The History Blog

The enamelled bronze figurine of a cockerel unearthed in a child’s grave during a 2011 excavation of a Roman-era cemetery in Cirencester has been cleaned and conserved. Even caked with dirt you could see that it was a beautiful piece, inlaid with blue and light green enamel diamonds on a proudly puffed chest. Now that it has been liberated from its loamy cage, the decorative detail and quality of construction mark it as one of the finest pieces of its kind ever discovered.

Dating to the middle of the 2nd century A.D., the figurine is five inches tall with the stretched neck and open beak of a cockerel mid-crow. It has enamel inlay on the breast, wings, comb, tail and forming each wide eye. The enamel inlay is shaped to match the part, so while enamel on the chest is diamond-shaped, around the edges of sides it is elongated and curved like long feathers. The enamel in the comb is three mounds following the bronze shape, and on the back/wing they’re closely set crescents in columns. The tail has a swirly openwork decoration with matching enamel accents. The enamel is shades of blue, green and yellow, but may have had a brighter palette including red when new.

The construction is ingenious. Much like Gaul, it is divided into three parts. The main body is hollow, with the back/wing plate and the tail created separately and then soldered to the body. This saved metal and made it easier to craft and to decorate. Each part could be enameled individually and then put together.

There are only eight Roman cockerels of this kind known to have survived. Four were discovered in Britain and are similar in construction and enamel styles. They may have been a examples of a trend in figurines, or they have been created by the same artist or workshop. The Cirencester figurine is the only one of the cockerels found in Britain to have been excavated from a grave and the only one whose tail has survived.

The other cockerels were found in Germany and the Netherlands, but may have also originated from Britain which was a center of fine enamelwork. One particular workshop in Castleford, West Yorkshire, northern England, was renown for its high quality enamel and may well have produced the Cirencester piece. Cirencester is in the south, so if cockerel was from Castleford, it would have been an expensive import on top of the expense of production.

Archaeologist Neil Holbrook, from Cotswold Archaeology, said the work had “exceeded expectations”, particularly for highlighting its fine enamel detail.

“It reinforces what a fantastic article this is and how highly prized and expensive it must have been,” he said. “This must have cost, in current money, thousands of pounds to buy and countless hours to make, and so to actually put this into the grave of a two or three-year-old child is not something that you would do lightly.

“It really shows that this was a very wealthy, important family, and signifies the love that the parents had for the dead child.”

The cockerel was one of the attributes of the god Mercury, the messenger of the gods who guided the souls of the death to Hades. The parents of the child probably included the expensive and beautiful cockerel figurine as a tribute to the god to secure a safe trip to the afterlife for their beloved child.

The Corinium Museum in Cirencester is hoping to secure the cockerel for permanent display. While talks continue, the figurine will be on public view for the first time on March 27th in Bingham Hall on King Street, Cirencester. The cockerel will be exhibited during the Cotswold Archaeology Annual Lecture which this year is about childhood in ancient Rome. Professor Ray Laurence of Kent University will be the lecturer. Admission is free.

The beautiful and historic Gold Rush-era jewelry box stolen from the Oakland Museum of California in January has been recovered and appears to be undamaged. At a news conference on Tuesday, police announced that the suspect in the thefts, Andre Taray Franklin, a career criminal with 10 previous felony convictions including three for burglary and petty theft, was arrested and booked into Santa Rita Jail Sunday.

Based on security footage taken during the burglaries, the police had been looking for him in connection with both thefts at the museum. When they arrested him, police found pictures of the box and of a mid-20th century pistol on his cell phone. They were able to trace the jewelry box from that picture, locating it at a business they declined to name. The six-barrel pistol in the picture is one of the objects stolen from the museum in November. It has not been recovered as of yet, nor have the stolen gold nuggets.

Police Chief Howard Jordan and Lt. Oliver Cunningham praised Sgt. Mike Igualdo for his dedication in pinpointing the suspect and finding the box.

Police Officer Michael Igualdo, the lead investigator, said officers were ecstatic to find the gold box, although he wouldn’t say where it had turned up. “We thought we were in the movie ‘National Treasure,’ ” Igualdo said.

