IN 1436, an intrepid young Spanish nobleman named Pedro Tafur set out from Gibraltar on a three-year journey to see the sights of Europe and the Middle East. From Italy, he sailed to the Holy Land, Egypt and Sinai, returning across land to Germany. By the time he reached the Netherlands, in 1438, he had seen many wonders, including hippopotamuses and the pyramids, but he was far from jaded: he was astonished by the wealth on show in the shops and markets of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Bruges. ‘The goddess of luxury has great power there,’ Tafur wrote. ‘Anyone who has money, and wishes to spend it, will find in Bruges alone everything that the whole world produces.’ Among the magnificent goldsmiths’ work, textiles and carpets, Italian armour, furs from the Black Sea, oranges and lemons from Castile and spices from Alexandria, he noted that, in Antwerp, ‘pictures of all kinds are sold in the monastery of St Francis’.
Tafur does not describe those pictures, although he says that they are destined for churches and so, presumably, were religious in nature, but his account of his visit vividly conveys the main reason the region that is roughly encompassed by modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg sustained one of the great traditions of European art over nearly three centuries —it was rich. This was largely because the area lay on the most important crossroads of European trade by sea, as well as land: Tafur claimed that as many as 700 ships sailed from the harbour of Bruges every day. He pointed out that the region was not rich agriculturally, so, to an unusual degree, its inhabitants relied on ‘the work of their hands’ for their income.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
