February 2012 – Page 5 – The History Blog

Oldest indigenous New World Christian artifact loaned to Cuba

February 9, 2012

A wooden lectern carved by indigenous artists shortly after the arrival of Columbus has returned to Cuba after almost 80 years in the Vatican’s Missionary Ethnological Museum.

Eusebio Leal Spengler, the official historian of the city of Havana, appealed to the director of the Vatican Museums for the loan. Perhaps because Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting Cuba at the end of March, no less an august personage than the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone authorized the loan, noting that it was done “as a great exception.” The unique artifact went on display in the Museum of the City of Havana on February 5th and will remain there the entire year.

According to family tradition, the shell-shaped lectern first belonged to Friar Bartolomé de Las Heras who traveled to the New World on Columbus’ second voyage (1493 – 1496) and then settled in Cuba to convert the savages. It remained in the Las Heras family in Cuba for hundreds of years until it was given to a justice of the Cuban Supreme Court, who gave it to Doña Anna Moulin y Sabon de Morel, who gave it to her son the priest.

In 1935, its owner Father Pierre-Baptiste Morel donated it to the Pope. He included a write-up of the long record of ownership, which is why we know of the piece’s reputed connection to Las Heras. Grain of salt, of course. Family legends can make one hell of a game of telephone. The age of the artifact is not in dispute, however, and both the materials used — fish bones, tortoiseshell, the wood — and the carving style confirm that it was made by indigenous people.

Archaeological evidence indicates that even before 1510, certain indigenous Taino groups had fled from La Española and taken refuge in easternmost Cuba, so it is highly probable that the area of Santiago de Cuba was where Columbus’ lectern was made. It is the oldest example of New World indigenous Christian art and illustrates the process of bilateral exchange and intercultural contact. The lectern, carved by indigenous artists from local materials, is a vivid expression of this process: in Christian iconography, shells are associated with resurrection and eternal life; for indigenous peoples they had great symbolic value, due to being linked to cults around water and fertility.

It certainly looks like something Venus might have been birthed on. It’s interesting to see the entirely unwitting connection between Greek polytheistic iconography and native Caribbean.

Unlike his first time at bat, Columbus’ second voyage had a specific brief of converting the indigenous peoples to Christianity. There are no priests listed on the passenger manifests of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, but the second time he came back with 17 ships and 1200 people, among them a number of priests and Franciscan friars. The first mass in the Americas was held in a temporary church built on the island of Hispaniola on January 6, 1494, Friar Bernal Buil presiding.

Also on that second voyage was Pedro de las Casas, a wealthy merchant whose son, Bartolomé de las Casas, would in 1510 become the first priest ordained in the Americas. A landowner and slave holder who actively participated in slave-taking raids, Bartolomé saw so much brutality in the conquest of Cuba in 1513 that despite his own involvement, the next year while contemplating Ecclesiasticus 34:18-22 for a sermon, he had an epiphany and realized that the Spanish treatment of indigenous peoples was naught but cruelest injustice.

He spent the rest of his life an advocate for indigenous rights. He sent his 1542 book, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, to Prince Philip II of Spain. It was hugely influential. Later that year King Charles V passed the “New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians,” which abolished native slavery in the Americas.

Oldest human paintings made by Neanderthals?

February 8, 2012

Ancient

New radiocarbon dating results indicate that six seals painted on the walls of the Nerja cave in Málaga, southern Spain, are more than 42,000 years old, making them the oldest human art on record. Neanderthals lived in the area at that time — they died out about 30,000 years ago — and they are known to have eaten seals. The Homo sapiens who followed them also painted on the cave walls, but no depictions of seals have been found in any of their art.

The stretch of land from Nerja to Gibraltar is thought to be last area in Europe inhabited by Neanderthals before they were elbowed out by the Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens. The caves were discovered in 1959 by five schoolboys who had observed enormous numbers of bats going in and out of a hole in the ground. They finally decided to explore the hole and once they wriggled through it, they found themselves in an enormous cave now known as the Cataclysm Chamber. The seal paintings are high on the walls of that same chamber.

