IRELAND, DUBLIN: THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF IRELAND, AND IRISH DANCING

 July 12, 2024

The National Library of Ireland is somewhat like our Library of Congress in the United States, albeit much, much smaller--12 million items as compared to the US Library of Congress's 167 million items. Its purpose is "To collect, preserve, promote and make accessible the documentary and intellectual life of Ireland and to contribute to the provision of access to the larger universe of recorded knowledge." This is a reference library, which means that guests can't check out a book, but can view them on the premises.

Built in 1890 in the classical style, the building houses the archival papers of some of Ireland's most prominent writers, including Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Edna O'Brien, Colm Toibin, and W. B. Yeats.

Bob was not as excited about taking a stroll through the library as I was, so he sat on a bench on the porch and I went in for a quick visit.

IRELAND, DUBLIN: THE NATIONAL GALLERY

 July 12, 2024

Our next stop was the National Gallery of Ireland, located in Merrion Square, which is in walking distance of Grafton Street. Opened in 1864, the museum has quite an extensive collection of European and Irish art.

This is going to be a simple post of photos of some of my favorite artworks from the museum--some by well-known artists, and others that are relatively unknown or at least new to me. I like keeping a record of my favorite art, and it is fun for me to see how my favorite artists keep popping up in various museums. So here we go.

Bust of Diego (1955/56)
by Alberto Giacometti

Still Life with a Mandolin (1924)
by Pablo Picasso 

Saint Peter Denying Christ (c.1610-1625)
Artist unknown

The Immaculate Conception (early 1660s)
by Francisco de Zurbaran

(Poor little angels being crushed by the Virgin's feet!)

Saint Joseph with the Christ Child (c.1637)
by Guercino

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (1570s)
by Luis de Morales

Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (1590-1595)
El Greco

Ecce Homo (1558-1560)
by Titian

Triptych with the Crucifixion and Donors (1540s)
by Pieter Coecke van Aelst

The Virgin (1530s) by Ligier Richier

Rest on the Flight into Egypt with the
Infant Saint John the Baptist (c.1494)
by Francesco Granacci

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (c.1495)
by Perugino (left to right: Nicodemus, St. John
the Evangelist, body of Christ, Virgin Mary, Mary
Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea)

The Arrest of Christ (c.1641) by Matthias Storm

The Assumption of Saint Mary
Magdalene (1380s)
by Silvestro del Geraducci

Frances Katherine Chadwyk-Healey and
Her Daughter Elizabeth (1900)
by Walter Frederick Osborne

For a quick break from the artwork, take a look at the architecture of the museum. I love this shot, which looks like a piece of art itself! I really love the rich colors of the walls as well.

Only 35 paintings by Vermeer are known to exist today, and there were at least two in the National Gallery that were part of a traveling exhibit.

Mistress and Maid (c.1666-1667)
by Johannes Vermeer

Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid (c. 1670)
by Johannes Vermeer

And another pause to check out the architectural details of this beautiful gallery:

To finish off our quick tour of the museum, we visited a gallery of portraits of great writers and one theater luminary. Seeing a room full of Ireland's artists made me realize the substantial contributions Ireland has made to the literary world.

William Butler Yeats (1900)
by his father, John Butler Yeats

Garry Hynes, Theatre Director,
Co-founder of Druid (2017)
by Vera Klute

Seamus Heaney, poet, playwright, translator,
Nobel Laureate (2007)
by Jackie Nickerson

The Composition--A Portrait
of Marian Keyes (2023) [Irish author]
by Margaret Corcoran

Samuel Beckett: Novelist, Dramatist,
Theatre Director, Literary Translator (1961)
by Reginald Gray

IRELAND, DUBLIN'S GRAFTON STREET: DAVEY BYRNE'S PUB AND BEWLEY'S CAFE AND THEATER

 July 12, 2024

Many cities have "their street," the one that is associated with only that city and uniquely theirs--Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, 5th Avenue in New York City, Champs-Élysées in Paris, Downing Street in London. In Dublin, it is Grafton Street, a mostly pedestrian street that was a fashionable residential street in the 1700s, a dilapidated, crime-ridden street through the 1900s, and a shopping thoroughfare since the 20th century. It runs from Trinity College to St. Stevens Green, a distance of about 1600 feet. According to Wikipedia, it has some of the most expensive rent of any retail street in the world.

If you like people-watching and beautiful sites, Grafton Street is a great place to spend an hour or two, and compared to what we are used to in the United States, prices did not seem all that expensive.

The street is particularly famous for its buskers, and we saw at least a dozen. Most of them were unusually good. I was thinking, "Here's material for Ireland's Got Talent"!

IRELAND: TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

 July 12, 2024

Bob and I like to visit famous universities. We've been to most of the biggies in the United States (Think Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, etc.), and we've been to a few overseas (Think University of Heidelberg in Germany, University of Coimbra in Portugal, Oxford and Cambridge in England, Trinity College in Toronto, etc.).  We were excited to add Trinity College Dublin (aka University of Dublin) to our list.  

We started with a guided walking tour of the campus. Modelled after Oxford and Cambridge, Trinity was founded in 1592 by England's Queen Elizabeth I and is now home to 19,000 students. One of Trinity's specialties is English literature, and its program is ranked #1 in the European Union and 21st in the world. Literary luminaries who are alumni include Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. Four Presidents of Ireland and four Nobel Laureates are alumni.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) is engrossed in his book and hardly notices the many visitors who walk by him near the entrance.  George Salmon (1819-1904), a mathematician and a theologian who was also the college provost for a time, famously said, "Over my dead body will women enter this college." Maybe he felt that way because he had six daughters and Trinity College was the only place he could go to get away from them.

The iconic Campanile was being renovated when we were there.

NORTHERN IRELAND: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL (ROMAN CATHOLIC) OF ARMAGH AND DOWN CATHEDRAL (CHURCH OF IRELAND) OF DOWNPATRICK

 July 11, 2024

We made our way from the Protestant Saint Patrick's Cathedral to the Catholic Saint Patrick's Cathedral and were amused to see the figure on The Bishop's Monument looking over the valley at the rival church. With his right hand raised in blessing and his left indicating the spire of his own church, he seems to be making a statement about which church is better.

To be honest, I have to agree with him. This cathedral was built in phases between 1840 and 1904 after the Church of Ireland appropriated the medieval Cathedral of Saint Patrick discussed in the previous post. This cathedral is a significant structure for Catholics, who have a relatively weak presence in Northern Ireland.

I love the Gothic style, including this arcade of apostolic statues.

NORTHERN IRELAND, ARMAGH: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL (CHURCH OF IRELAND)

 July 11, 2024

It was time to get back on the road, so we headed south from Belfast in our rental car, a definite upgrade from the one that had broken down on us a few days prior.

I should reiterate here that I am so grateful for Bob's excellent wrong-side-of-the-road driving skills. He does a great job handling manual shifting with his left hand and staying on the left side of the road. (The rental cars have reminders for tourists posted on the windshield.)

On our way out of Belfast, we saw this huge piece of geometric art looming over the freeway. Google Image has helped me identify it as RISE, a sculpture designed by Wolfgang Buttress that consists of a geodesic dome suspended inside a 98-foot diameter sphere. According to Wikipedia, "The inner sphere represents the sun rising over the bogs and the outer sphere represents the sun's halo, while the angled, steel supports are to represent the reeds of the bog meadows that extended more widely across the area before it was developed."  Wow, I'm glad I have Wikipedia. I never would have surmised all of that by looking at it.

It's still a bit of a shock for me to see King Charles's face in place of Queen Elizabeth's. The Northern Irish seem to have made the adjustment just fine.