The History Blog

I don’t know why but I seem to be on a pretty rocks kick lately. Today’s are brought to you by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit of “pietre dure”, literally hard rocks, a decorative inlay technique using semi-precious hardstones like lapis lazuli and alabaster.

The exhibit has been a sleeper hit for the Met, probably on account of the jaw-dropping beauty of the artifacts.

At the show’s heart is the constantly shifting use of stone, especially the flat pietre dure. Sometimes stone is exploited for its own fabulous color and texture, as in the bold geometric tabletops of papal Rome or a Venetian cabinet that is really more a rock-solid architectural model than it is furniture.

Sometimes delicacy prevailed, especially in pictorially inclined Florence. There, the stones’ textures, colors, shadings and inherent light were extensively micromanaged into descriptive schemes that often challenge painting. Examples include the fabulously accurate undergrowth of grape vines, butterflies and birds on a table with Eucharistic symbols, and a tiny austere landscape in which single pieces of lapis and agate form sky and hills. Inlaid details like a white church and green poplars sharpen the implicit spatial recession.

But the sentimental favorite has to be this amazingly realistic painting-like piece of the piazza in which I spent so many happy hours of my wayward youth:

Is that not a stunner? The craftsmanship, the eye for texture and color it takes to even see the possibility of something like this in a collection of rocks, just boggles my mind.

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence will be restoring sculptures in public, starting with Baccio Bandinelli’s 16th c. copy of the famous second century B.C. Greek Laocoön group.

During the “open air restoration”, which will take place behind clear plastic screens, the public can see how restorers use laser technology and deionised water to remove fatty substances, old layers of wax and dust deposits from the priceless sculptures.

Experts will also check the structural strength of the works, paying special attention to repairs done in the past following a fire in the Uffizi in 1762.

As if the Uffizi weren’t interesting enough to visit. Now it’s like an action museum!

Other works slated for restoration as a spectator sport include a Roman statue of Hercules at the end of his labours, two first century Roman busts of unnamed elderly gents, and the marble “Cinghiale” (aka wild boar) which was the model for the bronze “Porcellino” (aka piglet) that has become a symbol of Florence.

A white and blue glazed relief of the archangel Michael by Andrea della Robbia somehow came off its perch above a doorway in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Monday night and crashed to the floor where a security guard found it the next morning.

It’s apparently restorable because it landed on its back, but it has definitely suffered major damage. The face of the archangel is one intact piece, at least, which is important for the restoration to look good.

Mr. Holzer said there were no immediate indications of what caused the sculpture to topple. It was encased in a wooden frame that covered the unglazed back of the terra cotta. The sculpture and frame rested atop the doorway on a steel shelf, with additional steel bolts to secure the top, and there were no apparent signs of rust or water damage behind the piece. […]

The museum said in a statement that “while the Metropolitan routinely and thoroughly inspects its pedestals and wall mounts to reconfirm their structural integrity, it will initiate a reinvigorated museumwide examination as expeditiously as possible in the days that follow this unfortunate accident.” The Met was also reviewing security video to see if it revealed any information about what occurred.

The museum has closed the room in which fell to ensure every last possible chip that might have broken off is found and sent to the conservation area for restoration.

The Museum of London and The Times have collaborated to bring us a most delicious weekend-waster: an interactive map of London with skulls pinpointing the exact location of tens of thousands of buried skeletons found during construction and often reinterred.

Zoom in to see who was caught dead underneath a specific street, or just browse around the town, clicking on the skulls to read about the remains found on that spot. There are some great ones.

Another skeleton was found with a metal spike lodged in its spine. Its owner, a man who was buried in Smithfield, East London, in about 1350, was probably hit with an arrow or spear, but the attack did not kill him. He survived only to catch bubonic plague in his late thirties or early forties. “Somehow the injury didn’t cause an infection,” Mr White said. “The body has reacted by building bone around the projectile. He survived for months or possibly years. He was found in a large plot of land set aside for burying victims of the Black Death.” It is not known why the man was attacked, but it is thought that he may have been a soldier in the Hundred Years War.

Such a burn, surviving a spear in the spine in the Hundred Years War only to die of plague along with a good third of the rest of Europe.

The syphilitic, insane prostitute with rotten teeth and rickets from having been kept out of sunlight in childhood is a tragic figure of Hugoean proportion as well. I can’t help but wonder how much business she did, what with the deformed bones, decaying mouth and suppurating syphilis sores.

The British colony on the Avalon peninsula in Newfoundland was founded by Lord Baltimore in 1621. Six years later, someone dropped a 22-karat gold Scottish coin. Almost four hundred years later, archaeologists found it in the stone footing of a house.

The “Sword and Sceptre” coin dated 1601 was issued during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, two years before he ascended the throne of England as King James I.

It features the crowned arms of Scotland (rampant lion) on the obverse, surrounded by the Latin inscription, “James VI, by the Grace of God, King of Scots.” The reverse features a crossed sword and sceptre, flanked by two thistles — all below a crown. The reverse Latin legend reads, “The safety of the people is the supreme law.” “It’s probably the most unusual and valuable thing from this early period (ever found). I don’t know of any other (complete) gold coins from any other land archeological sites in eastern North America or Canada,” said Tuck, who has been excavating the site of the colony since the early 1990s. “Those underwater guys are always finding them by the bushel from ships and stuff.”

