Praxiteles
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@samuel j wrote:
Someone should tell him “Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris”
Well as the man himself said to the ship’s captain in the storm: Caesarem vehis Caesarisque fortunam
@Rhabanus wrote:
David Lawrence and Ann Wilson’s book, The Cathedral of Saint Fin Barre at Cork: William Burges in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006) arrived by post today. A handsome tome indeed. This is the kind of book that ought to be done on St Colman’s, Cobh before it collapses of neglect.
The Introduction mentions that Cork was elected European Capital of Culture in 2005.
Could not agree more with you. Anne WIlson is a superb person and under a heavy dogging from the bold bishop’s bould barrister she put up a might defence at the Midelton Hearing. Mre than anyone else, she knows the whole building history of St. Colman’s. Currently she is writing a book on the Cork sculptor Seamus Murphy. As soon as she is finished I think that we shoud get up a public subscription to fund her to write a proper history of ST. Colman’s Cathedral.
Forget the European Capital of Culture bit – it was a complete farce. There were only two useful things: an Exhibition of Cork Silver (for which there is a very good catalogue in circulation -pick it up for it will soon be a collector’s item) and an Exhibition of the Paintings of James Barry.
@samuel j wrote:
And perhaps a little bit of :
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!
No, I am inclined to think that its is more a case of qualis artifex pereo !!
And here is a close up of one of the main West doors giving some idea of the disintegration of the wrought iron strap work
And the is the bit that is enough to make you weep: the doors into the transepts and into the baptistery.
Just to change the abyss: after a trip to St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork earlier to-day, Praxiteles is able to bring you some interesting photographs of the present state and condition of this internationally significant monument. On a board, we are told that some
@samuel j wrote:
Plenty room now for “squatting on the floor” for Taize Masses and that kind of Jazz…. as once described to me by a wise owl….
Flannery et al must have been squatting, smoking some dodgy substances and have been in a psychedelic trance not to see the vandanism they were committing.
Indeed, all very much part of the Irish Catholic Church’s response to Woodstock!!
Developments across the pond:
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.9768
@Fearg wrote:
Its got to be up there with Monaghan and Killarney in the top 3 worst reorderings in the country. The ceiling looks to be similar in concept to that of the chapel in maynooth – oil on canvas attached to the plaster – it would need a good cleaning though, its so grimy you can barely make out any detail at all.
Once you move out of the category of wrecked Cathedrals in Ireland, St. Savour’s in Dublin is undoubtedly one of the VERY VERY VERY worst examples of sheer gratitutious iconoclastic vandalism – all perpetrated by Austin Flannery.
@Rhabanus wrote:
The interior is a wretched contrast with the original. The tabernacle atop a pillar looks utterly ridiculous. Can someone identify the altarpiece in the background of that photo? The sculpted relief at the bottom looks like Christ being laid in the sepulchre. Was this a mortuary chapel or does it commemorate Our Lady of Sorrows or the Death of St Joseph?
Thank you, Austin Flannery, wherever you are, for having destroyed the interior of a once-magnificent church. For shame!
This was the altar before it wrecked and demolished by Austin Flannery. I think that the relief depicts a version of the compianto sul Cristo morto very similar to John Hogan’s versions in Douglas CHurch in Cork, the Car,melite Church in Clarendon Street, Dublin and in the Cathedral of S. John’s in Nova Scotia.
What ever was gained by ripping off the raredos of this altar is quite beyond me – apart form vandalism of isaurian proportions.
@Rhabanus wrote:
Note the movement of this piece. The colourful marble cloth covers the head of winged Death as the Grim Reaper extends the hour glass, for none of us knows the day or the hour when the Son of Man shall come.
Note too that Alexander is not in the least perturbed by that greatest misfortune of all – sudden death! NOte too that the statue of Truth has her foot placed firmly on England!
My recollection is that they are in the crypt, on the right hand side of the covered part of the confessio. If you imagine facing the tomb of Paul VI, to the left, in the end corner. Strange that his body having returned from exile after 150 years should arrive in time to see his monument exiled from the confessio?
And, what is probably the most famous monument in St. peter’s Basilica, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s monument of 1678 for Pope Alexander VII – who built the colonnade in St. Peter’s Square
What is probably the best modern piece in St. Peter’s Basilica, Francesco Messina’s bronze monument for Pius XII erected in 1963
Canova’s monument for Clement XIII on which he worked from 1783-1792. This monument marks the arrival of the neo-classical ididom into the basilica.
And here is Canova’s monument to Pius VI, placed in the Confessio of St. Peter’s. Pius VI died at Valence in France in 1799 but his remains were not returned to the Basilica of St. Peter’s until the reign of Pius XII in 1949.
@Rhabanus wrote:
When Pope Pius VII [over whose election in Vienna Cardinal Consalvi presided as Camerlengo] died, Consalvi assigned a Protestant to design the monumental tomb of Pius VII. It is the only monument in St Peter’s Basilica to have been designed and executed by a Protestant. This before the ‘age of ecumenism’. The figures of the Pope flanked by St Peter and St Paul, in classical style, are rather too static for my taste. Perhaps, Prax, you might add a photo of it on this thread and on the Brother Michael Augustine O’Riordan thread.
I wonder whether we are not mixing up monuments here: is it not Tenerani’s (1866) monument to Pius VIII at the door to the sacristy of St. Peter’s , also in the South transept, that has the figures of the Apostles Peter and Paul?
