Wessobrunn

I went to Wessobrunn yesterday as I am translating a guide to the monastery. They show you glorious stucco and then forbid you to photograph it. The tour of one corridor with a view into another, and the Tassilo room, takes about 40 minutes. There isn’t time to linger on what you are most interested in, rather as in tours of stately homes, nor were there many books with good pictures on sale. The pictures on the Web are not very good either. There are some grainy shots at the monastery site, and fortunately one of a concert in the Tassilo room, although that doesn’t really do justice to the stucco, which is malachite green with a hunt going on: dogs and foxes (or badgers?) jumping through branches, grimacing faces between; oak leaves, sunflowers, acanthus leaves. What’s the good of having a camera with a ‘museum’ setting? Isn’t a photography ban tantamount to leading a person to sin?
cowportraitw.jpg

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.