scandinavian countries with an area of 450,000 square km and a population of 9 million people. Its capital city is the beautiful Stockholm, often referred to as the “Venice of the North” because of the numerous waterways in its midst. The country is a long strip with richly forested mountains in the North, central lowlands and lakes and the very fertile Scania plain of the South. Most of the cities are in the South with Göteborg, Uppsala, Malmö, Linköping and Örebro the major ones. Timber, manufacturing, and mineral resources all utilised to their full make Sweden a rich country.
 
The following people died on this day: In 1861, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, Italian statesman; in 1891, John Alexander Macdonald, Canadian PM; in 1941, Louis Chevrolet, US motor racer and car designer; in 1956, Hiram Bingham, US archaeologist and discoverer of Machu Picchu; in 1961, Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist; in 1976, Jean Paul Getty, US oil billionaire; in 1990, Rex Harrison, English actor.
 
Also on this day in 1844, the YMCA was founded in London.

FROM EGG TO EARTH

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” - Confucius
 

Morris Cole Graves (August 28, 1910 – May 5, 2001) was an American expressionist painter. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, William Cumming, and Mark Tobey, he founded the Northwest School. Graves was also a mystic. He is perhaps best known for introspective works that present a mystical view of nature. His style was greatly influenced by the three trips he made to East Asia between 1928 and 1930, and, like Mark Tobey, Graves had a deep interest in Asian art and religion, including Buddhism and Zen Daoism.
 

In 1936 the Seattle Art Museum presented Graves’s first one-man show. About 1937 he turned from oils to tempera or gouache, which he applied to Chinese paper. He then made some of his best-known works, including “Blind Bird” (1940) and “Little Known Bird of the Inner Eye” (1941). He frequently used a calligraphic style in which delicate white lines appear against a dark background. His art received international attention in 1942 when 31 of his works appeared in an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Thereafter Graves’s oil paintings and watercolours were highly sought after by collectors and won numerous prizes, including two at the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1947 and 1948.
 

A 1947 study Graves made of the Asian art in the Honolulu Academy of Art inspired his series of paintings depicting Chinese bronzes made that same year. In 1954–56 he painted the birds and animals of Ireland. Shortly thereafter Graves left the United States to make his home outside Dublin, to escape, as he explained, “the onrush and outrage of machine noise.” Before he left he painted “Spring with Machine-Age Noises—No. 3” (1957), a visual cacophony that seems to sweep over a stretch of grass.

In 1964 he again relocated, this time to Loleta, California, where he bought 25 acres of redwood forest and created an idyllic environment for himself, complete with a small lake, Zen-inspired buildings, and gardens. Inspired by his surroundings, Graves often depicted flowers in his later work. His later paintings were increasingly abstract, and while they retained their delicacy, the Asian influence was gone. In later years and especially at the end of his notable career, Graves returned to sculpture, originally created forty years earlier, and received critical acclaim for his “Instruments of a New Navigation”, works inspired by NASA and space exploration. Morris Graves died the morning of May 5, 2001 at his home in Loleta, hours after suffering a stroke.
 

Magpie Tales has selected his 1979 painting, “Waking, Walking, Singing in the Next Dimension” to spark creative writing in her weekly challenge. Here is my contribution:

From Egg to Earth
 

The egg has just hatched
And the nestling dreams sweetly;
As flower buds unfurl.
 

The bird sings joyful
Songs, in noon’s white blinding heat,
Hidden in leafy bower.
 

As golden leaves fall,
The bird eggs on its offspring,
To leave the nest, fly.
 

Snow falls and covers
The dead bird: A life cycle ends;
Soon, new beginnings.

POSTCARD FROM SYDNEY

“Sydney’s a beautiful city. It was a great experience.” - Barbara Hershey
 

I am in Sydney for work and enjoying some slightly better weather (expecting 21˚C maximum and sunny, compared to 16˚C and cloudy/showery for Melbourne). Not that I am enjoying much of the great outdoors as I am confined to buildings and meetings… Nevertheless, it’s good to be able to god from one place to another without getting wet or being cold. I always enjoy visiting Sydney, but at the same time I always enjoy leaving it. It would be a difficult city to live in, but always a lovely place to visit.
 

Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia. It is on Australia’s south-east coast, on the Tasman Sea. In June 2010 the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people. Inhabitants of Sydney are called Sydneysiders, comprising a cosmopolitan and international population.
 

