December 2009 – Page 5 – The History Blog

Van Dyck self-portrait breaks records

December 10, 2009

Sir Anthony van Dyck’s last self-portrait sold for a record-breaking £8,329,250 ($13,521,704) at a Sotheby’s auction today. Nine bidders drove the price for this rare masterpiece far above the £2-3 million estimate, and far above the previous record of £3.06m for his A Rearing Stallion sold by Christie’s in July of last year.

The winning bid was made by Alfred Bader in partnership with Philip Mould.

Art dealer Philip Mould said buying the portrait was an “opportunity we could not miss”.

Mr Mould added: “This is the most important 17th-Century British portrait to come on the market in the last two decades. It was an opportunity we could not miss.”

Considering that the last time it was on the market was in 1712, I can see his point. It first belonged to artist Sir Peter Lely. In 1712, it was bought by Sir Francis Child, a London banker whose descendant married the 5th Earl of Jersey. The portrait has remained in the Earl of Jersey family ever since.

Van Dyck painted the portrait in London in 1640, just a few months before he died. It’s one of only 3 self-portraits he made in England and it’s a fabulous one. He’s wearing a styling black and white slashed silk doublet and looking over his slashed sleeves at the viewer.

Born in 1599, Van Dyck was something of a child prodigy. His artistic talent was evident at a very early age and he was already studying under a professional artist when he was a mere 10 years old. He started his own studio with fellow child prodigy Jan Brueghel the Younger when he was 15.

He was just 42 when he died.

Ancient spear point found on campus

December 9, 2009

Ancient, Treasures

A University of Washington freshman who was clearing a plot of rocks to plant grapevines found 3-inch tan and red stone spear tip. It was just a foot under ground, so Ellen Van Wyk didn’t think it was all that old, but comparisons with other pieces found in the region suggests the spear point is between 4,000 and 7,000 B.C. years old.

Peter Lape, an associate professor of anthropology and the curator of archaeology at the UW’s Burke Museum, said Van Wyk’s discovery holds significance.

“People find stuff all the time. But that one projectile point is actually pretty unusual. You don’t see a lot of those,” he said. “That style seems very limited to the Lake Union and Lake Washington area. It’s kind of cool; it’s very interesting.”

Seattle has seen a great deal of development in a short period, so it’s rare to find such an ancient artifact within the city limits. It’s been 90 years since an ancient artifacts was found on the UW campus. The last was a fishing net weight and a stone tool found in 1919 near the Fisheries Building, appropriately enough.

After Van Wyk’s find, archaeologists from UW’s Burke Museum dug three more test holes and found 2 more stone fragments. The area has been registered with the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, and Lape and his students have applied to the state for permission to excavate further in the spot.

Construction projects on the site and in other parts of the campus will be put on hold temporarily while archaeological surveys are performed.

The point will likely go on display in the Burke Museum, although a specific date has yet to be set.

Fun fact: this is the second archaeological find by a UW student this year. Megan Webb was scoring a few credits at the UW’s Tel Dor Field School in Israel this summer when she came across the sensational carnelian ring stone engraved with Alexander the Great’s portrait.

Fire reveals medieval tombstones in church walls

December 8, 2009

Medieval, Modern(ish), Renaissance, Treasures

In 1998 raging fire devastated the interior of thousand-year-old Saxon church St. Brandon’s in Brancepeth, England. Temperatures reached 1200° Celsius at the height of the conflagration, melting the lead from the roof and virtually vaporizing the beautifully carved wooden interior.

The massive oak beams from the roof were the only remaining wood, and they too were so charred they may or not be datable via dendrochronology (tree ring dating).

Amidst the tragic loss, something wonderful was found: more than a thousand medieval gravestones stored in the walls of the church hundreds of years ago.

Cross slabs are the size of a coffin lid and are engraved with full-size crosses as well as designs indicating the profession or status of the deceased. A housewife is represented by shears, for instance, a priest by a chalice, a knight by a sword, a scholar by a book. Several of St. Brandon’s cross slabs include symbols not found anywhere else, like an intricate 5-point cross.

It was common practice at the time to reuse old stone from elsewhere in the church to reinforce the walls, so many of these cross slabs were used as internal lintels for the clerestory windows.

They weigh up to half a ton each and they date from between 1100 and 1300 A.D. A local historian thinks they might have been intentionally secreted in the clerestory to keep them safe from Puritan reformers.

Jim Merrington, of the Brancepeth History and Archive Group, explained: “After the roof burned off we discovered a ring of cross slabs high up around the perimeter of the clerestory which was built in 1638 by Rector John Cosin, who later became Bishop of Durham. All were neatly placed facing skywards. It is possible that Cosin had them gathered up from the churchyard and secreted them away on the very top course of the building safe from vandals and reformists. It was obviously quite a task to get them up there for no real structural purpose.”

Archaeologist Peter Ryder said the collection of cross slabs was the biggest in the North, and possibly the second largest in the country after a collection at Bakewell, Derbyshire.

Twenty of the cross slabs are now on display on the church walls. Another 40 will be exhibited at nearby Brancepeth Castle.

Kitchen reno turns archaeological dig

December 7, 2009

Modern(ish), Treasures

A Maryland couple renovating their old house found thousands of artifacts when they gutted the kitchen. The house is from the 18th c. and is on the National Register of Historic Places, so they expected to find an old thing or two, but they figured most of the goodies would have long since been stripped in countless preceding renovations over the centuries.

How wrong they were. As soon as the contractors stripped the kitchen to the studs, they started finding an immense wealth of objects.

In the dirt under what used to be the floor were parts of old shoes, part of a pipe, bones from a wild boar and other animals, oyster shells, bells, bottles and many pieces of pottery.

For now, the artifacts, most still covered in a thin layer of dirt, are being held in bins.

Homeowners Brian Lees and Gay Carter Lees called the Archaeological Society of Maryland and archaeologist Mechelle Kerns-Nocerito came running. She mapped out the area and came back with volunteers aplenty to find and catalog all the artifacts they can.

She’s hoping they’ll find artifacts that date all the way back the earliest settlements on Kent Island in the mid-17th century. Little is known about that period, so these finds might fill in all kinds of blanks.

Now the Lees’ kitchen looks like an archaeological dig instead of a home renovation, and they’re pleased as punch about it. Kitchen renovations are stressful enough — what do you do to cook in the interim — and building delays are usually bad news, but the Lees are true history aficionados and as far as they’re concerned, this is both the joy and responsibility of owning a historical property.

Once the archaeological study is done, the space will be sealed and the kitchen renovation can begin anew.

The Lees' home with centuries worth of additions