Raphael recreated lost Egyptian blue pigment

Egyptian blue, the world’s first known synthetic pigment, was used for thousands of years starting around 2600 B.C. The Romans called it caeruleum (the source of the English word cerulean). Vitruvius included a recipe for it in De architectura, Book VII, Chapter 11:

Sand is ground with flowers of sulphur, till the mixture is as fine as flour, to which coarse filings of Cyprian copper are added, so as to make a paste when moistened with water; this is rolled into balls with the hand, and dried. The balls are then put into an earthen vessel, and that is placed in a furnace. Thus the copper and sand heating together by the intensity of the fire, impart to each other their different qualities, and thereby acquire their blue colour.

The knowledge of how to make Egyptian blue was lost with the Fall of the Roman Empire. Vitruvius’ works were rediscovered in a Swiss monastery library in 1414 and first published in Latin in 1486. The lost recipe of Egyptian Blue, however, would not be rediscovered until the early 19th century when chemist Humphry Davy found lumps of it in the ruins of the Baths of Titus in Rome and discovered its chemical formula (calcium copper silicate). Or so we thought.

A new study of Raphael’s fresco The Triumph of Galatea, in Rome’s Villa Farnesina, has found that the Renaissance master recreated Egyptian blue for this work, and as far as we know, this work alone. Using non-invasive macro-X-ray fluorescence (MAXRF), researchers discovered to their surprise that the blue of the sea and sky were calcium copper silicate.

The Villa Farnesina was built for banker Agostino Chigi, treasurer to Pope Julius II and the richest man in Rome, by architect Baldassare Peruzzi. Construction was completed in 1512 but the frescoing of its interior began as soon as the walls were done in 1511. Chigi commissioned the greatest artists of his time for the job. Besides Raphael,  Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni da Udine, Giulio Romano and Giovanni Bazzi, aka Il Sodoma.

Raphael painted The Triumph of Galatea on the wall of the loggia, a grand space that was originally the main entrance hall of the villa. It depicts the Nereid Galatea standing on a seashell drawn by two dolphin steeds while winged Cupids aim their arrows at her. A neighboring panel by del Piombo depicts the Cyclops Polyphemus who kills Galatea’s beloved, the shepherd Acis, in a jealous rage.

Galatea was completed around 1514, seven years before the first Italian edition of Vitruvius’ De architectura was published. In a letter purportedly written by Raphael to his friend Baldassare Castiglione, the artist thanked the courtier for his compliments on Galatea and linked his painted to the forms of antiquity illuminated by Vitruvius. The letter is a copy and of uncertain authenticity, but it is certain that Raphael and other Renaissance artists had read Vitruvius and been hugely influenced by him.

None of the other Raphael frescoes of Villa Farnesina use Egyptian Blue. His Cupid and Psyche fresco cycle on the ceiling of the loggia has a vast blue background, all made out of lapis lazuli pigment. That fresco has been digitized and can be explored here, btw. There are annotations explaining the incredible proliferation of botanical motifs surrounding the scenes from Greek mythology

Rats are excellent historic preservationists

The moated brick manor house of Oxburgh Hall has been through a myriad cycles of growth, decline, expansion, dereliction and reconstruction since it was first built in 1482 by Sir Edmund Bedingfeld. It came within a hair’s breadth of demolition in 1952 before it was saved at the very last minute by Lady Sybil Bedingfeld who gave it the National Trust. It is currently undergoing a £6million program of repairs to the roof, structural timbers and tiles, 14 dormer windows and its 27 brick chimneys. It is a massive feat of engineering (wrapping a building surrounded by a moat that cannot be drained in full scaffolding is … tricky) and conservation.

The work on the roof is so extensive that temporary roofing was rigged to allow all of the 17,000+ tiles and coverings to be removed for structural work on the timbers. The floorboards were painstakingly lifted, numbered and removed, exposing the underfloor for the first time in centuries. The floorboards date to a Victorian-era renovation, but builders at the time simply laid them over the 16th and 17th century ceilings, leaving the underfloors entirely undisturbed. Archaeologists expected to find some old discarded fragments under the floors — newspapers, candy wrappers, buttons, pins — and their expectations were quickly met when they discovered a box of Terry’s Gold Leaf chocolates, complete with all the packaging and wrappers, missing only the chocs themselves.

