FOOD FRIDAY - TAGLIATELLE PRIMAVERA

“In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.” - Mark Twain
 

We have had some wild Spring weather, one moment sun shining, the next hailing and raining. One moment warm and sticky, the next cool and wet. Nevertheless, the Spring flowers and vegetables are out and what is more suitable to the season than a wonderful Italian recipe, “Tagliatelle Primavera” (Springtime Noodles).
 

Tagliatelle Primavera
 

Ingredients
200 g trimmed asparagus
1/3 cup of shelled peas
1/3 cup chopped chives
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cups heavy cream
400 g fresh tagliatellespring
½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese (and some shaved for decoration)
¼ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Fine sea salt, ground pepper
 

Method
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, adding peas, boiling for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, cut 5 cm of asparagus tips from the stalks. Steam asparagus tips for 3 minutes, then cut in half lengthwise. Reserve asparagus and peas.
 

Cut asparagus stalks crosswise into 1 cm rounds. In a medium saucepan, combine asparagus rounds and shallot with butter; cook over medium heat until butter is melted and vegetables are beginning to wilt, then add 1/2 cup water, bring to a boil and cook for 4-5 minutes.
 

Add cream, bring to a simmer and cook for 4 minutes. Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Transfer pan contents to a blender and purée until smooth.
 

Add pasta to the boiling water and cook (about 5-6 minutes for fresh pasta). Reserving 1/4 cup pasta cooking liquid, drain pasta and transfer to a large bowl. Pour purée into a skillet; bring to a boil. Add asparagus tips, peas, grated cheese and parsley; return to a boil, then add to bowl with pasta and toss to combine. Add chopped chives and toss in. Adjust seasoning and moisten with a little pasta cooking liquid, if desired. Garnish with shaved parmesan and serve immediately.
 

This post is part of the Food Friday meme,

and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

CALENDRICAL VAGARIES

“I don’t wait for the calendar to figure out when I should live life.” - Gene Simmons
 
Time has always fascinated human beings. The intangible and yet inexorable passage of the hours, the endless procession of the seasons, the death and regenerative cycles of crops and vegetation have necessitated the use of a calendar.  The farmer has to know when to sow his plants, the priest when to glorify his gods, the king when to lead his army to battle.  And so were born calendars, to keep time and to reckon the passage of the seasons and the years.  Each culture tried to solve the problem of time keeping and calendar construction in its own way and vestiges of these multiple calendars are still to be found around the world.  Currently, there are about 40 different calendrical systems in use worldwide, with about six widely used.  The Gregorian calendar is the most widespread, and by convention, used in most (if not all) secular activities around the world. This calendar is solar one and it is based on the ancient Roman calendar as modified by Pope Gregory XIII (7 January 1502 – 10 April 1585).
 
The solar year depends on the revolution of the Earth around the sun, each revolution taking 365.2422 days.  The tilt of the Earth’s axis is responsible for the seasons. At the same time, the moon has influenced the development of a calendar with each lunar cycle lasting for approximately 1/12 of the solar year. This has given rise to subdivision of the year into 12, sometimes 13 months.  The word month itself shows its close association with the word moon.  The ancient Greeks had a similar association: mén = “month”, méne = “moon”.
 
The Western calendar developed from the ancient Greek and Roman calendars.  The term calendar itself is derived from the Latin calenda meaning the first day of the month.  The ancient Roman calendar is the one that corresponds most closely to our own and was called the Julian Calendar as it was standardised by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. His Greek astronomer Sosigenes devised a 12-month calendar of 365 days, with a leap year of 366 days every four years. Each month had 30 or 31 days except for February, which was considered unlucky and hence had 29 days except every leap year when it had 30.  This was until Augustus Caesar renamed the old Roman month Sextilus after himself, in the process robbing February of a day in order to increase August’s 30 days to 31.
 
The Julian calendar assumed that the year lasted for exactly 365.24 days.  The real year was about 11 minutes and 14 seconds shorter than the Julian year and over the decades, the seconds and minutes added up to hours and days, making the real seasons drift away from the calendrical seasons.  After a few centuries, the Church began to find it difficult to set the moveable Church feasts such as Easter, which depend on the Vernal equinox.
 
Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 decided to remedy the situation, which by that time had led to a calendrical discrepancy a few days ahead of the seasonal calendar.  The Pope decreed that February would have 29 days in century years that could be divided evenly by 400 (e.g. 1600, 2000), but only 28 days in century years that could not be divided evenly by 400 (e.g. 1700, 1800, 1900).  Commencing in October 1582, ten days were dropped from the calendar in order to correct the discrepancy. The resulting calendar is the Western Gregorian Calendar in use throughout most countries around the world today.
 
Most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendrical reformations immediately after Pope Gregory’s modifications, and other Western nations followed suit soon after (e.g. France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg 1582).  As the Pope had no authority over the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Julian calendar persisted in its use in the countries where the Orthodox faith was the official state religion (e.g. Russia [adopting the Gregorian calendar in 1918], Rumania [1919], Bulgaria [1915], Greece [1923]).
 
Even when for practical reasons the Gregorian calendar was adopted by the laity, the religious feast days continued to be calculated according to the Julian Calendar.  This situation persists in some countries to this day.  Some of the Eastern Churches calculate all of their feast days according to the Julian Calendar (which is now 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar!).  For example, the Ukrainian Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on the 7th of January.
 
Some other Orthodox Churches have adopted a more illogical practice.  They have embraced the Gregorian calendar for all “fixed festivals” (e.g. Christmas and the commemorative Feast Days of Saints) that recur on the same date every year.  However, when it comes to calculating the “moveable festivals” (e.g. Easter and all of the associated feasts such as Ash Wednesday, Ascension, Pentecost, etc), such Orthodox Churches use the Julian Calendar.  This leads to the curious situation of the Greek Orthodox and Catholic devotees celebrating Christmas together on the same date and Easter at different times.
 