“What clicked in me was the history of California, the Gold Rush era, our American history, our heritage,” Igualdo said.

The Alameda County district attorney’s office charged Franklin with violating parole on a previous conviction for possessing stolen property and receiving stolen goods valued at more than $200,000 — the box (valued at $805,000) and the pistol. More charges, namely multiple counts of burglary, are likely to follow. In the meantime he is being held without bail.

Museum officials are thrilled to have the jewelry box back, of course. At the press conference, Director Lori Fogarty thanked the Oakland Police Department “for their expert assistance with recovering OMCA’s historic jewelry box” and said they plan to have to the box back on view as soon as possible. They need to examine it carefully to tend to any conservation needs, but as soon as any condition issues are resolved, the jewelry box will be the star of the Gallery of California History again. There is no question of the box being secured out of public view, despite its unfortunate history of theft. Fogarty again: “It is our mission and our responsibility to share California’s history with the public. If we were just a treasure trove, a mausoleum for objects, we wouldn’t be serving our mission.”

Instead of hiding their light under a bushel, the museum has significantly beefed up its security protocols. They’ve added security guards, additional cameras, alarm systems and lighting. Museum officials are confident that the 1.8 million-object collection will be safe.

I’m just glad it’s still whole instead of having been melted down. I hope Franklin tells authorities where all the other artifacts he stole ended up, although odds are they’re several steps removed from the first pawn shop or fence he sold them to.

Morten Skovsby had found a few coins, tools and a cannon ball in his backyard with his new metal detector when he decided to go further afield. On December 28th, 2012, Skovsby, Michael Nielsen, Jan Hein and Jacob Sietam, all members of a local metal detector group, explored a field in Hårby, central Denmark. Morton got a strong signal so he loosened a clump of frozen soil only to find a little silver face looking back at him. He scooped up the whole clod of earth, brought it home and put it on the radiator to thaw. Once unfrozen and cleaned of soil, the face turned out to belong a small female figurine just 3.5 centimeters (1.38 inches) tall.

Morten emailed the curator at Odense City Museums, Mogens Bo Henriksen who replied that it was a very interesting discovery. Further investigation by museum experts confirmed that early assessment and then some. It’s a standing figure of a Viking shield maiden broken at the abdomen. She wears a long textured gown and her long hair is in a pony tail tied in a knot at the back of her head. An eyelet behind her neck indicates the figurine was worn on a cord, perhaps as a pendant. She carries a double-sided Viking sword in her right hand, arm bent at the elbow, and holds a round shield in front of her body on her left arm.

She is made of solid silver and weighs 9.2 grams (.32 oz). The silver is gilded and the pattern details in the gown and shield are filled in with a black enamel-like material called niello. She dates to the Viking age, around 800 A.D., and the design details identify her as not just any shield maiden, but as a valkyrie, emissaries of Odin who choose who dies in battle and escort their souls to Valhalla. Other valkyrie figures from the early Viking era have been discovered in Denmark, but they are flat two-dimensional pieces (mostly brooches). The Hårby figurine is the first three-dimensional valkyrie figurine ever discovered. The fact that her back and sides are carved reveal heretofore unknown details about Viking hairstyle and dress from the period.

Odense City Museums did a small follow-up excavation at the discovery site. They found evidence of multiple pit houses, huts used as workshops for various crafts. Layers of burnt debris and fragments of scrap metal testify to the pit houses’ use as silversmiths. Perhaps the valkyrie lost her legs in the process of being chopped up and melted, her silver to be reused in new jewelry, only somehow the process was interrupted and she wound up in the trash instead.

The figurine has been declared treasure trove and the finder will receive a reward, although Morten doesn’t care about that. He’s just excited to have found such a special historical artifact. As of March 1st, she is on display at the National Museum’s yearly exhibition on treasure trove finds. After that she will be included in the National Museum’s upcoming exhibition on the Vikings which will travel to the British Museum in 2014.

