A pleasant Surprise: Years ago I used to collect 19th century books, but I gave away most of them to Save the Children charity. One I was always sad about was a late 19th century Victorian photobook. But going back through my old blogs came across a few photos I had taken from it. The Roman boar always appealed to me he is such a tough looking fellow. The Saint Ursula one is only part of the picture, see below.
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| Varallo |
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| The bridge is still at Varallo |
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| St.Ursula with her father - Carpaccio - Academia Venice |
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| Modern photo from the gallery |
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| Florentine Boar - vestibule Uffizi Gallery |
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| The Birth of Venus - Sandro Botticelli |
I have always quite liked Botticelli, there is a freshness and clear colour round his work.It was interesting to follow up each of these photos, all the objects still intact and on show. It made me look up
Henry Fox Talbot, not the first person to start the invention of photography but the first person to produce the photos.
He lived in the village of Lacock not far from where we lived and the village has a museum for him. It was that wonderful period in the 19th century when things were discovered and built upon. Today the modern camera is an act on its own. A complicated camera with all the paraphernalia of getting a good photo is what we have today. Or even a good camera within the little phones we carry about with us. Crystal clear there is no fuggy brown the objects captured, but it seems to me that we have lost our wonder at such a clever tricky piece of engineering as the camera.
Anyway I am glad I have a small reminder of that photobook and just wonder where it is really.