Easter is an interesting example as the Paschal dates are calculated on the seasonal calendar, re-enforcing the fact that Easter is an old Spring fertility festival (Eostra was the name of the Celtic Spring goddess).  Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox on the 21st of March.  The dates of all other moveable feasts are calculated in connection with the date set for Easter in that year.  If there is no full moon between the Spring equinox calculated according to the Gregorian calendar and the Spring Equinox according to the Julian calendar, then Catholic and Orthodox Easter occur at the same time.  This happened in 1977, 1987, 1991, and will periodically recur until reason prevails and the Gregorian calendar is adopted universally.  An even more logical approach would be to specify Easter as always being celebrated on the third Sunday in April, for example. What a boon for time-tablers, schedulers and forward planners that would be!

WORLD FOOD DAY

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” - Franz Kafka
 
World Food Day is celebrated every year around the world on 16 October in honour of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in 1945. The day is celebrated widely by many other organisations concerned with food security, including the World Food Programme. The World Food Day theme for 2013 is “Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition”.
 
It is a day when countries around the world, take tally of achievements made toward food security and work on the inventory of the work that must continue to finally end world hunger. It is a day devoted to raising awareness of the unequal access to food and production resources that exist across current world food systems. Above all else, one needs to highlight the reality of working collaboratively to create and spread the political will that promises nutritious food for everyone, everywhere.
 
To live in a world free of hunger, nations must create food systems that ensure a plentiful supply of nutritious food with minimal impact on the environment. Food systems must take into account sustainability in every step of the supply chain: From production to processing, transportation to retail, and consumption to post-consumption waste. Without a focus on sustainability, food systems may not produce the healthy, nutritious food that we all deserve.
 
The world’s population is growing by 80 million people each year. This means that there will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night. Many of these people will have nothing to eat. In Nigeria, 27 percent of families experience foodless days. In India it is 24 percent, in Peru 14 percent. Not eating at all on some days is how the world’s poorest are coping with the doubling of world grain prices since 2006. The world is in transition from an era dominated by surpluses to one defined by scarcity.
 
The response to this looming crisis needs to be global, collaborative and immediate. Initiatives surrounding sustainable food production are tied up with climate change and environmental issues, which if ignored can lead not only to depredation of ecosystems planet-wide, but massive famines that will claim the lives of millions upon millions of people worldwide.

UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG

“A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.” - Benjamin Disraeli
 

Although Wollongong is New South Wales’ third-largest city, Wollongong has more of a large country-town feel. It’s essentially a working-class industrial centre (Australia’s largest steelworks at nearby Port Kembla looms unattractively over Wollongong City Beach) but the Illawarra Escarpment, rising dramatically beyond the city, provides a lush backdrop. The students of Wollongong University certainly give it extra life in term time and the city also enjoys a big dose of surf culture as the city centre is set right on the ocean.
 

The University of Wollongong, abbreviated as UOW, is a public research university located in the coastal city of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, approximately 80 kilometres south of Sydney. As of 2012, the University had a total of 30,516 students enrolled, included 11,440 international students from more than 140 countries. The University ranked 276th in the 2013 QS World University Rankings, 276-300th in the 2013-2014 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and 301-400th (352nd) in the 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities.
 

The University of Wollongong has fundamentally developed into a multi-campus institution, three of which are in Wollongong (Wollongong, Shoalhaven and Innovation), one in Sydney and one in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Wollongong Campus, the University’s Main Campus, is on the original site five kilometres north-west of the city centre, and covers an area of 82.4 hectares with 94 permanent buildings including six student residences. In addition, there are University Education Centres in Bega, Batemans Bay, Moss Vale and Loftus as well as the Sydney Business School in the City of Sydney. The University also offers courses equally based on the main Wollongong Campus in collaboration with partner institutions in a number of offshore locations including Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
 

The University of Wollongong traces its origins to 1951. The University was founded in 1951 when a division of The New South Wales University of Technology (currently known as The University of New South Wales, UNSW) was established in Wollongong. In 1962, the Division subsequently became the Wollongong College of The University of New South Wales.
 

On the 1st January 1975, the New South Wales Parliament incorporated the University of Wollongong as an independent institution of higher learning consisting of five faculties (Engineering, Humanities, Mathematics, Sciences and Social Sciences) with Professor Michael Birt as its inaugural Vice Chancellor. In 1976, Justice Robert Marsden Hope was installed as Chancellor of the University.
 

The University in Wollongong is on a delightful, well-treed and gardenesque campus, whose serenity is conducive to study and enquiry. One of the most enjoyable aspects of my visit there was the beautiful smell from the gum trees and native flora around the university buildings. The rustle of the leaves and the birdsong was a wonderful backdrop to the chatter of students socialising on the campus grounds. The facilities are world class and the academics passionate and dedicated. The Campus offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The Courses are offered across nine faculties including Arts, Commerce, Creative Arts, Education, Engineering, Health & Behavioural Sciences, Informatics, Law and Science. All together, nearly 30,000 students attend classes on the Wollongong Campus.

POSTCARD FROM WOLLONGONG

“You get educated by travelling.” - Solange Knowles
 

I am travelling for work again and visiting the seaside city of Wollongong,  located in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. Wollongong lies on the narrow coastal strip between the Illawarra Escarpment and the Pacific Ocean, 82 kilometres south of Sydney. Wollongong’s Statistical District has a population of 292,190, making Wollongong the third largest city in New South Wales after Sydney and Newcastle, and the ninth largest city in Australia.
 

The Wollongong metropolitan area extends from Helensburgh in the north to Shellharbour in the south. It sits within the Wollongong Statistical District, which covers the local authority areas of Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama, extending from the town of Helensburgh in the north to Gerroa in the south. Geologically, the city is located in the south-eastern part of the Sydney basin, which extends from Newcastle to Nowra.
 

Wollongong is noted for its heavy industry and its port activity, having a long history of coalmining and manufacturing. The quality of its physical setting is unique, occupying a narrow coastal plain between an almost continuous chain of surf beaches and the cliffline of the rainforest-covered Illawarra escarpment. It has two cathedrals, churches of many denominations and the Nan Tien Temple, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the southern hemisphere.
 

The city attracts many tourists each year, and is a regional centre for the South Coast fishing industry. The University of Wollongong has around 22,000 students and is internationally recognised. Although other explanations have been offered, such as “great feast of fish”, “hard ground near water”, “song of the sea”, “sound of the waves”, “many snakes” and “five islands”, the name Wollongong is believed to mean “seas of the South” in the local Aboriginal language, referring to NSW's Southern Coast.

