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The first duty of a prince is magnificence. A royal prerogative to go forth and accumulate; especially on the backs of the disenfranchised poor, of which there seemed an unlimited supply. The four sons of King John took up their noble burdens with a tasteful zeal. They collected pearls and tapestries, illuminated books and lapis [...]
Sometimes, unlike Banks, ideas are too small to fail and too big to succeed. Religiously, law makers have practiced anti-eugenics in keeping the big banks and global economy in a recurring coma, various unspecified ”upper body injuries” of the financial institutions and preventing other near death experiences at all costs. “In the wake of Lehman’s [...]
Philip the Bold, youngest of King John II’s four brothers and his father’s favorite, was robust, but dark complexioned and certanly not handsome. He had marked features and a jutting chin, which persisted among his distant descendants as the Hapsburg jaw. He was shrewd and longsighted, affable and charming, and very much the ”grand seigneur”. [...]
Ziggy and the zentais from Mars. ”And I’m all for it. This is the perfect avenue to make a bold fashion statement but preserve one’s anonymity. One can say the person attracted to zentai exhibits signs of attention whoredom. I disagree. The attention is on the suit and perhaps the body the suit is accentuating. [...]
The great masters of the Books of Hours were three brothers, Pol, John and Herman, from Limbourg, in the Netherlands. After serving an apprenticeship in Paris they entered the employ of the Duc de Berry. Their masterpiece is the ”Tres Riches Heures” , now in Chantilly. It includes a calendar of the months; each picture [...]
The elder uncle of Charles VI started perhaps, the greatest and most extravagant spending spree in the history of the world to that time. His collection itself was a work of art. Jean, Duc de Berry, was more intellectual than warrior, more a puller of strings than a weilder of battle-axes. Christine de Pisan, one [...]
The duty of the prince is magnificence. Or at least this is what the four sons of King John II convened; the likely one thing they could agree upon was to accumulate and collect art and precious objects with an obsessional passion. They were the world’s first great materialists who reconciled Roman Catholic orthodoxy with [...]
Somehow once the idea got around, started circulating,it became an axiom of faith that a prince’s duty is magnificence. The four sons of King John took up their noble burdens with a tasteful zeal.It was buy cheap and sell high, or loot and hoard. They collected pearls and tapestries, illuminated books and lapis lazuli, ermine [...]
”The book was so popular it went into six editions during Burton’s lifetime, and its gratified author was eager to doff his anonymity after the first. It should have been popular. Although it gave expression to the pains of the people (always a kind of comfort), his Anatomy recounted so many sorts of follies that most of them had [...]
Melancholy, to Robert Burton, the philosopher of melancholy, could encompass many states of mind; mild regret, peaceful contemplation, bitter grief, the hatching of pleasing visions, jealous torments and dementia: I’ll change my state with any wretch, Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch; My pain past cure, another hell, I may not in this torment [...]
