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Human Ingenuity and Creativity. Our Cultural Heritage.
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PADDINGTON Bear may be
flavour of the month at the cinema, but at the breakfast table it is Pooh’s
tastes that reign supreme. Sales are soaring, partly thanks to honey’s growing
reputation as a health superfood.
Honey is said to have antiseptic
properties and to help with a variety of complaints from digestive disorders and
sore throats to hay fever and even antibiotic-resistant MRSA. Several clinical
studies support the traditional use of honey as a cough-soother.
Its ability to attract and retain
moisture has also made it sought after as a beauty treatment — it’s said to have
cleansing, exfoliating, anti-ageing and acne-ridding qualities. Beauties through
the ages, from Cleopatra to Scarlett Johansson, have used honey as a complexion
enhancer.
Honey is turning up in lollies,
spirits and cereals, as consumers view it as a healthier alternative to refined
sugar. But is it? Granulated sugar is 100 per cent sucrose, whereas honey is a
mix of fructose, glucose and about 20 per cent water.
Because honey is denser than
sugar, though, a teaspoon of the sticky stuff contains more calories. What’s
more, says nutritional therapist and naturopath Vicki Edgson, there is no health
advantage to eating cheap honey. “Quality is everything. If you’re buying runny
honey in a squeezable plastic bottle it will behave in the body exactly the same
as white sugar,” she says.
Most honeys you find on
supermarket shelves have been pasteurised to stop them solidifying and to
prevent any risk of fermentation. “There are virtually no nutritional benefits
to this sort of honey. It’s been heated, which has killed off all the enzymes
and antioxidants,” Edgson says.
“Monofloral” honeys are a
gastronomic step up from the mild-tasting squirts. Made from the nectar of a
single species, they do indeed taste distinctive: orange blossom honey is fruity
and tangy, pine honey is resinous, clover honey pale and creamy-tasting,
chestnut honey strongly aromatic with a bitter aftertaste. According to Edgson,
personal preference aside, none is nutritionally much superior to any
other.
Raw (unpasteurised) honey is
another story. It contains small amounts of a wide array of vitamins, including
niacin, riboflavin and pantothenic acid. And it’s likely to be significantly
more expensive.
“Raw honey needs to be collected
from hives that are maintained by experienced beekeepers to preserve their
cleanliness,” Edgson says. “The germ-fighting properties of honey ensure that
most organisms can’t survive in it, but bacteria that reproduce using spores,
including the one that causes botulism, can remain.”
Pasteurisation doesn’t reliably
kill the spores of clostridium botulinum either, so honey of any sort is
not recommended for babies under 12 months old.
In fact, Edgson says she would
avoid giving children honey. She thinks it important not to give them a sweet
tooth, which honey will almost certainly do. The benefits of honey wouldn’t
outweigh that factor, and “the only circumstance in which I would want to give a
child a spoonful of honey would be when they had a cold”.
For the honey as health food
brigade, one variety beats all the rest: Manuka. This the stuff Johansson uses
as a face mask. Classical singer Katherine Jenkins soothes her throat with it,
while Novak Djokovic, the No 1 ranked tennis player, starts each day with two
spoonfuls of the honey mixed in warm water.
While it is just as sugary and
calorific as other types of honey, Manuka has been shown to be particularly
effective at killing bacteria and helping to heal wounds. Research published in
the November 2008 issue of the journal Phytotherapy Research indicates
that rats fed Manuka honey suffered a decreased incidence of the bowel disease
colitis. It’s even been shown to help cure dandruff, when diluted and spread on
the scalp.
Manuka honey is an acquired
taste, being earthy and herbaceous with a woody aftertaste, rather than
delivering the sort of mild sweetness that lends itself to being slathered over
a crumpet.
“It’s not a sweet treat,” Edgson
agrees. “Ideally, you should eat it first thing in the morning because the
enzymes in the honey are more effective on an empty stomach.”
The Unique Manuka Factor (UMF)
label on a jar of Manuka honey indicates the strength of its antibacterial
properties, so the higher the factor, the more potent the honey — and the more
expensive.
TWENTY years ago there was a monumental
row when the Sistine Chapel was given a makeover using what seemed to be the
most startling shades of paint in the Dulux catalogue.
The Vatican defended this eye-popping, 10-year
restoration project by claiming it was exactly that: dissolving five centuries
of grime to show us exactly how vivid the colours were when Michelangelo first
painted his frescoes. For many art critics, however, it seemed more like a
Disneyfication of Rome’s greatest interior, giving these massive religious
paintings a lurid sensationalism that the artist never intended.
