Saturday, June 2, 2012

THE CRUSADER … and the Acting Student


One day, the actress took me to see Graceland Cemetery…  I was living in Chicago, and she said it was a must see.  It was a beautiful spring day, and we strolled the grounds… me snapping pics and she studying her lines for a play that was opening soon.  Never one to miss a dramatic opportunity, she began posing with the statuary… giving me her reaction to each theme.  When we came to the stone knight, she fell to the ground and played the ‘fair maiden struck down in the prime of life’.  After she got up, I asked her if he had slain her.  ”Oh no”, she replied, “he stands guard, protecting her.”
The Crusader by Lorado Taft (1931)…  Cemeteries are the perfect place for a history lesson.  I learned a lot about Chicago history at Graceland.  The place names I had seen around the city came alive with the dead.  The men and women who created Chicago, or made her interesting, making their final stop at Graceland and the other cemeteries around town.  Their gravesites were fascinating, not only for the artwork, but for how they wanted to be portrayed.  Some erected huge mausoleums, and some preferred something quieter…  like their name carved upon a rock.   Victor Lawson got a Medieval Knight.  Victor was the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, and the sculpture embodied his character.   The monument does not bear Lawson’s name, but does have an inscription which reads, “Above all things truth beareth away victory”.   At his brother’s request, Lorado Taft sculpted The Crusader out of a single block of  dark granite.
Taft’s most famous sculpture also stands sentinel at Graceland… although of a different type… it is entitled  Eternal Silence.
English: Eternal Silence, (1909), Lorado Taft....
wikipedia photo
I thought of my photo, taken in 1988, while watching Game of Thrones last night.  The knights protecting their charges… and some not with protection in mind.

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