Heading to Italy?

Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper will undoubtably top the reading list for those bound to the Renaissance-rich regions of central and northern Italy. And for anyone lucky enough to score a ticket to luxuriate for 15 minutes in the presence of da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan, the book is on the required list. Readers will not only find a detailed explanation of the actual process of painting of the Last Supper but will also tap into a rich source of information on Leonardo’s early life, his working style (which would certainly earn him low evaluation ratings in today’s employment environment) and the meaning behind Leonardo’s interpretation of the final meal shared by Christ and His disciples. The book  explores many aspects of life in Renaissance Florence and Milan and increases understanding for the artistic and political milieu that influenced the next five hundred years. 

King describes Leonardo’s childhood--he was illegitimate, born to a mother who may have been a slave in a Florentine household. His father’s family accepted him, a not-unusual situation in 15th Century Italy where even popes and cardinals had offspring. Several professions were off-limits by virtue of his birth circumstances, but he was educated in an ‘abacus school’ and prepared for a job as a merchant. His father’s influence won him an apprenticeship in the workshop of Verrochio, a respected sculptor and painter at the Medici court in Florence. Verrochio recognized Leonardo’s abilities and provided training and contacts that forged a promising career.

Perhaps Leonardo’s interests were too broad, because he seemed to have difficulty in focusing on and completing the task at hand. Although he was trained as an artist, he emphasized his achievements in architecture and design of machines of war to win a position in the court of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. Despite Leonardo’s efforts, the Duke was primarily interested the Florentine’s artistic talents, which frustrated Leonardo and resulted in frequent foot dragging when it came to completing portraits and other assignments. By the time Leonardo was commissioned to paint the Last Supper, his actual output was surprisingly sparse.

King’s chapters on the painting of the Last Supper provide rich detail on the genesis of the project as well as on Leonardo’s techniques, innovations, and actual painting. Patrons did not simply tell an artist to paint a picture. They gave detailed instructions and provided contracts which specified exactly what they wanted to appear in the final product. The artist was expected to carry out the technical aspects of the job, but his creativity was not left unharnessed.

Other passages explore artistic techniques used during the Renaissance for frescoes. For instance, paper for cartoons was prepared with burnt chicken bones and silver styli were used to scratch preliminary fresco designs onto the paper before the design was transferred to the wall for final production. 

Perhaps some of the book’s most interesting detail was a description of how Leonardo’s interpretation of the Last Supper differed from earlier artists’ depictions which were drawn from the scriptures of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Instead, Leonardo rooted his version of the events in the Book of John and the resulting interpretation offers new insights into the story. And, for Dan Brown fans, King considers the figure on the right of Christ and offers a different, more scholarly interpretation of whom that figure may represent.

Leonardo and the Last Supper is a fine addition to King’s earlier books about the Italian Renaissance (Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, Michaelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, and Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power. As a collection, they provide a fine reading on a historical period that shaped history and remind us that the arts can flourish even in times of political uncertainty.

The book will be published on 30 October, and if your local bookstore runs out, you can order it from Amazon.  

Happy reading!

The Charms of Suggestive, Deceptive Beauty

I woke up Saturday morning to the sun shining through my window of opportunity—and I decided to grab my chance. Just possibly, this long-desired, rain-free day might coincide with the wild orchids blossoming along the path to the Elmauer Alm, a mountain meadow not far from Garmisch.

Shortly before 11 a.m., the local bus dropped me off in Klais, a tiny village 20 minutes east of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. After a wrong turn or two, I found the trail, probably a logging road, leading to Hotel Kranzbach, close to where I remembered seeing orchids last spring. The sun was decidedly warm and I was getting sweaty enough to wonder why the parts of the road leading uphill, the parts that required a bit of exertion, were never shaded by trees.

After 45 minutes and a few huffs and puffs, I reached a valley and walked around the back of Hotel Kranzbach, the only Arts and Crafts-style building in Germany. In a prime example of terrible timing, Mary Portman, an aristocratic English woman who had studied music in Leipzig, decided to build this Scottish-style castle shortly before World War I. The war destroyed her plans for using the “castle” to host her musical and artistic friends. Over the intervening decades, the building survived use as a church recreational area for children from the industrialized Ruhr region; housing for the 1936 Garmisch Olympics; and a hotel for American troops after World War II. Then, in 2006 and 2007, the old building was renovated and reopened as a “wellness hotel.” It’s a fine place to spend a week hiking, sampling the local food, and restoring one’s sanity.

Skirting the buildings, I walked between the parking lot and front lawn and saw my first wild orchid (Orchis mascula )—in profuse bloom. The stalk, clustered with tiny blossoms rising from spear-shaped mottled leaves, snuggled among blue, white and yellow wildflowers in the meadow at the end of the lawn.