In a press conference last month, Antonio
Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, was still defending the restoration,
claiming that Michelangelo “wasn’t just agony and ecstasy” (a reference to Carol
Reed’s 1965 biopic about the Tuscan artist) but “pure colour too”.
Now the Vatican has initiated a project likely to
cause a similar controversy. Of course its new 70-minute promotional film The
Vatican Museums 3D hasn’t physically altered the artworks inside the 54
galleries and chapels. It has, however, applied “three-dimensional”
cinematography to how punters will view them.
And that isn’t the only startling aspect of the
documentary, which is directed by Marco Piangiani for Sky 3D and Sky Arte HD and
was shown in cinemas across Britain and Ireland this week. Making use of the
advanced surround sound technology, The Vatican Museums 3D has the sort
of pumped-up synthesised soundtrack usually heard accompanying kung-fu
movies.
As the gorgeous actor portraying Michelangelo
chips off shards of marble from his nascent sculpture, apocalyptic percussion
effects rend the air. Works of art emerge through mists of dry ice. A bland
commentary of almost continuous cliche is spoken in the hushed and reverential
tones of a television presenter covering a state funeral. And there’s far too
much unchallenged sycophancy from Paolucci about the far-sightedness,
benevolence and cultural wisdom of popes through the ages.
Yet the film delivers the one thing that truly
matters: gorgeous, high-definition close-ups of some of the greatest art in
Western civilisation. Here is Giotto’s Triptych, Leonardo’s St Jerome
in the Wilderness, Raphael’s Transfiguration and The School of
Athens, Caravaggio’s Entombment and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment
from the Sistine Chapel as they have never been seen before on film or
TV.
And although the film is brutally selective — just
a couple of dozen paintings and sculptures are displayed and discussed out of
the thousands acquired by the popes throughout the past five centuries — it does
show something of the spectacular variety of what is inside the
Vatican.
The film is released at a crucial time for the
Vatican Museums. In a sense they are victims of their own success. Last year 5.5
million people visited them, making them collectively the fifth most popular art
museum in the world.
Unlike the Louvre, however, the Sistine Chapel is
not a purpose-built gallery and the art it contains is being gradually but
perceptibly eroded by the dust and carbon dioxide brought in by visitors. To
counter that, the chapel’s lighting and air-conditioning systems are being
upgraded at a cost of millions of euros.
The Vatican also proposes to limit the number of
Sistine Chapel visits per day to 20,000 and also to limit the amount of time
each visitor can spend gawping upwards.
Shuffling in a massive crowd of humanity through
one horribly overcrowded gallery or chapel after another, being allowed a mere
glimpse of the art treasures they contain — these might perhaps be accepted as
the penances of a pilgrim.
For millions of nonbelievers, however, the art is
the draw, not the sacred ambience of proximity to the Holy Father. The Vatican
needs their money too and it must offer a museum experience that doesn’t seem
exploitative and superficial.
The Vatican Museums 3D may strike
many art “insiders” as a crass and superficial film, but at least it is an
attempt — very much in the outward-looking spirit of the present Pope — to share
some of the stupendous cultural glories of Rome with the millions of people who
will never see them at firsthand.
Above:Michelangelo'sPietà (1498–1499). He was 23 years old when he sculpted it. Astonishing! With thanks to The
Australian
Glyn Johns is a walking rebuttal
to the maxim that if you remember the 1960s, you weren't there.
He was there - overseeing the
Rolling Stones' first recording session, arranging the Beatles' rooftop concert,
reeling from the first blast of Led Zeppelin - and he remembers it
all.
Johns, a recording engineer and
producer, began his career at the start of the '60s, when studio technicians
still wore lab coats. He went on to work with the Stones, The Kinks, The Who,
the Eagles and many more, helping to define a certain classic-rock
sound.
"I'm a bit of a purist," said
Johns, whose memoir Sound Man has just been published. Johns recalled how after the
Beatles released the Sgt. Pepper album in 1967, Mick Jagger took him into a cafe
near London's Olympic Studios.
"He said: 'You've got to come up
with some new sounds.' Because Sgt. Pepper had reinvented the wheel," Johns
explained. "And I said: 'Oh really? Have I? I thought I was here to record you
playing.' And that's really always been my attitude."