That’s funneh.

Interdisciplinary envy aside, I didn’t realize gold coins were such a rare find in North America. It makes sense, though, considering that Britain colonized the land at least in part to establish a solid launching point for piracy again Spanish treasure ships from Central and South America, and all that gold went to the motherland.

For that price I’d expect it to have been a newly discovered Michelangelo original, or at least personally written by the reanimated corpse of Michelangelo himself, but no, it’s just a coffee table book about his work. And it doesn’t even have color pictures!

Using the high standards of the privately published books in the 19th century — an ideal known as the “book beautiful” — as a starting point, FMR sought expert artisans from various fields to create something Ms. Ferrari described as “a work of art in itself.”

Aurelio Amendola’s black-and-white photographs were printed on paper made exclusively for the project. There are detachable reproductions of Michelangelo drawings on handmade folios created according to centuries-old traditions. And then there’s the cover: a scale reproduction in marble of the “Madonna della Scala” (”Madonna of the Steps”), a bas-relief of the Virgin and Child sculptured by Michelangelo when he was still in his teens. The original is housed in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence.

It took two white-gloved attendants to lug around the 46.2-pound book at its City Hall debut.

The dimensions (45×70, 5×8 cm) are inspired by a Fibonacci sequence whose first and final terms approach the golden ratio. The publishers were going for that full-on ancient harmony in the visual arts thing.

There are only 99 copies in the first limited edition, and since it takes 6 months to make one of these books, so you can’t run out and buy me a copy. Better plan ahead for my birthday instead.

You can find more details (in Italian) and film of the book itself on the publishers’ site.

They have some rare wonders on exhibit right now. Three panels from Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”, the astonishingly gorgeous gilded cast bronze doors of the Florence baptistery, are on display until April.

These panels do not travel, folks, so this is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see them restored and up close. After the tour ends, they are going home to be kept in an oxygen-free space and will never leave the city again.

Opening Thursday, February 21, an extensive exhibition of Roman Art from the Louvre is a must-see. Not only are the individual pieces exquisite (of course), but it looks like the Seattle Art Museum has really gone all out to create a unique and illuminating design to showcase these wonders.

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer :

The objects in the Roman collection rarely move. Only 200 or so are on exhibit at any one time. Most remain in storage. With the American tour, the Louvre wants to conceive new installations beyond the usual classifications of materials (bronzes, marbles and glass, for instance) and chronology to those that reveal different aspects of Roman life, its private and public domains. It is a world known and unknown, familiar and unfamiliar. All of it bears exploration and examination.

“We want to reimagine the collection,” Roger said. “We want to mix everything up to see what happens when, for example, a huge marble statue sits next to a small bronze, to see what kind of space is needed.” […]

The Louvre cannot paint its walls to accommodate different exhibits because it is a historic building, but the Seattle Art Museum can. So the exhibit of nearly 200 objects that takes up the entire fourth floor of the south wing is seen in rooms painted in dramatic colors — antique yellow, somber burgundy, serene gray-green, almost pumpkin. It’s a palette adapted from a typical Roman house, suggested by Giroire and Roger. The effect of the different colors and pinpoint lighting, said Roger, is startling. Everything, particularly the marble, pops almost theatrically.

This is the only place on the west coast you can see the exhibit. I think it’s worth a special trip if you’re anywhere remotely nearby, especially since you can enter the Gates of Paradise at the same time.

The Codex Atlanticus — the largest bound collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s writings — is moldy. So far the mold isn’t spreading, but the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan doesn’t have the money even to analyze what needs to be done, nevermind actually do it.

Until more scientific analysis is done, the cause of the mold will remain unclear, said Cecilia Frosinini, the deputy director of the Opificio.

She said the mold could be the result of several factors, including exposure during any exhibition or study, or the unintended consequence of a restoration that began in 1968 and ended in 1972.

The Codex has some amazing engineering diagrams and inventions, including flying machines, swing bridges, pontoon bridges, covered bridges, trestle bridges, castles, pumps, water-powered saws, submarines, paddle boats, drills, canal excavators, canals, rotating cranes, mirror grinders, printing presses, weaponry galore and much, much more. The horizontal Tommy cannon is one my favorites:

A British Caravaggio expert spotted it at an auction in London. Sold as done by a student of Caravaggio copying one of his works, the painting actually turned out to be an earlier, cheaper version of ‘I Bari’. Sir Denis Mahon bought it for $100,000, lucky bastard, authenticated it, and loaned it to the Pepoli Museum in Trapani, Sicily.

How do they know it’s the genuine article?

Maurizio Marini, another Caravaggio expert who has studied the newly found painting, said the work is true to Caravaggio’s style, and X-rays have confirmed it is an original by revealing the lead-laced sketch that was drawn to outline the painting.

An analysis of the paint has also come up with traces of very fine sand, another trademark of the artist, he said.

“The Cardsharps” is an early work by Caravaggio and shows a young, fresh-faced page being tricked at a card game by two cheaters. The scene is typical of Caravaggio’s revolutionary style of depicting realistic characters and images found in everyday life.

Gregori said she was convinced the London painting was a Caravaggio when she noticed that the face of one of the cheats, though partially covered by the page’s hat, had still been sketched out in detail by the artist before being painted over.

“That’s the ultimate proof,” she said. “A copycat doesn’t do that.”