Here a necklace with stylized mandrake fruits:

from the tomb of  Djehuty, 1450 b.C.

The museum also shows some modern jewelry based on ancient Egypt style (Steltman collectie).

Also in the tomb of  Tutankhamun artwork was found with fruit and trees on. Here a mandrake being presented to Tutankhamun (not shown in Leiden).

Today, May 9th 2012, Google Doodle shows the tomb of Tutankhamun.

The tomb was discovered by Howard Carter, and today it is Carter´s 138th  birthday.

The Dutch astronomer/scientist Christiaan Huygens built  a magic lantern in 1659 with lenses and mirrors, and this new lantern worked much better than the previous shadow versions without a lens. Huygens himself found the magic lantern pretty childish and gave little attention to it. Yet he has also made a few sketches for Laterna Magica slides inspired by the Dance of Death by Hans Holbein (the figures below are taken from Huygens’  Oeuvres complètes  - these images are  not  shown in the Lakenhal!)

Here is a sketch of a lanterna magica from Christiaan Huygens, from left to right: concave mirror, lamp, glass lens, transparent plate, lens, and wall.

Magic lantern pictures of Christiaan Huygens:   Dance of Death  by Hans Holbein 

Huygens himself achieved simple motion effects by moving two images in quick succession: the skeleton sketched by him taking off his head courteously in the next picture has become a true classic.

In his Dance of Death-wood carves Holbein shows that death threatens all age groups and social classes.

It was common that magic lantern images were made after printed originals, for example prints by Jan Luyken, Leonardo da Vinci, Jacques Callot and Pieter Bruegel.

In the Lakenhal Museum  Magic lantern pictures from the workshop Musschenbroek  are shown, a collection of the earliest beautifully painted magic lantern pictures of the world,  manufactured in Leiden nearly three centuries ago in the workshop of instrument maker family Musschenbroek.   The images range from landscapes to artisans, to comic dwarves and monkeys and to grotesque heads and foreign Comedia dell’Arte figures.

Maria Trepp

Narcissus in the mirror:

Narcissus became after all obsessed with his own reflection.

and here a water color from  Maria Sibylla Merian (1670)

Maria Trepp

The Lakenhal Museum, the city’s art museum in Leiden, is housed in the former cloth hall from 1640.

Rembrandt painted the picture “The glasses salesman” (1623-1624) at the age of about 17 years in his native city Leiden, the cradle of Dutch paintings in the 17th century.

“The glasses salesman” is already showing the distinctive artistic characteristics with which Rembrandt (Leiden, July 15, 1606 – Amsterdam, October 4, 1669) was later to become famous: the contrasts between light and dark, loose brush strokes, and the life-like heads of the main characters.  The painting was originally part of a series of five small paintings with the theme of the Five Senses.  Two of the three remaining preserved paintings (“Feeling” and “Listening”) are located in a private collection in New York.   The third piece (“Seeing”) is now maintained as a Dutch cultural heritage.

The theme of the Five Senses plays an important role in the Dutch printmaking and painting.   The Five Senses have been represented in a characteristic, but for us not always understandable way . The allegories used for showing the Five Senses were diverse, and sometimes – at least in our eyes – far-fetched.

E. de Jongh wrote in his book about the importance of the Dutch genre paintings from the seventeenth century:

“From ancient times to the 17th century much has been written about the senses, especially in disapproving words.  The senses have been condemned as unreliable not only in the teachings of Plato; also other philosophical systems have considered perception – and indeed all forms of perception – to be illusory. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the senses were treated from a  Christian point of view as the ways in which evil and sin invaded the human spirit.  During the 17th century, however, this distrustful attitude changed under the influence of the developing empiricism, which sought to establish all knowledge in experience.  This philosophical movement treated the senses not as sin, but as a facilitator of information and evidence.”

And Noël Schiller states:

“Numerous versions of the Five Senses have been produced by artists in the Northern Netherlands during the early decades of the seventeenth century.

