Artistic Works Inside Egyptian Tombs

Drawing by Faucher-Gudin taken from a ¨squeeze¨ from the tomb of Ti. The domains are represented as women. The name is written before each figure with the designation of the landowner. Image from Projectgutenberg.org

This post is the second part of the previous one (About the Egyptian Village). 

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2010/03/plan-of-villa-of-great-egyptian-noble.html

It is an excerpt from the book at project Gutenberg.org: History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria. By G. Maspero, who is introduced as ¨Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen´s College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of France¨. Edited by A. H. Sayce, professor of Assyriology, Oxford. The Grolier Society, London. (out of print)

Drawing by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dumichen, Resultate, vol.i. pl. 13. Project Gutenberg.org

¨Neither pictorial effect nor the caprice of the moment was permitted to guide the artist in the choice of his subjects; all that he drew, pictures or words, bad a magical purpose. Every individual who built for himself an "eternal house," either attached to it a staff of priests of the double, of inspectors, scribes, and slaves, or else made an agreement with the priests of a neighbouring temple to serve the chapel in perpetuity. Lands taken from his patrimony, which thus became the "Domains of the Eternal House," rewarded them for their trouble, and supplied them with meats, vegetables, fruits, liquors, linen and vessels for sacrifice.

In theory, these "liturgies" were perpetuated from year to year, until the end of time; but in practice, after three or four generations, the older ancestors were forsaken for those who had died more recently. Notwithstanding the imprecations and threats of the donor against the priests who should neglect their duty, or against those who should usurp the funeral endowments, sooner or later there came a time when, forsaken by all, the double was in danger of perishing for want of sustenance. In order to ensure that the promised gifts, offered in substance on the day of burial, should be maintained throughout the centuries, the relatives not only depicted them upon the chapel walls, but represented in addition the lands which produced them, and the labour which contributed to their production. On one side we see ploughing, sowing, reaping, the carrying of the corn, the storing of the grain, the fattening of the poultry, and the driving of the cattle. A little further on, workmen of all descriptions are engaged in their several trades: shoemakers ply the awl, glassmakers blow through their tubes, metal founders watch over their smelting-pots, carpenters hew down trees and build a ship; groups of women weave or spin under the eye of a frowning taskmaster, who seems impatient of their chatter. Did the double in his hunger desire meat? He might choose from the pictures on the wall the animal that pleased him best, whether kid, ox, or gazelle; he might follow the course of its life, from its birth in the meadows to the slaughter-house and the kitchen, and might satisfy his hunger with its flesh. The double saw himself represented in the paintings as hunting, and to the hunt he went; he was painted eating and drinking with his wife, and he ate and drank with her; the pictured ploughing, harvesting, and gathering into barns, thus became to him actual realities. In fine, this painted world of men and things represented upon the wall was quickened by the same life which animated the double, upon whom it all depended: the picture of a meal or of a slave was perhaps that which best suited the shade of guest or of master.

Even to-day, when we enter one of these decorated chapels, the idea of death scarcely presents itself: we have rather the impression of being in some old-world house, to which the master may at any moment return. We see him portrayed everywhere upon the walls, followed by his servants, and surrounded by everything which made his earthly life enjoyable. One or two statues of him stand at the end of the room, in constant readiness to undergo the "Opening of the Mouth" and to receive offerings. Should these be accidentally removed, others, secreted in a little chamber hidden in the thickness of the masonry, are there to replace them. These inner chambers have rarely any external outlet, though occasionally they are connected with the chapel by a small opening, so narrow that it will hardly admit of a hand being passed through it. Those who came to repeat prayers and burn incense at this aperture were received by the dead in person. The statues were not mere images, devoid of consciousness. Just as the double of a god could be linked to an idol in the temple sanctuary in order to transform it into a prophetic being, capable of speech and movement, so when the double of a man was attached to the effigy of his earthly body, whether in stone, metal, or wood, a real living person was created and was introduced into the tomb. So strong was this conviction that the belief has lived on through two changes of religion until the present day. The double still haunts the statues with which he was associated in the past. As in former times, he yet strikes with madness or death any who dare to disturb his repose; and one can only be protected from him by breaking, at the moment of discovery, the perfect statues which the vault contains. The double is weakened or killed by the mutilation of these his sustainers.¨

 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17322/17322-h/v2a.htm

Plan of the Villa of a Great Egyptian Noble

Image from projectgutenberg.org

It was by chance that I´ve found this depiction of the ¨plan of the villa of a great Egyptian noble¨, at project Gutenberg.org. This web site is amazing. It has 30000 books you can read on line, some of them can be downloaded. Most of those digital books are really old, I´m not sure if they have incunables.

