The History Blog

The complete original manuscript of General Theory of Relativity penned by Einstein’s very hand has gone on display today for the first time at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem. Einstein donated the manuscript to Hebrew University in Jerusalem when it was founded in 1925. He left them the rest of his documents in his will.

The manuscript has been kept in a safe at Hebrew University since the founding. A few pages have gone out on display to museums on occasion, but very rarely.

The University lent the manuscript to the Academy to put on a display worthy of its 50th anniversary celebration. The display will be open until March 25th, therefore overlapping the Academy’s anniversary festivities with the 131st anniversary of Einstein’s birth on March 14.

It took Einstein eight years after publishing his theory of special relativity — in which he came up with the famed equation EMC2 (squared) — to expand that into his theory of general relativity, in which he showed that gravity can affect space and time, a key to understanding basic forces of physics and natural phenomena, including the origin of the universe.

But exhibit organizers say the significance of Einstein’s pages of careful script, diagrams, and perfectionist’s scratches will not be lost on casual viewers. They say the display will present the manuscript in the context of the theory’s legacy — which includes everything from modern space exploration to commercial satellite and GPS technology and present-day attempts to create a universal explanation of the forces of nature, a quest that started decades ago and stymied even Einstein himself.

This is the first time the whole 46 pages are laid out in a darkened room, each page gently lit in its own protective casing. You can read every page, every chart, note, and doodle as Einstein wrote them.

A late 16th century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I has reveled over time and degradation that she was originally depicted holding a coiled serpent in her hand instead of the innocuous nosegay she holds now. When an earlier image that has been painted over begins to show through, that is known as a pentimento, which means repentance in Italian.

The portrait, painted by an unknown artist, some time in the 1580s or early 1590s, has not been on display at the National Portrait Gallery since 1921. You can clearly see the shadow of the serpent’s coming up from between her fingers and his tail coiling above her hand.

The serpent was a symbol of wisdom and reasoned judgment — as on the rod of Aesculapius, the physicians’ emblem — so that’s probably where our unknown artist was going with the imagery. He changed his mind, though (possibly in consideration of the common association of snakes with the devil and original sin), and quickly painted it over with a strangely-shaped but perfectly inoffensive little bouquet of roses.

Paint analysis shows that the snake was definitely made at the same time as the rest of the portrait. There is no varnish between the snake and flower layers, so we know it was painted right over.

The artist repented of his creation, if you will, and now the serpent is repenting him right back.

That’s not the only pentimento showing through, though. X-rays show that a portrait of an unknown woman lies underneath Elizabeth. Her head is higher and she’s facing the opposite way. If you click on the first picture at the top right of this entry, you can actually see her eye and nose in the left side of Elizabeth’s forehead and temple where the paint has chipped off. It looks like an absorbed twin.

Again the painter is unknown, but he’s definitely not the same person who would paint Elizabeth on the panel later. It’s very thoroughly painted but not quite complete. This lady is wearing a French hood, a garment fashionable from 1570 to 1580, so she might have been on the recycling heap for 10 to 20 years before getting royally repurposed.

The serpent portrait will go on display starting on March 13th along with 3 other interestingly altered paintings of Elizabeth I in an exhibit called Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I.

The four works range in date from the 1560s until just after her death in 1603. They were all modified in their time and have recently been re-examined using advanced scientific techniques of paint analysis, infrared and x-Ray photography so we can see more of what Elizabeth painters had hidden.

The most famous portrait of Elizabeth in the group, the Darnley portrait, originally showed the Queen with pink and rosy cheeks, so the image of the Virgin Queen always made up with white face and hands may turn out to be more of an artifact of faded paint than Elizabeth beauty standards.

An 1,800-year-old marble bust of Jupiter was found in English Heritage’s main northern archaeological storage unit in Helmsley, North Yorkshire.

Conservators examined it and quickly realized it wasn’t a reproduction, but rather a genuine 2nd c. Roman sculpture that had been given to the Earl of Arundel, one of the first dedicated collectors of antiquities, by Dudley Carter in the early 17th century.

It was first documented in 1616, but the collection itself became dispersed later in the 17th Century.

However, about 100 years later, the bust fell into the hands of John Aislabie, an MP and wealthy owner of Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, near Ripon.

It is believed it may then have taken pride of place in the Temple of Jupiter on the Studley Royal estate, adding a touch of authenticity to the 18th Century folly.

