In the program after the list of the music was a paragraph in German which we could not understand. Today, we found a translation some 25 pages on. It seems quite conflicted with the optimistic message of Handel's Messiah:
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Today was Easter. When we checked for holiday closings, we found much to our surprise that, unlike at home, museums normally closed Sunday and Monday were open Easter Sunday and Monday. So we spent the day at the Belvedere Palace complex. Besides the now-familiar overdone baroque rooms,
the Orangery houses an exhibit featuring Albin Egger-Lienz and his work, famous here, Dance of Death:
The artist was so pleased with his picture that he repainted it many times, using slightly different colors. And he painted also separate pictures of some of the heads.
The Upper Belvedere has Gustave Klimt's The Kiss, placed and illuminated like a church altar painting. It is usually surrounded by an adoring crowd:
There was a temporary exhibit gathering works from Berlin and Vienna. It was meant to show the different personalities of the cities. Ship of Madmen by Oscar Laske is very pessimistic take on humanity.
Walking away from the Belvedere Palace, we came across the Soviet war memorial. There are many Russian visitors here and a lot of flowers at the well-maintained site.
The hotel put out chocolate eggs at the desk and when we returned this afternoon, we found that the Easter bunny had been here and left a small chocolate bunny, a cognac egg, and chocolate.
It appears the Easter bunny is very big here. In the market, we saw cakes baked as rabbits.
Music is an important part of Easter here. The Missa Solemnis and Messiah we attended were part of Oster Klang, which seems to be a multi venue music festival. (Klang is the sound that bells make; Oster is Easter.) The hotel offered a short concert tonight, performed by a cello/piano pair of students from the National Academy, with Champagne at the intermission.
We ate at a close-by Vietnamese Restaurant, which turned out to be surprisingly good.
**
Monday, Apr 21.
Went back to the Kunsthistorische Museum to view the Italian, Spanish, and French paintings and the antiquities.
Caravaggio's David with Head of Goliath:
Roman Cameo from their major cameo collection:
Grabbed a sandwich at the Natural History Museum. That was not an expected stop, but the cafe at the Kunsthistorische was not available (Easter brunch) and this was across the Maria Theresa Plaza. In the middle of the plaza is this large pile of bronze and granite to celebrate the Pragmatic Sanction:
The Pragmatic Sanction changed the law to allow a Habsburg daughter to inherit. The results were the War of Austrian Succession and the long rule of Maria Theresa.
We ended up spending the rest of the day a Natural History Museum. It has the world's largest meteorite collection. They range from quite dull to beautiful.
These are bits broken off of Mars:
The 24,000 yr old, 5 inch, Venus of Willendorf is no doubt the most famous item in the museum:
Went back to the Cafe Amacord for dinner. Excellent wiener schnitzel, potato salad and rabbit stew.
***
Tues, Apr 22
We had some luck. We set off for the Hofburg Place only to find it closed. (Yes, we did not check.)
What we ended up seeing was probably more interesting.
So we spent the day on foot, starting with the Secession Building. Secessionist art refers to "a number of modernist artist groups that separated from the support of official academic art and its administrations in the late 19th and early 20th century". (citation: Wikipedia)
In the basement, they've installed a "frieze" by Gustave Klimt, the Beethoven frieze. Here's a bit; you get the idea.
This piece refers to the Ode to Joy. A couple kissing in front of a choir of angels.
We visited the Minoritenkirche, which is very austere. Note the columns have no capitals, a feature we cannot recall elsewhere among the gothic cathedrals we have viewed.
A light lunch at the Central Cafe. The menu claims Freud and Trotsky were former patrons.
It was time to try Viennese specialities. We had coffee with apricot brandy (Bruce) and coffee with rum (Leslie). And here is our strawberry-rhubarb cake cream pastry.
Then several museums that are a part of the National Library. There's a Globe Museum...
... and an Esperanto Museum. Initially, the Espernto movement used a green star as a recognition symbol. They switched to the ovals 50 years ago because the star had become too ideologically charged. We learned that the language was spoken in the World War I p.o.w. camps of Siberia as the people there spoke so many different languages.
We finished at the Prunksaal, which is the historical main room of the National Library. Very imposing and stately.
Like our Library of Congress in D.C., the Austrian National Library has changing exhibits from its archives. Today, they had an extensive display of documents from World War I from the perspective of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We knew about the Western Front, having visited sites in Belgium and France. We also knew, from Hemmingway's Farewell to Arms, about the Tyrol Front. We didn't realize that the slaughter was so high -- several million lives were lost in 7 battles fought there. That war began after Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, was assassinated; it ended with the end of the Empire itself.
On this sober note, we depart. Our next post will be from Turkey.
Dinner tonight at a local cafe (Sperl): boiled beef, potato pancakes, spinach.
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