lam gods

On Friday, Matt and I trekked out to Ghent, a moderately small city that proved incredibly cool. Having barely made it into St. Baaf's Cathedral on crutches in the freezing December cold, I hadn't realized how opulent and vast it was, complete with an underground museum and a separate 2-euro admission chamber containing the famed van Eyck brothers' polyptich "The Adoration of the Lamb." Vincent Scully had raved about it endlessly in art history class, but I hadn't realized at the time that it was in Belgium. (Having nearly walked past De Unie for the xth time without noticing it in Rotterdam yesterday, I must say I wish I could conscript Scully as my Low Countries tour guide). Matt particularly enjoyed the backside of the painting, and I must admit I liked the suspicious, even skeptical, expression of the woman in prayer. On the front, the impossibly tiny organ keyboard played by an angel added hilarity to its monumental greatness. But suprisingly, most of all I found great merriment in seeing a throng of people gathered around a single monumental, futuristically protected medieval polyptich holding little audio guides to their ears and gawking.

Happy first day of spring!