By this Author: VagabondCowboy

The Botero Museum, located in La Candelaria neighborhood, houses one of Latin America's most important international art collections; the museum opened in 2000 with 123 works by Botero and 85 works of other international artists owned by Botero

Oranges, 1997; Botero is the most successful living, Latin American artist with his works commanding millions of dollars; more than 500,000 visitors annually patronize the Botero Museum along with lots of school groups

Sunflowers, 1959; one of Botero's early works, he grew up in Medellin but lived in NYC, Paris and Florence where he studied the works of Renaissance masters; today, at 90, he lives in Paris and Pietrasanta, Italy but spends 1 month a year in Medellin

Mona Lisa, 1978; Botero is known primarily for his sculptures and paintings that consist of overblown human and animal shapes and characters; his works, with that instantly recognizble style, are now in museums worldwide

Cezanne, 1994; the record price for Botero at auction is $4,320,000 for Man on a Horse, sold at Christie's New York in 2022; when Botero moved to Paris he studied the French Impressionist works at the Louvre and Orsay and devleoped a love for their work

Hands, 1998; this drawing is an example of the exercise of disproportion that Botero executes with each of the objects and characters that he incorporates in his paintings and sculptures; the study of hands was often a classic pursuit among the grand masters

Little Bird, 1980; in 1995, a terrorist group linked to drug lord Pablo Escobar, placed a bomb under Botero's sculpture Bird in Medellin which killed 30 people and injured hundreds more; at the time Botero's son was Colombia's Minister of Defense

Earthquake in Popayan, 1999; here Botero is drawing attention to the 1983 earthquake in western Colombia in which 267 people were killed and 14,000 buildings damaged; pressure was put on the government to pass stricter building codes as a result

Little Woman, 1975; the individuals one sees daily on the streets of Bogotá, Medellín, Cali or Barranquilla constitute the cast of characters that populate Botero's paintings, drawings and sculptures; he has called himself the most Colombian of artists

The Thief, 1980; Botero used his art as social commentary at times such as this piece alluding to the widespread corruption in Colombian government; the Botero Museum is very modern and well done and was easily my favorite museum in Colombia

Basket of Fruit, 1997; Botero's father died of a heart attack when Botero was just 4 years old; although isolated from art as presented in museums, Botero was influenced by the Baroque style of the colonial churches and the city life of Medellín

Walking Near the River, 1989; the Botero Museum has free admission; there was a national scandal when Botero chose Bogota as the site for the museum rather than Madellin, his hometown; the bureaucracy in Medellin proved too frustrating for Botero

The Studio, 1990; highlights of Botero's personal collection (which he donated to the museum) include terrific works by Balthus, Pissarro, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Braque, Chagall, Dalí, Miró, Picasso, Sisley, Renoir, Monet, and Matisse

A Family, 1983; many of Botero’s finest paintings represent a mélange of his own lived experiences in Colombia with scenes of the most exaggerated dramatic elements inherent to life in South America

Bird (bronze); Botero Plaza, outside the Museum of Antioquia in Medellin (Botero donated 119 works to the museum), displays 23 Botero sculptures he donated in 2004; the Botero legend suggests that rubbing the statues brings love and good fortune

The harbor as you approach Gozo by ferry is dominated by the 1888 Church of the Madonna Lourdes; Gozo has no airport so the only way to reach the island is by boat (the ferry from Malta only takes 25 minutes)

The largest church on Gozo is the Rotunda of St. John the Baptist; it towers over the surrounding village (the church holds more people than the village has residents), and has the 3rd highest unsupported dome in the world (larger than St. Paul's in London)

The Cittadella (the current structure dates from 1622) dominates the surrounding town of Victoria; this area has been inhabited since the Bronze Age with the current site believed to have been the acropolis for a Roman city

Victoria's Cittadella looks formidable but was overrun by opposing forces frequently in Malta's long history; Gozo is roughly the same size as Manhattan and contains about 40,000 citizens (out of Malta's total of 440,000)

The Ta Kola Windmill (1725) is one of the few surviving windmills on the Maltese Islands; the windmill, much like the parish church, was one of the main focal points of village life, providing villagers with flour for the production of bread

The Ggantija (pronounced Giantess) Temples are 5500+ years old and are the world's second oldest existing manmade religious structures after Göbekli Tepe in present-day Turkey; they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site