The book where I took this great image is History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria. By G. Maspero, who is introduced as ¨Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen´s College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of France¨. Edited by A. H. Sayce, professor of Assyriology, Oxford. The Grolier Society, London. I couldn´t find the date of publication.

This plan was taken from a Theban tomb of the XVIIIth dynasty. The text in the book related to this plan is the following:

¨It was there, doubtless, that Amten ended his days in peace and quietude of mind. The tableland wheron the Sphinx has watched for so many centuries was then crowned by no pyramids, but mastabas of fine white stone rose here and there from out of the sand: that in which the mummy of Amten was to be enclosed was situated not far from the modern village of Abusir, on the confines of the nome of the Haunch, and almost in sight of the mansion in which his declining years were spent. (Note: The site of Amten´s manorial mansion is nowhere mentioned in the inscriptions; but the custom of the Egyptians to construct their tombs as near as possible to the places where they resided, leads me to consider it as almost certain that we ought to look for its site in the Memphite plain, in the vicinity of the town of Abusir, but in a northern direction, so as to keep within the territory of the Letopolite nome, where Amten governed in the name of the king.)

The number of persons of obscure origin, who in this manner had risen in a few years to the highest honours, and died governors of provinces or ministers of Pharaoh, must have been considerable. Their descendants followed in their fathers' footsteps, until the day came when royal favour or an advantageous marriage secured them the possession of an hereditary fief, and transformed the son or grandson of a prosperous scribe into a feudal lord. It was from people of this class, and from the children of the Pharaoh, that the nobility was mostly recruited. In the Delta, where the authority of the Pharaoh was almost everywhere directly felt, the power of the nobility was weakened and much curtailed; in Middle Egypt it gained ground, and became stronger and stronger in proportion as one advanced southward. The nobles held the principalities of the Gazelle, of the Hare, of the Serpent Mountain, of Akhmîm, of Thinis, of Qasr-es-Sayad, of El-Kab, of Aswan, and doubtless others of which we shall some day discover the monuments.

They accepted without difficulty the fiction according to which Pharaoh claimed to be absolute master of the soil, and ceded to his subjects only the usufruct of their fiefs; but apart from the admission of the principle, each lord proclaimed himself sovereign in his own domain, and exercised in it, on a small scale, complete royal authority.

Everything within the limits of this petty state belonged to him—woods, canals, fields, even the desert-sand: after the example of the Pharaoh, he farmed a part himself, and let out the remainder, either in farms or as fiefs, to those of his followers who had gained his confidence or his friendship. After the example of Pharaoh, also, he was a priest, and exercised priestly functions in relation to all the gods—that is, not of all Egypt, but of all the deities of the nome. He was an administrator of civil and criminal law, received the complaints of his vassals and serfs at the gate of his palace, and against his decisions there was no appeal. He kept up a flotilla, and raised on his estate a small army, of which he was commander-in-chief by hereditary right. He inhabited a fortified mansion, situated sometimes within the capital of the principality itself, sometimes in its neighbourhood, and in which the arrangements of the royal city were reproduced on a smaller scale.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17322/17322-h/v2a.htm

La Casa Propia y la Casa Apropiada

La Mancha de Humedad. Photocollage de Myriam Mahiques

El filósofo Gastón Bachelard (1884-1962) nos dice en su libro ¨The Poetics of Space¨, que hay un viejo dicho, ¨llevamos nuestro hogar con nosotros¨, que contiene muchas interpretaciones. A través de los sueños, los lugares que habitamos en nuestras vidas retienen los tesoros de los días pasados. Nuestra vida es protegida en el pecho del Ser casa.

Siendo la casa de uno cuestión tan importante, no es de extrañar que uno de los primeros ejercicios en la facultad de arquitectura, se aplique a la vivienda del alumno. Luego, la cuestión reside en cómo alcanzar exitosamente el objetivo del ejercicio.

Trabajaba yo como dibujante en un Estudio, casi concluyendo mis estudios. Mi supervisor directo, era un arquitecto que había comenzado a dar clases como docente en la Universidad. Ese día, fue verlo emanar angustia, y comprender que algo andaba mal. Nos cuenta entonces, que la cátedra pidió a los ¨principiantes¨, analizar su propia casa desde el punto de vista del diseño.

