Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Back from Vienna!

I'm back in Spain after a wonderful five days in Vienna. I'll be publishing more about my trip here and on other sites, but at the moment let me just leave you with this stunning piece of Renaissance art from the Kunsthistorisches Museum. This is the most impressive art museum I've ever been to, beating even the Met and the Prado. They have a huge collection of fine art from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance.

This lapis lazuli bowl with gold, rubies, emeralds, pearls, garnets, and enamel was made in Milan around 1565. The dragon looks pretty Chinese, doesn't it? Marco Polo had made his voyages two hundred years before and there was some contact between Italy and China by this time. I've never seen a piece like this, though! The Kunsthistorisches Museum has hundreds of pieces like this.

1 comment:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

That is a cool piece. Very intricate.
Welcome back, Sean!

Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Civil War Horror blog, where he focuses on Civil War and Wild West history.

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