A few weeks later they found some old rats’ nests and it turns out the rodents at Oxburgh Hall had excellent taste in bedding. There were fragments of 16th century sheet music and of a 16th century English edition of the King’s Psalms. Next to the nests was a large fragment from a 15th century illuminated Bible, only slightly gnawed. It contains a passage from Psalm 39 from the Vulgate highlighted with blue and gold letters.

Upon closer examination, two of the nests were found to contain more than 200 fragments of luxury textiles including silk, satin, linen, velvet and leather. There are pieces with fine embroidery and ribbons. They date to the late 16th, early 17th century and were probably snippets of larger sections. The rats recognized their high-end qualities and made off with as many remnants as they could get their tiny little hands on.

One of the largest pieces is browny-gold slashed silk, with each of the slashes revealing gold thread. Slashing was very popular for men’s clothing during the 16th century and was used for doublets, jackets and sleeves. It was placed over a textile of a contrasting colour which would be revealed through the slashes. We have the rats to thank for the remarkable condition of these textiles; begin kept below the floorboards for hundreds of years has prevented them from decaying and has allowed us to find out so much more about life at Oxburgh Hall.

That was in May. Two weeks ago, builders hit a motherlode, not in the rats’ nests but it was in a nearby void in the attic. It is a full leatherbound copy of the King’s Psalms published in 1568 and is in exceptional condition, even if was the source for the fragments found in the rats’ nests. There is only one other copy of this book known to exist and it’s in the British Library.

The Kynges Psalmes was originally written by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, in the 1st half of the 16th century and first published in England c.1544. Fisher was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to accept him as the supreme head of the Church of England and is honoured as a martyr and a saint by the Catholic church. Interestingly, this edition was translated into English from Fisher’s Latin by none other than Katherine Parr, who tweaked the emphasis of some of the text (perhaps in collaboration with her husband) in order to emphasise Henry VIII’s religious authority, obedience to God, and military prowess. The English version of The King’s Psalms, which we have at Oxburgh, was therefore highly regarded by Protestants.

This is of particular significance because the Bedingfelds were Catholic, and staunchly so. They were persecuted, fined and harassed for their recusancy. Oxburgh Hall is famous for its priests’ hole, a trapdoor in the floor that is the most popular stop for visitors to the estate.

Russell Clement, general manager,said: “We had hoped to learn more of the history of the house during the reroofing work… but these finds are far beyond anything we expected to see. These objects contain so many clues which confirm the history of the house as the retreat of a devout Catholic family, who retained their faith across the centuries.

“This is a building which is giving up its secrets slowly. We don’t know what else we might come across or what might remain hidden for future generations to reveal.”

Mystery portrait identified as Mary Boleyn

A painting in the Royal Collection previously known only as Portrait of a Woman has been identified as a portrait of Mary Boleyn, older sister of Anne Boleyn and mistress of her future husband Henry VIII. The identification was made thanks to researchers with the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project (JVDPPP), a multidisciplinary study based in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels of oak panel paintings by 17th century masters Jacques Jordaens and Sir Anthony Van Dyck. The portrait is in the style of Flemish artist Remigius van Leemput, so not one of the two artists on the project’s masthead, but Leemput worked in Van Dyck’s studio and he specialized in making copies of the master’s paintings, especially his portraits of the British aristocracy. Not all of the originals have survived, so  van Leemput’s work is of particular interest to the researchers both for comparative purposes and to get as close to lost originals as possible.

The JVDPPP examined it and another 13 portraits of women, collectively known as the Beauties, by van Leemput that are in the Royal Collection. The other 13 are contemporary portraits, however, aristocratic 17th century women garbed and coiffed in styles of their time. The unnamed woman in Portrait of a Woman is the only one in 16th century clothing and hairstyle.

They examined it in September of 2019. Dendrochronological analysis on the oak support found that it was cut from the same Baltic tree around 1629 as the only other portrait of the 14 whose sitter was previously unknown. Archival research revealed a key clue tying the two portraits together: photographs of two paintings in private collections with inscriptions identifying the 16th century woman as Mary Boleyn and the 17th century one as Lady Herbert, ie, Margaret Smith, wife of Thomas Carey who was Mary Boleyn’s great-grandson. A few years after her portrait was painted, her husband died and she married Sir Edward Herbert.

Sir Oliver Millar, then Surveyor of H. M. The Queen’s Pictures, wrote in his 1963 book The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen that in the 19th century the painting was believed to be one of several copies of a Hans Holbein portrait of Anne Boleyn. By 1861 it was listed in the catalogue as a “portrait of a lady” and the sitter has been anonymous for nearly 160 years until this discovery.

Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, told the Sunday Telegraph: “It’s absolutely fascinating. We don’t have the resources to apply technical examination like dendrochronology to the whole collection, which is 7,000 paintings, so it’s wonderful to collaborate with the JVDPPP to help us in that way. One of the things that I’m endlessly trying to do is to group the paintings properly to sort out their history and their relationship to each other.

“When a stray is reunited with the family, there’s joy in heaven. It disproportionately increases the value and understanding of the whole group.”

Describing the paintings as “absolutely beautiful”, he said that the set could now be reunited.

Justin Davies, a British art historian and JVDPPP co-founder, said of the research: “It’s been a voyage of discovery. The results were remarkable and unexpected. Six of the 14 panels had been made from the same oak tree. The tree had started growing in south-west Germany before 1393 and was cut down between 1651 and 1671. In itself, this result constitutes a world record – six panel paintings from the same tree had not been recorded before.”

He added: “The remaining eight pictures are four pairs of two in terms of their trees of origin. “

The newly-identified Mary Boleyn portrait now hangs in the bedchamber of Mary, Queen of Scots, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Cromwell’s cut-and-paste in the Great Bible

Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s favorite and chief minister until he met a sharp end, played an outsized role in the English Reformation’s violent severing of relations with the Catholic Church. He led the charge on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, ordered destruction of all artwork, church decoration, relics and books he deemed idolatrous/superstitious/popish (Oxford’s entire library was destroyed) and chaired the synod that established Church of England doctrine. The Great Bible of 1539, the first authorized edition of the Bible in English, was commissioned by Cromwell who then ordered its distribution. On September 5th, 1538, the crown, ie, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell, issued an injunction that every parish in England and Wales buy a copy of the Bible in English and set it up “in sum convenient place” so that all parishioners could read it. The first printed copies of the first national Bible, known as the Great Bible due to its large size, went on sale in April of 1539.

Two presentation copies were printed, one for King Henry VIII and one for Thomas Cromwell. These were luxury editions, with parchment pages instead of paper and the illustrations, black-and-white woodcuts in the standard copies, elaborately hand-painted to look like illuminations. Henry’s copy is in the British Library. The Cromwell copy is now in the Old Library of St John’s College, Cambridge.

The frontispiece of the Great Bible was not what you would call subtle about its propagandistic purpose. The dominant figure, larger than everyone else and enthroned above the title is Henry. Jesus is crammed uncomfortably into a small cloud-lined gap above him. He doesn’t even have space to raise his head so it sort of flops on his shoulder. Just below to his right is a much smaller Henry VIII, his imperial crown on the ground, kneeling in the presence of God. Banderoles contain biblical passages from Isaiah and Acts of the Apostles that heavy-handedly replace King David with Henry as the man God has chosen to fulfill his will. Kneeling Henry replies in his banderole with a quote from Psalm 118, speaking as David.

Archbishops, their mitres on the ground, and courtiers, hats in hand, flank the grand enthroned Henry on both sides as if they were apostles or angels to his Christ. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury on Henry’s left and Thomas Cromwell on his right receive the Verbum Dei (Word of God) directly from the king. In the second tier, they, now wearing their chapeaux, pass the Bible to (hatless) parish priests and nobility. They (hats on) then deliver it to the grateful masses at the bottom who cheer “Vivat Rex” and “God Save the Kynge.”

The message is clear: Henry is second only to God in spiritual authority and it is he, through his personal gift, who transmits the word of God to his people. The Byzantine hierarchies and Latin texts of Roman Catholicism hold no sway in Henry’s England. His people can read the Word for themselves.

Cromwell’s high station would soon come crashing down. He backed the wrong horse after the death of Jane Seymour and Henry was disgusted with Cromwell’s choice of Anne of the Cleves for wife #4. He had to go through with the wedding so as not to piss off the Germans, but their marriage was never consummated and was annulled July 9th, 1540. Thomas Cromwell was executed for heresy and treason on July 28th, 1540. His heraldic insignia, originally in a roundel at his feet, were excised from all editions of the Great Bible printed after July 1540.

The frontispiece for Henry’s lavish presentation copy went beyond the mere excision. Both iterations of Cromwell — him receiving the Bible from Henry and then passing it to the lay nobility — were painted over entirely by a grey-haired gent, possibly his successor as Lord Privy Seal John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, and the empty roundel that had held Cromwell’s coat of arms filled in with a floral accent.