The Studley Royal neo-classical folly is actually called the Temple of Piety and was dedicated to Hercules, but it became known as the Temple of Jupiter because of the bust.

Aislabie found the bust in the cellar, where it had been relegated after the Earl of Arundel’s collection was broken up later in the 17th century. A lot of the Earl’s pieces were discarded rather unkindly, so it may have been at this point that the bust was damaged as we see it today.

Aislabie loved it anyway, so he moved the sculpture to Studley Royal and built the temple with Jupiter as its centerpiece. Aislabie’s son remodeled the temple and removed the sculpture, eventually putting it in storage.

Nobody’s quite sure how it got from Studley Royal to the English Heritage storeroom, but Professor Michael Vickers of Oxford’s Ashmolean confirmed that it was indeed the Jupiter bust from Arundel’s collection. Experts have looked for it in collections before but obviously never found it.

The bust is in fairly good condition despite its missing half. It needs cleaning and further research to try to pin down its movements over the centuries. Conservators will analyze the marble to determine exactly which part of the Roman world it may have come from originally.

Other than that, it’s good to go. In fact it will become the centerpiece of a series of free tours of the Helmsley facility which is normally closed to the public. It looks really cool in there. Huge floor to ceiling racks of dusty marbles just waiting to be explored.

That’s the title of an exhibit opening today at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Created in partnership with Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage & Activities and Contemporanea Progetti of Florence, this exhibit traces the connections between the myths, ideals, culture, government, military of the nascent US republic and the Roman Republic.

Three hundred Ancient Roman and post-Revolutionary artifacts illustrate how much the founding of America owes to Rome, culturally and politically. There are items in the exhibit that I’ve never seen — like a bronze eagle from a standard of the Roman legions — and I grew up in Rome.

The new republic (from res publica, literally “public thing” or “public affair”) was a dangerous undertaking, Winterer says, and all parties knew it. “They examined Rome and its history as if it were a cadaver at an autopsy,” she says. “And they examined it closely. They asked: ‘What worked? What should we do? What mistakes should we avoid?’ “

Grey says that “the founders deliberately appropriated images, themes and language from Rome to build up their self-image.” People had their portraits painted in Roman dress. They aspired to the dignity and grandeur of the world’s most famous republic.

This is why you find so many delicious anachronisms in D.C. like a statue of George Washington half nekkid in a toga.

That cultural bond with ancient Rome continued for the first century of the United States’ life. Roman style informed US architecture, school curriculums, statuary, even the government itself with its elected representatives and a strong but revolving executive.

These links to Rome are so ubiquitous they’ve almost become white noise. The aim of this exhibit is to renew consciousness of the Roman roots of our Republic.

The exhibit is divided into three parts (like all of Gaul!). The first section is “Building a Republic” and looks at the beginnings of both the Roman and the American republics. Roman artifacts are displayed along with early (and even some contemporary) US artifacts, like Roman gladiator helmet juxtoposed with a helmet worn by Philadelphia Eagles receiver Harold Carmichael.

The second section, “A Classical Revival,” presents Roman arts and culture through Pompeiian artifacts and how they influenced American arts and culture. The third section is called “Expansion and Empire” and displays artifacts from the post-Republican empire that Rome became, comparing its growth to that of the United States from the original 13 colonies to the Manifest Destiny expansion across the continent.

The Constitution Center’s website has a nice overview of the exhibit. They call it a walkthrough but it’s not as comprehensive as the name suggests. Still, it gives a tantalizing glimpse into the artifacts on display.

Here’s a quick YouTube about the 18th and 19th century American affinity for ancient Rome by Stanford associate professor of history Caroline Winterer who helped craft the exhibit.

Researchers published in the journal Science have dusted off fossils uncovered 40 years ago by the Marion Bonner family in western Kansas and found a new genus of giant plankton-eating bony fish among them.

Filter-feeding fish known as pachycormids were previously thought to have been a brief phase in evolutionary history, appearing 170 million years ago and then leaving the scene until whales, sharks and rays stepped into the niche 56 million years ago.

The new finds suggest that instead the pachycormids were a hugely successful species who set up shop in oceans all over the world from 170 million years ago until 65 million years ago, when the K-T extinction event that killed the dinosaurs killed them (and most everything else on earth) too.

