Altar Lesson--Vienna

Today we visited Vienna's Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral). The children's teacher is telling them about the Wiener Neustaedter Altar, the most important in the church other than the High Altar; here is a link to page 86 in a book describing its complicated structure in detail. Well worth viewing large.

The accounts I've found (including this one) say that this fully opened view--with sculptured figures venerating Mary, the mother of Jesus, would normally be visible only on "special days." I'm not sure why we were privileged to see it. This is another web page with details on some of the main features of the cathedral.

After lunch at a nearby Nordsee (a restaurant chain serving excellent inexpensive fish meals), we visited the Albertina, which houses one of Europe's most important collection of works on paper. Frustratingly, it doesn't always have any of them on view, but today we did see "Matisse and the Fauves," an exhibition closely focused on the period 1905 to 1907, when Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and others formed the group dubbed the "wild beasts" by critics. It was marvelous, with nearly abstract compositions flooded with vivid color.

Supper was Vietnamese, not exceptional. But we're still delighted to be here.