National Gallery, Elephant Cafe, Rosslyn Chapel

Second full day was just as fascinating and jam-packed as the first, as you can see below!

1) National Gallery of Scotland, which features mainly portraits of influential Scottish personalities displayed salon style in attractive red-painted rooms with period furniture. The three paintings which stand out most in my mind were 1) Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, 1861-1928 by John Singer Sargent (http://www.nationalgalleries.org/index.php/collection/online_az/4:322/results/0/2646/), 2) Self-portrait, aged 51 by Rembrandt (http://www.nationalgalleries.org/index.php/collection/online_az/4:322/results/0/8677/), and 3) Madonna of the Yarnwinder, Leonardo Da Vinci (http://www.lairweb.org.nz/leonardo/yarn-small2.jpg).

2) Elephant Cafe, "the birthplace of Harry Potter"! Rumour has it that J.K. Rowling originally scrawled the first few sentences of Harry Potter on a napkin in this cafe. The cafe has since capitalized on this with a giant sign on the outside, photos of JK Rowling working in the cafe framed on the wall, graffiti on the bathroom door featuring Harry Potter memorabilia such as the sign of the deathly hallows, "RIP Dobby," etc., and a toilet seat covered with a collage of Harry Potter characters! The food was delicious, too :)

3) Rosslyn Chapel, an utterly fascinating and mysterious 15th century chapel commissioned by Sir William Sinclair (aka St. Clair) featured in The Da Vinci Code! The chapel is unfinished, because Sir William died halfway through the project and his sons weren't interested in finishing it, but what remains is still spectacular. Some amazing facts about this chapel:
- The frieze around the windows features maize, a primitive derivative of corn only found in the Americas. But...Rosslyn Chapel was built 50 years before Columbus' voyage! This fact may be evidence of the theory that the Knights Templar (reportedly at least one Sinclair was a member) visited a tribe of Native Americans in MA early in the 15th century. Or it may simply reflect Viking influence in Scotland, who we already know traveled to the Americas long before Columbus.
- A recurrent motif in the chapel is the Green Man, a pagan symbol representing fertility and growth. One of the most interesting aspects of the chapel in general is the mixture of Christian with secular/natural, pagan, Knights Templar, and Masonic imagery, reflecting the unique eclecticism of the patron himself. In a way it seems like a secular/mystical space masquerading as a Christian church...lots of conspiracy theories to propose here! Check out more of the carvings (and images of the chapel - we weren't allowed to take pics of the inside) here: http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/history.php
-In fact, even the Christian imagery in the chapel is not conventional - for instance, two friezes depicting the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues switch charity and greed, listing charity as a deadly sin and greed as a virtue. A mistake by a mason or a satirical remark? The carvings also have a uniquely Scottish flair - e.g. an angel playing the bagpipes!
- Oliver Cromwell and his men once used the chapel as a stable for their horses at the height of anti-Catholicism during the Reformation. They probably destroyed all the statuary too :(
-The barrel-vaulted ceiling of the chapel is in five sections, featuring different kinds of flowers and stars. This is very unconventional and totally unique.
- Theories abound as to what lies below the chapel floor, including (in order of probability...) the missing statues, the bodies of 12 men, the Knights Templar treasure, the skull of Christ, and the Holy Grail.

And now a story about the chapel:
Sir William asked one of the master masons and his apprentice to model a column in the chapel directly off one he had seen in Rome, so the master traveled off the Rome to study the column to copy. In his absence, the apprentice had a dream in which an angel asked him to instead create a column with a beautiful spiral pattern (http://www.nomadicmatt.com/images/rosslyn1.jpg). He convinced Sir William to let him do that column instead, and he finished it in just a few short weeks. But when the master returned, he was overcome by a fit of jealousy and struck the apprentice over the head with a mallet, killing him instantly. The master was condemned to death for murder and executed shortly after. Now, in the chapel, a carved face of the master mason sits at the top of the arcade opposite the spiral column, forced to stare at it for eternity. Opposite him, the carved face of the apprentice is also immortalized, with a black mark on his head symbolizing the fatal blow. Nearby, the image of his grieving mother is also carved in the arcade. It seems that nearly every square inch of this chapel has a provocative story!

Predictably, I have decided to do my Gothic Architecture paper on Rosslyn Chapel, because there is so much to talk about! See pics in the same Flickr link as below.