"Bruce Sterling - My Rihla" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

could not keep up with his restless migrations, and
drowned, or froze, or fell ill, or were sold. He does
not keep count of the number of children he sired, but
there were many, mostly by slave-women.
What atrocities are we committing today, that we
too take in stride?
History lives in the Mauritshuis, shelter to a
horde of Rembrandts and Vermeers. Portraits--with that
pre-photographic intensity that an image had when it
was one-of-a-kind, likely the only visual record of
the sitter that would ever be made. The portraits are
formalized, flattering, very studied, and they lie a
lot. The children of the rich pick garlands of flowers
in unlikely getups of velvet and chiffon, expensive
fabrics that a grass-stain would ruin forever. This
kind of portraiture is a dead visual language now, and
when the language no longer works, the lies become
evident, like someone else's old propaganda.
It was a rich and earthy life. Leather, wood,
wool, bloody still-life heaps of slaughtered game. A
woman in satin rides side-saddle with a boar-spear in
one dainty gauntlet. Huntsmen let fly with flintlock
muskets at a foam-snorting pig. The sky has never
known an airplane; these are clouds that have never
been seen from above, fleecy and untainted by smog.
But there is honesty, too. Vermeer's famous Girl
in a Blue Turban is not posed, but caught in an
instant in the mind's eye. She is plainly dressed, and
her sweet frail face strikes the viewer in a sudden
rush, the very opposite of all those formal images of
Dutch aristos with unearned power and too much
jewelry.
Here are Rembrandt's se

lf-portraits--a big-nosed
kid of twenty-two or so, striking a pose in fake-
looking armor, the detail excellent, but perhaps a bit
forced. Transmuted by time and experience, he becomes
a big-nosed saggy-eyed veteran, a gold pendant in one
earlobe. Less youth--but more gold. And a lightening-
quick brushwork that catches the play of light with an
almost frightening ease.
Flattery was their stock in trade. They knew it
was a shuck, a stunt, a trick. Ever notice how good
artists can make each other look? With their palettes
hooked over their thumbs they resemble philosopher-
kings. The big money was in flattery, but they were
restless. Here and there real-life boils out in a
rush. J. V. D. Heyde (1637-1712) paints the Jesuit
Church of Dusseldorf. A couple of black-clad Jesuits