Lost portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie found

In 2008, art historian Dr. Bendor Grosvenor, director of London art gallery Philip Mould Ltd, caused a stir when he claimed that a portrait in the National Galleries of Scotland purporting to be a pastel of Bonnie Prince Charlie by Maurice Quentin de la Tour was actually a portrait of his younger brother, Henry, Duke of York. The museum which had bought the painting in 1994 for £22,000 ($36,583), pointed to a top expert’s authentication and insisted the portrait was the pretender to the British throne. When said top expert admitted in 2009 that Grosvenor’s argument was supported by the weight of the evidence (Grosvenor’s paper in the British Art Journal is pretty damn persuasive), the National Galleries had to grudgingly admit they had bought a prince in a poke, to coin a phrase.

Grosvenor’s vindication was not cause for unbridled joy. The painting in question was considered the best surviving portrait of Prince Charles in his prime. There are paintings of him as a youth and as an old man, but this one showed him in armor, the dashing prince seeking to reclaim his throne from the Hanoverians. It was printed in histories, biographies, on shortbread tins and was literally next to the prince’s name in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. “Bonnie Prince Charlie is one of my heroes,” said the art historian, “and I always felt bad about debunking what used to be his most famous portrait.” So he set about looking for a real portrait of the prince, one that was known to have existed in the 1740s but was lost after the defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion at the Battle of Culloden on April 16th, 1746.

His first stop was the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle. There he found a letter from by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s valet to renown Scottish painter Allan Ramsay. It said: “Sir, you are desired to come to the Palace of Holyroodhouse as soon as possible in order to take his Royal Highness’ picture. So I expect you’ll wait no further call. I am, your most humble servant, John Stuart, Holyrood House 26th of October 1745”. That was important because it confirmed the existence of a portrait painted in Scotland, not England, by a Scottish painter rather than de La Tour.

Grosvenor then went to the National Portrait Gallery in London to look through its archives. He found a black and white picture of a painting of Charles that bore some of the hallmarks of Ramsay’s style. The sitter painter wasn’t identified, but on the back of the photograph was a note saying that the portrait was at Gosford House, seat of the Earls of Wemyss in East Lothian, Scotland.

“I went to Gosford House where the portrait had been hanging in a dark, downstairs corridor. It had always been known that it was Bonnie Prince Charlie but not known to have been painted by Ramsay in Scotland.” Dr Grosvenor added that Ramsay went on to become King George III’s official artist and the portrait of the Jacobite prince became his “guilty little secret”.

Dr Duncan Thomson, former director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and an expert on Ramsay, said: “This portrait brings the prince back to life in a way I’d never thought imaginable. It’s hard to overstate the importance of finding a portrait of the prince painted in Scotland by a Scottish artist.”

The Ramsay portrait, depicting Prince Charles Stuart wearing the blue sash and star of the English Order of the Garter, was supposed to be Charles first official state portrait after his great victory placed him on the throne his grandfather, James II, had vacated so hastily in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Charles took the painting with him in 1745 when he and his army got as far south as Derbyshire. It was still with him when his forces turned back to Scotland and met their fate at Culloden a few months later.

With the Jacobite hopes dashed, even supporters weren’t keen to be seen displaying fine portraits of the failed pretender. The original painting disappeared from the public record. The image survived thanks to an engraving made of the Ramsay portrait by Robert Strange. It appeared on Jacobite memorabilia, like this scent bottle made in Bourbon-ruled Naples around 1753. Notice the addition of the green sash of the Scottish Order of the Thistle. The prince who had himself painted with specific English references to enlist iconography in supporting his claim was now wistfully draped in his Scottish colors too.

No decision has been made about display of the portrait. Gosford House released a statement saying that they’re considering where it might be exhibited in the near future.

The BBC dedicated an episode of The Culture Show, hosted by Bendor Grosvenor, to the discovery. If you’re in Britain or can make your computer pretend to be in Britain, the show will be available for viewing on the BBC’s website for the next six days.

