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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We ought to start a competition for the most lost works authenticating a scholarly one. It would be like Chinese Whispers only without any Chinese Whispers. It certainly fulfils our (nearly) rhyming couplet rule:
Originals never survive, copies always survive
Despite being on the desk, side-by-side. |
It's as if the bacteria know to go for the valuable one.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| The unveiling of yet another new Leonardo—especially during the artist’s much hyped quincentenary year—is surely a reason to be sceptical, rather than cheerful. Yet Leonardo’s “only surviving sculpture†of The Virgin and Laughing Child (around 1472) is now unequivocally presented to the world by the curators of a magnificent new exhibition devoted to Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo’s master (showing at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, with an additional segment at the nearby Bargello, until 14 July) |
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/04/06/another-new-leonardo-is-a-reason-to-be-cheerful
The V&A bought the sculpture in 1858, which coincidentally or not is the same year Augustus Wollaston Franks was appointed Director of the Society of Antiquaries of London. The reference to the Bargello in the article's opening paragraph seems to be a red flag in view of the chequered history of the so-called Franks Casket.
Without a provenance to account for the sculpture's whereabouts in the assumed 400-year interval, it's impossible to know who made it and when. Speculation had already kicked off in 1899 when Leonardo's name was suggested and then apparently rejected. Sounds like his quincentenary was too tempting an opportunity to pass over.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Leonardo is an untouchable, I'm afraid, like the time I mocked Tolkien as an Anglo-Saxon scholar. Like the bloke who used to look after the Queen's -- I suppose now the King's -- world record collection of Leonardo cartoons. (They got that right.) 'Sfunny how preparatory sketches survive better than the real thing.
On the other hand if you put something really groovy together about all this, I could post it up on Medium and put a large cat among the kittens without chancing too many arms. Lower standards but higher audience numbers. You can have half the dosh.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Why is the child laughing? I don't think babies laughed until 17th century? Did Jesus giggle? Don't know.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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That's a really good point but a case in point. If you pointed it out, everyone would say, "Another example of Leonardo being ahead of his time."
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | Why is the child laughing? I don't think babies laughed until 17th century? Did Jesus giggle? Don't know. |
That's a spot-on observation and one which art historians have (sort of) picked up, with comments like "the unconventional laughter of the child."
It should scupper the Leonardo attribution but the V&A is hedging its bets (and seemingly not too sure about when it was done)
| Tests undertaken on the sculpture indicate that the earliest date is 1460, although the sculpture is likely to be later in date. Technical and art-historical research is continuing with the view to unravel more of the sculpture's unknown history. |
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O70263/the-virgin-with-the-laughing-statuette/
Maybe they think he was so far ahead of his time what with bicycles, aeroplanes, engineering projects and whatnot that this is just one more example of his genius?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Another case in point. Any other artist and these ridiculous contraptions would be instantly denounced as blatant anachronisms, and hence obvious forgeries. Still, they do allow us to date the royal cartoons as late-nineteenth century -- the window is quite tight between being able to conceptualise them and their actual invention.
If only Charles could afford to carbon-date one of them we could be even more exact than that.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Someone on Twitter/X posted about a Babylonian kudurru, 'kudurru' apparently meaning stone or stele in Akkadian according to Wiki
This Babylonian kudurru stele records the gift of land from a father, Nirah-nasir, to his daughter, Dur-Sharrukinaia'itu, on the occasion of her marriage. It was probably deposited in a temple, and gave her control over her own property.
Serpentine stone, 1100-1083 BCE |
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Caillou_Michaux_CdM.jpg/800px-Caillou_Michaux_CdM.jpg
It is known as the Caillou Michaux after the French botanist who discovered it, André Michaux, in 1784, who would go on to become the Royal Botanist. The name seems rather unassuming as caillou is French for 'pebble'.
Various red flags, aside from the familiar complaint that stone inscriptions aren't dateable, namely the Caillou holds a world record as 'the first cuneiform monument brought to Europe' and the findspot which, according to Michaux's diary entry, was not 'a temple' but a village on a river bank
| they found the “caillou†in the “lower Baghdad†region, on the banks of the Tigris, in a place then called Semiramis (now the village of Taq Kasra). This village, south of the ruins of the ancient Ctesiphon, is more than likely to be where Michaux came across the kudurru. He may have found the object in situ, and the modern-day village of Taq Kasra could be one of the places mentioned in the kudurru text. |
One wonders who "they" were. There are resonances here with monastic land charters of dubious antiquity.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I don't entirely agree with your red/green flags
* being the 'first in Europe' hardly counts as a world record since Michaux would have had to know what cuneiform monuments were like to produce his own
* the nature of the find surely means a village on a river bank more likely than a temple for a findspot, irrespective of the official claim
Here are my own:
* being backdated to make it the first in Europe when every museum is overflowing with the damn things
* having the name 'pebble' for someone who is supposed to have specialised in cuneiform tablets
* cases of forgers going on to become the 'Royal something-or-other' are itemised in RevHist. He'd better get cracking if it's 1784.