The briskly written Sound
Man recounts an exhausting work rate. Through the 1960s and into the '70s,
Johns spent long nights in the studio with the Stones, went on the road with
them, and became increasingly in demand in the US while working with the cream
of British rock. Johns never took
drugs.
"You can't do what I do and be
under the influence of anything," said Johns, clear-eyed and energetic at 72.
"Coffee would be about it."
He said some acts stopped working
with him because he wouldn't allow them to get high during recording
sessions.
"I wouldn't let The Eagles have
any drugs in the studio and in the end that was part of my reason for being
fired" after producing their first two albums, he said. Still, he noted their next album,
Hotel California, was a smash hit - and Sound Man is full of such
even-handed assessments.
Johns gave the Stones their first
recording session, in 1963, only to see the band go with producer Andrew Loog
Oldham.
"I wasn't best pleased," Johns
said. "But that's life."
He went on to work with the band
as an engineer for well over a decade.
He recorded the Beatles in 1969
for their final album, Let It Be, and suggested they play on the roof of
Apple Corps' London headquarters.
"It was a difficult time for
them," Johns said. "But equally I also witnessed them having a really good time
and being hysterically funny and just ordinary blokes."
Johns describes several
lightning-bolt moments, like hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time after Jimmy
Page, an old friend, asked Johns to record his new band.
"My jaw was on the floor for the
next week," he said.
When he tried to share his
enthusiasm with George Harrison and Mick Jagger, he was disappointed. "They completely didn't get it,"
Johns said.
Then there were the ones that got
away. In 1969, Bob Dylan asked Johns to help him make a record with The Beatles
and The Stones, but Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were dead-set against it, and
the ultimate super-group collaboration never happened.
Johns, who was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, is still working, recording the likes of
Ryan Adams and Band of Horses.
After half a century, Johns'
enthusiasm for the job hasn't waned.
"I can't wait to get back in the
studio," he said. "I'd do the Hallelujah Chorus tomorrow morning and get
just the same buzz as I would from the Rolling Stones."
"The Mona Lisa (Monna Lisa or La Gioconda in Italian; La Joconde in French)
is a half-length portrait of a woman by Leonardo da Vinci, which has been
acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most
sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world".
The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of
Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, and is
believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506, although Leonardo may have
continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of
France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at
The Louvre museum in Paris since 1797.
The ambiguity of the subject's expression, which is frequently described as
enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms
and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to
the continuing fascination and study of the work.
[...]
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence,
Italy. Although the Louvre states that it was "doubtless painted between 1503
and 1506", the art historian Martin Kemp says there is some difficulty in
confirming the actual dates with certainty. According to Leonardo's
contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, [he]
left it unfinished". Leonardo, later in his life, is said to have regretted
"never having completed a single work".
In 1516 Leonardo was invited by King François I to work at the Clos Lucé
near the king's castle in Amboise. It is believed that he took the Mona Lisa
with him and continued to work after he moved to France. Art historian Carmen C.
Bambach has concluded that da Vinci probably continued refining the work until
1516 or 1517.
On his death the painting was inherited, among other works, by his pupil
and assistant Salaì. The king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at
Palace of Fontainebleau, where it remained until Louis XIV moved the painting to
the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the
Louvre, but spent a brief period in the bedroom of Napoleon in the Tuileries
Palace.
During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) it was moved from the Louvre to
the Brest Arsenal.During World War II, the painting was again removed from
the Louvre and taken safely, first to Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu
Abbey and Château de Chambord, then finally to the Ingres Museum in
Montauban.
[....]"
There is usually a huge problem associated which such heists: now what do I do with it?
Vincenzo Peruggia stored the painting in his Paris apartment for over 2 years! He finally decided to contact an art dealer and his associate from the Ufizzi Gallery.
In that time the Mona Lisa became the talk of the day all over the world.
This went on for ages. If anyone hadn't heard of this painting at the time they certainly knew about it now.
La Gioconda got as much press coverage, probably even more, than any of today's celebrities or politicians.
It is one of the reasons it it now the world's best known painting.
Many speculated as to who could have committed this crime. No one came close.
After all that time he finally decided to contact an Italian art dealer and his associate from the Ufizzi Gallery.
Ultimately this lead to his capture.
More from Think Big - an excerpt with many thanks.
"He
made more money as a handyman than as an artist, but Vincenzo Peruggia’s personally responsible for making
the Mona Lisa what it is today. Leonardo da Vinci painted Lisa del Giocondo in the early 16th century, but Peruggia made
her famous worldwide by walking out of the Louvre with the
painting wrapped in his smock on August 21, 1911, one hundred years ago (today).