Not long after finding the first orchid, I branched off onto the path leading toward Elmauer Alm and for the next 45 minutes walked through a karst landscape dimpled with potholes covered with soft grasses. The pastures shimmered with yellow, blue, pink, purple and white blossoms—a sea of flowers, undulating gently as the wind blew. The orchids, listed under CITES and protected by law, seemed to thrust up from the meadow floor like exclamation marks and quite obligingly grew along the side of the paths, giving a perfect opportunity for a very close view without trampling nearby plants.

Sheep graze occasionally in the pastures, but the grasses and plants are mowed only once annually, in the fall after plants have produced and dispersed seed—this assures lush new pastures for the next year. Smack in the middle of the meadows I noticed five or six bee hives. The bees are not only the source of the honey served in Hotel Kranzbach’s dining room, but also the pollinators of the orchids. The orchids, though, play a game of deception, luring bumblebees and other bees to perform the deed of propagation but giving nothing in return: the Orchis mascula is nectarless.

Orchids, one of the largest plant families, are adapted to widely diverse habitats, so it’s no surprise to come across wild species growing in this region. These purple spikes are locally called Knabenkraut, (literally “boys’ weed”). In Britain, some of the more colorful local names include bull’s bag or priest’s pintle. A quick glance at a scientific illustration, particularly the tubers, will suggest the reasoning behind the names. (If your Greek and Latin are rusty, the plant’s Linnean name means ‘robust testicle’.)

The plant was used in folk medicine to treat colds and coughs, but it also served both as an aphrodisiac and as an anaphrodisiac. Orchis mascula found its way into the supply cabinet of practitioners of the magic arts, the multi-tasking charm, ever ready to attract or repel a benighted husband or lover.

If it’s possible to be charmed by a wildflower, I was—maybe those practitioners of magic were on to something. I wanted to know more and a bit of research revealed quite a story behind this plant. This orchid, it turns out, grows in wooded regions and open pastures across Eurasia, from Ireland to North Africa and Western Asia. In Britain and Ireland, it frequently complements endangered bluebells, creating a rhapsody of blue and purple meadows.

Despite the beauty of this small orchid, it’s acquired some dark connotations. In northern England, children called the plant “dead man’s thumb” and believed the stalks to be the finger of murderer, who had not been buried.

In one of those puzzling verses from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gertrude’s tale about Ophelia’s drowning describes a pastoral setting filled with flowers, including this orchid:

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. . . ."

Four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote those words, while I was walking across an Alpine meadow, I could easily visualize Ophelia’s death, right there by the gently curving stream flowing through the sweet-scented meadow dotted with purple and white flowers.

Yet another surprising connection turned up purely by serendipity. Orchis mascula has been used for culinary purposes—or perhaps this is not surprising, considering that other orchid that provides us with vanilla beans.

In North Africa and Turkey, where Orchis mascula grew abundantly, the tubers were ground into a flour, the prime ingredient in salep, a fortifying, satisfying drink still popular today. Salep spread westward to Europe and became the working man’s alternative to coffee or tea in England in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In Turkey, salep is still seasonal: it’s served throughout winter months to relieve the miseries of colds and coughs. Only the most potent tubers, fresh from the previous summer’s growth, are used to prepare the drink.

Packages or jars of salep are sold in Turkish and other Middle Eastern markets. If you find it, check the ingredients—most salep today is not made with the tubers, which even in the Middle East are becoming less abundant; other thickeners are frequently substituted and most often the preparation is pre-mixed with sugar, cinnamon or other spices. Even if you can’t find the genuine article, give it a try. Reminiscent of chai, it will warm you up on a raw day.

According to food scientist, Harold McGee, the tubers contain a mucilagenous carbohydrate, glucomannan, which enables the living orchid to retain water during periods of low rainfall. Put to a culinary use, glucomannan performs a role similar to cornstarch: it thickens the liquid.

McGee also describes a “chewy” ice cream, maraş, that takes salep one step further. This popular Turkish street food was originally produced by hand, but today a machine, a dondurma maker, does the work: it pounds and stretches salep to which mastic (an aromatic resin) has been added. After a 20-minute pounding process, which performs a function similar to kneading bread to develop the wheat’s gluten, the water forms ice crystals and the mixture begins to freeze. The crystals crowd the glucomannan into less space and bonds begin to form. The end product, cut into serving size portions with a knife, forms a dense, elastic mass resistant to melting. It’s the perfect solution for those of us who like to savor an ice cream cone slowly, but race against the drips coursing down the cone in summer months.

