Katie And Dive Do London Pt.6

In today's post, Katie and Dive find the last mosaics on our list and they don't disappoint us.
Dive also gets a teensy bit sweary and offensive (so what's new?), so be warned; you might just want to look at the pictures instead of reading.

Leaving Downing Street - where we finished up yesterday - to be refurbished by Murphy's the builders, we amble back across Parliament Square (for the umpteenth but not the last time) and wander off toward Victoria, stopping on our way at Broad Sanctuary to photograph this …

Yup: tourist time again, it's Westminster Abbey of course.
Robyn should recognise this scene as it is right there on the corner behind those taxis that we first met. And of course Mme. and MB, who I dragged here on our way to the Eye.

Toddling off along Victoria Street in the direction of New Scotland Yard Katie points out this spiffy window display and we pose for a photo together (the only one we've got, so make the most of it).

A little further along the street I get jittery as Strutton Ground market appears on the left (my office is just down there).
Suppressing a shudder at the sudden urge to pop in and check my emails we soldier on until we come to a large square, at the back of which glowers the bizarro façade of the most incongruous looking Christian church you're ever likely to see: the snappily named Metropolitan Cathedral Of The Precious Blood, known to most as Westminster Cathedral, London's Roman Catholic mothership.

I've walked past this startling edifice twice a day for more years than most people have been alive but until today I have never ventured inside.
Thanks to Katie's mosaic quest I am about to be surprised and delighted.

By the way, just off to the left of this photo lurk the inevitable Murphy's builders vans.
This beautiful Cathedral was built just over a hundred years ago, at the tail end of Europe's fascination with all things Byzantine.
With its huge dome - modelled on Hagia Sophia - it looks to today's eyes to be Islamic, but of course Hagia Sophia was originally a Christian church and this building (conceived at a time when Islamic culture was rightly admired rather than ignorantly feared) was intended to hark back to the glory days of Christian Constantinople, seat of the Holy Roman Empire before the revelations of the Prophet.

The mosaic above the entrance is impressive enough, but what greets us inside is astonishing.

It soon dawns on us that this church is very much a work in progress (and not just because Murphy's the builders are knocking the shit out of it).
Even though the structure is over a hundred years old, around half of the interior is still bare brickwork - a tabula rasa awaiting decoration - soot-blackened from decades of candle-flames.
Every few years, somebody bequeaths enough money to install another section of mosaic and when this work is completed - at least a hundred years hence - the effect will be magnificent beyond words.

Whatever your views on the Catholic Church, you have to admit that the sale of indulgences has resulted - if nothing else - in some fabulous artworks.
And apologies to any Catholics who may be reading this but I've spent quite enough time laying into American Christian fundamentalists (sorry, Shan), so now it's your turn.
Question: What is it with earthly redemption from sin? I've never quite been able to grasp that concept.
I can appreciate transubstantiation - not of course in any physical way but in the way a person's belief can transcend reality for them; but having your sins forgiven by a man? That's just too much to swallow.

From my readings of The Bible it seems to go like this:
You sin; you wait for God to judge you and in all likelihood you go to Hell … at least you do if you believe in all that Heaven and Hell stuff that I was brainwashed with as a kid.

But who on earth came up with the idea that you can sin and then go fess up about it to some creepy guy hiding in a box who may well be raping your children in his spare time and who'll have you believe that he'll intercede personally with God on your behalf if you recite a few pat phrases?
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth, what a fucked up world we live in.

But holy moley; what a great money-making idea the sale of indulgences was … I can picture Pope Leo X grinning to himself as he declared to a delighted aristocracy: "No matter how vicious, cruel and barbaric you are; no matter how sinful and debauched you murdering, raping and thieving utterly shitty bastards may be; if you give me lots and lots of money you can go straight to Heaven!"

So Europe's mediæval Catholic rulers taxed and robbed the people blind to pay for magnificent chapels to their own glory whilst Leo and the Borgia Popes partied until they shat gold (extracted from "Old Dive's History Of Moaning At The Godbotherers, Vol.2"), all of which kinda gave the Catholic Church a bad name.

Katie soon points out a mosaic panel pleading "Pray for the donor", and indeed most of the side chapels seem dedicated to some obscenely rich and rapacious dickhead trying to buy forgiveness for their life of sin with a token "good work" (a bit like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation … Listen up, Bill: no amount of charity work will ever atone for selling people "Windows" … Oh, the suffering you have caused).
Panel after panel of beautiful mosaic exhorts us to pray for the soul of someone loathsome.

But at least the mosaics that all these greedy and grasping sucklers at the filthy teat of Mammon have left us are pretty bloody awesome!

Hokay, I shall stop knocking the Godbotherers and the "aristocracy" (for a moment) and step back to admire the beautiful works of art that surround us.

These golden mosaics are not glass tesseræ applied over gold leaf - as at Ravenna - but little blocks of gold-leaf-encrusted stone and tile pressed into a wet base.

Katie can tell you much more about the history and the techniques involved.
She explains a lot to me, pointing out how this method gives a deliberately uneven finish that causes the tesseræ to catch the sunlight and the flickering candles in a myriad different ways and - you have to go there and see for yourself to get the true, breathtaking effect - makes the whole lot glitter fabulously.

Unfortunately I forget most of what Katie teaches me as each new chapel finds me gazing, mouth agape in wonder at the sheer beauty of the mosaics and the unbelievable amount of work involved in creating them.

As each new scene is revealed I also have considerable trouble keeping the words "Holy crap!" from flying out of my mouth in front of the smattering of worshippers bent in prayer and contemplation.

Katie points out one figure in particular (regrettably in a nook too dark to photograph), commenting on what a "hot chick" she is.
Inevitably this turns out to be Mary Magdalen and hot she undoubtedly is!
Whooee! Whoever made that panel must have got pretty steamed up while they did it!
This diaphanous vision of Art Nouveau erotic beauty is located (for the curious) around halfway along the right aisle but on a section of wall facing forward toward the altar so any horny member of the congregation would have to crane their neck all the way around to check it out and would therefore be spotted straight away; the priest's voice bellowing out "And if Mister Dive would care to tear his eyes away from the obvious delights of Ms. Magdalen for a moment I am sure we would all be most grateful for his attention."

All things considered I have to admit that this wildly overindulgent display of obscene wealth is a much prettier and longer-lasting way to waste mountains of money than bailing out a load of fatcat bankers.

And so we take our leave (via the shop, where Katie stocks up on postcards) and wander down the side of the Cathedral, past Winston Churchill's old London flat (just behind us in this photo).
During the early part of the Blitz, Winnie would sit up on the roof here in the evenings (often with various dinner guests, including Roosevelt long before the US joined the fight), reclining in his deckchair and fortified with a bottle of brandy and a fat cigar as he angrily watched the East End getting bombed to oblivion and drafted his speeches of defiance.

At the bottom of the road is my office, which we carefully skirt, only stopping for a moment to wave to Fernando the security guy before heading back toward the river and … well, you shall see tomorrow in what shall be - extremely regrettably - my last Katie and Dive post (at least for this year).