With that daring daylight robbery, the Mona Lisa began her ascent into
the stratosphere of cultural fame, while Peruggia sank further and further into the hazy mists of vague infamy.
How and why
did Peruggia do it? More importantly, what would have happened if he
hadn’t?
Peruggia came to Paris in search of a life in art, even
if it was only as a part-time worker in the Louvre. Like many other Italians,
Peruggia sought greater opportunities in the City of Lights only to find himself
disparaged by the locals as “sale macaroni,” French for “dirty macaroni.”
Wounded by prejudice and longing for home, Peruggia, as he later claimed, stole
back what he mistakenly thought Napoleon had stolen from Italy a century before. In reality,
Leonardo sold the painting to Francis I after moving
to France to become court painter. But why did Vincenzo really do
it?
Medeiros enlists the help of Peruggia’s descendants,
including his daughter and grandchildren, to track down the truth—whether it be
the often-invoked patriotism motive or a more nefarious profit motive.
One
less-noble theory has Peruggia stealing the painting for a con
man who planned to sell six copies to wealthy investors while the
real work was missing. [....]
Sadly, when Medeiros’ research
unearths Peruggia’s letters that the police had taken as evidence, those letters
reveal that Peruggia stole the Mona for the usual reasons—money and
fame.
In addition to analyzing the how and why
of the theft, Charney goes into the pre- and post-Peruggia lives of La Gioconda.
Even before the heist, da Vinci’s work drew praise ranging from contemporary
Giorgio Vasari, who gave the painting it’s name, which means
approximately “Lady Lisa,” to 19th century essayist Walter Pater’s prose poem to the “Lady of the Rocks.”
“Mysterious,
beautiful, iconic, and the work of a true universal genius, the Mona Lisa
was once again celebrated, already among the most famous paintings in the
world,” Charney writes of the power of Pater’s paean.“And it hadn’t even been stolen yet.”
Before Peruggia,
the Mona Lisa stood among the greatest paintings in the world. After
his act, followed by the search and recovery two years later, Mona left
the rest far, far behind.
Charney tells the tale with his trademark breathless
flair and eye for fascinating detail, in this case episodes such as Picasso’s being questioned about the theft and Mona’s
“missing years” during World War II when the Nazis may have taken her as part of their rape of Europa’s art
treasures.
Peruggia held onto the painting for nearly two years
before contacting art experts in Italy about selling her. During those two
years, Mona-mania gripped Europe, ginning up the painting’s cultural
cache.
Peruggia served a short jail sentence while Mona toured Italy
before triumphantly returning to France. While fighting for Italy in
World War I, Vincenzo
began answering to Pietro. After the war, Pietro Peruggia married, moved back to
France, opened his own paint store, and lived in obscurity with his family until
his death in 1925.
When a different Vincenzo Peruggia died in 1947, some
obituaries mistook him for the real thief. Peruggia died believing that he’d
live forever as the man who stole the Mona Lisa. That he never received
that reward may have been the worst penalty for his crime.
When
I asked Noah what museums today should take away from the Peruggia case, he
replied, “The biggest lesson to learn would be that wishful thinking, hubris,
and lethargy lead to security problems.
The Louvre had been robbed on multiple
occasions in the decades prior to 1911 and the museum had done nothing to ramp
up security until it was too late.”
What art lovers should take away is just how constructed the
Mona Lisa’s fame is, and what the price of that fame is.
“Despite its
renown, the Mona Lisa is what has been called an “invisible”
icon—something so famous that people have ceased to really look at it or know
anything about it beyond its title and creator,” Charney believes.
“Next time
you go to Paris, by all means visit the Mona Lisa. Take a picture, if
you like. But when you stand before it, take a moment to really look.
Share the space, consider its history, the miracle of its survival, and think
about why it is famous. The reward will be far greater for the time spent in
contemplation and admiration.”
Mona’s everywhere, yet nowhere at the
same time, at least in any true sense. What Peruggia really stole from the world
may be the chance at that authentic, unfiltered look at da Vinci’s portrait. A
century later, the time has come to take it back.
Knowing all that I still feel the painting is substantially well-known in it's own right simply because Leonardo Da Vinci is one of history's most amazing people.
He is a true Renaissance man who dabbled in so much - art, anatomy, invention, mathematics and much more - so to me it follows that whatever he did was incredible and is still being studied and admired!
