October 20, 2008
We went to the hospital in the morning and analyzed some of the results related to an experiment that was performed this week. This information will be added to the grant application. After meetings with our transplant immunology collaborators Sicco and I went to Amsterdam to meet with an art historian who gives private art tours of the Dutch masterpieces. I had read about him on the internet. I have a passion for Vermeer and included on my “life list” is a goal of seeing all 35 or so existing Vermeer paintings. I haven’t quite counted how many I’ve seen so far but it is at least 8 (plus the empty frame of the stolen Vermeer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston). Vermeer is an enigma. Very little is known about his life or his training. Yet he was a genius. His paintings have been owned by historical figures as different as Andrew Mellon and Adolf Hitler. Today we had the pleasure of standing in front of three different Vermeer paintings (one, “The Love Letter” is shown in the top photo) for long periods of time while Kees (the art historian) explained all kinds of details that one would miss with a quick glance while passing by. The middle photo shows some Dutch museum humor. Since the book and the movie about the “Girl With the Pearl Earring,” many tourists come to the Rijksmuseum to see her. However, she is in another museum in the Hague. I saw her on a previous visit to Holland, and she is far prettier on canvas than Scarlett Johanssen was in the movie. Kees did point out though that she has no eyelashes or eyebrows. When I diagnosed her as having “alopecia areata,” he asked me to write the diagnosis down for him!
No comments:
Post a Comment