Un alumno, expresa en sus dibujos grandes manchas: su vivienda tiene humedad y este problema familiar no lo deja visualizar la finalidad del ejercicio.

¨Mínimos¨ incidentes a lo largo de los años de carrera, hacen que nuestras propias casas pierdan el encanto de la niñez y descubramos que ya no es la casa apropiada.

Y ahí nomás, el docente inexperto lo increpa al adolescente, y le pregunta si no se da cuenta que la humedad es un problema técnico, pero si salta a la vista!, que la planta tiene problemas de diseño, porque la cocina esto, y la habitación lo otro, y cómo es que no lo ha notado?

No fue posible retroceder en el tiempo. El velo se había caído no en los seis años que dan lugar a que el alumno madure, sino en cinco minutos de una corrección. No hubo tiempo de enseñarle, que además, puede aprender de Gastón Bachelard (necesitaría diez o quince años más para dar con su libro); o que también se habla de una estética de la humedad y las ruinas, que es parte del digno envejecer de los edificios. Tampoco hubo posibilidad de pararlo en los pasillos y al menos darle un pañuelo para que se limpie la cara.

El afamado filósofo sostiene que todo lo que intentamos comunicar a otros, es una orientación hacia lo que es secreto, aunque no lleguemos a expresar estos secretos objetivamente.

Personalization of the sick city of London in Daniel Defoe’s words

Illustration of the city of London and the plague. From http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/images/great-plague/plague-illustration.jpg

I came across with this book, and though it does not have the psychological sense and spirituality of The Plague by Albert Camus, the story is interesting, considering it  has a remarkable fabric that gathers fact and imagination.

In the prologue, Maynadier says that the Journal is probably the writer’s own recollection. It seems to have been established that Daniel Defoe (1659-1731) was five or six years old during the Plague Year, instead of four as has been previously supposed, and therefore of an age to receive a pretty distinct impression of the gloom which overspread the city. During the next years of his childhood, he would naturally hear from the city people of his acquaintance many a tale of the pestilence, the most appalling experience they had known. The plague that stroke England in 1665, was the same disease that more than three hundred years before, drove Boccaccio’s gay Florentines to the villa where the stories of the Decameron were told. The spots on the skin were formerly common tokens of the disease. Another symptoms are fever, vomiting, the frightful aches and pains, the swellings or buboes in the neck, armpit, or groin. Rats are supposed to be carriers of the pestilence.

The text I reproduce below, is Defoe’s reflection of how he feels or understands the city. Here, we see the personalization he makes of it, London is a suffering haptic city, it  has a face, composed by all the faces of the citizens that express the anguish, that is also shown in the public buildings, in the closed houses. There is no way we can imagine the sick physical city separated from its inhabitants.

Mural at the Eyam Museum. From http://www.eyammuseum.demon.co.uk/mural.jpg

A tear sheet from a newspaper. From http://faculty.up.edu/asarnow/images/MUTABIL2.GIF

 “The face of London was now indeed strangely altered, I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets.”

REFERENCE

Daniel Defoe, Howard Maynadier. The works of Daniel Defoe. Volume 9. A Journal of the Plague Year. Written by a citizen who continued all the while in London.

Department of English, Harvard University. Thomas Y. Crowell and Co. Publishers. New York. Copyright 1904 by the University Press.
Read more about Los Angeles plague in 1924:
http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2009/10/urban-consequences-of-1924-plague-in.html

Chinampas -islas flotantes mexicas- o Acamapichtli -primer tlatoanitenochca-

Islas de Tenochtitlan. Imagen bajada de Google images.

Cuando los conquistadores españoles arribaron a Tenochtitlan, se sorprendieron gratamente de los grandes jardines de Montezuma, que eran irrigados por medio de canales, a través de los cuales se trazaban caminos para que los visitantes disfrutaran de la naturaleza. De acuerdo con Cervantes de Salazar, los jardines contenían hierbas medicinales y aromáticas, rosas nativas y árboles variados de flores fragantes. Se dice que Montezuma no permitía a sus jardineros cultivar plantas comestibles, ya que estos menesteres se reservarían al sustento de las clases bajas. Por lo tanto, los jardines de Montezuma eran destinado al placer sensual y a colección de especies de todo el imperio.

Sin embargo, hemos de notar que el aspecto más fascinante de los cultivos, es que se producían ingeniosamente bajo el agua, ya que Tenochtitlan, (actualmente ciudad de México), fue fundada en un lago.