Ancient mass grave found under Uffizi Gallery

Workers digging underneath the library of Florence’s famed Uffizi Gallery to build a new elevator have unearthed the skeletal remains of more than 60 people dating back to late antiquity. Coins found in the graves range in date from the end of the 4th century A.D. to the beginning of the 5th, but of course we don’t know how old the coins were when they went underground with their owners. Radiocarbon dating, DNA testing, stable isotope analysis and osteological examination will help determine the time of death, where they were from, their diets, physical condition, social class and hopefully cause of death.

Over the five months of excavation, archaeologists have thus far seen no evidence of trauma to the bodies, so they were not killed by violent means. Their bones don’t show the signs of malnutrition either, so they didn’t die in a siege or famine. It seems they were felled by illness. Soil samples taken from around the remains indicate they were interred either simultaneously or within a very short timespan. That the bodies were buried to take up as little space as possible, mainly head to toe, and in uneven groupings with children placed in the small empty spaces is evidence that they were done in a hurry, likely as the result of an outbreak of contagious disease.

This area was just south of the Roman walls and prone to the alluvial floods of the Arno. The earliest remains found on the site were architectural and lapidary remains that appear to be construction debris dumped during the city expansion of the late 1st, early 2nd century A.D. The use of the spot as a dump ended by the 5th century when it began to be used as a necropolis. The choice of location — over a dump next to a river regularly in flood — confirms that the burials were an emergency, probably done in the summer while the river was at its lowest.

The timing could coincide with the Plague of Justinian, an epidemic that devastated the Byzantine Empire and what was left of the Western one during the 6th century A.D. Recent DNA studies of 6th century burials in Germany have found that the Yersinia pestis bacterium caused Justinian’s Plague like it would the Black Death eight centuries later.

The bones have been documented in situ and once fully excavated will be studied by Italian archaeologists in conjunction with experts from the University of Mainz who specialize in paleogenetics. Researchers hope to find pathogen DNA that will identify which deadly contagion claimed the lives of the people buried. Besides bubonic plague, possible candidates include cholera, dysentery and influenza.

Archaeologists hope the mass grave will fill in important blanks in the history of Florence in late antiquity. Up until now, very few human remains from this time have been found in various parts of the city. Finding dozens of skeletons in one place provides researchers with a solid sample size that can testify to the living conditions, health, nutrition, work of the Florentine population during a period that is poorly documented.

The five months of excavation were filmed in 3D to make a documentary that can be exhibited in the new addition that is expected to double the gallery space of the Uffizi. The skeletal remains themselves will be reburied somewhere in Florence once the studies are complete.

A lady’s bag at the court of Mosul in 1300

The ancient city of Mosul on the west bank of the Tigris in what is today Iraq, once home to the palace of King Sennacherib and Library of Ashurbanipal, has had many different rulers seek to profit from its location as a hub in trade routes connecting Persia, India and the Mediterranean. In 1262, it was conquered by the Mongol forces of Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan who expanded the southwestern Mongol empire from Uzbekistan to Syria.

Hulagu was not known for his light hand. Any cities where he encountered resistance were destroyed and their inhabitants slaughtered. When the Mongols conquered Baghdad in 1258, they virtually leveled the city. It’s said that the waters of the Tigris turned black with the ink from the thousands of books from the Grand Library of Baghdad that the Mongols threw into the river. Mosul was spared, however, because governor Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ agreed to support Hulagu’s invasion of Syria. The Mongol Ilkhanid and Jalayrid dynasties ruled Mosul through the 15th century until it was conquered by the Turkic Aq Qoyunlu Confederation.

Even before the arrival of the Mongols, Mosul was famed for its exceptional metalworking tradition. The technique originated in Persia, but Mosul’s location at the cross-roads of trade influenced the craft, introducing new forms of vessels and designs from the Byzantine Empire. Brass containers were inlaid with silver and copper creating intricate geometric decoration and scenes of courtiers hunting, traveling, adorning themselves, drinking, eating and listening to live music. The Blacas Ewer, now in the British Museum, is an exceptional example of Mosul metalwork. Made by Shuja’ ibn Mana al-Mawsili in 1232 (he signed and dated the piece, for which we were eternally grateful), the ewer may have been commissioned by Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ or one of his courtiers. He is known to have commissioned a number of pieces that bear his name.