St. Petersburg, Epiphany Day, January 6th (January 19th on the Gregorian calendar), 1905: Tsar Nicholas II, members of the royal family and diplomatic corps attend the ceremonial blessing of the waters of the Neva River in front of the Winter Palace. This is a longstanding tradition celebrating the baptism of Christ in River Jordan transposed to a frigid Russian winter setting. A hole called the Jordan is cut in the ice of the river and the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of Saint Petersburg immerses his cross in it, blessing and purifying the water. People flock to collect the holy water which is believed to have protective and curative powers.

The Tsar and some of the dignitaries observe the blessing from an elegant pavilion built overlooking the river, while the Tsarina, Grand Duchesses and members of the diplomatic corps watch from the windows of the Winter Palace. The blessing is marked with a military gun salute.

This year, however, the ceremonial gun salute has an unexpected bite. The 17th Battery of the First Horse Artillery of the Guard, one of the most aristocratic of corps in the Russian army, firing from Vasilyevsky Island in response to shots from the Peter and Paul Fortress, has among all the blank saluting cartridges at least one weapon loaded with live ammunition. That gun happens to be aimed right at the Imperial pavilion. A charge of grapeshot peppers the Jordan, injuring one police officer and snapping the flagpole of the Marine standard. The shot also breaks four windows in the Window Palace, where the Tsarina and company stand. Nobody is harmed, but the Tsar’s mother is sprinkled in broken glass.

The official story is that this was negligence, an accident caused when the artillery was not properly cleaned after target practice two days earlier. It’s not a satisfying explanation. The guns can only take a single charge at a time, so how come nobody noticed there was already something in there when they attempted to charge the saluting cartridges on the day of the ceremony? Also, ceremonial salutes aren’t generally aimed right at the Emperor.

On the other hand, any artillery expert would know that grapeshot is not an effective tool of assassination when it has to cross a river to reach its intended target. If one of the soldiers of the battery had been attempting the life of the Tsar, surely he would have loaded the gun with something that had a chance of working. One the lead pellets lands not three feet away from the Tsar, but it’s unlikely it would have harmed him beyond a contusion had it made contact.

Nicholas seems sanguine about the event in his diary, but an investigation is launched into the disturbing event. Several officers are court martialed two months later and convicted of negligence, but no evidence of conspiracy or intent to harm is presented at trial.

Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch, grandson of Nicholas I and first cousin once removed to Nicholas II, is standing next to the Tsar when the shot reaches the pavilion. He picks up one of the lead pellets and gives it to Carl Fabergé, the imperial family’s favorite goldsmith, to have a memento made of the near miss. Fabergé mounts the lead shot, a pristine lead ball 1.5 inches in diameter, on a gold seal 2.5 inches high. In the base he sets a white chalcedony sealing stone engraved with the personal crest of the Tsar. The Grand Duke gives it to Nicholas as a present.

When revolution breaks out, a courtier takes the seal with him as he flees the country. It remains privately held for close to a century. Now, for the first time, the shot that missed the Tsar is being offered for sale by jewelers and Fabergé specialists Wartski of London. The suggested retail price is £500,000 ($760,000). It will go on display at the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht from March 15th to 24th.

Archaeologists surveying the construction site of the former City Hall in Rotterdam have unearthed a collection of 477 coins stuffed inside a 16th century shoe. The oldest coin in the hoard dates to 1472 and the most recent to 1592. The shoe, its leather still in quite good condition, is a 16th century style. Experts believe it was buried in 1592 or shortly thereafter, under the floorboards of a house by the owner, either as a standard savings practice (like the proverbial keeping your money in your mattress) or out of fear that they might be lost or stolen during turbulent times.

Most of the coins are Netherlands nickels, half pennies and double nickels. There are also English and Spanish pieces. At that time, foreign currency was just as usable as local coin. It was the quality and weight of the silver that counted. Some of the coins show signs of having been tested for value; they’ve been pierced to see if they’re real silver through and through. The total worth of the hoard in 1592 would have been around 50 guilders. To give you an idea of the buying power, a skilled craftsman earned a little less than one guilder a day, so this collection amounted to about two month’s pay.