ART SUNDAY - GIULIO CLOVIO

“Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.” – Rembrandt
 
Giorgio Giulio Clovio or Juraj Julije Klović (1498 – January 5, 1578) was an illuminator, miniaturist, and painter born in Kingdom of Croatia, who was mostly active in Renaissance Italy. He is considered the greatest illuminator of the Italian High Renaissance, and arguably the last very notable artist in the long tradition of the illuminated manuscript, before some modern revivals.
 
Giulio Clovio was born in Grižane, a village near the town of Modruš in Kingdom of Croatia. He came from a Croatian family and while it is not known where he had his early training, he probably studied art with monks at Fiume of Novi Bazar when he was young. He moved to Italy at the age of 18 years and entered the household of Cardinal Marino Grimani where he trained as a painter. Between 1516 and about 1523 Clovio may have lived with Marino in the residence of the latter’s uncle Cardinal Domenico Grimani in Rome.
 
Clovio studied under Giulio Romano during this early period. He also studied under Girolamo dai Libri. While a protégé of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, Clovio engraved medals and seals for him, as well as executing the Grimani Commentary manuscript, an important early illuminated book (now Sir John Soane’s Museum, London).
 
By 1524 Clovio was at Buda, at the Hungarian court of King Louis II, for whom he painted the “Judgment of Paris” and “Lucretia”. After Louis’ death in the Battle of Mohács, Clovio returned to Rome where he continued his career. After 1527 he visited several monasteries of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. In 1534 Clovio returned to the household of Cardinal Marino Grimani. A year later Clovio may have followed Marino when the latter was appointed as a papal legate to Perugia, where Clovio is thought to have worked on illustrations for the Soane Manuscript written by Marino Grimani around that time.
 
Clovio went back to Rome by the end of 1538 when he is known to have met with the writer Francisco de Hollanda. Clovio later became a member of the household of Alessandro Farnese with whom he would be associated until his death. It was during his time with Farnese that Clovio created one of his masterpieces, the “Farnese Hours”. Other well-known works from this period include the illustrations for the Towneley Lectionary.
 
From 1551 to 1553 Clovio is known to have worked in Florence. During this time he painted a miniature of Eleanor of Toledo (England, Walbeck Abbey, Private Collection). Clovio was a friend of the much younger El Greco, the celebrated Greek artist from Crete, who later worked in Spain, during El Greco’s early years in Rome. Greco painted two portraits of Clovio; one shows the four painters whom he considered as his masters; in this Clovio is side by side with Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael. Clovio was also known as the “Michelangelo of the Miniature”. Books with Clovio’s miniatures became famous primarily due to his skilled illustrations. He was persuasive in transferring the style of Italian high Renaissance painting into the miniature format.
 
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a personal friend of Giulio Clovio, and stayed with Clovio in Rome during his Italian trip of 1553. Breugel executed a small medallion depicting ships in a storm on a Clovio miniature of the Last Judgment (New York Public Library) but the six Bruegels, mentioned in Clovio’s will, unfortunately have all disappeared.
 
The Farnese Hours is an illuminated manuscript created by Giulio Clovio for cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1546. Considered the masterpiece of Clovio, the book of hours is now in the possession of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. It contains religious stories (both Biblical and apocryphal), and illustrations with architectural borders and classical nudes. Clovio sometimes exceeded the limitations of his medium in attempts to sustain the art of illumination. His approach ends to the monumental, despite the small scale of the works he was executing.

MUSIC SATURDAY - DVORAK

“For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.” - Henry A. Kissinger
 

Antonín Leopold Dvořák (date of birth: 8 September 1841, Nelahozeves, Bohemia, Austria. [now Czech Republic]; date of Death: 1 May 1904, Prague, Czech Republic) was the son of a butcher, but he did not follow his father’s trade, even though he was brought up with that intent by his parents. While assisting his father part-time, he studied music, and graduated from the Prague Organ School in 1859. He also was an accomplished violinist and violist, and joined the Bohemian Theatre Orchestra, which was under the baton of Bedrich Smetana in 1860s. For financial reasons he quit the orchestra and focused on composing and teaching.
 

He fell in love with one of his students, but she married another man. Her sister was single, so Dvorak married the sister, Anna, in 1873, and they had nine children. Dvorak’s early compositions were influenced by Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms, and with their support his music was performed in European capitals and received international acclaim. His performances in 1880s of Slavonic Dances, the Sixth Symphony and the Stabat Mater were a success in England, and Dvorak received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge.
 

He made a successful concert tour in Russia in 1890, and became a professor at the Prague Conservatory. In 1892 he received an invitation to visit America from Jeannette Thurber, the founder of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. Dvorak was the Director of the National Conservatory in New York for three years (1892-95), where he also taught composition and carried on his cross-cultural studies.
 

Dvorak broadened his experiences through studying the music of the Native Americans and African Americans, many of whom became his students and friends. Dvorak was inspired by the originality of indigenous American music and culture, as well as by the spirituals and by the singing of his African American students. Dvorak incorporated his new ideas, blended with his Bohemian roots, into his well-known Symphony No.9 in E minor “From the New World”. He worked on this symphony for most of the spring and summer of 1893, and made it's glorious premiere in Carnegie Hall in December, 1893.
 

In America he also wrote the remarkable Cello Concerto and two string quartets, including the Quartet in F (“The American”). Dvorak was doing very well in New York financially, but his heart was in Prague and he left America for his Czech fatherland. He had a big family with his wife and nine children in Prague. He became the Director of the Prague Conservatory in 1901 and kept the position until his death in 1904.
 

Here is his most famous work, Symphony No.9 in E minor “From the New World”, performed by the Wiener Philarmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

The painting above is Johnson Eastman's "Life in the South: My Old Kentucky Home".

