oh, art history

Apollo

 There are so many awesome student deals on museums here (and I get reimbursed by my program whenever I do something cultural anyway...) that I have been trying to take full advantage of the wealth of the art collections in Vienna. Definitely making up hardcore for not having taken art history at Wellesley yet and having so many friends who do...

I have a year pass to the set of Art History museums (which is about 9 different museums, including the huge impressive art history one at Mariatheresianplatz) and have been lately going through the huge art history museum section by section. Last week I explored the Greek and Roman wings and LOVED it. Maybe it's because I read the Percy Jackson books this summer...but something about the faces of the various interpretations of the Greek and Roman gods struck me. I found Apollo and Zeus' faces the most striking. 

Zeus

This afternoon I attended a lunchtime museum tour of the Hans von Aachen exhibit, which is presently the featured exhibit in the picture galleries. The museums has free 30 or 60 minute tours weekly during lunchtime, mid-afternoon, and early evening. They're in German, so I thought I would start going to them every so often to experience a lecture in German on art. The paintings were beautiful, and the lecture informative and challenging, lots of vocab I didn't know. Hans was the court painter of Emporer Rudolf II in Prague starting in 1592, and his painting technique was innovative in that it combined Dutch, Venetian, and Roman styles to produce stunningly elegant compositions. He achieved this beautiful glow on his subject's skin that is apparently characteristic for his work. The funny thing I realized during that tour was that I was definitely the only one there under say 40 and one of maybe 5 that doesn't have grandchildren. I kept feeling like they were all checking me out, like what is that young thing doing here? tee hee, I love museums.