This double figure stone statuette is the most complete and remarkable sculpture from the Ggantija Temples featuring a miniature, highly detailed set of corpulent figures; this site required quite a bit of imagination to understand its significance

This Ggantija Temple dates from 3600 BC and is a remarkable feat when considering the monuments were constructed when the wheel had not yet been introduced and no metal tools were available to the Maltese Islanders

The Rotunda of St. John the Baptist as seen from the Ggantija Temples; the dome on the 1978 church is 89 ft in diameter and 246 ft high and weighs 45,000 tons; plans for the church were based on Santa Maria della Salute of Venice, but on a larger scale

It was challenging to determine exactly how the Ggantija Temples were originally designed but this model illustrates what experts theorize; the temples are more than 1000 years older than the Pyramids in Egypt

Victoria's Cittadella is a museum complex featuring the Old Prison, Gozo Nature Museum, Gozo Museum of Archaeology and Gran Castelo Historic House; in recent decades proposals have been made to link Gozo to Malta via bridge and/or tunnel but none have been started

The 1711 Cathedral of the Assumption, inside Victoria's Cittadella, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gozo; a car is essential when visiting but the dense urban areas are challenging, even with GPS, since there are no street signs

One of the most characteristic trees (there are few trees) on Gozo is the carob tree which was introduced here by Arab traders around 1000AD; carob is a healthier alternative to chocolate since it has no caffeine while the carob seeds are used for their gum

The 1968 Astra Theater, seating 1200 in ornate Baroque splendor, is particularly noted for its spectacular operas, a genre which has been an intrinsic part of Gozitan heritage since the 19th century

Created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka from 1887 through 1936 at their studio near Dresden, Germany, the glass flower collection was commissioned by George Lincoln Goodale, the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum

You can't help but stare at each specimen to see if you can detect that it is made of glass as opposed to being the real thing and I never could; the collection includes 847 life-size models representing 780 species and varieties of plants

Modern-day glassmakers can't precisely replicate the work of the Blaschkas, although they've tried in a series of annual competitions to pay homage to this Czech father and son; some results are better than others but none come close to the original glass flowers

The Blaschkas' primary technique was lampworking, in which glass is melted over a flame fed by air from a foot-powered bellows, then shaped using tools to pinch, pull or cut; forms were blown as well

The primary impetus of the glass flowers project was that at that time botanical specimens were pressed, carefully labeled, and put on display; the pressing lost the three-dimensional aspect of the specimens and the formerly living tissues lost their color

When I visited Harvard in 2021 the Museum of Natural History had not yet reopened to the public due to the pandemic so I made a special trip in 2022 just to see the amazing glass flowers

This is the lampworking bench the Blaschkas used to make their glass flowers; creating texture posed a special challenge but the Blaschkas found solutions such as blowing fine cotton fiber flocking onto cooled glass surfaces to create a hairy looking leaf

For plants like this strawberry hedgehog cactus, the Blaschkas would illustrate species in the field before creating the glass flowers in their studio; some of their techniques weren't apparent until specimins had undergone microscopic analysis

I found it impossible to get the reflection from the overhead lights out of the photos; the Boston Globe has called them anatomically perfect and, given all the glass-workers who've tried and failed, unreproducible

Starting in 1863 the Blaschkas had a thriving business making glass models of marine invertebrates; approached by Harvard about making glass flowers, the Blaschkas agreed and the project would continue almost 50 years

So that the Blaschkas had a good sample from which to create, Harvard sometimes sent over plant seeds so that the Blaschkas could grow species in their greenhouse and create from that living specimen

The Blaschkas earliest models were cold-painted using glue-based distemper paints, applied to the models' surface following a coating of animal glue; some pigments, like reds and yellows, are particularly light sensitive and tended to fade over time

A particular focus recently has been restoring the original glass flowers since most are well over 100 years old; the Blaschkas were descended from a long line of Czech glass makers who were expert in the Bohemian traditions of glass making

Rudolf Blaschka developed a process of using colored glass enamels instead of paints; he mixed glass powders in a viscous medium which were then brushed on the glass surface; the results were stunningly lifelike, nearly indistinguishable from a living plant

The Pont Valentre, opened in 1350, spans the Lot River and is the symbol of the city; the 453 foot long bridge is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with the Lot River being the longest (301 miles) in SW France