The place where they were discovered was the location of a City Hall built after the destruction of the old one during World War II. It hasn’t been a private home in centuries, which makes the survival of the coin-filled shoe even more remarkable.

The late 16th century was a particularly rocky time for Rotterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. In 1568, the Seventeen Provinces (comprising all of today’s Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, plus bits of France and Germany) rebelled against the rule of the Spanish King Philip II. Religious conflict was the immediate catalyst. Philip was keen to enforce anti-heresy edicts in his heavily Protestant territories. Those territories were used to Charles V’s lax attitude; they didn’t appreciate having the Inquisition breathing down their necks. A burst of Iconoclastic fury by Dutch Calvinists in 1566 resulted in a brutal crackdown by the Duke of Alba, the Spanish military commander. A thousand people, among them nobles of the highest rank, were executed for treason.

William of Orange was supposed to be one of them, but he escaped and launched a revolt from Germany. Rotterdam sided with the rebellion in 1572 and became part of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands when the Dutch Low Countries seceded from the Spanish crown in 1581. Philip wasn’t going to let them go without a fight and a fight they got. Philip’s nephew, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, successfully led the Spanish army to reclaim Belgium and the southern Netherlands in 1585 and put constant military pressure on Holland, at this point garrisoned by ineffectual British troops under Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth’s favorite.

The Dutch Republic’s fortunes improved with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and with Philip’s involvement in the French Civil War in 1589. Parma’s troops were spread too thin while the Dutch Army instituted revolutionary reforms which transformed it into an effective fighting force. In the early 1590s, the Dutch took the offensive, besieging Spanish-held cities with much success.

There was no official truce between the Republic and Spain until 1609. Fortunes shifted and anybody living in Holland during this period would have had good reason to hoard coin. Yet, such hoards are rare finds, and this is the first one that has ever been found in a shoe. Next up, Rotterdam’s Archaeological Research Center will clean the coins and study the find in more detail.

Here’s a nifty YouTube of the excavation. It’s all in Dutch and there are no subtitles, so if there’s any information in there I should add to this entry, please do let me know in the comments.

And now, a composition of my own, inspired by the nursery rhyme that immediately leaped to mind when I read this story. Throat clearing. One arm up in declamation position.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

In the summer of 2004, the Krasnodar regional museum near the village of Mezmay in the Central Caucasus was notified of a site that had been looted on a large scale. Staffers reconnoitered the area and found an ancient necropolis disfigured by 100 pits dug by looters. Upon inspection of the spoil heaps (material discarded by looters), experts found artifacts of archaeological significance like iron spear-heads, two complete bronze helmets in pieces, an iron mace in the shape of a Tree of Life and a fragment from a gold torque.

The discoveries spurred systematic excavation of the one-acre necropolis. Archaeologists found six burials, three of them recently looted. The necropolis appears to have been in use from the 3rd century B.C. to the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. One of the three graves which had not been plundered has now been fully excavated and turns out to be the elaborate three-level grave of a high status warrior, probably a chieftain. It dates to the earlier period of the necropolis, the late 3rd century or early 2nd century B.C. The culture cannot be conclusively determined — the site is 2,600 feet above sea level in the Caucasus mountains, hard enough to reach that little archaeological exploration has been done — but it was certainly influenced by Hellenism even as it maintained its own particular traditions and practices.

The grave pit is 12.5 feet wide, 14 feet long and 8.5 feet deep today, although the ground has shifted and subsided over time. The first level has a large dolomite slab along the eastern edge. Remains of animal bones and pottery fragments found on the slab and around it suggest it was used as a table for a sacrificial funeral feast. The second level contains the bones of three horses and a cow. Iron bits, cheek pieces and one large bead were found on the remains of the horses, part of the tack they were buried with.