The paint itself was not tested. Charcoal traces less than four inches away from the seals, which researchers think were used either to make the paintings or as illuminating elements in the composition, were radiocarbon dated to 43,500 and 42,300 years ago. University of Cordoba professor José Luis Sanchidrián, who has been running a conservation project on the site since 2008, wants to carbon date the thin organic film that formed over the paintings shortly after their creation. That’s the only way to absolutely date the art itself. Unfortunately, the project is short of funds so everything is on hold for now.

If the dates are confirmed, then those six seals will not just hold a new record — the current record-holders for oldest art are the 32,000-year-old paintings in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave — but they will revolutionize our understanding of humanity itself. “An academic bombshell,” Sanchidrián calls it, and that’s putting it mildly. The ability to produce art has thus far been considered the exclusive province of Homo sapiens, a distinguishing mark separating us from other human, but not as human as us, species.

Guinea pigs popular for all classes in 16th c. Europe

February 7, 2012

Modern(ish)

Guinea pig bones found in Mons, Belgium Spanish traders introduced guinea pigs to Europe after the conquest of Peru in 1532. The remains of only three guinea pigs have been discovered in Europe’s archaeological record, and the general historical thought is that those early piggies were exotic pets for the upper classes rather than the common household pet they are today. A new study done on the third archaeological guinea pig skeleton, discovered in Mons, Belgium in 2007, proves that in fact pet cavies were very quickly available to middle class Europeans.

The study, published in April’s Journal of Archaeological Science, examined the remains of the Mons guinea pig. They confirmed that the skeleton belonged to a domesticated guinea pig. (Andean peoples domesticated the wild cavy approximately 7000 years ago, so by the time the Spanish got there the tame pigs had clear morphological differences separating them from their wild cousins.)

Researchers were also able to confirm using radiocarbon dating and the archaeological layers of the site that the animal died at end of the 16th/beginning of the 17th century. Isotope analysis of the Mons pig’s bones found that it ate table scraps, unlike the Andean guinea pigs which subsisted primarily on maize, so in all likelihood it wasn’t a fresh export but rather a guinea pig born and raised in Europe. Also unlike his Andean relatives, this guinea pig was definitely a pet, not a food source. The skeleton was discovered complete, buried in skeleton formation. If it had been eaten, there would have been evidence of butchering and dismemberment. This little guy was tenderly buried in the cellar.

(Not that Europeans at the time didn’t also eat them. They do make an appearance in a book written by French agriculturalist Olivier de Serres in 1563 — he apparently found the flavor less than palatable without the use of copious spices — but that’s the only period reference to guinea pigs as comestibles.)

The new study shows that guinea pigs as pets were more widespread through 16th- and 17th-century society than previously thought, Pigière noted.

That’s because ceramics and glassware found at the Mons archaeological site suggest the house’s residents were middle class, meaning “the animal was available to several classes of populations and not only the aristocrat,” she said.

The earliest of the three archaeological guinea pig skeletons was discovered at Hill Hall in Essex, England, an Elizabethan manor house. The remains date to 1575 or so, when Hill Hall was owned by Thomas Smith, secretary to the Earl of Essex and ambassador to France. The Mons pig was found on the outskirts of the town center in the 16th century. It was a residential village with solid, well-appointed houses, a middle class suburb.

So it seems that the exotic guinea pig, doubtless thanks to its exceptional skill at reproducing early and often, took only a few years to go from manor house pet to suburban denizen.

On a related note, you know who liked guinea pigs? Jan Brueghel the Elder. He put them in several paintings in the 1610s, including at least four of the paintings he made with his friend Peter Paul Rubens (The Garden of Eden, Flora and Zephyr, The Return from War: Mars Disarmed by Venus, Madonna and Child), plus in his own landscapes and still lives like The Entry of the Animals Into Noah’s Ark. He used them to represent fruitfulness, and, in my expert opinion, adorableness.

Art historians think he encountered the New World imports in the royal menagerie in Brussels, and certainly the piggies’ front-and-center placement in mythological and Biblical scenes suggests a prestigious association, but who knows? Maybe he saw guinea pigs in Mons’ Levittown instead.

