JJ Merelo

a man is sitting in front of a globe with the words `` me investigating on this matter '' written above him . ALT: a man is sitting in front of a globe with the words `` me investigating on this matter '' written above him .

And I’m going to stop for today here, since I’ve only scratched the surface and we already have three new words to learn. There’s an issue, however, that I’ve found weird: the first page starts in an even page, not an odd page. Is that a quirk in this specific copy? Will need to find out

This is the first sentence of the Qu’ran (I found this with Google translate), of the first sura. Check out the beauty of the bicolor script, whose style is called naskh. Not only that, the elongation of letters to provide justification on the line is called kashida. They’re originally Ottoman…

For starters, up until the Modern age it was _always_ handwritten by scribes that put into it all their craftsmanship and talent, elevating copywriting to a work of art. They put their fancy in things like these, called “hizb” if I’m not wrong; it separated 1/60th Qu’ran segments. A brown circle

So I needed to understand it with help from Google Translate and a couple of AIs… And then double-check what they said just in case it wasn’t totally made up. And then a rabbit hole opened, with the complexity and conceptual wealth of what the Qu’ran meant and how it got to its production.

The thing is that I’m not too familiar with Islamic art. Being where we are, we do have a couple of classes in the degree about Islamic art, global one and Spanish one. Not ones I’ve taken so far, unfortunately, so I guess I didn’t have the vocabulary to interpret what I was seeing…

Tomorrow is the last day of the “Qu’ran heartbeats” exhibition at the Hospital Real, the main University building, so I took the chance to visit it. I didn’t know what to expect, and to be honest I wasn’t impressed: there were, well, many Qu’rans, mainly produced in our peninsula from 14th to 16th c

Water is wet more at 11

Orbán is ruining Hungary

… it could be that the inspiration did not come from a Minaret, but from those utility towers from the Compañía Eléctrica Granadina, which were all over the city. BTW, this is the way to the PO where I take the second-hand books I sell. Check them out
wallapop.com/item/falling...

It seems to be made of ceramic or maybe class spheres. I’m not totally sure this had some utility beyond decoration: glass insulators were used in electricity poles, and they used this same color, sometime a greenish one. And since the other house I posted a week ago is 50 meters away from this…

These companies built many utility “towers” such as this one, still existing and, as far as I can tell, with the same function. They have a certain neo-mudéjar style, using reddish bricks and “Arab” tiles in the roof… but also a “yamur” topping the tower, as if it were a minaret.

In the 1920s, Granada was flush with money from white gold: sugar. These (probably-a-bit-robber) sugar barons built lots of modernist palaces, but also created tram lines and one of the few cargo tram lines that have ever existed. And all these needed electricity, so many companies were created

Mark Z. Danielewski's novel, TOM'S CROSSING, is published today. Set in the Utah mountains, it's a chase story...and as close to the Great American Novel as you're ever going to get.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irving Moskovitz

George Grosz, Explosion, 1917
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1135840

Or it might be another reason. The original church depended on the patriarch of Aquileia, which was also the original patriarch of the city of Venice. The basilica in Aquileia, as many others in the area, do have a separate bell tower. Not at an angle, but still. The dome is all Mitteleuropa

Since it’s got a republican “crown” (the crenellated thing on top), I think it’s simply the coat of arms of the fascist Italy.

Spot the works by today's artist, Quentin Metsys, that hung in the home of the great collector Cornelis van der Geest in my own time. Had all the stars! I am here too, in person and in painting.

Caracciolo di Vico chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples.

Caracciolo di Vico chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples, with a view of the main altar of the Epiphany sculpted by Diego de Siloé and Bartolomé Ordóñez.

Entrance to the Caracciolo di Vico chapel, made in a beautiful classicizing style.

View of the cupola of the Caracciolo di Vico chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples.

One of the true hidden gems of #Naples: The early 16th-century Caracciolo di Vico chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara. Its architect is unknown, but seems to have come from the circle around Bramante in Rome.

The poor Saint Ambrose looks rather helpless, surrounded by the symbols of fascist and industrial power, throwing his hands up in despair.
Although a second look would be that it follows the iconography of “Our Lady of Mercies” and it’s protecting them under his cloak.
Neither looks too good…

Because this is basically what we’re talking about: fascism. The stark building is made in what’s called “stile littorio”, I guess to not call it directly totalitarian brutalist. To drive the message home, it mixes the fascio with the industrial/commercial iconography

This bas-relief found in the Palazzo Banca di Roma in Milano represents Saint Ambrose, the bishop that became the saint patron of Milano.
The author was Geminiano Cibau, an Italian sculptor that developed his work during the fascist regime and beyond.

View of a painted cupola in the San Gennaro chapel of the Cathedral of Naples. Painting by Giovanni Lanfranco

View of a nave-arcade of one of the side-chapels of the Cathedral of Naples

Façade of the duomo

My very tired but happy face early this morning at the airport just before I had my coffee

So I decided to go to Naples for a few days to celebrate my birthday. This is day one - just a bit of exploring, ‘cause I had an early flight

Square of tartan with vertical and horizontal thin stripes in red and grey on black

A new Scottish tartan memorializing the (mainly) female victims of the Witchcraft Act has been officially registered, created by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi, founders of the Witches of Scotland campaign #WomensArt
via Smithsonian Magazine

The frieze is actually inclined downwards and also decreasing in size, same as the pieces that form the vault. The amount of computation Bramante would have needed is staggering, and the fact that it really cheats is also remarkable.
A place you need to visit, not only for this reason.

There was no space for the short part of the cross in the building, scarcely a meter, which made Bramante come up with an architectural trompe l’oeil, which is the weird apse you see from the left, which seems to be opened to the right of the nave. It using the architectural elements to achieve it

Santa Maria presso (nearby) San Sátiro is a small church in Milan that whose structure in this version was created by Bramante, although there are many Baroque additions that came much later.
It’s one of the few churches that have a tau architectural plan, that is, a kind of T.

European leaders still treat Trump as an aberration - something to wait out until history returns to normal. That’s an illusion. By flattering Trump without a strategy of their own, they normalise a rising monarchist ideology coming to unseat them in Europe’s next elections.

Art History Class: Women Artists of the Early Modern Period with Dr. Bryn Schockmel - www.hydecollection.org Art History Class: Women Artists of the Early Modern Period with Dr. Bryn Schockmel Talks The Hyde Collection, 161 Warren Street, Glens Falls, Ne...

Art History Class: Women Artists of the Early Modern Period with Dr. Bryn Schockmel
www.hydecollection.org/event/art-hi...

women are absolutely the reason modern fandom exists, and you can even trace the origin of the term "slash [fic]" to women!

it's frustrating to see men know nothing (or not caring) about what women have contributed to society while pretending they add so much.

There is some starkness in the palette chosen: white, black and red, just the bare minimum, almost expressionist. I don’t know enough to say that this is an artist to watch, but it’s certainly a great experience to have a few drinks in Tocateja and watch the interior decoration he did there.