On the third level archaeologists found a layer of charcoal 2 inches thick. There’s no evidence of fire in the pit itself, so this charcoal must have been deliberately added to the cist. The remains of a wooden coffin, decayed into a few pieces of wood and some compacted decomposed timber, covered the skeleton of an adult male. Buried with him was a prodigious number of grave goods, concentrated at his head, chest and feet. Because it’s such an impressive collection of artifacts, here’s a full list of what was found in this warrior’s grave:

• two forged bronze helmets, one of which was initially on the head of the deceased
• a gold temple ring
• a black-glazed kantharos, or drinking cup
• an oval gold fibula brooch with a rock crystal bead mounted in the center, a tunnel was drilled through the middle of the bead from both sides
• a matched pair of round gold plaques with a hole in the middle
• an iron sword along the northeast wall
• a fragmented iron sword inside the left humerus
• a hollow gold bead near the left wrist
• three gold plaques of a type sewn to clothing found north of the elbow bone
• a short iron sword along the right elbow
• along the blade was a rectangular gold plaque mounted with a beautiful black patterned agate
• a gold bracelet found near the handle of the sword
• a bi-metallic fibula was in the shape of a Hercules’ Knot (a figure eight) found near the right radius
• a bronze cast mirror with a figured handle found in the pelvic area
• a pendant made from a chalcedony bead
• a gold button found on the chest near the spine
• a second gold button similar to the first found near the left humerus
• two gold buttons near the right shoulder
• a pendant made from a gold coin from Sinope depicting Athena on one side and Nike on the other
• a cast glass semi-spherical bowl
• a cast glass skyphos or two-handled wine cup
• an iron axe
• a gold umbo-shaped plaque near the handle of the axe
• a long iron sword placed between the legs of the deceased with the sharp end pointed towards the pelvis
• a round gold plaque with multi-colored inlay
• the vertical rod of an iron tripod decorated with figures of deer found under the blade of the sword
• two bowls found between the warrior’s legs
• a rolled-up piece of iron chainmail near the right shinbone
• underneath the chainmail were the ends of four long and three short spears
• against the opposite wall, the iron ends of another two long spears and three short spears found fused together
• a large forged bronze basin turned upside down with fragments of iron tongs underneath
• a red clay kantharos with three handles
• a black-burnished lamp
• fragments of a bronze jug
• an unidentified object made from a piece of horn
• a bone knife found under the left shin
• the complete skull of an adult wild boar
• a large wheel-turned jug
• one wheel-turned jug made of grey clay
• one wheel-turned kantharos with three handles also made of grey clay
• a penannular bronze bracelet
• an iron arrowhead

That’s more than a dozen gold artifacts, and the gold and agate plaque is unique. This is the first gold sword decoration ever discovered in this part of the world. Suck it looters!

A woman in Somerset, England, discovered she had a rare Italian Renaissance Maiolica plate hanging on the wall of her cottage when she invited appraiser Richard Bromell of Charterhouse Auctioneers in Sherborne, Dorset, to assess some of the objects in her home for their market value. It was hanging in a makeshift wire frame behind a door that was always open. Only about two inches of it were visible when Bromwell caught a glimpse of it.

At first he thought it had to be a 19th century reproduction worth perhaps £2,000 ($3,100), but when he took it to experts at the Ashmolean Museum they confirmed that it was the real thing: a Maiolica charger made in Urbino around 1540. The owner had inherited it from a relative years ago and had no idea of its age or value. It was put up for auction at Charterhouse on February 14th with a pre-sale estimate of £100,000 ($155,000), but due to massive interest from bidders all over Europe and the US, the final hammer price was an astonishing £567,000 ($880,000).

It’s the condition and quality of the painting that made the market salivate. The dish is nearly 500 years old, but the colors are still brilliant and the finish glossy. The only damage was a repaired chip about 1.4 inches wide on the bottom of the charger. It’s barely noticeable and doesn’t overlap with any of the figures, just with the yellow border and a green scribble of grass.

The plate is 16 inches in diameter and painted in a style called istoriato, an elaborate, highly detailed scene from history or legend. The subject on this piece is the Feast of Herod, although it takes a little looking to see it. Herod and his wife sit at a table under the columned portico in the left background. Walking up the steps towards them is Salome and some ladies carrying the head of John the Baptist on a platter. In the center background between the upper tree trunk on the left and the riverbank on the right is the executioner standing next to John’s headless body.

