Whose idea was this, anyway?

A morning with my favorite artists – part two

When I was a teenager in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I remember Mom reading the fictionalized biography by Irving Stone about Michelangelo.  She liked to call the book “the a-GO-nie and the ec-STASS-ie.” She was probably trying to fool me into believing these were Italian words or something.

It wasn’t until several years later that I became very interested in Michelangelo, along with Leonardo, having heard these two were especially prominent in changing the face of art in Europe.

Michelangelo’s David was the first colossal nude (17 feet tall) to stand in a piazza since Imperial Rome. He was in his early thirties when he created it.

I read my own biography of Michelangelo while studying him at school, and knew that he was kind of a misfit and not a very happy man, throughout his life.  But he was considered perhaps the greatest artist of his time and vied, in many people’s eyes, with Leonardo for the title of Renaissance Man. Two biographies, almost unheard of, were written about him while he was still alive, that is how famous he was.

Anyway, the guy was good. Really good at what he did, whether it was writing poetry, sonnets, madrigals and epigrams; or sculpting, painting and designing buildings (he was one of the architects of St. Peter’s Basilica). He was foremost a sculptor and he loved finding just the right giant chunk of Carrara marble up in the mountains in northern Tuscany.

There are three stunning works by Michelangelo housed in the Vatican, two in the Sistine Chapel and one in the basilica itself (I’m not counting the church’s dome or any of the other architecture he designed for the building itself).

Let’s start with the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.

He was hard at work on designing and sculpting figures for Pope Julius II’s tomb, when the Pope hauled him away from his favorite art to create and paint a fresco on the ceiling in the chapel named after his Uncle, Pope Sixtus IV (hence the “Sistine” Chapel).

The art is groundbreaking for a couple of reasons, one of which is: the artist used a painted architecture to help make the scenes cohere.

He uses both Old Testament prophets and pagan sibyls to frame the main theme, all of whom supposedly foretold of the coming of Christ.

The center theme consists of the first nine stories of Genesis, beginning with “Let there be light,” through the drunkenness of Noah.

Our guide, Christian told us a great story:

Michelangelo started with the last panels, those that feature Noah, the flood and the aftermath. After having completed three or four of them, Michelangelo looked at them and decided they couldn’t possibly compete with the “real painters” who’d painted the scenes along the walls below (Botticelli for one).

So he took a metaphorical step back and changed his tactic:

He started to paint sculptures.

The most famous scene – of God’s finger about to touch Adam’s – is a great example of sculpture coming to life in the fresco.

The story goes that he got so good at it that, toward the end of the four years it took to complete the ceiling, Michelangelo could be seen painting with one hand and drinking a coffee with the other.

The Pope fired all his other painters (except Raphael of course) because Michelangelo changed the way painting was done. He was 37.

We were not allowed to take photography in the Chapel due to copyright laws (!) but I bought a book and have tried to help illustrate what I mean:

This panel – one of the early ones he painted – is “The sacrifice of Noah.”

Compare it to the next panel – that of the “Expulsion from Eden” – and I think you can see he has changed from trying to paint a ‘painting,’ to painting sculptures

 Oh, how he loved the human form!

 

Two popes later, Clement VII (a Medici from Florence) commissioned Michelangelo to finish the Chapel by painting “The Last Judgment” on the altar wall. He was 59 when he began.

This fresco is very different from the ceiling fresco.

It is also not the fresco Michelangelo painted, what you see today:

His fresco depicted the risen Christ and his mother, Mary totally nude.

A scandal!

And no one was brave enough to order him to paint clothes on them!

It wasn’t until after his death that the Pope finally ordered a former student of Michelangelo to paint some modesty onto the fresco in the form of a loincloth (for Jesus) and a blue robe (for Mary).

The nudity, however, isn’t what makes this fresco so different from the earlier one. It is the angry, judgmental theme of the entire work. Jesus is no longer a loving, forgiving, gentle god. He is pointing to those being resurrected and sending them up to heaven or down to hell.

The only smiles you’ll find on any of the faces are on those of the demons gleefully biting into the damned and devouring all sorts of body parts.

Look at the face of the guy on the left: he’s doomed and he knows it!