In the early decades of the seventeenth century, artists in Haarlem and Amsterdam began to favor depicting middle- or lower-class figures enacting the sense perception narratively, rather than suggesting the subject symbolically.

The young Rembrandt was among the artistic innovators who painted a series of small panels depicting the Five Senses (c. 1624-1625). In Rembrandt’s case, groups of three primary figures representing lower-class social types are portrayed engaged in a sense-related activity—figures sing in Hearing, undergo a procedure to remove the proverbial ‘stone of Folly’ in Touch, and purchase spectacles in Sight.

Rembrandt’s figures are absorbed in their actions and take little notice of the viewer.”

Maria Trepp

Symbolism is the in the focus in the past years.

It is an art movement at the end of the 19th century,  as a reaction to Impressionism. Artists painted dreams and visions instead of visible reality, as a response to the growing industrialization and materialism in Europe. Their works often reflected a desire for beauty, aesthetic refinement, nobility, spirituality, mythology and abstraction.
Symbolism united a small group of artists who dreamed and theorized about the unity of the arts.
A number of works by Van Gogh can be called symbolic, particularly the work that was created in contact with the symbolist dreamer and Gauguin. But the fact that Van Gogh worked starting from ideas, and spent much time with a particular theme before he made ​​a painting, brings him close to  other symbolists. His paintings have deeper meanings, hidden symbolism, and references to literature and music.
Here are a few examples of Symbolist themes of paintings by Vincent van Gogh:
Nature and suggestion: more than a faithful representation of reality, the landscapes of Symbolists are a reflection of the feelings evoked by nature in the artist. Here “Willows at sunset”: note the sun’s rays.

Dreams and visions: Some symbolists painted dreams and visions; the world behind the observable reality. Here Van Gogh’s “Memory of the Garden at Etten” Arles, 1888.

The city as a mysterious dream-like landscape: Cafe Terrace at Night

The cosmos: Van Gogh landscapes  show his ideas on natural forces, cosmic energy and the insignificance of man in the face of nature.

Vincent van Gogh, Sterrennacht, 1889

(Here a fantastic interactive Video Starry Night)

The German- born businessman (Unilever) Walter Suskind worked for the Judenrat/Jewish Council in Amsterdam as the director of the Jewish theatre “Hollandse Schouwburg”. In this position the clever, handy, charismatic Suskind  took the chance to change and hide the identity of hundreds children and adults to protect them from transportation to camps.

The Jewish theatre “Hollandse Schouwburg” ( now a monument and museum) was used by the Nazis to gather the Jewish families for deportation.

Suskind did his without any support from the Judenrat/ Jewish Council who did not support any resistance activities. The Judenrat Amsterdam was – like many other “Judenraete” – an enforcement bodies established by the Nazi occupiers to manage Jewish communities.

Without the good cooperation of the Judenrat Amsterdam the Nazis had not been able to deport as many Jews as they did, since it was unknown to the German occupier who was Jew and who was not. Later the Judenrat was serverely critized by a Jewish Honours Council for turning over community members for deportation.

The Judenrat Amsterdam hoped to save lives by cooperating well with the Nazis, something which later was recognized as a failing strategy.
Cooperating or not, millions were murdered- also seemingly cooperating Walter Suskind, his wife Hanna and their child Yvonne.

The full text can be read in Dutch on my Dutch weblog

Maria Trepp www.passagenproject.com

Suum cuique “Buchenwald” fence design StudioJob

The design has now been changed and there will no “Suum cuique” bell, but the smoking chimneys remain, and the “Suum cuique” rings on silently, since this motto  has been broadly discussed in public. 

This controversial design is a provocation to think about inclusion-exclusion issues in nowadays politics and society.

The fence is obviously meant and planned as a tasteless design- offence!?- , and is yet  a political statement and question mark.

Maria Trepp www.passagenproject.com

This text is also published on my Dutch blog www.passagenproject.com/blog

Aalmarkt [click here voor high resolution]

Pieterskerk

Flower Shop Fiori Lange Mare