The rest of the scene is populated by wealthy revelers banqueting front and center, musicians to the left of them, ladies dancing to the left of the musicians, skinny dippers in the river on the right and a townscape in the back. It’s a big ol’ Renaissance party that could be set in any hilly town in Europe. One extra special touch is a hint of what may be the painter’s name hidden in the fur stole of the woman sitting on the right side of the central foreground banqueting table.

The design is a version of The Feast of Herod, a woodcut by German printmaker Sebald Beham dating to 1525-1545. The maiolica version leaves out the figure of death of holding a scythe who follows a couple walking just beneath Salome and John’s head. The architecture and overall scene is compressed to fit onto a plate, but other than those changes and the marvelous addition of color, it’s a faithful rendition.

No wonder that it claimed one of the highest prices ever paid for Italian pottery. The lucky buyer was London jewelery dealer S.J. Phillips Ltd. Company director Francis Norton said: “The plate is in wonderful condition and we really fancied it and were determined to get it. We don’t know what we’ll do with it yet but we might put it on display.”

At noon on Monday, January 14th, construction workers renovating Cooney’s Bar in the South Tipperary town of Carrick-on-Suir unearthed 81 gold coins from the 17th century. The building crew was digging a hole in front of the pub’s bar area to prep the area before pouring a new concrete pad when Shane Murray found the coins lying on their sides, back to front like they were in one of those paper tubes you get at the bank to organize your penny jar. Whatever was once holding them together has decayed but the shape remains. The space where they were stashed was a recess — possibly an old door opening or a fireplace — opposite where the pub’s front counter once stood.

Murray showed them to his boss, contractor Shane Comerford, and Comerford threw them on the ground thinking they were fakes or tokens or some other kind of insignificant geegaw. Murray knew they were for reals gold, though, so he scooped them up. He and his crewmates examined them more closely and found 17th century dates and the belaureled profiles of English monarchs Charles II, James II, William and Mary and William III.

Shane Comerford took the coins to the pub’s owner, David Kiersey, and they sought legal counsel. By Irish law, all archaeological objects belong to the state and must be declared to the authorities within 96 hours of discovery. Comerford handed over the coins to the Carrick-on-Suir gardai (Irish police) and the gardai brought them to curators at the South Tipperary Museum. They are now being examined by experts at Dublin’s National Museum.

The coins haven’t been thoroughly examined or assessed for value yet, but according the a National Museum statement they are mostly Guineas with a few half Guineas in the mix. (Guineas were coins minted in England from the 17th to 18th century using gold from West Africa, hence the name.) No hoard of gold coins from the 1600s has been discovered in Ireland since 1947.

Marie McMahon, curator of South Tipperary Museum in Clonmel, who was at Cooney’s Bar last Wednesday while the archaeological examinations were taking place, hailed the hoard of coins as South Tipperary’s most important archaeological find since the discovery of the Derrynaflan chalice in the early 1980s.

She said the coins were in very good condition but there wasn’t any clues as to why they were there. The premises they were found in may have been built on the site of one of Carrick-on-Suir’s old lanes.

Carrick-on-Suir was founded on an island in the River Suir in the 13th century. Its location put in smack in the middle of a lot of trade traffic. It was occupied by Parliamentary forces in 1649 during Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland but was returned to the control of Royalist James Butler, the Duke of Ormond, after the restoration of the monarchy. In 1670, the Butler family founded the wool trade in Carrick-on-Suir, another potential source of gold coinage.

The 81 coins were viewed by dignitaries at the National Museum of Ireland on Wednesday, January 30th, but they are not yet on public display. Marie McMahon hopes the collection will return to its hometown for display at the South Tipperary Museum. If insurance proves to be a difficulty because of security concerns at the small local museum, replicas of the coins will be made for display.

On Sunday May 17th, 2009, three-year-old James Hyatt, his father and grandfather were exploring a field in Hockley, Essex. James went first, using his grandfather’s metal detector. After five minutes of scanning, the machine alerted.