Even the ones who are going to be saved don’t look very happy:

The artist paints in a macabre self-portrait: it’s his face you see on the flayed skin held by Saint Bartholomew (an early Christian martyr who was flayed for his beliefs).

I wonder what this says about Michelangelo's state of mind, that he portrays himself as a flayed piece of skin....

And now I’ll quit before you fall asleep and take one more post to talk about the Basilica of St. Peter.

A long-awaited visit to my favorite artists

I visited Rome earlier this month with some good friends.

This post is about only one morning of that, spent with one of those friends, inside the Vatican Museums and the Basilica of St. Peter.

I visited St. Peter’s 54 years ago. I saw Pope John XIII enter the church on a sedan chair carried by his Swiss Guards. I was nine and the Sistine and Museums were not on my family’s agenda.

That’s my family with grandparents on the Spanish Steps in Rome. I’m the little girl in the center with white knee socks. (Note: I was slightly out of focus even then)

I went on to study Italian Renaissance art and art history at university (seeing as it took me six years to get my undergraduate degree, I happened to rack up enough credits in art history to call it a minor).

If you are not interested in art history or Italian art, it’s okay.

But you could probably stop reading now and save yourself some boredom.

If you are a brave soul, read on.

I had this really great art history teacher at Arizona State University (the second of three I attended in an attempt to stay ahead of some undesirable grades).

We concentrated on 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century art history, where Italian High Renaissance sits smack dab in the middle – between the late 1400s to the mid-1500s. My professor used to say (with tongue in cheek, I think) that the true High Renaissance occurred in November 1507.

Leave it to say that the 40-year period between 1490 and 1530 has given us some of the world’s most sublime art.

Interestingly, all of it commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church and much of it by the Pope Julius II, to decorate his private apartments and the Vatican’s private chapel, The Sistine Chapel.

How lucky we are today to be allowed to visit these private areas!

My friend, Fiona and I opted for an early, private tour in order to miss the masses of people paying $100 less than we to be marched through these magnificent rooms en masse.

It was worth it. We had a guide, Christian, who had at least a Master’s degree in art history (he studied under a Jesuit and leading scholar of Italian Renaissance art).

Christian managed to grab and hold our interest (there were 12 of us in the group) for a solid three hours.

I see I’ve already written far too much and we haven’t even begun the tour.

I am going to slide over much of it and concentrate on the works of Raphael and of Michelangelo.

A couple of things along the way:

Here is the Fontana alla Pigna or “Fountain of the Pine cone.”

Made of bronze, this giant pine cone was originally a fountain spewing water and situated near the Pantheon in Imperial Rome, near the temple of Isis. It was moved to the Belvedere Courtyard (below) which connects Pope Innocent’s palace to the Sistine Chapel.

Imperial Porphyry is a marble quarried exclusively in one isolated site in ancient Egypt (discovered AD18). It was called ‘Imperial’ because of its royal purple color. Used extensively by Imperial Rome and later Byzantium, it is extremely rare today, having been all quarried out.

These two sarcophagi are made of Imperial Porphyry and contain the remains of Emperor Constantine’s wife and daughter. They’re found in the Vatican because Constantine was the emperor who legalized Christianity.

These former Papal Apartments contain perhaps the world’s most valuable works of art.

Here is a copy of the famous, if only for the very strange anatomy, Ephesian statue of Artemis:

Yes, those are a lot more breasts than we normally see on a woman.

On to Raphael.

Not only are there entire rooms painted by Raphael, there are tapestries created in Belgium but designed by Raphael.

Here’s a detail of one of Raphael’s ‘cartoons’; and another entire tapestry:

 

Ceilings are not ignored in the Vatican Museum, anymore than in the Sistine Chapel.

This one – believe it or not – is painted to look three-dimensional, using trompe l’oeil or ‘trick of the eye’.

I frankly didn’t believe it, until Christian has us look at it from the end of the hall down the length of the ceiling. It was flat.

Here’s another ceiling – this with real bas-relief statues and paintings:

Okay so now we’re getting to the really good stuff.

There are a couple of rooms where Raphael painted all the walls. They were themed according to what the Pope wanted. In one room, the two main walls face one another and are themed “Philosophy” and “Religion” (that’s close enough).

