This mighty apparition, whose legs curve up the drill like the arches in a Gothic cathedral, was one of the first robots to emerge in Western art.

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Beuys's distinctive use of industrial objects took shape in his Kurhaus years, but some of his earliest artistic traces can be found in Schloss Moyland ( moyland.de), a neo-Gothic castle outside Kleve housing the art collection of the van der Grinten brothers, two early supporters.

WSJ: Touring Beuys-World in Germany's Lower Rhine

The purple lighting and Gothic wrought-iron art work feels like someone slightly out of their mind tried to recreate a New Orleans bordello.

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The first gallery opens with a massive 1st century A.D. marble Roman vessel carved with Bacchic dancers, surrounded by "the legacy of the fathers" French and Italian precursors of the Renaissance, including Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni, who blended French Gothic style with elements of Roman art gleaned from ancient sarcophagi.

WSJ: Review: The Flowering of the Florentine Renaissance | 'Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400�C1460,' at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence