EDWARD LEAR (1812-1888)
Mytikas -Mount Olympus (2, 918 m- 9,573 ft)
Greece
Painted in 1849 - The MET, New York
The mountain
Mount Olympus or Olympos, or Oros Olympos is the highest mountain in Greece and the second highest mountain in the Balkans. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks, deep gorges, and exceptional biodiversity. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,918 m -9,573 ft. It is one of the highest peaks in Europe in terms of topographic prominence. It is located in the Olympus Range on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, between the regional units of Pieria and Larissa, about 80 km (50 mi) southwest from Thessaloniki.
There are multiple theories for the origin of the name Olympus. It has been suggested that it means "sky", "bright", "high" or "rock". One theory holds that Olympus is a prehellenic toponym that simply means "mountain". In Ottoman times, the Turkish name for the mountain was "Semavat Evi", meaning "sky house".
Olympus was notable in Greek mythology as the home of the the Twelve Olympian gods, on the Mytikas peak. It is the setting of many Greek mythical stories. The Twelve Olympian gods lived in the gorges, where there were also their palaces. Pantheon (today Mytikas) was their meeting place and theater of their stormy discussions. The Throne of Zeus (today Stefani) hosted solely him, the leader of the gods. From there he unleashed his thunderbolts, expressing his godly wrath. The Twelve Olympians were Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, and the twelfth was either Hestia or Dionysus. In Pieria, on Olympus' northern foot, the mythological tradition had placed the nine Muses, patrons of the Fine Arts, daughters of Zeus and the Titanide Mnemosyne: Calliope (Epic Poetry), Clio (History), Erato (Love Poetry), Euterpe (Music), Melpomene, (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Hymns), Terpsichore (Dance), Thalia (Comedy) and Urania (Astronomy).
Mount Olympus is also noted for its very rich flora with several species. It has been a National Park, the first in Greece, since 1938. It is also a World's Biosphere Reserve.
Every year thousands of people visit Olympus to admire its fauna and flora, to tour its slopes, and reach its peaks. Organized mountain refuges and various mountaineering and climbing routes are available to visitors who want to explore it. The usual starting point is the town of Litochoro, on the eastern foothills of the mountain, 100 km from Thessaloniki, where, in the beginning of every summer, the Olympus Marathon terminates.
Climbing
Ancient Greeks likely never tried to climb Olympus' peaks Pantheon and the Throne of Zeus which they considered to be the Gods ' home. But surely they reached the nearest peak, nowadays called Aghios Antonios, from where they had a view of the two peaks and where they left offerings, as recent archaeological findings indicate.
In the modern era, a series of explorers tried to study the mountain and to reach, unsuccessfully, its summit. Examples include the French archaeologist Leon Heuzey (1855), the German explorer Heinrich Barth (1862), and the German engineer Edward Richter. Richter tried to reach the summit in 1911 but was abducted by klephts, who also killed the Ottoman gendarmes that accompanied him.
On 2 August 1913, just one year after the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule, the until then untrodden summit of Olympus was finally reached. The Swiss Frédéric Boissonnas and Daniel Baud-Bovy, aided by a hunter of wild goats from Litochoro, Christos Kakalos, were the first to reach Greece's highest peak. Kakalos, who had much experience climbing Olympus, was the first of the three to climb Mytikas. Afterwards and till his death (1976) he was the official guide of Olympus.
In 1921, he and Marcel Kurz reached the second highest summit of Olympus, Stefani. Based on these explorations, Kurz in 1923 edited Le Mont Olympe, a book that includes the first detailed map of the summits.
In 1928, the painter Vasilis Ithakisios climbed Olympus together with Kakalos, reaching a cave that he named Shelter of the Muses, and he spent many summers painting views of the mountain. Olympus was later photographed and mapped in detail by others, and a series of successful climbings and winter ascents of the steepest summits in difficult weather conditions took place.
Climbing Mount Olympus is a non-technical hike, except for the final section from the Skala summit to the Mytikas peak, which is a YDS class 3 rock scramble. It is estimated that 10,000 people climb Mount Olympus each year, most of them reaching only the Skolio summit. Most climbs of Mount Olympus start from the town of Litochoro, which took the name City of Gods because of its location at the foot of the mountain. From there a road goes to Prionia, where the hike begins at the bottom of the mountain.
Reference
The painter
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
Lear was already drawing "for bread and cheese" by the time he was aged 16.
In 1842, Lear began a journey into the Italian peninsula, travelling through
the Lazio, Rome, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. In personal notes, together with drawings, Lear gathered his impressions on the Italian way of life, folk traditions, and the beauty of the ancient monuments. Of particular interest in Lear was the Abruzzo, which he visited in 1843, through the Marsica (Celano, Avezzano, Alba Fucens, Trasacco) and the plateau of Cinque Miglia (Castel di Sangro and Alfedena), by an old sheep track of the shepherds.
Among his travels, he visited Greece and Egypt during 1848–49, and toured India and Ceylon during 1873–75. While travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings in a distinctive style, which he converted later in his studio into oil and watercolour paintings, as well as prints for his books. His landscape style often shows views with strong sunlight, with intense contrasts of colour. Between 1878 and 1883 Lear spent his summers on Monte Generoso, a mountain on the border between the Swiss canton of Ticino and the Italian region of Lombardy. His watercolor Mount Olympus dated 1849 in in the MET in New York City. His oil painting The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso is in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford (UK).
Reference
Reference