FOOD FRIDAY - SPANISH OMELETTE

“Our curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is hard to any person on earth?” - Lady Gregory
 

World Egg Day is celebrated every year on the second Friday in October. The first World Egg Day in modern times was celebrated in 1996, but the egg has been celebrated since ancient times. People may make a special effort on this World Egg Day to enjoy the wonderful versatility of the egg. Eggs have a vital role to play in feeding people around the world, in both developed and developing countries.  They are an excellent, affordable source of high quality protein. To this end, here is a delicious egg recipe:
 

Spanish Omelette

Ingredients
500g waxy potatoes, such as Charlotte
50 g of butter
2 small red onions, finely sliced
1 red pepper, finely chopped
8-9 eggs
Chives (optional)
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
 

Method
Finely slice the onions and chop the red pepper, removing the seeds. Cut the potatoes into roughly ½ cm slices.
 
Heat the butter in a medium (about 24cm) frying pan over a low heat and cook gently for 10 – 15 minutes until starting to go brown, add the peppers and cook for a further 5 mins.
 
Put the potatoes in a steamer over boiling water for 10 - 12 minutes to soften. If you don’t have a steamer, put in a saucepan, cover with boiling water and simmer gently for around 8 - 10 minutes until just cooked through and drain well.
 
Break the eggs into a jug and beat with a fork, season with a generous grind of pepper, a pinch of salt and some ground nutmeg. Use scissors to snip the chives into small pieces and stir in (if using).
 
Heat the grill. Add a little more butter to the frying pan and add the potatoes. Pour over the egg mixture. Cook for 15 mins until almost set and golden brown underneath - you can use a spatula to lift the omelette up and check. Put the frying pan under the grill. Make sure the handle is outside the oven as it will become very hot and can burn. Cook for a further minute or two and serve.
 
This post is part of the Food Friday meme,
and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

VIVA VERDI!

“I adore my art... when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.” - Giuseppe Verdi
 

Giuseppe Verdi (October 10, 1813 - January 27, 1901) one of the greatest opera composers that ever lived, was born in the Italian town of Le Roncole, a village in the province of Parma (Emilia-Romagna region) of Italy. Verdi and Richard Wagner (also born in 1813) are considered the two preeminent opera composers of the nineteenth century. Verdi dominated the Italian opera scene after the eras of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture, as “La donna è mobile” from Rigoletto, “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” (The Drinking Song) from La Traviata, “Va, pensiero” (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, the “Coro di zingari” from Il Trovatore and the “Grand March” from Aida.

When he was still a child, Verdi’s parents moved from Le Roncole to Busseto, where the future composer’s education was greatly facilitated by visits to the large library belonging to the local Jesuit school. When Verdi showed early talent, Antonio Barezzi, a music-loving grocer paid for his music education. Back then, Italy was not a united country, and a lot of it was under Austrian rule – in fact technically, Verdi was born a Frenchman, as Le Roncole was under French rule at the time of his birth.
 

It was in Busseto that Verdi was given his first lessons in composition. The young composer went to Milan when he was twenty to continue his studies. He took private lessons in counterpoint while attending operatic performances and concerts, often of specifically German music. Milan’s Beaumonde association convinced him that he should pursue a career as a theatre composer. During the mid-1830s, he attended the Salotto Maffei salons in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei.
 

Returning to Busseto, he became the town music master and gave his first public performance in 1830 in the home of Antonio Barezzi, the music lover who had long supported Verdi’s musical ambitions in Milan. Because he loved Verdi’s music, Barezzi invited Verdi to be his daughter Margherita’s music teacher, and the two soon fell deeply in love. They were married on 4 May 1836, and Margherita gave birth to two children, Virginia Maria Luigia (26 March 1837 – 12 August 1838) and Icilio Romano (11 July 1838 – 22 October 1839). Both died in infancy while Verdi was working on his first opera and, shortly afterwards, Margherita died of encephalitis on 18 June 1840, aged only 26. Verdi adored his wife and children and was devastated by their deaths.
 

Nabucco, one of the earliest operas that Verdi wrote, included a chorus of Hebrew slaves longing for their country “so beautiful and lost”. Italians latched onto Verdi’s “Chorus of Hebrew Slaves” as an unofficial anthem for their divided nation that was ruled by foreign occupying powers. Verdi and his music became part of the Italian struggle for independence. Even his name became a political statement. The letters V-E-R-D-I are the first letters of the phrase “Vittorio Emanuele, Rei D’Italia”, which translates to “Victor Emanuel, King of Italy”. Victor Emanuel was the man Italians wanted to be their ruler. When Italians shouted “Viva Verdi” (long live Verdi)! their Austrian rulers didn’t know that they were talking politics, not opera, because the Austrians knew how much the Italians loved opera.
 

In his late thirties, Verdi composed Rigoletto (1853), and La Traviata (1853). Although the public loved them, critics were often scandalised by their subject matter - they seemed to condone rape, suicide, and free love. But Verdi was fiercely independent and himself lived openly with his second wife for ten years before marrying her. After these operatic successes had made him wealthy, Verdi bought an estate in Busseto; and in 1861 he was elected in the first parliament that convened after Italy had become a nation. In his later years he wrote Aida (1871), Otello (1887), and at the age of seventy-nine his final opera, Falstaff (1893).
 

Verdi composed not for the musical elite but for a mass public whose main entertainment was opera. He wanted subjects that were “original, interesting and passionate; passions about all!” Almost all his mature works are serious and end unhappily; they move quickly and involve extremes of hatred, love, jealousy, and fear; and his powerful music underlines the dramatic situations. Expressive vocal melody is the soul of a Verdi opera. There are many duets, trios, and quartets; and the chorus plays an important rule. Verdi’s style became less conventional as he grew older; his later works have greater musical continuity, less difference between aria and recitative, more imaginative orchestration, and richer accompaniments. His last three operas, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff, are perhaps his greatest. Falstaff, his final work, is a comic masterpiece which ends with a carefree fugue to the words “All the world's a joke!"
 

Here are the Three Tenors (Carreras, Pavarotti and Domingo) with Verdi’s “La Donna e Mobile” (Rigoletto) and “Brindisi” (La Traviata).

WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY

“Mental health is often missing from public health debates even though it's critical to wellbeing.” - Diane Abbott
 
This week is Mental Health Week, with World Mental Health Day tomorrow, October 10. A number of high profile Australians are supporting this health initiative this year, with celebrities, business people, politicians, sporting stars and organisations making a personal mental health promise. The purpose is to achieve three objectives:

1. Break down stigma, and convince people that mental illness is something that can be dealt with effectively, just like any other illness;
2. Bring communities together and get them talking about mental health and sharing their experiences;
3. Encourage people to seek help when they need it.