Now researchers have discovered that there were alterations made to Cromwell’s copy too. Queen Mary University of London historian Dr. Eyal Poleg and Dr. Paola Ricciardi of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum turned an x-ray spectrometer a high-powered digital microscope to the title page. They discovered the face of Cromwell distributing the Bible was covered with someone else’s visage painted onto vellum and pasted on top of the original.

Dr Poleg believes the change was made to shore up Cromwell’s position with Henry who still had doubts about the move towards Protestantism. He said: “In the original title page, Cromwell is associating himself with the person distributing Bibles. This was a very dangerous position to be in because Henry was not fully supportive of the new Bible. Cromwell realised this so he tweaked the images to place himself receiving a Bible from Henry. He would have employed an artist to add in a portrait of himself receiving the Bible from Henry.

“It’s been done so professionally that a microscope and a good light source are needed to see it. It’s painted on a separate piece of vellum and then glued on. This makes it the last known portrait of Cromwell before his execution. Cromwell is often seen as a reformer who moved the country very ardently in the direction of Anglicanism and here he is shown as someone who understands politics very well, and actually tries to position himself in the right location. He was very much aware of Henry’s hesitation regarding the Bible and he’s very good at playing the political game. This adds to our growing understanding of Cromwell and the uncertain course of English Reformation.”

Researchers also spotted another change likely intended to curry favor with the king. Cromwell had a miniature portrait of Jane Seymour, the queen who had finally given Henry his male heir and died from it, pasted over one of the commoners, a woman with three children at her feet.

Dr Poleg said: “The page was manipulated to present Henry with an image of Jane Seymour. Cromwell was using Jane to persuade the King of the value of the Bible. When the Bible was produced, Jane had recently died, so she was still Henry’s beloved Queen. And because she had given birth to their son Edward, putting her in a scene with children makes a lot of sense.”

Remains of Aztec palace, Cortés’ home found under 18th c. building

Remains from the palace of Mexica emperor Axayácatl and the house Hernán Cortés had built on its ruins have been unearthed under a historic building in downtown Mexico City. National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) archaeologists dug under the floors of the northern half of the Nacional Monte de Piedad, a non-profit pawnshop established in 1775 to provide interest-free loans for the poor, between September 2017 and August 2018 in advance of foundation work to strengthen the historic structure. They discovered pre-Hispanic basalt slab floors dating to the reign of Axayácatl (1469-1481) and the remains of  Cortés’ residence in Tenochtitlan from the earliest days of the conquest ca. 1521.

The INAH team dug 12 test pits and unearthed the remains of a stone wall, plus flooring and column remains from the early Viceregal building. Archaeologists then excavated a neighboring room and discovered walls made of basalt and vesicular lava stones built on a basalt slab floor. These were built by order of Cortés after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521.  Underneath that floor was another one paved with basalt slabs, this one from Axayácatl’s palace. It was likely an outdoor space within the palace precinct.

By the time the Spanish arrived at Tenochtitlan in late 1519, Moctezuma II, son of Axayácatl, no longer lived in his father’s palace. It was known as the “Old Houses,” while Moctezuma resided in the “New Houses.”  He was gracious enough to allow Cortés and his men to live in his father’s palace. Big mistake, needless to say. Within months the palace was a military barracks and Cortés imprisoned a series of Aztec rulers, starting with none other than the guy who had rolled out the red carpet for them, Moctezuma II. He was still there when he was killed in the revolt after the Tóxcatl massacre.

After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Cortés ordered the destruction of the city’s royal and religious buildings, and he was more than thorough about it. The city’s survivors were forced to demolish their buildings to the foundation. Almost no walls higher than three feet were left standing, and the rubble was reused to construct nice new digs for the conquerors.

The evidence is embedded in the walls of Cortés’ house.

As an example of this, embedded in the façade of the southeast interior corner of the colonial room, two pre-Hispanic dressed stones carved with sculptures in high relief were found. They depicted a feathered serpent (Quetzalcóatl) and a headdress of feathers, and must have belonged to a panel of the Palace of Axayácatl. Also, another Mexica sculpture with the glyph that symbolizes the tianquiztli or market was recovered, in its place as part of a shaft.

Nacional Monte de Piedad officials are looking into how to preserve the discoveries as a layer cake of Mexico City’s history and make them accessible to the public.