May 2011 – Page 4 – The History Blog

New world record price for Roman gold coin

May 16, 2011

An 8 aurei gold medallion minted in 308 A.D. during the reign of the Emperor Maxentius sold at auction for $1,407,550 (1.3 million Swiss francs). That’s a new world record public auction price for a Roman gold coin. (We can’t say for sure that it’s the highest price ever paid because of private sales, which of course don’t announce what kind of money changed hands.)

The coin is extremely rare, one of only two known to be in existence, and it’s in extraordinarily great condition. It’s so deeply struck and so pristine it looks like one of those goofy commemoratives they sell on infomercials, only, you know, not goofy. Or commemorative.

That handsome profile with the unbelievably detailed hair on the obverse side of the coin is the Emperor Maxentius. On the reverse is the deified spirit of Roma sitting on a shield and handing Maxentius, who stands before her wearing a toga and holding a scepter, a globe. This medallion would not have been a coin in regular circulation, but rather a special minting of presentation pieces.

The gold medallion offered here is among the largest to survive, weighing eight aurei, and was part of cache no doubt intended for distribution to Maxentius’ military officers. High-profile items like this were a perfect medium for reinforcing his ideals among the men who were in the best position to support or to betray him.

The patriotic reverse represents Maxentius as the one charged by Roma herself to deliver the capital from the degradations threatened by Galerius. The inscription “to Eternal Rome, guardian of our emperor” speaks volumes of how Maxentius presented his case for sustaining the rebellion. On the obverse, Maxentius portrays himself bareheaded at a time when all of his contemporaries are crowned, and on the reverse he wears the robes of a senator. Every aspect of this must have been carefully considered in the hope that the recipient of this medallion would be assured that Maxentius did not rule as a despot, but humbly, and at the behest of Roma herself.

The golden propaganda didn’t work. Maxentius only ruled from 306 to 312 A.D., and since Constantine controlled most of his father’s (the Emperor Constantius) army and the Caesar Severus was firmly ensconced in northern Italy, Maxentius never ruled more than central and southern Italy. In 312 Constantine took that small part forcibly by defeating him in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

This battle has gone down in history because it’s where Constantine first took the field under the banner of Christ, either the Christian symbol of the Chi-Rho (☧) on the Labarum banner, or with crosses inscribed on the soldiers’ shields. As Eusebius tells it, Constantine had a vision of the cross when he looked up at the sun one day. Above the cross was written in Greek, “In this sign, conquer.” The next night Christ came to him in a dream and explained that if he carried a Christian standard, he would defeat his enemies and win the empire.

Gaudí’s only complete building reopens after 7 years

May 15, 2011

Modern(ish), Treasures

The Güell Palace in Barcelona is one of Gaudí’s earliest buildings (built between 1886 and 1890), and it’s the only one he ever fully completed. It has been closed to visitors since 2004 when a thorough renovation program was undertaken to repair cracked stonework that was causing structural problems. After seven years and 9 million euros, the restoration is finally complete. The Güell Palace reopens to the public on May 26th.

The renovation also updated all the emergency facilities and climate control systems, but particularly focused on the lighting. The interior is dark, thanks in part to Gaudí’s use of grey stone from the homeowner’s quarries, so restorers wanted to include additional light sources to illuminate the beauty of the materials used to build and decorate the palace. It’s also hot, even stifling during the peak tourist season in the summer, hence the installation of air conditioning.

It was the Güell family home for 20 years, but when the Spanish Civil War came it became a Police Station, and later when belonging to the Diputación de Barcelona provincial government, was home to the Theatre Institute.

Restoration started in 1982, but it was in 2004 when the doors were closed to the public for the final stages, under the direction of the architect, Antoni González. He’s now commented that the building is the best conserved Gaudi work and describes it as “the most genuine, the most authentic,” and with no additions. It broke all the postulates of 19th century romantic architecture, with its famous triple interior façade.

Commissioned in 1885 by Catalan industrialist and patron of the arts Eusebi Güell, the palace showcases embryonic versions of Gaudí’s characteristic style, like Eastern and Gothic-influenced architectural features, parabolic arches, elaborate ironwork, and sculptural chimneys covered with trencadís (broken ceramic tiles). Unlike most of the Catalan Modernist buildings which were built in the fashionable Eixample area of Barcelona, the Güell Palace was built next to the existing Güell family home — they were connected at one point — in the old neighborhood of the city.

