w.atching the w.orld unw.ind

We found some of the art and artefacts in Prague to be, well, bizarre.

In the Museum, there is a painting called "Tearful Bride*" (c.16th century, if I remember rightly).

It’s of a particularly hideous specimen of womanhood (yes, I know, I know, I’m no oil painting myself) who appears to be being escorted (frog-marched, I thought) to her doom, by two equally unsavoury characters who Mrs.D. averred resembled “the Mitchell brothers from "Eastenders"?

I had to take her word for that.

The painting itself was of such quality, it was virtually photographic. But apart from her puffy and bloated face, caused (at least in part?) by her unconfined joy at the prospect of marital union and the ensuing nuptials, there was – and I kid you not – an inch of snot descending from one nostril.

Which begs two questions:

a) why could anyone be bothered, hundreds of years ago, to spend an enormous
amount of time reproducing the sheer terror of the impending ceremony; and
b) wtf did the groom look like?


* no pix available as photography was, of course, forbidden.

YGGY (2) tomorrow (with pix)

Now showing in Wenceslas Square Odeon - Tolkien's second opus: