Borges' Library

Birdwatching in Paintings

Image 1 (Detail from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado)

Image 2 (Raphael's Madonna del Cardellinoa, in the Uffizi)

Image 3 (Detail Above)

Image 4 (Carel Fabritius The Goldfinch, in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague)

 

Image 5 (Bronzino's Portrait of Giovanni de' Medici as a Child /Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence)

 

Figures Six and Seven (Details from Bosch)

Figures 8 and 9 (Antonella's Saint Jerome/National Gallery)

Image 10 (Mantegna's Madonna della Vittoria/Louvre)

 

Images 11 & 12 Pups by Carpaccio

Image 13 Carpaccio's Hunting on the Lagoon (Getty)

Image 14 Detail
Image 15 Cormorant fishing Shuji Sugiyama descends from a long line of master cormorant fishermen—he's now one of only nine left in Japan. COURTESY OF GIFU CITY)

Image 16 Carpaccio's Two Venetian Ladies (Correr Museum)

Image 16 Carpaccio's Annunciation (Ca' D'Oro Franchetti Gallery)

Images 17, 18, 19 Details

Image 20 Vittore Carpaccio’s Narrative Cycle in the Scuola DalmataImage 21 detail

 

DC Carpaccio Show 2023 

 

Ciao, Carpaccio

Ciao, Carpaccio!: An Infatuation
by Jan Morris

 

The Annunciation of the Virgin at Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro 

My Goodreads Review:

This is pretty much a "perfect book." A jewel. A book to be treasured! Charming, witty, and enlightening, it is a must-read for anyone who loves Venice, Carpaccio paintings or well, I think pretty much anyone in the world would fall in love with this small gem of a book. In fact, I am not sure I’ve read too many books by Jan Morris-- but I have to say, I am now very much committed to reading as many as I can! Carpaccio is one of my favorite painters, John Ruskin was also quite fond of him --though he would declare not one but two Carpaccio paintings to be "the most beautiful picture in the world."

Like Morris, while I don't think he is one of the greatest of the sublime artists of the Renaissance--not one of the "greats" perhaps (Gombrich didn't even include Carpaccio n his famous Story of Art!) Still as Morris rightly says, his paintings are unforgettable. They are gentle, with those glorious Venetian colors, and the bestiary of enchanted animals... Bellini pups! And those pheasants and rabbits; lions and deer... While Ruskin put the Ursula painting as "most beautiful" he later changed his mind and famous declared the Two Venetian Ladies in the Correr to be the finest picture in the world... I myself would probably agree, as for me, the upper part of that picture (in the Getty) of Hunting on the Lagoon, is a painting very, very dear to my heart. Morris, for her part loves St Augustine in his study (still in situ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Aug...

Her musings about this picture are just delightful.

The book begins and ends with her personal impressions of Carpaccio's paintings. Oh, if only I could write so beautifully about art.

And yes, I must read Calasso's Tiepolo Pink! (With its titled plucked from Proust).

And oh, that little white dog!

As Jim C says below: What she says of Carpaccio, I would say of her own work – that she is an artist of "that simple, universal and omnipotent virtue, the quality of Kindness."

Don't miss this one!

Bird Books

 

Field Guides

How to differentiate between birding field guides? There is the Peterson Guide and Sibley's. The National Geographic Field Guide is the one recommended by the instructor of the Great Courses Birding class, while Audubon is one of the oldest (though I just read that Peterson's is older still). If you really want the oldest, you will have to track down a copy of Birds Through an Opera-Glass, written by Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey (1863 –1948), who was an American ornithologist and nature writer who organized early Audubon Society chapters and was an early activist for bird protection. 

In the end, it seems, it really comes down to personal preference.

While my husband gravitated immediately toward the beautiful illustrations of the Sibley, with their focus on plumage; I liked the simplicity and feel of the Kaufman Guide, which was designed for beginners. I also love Alvarez's Guide to California Birds. This latter one is the only field guide I actually use. Both Alvarez and the Kaufman have better notes on bird calls and songs too.

My new favorite is Hansen's Field Guide to Birds of the Sierra Nevada: with its beautiful descriptions and fabulous pictures!

I also regularly consult the funny Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America, by Matt Kracht. 

