Thursday, November 24, 2011

Faces of the Renaissance -Bode Museum, Berlin

We queued for over an hour, very early on an extremely cold Sunday morning. It was the last day and I was lucky to be able to have my coffee delivered to me in the queue. But it was totally worthwhile. The Bode is an impressive Museum, having been recently renovated, which houses some amazing sculptures. They were limiting entry to this exhibition to 300 people at a time, which was appreciated. It was quite dark as we entered - but we quickly adjusted to the low light levels. And then it was like a whole new culture emerged in front of our eyes - the wealthy who were variously beautiful and arrogant. There was a subtle change in actual painting techniques from a fairly brutal profile to the more common 3/4 view. There were also the pragmatic attempts by those who had money to show their power. And there was an enigmatic quality to the women portrayed, mostly in their youth.
But I do remember leaving thinking that life now was not that very different from life over 500 years ago. Money is power and power can corrupt... but they had a lot of fun enjoying the process....

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