* * *

Summer was fleeting that day on the Elmauer Alm. Eating lunch above the meadow, I noticed the clouds gathering over the Zugspitze to the west and a chilly wind blowing across the fields. I turned back, coming down the trail at a faster clip than I had come. I hurried through Klais, and hopped on a train heading back to Garmisch. I arrived back in town just as the rain and two weeks of November weather descended on the valley—weather perfect for a cup of salep.

The Best Medicine? Laughter, Of Course!

Crossing the bridge over the Partnach, the river that separates Garmisch from Partenkirchen, a thought crossed my mind: the threats and crises that we face, while different from those of earlier centuries, are no more serious than those problems of the 16th—or any other—century. Maybe there are even a few lessons we could learn from the way people coped.

During the 1500 and 1600s in the Werdenfels region, epidemics and Swedish invaders regularly caused massive social upheavals and high death rates. The Oberammergau Passion Play grew out of these events, as did another tradition that has spread to many towns in Bavaria, the Schaeffler dance.

The Schaeffler were the coopers, the craftsmen who made not only the barrels to store beer and wine, but a variety of other wooden containers and kegs. Their name came from the Bavarian word Schaff, a keg or barrel that opens on the top.

Munich’s beer barrel makers, who eventually formed a guild, were an integral craft there since the 7th or 8th Century —no surprise considering the central role that beer has played in the city. According to a local tradition, their dance originated in 1517, one of the numerous years that the plague had infested Munich. Thousands of Munich’s inhabitants had died and the city was at a standstill. Only the Neuhauser and Isar gates were open and vigilant guards permitted very few people to enter. Coins brought into the city had to be soaked in vinegar and letters were fumigated with smoke. Streets were deserted, except for the gravediggers. Eventually the disease loosened its grip but Munich’s residents continued to huddle in dark rooms, refusing to open tightly shut windows.

During these grim days, a member of the coopers’ guild realized that the town’s residents needed a bit of comic relief. He called together the members of his guild and asked them to help cheer up the local population with music and dance. The coopers agreed to participate and, wearing their green caps, white shirts, and red jackets, marched to the marketplace and began dancing in circles with boughs of evergreen. The joyful sound of music and colorful celebration lured inhabitants outdoors. Church bells began to ring, calling people to services of thanksgiving. Joyous reunions with friends thought to be lost fueled the revival and Munich finally awakened from its nightmare. Thanks to one man’s idea and help from his guild, the dark mood had been banished and the city returned to life.

Of course, Bavarians are not known for missing—or forgetting—opportunities to celebrate. In the 1700s, records show that the Schaeffler dance was again performed in Munich. During the 19th Century the dance spread to other communities, thanks to young men who had apprenticed in Munich as coopers. When they completed their apprenticeships, they moved to other communities and introduced the custom throughout Bavaria as well as Franconia, just to the north.

By 1842 a cooper in Murnau, about an hour south of Munich by train, introduced the dance to his town. Since Murnau at that time boasted 11 breweries (today, as far as I can tell, there are only two left) and many of the coopers had apprenticed in Munich, there was no shortage of experienced dancers, who were also required to be single and of good character. Murnau’s first recorded Schaeffler dance took place in 1859 and established a tradition now observing its 150th anniversary.

Originally, dance participants were limited to single young men of good character. By the 1960s, the numbers of men taking up the cooper trade dwindled and the changing times necessitated compromise and liberalization. If the dance was to survive, new sources of dancers had to be found. Thus, men who were married or worked in other occupations became eligible to participate. But despite the disappearance of barrel making as an occupation and the dispersal of the custom beyond its original location, one tradition is still maintained: the dance was, and still is, performed only every seven years.

In mid-July, Schaeffler dancers from Bavaria and Austria gathered for Murnau’s celebration. Not only was there dancing in the street on both Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday, crowning the weekend, all 2000 participants paraded through the old town before a crowd of about 10,000 visitors, who happily enjoyed the escape offered by the laughter and spectacle.

Marching brass bands. . . , horses and oxen pulling beer wagons. . . , clowns. . . , floats depicting Murnau’s history. . . , men twirling hoops. . . , standard bearers carrying the flags of each Schaeffler corps. . . , the Schaeffler themselves, most wearing the traditional green, white, and red outfits and leather apron of medieval barrel makers . . . , a group of people dressed in medieval costumes pulling a cart bearing a plague victim to his final resting place—all paraded through Murnau’s old town, representing some element of the Schaeffler dance tradition and the harsh times from which it developed. This cheerful legacy created during tragic experiences is a triumphal commemoration of the grim human events, survived thanks to the touch of humor and humanity.

For more photos, see
http://www.br-online.de/bayern/kult-und-brauch/schaefflertanz-bayern-handwerk-ID1237820575755.xml