El Escorial  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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"Philip was interested in the arts all his life and founded the Spanish royal collection of pictures now admired by millions in the Prado. His admiration for Titian he shared with his father, but his liking for Hieronymus Bosch shows a greater originality of taste than that of Charles. He also adored Roger van der Weyden and bought for the Escorial a Descent From the Cross by that master, which he had seen years before in the sumptuous castle in the Netherlands of his cultivated aunt, Mary of Hungary, when she was Governor in the Low Countries." --in a review of Henry Kamen's life of Philip II of Spain

Titian's Venus Is she masturbating, or modestly covering herself? Decide for yourself, but Mark Twain in A Tramp Abroad was in no doubt. Here's what he wrote:

"At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they hardly suggest human beings-- yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that exists in the world--the Tribune--and there, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all that. The world says that no worded description of a moving spectacle is a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast, but won't stand a description of it in words. Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it might be.

There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought--I am well aware of that. I am not railing at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort. Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune; persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am referring to."

The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, is what The Independent described as “The Da Vinci Code for people with brains.”

Looted art Venus with Pistol, Giorgione, Venus

Titian, Venus Anadyomene (Venus Rising from the Sea), 1520.

Four Dutch translations of the poem The Raven.

• John F. Malta in 1887
• Gerard den Brabander in 1944
• Bob de Uyl in 1983
• Carel Alphenaar in 1993

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Abstract Funk Theory