The site of the first British colony in Australia, Sydney was established in 1788 at Sydney Cove by Arthur Phillip, commodore of the First Fleet, as a penal colony. The city is built on hills surrounding Port Jackson, which is commonly known as Sydney Harbour, where the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge feature prominently.
 

The hinterland of the metropolitan area is surrounded by national parks, and the coastal regions feature many bays, rivers, inlets and beaches including the famous Bondi Beach and Manly Beach. Within the city are many notable parks, including Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Sydney is a high-ranking world city and has hosted multiple major international sporting events, including the 1938 British Empire Games (now known as the Commonwealth Games) and the 2000 Summer Olympics. The main airport serving Sydney is Sydney Airport and its main port is Port Botany.
 

Sydney is the top tourist destination in Australia, most international tourists spending some time there if nowhere else in Australia. In the year ending 2012, Sydney received a total of 10.5 million international and domestic visitors, which injected $11.7 billion into the state of New South Wales’ economy. The most well-known attractions include the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Other attractions include Royal Botanical Gardens, Luna Park, Darling Harbour, some 40 beaches and Sydney Tower.
 

The New South Wales Government operates two programs relevant to Sydney as part of the NSW Tourism Strategy, they are: Brand Sydney ( to revitalise and strengthen the image and appeal of Sydney) and Visit Sydney (to increase promotion of Sydney as a tourist destination through a strengthened dedicated business unit within Destination NSW). Sydney also has several popular museums, such as the Australian Museum (natural history and anthropology), the Powerhouse Museum (science, technology and design), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Australian National Maritime Museum.

MOVIE MONDAY - LIFE OF PI

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” - Aristotle
 

Last weekend we watched Ang Lee’s 2012 film “Life of Pi”, based on the novel by Yan Martel, and starring Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan and Adil Hussain. I read the novel several years ago and I enjoyed it very much, which made me rather reluctant to watch the movie. Having been given the DVD as a gift, however, persuaded me to have a look at the movie, with a screenplay written by David Magee.
 

Let me preface the review by saying the film was unexpectedly enjoyable and a visual treat. The cinematography (Claudio Miranda), direction, special effects and CGI were quite amazing, supplemented by excellent acting and a music soundtrack by Mychael Danna that was well-suited to the action and atmosphere of the movie. Nevertheless, that said, the most memorable part of the soundtrack is the Indian Tamil song playing during the beginning of the film and during the end credits.

“Life of Pi” is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel, is a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, who is brought up by an educated and family in an intellectually stimulating environment. He explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age, and although brought up as a Hindu, also discovers Christianity and Islam. He starts to follow all three religions as he “just wants to love God”. He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognise benefits in each belief system. When his father decides to take his family and move to Canada with the animals form the zoo they own, The ship sinks and Pi is the only survivor. He survives 227 days while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The novel, which has sold more than ten million copies worldwide, was rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition then won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year (aspiring authors, don’t give up after your manuscript gets rejected repeatedly!).
 

The novel according to the author, Yann Martel, can be summarised in three statements: “Life is a story... You can choose your story... A story with God is the better story.” A recurring theme throughout the novel seems to be credibility: Truth versus falsehood, veracity versus untruthfulness, fact versus fiction, believability versus unbelievability. Pi at the end of the book asks the two investigators of the shipwreck: “If you stumble about believability, what are you living for?” According to Gordon Houser there are two main themes of the book: “That all life is interdependent, and that we live and breathe via belief.”
 

The novel (as well as the film) is very non-sectarian and depends on the concept of belief in a benevolent, spiritual creator not aligned with any, or perhaps aligned with all religions. It is a deeply spiritual book and according to the author it defined his being and helped him find a purpose in his life. The 2012 film adaptation was given a wide release in the United States on 21 November 2012 and at the 85th Academy Awards it won four awards from eleven nominations, including Best Director.

The film is vibrantly visual. The colours and sounds of India soon give way to the beauty and terror of the Pacific Ocean, while the interaction of humans with animals is constantly running theme in the narrative and transferred to screen well. Some of the fantasy scenes are quite spectacular and the manner in which the cinematographer and director have dealt with the confined space on the lifeboat is inventive and interesting. We enjoyed seeing this film greatly, although I still preferred the book! Read it first and then see the movie…

ART SUNDAY - VELÁZQUEZ

“Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.” – Plautus
 
Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez (baptised June 6, 1599, Seville, Spain - died August 6, 1660, Madrid) is acknowledged as the most important Spanish painter of the 17th century, and a giant of Western art. The naturalistic style in which he was trained provided a language for the expression of his remarkable power of observation in portraying both the living model and still life. Stimulated by the study of 16th-century Venetian painting, he developed from a master of faithful likeness and characterisation into the creator of masterpieces of visual impression unique in his time. With brilliant diversity of brushstrokes and subtle harmonies of colour, he achieved effects of form and texture, space, light, and atmosphere, that make him the chief forerunner of 19th-century French Impressionism.
 