Monumental 15th c. Portuguese tapestries tour US

February 6, 2012

Medieval, Museums

In August 1471, eager to secure control of the strategically important Moroccan cities at the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar, King of Portugal Afonso V attacked the coastal walled city of Asilah. Asilah fell, followed two days later by Tangier which was handed over to the Portuguese by the governor of Asilah. The conquest of Tangier would give Portugal control over maritime traffic between the Mediterranean and Atlantic until 1661, and on a personal note, gave King Afonso the satisfaction of succeeding where his kingly uncles had failed.

It also earned him brownie points with the Church, which had been actively encouraging colonialist crusades since Pope Nicholas V’s 1452 bull Dum Diversas first exhorted the kings of Spain and Portugal to “invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property […] and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.”

To commemorate these glorious victories, four monumental tapestries, each measuring 12 by 36 feet, were commissioned from Flemish weavers in Tournai, Belgium. Begun just a few years after the battles, Landing at Asilah, Siege of Asilah, Assault on Asilah and The Conquest of Tangier were woven from the finest wool and silk and depict the Portuguese conquest as the epitome of chivalric heroism.

Probably produced under the direction of Passchier Grenier, tapestry merchant, Tournai (Belgium), 1470s, Landing at Asilah, 1475-1500, wool and silk, 144-7/8 x 436-1/4 in., Diocese of Sigüenza-Guadalajara and Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Pastrana, Spain. © Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Photograph by Paul M.R. Maeyaert.

Their advanced age, immense size, intense colors and riot of details would make these tapestries rare and marvelous by any standard, but they are also some of the earliest tapestries to depict a contemporary event instead of the allegorical, mythological and religious subjects covered by the vast majority of Gothic tapestry.

Probably produced under the direction of Passchier Grenier, tapestry merchant, Tournai (Belgium), 1470s, Siege of Asilah, 1475-1500, wool and silk, 168-1/2 x 424-7/16 in., Diocese of Sigüenza-Guadalajara and Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Pastrana, Spain. © Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Photograph by Paul M.R. Maeyaert.

The Flemish weavers, amazing geniuses though they obviously were, weren’t so clear on what North African cities and people looked like, so Asilah and Tangier look remarkably like North European cities, complete with flora that are characteristic filler material in Tournai weavings. They were familiar with the Portuguese, however, so Afonso’s forces are depicted in accurate detail, leaving us an incredibly rare encyclopedic visual record of 15th century military regalia.

Probably produced under the direction of Passchier Grenier, tapestry merchant, Tournai (Belgium), 1470s, Assault on Asilah, 1475-1500, wool and silk, 145-1/4 x 432-11/16 in., Diocese of Sigüenza-Guadalajara and Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Pastrana, Spain. © Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Photograph by Paul M.R. Maeyaert.

All of this beauty might have been lost along with so many other Portuguese treasures during the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and the tsunami and fires that devastated the area in its aftermath. What saved the Pastrana tapestries is what gives them their name: by the time of the earthquake, the tapestries were kept in a parish church in Pastrana, Spain. We don’t know exactly how they got there, but one prominent theory is that they were given to Philip II of Spain in the late 16th century during the period of Iberian Union, when the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal were joined under Philip’s sole rule.

Probably produced under the direction of Passchier Grenier, tapestry merchant, Tournai (Belgium), 1470s, The Conquest of Tangier, 1475-1500, wool and silk, 157-1/2 x 426 in., Diocese of Sigüenza-Guadalajara and Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Pastrana, Spain. © Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Photograph by Paul M.R. Maeyaert.

In the remote Church of Our Lady of the Assumption at Pastrana, the tapestries remained safe for centuries. They were only removed briefly during the Spanish Civil War to keep them from danger. Still, after hundreds of years, the tapestries were caked with dirt, snacked on by moths, faded from light damage and from the natural deterioration of the dyes. In 2008, a number of organizations worked together with the Fundación Carlos de Amberes to raise money for a complete conservation of the tapestries.