Co-author Kenshu Shimada, a research associate in paleontology at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that one of the fish he and his colleagues identified, Bonnerichthys, grew to around 20 feet in length and swam through a seaway covering what is today the state of Kansas. [...]

For the study, led by University of Oxford scientist Matt Friedman, the researchers analyzed both old and new fish fossils found in England, the U.S. and Japan. The Kansas fish was previously thought to have been like a gigantic swordfish, bearing fang-like teeth on its jawbones.

“However, our close examination of the specimen showed that such a long snout and fang-like teeth were not present in the fish,” Shimada said. “Rather, with a blunt massive head, the fish had long toothless jawbones and long gill-supporting bones that are characteristic of plankton-feeding fishes.”

The European Jurassic species Leedsichthys was even larger at 30 feet. Their huge mouths were an asset in keeping their even huger bodies fed off tiny plankton. Like baleen whales today, pachycormids opened their mouths wide and gulped as much water as they could, filtering the plankton-packed water through its gills.

There’s some great background on the fossil-hunting Bonner family in this article.

Over the seven decades that Marion climbed and combed the chalk buttes; and over the four decades his children accompanied him, the Bonners helped science immeasurably. They were resourceful and careful; when they found unusual-looking bones, they gave them to scientists and let them take published credit for the scientifically described “discoveries.”

Their discoveries lay now in museums in Kansas, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Grateful scientists named discoveries after the family: A few invertebrates. Pecten bonneri, a small-fin fish, pterandon bonneri, a flying reptile, niobrarateuthis bonneri, an ancient squid, found by Melanie.

This is their first genus, though.

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An appeals court in Pesaro, Italy, has ruled that the Greek bronze known as the Victorious Youth should be confiscated from the Getty Museum in Malibu and returned to Italy. This ruling comes as a surprise and not just to the Getty. Previous rulings on the ownership of the statue have all come down on the side of the Getty due to the nebulous circumstances of the bronze’s discovery and sale.

The life-size statue was fished out of the Adriatic off the coast of Fano in 1964. The fishermen never declared it to customs officials as required by law. Instead they buried it in a cabbage patch before selling it to Italian middlemen that same year for a measly $5,600. They hid it in a priest’s bathtub then smuggled it out of the country into the hands of dealer Elie Borowski in Switzerland, who in turn sold it to the Artemis Consortium. The Getty bought it 13 years later for $3.9 million.

The statue is thought to be from the 2nd or 3rd century B.C., possibly from the workshop of the great Greek sculptor Lyssipos, who was Alexander the Great’s court sculptor and the teacher of Chares of Lindos, the artist who built the Colossus of Rhodes. It is one of very few extant Greek bronzes. Most of what we have are Roman copies.

Italian prosecutors have tried to retrieve it for 40 plus years. In 1966 they prosecuted the Italian middlemen and the priest. They were convicted but their convictions were reversed on appeal in 1970 due to insufficient evidence. The statue itself was still in the shadowy antiquities underground at this point, so the prosecution didn’t even have stolen goods as evidence.

Most recently a case in 2007 prosecuted by Francesco Rutelli (who also prosecuted today’s case) was dismissed by the same Pesaro court who ruled in his favor today. It was a different judge though, and he ruled that the statute of limitations had expired, that since the fishermen were long dead there was no longer anyone to prosecute, and that the Getty had purchased the bronze in good faith.

So what changed, you asked? Some recent news cast serious doubt on the Getty’s good faith. An article in the LA Times last month pointed to a shady series of correspondence over the purchase of the bronse.

“It is clearly understood by us that no commitment is to be made by me on your behalf for the Greek Bronze until certain legal questions are clarified,” wrote Met director Thomas Hoving to Getty in a June 1973 letter. Hoving promised that the Met’s attorneys would talk with Italian officials to clarify the circumstances under which the statue had left Italy and whether the Italians were still pursuing a legal claim, records show.

The Met’s antiquities curator, Dietrich von Bothmer, raised legal concerns of his own, warning Hoving that the 1970 acquittal “does not permit the legal conclusion that the statue was . . . legally exported from Italy.”

