On Saturday, I went to Bilbao, the industrial capital city of the neighboring province of Vizcaya. In the
arte zaharran or the old part of town is the Museo Vasco, the Basque Museum. There were some beautiful artifacts to see. Since prehistoric times, the Basques seem to have been fascinated by the sun. This ancient tombstone features a disc, which is omnipresent in artifacts and furnishing throughout Basque history. This disc came to be filled in with the rays of the sun or the petals of the sunflower. When that most famous Basque of all, Ignacio de Loyola founded the Jesuits, he chose as their symbol not the cross but the sun.
As with all prehistoric peoples, animals figure greatly in the earliest known art and artifacts of the Basques.
The sacred tree of Guernica where every year allegiance to the ancient
fueros or laws was sworn has, in reality, been a series of trees. There´s always a seedling waiting to replace the tree when it dies. This is a part of the tree that grew in the square in Guernica at the end of the 18th century.
A medieval sarcophagus.
A beautiful chest from the Renaissance also features the solar symbol.
On Saturday, I went to Bilbao, the industrial capital city of the neighboring province of Vizcaya. In the arte zaharran or the old part of town is the Museo Vasco, the Basque Museum. There were some beautiful artifacts to see. Since prehistoric times, the Basques seem to have been fascinated by the sun. This ancient tombstone features a disc, which is omnipresent in artifacts and furnishing throughout Basque history. This disc came to be filled in with the rays of the sun or the petals of the sunflower. When that most famous Basque of all, Ignacio de Loyola founded the Jesuits, he chose as their symbol not the cross but the sun.
As with all prehistoric peoples, animals figure greatly in the earliest known art and artifacts of the Basques.
The sacred tree of Guernica where every year allegiance to the ancient fueros or laws was sworn has, in reality, been a series of trees. There´s always a seedling waiting to replace the tree when it dies. This is a part of the tree that grew in the square in Guernica at the end of the 18th century.
A medieval sarcophagus.
A beautiful chest from the Renaissance also features the solar symbol.
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