The impact of mental illness within the Australian population has become increasingly apparent. The 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that an estimated 3.2 million Australians (20% of the population aged between 16 and 85) had a mental disorder in the twelve months prior to the survey. The burden of disease and injury in Australia 2003 study indicated that mental disorders constitute the leading cause of disability burden in Australia, accounting for an estimated 24% of the total years lost due to disability.
 
The onset of mental illness is typically around mid-to-late adolescence and Australian youth (18-24 years old) have the highest prevalence of mental illness than any other age group. Common mental illnesses in young Australians are: Anxiety disorders (14%), depressive disorders (6%) and substance use disorders (5%). About 65% of people with mental illness do not access any treatment. This is worsened by delayed treatment due to serious problems in detection and accurate diagnosis. The proportion of people with mental illness accessing treatment is half that of people with physical disorders.
 
According to new research by the Mental Health Council of Australia (MHCA), four out of ten Australians who use mental health services are very satisfied with them. This research shows that there is a lot of good news for those who experience mental illness in Australia. It is a particularly encouraging fact for those who may be thinking about seeking help. The MHCA is calling on people to make and share their mental health promise, to encourage more people to open up about mental health. Anyone can make a promise at this website: http://1010.org.au/promise/add

TEMPUS EDAX RERUM

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” - William Penn
 

Magpie Tales has selected this week an image by Crilleb50 to act as a stimulus for creative endeavours. Here is my offering:
 

Tempus Edax Rerum
 

Infinite Time forever rushing forth
You run, you never stop, never to die.
In, out, unendlessly you weave a cloth,
A wily web in which we fall and helpless lie.
 

Time, tireless traveller, you never tarry
Unheeding to our cries of: “Mercy, stop!”
You hurry forward and Death you carry
His sickle sharp and ready for the crop.
 

Unending Time, the one without beginning,
How weak we be, if we should try to fight!
You only can the victor be, forever winning;
Glory for you, fame light; for us an endless night.
 

Even the strong you break as forth inexorably you fly;
Time in the end only surviving, all other things to die.

MOVIE MONDAY - 3 FRENCH FILMS

“Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit.” - Stendhal
 

We watched three French films recently and overall they were all very good. Living in Australia it is rather more difficult to find a wide variety of good international movies in most DVD shops, so when I see something that looks interesting and in a language other than English, I enthusiastically grab it. In some cases the film has disappointed, but in over 90% of cases we have generally enjoyed my choices.
 

The first, was the 2009 Catherine Corsini movie, “Leaving” (Partir), which starred Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi López and Yvan Attal. This was a graphic tale of power, family, love, sex and complex relationships in a typical love triangle - shades of Madame Bovary in a modern-day setting. The film does contain some sex scenes, so be warned.
 

Scott Thomas plays Suzanne, a well-to-do married wife and mother in the south of France. Her idle, comfortable bourgeois lifestyle bores her and as her children are growing up, she decides to go back to work as a physiotherapist. She begins to study as a refresher, and her doctor husband (Attal) agrees to renovate a storage building as a consulting room for her in their backyard. When Suzanne and Ivan (López), the man hired to do the building, meet the mutual attraction is as sudden as it is passionate. Suzanne has little hesitation to give up her life, her family and all her future plans in order to live this love to the fullest.
 

The film is gritty and realistic, and even though Suzanne is depicted as the faithless wife betraying her husband and family, one cannot help but sympathise with her, especially as the film develops and her husband’s attitude towards her is explored. It is difficult to fathom what Suzanne is experiencing: Is it true love, an overwhelming passion, or an attempt to reaffirm her femininity in order to experience Ivan’s tenderness towards her (something that is missing from her relationship with her husband)? The vulnerability of each of the three main characters is artfully displayed by the director, who is very restrained in the way she depicts the foibles of all three. Quite an enjoyable movie.
 

The second film was “IP5: The Island of the Pachyderms” (IP5: L'île aux pachyderms) a 1992 film by director Jean-Jacques Beineix, starring Yves Montand, Olivier Martinez and Sekkou Sall. This was part road movie, part coming-of-age tale, part quest for the ideal love movie. It is notable for being Yves Montand’s last movie (he died in 1991, before the film’s release).

Two young people, Tony (Martinez) a dysfunctional anti-social angry youth and his friend, Jockey (Sall) a black boy, live a precarious existence in the ethnic minority slums of Paris. They deface walls with graffiti and decorate billboards with art. Tony gets in serious trouble with a gang of drug pushers and in order to extricate himself, agrees to deliver a consignment of “gnomes” to Grenoble. En route, Tony decides to head for Toulouse instead, in pursuit of a girl he met briefly in Paris and with whom he has fallen in love. The two youngsters dump the truck, steal a couple of cars and in the second one, they find that Leon, a tramp and mystic (Montand), is hiding in the back seat. They form an unlikely threesome, each pursuing a dream, each finding within themselves a redeeming feature that changes their lives.
 

Beineix has made some interesting films, including “Betty Blue”, “The Moon in the Gutter” and “Diva”. Socially marginal anti-establishment characters on a quest seems to be a recurring theme with this director. This film has an engaging style, often lapses into visual lyricism and Montand’s acting shines forth like a diamond. The two young leads also do a great job acting and the cinematography, music and direction are wonderful. We were kept engaged and interested throughout this movie that looks at France’s minorities, some of their problems, but more importantly, the universality of human emotions and needs.
 

Third in the list is Claude Lelouch’s 2007 movie, “Crossed Tracks” (“Roman de Gare”) starring Fanny Ardant, Dominique Pinon and Audrey Dana. This was a quirky film that was nevertheless well made, original and kept you guessing for quite a while with its clever plot and false leads. One has to pay close attention to the story, but at the same time, this is not hard to do as the movie is interesting, the acting is good and the plot has few if any holes in it. One’s changing evaluation of the characters as one watches and learns more of them, is part of the pleasure of watching this film.
 

