Museu Calouste Gulbenkian

 Bom Dia,

I came to the right place.  The Iberian Peninsula has low Covid rates, and Portugal is doing better than Spain. The rest of Western Europe?  Not so much.  Bright red on the Covid Color Scale.

Lovers of fine art who will visit Lisbon, the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian is the place to come.  The impressive collection would turn the curators of the British Museum green with envy.  What's your fancy? Everything from paintings to statuary, to furniture, to rugs, to tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, ceramics from Western Europe to East Asia in various periods is on offer.

I took the metro finding it a refreshing change from trams and busses.  It's a lot faster.  I went to get my day pass and a couple asked me if I spoke English.  They were having a hard time figuring out the machine, so of course I helped them because we denizens of Lisbon are Nice!  It turned out we were headed to the same place, so I hung around while the poor husband kept messing up the metro gate.  He had to go back and back to get more tickets several times.  But when it came down to it, I took the train in the wrong direction and had to double back.  I got off at my stop and then had no idea where to go.  My first guess was wrong, so I turned around and headed across the Praca do Espanha.  I didn't see anything promising, so I asked a lady.  She didn't speak English, but she recognized the name of the museum and pointed me in the right direction.  The People of Lisbon are Nice!

Something was going on there--not in the museum itself, but in the attached institute.  All kinds of police cars, press, and a lot of important looking men in suits.  Never mind them.  We have art to view.

Calouste Gulbenkian of Armenian descent liked spending his money on fine arts and was a collector of outstanding taste and wide and varied interests.  A visit to the museum is like a walk though of Art History.  You can find Egyptian and Greco Roman Works.  I was especially fascinated by the Islamic collection of rugs and gorgeous ceramics.

Art from India and the Far East is also to be seen.  There's a marvelous exhibit of porcelain vases from the Qing Dynasty, and all of them are exquisite.  Then I moved on to European Art starting with some Late Medieval ivory carvings and illuminated manuscripts in the form of Books of Hours.

You would recognize many of the names of the painters whose works are on show.  How about Rembrandt and Rubens?  There are portraits by Van Dyke and Thomas Gainsborough.  If you like Impressionists you can mind, Manet, Monet and Mary Cassat.

I'm leaving out the statuary, but I liked the furniture.  I prefer period rooms, they arranged pieces of the same style and period together so it was almost like one.  Lovers of Art Nouveau will appreciate the exhibit of Rene Lalique.  Most of it was to clunky for my taste, but I did take a fancy to a couple of tiaras.

When I emerged it had turned hot, and I was in an area of broad streets and scary traffic with lots of hooting horns.  I was glad to get back on the metro and head for home.

Apero is the last of the ham.  I'm going to do my arteries a favor and not get more. I washed it down with green tea.  I went to the grocery store this morning, but I couldn't find any more of that nice wine from Douro, so I got some from Aletejano.

Bye for now