“Philosophy” is also known as the School of Athens, because it depicts all the classical Greek thinkers: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Zeno, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and on and on.

This is perhaps the most famous painting by Raphael and it is notable, for me, for two things: 

1. Raphael includes portraits of the three most famous artists of the time in this work – Leonardo portrays Plato, Michelangelo portrays Heraclitus; Raphael portrays himself as a minor noble.
2. Although the current St. Peter’s Basilica had not yet been built at the time he painted this picture, Raphael was given access to Bramante’s plans for the church and, as a gift to Pope Julius, he set the scene for his “School of Athens” in the soon-to-be-erected St. Peter’s Basilica.

Raphael’s work here in the Vatican is important for so much more than my two points – transforming ancient, classical work into a modern, more realistic style in composition, perspective and anatomy. Considering people write entire PhD theses on these subjects, to say this is a gross over-simplification is, well, a gross over-simplification.

Next we’re going to the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s itself. So let’s take a break:

I’m exhausted.

A cooking class to remember

You know how much I love popping over to Bratislava. I always try to have a legitimate reason to go:  IKEA usually.

I’m about to tell you a secret:

Shhhh….

I go to Bratislava for the food.

More precisely, the food at the Kempinski River Park Hotel.

You’re probably tired of hearing me go on about the wonderful food I always find there, whether it’s a couple of delectable tapas in the Arte Bar and Tapas, an informal but classy noshing spot…

or the River Bank Café, where the food is just a little bit more elegant.

The world-class food is served by world-class waiters.  One in particular, Jakub, I think must have started his career out of middle school, he looks so young. But his knowledge of wines and his ability to talk with animation about what I am about to be served is infectious and only adds to the pleasure I always get eating in the restaurant.

Jakub, btw, is the one who introduced me to the special Slovak distillates available very few places other than the Kempinski River Park Hotel.

One of my recent visits occurred after I had been trying to cook a new Thai Basil Chicken recipe.  It calls for hot Thai basil (hot as in ‘spicy’).  I don’t imagine there are that many places in the world – outside Thailand – where one can easily find fresh hot Thai basil (New York? L.A.? London?)

Jakub was telling me about the secret garden the hotel maintains up on the first floor (second floor in “U.S.-speak”) for spices and herbs.  I was bemoaning my frustration about not being able to find spicy Thai basil.

His face lit up and he said, “Well, Mrs. Zumberge, it just so happens that my mother lives in Thailand and she will visit me soon. I will ask her to bring some spicy Thai basil seeds for you.”

And she did.

I think they kind of like me there because they know how much I love food.  One look at me…. well….let’s not go there.

Anyway, Executive Chef Björn Juhnke has taken to stopping by my table, once we’d been introduced during that incredible dinner Jakub served.

During one of those chats, I mustered up the courage to ask the Chef if he would, by any chance, consider giving a cooking class to my friend Annabel and me sometime.  He was very positive and we talked about getting in touch to make it happen.

It happened this past weekend.

Annabel flew over from London and we met at the hotel on Saturday.

After a leisurely lunch in Arte Bar & Tapas, with a little champagne, we met with Chef Junke for a brief discussion on the agenda for Sunday, then onto more outstanding dining in River Bank Café. Jakub served us wonderful courses including an onion velouté (fancy cream of soup), pirohy with Bryndza cheese, bacon, crispy onion and crème frèche; fresh smoked sturgeon (they have a local supplier of fresh fish they scoop up in nets), saddle of rabbit; and a foot-long chocolate éclair (!).

Sunday at 12:30, we met Chef Juhnke at the front desk and began our journey through food heaven. He took us immediately through a door to ‘back of house’ and into a staff-only elevator down to The Kitchens.

I’m going to pause in the retelling of our cooking class to describe a little about this particular floor in the hotel:

I asked Chef what he thought of the cooking facilities in the hotel.

He told me that Bratislava’s Kempinski is a rare breed of hotel where the kitchen and catering facilities are actually purpose-built rather than slotted into a pre-existing building.

