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When the doorway was cleared, Ruz found that the room measured 26 ft. by 13 ft., with a ceiling 19 ft. high. The stonework was beautifully fitted and some of it was polished like marble. The walls were covered with stucco bas-reliefs of gorgeously costumed priests. Dominating the hidden chamber was the altar, built of two carved stone blocks. On the altar was a "Palenque Cross": a stone carving of the Mayan tree of life...
...tortured landscapes, the cockeyed leering figures that result, were on exhibit in a Manhattan gallery last week. To most observers, the paintings looked like wild crosses between surrealist bas-relief and a mad child's mudpies. But to their creator they brought "astonishing news from the country of the formless." They contained "half-revealed facts ... in some sphinx's tongue [perhaps] the key to ... strange systems of which we have not the slightest inkling...
Detroit's Institute of Arts is one of the nation's biggest and best museums. Its Italian Renaissance building (of Vermont marble) covers a city block, and holds treasures ranging from an Assyrian bas-relief to a mural by Diego Rivera. The public's favorite painting is Pieter Bruegel the Elder's big, brash The Wedding Dance...
Illuminations and cathedral bas-reliefs accompany the first two essays, "The Spirit of the Middle Ages" and "Medieval Life"; the third is illustrated by early Renaissance masterpieces of Giotto and Botticelli. Later comes "The Age of Exploration" with its hopeful, half-empty maps, Vasco da Gama in cap & gown, and a grinning mask which Montezuma presented to Cortes. The section on "The Protestant Reformation" includes a caricature doodled by a seminarian of his instructor, one John Calvin. The world's first modern observatory helps illustrate "The Dawn of Modern Science." Watteau's dimpled courtesans bring...
Switch in Biarritz The Empress Eugenie always loved Biarritz, and Biarritz felt the same way about Eugenie. Until World War II, a bas-relief sculpture of her stood on the town's seaside boulevard; then the Germans carted it away for scrap metal. Biarritz somehow didn't look right without her. This spring, the city fathers signed up a 28-year-old Chilean sculptor named Juan Luis Cousino to carve a new statue. The sculptor's advance design was perfect: a gay, wasp-waisted Eugenie in swirling crinolines. Last week the city fathers were hopping mad. They...