The plot centres on (but is not mainly about!) the successful novelist Judith Ralitzer (Ardant). We start out with Judith’s interrogation at a police station regarding the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A the same time, a serial-killer/child rapist escapes from a prison in Paris. A school teacher leaves his wife and children and goes missing, while his wife desperately tries to find him but instead falls in love with the police detective in charge of the case. Further afield, on the road, an annoying and stressed hairdresser, Huguette (Dana) is abandoned at a service station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the farm of her family in the country in order to introduce her fiancé and announce their wedding to them. A man (Pinon) offers her a ride and she pleads with him to assume the identity of her fiancé for 24 hours so as not to disappoint her mother. Who is who? What is truth and what is a lie? Who is the killer and who is the victim?
 

This is a great movie, full of incident, quirky characters, humour, pathos, intrigue, mystery and drama. We enjoyed it very much and had a laugh, identified with some situations, booed at the villain only to discover that it was a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and were surprised by the ending. The film could have easily been a mess, but Lelouch shows his mastery of the medium, while the actors pull all stops out to give fantastic performances. Pinon is really the star of the film, but is ably supported by Ardant and Dana is quite refreshing as the pathetic “airhead” hairdresser.

ART SUNDAY - HANS HEYSEN

“I love a sunburnt country, 
A land of sweeping plains, 
Of ragged mountain ranges, 
Of droughts and flooding rains. 
I love her far horizons, 
I love her jewel-sea, 
Her beauty and her terror 
The wide brown land for me!” – Dorothea Mackellar
 
Hans Heysen was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1877 and migrated to Adelaide, South Australia with his family at the age of six. As a young man in new surroundings, Heysen showed an early interest in art. He dropped out of school at 14 to work as a hardware merchant and study at art school in the evenings. Drawing and design became vital to Heysen’s art and ideology. Through his accomplishments as a draughtsman, Heysen developed a great control of line and shape and this is evident in his paintings, but also in his studies drawn in pencil, pen, chalk and charcoal.
 
Heysen was very fortunate with patrons and at only the beginning of his career as an artist, four prominent Adelaide businessmen were so impressed by his enthusiasm that they agreed to sponsor his studies in Europe, in lieu of the right to sell whatever he painted abroad. Later he sold art works to the State galleries in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and carried out commissions for prominent patrons such as Dame Nellie Melba and the Governor of Victoria.
 
After hosting his second solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1912, Heysen was able to afford to purchase a property “The Cedars”, near Hahndorf in the Adelaide hills. He lived there for the rest of his life recording the essence of the landscape and the labours of the German farmers in the fields, until his death in 1968. The property was the inspiration for many of Heysen’s famous subjects, gigantic gums, timber hauling and toilers, and is open to the public to this day.
 
Heysen’s artwork is highly traditional. Whilst he painted Australian subjects such as the Hahndorf pastorals, the Flinders Ranges and his iconic gums, they are strongly influenced European models of dark and light compositional elements, which distil the essence of the harsh Australian light. His animal and bird studies feature the cattle, sheep, pigs and ducks of his own farmyard, rather than Australian mammals. However, Heysen helped define a national identity for Australia through his original approach to the Australian landscape, light and rural life.
 
Best known for his watercolours of the bush, Heysen won the prestigious Wynne Prize for landscape painting an astonishing nine times. The first win was in 1904 with the famous large oil, “Mystic Morn” which now belongs to the Art Gallery of South Australia. Heysen produced an enormous body of work and his pictures have been enthusiastically collected across the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. Knighted in 1959, Sir Hans Heysen holds a distinctive place as one of the nation’s most honoured artists of the Federation era.
 
The Heysen Trail in South Australia was named after Sir Hans Heysen. This is a long distance walking trail in South Australia. It runs from Parachilna Gorge, in the Flinders Ranges via the Adelaide Hills to Cape Jervis on the Fleurieu Peninsula and is approximately 1,200 kilometres long. Heysen’s daughter, Nora Heysen, was also a successful artist.
 
Heysen’s “Droving into the Light” (1914-21) is an iconic painting that is highly representative of this artist’s work. It is exhibited in the Art Gallery of South Australia and is a large oil on canvas, 121.9 (h) x 152.4 (w) cm. It is a gift of Mr W H Vincent, in 1922. Although it deals with the droving of sheep, the painting depicts the majesty of Australian eucalyptus trees. The combination of the gum-tree motif with a theme of end-of-day homecoming is symbolic of a new age: A unified Commonwealth of Australia had been created and was still in the process of formation. "Droving into the Light" is one of Australia’s greatest Federation pictures.
 
The gum trees set the scene, leading the eye into a sunbathed landscape beyond. Its dynamic compositional elements, rich colour, fine draughtsmanship make of this painting a successful, complex visual treat. It demonstrates Heysen’s successful use of light and is my favourite of all his gum-tree paintings in oil. The painting pivots upon the the River Red Gum right of centre. The River Red Gum was in fact an afterthought. Heysen recalled in 1954 that it was introduced to remedy a compositional disharmony:

“I realised the weakness of the composition and repainted portions, introducing the large central Red Gum. This helped to bind the two sides and made a great improvement, materially enhancing the whole conception.”

MUSIC SATURDAY - ALCINA

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” - W. H. Auden
 
“Alcina” (HWV 34) is an opera seria by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of “L’ Isola di Alcina”, an opera that was set in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he acquired the year after, during his travels in Italy. The plot was originally taken from – but partly altered for better conformity – Ludovico Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” (like those of the Handel operas “Orlando” and “Ariodante”), an epic poem set in the time of Charlemagne’s wars against Islam. The opera contains several musical sequences with opportunity for dance: these were composed for dancer Marie Sallé.
 
“Alcina” was composed for Handel’s first season at the Covent Garden Theatre, London. It premiered on April 16, 1735. Like the composer's other works in the opera seria genre, it fell into obscurity; after a revival in Brunswick in 1738 it was not performed again until a production in Leipzig in 1928.
 
Here it is in its entirety performed by the Staatsorchester Stuttgart, in 1999, conducted by Alan Hacker, with:
Catherine Nagletstad – Alcina
Alice Coote – Ruggiero
Helene Schneiderman – Bradamante
Catriona Smith – Morgana
Rolf Romei – Oronte
Michael Ebbecke – Melisso
Claudia Mahnke – Oberto
Heinz Gerger – Astolfo
 
Musically it is wonderful, but the unfortunate modern-day costumes and setting by stage directors Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito are really distracting and so out of keeping with the opera that they grate on me… Never mind, just listen to the music!