Estos cultivos han estado íntimamente ligados a la construcción de edificios. Creo que una hermosa visualización del tema, ha sido lograda por el arquitecto Ignacio González, en su cuento Chinampas -islas flotantes mexicas- o Acamapichtli -primer tlatoanitenochca-, que aquí reproduzco con su permiso.

Chinampa. Imagen de Google images.

Representación renderizada de las islas de Tenochtitlan. Imagen bajada de Google images.

Todos querían seguir al patriarca Macatlalihue. Se sabía que sus antepasados tecuhtli, todavía en los pantanos aledaños aAztlán-Chicomóztoc, eran reconocidos por las balsas-islas en las que sembraban maíz y cacao.

La invitación a los atlaca chichimecas que se encontraban dispersos por todo el valle central había llegado a oídos del noble, quien era además uno de los pocos sobrevivientes de Chapultépec y Tula, y él, al fin guía pipiltzin, la hizo extensiva a todos sus primos tizapeños del señorío culhua.

Las crónicas refieren un enfrentamiento en el que la corte militar de Culhuacan los obligó a retirarse de Tizapán hacia la zona lacustre meridional, pero los atlaca chichimecas, que para entonces ya se hacían designar mexitin ("gente de Mexi o nuestro señor Huitzilopochtli"), se infiere que fácilmente hubieran triunfado en cualquier forma de batalla.

De aquí que la elección del islote rodeado de lagos y pantanos, se cree que no fue solamente debido a la señal divina (del águila devorando una cascabel), sino al factor económico en los productos lacustres y a la facilidad de defensa pero, sobre todo, al aspecto ideológico, al recrear el lugar de origen y la forma en la que concebían la vida. Macatlalihue repartió tierras, aunque mejor sería decir: agua y pantanos, asi como algunos islotes.

Sus primos aprendieron, no sólo a construir y botar trajineras y canoas, sino también el importantísimo y vital artificio de la chinampa, caracterizado por la ganancia terrestre al lago, mediante la paciente fabricación de entretejidos naturales con raíces resinosas y la minuciosa selección y el cernido de finas arcillas que se convertirían a la postre en resistentes pero porosos y cultivables estucos.

Islas artificiales con superficie propicia para las labores agrícolas mexicas y que, gracias a las renovadas raíces de constantes cosechas y sembradíos frecuentes, endureció de forma tal que pudo recibir la construcción de enormes y pesados palacios, así como de las moles monticulares que honrarían a las más importantes deidades.

Callitepletzin, uno de los primos del patriarca, había llevado consigo a una bella joven culhua que era el centro de atención del señorío por su noble ascendencia. Ella se sabía proveniente de la antigua ciudad de Tula y portadora del estandarte dinástico, que llevaba más de once generaciones de transferencias, a la espera del renacimiento del poder central tolteca.

Así que la muchacha fijó sus expectativas en uno de los hijos del guía Macatlalihue con el que contrajo segundas nupcias.

De este enlace nació Acamapichtli, quien con toda la nobleza ancestral, iba a ser el primer tlatoani tlacatecuhtli de los mexicas en la naciente ciudad Estado de Tenochtitlan.

El monarca aplicó las enseñanzas recibidas por la vía oral de los antiguos consejeros de Huitzilíhuitl, quien había gobernado en Chapultépec tiempo ha, motivo por el que uno de sus hijos llevó dicho nombre y fue por cierto el segundo emperador tenochca.

Para quienes deseen leer otros cuentos del arq. Ignacio González

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2010/01/mayan-stucco-and-mysticism.html

http://imagenarro.ning.com/profile/IgnacioGonzalez

Rural Haiti Struggles to Absorb Displaced

This article has been published on March 16, 2010, in New York Times, Americas.

I´m only reproducing some excerpts that are significative to show what could happen with overpopulation and migration after urban catastrophes. All pictures here are published in New York Times, in this article´s gallery.

 ¨Life has come full circle for many Haitians who originally migrated to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. Since the early 1980s, rural Haitians have moved at a steady clip to Port-au-Prince in search of schools, jobs and government services. After the earthquake, more than 600,000 returned to the countryside, according to the government, putting a serious strain on desperately poor communities that have received little emergency assistance.

“There has been a mass exodus to places like Fond-des-Blancs,” said Briel Leveillé , a former mayor and founder of the leading peasant cooperative in this region, which includes Nan Roc. “But the misery of the countryside is compounding the effects of the disaster. I’ve heard people say it would be better to risk another earthquake in Port-au-Prince than to stay in this rural poverty without any help from the government.”

