August 6

Today we went to the Kunshistorisches Museum, the Café Central, and watched a movie based on research conducted by Prof Stuart, who is also running this study abroad program!

The Kunsthistorisches Museum (lit. "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal dome. The term Kunsthistorisches Museum applies to both the institution and the main building. It is the largest art museum in the country and one of the most important museums worldwide.

Egyptian art

This art museum has art from practically every historical era you can imagine. I doubt even one visit is enough to do it justice, and we were there for hours. The earliest era I saw here was art from ancient Egypt. I saw ancient egyptian sculptures, sphinxs, sarcophagi, hieroglyphs, canopic jars, mummies, masks, obelisks, pillars, etc. A lot of these artifacts were gifted to Franz Joseph to be put on display in the museum, though one of the artifacts came from Vindobona through the Romans due to the fact that the Romans probably got it from Egypt.

This artifact has a unique story. Although it dates back to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, it was not actually found in Egypt, but rather, it was found in the Roman ruins of Vindobona. It was probably taken as a souvenir of some sorts by a Roman officer stationed in Vindobona thousands of years ago.

ancient greek art

After seeing countless artifacts from Ancient Egypt, we then found ourselves back in Ancient Greece thousands of years later.

Here, we saw lots of statues and sculptures from Ancient Greece.

Some of the statues were in one piece, and some of them were in pieces with arms, heads, and/or legs missing.

Other things we saw were some marble busts, pottery, stone tablets, bronze tablets, etc.

Also, check out some of these paintings in the ceiling above our heads. Obviously, these paintings were not from the Greek era, but rather, they were painted when the museum was built.

The amount of respect I have for people who make paintings on ceilings is immense.

Painting ANYTHING on the ceiling, including just blank whiteness, can be a pain. I should know because a few years ago, I repainted my dad's ceiling, and that wasn't even an artwork masterpiece. I was just filling in white. My back was sore from just doing that because I had to tilt my head up a lot.

I don't even know how much effort it takes to make paintings like these ones.

Like damn, this is beautiful

Roman art

Roman and Greek art are so similar to each other that I wouldn't be surprised if some of the art in the Greek section of this blog are actually Roman due to how similar they are. The only things that distinguish Greek and Roman things that I can think of are the following: language (Greek vs Latin), age (Roman is newer than Greek), and the fact that Rome became Christian in its later years ("Greece" was part of Rome when it too became Christian).

I know this guy was a 16th century copy of a Roman bronze statue that was itself a copy of a Greek bronze statue. Somehow, there's a lot of lore behind this man, given that we spent a lot of time talking about him.

Loving Jesus is now legal and in fact, required, in the Roman Empire! Yay, unless you're not Christian, then not yay.

more art that i forget which era it's from!

Gustav Klimt has a brother?!

And he's also a famous artist himself?!

Although not as well-known as his older brother, one of Ernst Klimt's most famous works was this staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which he collaborated on alongside his older brother and other famous artists.

The staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is equipped with spandrel and intercolumniation paintings by Gustav Klimt, Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch, lunette pictures by Hans Makart and a ceiling painting by Mihály Munkácsy. In the middle of 1881 the committee in charge of building in Vienna commissioned Hans Makart with the overall equipment of the large staircase. However, since Makart died in 1884, only the lunette pictures had been completed by then and could be affixed to the walls of the museum. The committee had to look for other artists for the missing spandrel and intercolumniation paintings. In 1885 Hans Canon was initially entrusted with the ceiling painting, but he also died a few months later. Finally, Mihály Munkácsy was commissioned to paint the ceiling with Apotheosis of the Renaissance, which was completed in the middle of 1890. The Maler-Compagnie, in which the brothers Gustav and Ernst Klimt as well as Franz Matsch had merged, was to carry out the spandrel and intercolumniation pictures. The works were completed in 1891. Concept and naming of the interior came from Albert Ilg.

Gustav Klimt is the most famous of the Klimts. He made numerous paintings with a unique artstyle, such as "The Kiss", "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", and many more. We'll see him again in when we visit other museums in Vienna, such as the Wien Museum, Leopold Museum, and the Belvedere, where his paintings are kept. You can also see him in New York too, because that is where the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is kept after it was reclaimed by Maria Altmann, niece of Adele, in a restitution case because the painting was actually stolen by the Nazis. Before this, it was kept in the Belvedere.