“It went beep, beep, beep. Then we dug into the mud. There was gold there,” James, now four, said.

“We didn’t have a map. Only pirates use treasure maps,” he stated.

James is indeed wise in the way of treasure. After digging down eight inches into the soil, they pulled out an engraved locket which turned out to be reliquary from the early 1500s. As a gold object more than 300 years old, the locket was declared official treasure trove under the terms of the 1996 Treasure Act at a coroner’s inquest.

When it made the news in late 2010, there was much excited speculation that the discovery was so rare it could be worth millions of pounds. It is rare — one of only four similar pieces known — but the market value turned out to be considerably lower. The British Museum acquired it for £70,000 ($110,000) and the sum was split between the Hyatt family and the owner of the land on which the locket was found. In terms of history, however, it’s a million dollar discovery which is why it’s now on display in the British Museum’s Medieval Europe gallery.

The diamond-shaped pendant is engraved on the front with the image of a female saint, probably Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, holding the cross. Dashes along the length and width of the cross are meant to indicate wood grain. The saint stands on a checkerboard pattern tile floor while on either side of her and the cross are floral tendrils.

On the back side is a veritable shower of blood droplets falling out of and over four incisions and a cut heart symbolizing the five wounds of Christ. That back piece is actually a panel that slides out along grooves cut into the sides. Inside would have been kept a small relic. Given the imagery on the pendant, the contents were probably thought to be a piece of the True Cross which according to legend Saint Helena found on her trip to the Holy Land from 326 to 328 A.D. Helena is often depicted holding the cross because of her famous finds.

The back didn’t open when the reliquary was first found. The bottom was damaged, pressed inwards so it was derailed from its guide grooves. Marilyn Hockey, Head of Metals Conservation in the British Museum’s Department of Conservation and Scientific Research was able to correct this by painstakingly prying the back up from the bottom working under a microscope to lift the panel with a miniature probe.

When the back finally slid out, conservators found (drumroll) a few flax fibers locally grown. Sorry, no piece of the True Cross. Examination of the fibers with a scanning electron microscope identified fragments of the outer stems of flax. These are unprocessed and would not be present if the flax fibers were from threads of linen fabric. They’re root hairs, basically, which could well have gotten in there during the pendant’s sojourn underground.

On three sides of the of the pendant are inscribed the names of the Three Wise Men — Iaspar (Caspar), Melcior (Melchiore), Baltasar (Balthazar) — in a lovely Lombardic script. The fourth side has a floral tendril similar to the ones on either side of Helena.

The pendant is 1 inch wide and 1.3 inches long which makes its rich decoration even more unusual and difficult to produce. Experts believe the engravings were likely enameled when the piece was new. That would have given the object a rich combination of colors on top of the precious metal, a popular style in late Medieval jewelry. Only a very wealthy person could have afforded to buy such an expensive symbol of their pious dedication to the blood and wounds of Christ.

On August 1st, 2012, the iconic Ritz Hotel in Paris’ Place Vendôme closed its doors for the first time since Swiss hotelier César Ritz and chef Auguste Escoffier opened them in 1898. They will remain closed for two years while the venerable establishment is renovated from stem to stern. The famously opulent contents were removed in September to be stored in a secret location.

While taking inventory of the Coco Chanel Suite, the designer’s home from 1934 until her death in 1971, the Ritz’s artistic advisor Joseph Friedman was struck by a large painting on the wall depicting the ritual slaying of Trojan princess Polyxena.

“When I saw this painting in the suite, I had to take a step back. It had a very powerful impact,” Friedman told AFP.
“The use of colour and the movement are remarkable. The influence of (Baroque master Nicolas) Poussin is obvious.”

Friedman’s colleague Wanda Tymowsa identified the initials CLBF and the date 1647 in the corner of the canvas. The initials stand for Charles Le Brun Fecit (Charles Le Brun made it). Experts from Christie’s and leading French museums examined the painting and unanimously confirmed the attribution.