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Art/Culture

The Book of the Bird: Birds in Art Birds in Art
Hyland, Angus, Laurence King Publishing

The Bird in Art
Bugler, Caroline, Merrell 

An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird
Flynn, Sean, Simon & Schuster

Birds and People
Mark Cocker, David Tipling

Birds: Myth, Lore and Legend
Rachel Warren Chadd, Marianne Taylor

Ciao, Carpaccio!: An Infatuation
by Jan Morris

Carpaccio: Major Pictorial Cycles
by Stefania Mason

Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights
by Hans Belting

As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Birds & Books
by Alex Preston, Neil Gower

"Carpaccio's 'Hunting on the Lagoon': A New Perspective"
Yvonne Szafran

"A Late Fifteenth Century Venetian Painting of a Bird Hunt"
 George Goldner

"Divine Judgment in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights"
Author(s): Peter Glum
Source: The Art Bulletin 

Memoirs/Journalism

To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession

Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder: A Memoir
by Julia Zarankin

Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation
by Kyo Maclear

How to Know the Birds: The Art and Adventure of Birding 
by Ted Floyd

Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds
Gentile, Olivia

Kingbird Highway
Kenn Kaufman

Big Year, Biggest States
Lynn Barber

A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey
Meiburg, Jonathan

The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
Strycker, Noah

Pasta for Nightingales: A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore
Olina, Giovanni Pietro, dal Pozzo, Cassiano, Clayton, Kate, Macdonald, Helen, 

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany An Avian Miscellany
Gibson, Graeme, Atwood, Margaret

The Charm of Birds
Grey, Sir Edward,

Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds
Weidensaul, Scott

A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
by Scott Weidensau

Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song by David Rothenberg (2005-04-12)
Rothenberg, David

Into the Heart of Borneo
by Redmond O'Hanlon

 

 

Bruegel, Bosch and Company in the Kunsthistoriches

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Dutch novelist Cees Notteboom writes about seeing Bosch's Garden of Heavenly Delight at 21 and then seeing it again at 82. He asks, How has the painting changed? How has the viewer changed? Am I even the same man now? Can we moderns access the picture in the way Philip II did? Have our eyes changed so much? While it hasn't been sixty years, still it has been a long time to be in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. It was thirty years ago. I was nineteen. We stopped in Vienna on the way back from two months in India. My first time abroad. Vienna was so damn pretty.
I can vividly recall what a warm day it was and how overwhelmed I felt by the Grand museum exterior . It was not just royal but imperial and ascending that colossal double marble staircase with the statue by Canova situated in the first landing halfway up, I turned back to look at Alexis who was trailing behind me. He was staring up at the painted ceiling, called the Triumph of the Renaissance. He was as gobsmacked as I was.

At the top, the path forked: to the left, the Northern School and to the Right, the Italian School. The eternal fork in the road of European art history. Today, I definitely would take left. But being young Americans, we took right.

From that day thirty years ago, I remember that staircase. And I also remember one picture. It is as if that one picture blotted out all the others we saw that day. But what a picture it was. We stood in front of Raphael's Madonna del Prato for the longest time. I couldn't understand it. Why were there two boys? Where was John the Baptist's mother? And were those strawberry plants? Also known as the Madonna del Belvedere, the Queen of Heaven in her ultramarine robe was breathtakingly, unforgettably magnificent. Her carmine color dress the same color as the poppies signifying the Christ's sacrifice and death. It was the same azure blue and carmine red we had seen in the murals at Alchi.

"When do paintings free themselves/from the painter, when does the same substance/become a different thought?"Cees Notteboom wonders...

In the Uffizi there is the Madonna of the Goldfish. 

It is so similar to the Madonna del Prato--but instead of a cross the children play with a tiny goldfinch.n Madonna Del Cardellino, the goldfinch represents Christ's crucifixion.

Like the story of the mountains at Montserrat in Spain that rose from the earth at the precise moment that the Christ was crucified, there was a legend that the goldfinch received its red spot at the time of the crucifixion. The bird " flew down over the head of Christ and was taking a thorn from His crown, when it was splashed with the drop of His blood."

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Bruegel Room

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Top painting by
Robert Raschka (1847–1908) 
Medium Pencil, watercolor, heightened with opaque white on paper