Despite its untrendy (at the time) location, the palace was both a family home and a society party showpiece, with double iron gates in parabolic arch shape for coaches to drive right into the house and drop off the people to go upstairs to the receiving room while the horses were led down a ramp to the stables. The walls and ceilings of the receiving room are decorated with intricate woodwork that obscures small viewing windows the family would use to peek at their waiting guests from the floor above.

The main entertaining room is topped by a soaring high ceiling with a dome that is perforated with graduated circles of holes up top. At night, lanterns were hung above the dome to shine through the holes and give the impression of a starry sky. The different sizes can give it a rotating effect. There is an organ on the second floor, and the acoustics of the domed room are apparently spectacular.

Most of the palace is unfurnished, in part because it puts the focus on Gaudí’s brilliant architecture rather than the way the Güells lived their daily life, but also because the Güells simply took their furniture with them when they moved out during the Spanish Civil War. Once the doors open to tourists, only 160 people will be allowed in at one time (or 185; different articles give different figures) to keep the palace in good condition and to ensure visitors can all get out in case of emergency.

There’s a nice slideshow of the restored interior here. You can see footage of the restored interior in this video (in Spanish):

Newton’s apple tree gets fenced

May 14, 2011

Modern(ish), Treasures

The famous apple tree whose momentous 1666 fruit-dropping inspired Isaac Newton to develop his theory of gravity is a popular stop for visitors to Woolsthorpe Manor, the house Newton was born in in 1642. It’s getting increasingly popular, in fact, with visitors doubling this year to 33,000 from last year’s 15,000.

The tree blew down in a storm in 1820. The roots re-established themselves, to everyone’s relief, and the tree kept right on growing, but the trunk now dips and rises and the new growth has remained very close to the ground. To get a picture underneath it, you have to really squeezle yourself in there. Since everyone wants to get a picture looking pensive under the 400-year-old apple tree, the constant tramping is compacting the ground and could damage the roots.

To protect the root system and keep the tree alive another 400 years, the National Trust has fenced it in. It’s not an obnoxiously tall eyesore, though. It’s a two-foot-tall, elliptical (like the motion of planets!) willow fence custom-made by Richard and Suzanne Kerwood of Windrush Willow in Exeter. They built it on site in full view of the public.

The National Trust isn’t quite sure why the apple tree has generated this sudden explosion of interest. It may be a result of the media attention it received last year when a piece of the tree belonging to the Royal Society went into space on the Atlantis shuttle so this ultimate symbol of gravity could experience the absence of it.

The legend that has arisen around Newton’s eureka moment has an apple falling out of the tree onto Isaac’s head while he mused beneath it. According to the Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, written by biographer and archaeologist William Stukeley to whom Newton relayed the episode as they shared a cuppa under some apple trees, it wasn’t quite so cartoonish, but I think the real story has a beautiful unfolding drama all of its own.

After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to him self: occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: “why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.”

That there is a power like that we here call gravity which extends its self thro’ the universe & thus by degrees, he began to apply this property of gravitation to the motion of the earth, & of the heavenly bodys: to consider thir distances, their magnitudes, thir periodical revolutions: to find out, that this property, conjointly with a progressive motion impressed on them in the beginning, perfectly solv’d thir circular courses; kept the planets from falling upon one another, or dropping all together into one center. & thus he unfolded the Universe. this was the birth of those amazing discoverys, whereby he built philosophy on a solid foundation, to the astonishment of all Europe.

Early NASA space suits not as tough as you’d think

May 13, 2011

Modern(ish), Museums

Just because they kept the astronauts of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo flights safe from the intense radiation, heat and pressure of space travel doesn’t mean the early NASA space suits can survive the rigors of life on Earth. There are 270 of these iconic suits remaining, and curators at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum are struggling to conserve them before they fall apart.

As soon as they returned to terra firma the suits began to degrade. The astronauts’ copious sweat corroded the aluminium parts and two dozen damp internal layers of nylon made a cozy home for fungus. The rubber parts turned brown and brittle like the gasket in a Moka pot you don’t use often enough (personal experience, seriously; I had to break that gasket off in pieces with a screwdriver like I was chiseling stone).

After the end of the Apollo program in the mid-1970s, NASA transferred ownership of the suits to the National Air & Space Museum, but the museum didn’t actually take possession of some of them for as long as two decades after that because NASA had loaned them to museums and exhibits around the world where they were often kept in very poor conditions. People figured if they could survive space, they’d be fine in direct sunlight, and hot, humid environments. They figured wrong, of course. Some of the newly invented polymers and materials used in the design of these suits are in fact particularly susceptible to heat, light and moisture.