City Hall; Cahors is famous for its black wine which is made with 70+% Malbec grapes; this typically darkly-colored wine is the only red-wine appellation in SW France to use neither Cabernet Sauvignon nor Cabernet-France grapes

Remains of a Roman amphitheater were discovered when constructing this underground parking garage (somehow construction didn't stop and the ruins now largely ignored); Marcel Marceau, famous French mime, died in a Cahors rest home in 2007

The Arc de Diane is the main vestige of the Roman baths of Divona Cadurcorum, the Gallo-Roman city which became Cahors; Pope John XXII, born Jacques Duèze or d'Euse, was born in Cahors in 1244, the son of a shoemaker

The Tower of John XXII is the tallest building in town at 34 meters; It was originally part of a 14th-century mansion belonging to Jacques Duèze (later Pope John XXII), who constructed the Pont Valentré

Historically Cahors was once an early center for banking and was synonymous with the sin of usury (lending money with interest) and referenced in Dante’s Inferno in his explanation of sins punished in the seventh circle of hell along with blasphemers

The House of Henri IV, now a museum, owes its name to the fact that King Henri IV (king of France 1589-1610) would have stayed here during the Wars of Religion that raged in the region

Cahors Cathedral, completed in 1135, is an example of the transition between the late Romanesque and Gothic architectural traditions; it features two massive, 32 m-high, domes in Byzantine style, resting on pendentives, and supported by six huge pilasters

Leon Gambetta, born here, was a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed the French Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government; Cahors offered the closest train station to the chateau Gary had rented for us

The tourist office had a map showing the Gardens of Cahors; this is the Garden of the Witch and the Dragon with plants linked to witchcraft; most of the gardens were tiny with some even stretching the definition of garden

The Old Quarter of Cahors featured narrow streets, charming old buildings and cozy sidewalk cafes; the city is sited on a peninsula of the Lot River and is famed for its truffles and fois gras

The Pont Valentre is a pedestrian-only bridge today that walkers on the 713 km Le Puy Walk, the most popular route in France for the Camino de Santiago, follow; Cahors has held steady with roughly 20,000 residents for the last 50 years

This 1788 French cabinet was one of a pair delivered to the chateau of Saint-Cloud for the bedroom of Louis XVI; it was originally decorated with panels of Japanese lacquer, which were later replaced with hardstone plaques

Among the rarest and earliest pieces of French furniture in the Museum's collection, this 1670 writing table is one of the few surviving pieces of furniture known to belong to King Louis XIV

This large vessel was made in China in the mid-1700s and then, once imported into France, fitted with elaborate mounts and converted into an ornamental standing vase; it's reputed to have belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette

Cabinet-on-Stand, Andre-Charles Boulle, ca. 1675; this piece was one of Boulle's creations for King Louis XIV as evidenced by the royal medallions, the fleur-de-lis along the top drawers and the decorative veneer referencing French military victories

This Sevres porcelain lidded bowl and dish (1764) bears the heraldic arms and monogram of Princess Louise-Marie, the 8th and youngest daughter of King Louis XV; J Paul Getty was a passionate collector of objects with a royal pedigree

Coffer, Andre-Charles Boulle, 1684; in 1672 Boulle was awarded the cabinetmaker to Louis XIV; intended to hold jewels and other precious items, this coffer has an interior lined with bronze and tortoiseshell

Originally a clock on a pedestal, this elaborate 1712 long-case musical clock was made by the royal cabinetmaker to Louis XIV, who had a workshop in the Louvre; the gilt bronze figures on the corners represent 4 continents (Africa, Asia, America + Europe)

In the late 1670s the English and Dutch developed a more accurate clock, with a long pendulum and suspended weights; this is an early example of a French long case clock made by Andre-Charles Boulle, circa 1680

This 1787 swivel chair was created for Marie-Antoinette's bedroom at the Petit Trianon, her private mansion on the grounds of Versailles; specifically designed for hairdressing, the seat would swivel 360 degrees

This 1769 French commode is one of a pair that was installed at Versailles for the bedroom of Madame Louise, one of the daughters of King Louis XV

This mantel clock model, circa 1789, proved to be a popular model for Pierre-Philippe Thomire; graced with Vesta, the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth, Queen Marie Antoinette acquired two of these clocks

At the time of the French Revolution, this 1772 clock stood on the mantel of Louis XVI's council room at the Palace of the Tuileries; the museum has a wealth of furniture from French royal families