As noted by Spanish Muslim author Ibn Said al-Maghribi in his 1250 book Geography, Mosul metalwork vessels were so highly prized they were used as diplomatic gifts, a high honor considering they were made out of brass instead of the gold and silver that were the expected standard of gift-giving between rulers.

The Courtauld Gallery in London is the proud owner of another example of Mosul metalwork, a piece made in the first century of Mongol reign around 1300-1330. This form is one of a kind, so exceptional that it is rarely included in studies of the craft. The artifact has been part of the Courtauld’s permanent collection since 1966 when it was bequeathed to the institution by the grandson of collector and museum patron Thomas Gambier Parry. Experts have debated its function for decades. It’s shaped like a clutch purse, but they weren’t making brass ladies’ handbags in 1300s Mosul. Some proposed functions include wallet, saddlebag and document carrier.

The Courtauld is putting on a new exhibition centered around this beautiful piece. Court and Craft: A Masterpiece from Northern Iraq proposed a new function for the Courtauld wallet: a lady’s shoulder bag. Exhibition curator Rachel Ward found an important clue in the decoration of the bag itself.

The key to unlocking its secret is an unusual panel on the top showing a nobleman and women and their attendants. One of those, a smiling page boy, has the bag around his shoulder.

Wider research by Ward has turned up considerable visual evidence of bag-carrying page boys next to noblewomen but never alongside men.

“Other people in the past have called it everything from a work basket to a document wallet and inevitably male academics always assume it was for a man.

“What I’m saying is it’s a lady’s bag. It is the forerunner of a designer bag. The only difference between a modern and expensive designer bag and this one is that you get a bag carrier to go with it.”

The bag will be on display along with 40 other relevant works from collections around the world, including the Blacas Ewer. The exhibition will look at how Mosul society was depicted before and after the Mongol conquest in its art. The museum will also recreate the scene from the top of the bag, building a life-sized display of the courtly festivities from artifacts similar to the ones depicted.

The exhibition opened on Thursday and will run through May 18th.

1800s douche found under New York City Hall

Archaeologists excavating the National Historic Landmark New York City Hall in lower Manhattan have unearthed a rare early 19th century vaginal syringe, a sort of proto-douche. Made from the bone of an unidentified mammal, the device was found in parts and the Chrysalis Archaeology team weren’t sure what its function was. Its three-inch hollow cylinder with rounded tip looks sort of like a pestle; a needle case was another possibility.

The discovery was made in 2010. The eureka moment wouldn’t happen for another three years. It wasn’t until archaeologist Lisa Geiger saw a group of late 19th century glass vaginal syringes at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum (is there anything the Mütter’s collection can’t do?) that she realized what the City Hall tool was and began researching the history of these devices.

The syringe was found in a buried garbage pile that dates to between 1803 and 1815. The garbage begins three feet under street level and goes down another three feet. It’s filled with liquor bottles and food waste and may be the impressive remains of a single epic party. Construction on City Hall began in 1810 and ended in 1812, so right around the time this infamous liquor and douche party may have taken place. Before that, the area was the city commons, known as “The Fields,” site of public pasture land, the old Debtor’s Prison, run as a POW jail by the brutal British Provost Marshall William Cunningham during the Revolutionary War, the Bridewell prison and the poorhouse.

Vaginal syringes were used by women for contraceptive purposes to flush out sperm after intercourse and to treat gynecological ailments from venereal diseases to menstrual cramps to “the Whites,” aka vaginal discharge. Although they became increasingly popular in the 19th century, syringes were in active use in modern Europe as early as the 17th century. The civic museum in Zwolle, the Netherlands, has two rare 17th century wooden ones that are rather more artistically designed (read: penis-shaped, one complete with decorative scrotum) that were also found in historical garbage, namely in the cesspit of a private home.