Indeed, some have already returned to the capital seeking the international aid that is concentrated there. But if the reverse flow continues, it could undermine a primary goal of the Haitian government and the international community: to use the earthquake as a catalyst to decentralize Haiti  and resuscitate its agricultural economy, said Nancy Dorsinville, a special adviser to former President Bill Clinton,  the United Nations  special envoy to Haiti.

“If we really mean what we say about decentralization, then we have to think fast about a more robust distribution of food to the countryside, cash-to-work programs there, and assistance to agriculture,” Ms. Dorsinville said.

Decentralization has long been championed by many advocates for Haiti because the countryside endured decades of neglect while the Port-au-Prince area gained dysfunctional congestion. Now, with the capital city battered, it has become a policy buzzword, even as food is growing ever scarcer in the countryside.

“It is only a matter of time before we start seeing severe malnutrition in Fond-des-Blancs,” said Conor Shapiro, director of the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, which runs a 60-bed hospital and community development organization here.

Fond-des-Blancs is a remote, mountainous area 75 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, accessible only by a rocky road impassable by vehicle after heavy rains. Community leaders say the population, counted at 45,000 by a government census in 2001, has swelled by at least a third since the quake.

The growth is hard to measure, but the community leaders point to a few indicators. Some 300 needy families surveyed reported taking in an average of five earthquake victims each. St. Francois Xavier, a secondary school, has seen its student body increase by half with 150 displaced teenagers. And an additional 500 to 600 earthquake refugees are seeking to resume their studies although Fond-des-Blancs has only two government schools (and neither goes beyond the ninth grade).

By 1982, Fond-des-Blancs, deforested, was at its nadir and the exodus to Port-au-Prince was under way. At the same time, help began arriving: a relatively successful reforestation program and a health clinic started by a Catholic parish in Quincy, Mass., which became St. Boniface Hospital.

Projects like the crossbreeding of scrawny local goats with large Dominican studs breathed some life into the economy (with Fond-des-Blancs aspiring to be known as the goat capital of Haiti), but the area still struggles.

Worried about the impact of the returnees, local leaders have decided to unite their myriad community groups to figure out how to absorb the newcomers while using the earthquake to draw attention to the plight of rural areas. At a recent New England-style town meeting, they summed up their resources succinctly on a blackboard: “Public health: nonexistent; electricity: nonexistent; water: insufficient.”

Read the complete article

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/world/americas/17rural.html?ref=todayspaper

Artículo: Falta de cloacas, un riesgo para la salud. Informe de la OMS y Unicef

Foto de los archivos del periódico La Nación.

Este artículo salió publicado hoy en el diario La Nación. Uno de los lectores, se queja de las desventajas de tener aún pozo ¨ciego¨, entre ellas el costo del servicio de camión atmosférico para vaciarlo. He vivido un par de años en San Isidro, Buenos Aires, en un barrio cerca del hipódromo, y doy fe que lo que dice esta persona es cierto. Las cloacas pasaban muy cerca, se había pagado por su extensión, pero luego, por estos conflictos habituales entre dirigentes, empresa de agua, etc, finalmente -al menos hasta cuando me mudé- las obras no se realizaron y comenzaron a devolver lentamente el dinero que había sido adelantado, que no era poco.......

Recuerdo que he llamado a varias empresas a desagotarlo, y, si bien insistían en que lo dejaban vacío, siempre quedaba líquido (la trampa del negocio), a los pocos días, el pozo estaba lleno otra vez, las paredes ya no filtraban, y no había producto químico que solucione este problema. Un día me aconsejaron que tirara carne dentro, para producir gusanos, que supuestamente horadarían las paredes. De nada sirvió, y hasta el pasto alrededor del pozo ya no crecía.

En California, en zonas de montaña, el costo de realizar el pozo más todo el sistema de filtros puede alcanzar la suma de 20000 dólares, precio standard. Generalmente el trabajo se monopoliza entre algunas empresas especialistas, cuya lista es provista por la ciudad. Ejemplo, Riverside. Si a este costo se le agrega el reporte de especies en extinción, y tal vez, análisis arqueológico de campo, más estudio de suelos, análisis geológico, etc., muchos propietarios de terrenos deciden abandonar sus expectativas de construir una vivienda.