In his acquisition proposal to the Met’s board, Von Bothmer wrote, “I recommend that legal opinions be solicited as to the possibility that a foreign government may at a later time, especially after publication of the statue, claim it as ‘artistic patrimony.’ “

The deal fell through for reasons neither the Met nor the Getty will discuss. After John Paul Getty died in 1976, however, the museum bought the statue for more than JP had offered and without the legal assurances from the Italian government that JP had required. Instead they just took the word of the dealers’ lawyers, which, let’s face it, is worth pretty much nothing.

Anyway, nasty horsetrading shenanigans aside, the legal questions surrounding the find remain thorny and the precedent of several failed cases is on the Getty’s side. The Getty said in a statement that they would pursue the case to Italy’s highest court. Given the glacial pace of the Italian legal system, the Victorious Youth won’t be leaving the Getty Villa in Malibu any time soon.

The New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl for the first time in a decisive 31-17 victory of the Indianapolis Colts. This is a great boost for the city of New Orleans which has had a rough time of it the past 4 or so years.

But for those of us who find museum drama more fascinating than football, this victory means only one thing: the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s prize JMW Turner painting The Fifth Plague of Egypt is headed to the New Orleans Museum of Art where it will hang with pride for 3 months starting in July next to their beautiful landscape Ideal View of Tivoli by Claude Lorrain.

NOMA director E. John Bullard seems to be basking in the glow of victory. He tweeted: “Dreams DO Come True!” IMA director Maxwell Anderson just tweeted his congratulations. “Congratulations, Saints–great game.” Followed by: “PS–Did you want that picture via FedEx or UPS?”

But really both museums are winners, even if only one team won. Not only has the playful competition been a charming micro lesson in art history, but the bet has garnered them both international attention. On Firday both directors were interviewed by the BBC. A week before then they were on NPR.

The sports press is showering the museums with stories about the bet too. As Tyler Green points out, the snarky comment from a sports blogger “and yes, I’m as surprised Indianapolis has an art museum as you are” illustrates the huge PR boost the popularity of this bet has brought to the museums.

There will no doubt be greater traffic in the Indianapolis Museum of Art — gotta see that Turner before it heads off to New Orleans — and in the New Orleans Museum of Art, especially after the victory Turner arrives. You can’t buy this kind of attention in prosperous times, never mind in a recession.

Edit: This morning Bullard tweets: “@MaxAndersonUSA, both teams made our cities proud. We would love to see you and Team @IMAmuseum (& the Turner) in #nola!”

All of that and more can be found in the newly uploaded online archives of the National Portrait Gallery. The archives, previously available by appointment only, track the fascinating history of the NPG since its founding in 1856.

The digitization project is two years old and they’ve got a third of the archive online, which is over 15,000 descriptions of a variety of records, including letters, posters, articles, reports, pictures, even x-rays. More records are being added to the online catalogue every day.

Among the correspondence and reports from the Gallery from 1940 to 1946 when the entire collection had been moved out of town to Mentmore, a mansion in Buckinghamshire, for safekeeping during the war. Apparently while the cats were away, the mice did literally play. There are carefully annotated lists of every rat killed, where and how. My favorite is the one killed in the library “speared by Pittock with poker after it had escaped, with great excitement”.

Then there’s the story of the portrait of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle that so enraged a suffragette she slashed his face with a meat cleaver in 1914. She claimed to be protesting the repeated arrests of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, but I’m not clear on why poor Mr. Carlyle got it in the face.

On a tragic note, the gallery archive describes a shocking, bloody murder-suicide that took place in Room 27 in the east wing of the NPG in 1909. A well-dressed 70-year-old gentleman was viewing portraits with his 58-year-old wife when he took out a revolver, shot his wife in the head then shot himself. The man died instantly. His wife survived a little longer, bleeding profusely all over the parquet floor. The subsequent cleanup is a focal point of the report.

Who knew a portrait gallery could see so much dramatic action?

It all started with a little friendly smack-talk on Twitter. Blogger Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes tweeted that the Indianapolis Musem of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art should get a Super Bowl art loan bet going.

Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the IMA, took up the challenge and offered NOMA a three-month loan of Ingrid Calame’s From #258 Drawing, at the same time scoffing at the notion that they’d have to part with it. “We’re already spackling the wall where the NOMA loan will hang,” Anderson tweeted.