They make an appearance in 17th century Dutch art as well. Jan Steen was overtly fond of painting domestic scenes of swooning women being treated by questionable doctors for “lovesickness.” He made multiple versions of these tableaux, all of them with details like cupid statues, boys holding arrows or herrings meant to convey phalluses, background paintings of mythological sexytimes and unmade beds suggesting that taking the pulse of the lady wasn’t going to cure what ailed her. Two of them, The Sick Woman (1660-70) and The Doctor’s Visit (ca 1665), both now in the permanent collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, feature figures holding vaginal syringes. A particularly formidable example is wielded by an old lady, a midwife perhaps, in the first painting, while a little boy holds a slightly less endowed version in the second. Both characters are snickering, because, as the paper on the floor of The Doctor’s Visit notes, “No medicine is of use, for it is lovesickness.”

Medicine was certainly deemed of use by doctors, apothecaries and herbalists. English botanist Nicholas Culpeper wrote in his 1653 compendium Complete Herbal about the appropriate herbal remedies for various women’s troubles to be applied directly into the afflicted region: Lady’s Mantle, Amaranth, Plantain and Feverfew, among others.

Monsieur Pierre Pomet, owner of an apothecary shop and chief druggist to King Louis XIV, wrote extensively about what kind of nostrums women should inject into their vaginas via syringe, and he didn’t stick to herbs. From the 1748 translation of A Complete History of Drugs by Pierre Pomet, first published in French in 1684 and translated into English in 1712:

The Aqua Styptica Composita, or the Compound Styptick Water, is made of this [white] Vitriol, and other Ingredients in the following Manner. Take purified white Vitriol, Roch Alum, of each an Ounce; Saccharum Saturni, half an Ounce; Spring Water, two Quarts, mix and dissolve over a gentle Heat, digest close stopt ten Days; decant the clear, filtrate, and keep it for Use. This is an easy Preparation, and of few and simple Ingredients, but of no mean Use. It is a good Injection (Universals being first premised) against the Whites in Women, and the Gonorrhea in Men, though of never so long standing, and possibly may do more in two, three, or four Days Time, being injected, than all other Medicines could do in as many Years.

By the late 19th century, home medical care assumed the easy availability of vaginal syringes. Here is a treatment for leucorrhoea (the so-called “Whites”) from Gunn’s Newest Family Physician by John C. Gunn, published in 1883:

The first is cleanliness, by bathing freely with cold or tepid water, and injecting it up the birthplace three or four times a day with a female syringe, which can be purchased at any drug store. The glass syringe is preferable. […]

I have used an injection of Green Tea with much benefit, which may be substituted for the simple water, either cold or tepid, which ever appears to be most beneficial. Injection of Sugar of Lead forms one of the most cooling and astringent injections in this disease, in the commencement of the discharge, and should be injected two, or three, or four times a day; this remedy will, in mild cases, be attended with much benefit, and in those of plethoric or full habit, this injection, with a dose of Salts occasionally, combined with the Bath, will be found very beneficial. The proportion of the injection is from 5 to 8 grains of Sugar of Lead, medically called Aceti Plumbi, to three or four table-spoonfuls of Rain Water; or an injection made with 5 or 6 grains of White Vitriol, medically called Sulphate of Zinc, to the same quantity of Rain or Soft Water; or an Alum wash in similar proportions to the last, or a decoction of Oak Bark, or the Green Tea, as before mentioned, or a strong tea of Nut Galls; either one of these astringent articles, used as an injection, four or five times a day, will, if used regularly, remove the discharge, which few women, particularly if they are married, or mothers, escape completely, for, of all the diseases peculiar to the sex, there is none so common as the Whites.

Yes, I’m quite sure injecting lead and zinc sulphate into your vagina five times a day will work all kinds of wonders. It often amazes me that anyone ever survived their doctoring.

As common as vaginal syringes were in the middle class households of the Victorian era, there were rumblings against their use, primarily in the nascent males-only profession of gynecology. In 1875, Dr. Thomas More Madden presented a paper to the Dublin Obstetrical Society advocating that gynecologists abandon the DIY vaginal syringe which could cause (admittedly very rare) complications in favor of the vaginal irrigator to be operated only by the doctor. Later that year, Dr. Alexander Padlock addressed the questions raised by the Dublin doctors in a paper read before the East Tennessee Medical Society. He gets into some pretty gruesome detail about his patients’ experiences with vaginal syringes. Lots of “uterine colic” which does not sound at all fun followed by peritonitis which in addition to not being fun was also frequently fatal.

