Last Documentary Post

The Trinity College Old Library was insane! When you walk in, you are almost overwhelmed by the incredible length of the barrel vaulted ceiling which is almost 65 meters long. The library didn't always look this way. It was originally built around 1712 with a flat ceiling and had to be rebuilt in the 1850s to accommodate for the astonishing 200,000 books that live here.  Along the sides of the walls are two rows of busts of the heads of some famous and some not so famous men throughout history including Aristotle and Jonathan Swift. The busts are all white and all awesome. Obviously they weren't all made by the same artist, but some of the artsists include Peter Schemaker, who did the first fourteen, and Louis Francois Roubiliac, who made the famous Jonathan Swift bust. My favorite part was the smell.

The other buildings of Trinity college are also amazing. It really makes me feel stupid for thinking the columns in Milledgeville were cool. The columns on the Pubic Theatre Building in the main square are very ornately corinthian in style. Another interesting piece of architecture is the Campanile. This is a very recognizable structure because it is often used as the face of Trinity College. It was built in 1853 and is made of granite, cast-iron, and Portland Stone. Around the top of the structure is four statues representing the main subjects of the school which at the time were Divinity, Science, Medicine, and Law. These sculptures were made by Thomas Kirk but the structure itself was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon. I wish GCSU looked more like this!

We saw this incredible piece in the Chester Beatty Library exhibition. This work is entitled "The Gleaners" and was painted by Jules Breton in 1854. The medium is oil on canvas and the style is French Realist. This painting was absolutely breath taking at a first look is because of the masterful use of light and line. Breton's use of light makes some incredible colors that range from an intense orange to a dusty sand. Because there is a lot of farm work going on, most of the subjects of the painting are bending on an diagonal line, which implies movement. He also uses great linear perspective to allow the viewer to get an accurate view of what the scene would actually look like if you were there. This painting is impressive not only because of its incredible detail and color but the fact that it was made during a time where such accuracy just wasn't done.