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Complex Iconography and Contradictory Content in Architecture
2007.11.24 11:23
"No. 5, the adjoining mansion, is La Louve (the She-Wolf), so named from the carving over the door, which represents Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, being suckled by their widl foster-mother. This house belonged to the Archers' Guild, and is surmounted by a gilded phoenix."
Arthur Milton, Brussels in Seven Days (1935).
It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving 1999. The Inside Density colloquium was now over, and, after dinner atop the Atomium, Charlotte Geldof offered to take me around Brussels the next day. We started at the Cathedral where Charlotte took me down to the excavations under the church--she felt sure I'd be interested after hearing me talk about reenactment, inversion and pagan Rome the days prior. Then we went to the Grand' Place. (I was intrigued by the late Horta (non-Art-Nouveau) building inbetween). Charlotte left me standing in the middle of the Place as she went to try to get tickets to some exhibit (which we never made it to). So I stood there and admired the Hôtel de Ville, especially all the statues over the second story windows. There was this sudden three claps, and this loosely-formed group of children near to where I was immediately stood in formation and just began singing in unison. I then looked back and forth between the statues and the children, and it was like they were all singing.
Charlotte was taking too long so I started walking toward the strikingly ornamented Guild Houses along one the Place's edges, and there they were. Soon Charlotte found me and I said, "Guess who I found?" "Who?" I nodded my head upward and she saw them too. She laughed, "You're crazy."
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