Piranesi and Preservation
The following links to an intriguing article sent by a reader of this blog:
http://chronicle.com/article/Behind-Historic-Preservation/132119/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
Monday 16 July 2012
Sunday 8 July 2012
Viewing Thames Pageants
The idea of a river pageant - a great show of different crafts to delight and intrigue a public audience - is a lovely one and it would be nice to have lots of them. The grand 2012 Thames Pageant - in London England - there is also London and the Thames in Ontario - however turned out to be both too populist, and too 'corporate', with lightweight commentary from comperes, and large privileges for commercial interests, including the occupation of our public bridges.
London's Thames as a site of pageantry and the parade of political interests have an interesting history. The Thames has long been connected with elaborate ritual and displays designed to enhance the monarchy, as well as to mark the civic and corporate leadership of the capital. Such processions have been depicted in painted riverscapes in which the Thames presented a glittering surface for the passage of the Royal Barge and other ceremonial vessels.
An elaborately carved and gilt barge built for the Prince of Wales in 1732 was still used into the nineteenth century, and ceremonial journeys marked the movement of royal persons and imperial or civic dignitaries between palaces, or to Westminster, or official functions. The City of London with its Lord Mayor had achieved a certain autonomy from the Crown and civic pageantry had a long tradition intimately associated with “English freedoms” with the City represented as “the bulwark of liberty”. London’s own State Barge was used for water pageants including an annual procession or “Triumph” to Westminster on Lord Mayor’s Day, depicted in Canaletto’s panoramic riverscape The Thames and the City (1746-7) illustrated below. This image shows the river thronged with ceremonial barges bearing flags and hundreds of small craft, the motley scene contained by the shoreline and the monumental architecture of St Paul’s, reiterating the river’s symbolic function as a site for national ritual and display. Not unlike the pageant in 2012.
See also: "The Victorian Thames: England’s Silver Stream or Britain’s 'Monster Soup'?" in Tricia Cusack, Riverscapes and National Identities, Syracuse University Press 2010.
The idea of a river pageant - a great show of different crafts to delight and intrigue a public audience - is a lovely one and it would be nice to have lots of them. The grand 2012 Thames Pageant - in London England - there is also London and the Thames in Ontario - however turned out to be both too populist, and too 'corporate', with lightweight commentary from comperes, and large privileges for commercial interests, including the occupation of our public bridges.
London's Thames as a site of pageantry and the parade of political interests have an interesting history. The Thames has long been connected with elaborate ritual and displays designed to enhance the monarchy, as well as to mark the civic and corporate leadership of the capital. Such processions have been depicted in painted riverscapes in which the Thames presented a glittering surface for the passage of the Royal Barge and other ceremonial vessels.
An elaborately carved and gilt barge built for the Prince of Wales in 1732 was still used into the nineteenth century, and ceremonial journeys marked the movement of royal persons and imperial or civic dignitaries between palaces, or to Westminster, or official functions. The City of London with its Lord Mayor had achieved a certain autonomy from the Crown and civic pageantry had a long tradition intimately associated with “English freedoms” with the City represented as “the bulwark of liberty”. London’s own State Barge was used for water pageants including an annual procession or “Triumph” to Westminster on Lord Mayor’s Day, depicted in Canaletto’s panoramic riverscape The Thames and the City (1746-7) illustrated below. This image shows the river thronged with ceremonial barges bearing flags and hundreds of small craft, the motley scene contained by the shoreline and the monumental architecture of St Paul’s, reiterating the river’s symbolic function as a site for national ritual and display. Not unlike the pageant in 2012.
See also: "The Victorian Thames: England’s Silver Stream or Britain’s 'Monster Soup'?" in Tricia Cusack, Riverscapes and National Identities, Syracuse University Press 2010.
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