* places with resonant names like Semiramis and Ctesiphon featuring in the account
* examples of previous civilisations' enlightened views of women's rights turning up on Twitter.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I wonder if it is possible to use the red and green flag technique to judge whether the Gunpowder Plot was real. (As opposed to a government provocation, I do not doubt that the 'event' was real.) Just a few minutes into Channel 5's reasonably academic account The Gunpowder Plot: The Countdown to Treason, four things occurred to me
1. Why in 1605? Nobody at that time knew what James I's attitude to Catholics was going to be. The Stuarts were all a bit papistical.
2. Would you really launch a treasonable undertaking in a pub known to be a Catholic hangout?
3. And with five people? That's already three more than any self-respecting conspiracy should have as top trumps.
4. What was the objective? The programme announced that, after killing the top tier of English government, there would be a 'Catholic uprising' and a coup d'etat. What then, a Catholic republic? There were no Catholic pretenders, were there?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I've been sent this from Medievalists.net which has the (I'm sure, unintendedly ironic) masthead of Where the Middle Ages Begin.
Since that is what we do here half the time, though for a different purpose, I thought I'd reprint it here with comments
| Medieval manuscripts can be a visual treat. The script, the illuminations, and the folios, all hundreds of years old. Here is a guide to some of the interesting things you can look for in these creations from the Middle Ages. |
Since we are always being told how fiendishly expensive these things are to produce and how specialist the audience for them is, this is something of a surprise in itself..
| One of the best books about medieval manuscripts is Erik Kwakkel’s Books before Print. It is a guide to how manuscripts were created, detailing everything from the holes in it bindings to what made for good parchment. We made use of this book to help us explain seven lesser-known visual aspects of medieval manuscripts. |
Hatty and I have had our run-ins with this dude but let bygones be bygones.
| 1. The Initials Medieval scribes understood that readers needed ways to help them navigate a text. One of the most popular ways to do that was to use the historiated initial – make the first letter in your section much larger than the others, and even fill it up with its own illustration. The earliest example of this dates back to the eighth century, and many medieval manuscripts would have them multiple times. It greatly helped introduce a new chapter or section. |
Or you could turn over the page.
| 2. Lots of shorthand Even the most experienced manuscript reader will sometimes come across things they do not understand. Often this is a kind of shorthand, the most popular of which is Tironian Notes. Dating back to ancient Rome, and attributed to Tiro, the personal secretary of Cicero, it was a way to write entire words of Latin as abbreviated symbols. The benefit of this system was to make writing quicker and save space on the page. |
Presumably used in manuscripts full of huge and highly wrought initials. I won't go over the familiar territory of Tiron, the Tironensians and allegedly Ciceronian literature.
| Tironian Notes became even more popular during the Early Middle Ages, with more symbols being created. It reached its height of popularity in the ninth century, with over 13,000 different abbreviations being in circulation. |
Aside from the total lack of carbon-dated ninth century manuscripts, the idea of 13,000 different abbreviations being in circulation among the tiny number of scribes and the scarcely larger number of readers is something to conjure with. But, I suppose, if you've had to learn Latin, learning Tironese is a walk in the park.
| Kwakkel has even found two manuscripts that are entirely written in Tironian Notes, both of which are editions of the Biblical Book of Psalms. He speculates on why that might be: |
So we've got a world record: the only book written entirely in Tironian Notes. And there are two of them! But let's listen to Erik
| "At first sight, it seems an odd practice to write out an entire book in a code that could only be deciphered by scholars who had enjoyed the same high level of training as the scribe." |
I wouldn't call it a practice, Erik, not if it was only done once (or, as it were, twice). Nor would I call it 'odd'. Absurd, weird, fake -- these are the words that spring to my own mind.
| "Perhaps these peculiar books were used to train people in the notation system." |
Now, class, get out your textbooks. You will see it is all in Pitman's which is something of a nuisance but...
| "Monks knew the Psalms by heart, making them the perfect tool to learn the strange alphabet of Tiro." |
I suppose it is possible that choristers might know the Psalms by heart but scribes would have to learn them by rote. What the hell, they've had to learn Latin so why not the Psalms so they can learn Tironian notation?
| "The Latin titles would prompt a memorized text in the reader’s mind, after which, perhaps, the symbols would fall into place." |
Or, I suppose, they could be written underneath but let's not make it too easy to become a scribe. /more
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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This business of Tironensian shorthand has always seemed a bit odd, if it was such a useful system why wasn't it more widely taken up?
