Month: June 2015

Lavau noble buried wearing 1.28-pound gold torc

Ancient, Treasures

The excavation of the princely tomb from the early 5th c. B.C. unearthed at Lavau in France’s Champagne region was completed a few days ago. Archaeologists from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have now published more about what they found in the richly appointed grave.

The deceased is laid out in the center of the tomb, head oriented south, with his two-wheeled chariot. The prince wears a torc in solid gold weighing 580 grams (1.28 pounds), significantly heavier that 480-gram 24-carat gold torc in the Lady of Vix grave discovered in 1953 about 40 miles south of Lavau. This rigid neck ring is richly decorated in a double motif of winged monster, extended by pear-shaped stamps. On his wrists are gold bracelets while his bicep is encircled by an lignite armlet. Near the nape of his neck are several finely worked amber beads, the remains of a necklace or hair ornament. There are also very rare surviving organic remains from his clothing. Archaeologists found two iron and coral hooks attached to fragments of leather and a row of rivets — remnants of the collar from his top — bodkins and bronze hooks from his shoes.

The largest and most elaborately decorated find — the bronze cauldron three feet in diameter adorned with four circular handles attached to the head of Greek river-god Achelous and eight lion heads around the rim — is part of a wine set that includes the Attic black figure ceramic oinochoe, perforated spoon and smaller bronze vessels found inside the cauldron. It’s Greco-Latin in manufacture and was probably the centerpiece of an aristocratic Celtic banquet.

The Lavau burial has several elements in common with the Lady of Vix, including the huge and hugely fancy banquetware. It dates to around 500 B.C., on the cusp between the end of the Hallstatt and the beginning of the La Tène period. She too was buried with exceptionally rich grave goods of Greek and Celtic extraction: a bronze volute krater of immense size — 5’4″ high, 290 gallon capacity, 450 lbs total weight including base and lid — which is the largest metal vessel from Classical antiquity known to survive, an oinochoe wine jug (although the Vix one was bronze while Lavau’s is black figure ceramic with a gilded rim and foot) a two-wheeled chariot, a heavy gold torc and jewelry with amber beads.

Another slightly later tomb (mid-4th century B.C.), that of the Princess of Reinheim, unearthed near Saargemünd, Germany, just across the border with Lorraine, also has similar grave goods: a gold torc around her neck and gold bangles on each wrist, amber beads by her side (once held in a long-decayed wooden jewelry box, perhaps), and an expensive beverage set composed of a large bronze flagon (1’8″ high), other bronze basins and the remains of gold fixtures thought to be from drinking horns.

The Lady of Vix’s remains were almost completely decomposed. She was deemed a lady because even with all the priceless treasures interred with her none of them are weapons. The same conclusion was drawn from the lack of a weapon in the grave goods of the Princess of Reinheim whose skeletal remains were annihilated by the acidic soil, but modern archaeology is reluctant to draw firm conclusions on sex based on the nature of the grave goods. A knife still in its sheath was found in the Lavau grave, but Celtic women were known to have fought, so we can’t assume the prince is not a princess. The bones that have survived are in very poor condition so it’s not possible to determine the deceased’s sex just by observation. Unlike with the Lady of Vix who was unearthed in 1953, modern archaeology may be able to make the determination by other means (DNA testing, stable isotope analysis).

Getty acquires rediscovered papal bust by Bernini

Museums, Renaissance

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired the recently rediscovered Bust of Pope Paul V carved in 1621 by Baroque master Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The bust was known to art historians from an 1893 photograph, a bronze copy now in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen that was cast by Sebastiano Sebastiani right after the marble original was sculpted, and from Vatican archives detailing the commission of the marble and bronze versions, but it had been secreted in unknown private collections since the 19th century. It recently resurfaced in a private collection and the Getty was contacted by Sotheby’s to arrange a private sale. Obviously the museum was more than interested and since it has an enormous endowment, money was no object. We don’t know what they paid for it, but it was certainly multiple millions of dollars.

The work was one of pair of busts commissioned by Paul V’s nephew and an important early patron of Bernini’s, Cardinal Scipione Borghese.Paul V, a patron in his own right who employed Pietro Bernini, Gian Lorenzo’s father, is said to have seen some drawings done by Gian Lorenzo when he was a boy and declared “This boy will be the Michelangelo of his age.” The other bust in the pair was of Paul V’s successor Pope Gregory XV who was actually pope when Bernini carved both busts. It is now in the private collection of Joseph M. and Toby Tanenbaum. You can see how similar they are in the dignified demeanor of the popes and in the decorative carving of their garments.