NOMA director E. John Bullard glove slapped Anderson right back harder via email. “Max Anderson must not really believe the Colts can beat the Saints in the Super Bowl. Otherwise why would he bet such an insignificant work as the Ingrid Calame painting? Let’s up the ante. The New Orleans Museum of Art will bet the three-month loan of its Renoir painting, Seamstress at Window, circa 1908, which is currently in the big Renoir exhibition in Paris. What will Max wager of equal importance? Go Saints!”

Well of course Anderson couldn’t take that affront sitting down. He came back swinging via Twitter and Renoir is probably still holding a steak on this shiner: “We’ll see the sentimental blancmange by that “China Painter” and raise you a proper trophy: [a richly bejeweled Jean-Valentine Morel cup.]

So Bullard decided to cut to the chase with an email to Tyler Green: “I am amused that Renoir is too sweet for Indianapolis. Does this mean that those Indiana corn farmers have simpler tastes? If so why would Max offer us that gaudy Chalice — just looks like another over-elaborate Victorian tchotchke. Let’s get serious. Each museum needs to offer an art work that they would really miss for three months. What would you like Max? A Monet, a Cassatt, a Picasso, a Miro? Sorry but we have no farm scenes or portraits of football players to send you.”

ICEBURN! Anderson must have felt it too, because he stopped playing around. His next tweet went hardcore: “Colts will win; here’s how sure I am: [the IMA's four-by-six-foot JMW] Turner [The Fifth Plague of Egypt] for Vigée Lebrun’s Portrait of Marie Antoinette.”

Bullard dug the landscape and made a solid counteroffer again via email to Green: “I’m glad to see that Max has gotten serious. Certainly the Turner painting in Indianapolis is a masterpiece, worthy of any great museum. Regretably the size, over ten feet high with its original elaborate frame, and the fragile condition of New Orleans’ Portrait of Marie Antoinette prohibits it from traveling. I propose instead our large and beautiful painting by Claude Lorrain, Ideal View of Tivoli, 1644. This great French artist is considered the father of landscape painting and was one of Turner’s great inspirations. These two paintings would look splendid hanging together in New Orleans — or miracle of miracles, in Indianapolis.”

Anderson accepted with a joyous tweet: “Deal — Claude for Turner. Two masters in spirited competition across the channel, and between our fair cities. Go Colts!”

Bullard emailed back: “Max is a gracious opponent. Thanks for accepting the wager of a Claude from New Orleans for a Turner from Indianapolis. But this is definitely the Saints year. They are the Dream Team and in New Orleans we know that dreams come true. Geaux Saints!!!”

I don’t follow football, but now for the first time I’ll actually be curious to see who wins. And the directors’ reactions, of course.

The 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia that was fished out of Lake Maggiore after 73 years underwater sold for an astonishing $370,000, three times Bonhams’ pre-sale estimate. The bidding for the rusting hulk was brisk at the Rétromobile sale, with buyers vying over the phone as well as in the room.

The winning bidder was a representative of US Bugatti collector Peter Mullin. He intends to put it on display in its current condition in his new museum in California. The Mullin Automotive Museum is opening this year in Oxnard, after an extensive remodel of what used to be the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife. It will include all of Mullin’s 12 Bugattis, plus cars from the former Schlumpf collection with a particular focus on French Art Deco masterpieces.

The underbidder was another American collector, only he intended to restore it. He couldn’t compete with Peter Mullin, however, who instructed the European dealer representing him at the auction that there was no limit to what he would pay. As the representative put it “Bugatti is the first disease.”

Acting on [Mullin's] behalf, Dutch dealer Jack Braam Ruben said: “Anyone can buy a restored Brescia [Bugatti]… To us it is the ultimate sculpture, an automotive Dali or Monet, created by the world’s most fabulous automobile creator and completed by the greatest creator of all, mother nature.”

Hear, hear. The story — for decades thought to be a legend — of the Bugatti at the bottom of the lake is the reason it sold for as much as it did. Restoring it fully would make it just a rebuilt old car. Only 20% of it is useable, so why take a car with such a luscious history and make it look new when you’d have to start almost from the ground up? By the time the restoration was done, hardly anything would be left of the original.

Keeping it as is will be quite a preservation challenge. The conservators will have to walk a very thin line between keeping it from degenerating further without fixing its many problems.

The Drowned Bugatti will be in great company in the Mullin Automotive Museum. You can preview/drool over of some of the beauties that will be its roomies on the museum Flickr stream.