FOOD FRIDAY - APPLE MUFFINS

“Two old Bachelors were living in one house; One caught a Muffin, the other caught a Mouse.” - Edward Lear
 
With Halloween around the corner and apples associated with this holiday, here’s a recipe for apple muffins.
 
Apple Muffins
 
Ingredients - Muffins
2 and 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground mace
Pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 and 1/2 cups diced apples
2/3 cup brown sugar
 
Ingredients - Topping
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
Icing sugar for dusting (optional)
 
Method
Preheat the oven to 200˚C and spray a standard 12-piece muffin pan with cooking oil. You may use paper liners for the muffins if desired.
Peel and dice the apples and mix with the brown sugar. Microwave until just tender, not cooked. Cool.
In a large bowl mix the flour, baking powder, spices.
In a medium bowl, whisk egg, add white sugar, oil, vanilla and apples.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and add egg-apple mixture, stirring gently until incorporated. Divide evenly among the 12 muffin pots.
In a bowl, mix the butter, nuts, sugar and flour until crumbly. Sprinkle over the top of the muffins.
Bake at 200˚C until a toothpick inserted in the muffin centres comes out clean (abut (20-25 minutes).
Let cool in pan for five minutes and then remove muffins to wire rack to cool. Sprinkle with icing sugar if desired.
 
This post is part of the Food Friday meme,
and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme. 

WORLD ANIMAL DAY 2013

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” - Immanuel Kant
 

World Animal Day was started in 1931 at a convention of ecologists in Florence as a way of highlighting the plight of endangered species. October 4 was chosen as World Animal Day as it is the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. Since then, World Animal Day has become a day for remembering and paying tribute to all animals and the people who love and respect them. It’s celebrated in different ways in every country, with no regard to nationality, religion, faith or political ideology.

There are many things that we can do on World Animal Day in order to show our support. A simple way of helping stray animals is to donate tins of cat and dog food to local shelters, which may also of course lead to adopting a stray pet. Schools can organise trips to shelters and farms. In the sympathetic workplace, why not try a “Bring Your Dog to Work Day”? You could organise an animal related quiz night to raise money for animal charities.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Victoria is a non-government, community based charity that works to prevent cruelty to animals by actively promoting their care and protection. RSPCA Victoria was established in Melbourne in 1871. Since this time, the RSPCA has become Australia’s leading animal welfare charity.
 

Across the state, the RSPCA’s community services include the work undertaken by the Inspectorate, Animal Shelters, Clinics and Education teams. The RSPCA operates ten animal welfare shelters in Victoria, providing refuge and care and where possible, offering more than 35,000 animals each year a second chance. RSPCA Inspectors work to protect animals from cruelty, investigates 14,337 estimated reports, prosecutes offenders and rescues animals from dangerous situations.
 

The RSPCA Education team contributes to prevention strategies by influencing over 12,000 young people about the value and importance of animals in our lives. The RSPCA works tirelessly to educate the community regarding animal welfare and to advocate for improved legislation. Legislative improvements to protect animals have been achieved at both state and federal levels, thanks to the continued lobbying of the RSPCA.
 

As a not-for-profit organisation, the RSPCA relies on community support to care for “all creatures great and small”. Only 3% of the RSPCA’s operating expenses are supported by a grant from the Victorian State Government, so it is truly an organisation funded by the generous Victorian community. You can donate to the RSPCA here.

Needless to say animals affect our lives in all sorts of ways, both directly and indirectly. In our increasingly urbanised societies, most people’s experience of animal interactions come from owning a pet. Research dating from the 1980s suggested that pet ownership could have positive benefits on human health. Benefits ranged from higher survival rates from heart attacks; a significantly lower use of general practitioner services; a reduced risk of asthma and allergic rhinitis in children exposed to pet allergens during the first year of life; a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease; and better physical and psychological wellbeing in community dwelling older people.
 

While people do not own pets specifically to enhance their health, they value the relationship and the contribution their pet makes to their quality of life. Over 90% of pet owners regard their pet as a valued family member. The death of a pet may cause great distress to owners, especially when the pet has associations with a deceased spouse or former lifestyle.

HAPPY WORLD ANIMAL DAY!

CHESTNUTS FOR ANGELS

“We cannot pass our guardian angel’s bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.” - Saint Augustine
 
Today is the anniversary of the birth of:
Ferdinand Foch, soldier (1851);
Mohandas Karamchanal Gandhi, statesman (1869);
Cordell Hull, UN founder (1871);
Wallace Stevens, writer (1879);
William A. Abbott (of Costello fame), actor (1895);
Groucho Marx, comedian (1895?);
Grahame Green, writer (1904);
Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury (1921);
Yuri N. Glazkov, cosmonaut (1939);
Don McLean, musician (1945);
Sting, musician/actor (1951).
 
The sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa, is the birthday plant for this day.  It is named after Castanum in Thessaly, Greece, where it still grows in abundance.  Roasted chestnuts sold by street pedlars was a common sight in older times in England and many continental countries.  The chestnut seller is still to be encountered in Mediterranean countries in autumn.  The sweet chestnut signifies chastity and the triumph of virtue over temptations of the flesh.  In the language of flowers the chestnut symbolises justice and speaks the sentiment “render me justice”.  Astrologically, the chestnut is under Jupiter’s rule.
 
In 1672, Pope Clement X instituted the Guardian Saints’ Feast Day as an opportunity for people to give thanks to the guardian angel that protected them throughout their lives. Perhaps there is no other aspect of Catholic piety as comforting to parents as the belief that an angel protects their little ones from dangers real and imagined. Yet the doctrine of the Catholic Church maintains that guardian angels are not only for children. Their role is to represent individuals before God, to watch over them always, to aid their prayer and to present their souls to God at death.
 
The concept of an angel assigned to guide and nurture each human being is a development of Catholic doctrine and piety based on Scripture but not directly drawn from it. Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:10 best support the belief: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.” Devotion to the angels began to develop with the birth of the monastic tradition. St. Benedict (Feast Day, July 11) gave it impetus and Bernard of Clairvaux (Feast Day, August 20), the great 12th-century reformer, was such an eloquent spokesman for the guardian angels that angelic devotion assumed its current form in his day.
 