Ernst Klimt (3 January 1864 in Vienna – 9 December 1892 in Vienna) was an Austrian history painter and decorative painter. He was a younger brother of the better-known artist Gustav Klimt. He was the third of seven children born to the gold engraver, Ernst Klimt (1834–1892), originally from Bohemia, and was raised under very modest circumstances. In 1877, aged only thirteen, he became a student at the University of Applied Arts, where his older brother, Gustav, had been studying for a year. They were both students of the decorative painter and engraver, Ferdinand Laufberger, and would become his assistants on several projects. He also introduced them to Hans Makart, who employed them for what is now known as the "Makart-Festzug", celebrating the silver anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife, Elisabeth. After Laufberger's death, in 1881 he, Gustav, and their friend from school, Franz Matsch, founded the "Künstler-Compagnie" and, two years later, opened their own studio. Among other things, their company created curtains and ceiling paintings for theaters in Reichenberg, Karlsbad and Fiume. They also produced ceiling paintings for the Hermesvilla and frescoes for the stairwell of the new Burgtheater. In 1890, they helped complete paintings in the staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which had been left unfinished by Makart, several years before. Ernst's largest solo commissions were at Mondsee Castle and Peleș Castle in Romania. In 1891, he married Helene Flöge (1871-1936), the sister of Gustav's friend, Emilie Flöge, and they had a daughter; also named Helene. He died unexpectedly, from an inflammation of the pericardium. Gustav took care of his wife and daughter and completed his unfinished paintings. His company was officially dissolved, but Gustav maintained professional contact with Matsch until 1900. He was interred at the Baumgartner Friedhof, next to his father, who had died only a few months earlier.

This is The Tower of Babel, produced in 1563 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Tower of Babel is a story that appears in the Bible's Book of Genesis, and it explains how different languages came to be. Humanity decided to unite as one and build a tower that would reach the heavens. God didn't like this and got pissed off, and so he blew the tower to pieces and scrambled everyone's languages to ensure they don't come together again. Of course, God didn't take into account that one day, translators and apps like DuoLingo would exist. Now humanity has reached space, and somehow, God is okay with that, and I bet the Tower of Babel couldn't have reached space. The Lord sure works in mysterious and arbitrary ways

The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to 1508 and now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria. It is signed on a cartouche which hangs from the artist's self-portrait in the center, saying Iste faciebat Ano Domini 1508 Albertus Dürer Aleman.

Northern Renaissance art

Unlike most people, we started our journey through Renaissance artwork with the Northern Renaisance rather than the Italian Renaissance. When most people think of the Renaissance, they think of the ITALIAN Renaissance. This is due in part to historiography of the Renaissance, and most historiography of the Renaissnace tend to start with the Italian one. However, the Northern Renaissance is just as important. Important Northern Renaissance painters include Abretch Dürer and Titian.

The Hunters in the Snow (Dutch: Jagers in de Sneeuw), also known as The Return of the Hunters, is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Northern Renaissance work is one of a series of works, five of which still survive, that depict different times of the year. The painting is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. This scene is set in the depths of winter during December/January.

Adoration of the Trinity (also known as the Landauer Altarpiece; German: Allerheiligenbild or Landauer Altar) is an oil painting on panel by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, executed in 1511 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

italian renaissance

This is the first thing people think about when they hear "Renaissance". After seeing the Northern Renaissance, we finished our journey through the Kunshistorisches Museum with the Italian Renaissance.

Café Central

After leaving the Kunshistorisches Museum, instead of going to the coffee house at the museum like a sane person would, I decided to walk to the Café Central. This is because the Café Central is both a god-tier coffee house and also in many ways a historical landmark. Many significant historical figures went here. Interestingly, in 1913, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Josip Broz Tito, Vladimir Lenin, Sigmund Freud, Franz Joseph, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand went to this coffee house frequently at the same time.....and they lived in the same district! Yet somehow, these figures never ended up meeting each other back then. It's so weird how all of these figures would later end up having beef with each other, which sounds like an interesting plot point/premise for a comedy-drama series.

Today we went to the Kunshistorisches Museum, the Café Central, and watched a movie based on research conducted by Prof Stuart, who is also running this study abroad program!

Countless iconic artworks are housed here: including art by Titian, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rubens, Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, and others. For example, the Tower of Babel painting is here.

It also houses artwork that spans throughout history: from Ancient Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to Byzantine, to Gothic, to Italian Renaissance, to Northern Renaissance, to early modern, etc.

It’s so big I couldn’t even see the whole thing (which is crazy considering the vast majority of this vlog is here).

After the art museum, I went to the Café Central, established in 1874. This place has had many notable customers, including Hitler, Stalin, Tito, Trotsky, Freud, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand (all of whom went there in 1913 when they lived in the same area). However, none of them actually met each other.

Finally, we went to the movie theater and watched Devil’s Bath, a movie based on research by Prof Stuart, and is a true story.

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