Tuesday, December 9, 2014

thought for the day . . . France's Versailles

The next perhaps really great cultural outpouring, where great architecture is made, embroidered with art(and science), after the Venicians(and Italy in general from the 1400/1500's . . . the famous Italian Renaissance), is France.

The cultural heritage of France goes back further than the Renaissance Italy actually. As I've pointed out many times in this blog, the so called 'dark ages' was split between the approximately five hundred years after the fall of Rome to a thousand A.D. when the translations of Spanish Arab books were made.  Those of course turned out to be ancient Greek mathematical science(and philosophy) books.  Really, the French were in on it first.  They were right there - right above Spain.

I think I'll go ahead and post some Alhambra pictures again here; this can never be shown enough!


This is it from the outside; looks like some square brutal fortress as Jacob Bronowski puts it.  But on the inside!






The Alhambra and some other Arab architecture was before the great French 'Gothic' cathedrals.  They came after the translations of the Spanish Arab texts of 1060 A.D.

Here's an early French Gothic cathedral.  Some say the first. It's history goes back to Roman times.  It's placed on top of roman ruins.



I can't help posting this picture of original bells placed in view.  I'm guessing the French Gothic cathedrals made these hugh bells ringing at certain times famous


As James Burke in his Connections, episode 3 points out, tip the bell over, put in some gunpowder taken from the Chinese, and you have a cannon . . .

Speeding right along through history, past all the Italian Renaisance and other history, to about 1680 France's Versailles. I don't claim to know everything about this place, but I found this French picture book of Versailles, thumbed through it, and found some interesting things!

Louis the XIV seemed to consider himself the 'sun king.' I don't know about reading to much into that, but it points to some of my discoveries in this little book.


Here's the Gabriel wing, which is just a small part of the whole of Versailles.

Here's the inside of one of those buildings,


Here's the inside of another part!


There's more cathedrals built in to Versailles . . .

Ah, here we go, the Hercules room!



The Venus room . . .


and the Mercury room,


Well, it's called the Mercury Salon

The Diana room . . . in Greek mythology, that's Apollo's sister; yes, that's what I'm getting at!


Made out of pure marble

The Apollo room,


The Mars room,


And of course, there's tons of other goodies,

Here's the famous hall of mirrors,


The Hall of battles dedicated to Democracy really,


The Royal Opera,


There's even Marie Antoinettes theater,


I wasn't able to find everything, and of course, I'm don't know about or am even going to show everything.  One curiosity is after the French built their Versailles, the Russians had to have one of their own. See their Winter palace alone.

Here's the King and Queens beds of Versailles,



Monday, December 1, 2014

astro picture for the day

 
Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing & Copyright : Francesco Antonucci
 

As I post in youtube, "The Petrans remind me of the Minoans.  They had a great cultural traditions that shaped their politics - use money and art to pay off whoever else is in power.  But, as this great documentary shows, the Petrans peaceful strategy couldn't weave through the winds of change. It comes to show that no country can last forever."

The above video led me to another great archaeology documentary that I haven't seen till now. This one is about Etruscans.  Etruscans are an iron age culture, that based on this great documentary, was a potentially great culture.  Once again, no matter how great, they just could not overcome winds of change.

 
 
A further note . . . perhaps part of these cultures problems was they spent their energies and wealth on art(and dare I say religion), instead of science and engineering.  This allowed competitors to catch up and then surpass them.