A Museum of Paintalitos

Today we went to a museum of paintalitos. It was called the Wallraf Museum. It had European paintings from the 13th to early 20th centuries.

On the first floor there were paintings from the 13th to the 16th centuries. Most of them were paintings of religious scenes from the Bible. In the first room they said back then these paintings were not called art. Instead, they were paintings to pray to or for carrying through the streets and having people follow them, which is very odd.

The second floor was from the 17th to the 18th century. At this time people starting painting things other than church like landscapes and portraits. In those rooms there were some Rembrandt paintings. I have no idea who he is but Daddy says he’s important.

The third floor was 19th and early 20th centuries and there were Van Gogh paintings — at least, he’s the only one that I had heard of. On that floor there were Impressionist paintings. Those were my favorites. There were two in particular that I loved.

Capo di Noli by Paul Signac.

The one of the naked ladies caught my eye because of all the color and light. If you looked up close you could see that it was made out of millions of paint dots. It is by Henri-Edmond Cross. He was born in 1856 and died in 1910. The painting was called “The Glade” and was made in 1906.

We also visited the Cologne Cathedral. My favorite part was the floor, which was millions of tiny tiles making up a mosaic. Each tile was 1 cm x 1 cm.

-Ruby

Ed. Note - We made a big push on Friday to get to Cologne because there wasn’t any camping between Bonn and Cologne.  We found another nice, little, family-run hotel on the outskirts of town, part of the Bike and Bed certified group, which means that the bikes are safely in a courtyard not accessible from the street.  The management was thrilled to let us dry our wet tents in the conference center and to wash, dry and fold our laundry for less than the cost of a washer at a campground.  We appear to have some important rituals that we also partake of whenever we stay in a large town -