The Catholic Church views devotion to the angels as an expression of faith in God’s enduring love and providential care extended to each person, day in and day out, until life’s end.

PORTUGAL

“I’ve got two places I like to be. Portugal is one.” - Cliff Richard
 
Magpie Tales has given us a Mark Haley photograph to inspire us and stimulate some writing for all those who take part in her challenge. Here is my offering, based on a detail of the image.
 
Portugal
 
Some day I’ll summon enough courage to flee.
Flee from your grey skies, grey days, grey people,
Hard, heartless land.
To Lisbon where sun shines in sky azure like satin,
Where flowers garland ancient walls,
To Portugal.
 
People still sing the fado
Dance in the streets,
In Portugal...
Guitars ring out, caressing nights of velvet
In Coimbra, Lisbon and Portó.
There’s love still to be found
In honey-coloured skin
And sparkling raven hair,
“Ay! Mi Amor!”
In Portugal!
 
Festering wound, my heart, in exile will not heal
Unless I feel Spring coming -
For Spring still comes
To Portugal!
 
Ah! But to roam the streets of Lisbon,
To drink red-wine sun,
To breathe sea-flower air,
To love warm-honey skin,
In Portugal...

MOVIE MONDAY - CHARLIE & BOOTS

“And that’s the wonderful thing about family travel: It provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind.” - Dave Barry
 
At the weekend, we watched the Dean Murphy 2009 Australian film Charlie & Boots starring Paul Hogan, Shane Jacobson, Morgan Griffin and Val Lehman. This was a slow-paced, wry comedy that depended very much on the two male leads Hogan and Jacobson who carried the movie in what is essentially another road movie with a “healing-of-a-father-son-relationship” theme.
 
Charlie (Hogan) is heartbroken after the sudden death of his wife and is taken by his estranged son Boots (Jacobson), on a road trip up to far North Queensland. They hope to realise their dream of going fishing at the northernmost tip of the country in Cape York. They drive from Warrnambool in Victoria, into New South Wales and up through Queensland visiting many famous and not-so-famous locations. The movie has a relaxed pace, depending for its forward motion on the relentless drive of the 3,500 or so km. The two stars have amusing conversations interact with the locals and pick up a young, perky hitchhiker (Griffin) who wants to be a C&W singer in Tamworth.
 
Shane Jacobson known for his role as toilet cleaner Kenny, another Aussie comedy of the same name, works well with Hogan. There are some mildly amusing moments, but no laugh-out material. Some serious or sentimental family issues are dealt with superficially as the father-son relationship is repaired. The whole film is a little travelogue, a little comic sketch type material, a little sight gag, a little bit of a homespun homily.
 
All things considered, this is a pleasant and largely enjoyable film exploring male bonding, with both funny and touching aspects. Australians who have taken a multiple-day road-trip will easily relate to the movie. It is quite a picturesque tourist guide of rural Australia, with travellers encountering the Grampians, Tamworth, Forbes, Tenterfield and the Great Barrier Reef. The cinematography by Roger Lawson does justice to these locations in an understated way. Dale Cornelius’ musical score adds another pleasant dimension to the film.
 
“Charlie & Boots” may not Oscar material or art film, it may riddled with endless clichés and old jokes, but it is pleasant and will make you smile.

ART SUNDAY - CARAVAGGIO

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” - Francis of Assisi
 
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571? – 18 July 1610?), a revolutionary and unconventional naturalist painter, was born in Caravaggio near Milan, the son of a mason. He showed his talent early and at the age of sixteen, after a brief apprenticeship in Milan, he was studying with d’Arpino in Rome.
 
During the period 1592-98 Caravaggio’s work was precise in contour, brightly coloured, highly modeled and sculptured in form, like the Mannerists, but with an added social and moral consciousness. By 1600 when he had completed his first public commission the St. Matthew paintings for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, he had established himself as an opponent of both classicism and intellectual Mannerism.
 
Caravaggio chose his models from the common people and set them in ordinary surroundings, yet managed to lose neither poetry nor deep spiritual feeling. This use of members of the lower classes (including prostitutes) as models to paint saints got him into trouble more than once with the church. His use of chiaroscuro - the contrast of light and dark to create atmosphere, drama, and emotion - was revolutionary. His light is unreal, comes from outside the painting, and creates deep relief and dark shadow.
 
Caravaggio’s paintings are as exciting in their effect upon the senses as on the intellect. Strangely enough though, his art was not popular with ordinary people who saw in it a lack of reverence. It was highly appreciated by artists of his time and has become recognised through the centuries for its profoundly religious nature as well as for the new techniques that had changed the art of painting.
 
Though Caravaggio received many commissions for religious paintings during his short life, he led a wild and bohemian existence. In 1606, after killing a man in a fight, he fled to Naples. Unfortunately, he was soon in trouble again, and so was forced to flee to Malta where, finally, after a series of precipitous adventures, died of malaria at the age of thirty-six. His influence, which was first seen in early seventeenth-century Italian art, eventually spread to France, England, Spain and the Netherlands.
 
The painting above is Caravaggio “Salome with the head of John the Baptist”, painted in 1610 the last year of the artist’s life, and it presently exhibited in the National Gallery, London. It is a characteristic work, showing Caravaggio’s mastery of chiaroscuro and exquisite characterisation of this scene from the Bible. The faces tell the whole story, with Salome’s wistful look of repugnance perhaps highlighting her role as a victim of palace intrigues and the awakening of some form of repentance.
 
The painting was discovered in a private collection in 1959. The early Caravaggio biographer Giovanni Bellori, writing in 1672, mentions a “Salome with the Head of John the Baptist” sent by the artist to the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in the hope of regaining favour after having been expelled from the Order in 1608. It seems likely, however, that Bellori was referring to a different painting of the same subject. The handling and the raking light link this painting to works done in Naples during the artist’s brief stay in the city during 1606–1607, an impression confirmed by the resemblance between Salome and the “Virgin in the Madonna of the Rosary”, and between the executioner holding the head of the Baptist and one of the two torturers in “Christ at the Column and The Flagellation of Christ”.