The 1647 painting, dubbed by Christie’s The Sacrifice of Polyxena, shows the youngest daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba with a dagger to her throat about to be sacrificed at the foot of Achilles’ tomb. In Euripides’ play Hecuba, the ghost of Achilles tells the Greeks that Polyxena must be sacrificed before the gods will send them the winds needed to carry them home and that Achilles’ son Neoptolemus is to do the deed. Polyxena goes willingly to her death over her mother’s despairing protestations.

Then seizing his golden sword by the hilt [Neoptolemus] drew it from its scabbard, signing the while to the picked young Argive warriors to hold the maid. But she, when she was ware thereof, uttered her voice and said: “O Argives, who have sacked my city! of my free will I die; let none lay hand on me; for bravely will I yield my neck. Leave me free, I do beseech; so slay me, that death may find me free; for to be called a slave amongst the dead fills my royal heart with shame.” Thereat the people shouted their applause, and king Agamemnon bade the young men loose the maid. So they set her free, as soon as they heard this last command from him whose might was over all. And she, hearing her captors’ words took her robe and tore it open from the shoulder to the waist, displaying a breast and bosom fair as a statue’s; then sinking on her knee, one word she spake more piteous than all the rest, “Young prince, if ’tis my breast thou’dst strike, lo! here it is, strike home! or if at my neck thy sword thou’lt aim, behold! that neck is bared.”

Le Brun made sure to capture the breast and bosom as fair as a statue’s, that’s for sure. Hecuba is on the bottom right, struggling to keep hold of her daughter while a Greek warrior (Odysseus?) pulls her away.

It’s an amazing find, a previously unknown early work by a painter who would become the predominant figure of French art of the 17th century. The Ritz archives have no information about the work, no record of purchase or installation. It could have been on the premises when César Ritz purchased the property, but the original 1705 building was extensively rebuilt during its conversion to the Ritz so that guests could have the latest and greatest amenities like electricity and en suite bathrooms in every room.

According to Christie’s Paris director of antique paintings Cécile Bernard, the painting with its elevated mythological subject is a “serious and academically perfect illustration of French classicism” and as such was probably commissioned rather than something Le Brun worked on privately. The discovery gives her hope that there may be other early works of Le Brun out there that we haven’t found yet.

In 1647, Le Brun was 28 years old already a successful artist. No less a figure than Cardinal Richelieu had commissioned several works from him when he was a teenager. Those paintings caught the eye of Nicolas Poussin, then Premier peintre du Roi (First painter to the King), who took the youth under his wing. When Poussin traveled to Rome in 1642, he took Le Brun with him. The young painter stayed in Rome studying the works of Raphael and antiquity with the master for three years, returning to Paris in 1646. He immediately began to receive commissions from courtiers and functionaries like finance minister Nicolas Fouquet and Richelieu’s successor as chief minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

In those years after his return Poussin’s influence was still so strong in his work that people confused Le Brun’s paintings with Poussin’s. His time in Rome is reflected in the meticulous detail on the marble sarcophagus, vase, tripod and the incense casket the little boy is holding. The casket is derived from a drawing Le Brun made of ancient piece he saw in Rome, a drawing which has survived and was published in 2000.

In the 1660s, Le Brun would reach the pinnacle of success. King Louis XIV loved him and commissioned a series of paintings on epic mythological and battle themes. In 1664, Louis appointed him Poussin’s successor as First painter to the King, a post he held until his death in 1690. The Sun King dubbed him “the greatest French artist of all time.”

If his last name sounds familiar in a more recent context, that’s because Charles Le Brun’s grand-nephew Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun would marry Louise-Élisabeth Vigée who would become famous as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, official portrait painter of the last Ancien Régime queen, Marie Antoinette.

The Sacrifice of Polyxena is going on display at Christie’s New York from January 26th to 29th. On April 15th, the painting will be auctioned at Christie’s Paris’ Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings sale. The pre-sale estimate is €300,000 – 500,000 ($400,000 – 668,000). Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of the Ritz, is selling it “because he thinks its quality means it should be in a museum,” which is a bit of an eyeroller since odds are it’s going to be bought by someone with far deeper pockets than museums tend to have.