One of the newly launched polymers incorporated into space suits was polyvinyl chloride. Used in the tubes that provided life support to the astronauts, PVC’s dioctyl phthalate plasticizer tends to leach to the surface of the tubing in much the same way that polycarbonate baby bottles leach their bisphenol A plasticizer into the contact liquid. 

In the case of the space suits, the sticky, leaching phthalates crystallized on the surface of the PVC tubing and then began degrading into a brownish-orange compound that stained the white space suit exteriors. To avoid the discoloration, space suit conservators physically removed the PVC tubing from all the space suits and quarantined the tubing in storage. 

Another problematic material in all the space suits is the rubber used in the so-called pressure bladders that sequestered the astronauts from the vacuum of space and kept their bodies at a livable air pressure, [Smithsonian conservation scientist Lisa] Young notes. Lasagne-noodle-shaped pieces of rubber combined with nylon were also placed in all the joints of a space suit to give astronauts better flexibility and motion. Unfortunately the rubber in all these components has lost its flexibility and become so brittle that the components can easily crack and deform. 

The problem, Young says, is that the recipe used in the NASA space suits was a mix of natural latex rubber and synthetic neoprene rubber. Both kinds of rubber are sensitive to oxygen degradation, as well as to light, temperature, and mechanical weakening. “There were signs of degradation six months off the shelf,” she says. “But the rubber did work well enough to get the astronauts to the moon and back.” Nowadays space suit conservators monitor the rubber with CT scans. They also try to thwart damage by limiting handling and controlling environmental conditions around the garments. 

The best immediate solution to the many conservation problems turns out to be just keeping the humidity level down. If the environmental moisture is below 35%, all the degradation, from the leaching plasticizers to aluminium and copper corrosion, stops in its tracks. NASM is now insisting that all museums that want to borrow the suits must adhere to strict conservation guidelines, but come June, the entire collection will be moved to new facilities at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. There the suits will be studied and conserved using the latest and greatest technologies so that they can hope to survive well into our Star Trek future.

Builders find fresco from ca. 1300 in Capri church

May 12, 2011

Medieval, Treasures

Builders working on the medieval church of Sant’Anna in Capri found a happy surprise behind a wall: a beautifully colored fresco dating to around 1300. The scene depicts the crucifixion of Christ with Mary and St. John on either side of the cross and a throng of heavenly host above. The image of Jesus himself is missing — not just deteriorated but a large section of the plaster appears to have broken off or been worn away — however, what remains is in very good condition.

The builders found the fresco last July when they were buttressing the wall that covered it. A piece of the wall broke off and when they looked into the hole they saw a splash of color. The Sant’Anna restoration team decided to keep the discovery secret so they could work on conserving the piece without interference.

Under the supervision of Capri heritage expert and restorer Tina Dal Conzo and architect Rosalia d’Apice from the Culture Superintendency, builders first removed the entire wall that had been covering the fresco so that the painting could be properly conserved. The parish priest, Father Carmine Del Gaudio, has given the Superintendency permission to fully restore the painting and put it on public display.

Sant’Anna was built in the 12th century, and in its role as the primary parish church of the island it was where baptisms were done. It was named after Saint Anne, patron saint of pregnant women. It’s no longer consecrated today, so this find will doubtless be a welcome tourism draw.

Sant’Anna, which was until 1595 Capri’s main parish church, occupies a small building in the island’s medieval borgo. […]

The wall bearing the fresco also features late-Gothic decorations and geometrical designs from the same period, [Father Del Gaudio] added.

“The discovery of this work enriches Capri with another precious jewel, as testimony to its heritage dating back thousands of years”.

There’s some talk in the articles about the possibility of this fresco having been painted by the great innovator and master of the form, Giotto, but it’s based on, well, nothing. The colors used were in his palette, certainly, but in other artists’ as well. Other than that, the only reason people give for this glorious attribution is that Giotto did paint some frescoes in nearby Naples towards the end of his life. He lived there for 5 years, between 1328 and 1333, and Robert of Anjou, King of Naples and dedicated patron of the arts, named Giotto his “first court painter” in 1332, but the title and the pension weren’t enough to keep him down south. He soon left for Bologna and then returned to Florence where he died in 1337. (OMG Giotto died leet!)