Born in Seville, the son of a lawyer of Portuguese origin, he began a six-year apprenticeship in 1611 with the painter Francisco Pacheco, whose studio resembled an academy in which students learned the techniques of painting in an idealising style grounded in Catholic propriety. Two of his famous fellow students there were Francisco de Zurbarán and Alonso Cano. But even in Velázquez’s early works such as The Supper at Emmaus the young artist abandoned Pacheco’s old-fashioned style and painted directly from life. Influenced by the naturalism of Caravaggio, he portrayed Christ and two of his disciples with dramatic facial expressions, sharply lit against a plain background, the forms solidly modelled in sombre colours. At this stage, Velázquez also specialised in kitchen scenes, or bodegones (“taverns”), with religious scenes relegated to the background.
 
In the summer of 1623, Velázquez was summoned to Madrid to paint a portrait of the king (now lost). This was very well received and it led to his being named official painter to the king. He remained attached to the court for the rest of his life, ascending in the hierarchy of court appointments, eventually receiving a knighthood. At Madrid, his art was profoundly influenced by Venetian paintings in the royal collection and by Rubens, who spent six months at the court on a diplomatic mission during which he painted royal portraits and copied the king’s masterpieces by Titian.
 
From June 1629 to January 1631, Velázquez travelled in Italy. The influence of contemporary Italian artists may be seen in his mastery of perspective and his rendering of the male nude in the two large canvases he painted in Rome, The Forge of Vulcan (Museo del Prado, Madrid) and Joseph’s Coat Presented to Jacob (Escorial, Madrid). 

The Portrait of Don Gaspar de Guzmán recalls the splendid equestrian portraits of individual members of the royal family that Velázquez painted in the 1630s. At the same time, he painted for the king unforgettable likenesses of court dwarves and buffoons, capturing their inner suffering with dazzling brushwork and cool detachment.
 
In 1649–51, Velázquez made a second trip to Italy to collect works of art for the king, and the fresh exposure to classical antiquity resulted in masterworks such as Venus and Cupid (“The Rokeby Venus” now in the National Gallery, London). The portrait of his assistant, Juan de Pareja, caused a sensation when Velázquez exhibited it in Rome. Hanging alongside works by the best artists of the time, the portrait was acclaimed for its extraordinary lifelike quality. Of all the painters then in Rome, he alone was granted permission to paint the pope. Upon seeing Innocent X (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome), one observer wrote that Velázquez had come to Italy “not to learn but to teach, for his portrait of Innocent X was the amazement of Rome. Every artist copied it and looked upon it as a miracle.”
 
In his final decade, Velázquez’s handling of paint became increasingly free and luminous. This late style can be seen in María Teresa (1638–1683), Infanta of Spain, a portrait probably made for her future husband, Louis XIV of France, and the breathtakingly beautiful portrayal of the royal family, Las Meninas, (“The Ladies-in-Waiting” in the Prado). The artist stands to the left before an enormous canvas on which he is painting the king and queen, who are reflected in the mirror in the background, but the real subject of the picture is the little infanta who has come to watch Velázquez at work. She stands between two ladies-in-waiting, who coax her to behave, and two court dwarves and a large dog, all rendered with astonishing freedom and truth to nature.
 
Because most of Velázquez’s work was carried out for the king, it remained in palaces where few people saw it. Not until the upheavals caused by Napoleon’s Peninsular War (1808–14) was some of his work dispersed throughout Northern Europe. In the nineteenth-century, his paintings made an enormous impact upon artists, and to the present day Velázquez is remembered as the painter’s painter.
 
The painting above, painted in 1629 is Los Borrachos (“The Drinkers/The Drunks”) but is has also been called The Feast of Bacchus. The spirit and aim of this work are better understood from its Spanish name, that implies that drunks are paying mock homage to a half-naked ivy-crowned young man (= Bacchus, the god of wine) seated on a wine barrel. The painting is firm and solid, and the light and shade are more deftly handled than in former works. Altogether, this production may be taken as the most advanced example of the first style of Velázquez.