Kunsthistorisches Museum on Day Four in Vienna
Another day in Vienna, another outstanding art museum. Ho hum, right? But I can’t emphasize enough, my friends – as the capital of the former Habsburg Empire (and before that, this little thing you may have heard of called the Holy Roman Empire), Vienna has inherited an astonishing amount of Western art of the highest quality. I mean, those Habsburgs had people like Peter Paul Rubens on the payroll, once upon a time.
Which is to say, that yes, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, our destination on day number four in Vienna, is incredible. To say that its collections are incomparable is, dare I say, completely accurate. As you walk through, and see one thing after another that is described as being the most complete collection of this and that IN THE WORLD, being the proto-typically cynical New Yorker that I am, my tendency is to say, “oh come on, that can’t be true.” But I don’t think they are exaggerating, in this case.
So we started out our exploration of the museum by visiting the Kunstkammer.
This series of galleries encompasses what is sometimes known in English as a Cabinet of Curiosities, a mix of natural history and artistic genius and odd-ball sensibilities (one way to think of a Kunstkammer/Cabinet of curiosities is a catch-all for anything that doesn’t easily fit into a pre-conceived category). Over the centuries, various members of the Habsburg family would collect all sorts of things (precious stones, that kind of thing), and have the foremost artists of the day set these things for them in extraordinarily beautiful settings. Or they would just have an artist on the payroll created something extraordinarily beautiful for them, like the Andrea della Robbia Madonna and Child you see above.
The museum building in itself is a work of quite considerable beauty, all that neo-Renaissance type architecture. You can see some photos to give you a sense of that above.
So after walking through gallery after gallery filled with these incredible curiosities, we decided to shift gears and go to the galleries focusing of Western Renaissance and Early Baroque art. That is always what I love to see, but in this case, I knew that their collection must be just a little more incredible than others I’ve seen. And sure enough, I was right. I mean, these were not just paintings by all the big names. In the Kunsthistorisches Museum, I saw some of the most famous paintings I’ve ever heard of. I will give you some examples of some of my favorites from the collection.
Let’s start with Albrecht Durer’s portrait of Emperor Maximilian I. Iconic is the word I would use for it. The leader of the Western world, basically, taking time out of his busy leading-the-world schedule to sit for a portrait.
Albrech Durer, Portrait of Emperor Maximilian
Jan van Eyck, the guy who some people say invented oil painting, is represented by two extraordinary portraits, that of Jan de Leeuw and Cardinal Niccolo Albergati. Two perfectly ordinary men, not necessarily incredibly handsome, but van Eyck, with his genius, makes both of these men look full of character, as if you are in the room with them in the flesh. Extraordinary.
Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Jan de Leeuw
Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Niccolo Albergati
One of my favorite painters, Rogier van der Weyden, is represented by a wonderful triptych of the Crucifixion. The lighting in the room casts a glare across the work, so I couldn’t really get a photo of the whole thing. No worries – better to focus on particular details of the work to explain why I just find it so monumentally incredible.
Right Wing of Rogier Van der Weyden Crucifixion Triptych
Let’s take the right wing of the triptych, a depiction of Saint Veronica displaying her typical veil impressed with the image of Jesus. This woman is so beautiful and the folds of her head cloth and dress are so perfect.
Saint John and Mary in Van der Weyden Crucifixion Triptych
The center of the triptych depicts the Crucifixion of Jesus, with Saint John and Jesus’ mother Mary at the foot of the cross mourning. John’s red garment and Mary’s blue one are both incredibly vivid. The mourning expressed on their faces and in their postures is so palpable. The hyper-realism with which all the figures are painted makes the emotions of the scene immediate, as if it were all happening right at this moment.
We would’ve spent much more time at the Kunsthistoriches Museum if we could have. What we saw was just a small part of the museum’s holdings. But we had plans for the afternoon, to go out of town and have wine and dinner at the Weinstube Nicholaihof, a restaurant run by a winery which produces some of the best organic wines in Europe. So we regrettably left the museum, and headed to the Franz Josefs Bahnhof, from which we would take a train out to the winery.
For lunch, I found that there is a well-regarded restaurant across the street from the Bahnhof (train station), called Gabel & Co.
I had scoped out the situation with their menu – like many others, the list of choices that did not have the dreaded letter “G” next to them, indicating dairy in their ingredients, was not large. But in the Viennese Classics section was listed a beef goulash, and remembering the wonderful goulash I had at the previous day at Cafe Griensteidl, I ordered it. It was not as not quite as good as Cafe Griensteidl’s fiaker goulash had been, but it was still quite good, and the house-made lemonade I drank with it helped to take the edge of what was, once again, a stiflingly hot afternoon.
Next time, I will tell y0u about our train ride up the Danube, and our memorable dinner at Weinstube Nikolaihof.
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