September 22 - Fine Arts Museum Take 2

This afternoon, Albert and I headed out to the fine arts museum.  It is not a large museum, but it has some beautiful (and some disturbing) pieces.  It definitely highlights works by artists from southern Spain.  There are 13 salons with works grouped by style and era, ranging from the 14th century to the 20th century.

On our way there I was trying to find my own inner artist and I snapped this photo of the bullfighter (who has been symbolically gored) statue that stands at the edge of our bridge with a view of the cathedral visible through his heart.... perhaps I will stick to math and Spanish for now and leave the art to the experts.

Once at the museum, I took a few photos of the grounds and one of the ceilings....

We spent a couple of hours walking through the museum - it is amazing to think about how old some of these pieces are.  Many of the older pieces have been donated by local churches making the collection favor Catholic themed art.  The collections in the 19th and 20th century salons included a more varied mix of works.

The royal tobacco factory in Sevilla is a beautiful building that was the first tobacco factory in Europe where (mostly women) workers worked long days.  It had an internal "jail" and its own guards because it was so common for the workers to try to sneak the product out and sell it on the street.  Today, the building is one of the main buildings of the University of  Sevilla and the cells have been "converted" into faculty offices.  Anyway, at the Fine Arts Museum there is a great painting by Gonzalo Bilbao of the women (with babies in tow) working in the royal tobacco factory.  He visited the factory many times to make sketches before creating this beautiful 10ft by 13ft painting.  I have included a picture from Wikepedia since photos of pictures in the Museum are not allowed

I feel sure there will be a Fine Arts Museum Take 3 before our time in Sevilla is finished.

With the temperature reaching into the high nineties today,  it was still a warm walk home at 8:30pm.  We stopped for a minute on the bridge to enjoy the almost full moon. 

After stopping at home for a quick dinner, we took out the trash and then I went for a short walk.  The kids were still taking down the decorations from last week's non-procession and the woman at the pastry shop was putting away the sweets for the night - they looked delicious.  

Albert is almost finished packing - I haven't started, but I am only going for one night.  If all goes well, we take the fast train to Madrid in the morning, hit a museum in the afternoon, find something delicious to eat, sleep well in a Madrid hotel, and then part ways and travel - Albert to Miami and me back to Sevilla - on Monday.