In fact, Chef told us, Kempinski’s original business philosophy was to start first with excellent wine and food. Then build a hotel to accommodate the dining guests.

Kempinski started in Berlin and I quote from the hotel’s website:

The Kempinski family was already successfully active in the wine trade from 1862. In 1872 it extended its company to Berlin, where Berthold Kempinski opened a wine-merchant’s business under his name in the Friedrichstrasse. This proved to have excellent prospects for the future, and became the parent firm of the group, which ultimately made the name Kempinski world-famous. Very soon it was possible to extend the Berlin business by adding a restaurant with several rooms. The ambitious entrepreneur Kempinski continued to pursue his plans for expansion with determination. In 1889 he opened a restaurant in the Leipziger Strasse which was the biggest in the whole of Berlin...

The philosophy to begin with food and build out from there is evident in the deliberate layout of the hotel’s vast kitchens. Chef Juhnke is proud enough to give us a tour of it all.

Now we move back to the lesson at hand.

First – to Housekeeping to don our chef’s whites.

See those buttons on the shirts? You have to punch each one of the 12 buttons into the correct slots, then button yourself up, before putting on the ankle-length white apron.

(We are out of focus in the photo but very focused on the tasks at hand)

As Chef leads us through the white-tiled walls to the kitchen we’ll use today, we see that Jakub has been here: bottles of wine and glasses are on the pass counter; champagne to begin; a tasty, dry Slovak Riesling for the slice-, dice- and whisk-work;  a nicely aged Slovak pinot noir for when we sit down to dine on our results. 

First up: slicing mushrooms: king, Portobello, shitake, chanterelles. For the chanterelles, we gently scrape the top layer off the stems to make them look pretty. For the shitake, we take the stems off.

Then comes the consommé: two kinds, one with two ways of doing it.

Tomato consommé begins with tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, shallots a little salt and pepper. It all goes into a blender. The puree goes into a big square of cheesecloth that hangs above a sieved bowl in the fridge overnight.

That’s the long way.

We also do the short way:  All of the above in a puree. Then you add 6 whisked egg whites and put it all in a pot to a slow boil.

Make sure you keep a flat-bottomed spoon in the pot. Every once in a while, you need it to gently scrape the bottom for any egg whites that might stick. Be careful not to disturb the growing egg ‘raft’ or ‘cake’ that’s forming on top of the liquid. If it breaks, you’re screwed.

What Chef is showing us is pure alchemy, as far as I’m concerned. The egg whites act as a kind of magnet to all the ‘bits’ floating around in the liquid. They cling to the cake as the pot continues on a slow boil.

When you gently take a spoonful of the liquid under the 'raft', you can see how it becomes clearer and clearer. Once the liquid is totally clear, g e n t l y ladle it into a sieve covered with cheesecloth and into a clean bowl.

This concentrated elixir can then be reduced by half at a slow boil.

Chef also demonstrates a chicken consommé, using the same method, adding a base of chicken stock and ice cubes for the raw ingredients (chicken bits no bones, finely diced celeriac, onion, celery, carrot, leek).

Once the elixir has been separated from the dross and reduced, it’s a pale golden color with a concentrated flavor that makes a wonderful first course.

Next up:

sauces Hollandaise and Béarnaise.   

Clarify the butter – it’s so much easier with a chinois that Annabel and I each bought our own chinois the very next day!

 

If you don’t work out regularly, especially for upper arm strength, you will fail at whisking the egg yolks (remember all those egg whites we used for the consommés?)

You must whisk fast and furiously making figure eights, not just ‘round and ‘round.

Then you have to whisk furiously to combine the butter into the frothy yolks to make an emulsion. Too slow and it’ll split.

Chef demonstrated how to sauté those shrooms

How to sauté a rib-eye steak to perfection and turn that tomato consommé into a white velouté of tomato (serve it with basil croutons – whoa).

Then we get to eat it all.

I will try not to gush too much about what an experience this afternoon was for Annabel and me.

It is very clear that Chef Juhnke really loves what he does.

It shows in his cooking.

It shows in the way he talks about cooking.

He is a great teacher.

Go eat his food.

You are also invited, btw, to Chata Diviak for my humble attempts at what I learned from the Chef.