Bernini’s portrait of Paul V depicts the pope almost bareheaded, his hair cut in the “tonsure of St. Peter,” which signified the renunciation of worldly fashion, and dressed in traditional pontifical vestments. The thick cope covering his shoulders is richly decorated with embroideries of the Apostles Peter and Paul – the saintly patrons of Rome – with borders of plant motifs. The cope is fastened in the middle of the chest by a complex brooch called a morse, composed of a gemstone set in an elaborate metallic frame. Underneath the cope is a surplice in thin fabric with small vertical pleats on the chest, an embroidered upper edge and a very fine, delicately carved, lace border at the neck.

“Bust of Pope Paul V exemplifies Bernini’s precocious mastery in capturing his sitters’ characters and in conveying a powerful liveliness of expression,” said Anne-Lise Desmas, head of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Getty Museum. “Beyond its extraordinary naturalism, the sculpture manages to combine a gravitas appropriate to the Pope’s status with an air of kindness and approachability. In addition, the rich embroidery decoration of the cope is technically a tour de force in low-relief carving. Remarkably, the portrait survived through all these centuries in perfect condition.”

The bust was in the Borghese family’s enormous art collection until 1893 when it was sold to a non-Italian private collector at an auction of antiquities and artworks at the Villa Borghese in Rome. At the time of the sale the bust was mistakenly attributed to Alessandro Algardi, a sculptor who would become a rival of Bernini’s 15 years or so later, but who didn’t get to Rome until 1625 and even then only worked restoring ancient sculptures for Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (Gregory XV’s beloved nephew) for a year or so. The Bust of Paul V was re-attributed to Bernini by Rome’s Inspector of Monuments Antonio Muñoz in a 1916 art journal article. I doubt the Borghese family would have ever sold it had they known it was a Bernini. Another bust of Paul V by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is still in Rome’s Galleria Borghese museum today.

Bernini was hugely famous and successful in his lifetime. He had a large studio and much of his work after he hit the big time was physically made by his assistants. When he was very young he collaborated on sculptures with his father. A work like this bust, therefore, that predates the studio but postdates his cooperative works with Pietro, is extremely significant because it was carved by his hand only.

Sculptures by Bernini are very rare in US museums. The Getty has another one — Boy with a Dragon — but it wasn’t made by Bernini alone; his father Pietro collaborated with his then-teenaged son in its execution. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has another father-son Bernini collaboration, the sculptural group Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children, made when Gian Lorenzo was just 18 years old. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has a pair of terracotta models of angels and the terracotta model for the Fountain of the Moor in Piazza Navona both by Gian Lorenzo. National Gallery of Art in Washington has one of only two other busts in the country, Monsignor Francesco Barberini. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) acquired the other, Portrait of a Gentleman, just this March.

With the Getty’s acquisition of Paul V, Los Angeles is now the proud host of two-thirds of the Bernini busts in the US. The bust went on display yesterday for the first time since Gian Lorenzo Bernini put chisel to marble almost 400 years ago.

Wellington’s cloak from Waterloo for sale

Modern(ish)

The cloak worn by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo is being offered for sale for the first time in 200 years. Wellington was a practical fellow when it came to his wardrobe, as evinced by his invention of that most sensible of boots. He eschewed the showy military outfits that were popular in his day (shout out to Joachim Murat), and this simple navy blue worsted cloak with purple velvet collar and plain gilt buttons is a fine example of his utilitarian style.

It also has a splendidly juicy ownership history. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was a highly accomplished swordsman in more ways than one. He cut a swath through the fine ladies, married or not, and courtesans of Regency England, and his conquests in the bedroom figured prominently in society gossip, courtesan memoirs (the famous phrase “Publish and be damned” was his response to the publisher of Harriette Wilson’s memoirs when they offered to keep the Duke’s name out of her scandalous book for a fee), satirical cartoons and divorce court documents. Count Molé, who met Wellington after Waterloo, described him as having “a taste for women, continual amours of extreme ardour and equally extreme frivolity, all the habits of a man of the world and a thirst for the pettiest amusements.”

After Napoleon’s final defeat, abdication and exile, Wellington went to France where he enjoyed an active social life in the packed salons, ballrooms and theaters of Bourbon Restoration Paris. As the greatest military hero on the winning side, Wellington had his pick of the noble groupies that flocked to him. One of them was Lady Caroline Lamb who was then two years out of her scandalous affair with Lord Byron and its even more scandalous aftermath in which she stalked him with violently unhinged dedication.