Probably not coincidentally, the syringes fell out of favor in the 20th century, replaced by douches on a minor scale and gynecologists on the larger issues.

Looter caught with Roman gold, silver hoard

An unnamed and unauthorized metal detectorist found a late Roman gold and silver hoard in the forest near Ruelzheim in Germany’s southwestern Rhineland-Palatinate state and dug it up so he could sell it on the black market. The authorities are not releasing specifics on how this scofflaw was discovered hoarding an ancient hoard except to note that “the looter rendered up [the pieces] himself – but only under pressure from investigators.” That means they caught him first and persuaded him to surrender the loot. The police have reason to believe he may have already succeeded in selling some of the pieces overseas. They will continue to investigate the case, looking for missing artifacts. No announcement was made regarding whether the looter would be charged with any crimes.

By German law, all excavations for archaeological material must be authorized in advance by the government heritage authority. Different states have differing laws on the particulars. Some allow finders to keep half the value of a find, if not the find itself. The Rhineland-Palatinate is not one of them. Searching for ancient artifacts with a metal detector is a misdemeanor offence. Removing any artifacts discovered without reporting them rises to the level of fraud, and selling them can result in a charge of receiving stolen property.

Certainly if monetary value plays a part in determining the severity of a property crime in Germany as it does in the US, this looter is going to be in big trouble. The hoard includes three dozen beautifully detailed solid gold brooches shaped like leaves, even more gold square pyramids that archaeologists believe all once ornamented a ceremonial tunic of an important Roman official. There’s also a silver dish with the remains of gilding still visible that was cut into pieces, possibly to be used as hacksilver, a solid silver bowl with gold accents inset with semi-precious stones, a crumpled and folded highly decorated silver plate that may have been a chest cover. A set of silver and gold statuettes and pieces of fittings are the remarkable survivors of what was once a curule seat, a commander’s portable folding chair.

The hoard dates to the early part of the fifth century A.D., a time when Germanic tribes banged away at each other and at the weakening Roman Empire. The Battle of Mainz took place in 406 A.D. not far from where this treasure was buried and it was a watershed event in the collapse of Roman control of Europe. Pressured by Huns in the east, migrating allied tribes including Alans, Suevi and Vandals assembled on the east bank of the Rhine. The Franks sent a raiding party across the river and succeeded in killing the Vandal king Godigisel, but the Alans turned the tide and defeated the Franks. The tribes then crossed the Rhine into Gaul on December 31st, 406, breaching what had been for centuries one of Rome’s strongest boundaries and pillaging Mainz, Rheims, Amiens and Strasbourg among many other Roman cities. It marked the end of Roman political and military control in northern Gaul and ushered in the Migration Period.

It’s no wonder why someone might have sought to bury his most precious treasures under these circumstances. The jewels from ceremonial clothing, the elaborate silver and gold folding chair and the exquisite silver tableware all point to them having been the belongings of an important magistrate or even royalty. These were the highly recognizable attributes of Roman political authority. They were buried near a former Roman road, whether by its original owner of by marauders who wanted to keep it safe from competing marauders, in a relatively shallow hole. It’s a testament to how dangerous the roads were that nobody made it back to reclaim so vast a treasure.

The age and nature of this hoard makes it a unique find in Germany, worth at least a million euro on the market and worth far more than that in historical value. It would be worth inestimably more if it had been excavated with respect for its context. Instead, the looter pulled whatever he could out of the ground, having no care whatsoever for archaeological integrity. According to state archaeologist Axel von Berg, the curule chair, for example, was “brutally torn out of the earth and destroyed.” The site itself was deliberately damaged. Boy would I love to see this thief prosecuted just for doing that.

Meanwhile, some people are getting excited over the prospect that this could be part of the legendary Nibelung hoard, the Rhine gold that features in Norse and German sagas and Richard Wagner’s opera cycle based upon them. The evidence for this is nonexistent, of course. The fifth century dating and the location somewhere in the vague area where the Rhine may have once flowed but doesn’t any longer is all it took for the legend buzz to start.

The treasure will soon go on display in Mainz and Speyer.