So on this day May 15, 1990 Vincent Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold at auction in New York for a mere 82.5 million dollars!! The portrait that sold was the first of two authenticated versions of the portrait that were painted by Van Gogh in June of 1890. Dr Paul Gachet took care of Van Gogh at Auers-sur-Oise during the final months of Van Gogh’s life. Both of the portraits depict Gachet sitting at a table with his head leaning on his right arm but they vary in color and style.
From Wikipedia….
Van Gogh painted Gachet resting his right elbow on a red table, head in hand. Two yellow books as well as the purple medicinal herb foxglove are displayed on the table. The foxglove in the painting is a plant from which digitalis is extracted for the treatment of certain heart complaints, perhaps an attribute of Gachet as a physician.
The doctor’s “sensitive face”, which Van Gogh famously wrote to Paul Gauguin carried “the heartbroken expression of our time”, is described byRobert Wallace as the portrait’s focus.[7] Wallace described the ultramarine blue coat of Gachet, set against a background of hills painted a lighter blue, as highlighting the “tired, pale features and transparent blue eyes that reflect the compassion and melancholy of the man.”[7] Van Gogh himself said this expression of melancholy “would seem to look like a grimace to many who saw the canvas”. Read More
Carlos II “El Hechizado”: Charles II “The Bewitched”, the last Habsburg King of Spain. His death precipitated the War of the Spanish Succession as France and Austria vied for the Spanish inheritance
Now the category that I would most fear, if I were ever a contestant on Jeopardy, (aside from English grammar) is Monarchs and Royalty! It is something that I have never paid attention to and have read little about. So when I read that on this day in 1702 the War of Spanish Succession began I really was sure what the war was about. Well it seems that everybody and their brother and sister wanted a piece of the Spanish Throne!From Wikipedia……
….As Charles II of Spain had been mentally and physically infirm from a very young age, it was clear he could not produce an heir.[10] Thus, the issue of the inheritance of the Spanish kingdoms—which included not only Spain, but also dominions in Italy, the Low Countries, the Philippines and the Americas—became contentious. In the absence of a direct heir, candidates had to be sought among the descendants of the king’s sisters, each with roughly similar claims but very different political implications: a recipe for certain conflict. Two dynasties claimed the Spanish throne: the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs, both closely related to Charles and to his father, Philip IV. Louis XIV of France claimed the crowns of Spain for his grandson Philip, and Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, claimed them for his son Charles.[5]
Charles III of Spain, second son of Emperor Leopold I and claimant to the Spanish throne. The Habsburg emperor’s intransigence, claiming the entire Spanish inheritance for his House, was a key factor that precipitated the war.
The heir general to Charles II was Louis, Le Grand Dauphin, the son of his elder half-sister, Maria Theresa, and Louis XIV of France.[11] Louis XIV and Charles II of Spain were also first cousins, Louis’s mother, Anne of Austria, being sister of Charles’s father, Philip IV of Spain. However, the Dauphin, as heir apparent to the French throne, was a problematic choice: he would have unified the French and the Spanish crowns and controlled a vast empire that would have threatened the European balance of power. Furthermore, both Anne and Maria Theresa had renounced their rights to the Spanish succession upon their marriages, although in the latter case the renunciation was widely seen as invalid, since it had been predicated upon Spain’s payment of the Infanta’s dowry, which was never paid. An alternative candidate was the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty.[12] Like Louis XIV, Leopold was a first cousin of the King of Spain and a nephew of Philip IV in the maternal line, his mother having been a younger sister of Philip IV (Maria Anna of Spain); moreover, Philip IV had stipulated the succession should pass to the Austrian Habsburg line in his will. However, Leopold also posed formidable problems as a candidate, for his succession would have reunited the elements of the powerful Spanish-Austrian Habsburg Empire of the sixteenth century. It was in part to pre-empt French objections to this outcome that in 1668, only three years after Charles II had ascended, the then-childless Leopold had agreed to partition Spanish territories between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs, even though Philip IV’s will would have entitled him to the entire inheritance. This position changed in 1689 when Leopold secured William III of England’s support to claim the undivided Spanish Empire in return for Leopold’s aid against France in the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697).Read on there’s more
Considering all this genealogical intrigue no wonder my wife likes this stuff!! She probably can keep it all straight!! Anyway they fought over who would ascend to the throne and take control of the weaken Spanish Empire…
Again from Wikipedia……
The war was fought mostly in Europe but included Queen Anne’s War in North America. It was marked by the leadership of notable generals including the Duc de Villars, the Jacobite Duke of Berwick, and especially the successful partnership of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. Several battles are considered classics in military history, notably the Grand Alliance victories at Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706), which drove the French forces from Germany and the Netherlands, and the Franco-Bourbon Spanish victory at Almansa (1707), which in turn broke the Grand Alliance hold over Spain. The war concluded with the Peace of Utrecht (1713), in which the warring states recognised the French candidate as King Philip V of Spain in exchange for territorial and economic concessions
and…….
The negotiated settlements recognised the Bourbon pretender Philip V as King of Spain but required him to be removed from the French line of succession, averting a personal union of the two kingdoms. The Austrians gained most of the Spanish territories in Italy and the Netherlands and the British were granted the right to slave trading in Spain’s American colonies for thirty years, as well as gaining Gibraltar and Minorca. France’s hegemony over continental Europe was ended and the idea of a balance of power became a part of the European order.[9] Philip revived Spanish territorial claims; taking advantage of the power vacuum caused by Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Philip announced he would claim the French crown if the infant Louis XV died and attempted to reclaim Spanish territory in Italy, precipitating the War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1717.
Is that all they did was fight??? No, evidently they also sired children who could all claim the various thrones!!
