In Ghent

Ghent - Gent - Gand
(the confluence of the rivers Scheldt and Leie)

We are in Ghent.  

Apparently.....

Bicycles and trams abound.....

This is the Flemish town of Hubert and Jan Van Eyck's great early 15th century polyptych Adoration of the Mystic Lamb altarpiece, which is heavily guarded (following the still unresolved theft of two panels in 1934 - though one panel was later returned - and various other adventures during wars etc) in the Cathedral of Saint Bavo:

But which appears in many guises around the town, including in this curious Street Art near the Sint-Michielsbrug:

A painting that, literally, changed the world.....  The first oil painting - so giving the middle east complete control of western art..... (just think Damien Steven Hirst)

Thanks, Jan.....

Now our virgins and madonnas only have to whisper Q8 and they are anybody's.....

Art is no longer a question of taste.

I know what I like.....

Or I like what I know....

Or, perhaps, I'm not quite sure what is going on here, but I rather think I might like it..... (it's that Mystic Lamb again.....)

And so you shift focus.  Hi Guys?

No.  No consoulation there.

Hello cat?

Not interested.

Ah.  A smurf burglar....

No it's OK.  Flavio, from Romania, is here, working.....

And all is well....

The lady will clean up.....

So, we stop in a bar.  It's a bit rough. Unfinished, shall we say?

But the people are friendly.  This is Wernerwin von Spleethoven, who plays his composition En God schlep orde in de chaos!  on his phone.....

At the very least, he thinks it's funny (though he is only drinking cola as alcohol reacts with his anti-depressants, poor chap.....)

As does lycra-clad Fagin in pink, whose hundred bicycles hang like orphans from the rafters inside.....

Across the canal, all is calm.....

Though if you look closely there is life on the steps....

Waiting, and willing, to be photographed.....

And along the canal banks, friends, pairs, couples, individuals, loners, geeks and kids push experiment with the limits of the elements....

Examining the important things in life....

While keeping an eye on what goes on around ....

Beethoven blasts from a block across the water, while a gentleman conducts with leeks in time....

He takes a bow.  The music ends.

And it's time to slip back to Dulle Griet, where La Trappe awaits.....

And where, as dusk gathers, the staff extend the warmest welcome.....

And I relax with a bottle of Brussels Champagne.....

Perhaps I am influenced by the local produce, but Ghent is sweet, and dark, and....

I don't know exactly how the good news arrived here....  Or left.....  But....

I sprang to the rollocks and Jorrocks and me,

And I galloped, you galloped, we galloped all three.

Not a word to each other: we kept changing place, 

Neck to neck, back to front, ear to ear, face to face: 

And we yelled once or twice, when we heard a clock chime, 

“Would you kindly oblige us, is that the right time?” 

As I galloped, you galloped, he galloped, we galloped, 

ye galloped, they two shall have galloped: let us trot.

I unsaddled the saddle, unbuckled the bit,

Unshackled the bridle (the thing didn’t fit)

And ungalloped, ungalloped, ungalloped, ungalloped a bit. 

Then I cast off my buff coat, let my bowler hat fall, 

Took off both my boots and my trousers and all – 

Drank off my stirrup-cup, felt a bit tight, 

And unbridled the saddle: it still wasn’t right. 

Then all I remember is, things reeling round,

As I sat with my head ‘twixt my ears on the ground – 

For imagine my shame when they asked what I meant 

And I had to confess that I’d been, gone and went 

And forgotten the news I was bringing to Ghent, 

Though I’d galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped 

And galloped and galloped and galloped. (Had I not would have been galloped?)

How I brought the good news from Aix to Ghent or Vice Versa

W C Sellar & R J Yeatman (from Horse Nonsense)

[With apologies to Robert Browning]

Yay!  Love it!

In Bruges

Bruges - Brugge - The Bridge

As I enter Bruges, whose name prosaically means Bridge, I meet myself coming out, riding toward me in a carriage drawn by a horse with a noseband that says Do not touch!

I was unprepared to meet my Doppelgänger - perhaps he was as startled as I was - but as soon as I recognised myself, I was gone, the heautoscopic moment was over..... 

But this unsettled me.  Bruges is a city of art. Both a work of art in itself and filled with art. And somehow I found myself confusing the now with the then, there seeming to be a time bridge between the one and the other. People seem to be walking in and out of paintings....

I am attracted to the Hospital of St John, where in about 1477 a wounded German, by the name of Hans Memling, took refuge.  

In gratitude he gifted a number of delicate works to the sisters, including a gothic shrine to St Ursula, which shows her demurely declining to be shot at point blank range.....

Memling may, perhaps, be a bit part player in the world of art, but I found his work entrancing.  This Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1479, otherwise known as the Triptych of Jan Floreins after its patron, would not look out of place in my sitting room, 

And this picture of a woman, painted in 1480, has a dreamy delicacy that went perfectly with the tranquillity of the place.....

And then, when she served us later, in the Cafe Vlissinghe, the oldest inn in Bruges, where Antoon Van Dyck is said to have held court, I was not surprised by her shyness....

There are artists all over Bruges, and it was natural that I bump into Jan Van Eyck on a bridge over a canal.  It is not known where nor exactly when he was born, but he lived, and died, in July 1441, in Bruges, and he was absolutely in the premier league....

I find myself in the Groeningsmuseum, a treasure-trove of painting, guarded by fierce gremlins who may just be left over from the reformation.  Amongst works by Van Eyck and Memling, here is Hieronymous Bosch's appalling (that's a descriptor not a judgement) Last Judgement, 

and the gruesome Judgment of Cambyses by Gerard David, which shows the surgical flaying of a corrupt judge.....

And then, just as shocking, there is the twentieth century, where I find that two people seem to have stepped out of Edgard Tytgat's 1952 painting of The Tony Herbert Family.....

Get back in the frame!

Outside, another of Memling's models strums a plastic ukulele,  

And, if it wasn't for the sunglasses, I could have sworn these two were somewhere in the crowd on the St Ursula Shrine.....

Slightly overfull of art, I go looking for my Doppelgänger in the Burg, by the great Stadhuis.  But the horses are resting, and a cluster of taxi-men stand waiting for fares.

There's nothing for it, but to melt back into the picture, and believe I was never there. The treachery of images!

Ceci n'est pas une photo.....

Merci, M Magritte!

For know there are two worlds of life and death: 

One that which thou beholdest; but the other 

Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit 

The shadows of all forms that think and live 

Till death unite them and they part no more..

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Prometheus Unbound

(1820)