The founder of the Tironensian Order, a Benedictine monk usually known as Bernard de Thiron, fell out both with Cluny and the pope and apparently sloped off to Chausey island, gifted to the Benedictine monks of Mont St-Michel, which was (and still is) under French jurisdiction
| From then on Bernard lived first as a hermit on the island of Chausey between Jersey and Saint-Malo. |
We came across the Chausey islands back when discussing the all-mportant maritime 'Tin Route' so I was wondering if a shorthand system might have been devised as a signalling or navigational code. Mariners could have done with a bit of assistance judging by a description of the headwinds and currents around the Chausey islands, written in 1929 but presumably not much if any improvement since
The numerous tourists who, from the tip of Roc de Granville, or Cape Lihou, contemplate an admirable panorama, see the horizon blocked to the north by a string of islands which from the West and the East, extends over a length of 13 kilometers with 5 1/2 width.
This is the Chausey archipelago, made up of fifty-three islets, around thirty of which are covered with vegetation, with thousands of rocks at low tide, giving the impression of a newly emerged continent.
The coasts of France, so picturesque, have few landscapes so curious, and, at the time of high tides, so striking. Only three other points on the globe in America show such a difference between extreme high and low waters: 14 meters or 42 feet the height of a four-story house. |
https://web.archive.org/web/20061126094215/http://www.normannia.info/cgi-bin/aurweb.exe/normannia/rechpdoc?idn=doris1929.html
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Good spot about Chausey. Latin makes for a good 'international signalling language' because of its brevity and its wide take-up. A short- form, with 13,000 'abbreviations' is uncannily similar to the Royal Navy's flag system in Nelsonian times, when a limited number of flags in a limited number of positions had to convey everything from "the French are issuing forth from Quiberon Bay' to 'England expects'.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| 3. Word Art Medieval scribes found many ways to make their words more than just words. One of these ways was to make the letters and words form into shapes and objects. This can be seen in a ninth-century manuscript of Aratea, a guide to astronomy. In depicting the constellations, the scribe used words to help him draw pictures of the gods and animals each one represented. |
Never heard of this Aratea but it won't be ninth century (Hatty will know). More evidence that these 'early medieval manuscripts' were designed to be kept rather than used. And have been kept for twelve hundred years! Like Rolls-Royces, there may not be many of them but by Gods they're still running.
| By the tenth century this practice was becoming more widespread, and has been called micrography. Medieval Hebrew manuscripts frequently show this, as do other cultures. |
I quite like the idea that is being gently conveyed here: that Dark Age Europe is a beacon to the whole world.
| 4. Empty space Considering how expensive it was to make manuscripts, a question you might be asking is why are they not completely full of text? Erik Kwakkel notes that it’s quite common for manuscripts to have blank margins that take up half the page (or even more). |
What a vigilant cove Kwakkel is. We noticed it too. I wonder if he'll come to the same conclusion we did....
| Part of the reason is that this was the traditional practice – even our earliest manuscripts would have a lot of empty space and medieval scribes continued to follow this example. |
We missed this circular argument.
| Another reason is that having big margins allowed people to write notes and comments. |
Like Joe Orton, do you mean?
| This would have been popular with students. |
Not just Joe apparently, any young scallywag. It was even more popular with people forging early medieval manuscripts with plenty of spaces to write in late medieval title deeds proving they acquired their property and privileges in the early medieval period.. /more
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| 5. Pen trials To make sure that the ink was flowing well from their pens, scribes would test them out on their manuscript. |
Now me, I'd have a bit of rough parchment to hand for this but who am I to say?
| Usually they can be found at the back of the book |
Can I stop you there? We scribes write on sheets of parchment. It's only later, much later, that our finished sheets are all gathered together and sent over to the bookbinders to be sewn into a book. Golly, I didn't mean those pen trials to be included. What must have happened is that I left that page at the bottom of the pile by mistake and they thought it was the last page! Well, bookbinders can't necessarily read, can they? Still, you would have thought...
| and consist of a few short words or a swirl. |
... they'd recognise it wasn't meant for inclusion. Except maybe this one time
| For example, in this 11th-century manuscript, the writer added several lines, including a short poem about birds building a nest. |
Yup, the ink's flowing nicely but it took its time.
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