Este artículo no apunta a estos problemas menores, sino a señalar países/continentes donde la carencia de agua potable y cloacas es grave:

¨GINEBRA (EFE).- Diez años después de los compromisos adoptados por las Naciones Unidas para mejorar la vida de los más pobres del planeta, 884 millones de personas viven sin acceso al agua potable y 2600 millones no cuentan con los servicios mínimos de saneamiento.

Un nuevo informe de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) y el Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la Infancia (Unicef) sostiene que, a pesar de esas cifras, algunos avances son alentadores, ya que un 87% de la población mundial ya bebe y utiliza agua apta para el consumo.

En cambio, la situación es decepcionante en cuanto al alcance de servicios higiénicos básicos (capaces de evitar el contacto de los seres humanos con los desechos fecales), con un 39% de habitantes del mundo que no tiene acceso a ellos.

Según el estudio, cuyos resultados fueron difundidos ayer, los avances han sido dispares por regiones: de los 884 millones de personas que no tienen acceso a fuentes de agua limpia, una tercera parte se encuentra en el Africa subsahariana, donde el 40% de la población todavía padece esa situación. Casi la mitad de las personas que desde principios de los años 90 accedieron al agua se encuentran en la India y China.

En cuanto al saneamiento, sólo la mitad de la población de países en desarrollo cuenta con un baño, una letrina o un pozo séptico. En los últimos años, los mayores progresos se han registrado en el norte de Africa y en el este y sudeste asiático.

De los 2600 millones de personas que actualmente no cuentan con ningún servicio de saneamiento (las previsiones indican que al ritmo actual serán 2700 millones en 2015), una gran parte está concentrada en el sur de Asia y en el Africa subsahariana.

En ambas regiones, todavía menos de la mitad de los habitantes tienen tales servicios, según el informe, que constituye el compendio más completo realizado hasta hoy sobre esta situación. El mundo alcanzará el Objetivo de Desarrollo del Milenio relativo a recortar a la mitad el número de personas sin acceso al agua potable para 2015, pero fracasará en el objetivo similar que se había trazado en cuanto al saneamiento.¨

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1243801&origen=NLCien

Romanesque Decoration

St Maur reliquary. From http://www.zamky-hrady.cz/1/img/becov_relikviar.jpg

From the book ¨The Art of The West. I. Romanesque¨, by Henri Focillon (Cornell University Press, New York, 1980) we are able to learn that Romanesque architecture is imbued in furnishings and illuminated books. It is not a condition of self similarity, because the images were not exactly the same, but I can say there was a sort of concept of self similarity in a scaling order. Let us read the a text (p. 136) from the chapter III ¨Romanesque Decoration¨.

 Romanesque church of San Isidoro, Spain. http://www.wga.hu/art/zgothic/mural/12c2/01catala.jpg

Three towers reliquary. http://www.wga.hu/art/zzdeco/1gold/14c/16f_1350.jpg

Three towers reliquary. http://www.wga.hu/art/zzdeco/1gold/14c/16f_1350.jpg

Wooden bench from Sant Climent de Tahull, twelfth century. Barcelona, Museo de Arte de Cataluña. Picture from my book ¨The Art of the West¨, by Henri Focillon

The logic of Romanesque architecture dominated the decorative arts. Obviously the application of this rule varied according to circumstances, but even metalwork was dominated by it. When the goldsmith was not a sculptor of cult images, heads or limbs, he was an architect or reliquaries. He gave to the shrines the form of chapels, adorned with arcades and covered with pitched roofs, while the pyxes were little turrets with perfectly conical roofs. The Cologne masters gave a magnificent development to the motif of the basilica of Greek-cross plan, surmounted by a cupola. Thus there was installed within the church another tinier church, not necessarily of the same type, but invariably conceived as architecture, like a microcosm surrounded by the vastness of the universe. A similar meaning must be read into the decorative architecture of the manuscripts, the canopies sculptured in stone or ivory, the arcades and pillars of carved wooden furniture. But such small scale replicas are only one form of a much wider harmony. This reacts characteristically upon wall painting. Nor does the painting of the manuscripts escape it. Like the reliquaries, most of the latter were conceived with a view of the scale of the building. They formed part of the liturgical furnishings, and have the necessary shape and format for being held by strong hands or laid on tall lecterns before which a a man stood upright, between massive columns and beneath immense vaults. The parchment on which is of the same colour as the wall, and seem to frame them within a broad border of stone. The figures with which they are adorned often possess the amplitude, the dignity and the calm strength appropriate to mural decoration.

Ivory carved book cover. From http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19870/19870-h/images/003.jpg