All four tapestries were sent to Belgium, their land of origin, to be conserved by the experts at the Royal Manufacturers De Wit in Mechlin. By all accounts they did a stupendous job. The conservation of the tapestries received a 2011 Europa Nostra Award.

Thus restored to their former splendor, the tapestries have been traveling since 2010. Brussels, Lisbon, Toledo and Madrid got to see them first; then they went overseas to the United States. The exhibit, The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries, first stopped at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from September 18, 2011 through January 8, 2012. The tapestries are now at the Meadows Museum in Dallas until May 13, 2012. Then they move on to the San Diego Museum of Art from June 10 to September 9, and lastly to the Indianapolis Museum of Art from October 5 to January 6, 2013.

The National Gallery of Art website has a pdf version of the exhibition wall panels which explain the overall action in each tapestry and pull out some salient details.

Civil War graffiti preserved by dirt

February 5, 2012

Modern(ish), Museums

The Graffiti House in Brandy Station, Virginia was built in 1858 next to the train tracks. Though a small town, Brandy Station saw a lot of activity during the Civil War because of its location at the junction of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad — the sole rail line linking Confederate capital Richmond with Union capital Washington, D.C. — and of the roads leading to two major fords of the Rappahannock River. The house is thought to have been used as a hospital by both Confederate and Union troops, many of whom left their autographs and sketches of girls, horses, birds, soldiers and more on the second floor walls to mark their stay.

It’s their graffiti that has given the house its moniker, but in the immediate aftermath of the war, the homeowners weren’t keen to preserve the doodles soldiers had scribbled all over the walls using charcoal from the fireplaces and the occasional pencil. The owners whitewashed all that tasty social history. Thankfully, a thin layer of dirt and soot had accumulated over the graffiti, keeping the whitewash from destroying the charcoal markings.

Over the years, the house passed through many hands, some of which made some unfortunately damaging repairs. The graffiti were forgotten until a 1993 renovation stripped off some wallpaper and old paint to reveal the treasures beneath. Despite the rediscovery of this important history, by 2002 the house was derelict. People took chunks of plaster off the wall just to ensure that some part of the graffiti would be preserved when the house was, as seemed inevitable, demolished. This dire fate was avoided thanks to the Brandy Station Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving the natural and historical patrimony of the town, which purchased the house in August 2002.

They restored the house and hired conservator Chris Mills of Christopher Mills Conservation Services out of New York City to work on the graffiti walls starting last year. He has had to stabilize the walls because the 1858 plaster is coming off the wooden lathing, and while he’s at it, he is painstakingly removing the whitewash using q-tips and razor blades, revealing new graffiti and reviving faded ones.

In some cases, previous owners have used strips of porous tape, covered with some type of spackling, to keep the cracks from widening. Removing these foreign substances makes Mills’ job even tougher and results in some minor but unavoidable damage to the graffiti underneath.

Once the tape is removed, Mills pins the cracked plaster to the laths with nail-like plastic fasteners. When the pins are removed, the holes they made are used to inject an alcohol solution into the plaster.

“Then I inject a synthetic resin that adheres the wood lath to the plaster,” Mills says, adding that he makes the substance himself. As it dries, the alcohol solution helps pull the heavier synthetic resin into the hole, says Mills.

The Brandy Station Foundation has researched all the identifiable signatures. Cavalry units dominate, which dovetails neatly with the history of the town because the Battle of Brandy Station (June 9, 1863) was the largest cavalry battle of the war, in fact the largest cavalry battle in United States history.

General J.E.B. Stuart, Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia Cavalry, led the Confederate cavalry in the Battle of Brandy Station. Many of the signatures are from members of Stuart’s cavalry, and one very large prominent signature is J.E.B. Stuart’s own. We don’t know for sure that he wrote it, but the Brandy Station Foundation has some copies of his confirmed signature hanging on the wall next to the graffito and they sure do look a lot alike.

JEB Stuart signature on the wall, confirmed signatures bottom left

The Foundation was also able to match a signature to a face. Here’s Private Michael Bowman of the 7th Virginia Cavalry, his signature and a period picture of him in uniform:

Signature of Michael Bowman, 7th Virginia Cavalry