Pleasant hollow QUELUZ continue… June 15, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Gymnasium, Library, Lisbon, London, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Portugal, Restaurant, USA , add a commentThe interior of the palace (which was partially destroyed by fire in 1934 but felicitously restored) is entered from the cour d’honneur. The cheerful lightness of first room, a corridor known as the Sala das Mangas, derives from its wall-to-ceiling revetment in blue and yellow azulejos, the characteristic Portuguese decorative tiles. A key position in the palace is occupied by the ceremonial reception room, the Hall of the Ambassadors. This room is also called the Hall of Mirrors, for most of the wall space not occupied by the window embrasures is filled with mirrors in gilt Rococo frames. The coved ceiling is decorated with a large painting, in which members of the royal family are depicted behind a balustrade as if watching one of the evening concerts for which Queluz was famous. (more…)
Pleasant hollow QUELUZ June 15, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Brazil, Lisbon, Portugal, USA , add a commentThe royal palace of Queluz is situated in a pleasant hollow about nine miles north-west of Lisbon. It belongs to the last phase of the opulent period in Portuguese culture that followed the discovery of gold in Brazil in 1693. At the beginning of the 17th century, foreign artists flocked to Portugal, where they created the somewhat over- decorated Baroque art of the royal palace at Mafra and the churches in Oporto and other cities. Artistically, Queluz represents a reaction against this earlier heaviness a shift from the dominant Italian influence to the lightness of French Rococo. (more…)
Aranjuez: Philip II’s leafy palace on the banks of the River Tagus May 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Airlines, Art Gallery, Austria, Beach Resorts, Destination, Europe, Granada, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Portugal, Restaurant, Spain, Sunblock, Travel Gear, Travelling Bag, USA , add a commentAranjuez, at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama rivers, about thirty miles south of Madrid, is the most celebrated of the rare oases which break the arid monotony of most of Spain. The air resounds with the noise of rushing water, the trees are the finest in southern Europe and the nightingales (which were Philip II’s chief regret during three years’ absence in Portugal) are as renowned as the strawberries and asparagus from its market-gardens.
In the Middle Ages the land belonged to the knights of Santiago, whose Grand Master, Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, erected a castle there in 1387. When Ferdinand and Isabella merged the Grand Mastership in the Crown, the property passed with it. Charles V converted the building into a hunting-lodge, which Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera, the architects of the Escorial, replaced by a palace for Philip II. (more…)
Sintra: The palace of the Portuguese sovereigns in the Moorish style continue… May 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Cars, China, Destination, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, Lisbon, Lodges, Morocco, Motel, Portugal, USA , add a commentMost of the interior of the palace is likewise typically Manueline in its treatment of certain features, notably Moorish carpentry (alfarge) and ceramic (azulejo) techniques adumbrating future developments. Over sixty different designs of azulejo are represented, from the simple green-and-white chequer-board, reminiscent of Persian work, on the walls of the Hall of Swans, to the intricate raised pattern of dark-green vine-leaves and turquoise-blue acanthus in the Patio of Diana, a little courtyard with a fountain bearing a graceful figure of the divine huntress. (more…)
Sintra: The palace of the Portuguese sovereigns in the Moorish style May 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Destination, Embassy, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, Istanbul, Lisbon, Lodges, Motel, Portugal, Round The World, Travellers Cheque, USA , add a commentThe Alhambra itself cannot well be more morisco in point of architecture than this confused pile which crowns the summit of a rocky eminence and is broken into a variety of picturesque recesses and projections.’ This description of Sintra Palace, which William Beckford entered in his journal on Sunday, September, 2,1787, has been echoed again and again by subsequent visitors, who have thereby, consciously or unconsciously, subscribed to the tradition that the building dates from the period of the Saracenic occupation of Portugal.
Many of its features are indeed strikingly Moorish in design, especially the pair of conical chimneys resembling giant Kentish oast-houses — oriental relations to that of Glastonbury, and distant cousins to those that adorn the seraglio of Abdul the Damned at Istanbul. (more…)
Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style May 8, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Bank Note, Beach Resorts, Brazil, Denmark, England, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lisbon, London, Memorial, Museum, Portugal, Restaurant, Spain, Sweden, Travellers Cheque , add a commentThe palace of QUELUZ, near Lisbon, is elegantly rustic in a way that is very characteristic of Portuguese life and manners. It has a seductive grace, for its muted beauty grows on the beholder gradually, until at length the splendours of a more conventionally royal building seem almost vulgar in comparison.
The rose-pink colour-washed facade is cunningly designed with two low semi-circular wings springing out from a small central block. The southern side ends in a black onion dome above the chapel, and goes on at right angles in a series of dependent buildings of different sizes. The northern wing now contains a luxury restaurant in the original kitchens of the palace. (more…)
ROCOCO April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Australia, Austria, Brazil, England, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Hotels, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, The Nile, USA, Wellington , add a commentAfter the great days of Baroque, the High Renaissance, led by Bernini and Borromini, and followed variously by Mansart and le Vau in France, Fischer von Erlach and von Hildebrandt in Austria, Zimmerman in Germany, Churriguera in Spain, and Wren,Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh in England, and before a period of Revivalism, France emerged from the reign of Henri IV (reigned 1589-1610) to establish a wealthy bourgeoisie under the political patronage of high taste in the salons of country chateau and hotels. In the next century, during the transitional period from Louis XIV (1638-1715) to the regency of his great grandson, Louis XV (1710-74), a demand for comfort, intimacy and ornament led to the late Baroque variant of Rococo.
The word Rococo derives from the French word rocaille, meaning sea rocks and shells, and it is applied to the highly ornamental and decorative strain of late Baroque architecture. (more…)
The Renaissance continue… April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Austria, Belgium, England, Europe, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Library, London, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain , 1 comment so farThis language was inherited by Donato Bramante (1444-1514), whose friends and mentors included Leonardo da Vinci (14591519), Alberti and Piero della Francesca (c.1420-1492). Within this extraordinary environment, Bramante, who had trained as a painter, studied the work of Brunelleschi and turned his genius to architecture. He collaborated with Leonardo da Vinci in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, a partnership that gave Milan a great building and the Last Supper. The French invasion of northern Italy forced Bramante to flee to Rome, where he taught Raphael (1483-1520) and the influential architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1483-1546), and he was commissioned to design the new St Peter’s by Pope Julius II. After Bramante’s death in 1514 and the sack of Rome in 1527, Michelangelo (1475-1564) inherited the task of continuing the project, which was to become the apogee of classical architecture. (more…)
