On Mt. Falcon

Yesterday I hiked up Mt. Falcon.  Hikes during early April are always a bit chancy because of snow remaining on the trails.  Here are two photos from the top of the mountain.

I like the following photo, taken on my return down the mountain.  The foreground shows a crisp, realistic view of the trees on the opposing hill.  The background looks like a water-color print of the distant hog-back ridges.

At the Denver Art Museum

I took the light rail to the Denver Art Museum to see the exhibit of portraits from the Spanish colonial period in Latin America.  My favorite was this surreal portrait of Don Francisco de Orense y Moctezuma, Conde de Villalobos (1761).

There seems something terribly wrong with the position of the dog's head.

I wandered back to the pre-Columbian artifacts area and found this charming alligator god with a decapitated head in his hand.

Some of the early artists were a bit more subtle.  Here is a realistic ceramic (Moche civilization, north coast of Peru), circa 400 - 600 A.D.  This guy, evidently a chieftain of some standing, must have warned his artist not to make him look like an alligator.