She and her poor, benighted husband William Lamb, went to Paris in August of 1815 for some R&R after she had spent a month helping nurse her brother Frederic back to health. Colonel Frederic Ponsonby, commander of the 12th Light Dragoons, was a great favorite of Wellington’s who had been so seriously wounded at Waterloo that it’s hard to believe he survived. Leading a cavalry charge, he was shot in both arms. Then he took a sabre blow to the head which knocked him unconscious and off his horse. When he came to, he raised his head only to be spotted by a French lancer who stabbed him with said lance in the back, puncturing a lung. Unable to move, he was roughly searched for plunder at least three times by soldiers on both sides and was unintentionally trampled by Prussian cavalry.

Finally, after languishing 18 hours on the field, the morning of June 19th Ponsonby was rescued and carted to nearby farmhouse where his wounds were tended to. Sort of. Here’s his description of his medical treatment as told to Wellington’s great friend (and lover, of course) Lady Frances Shelley: “I had received seven wounds; a surgeon slept in my room, and I was saved by continual bleeding — 120 ounces in two days, besides a great loss of blood on the field.” So yeah, first he survived getting shot, stabbed and trampled at Waterloo, and then he survived his surgeon tapping his veins like a keg.

Wellington visited Ponsonby on June 20th, missing Lady Caroline and William who arrived in Brussels in early July and stayed with Frederick until he was well enough to go back home. When they moved on Paris, Caroline was ready to party. English novelist Frances Burney, aka Madame d’Arblay, described Caroline in her diary after seeing her in Paris:

“I just missed meeting the famous Lady Caroline Lamb who had been there at [Madame de la Tour du Pin’s] dinner, and whom I saw, however, crossing the Place Royale, from Mme de la Tour du Pin’s to the Grand Hotel ; dressed or rather not dressed, so as to excite universal attention and authorise every boldness of staring from the general to the lowest solider among the military groups then constantly parading the Place — for she had one shoulder, half her back and all her throat and neck displayed as if the call of some statuary for modelling a heathen goddess.”

Lady Caroline’s first cousin, Lady Harriet Granville, daughter of the 5th Duke of Devonshire and the famously unconventional Duchess Georgiana, was also in Paris at that time. She wrote in her diary:

“Nothing is more agissant [agitating] but Lady Caroline William Lamb in a purple riding habit, tormenting everybody, but I am convinced she is ready primed for an attack upon the Duke of Wellington and I have no doubt but that she will to a certain extent succeed, as no dose of flattery is too strong for him to swallow or her to administer. Poor William Lamb hides in a small room while she assembles lovers and tradespeople in another. He looks worn to the bone. The D of W talked a great deal about Caroline William. I see she amuses him to the greatest degree especially her accidents which is the charitable term he gives to all her sorties.”

There are no extant letters that conclusively show the Duke of Wellington and Lady Caroline Lamb had an affair, but they were into each other for it to be noticed in public. American writer Washington Irving saw Wellington at a party in Paris paying the men little men as he was “quite engaged by Lady Caroline Lamb.” The news of their mutual interest soon grapevined its way back to London where Harriette Wilson, in a letter to her lover Richard William Meyler, wrote this finely crafted double-burn: “My old beau Wellington … has made I understand a desperate conquest of Lady Caroline Lamb, but then her ladyship was never very particular.”

It’s during this period that the Duke apparently gave Lady Caroline a cloak he had worn at Waterloo as a memento. The only source we have for this gift is the cloak’s first documented owner: Grosvenor Charles Bedford. He got it in 1823 from anatomist Anthony Carlisle who told him he had been given the cloak by Lady Caroline who received it from the Duke.

From the Sotheby’s lot notes:

The appearance and characteristics of the cloak itself, together with its provenance, leave little doubt that this was a cloak worn by Wellington during the Waterloo campaign, but it remains impossible to be sure whether he wore it on 18 June 1815. It is almost certain that that he took more than one cloak on campaign; at least one other Waterloo campaign cloak candidate once existed in the hands of Wellington’s friend John Wilson Croker, although that cloak has been lost since 1824. Croker tells the story of how Wellington had given him the cloak worn at Waterloo, but that he lent it to Sir Thomas Lawrence when he was commissioned to paint Wellington for Sir Robert Peel …, and when he asked for it back Lawrence admitted that he had given it – with the Duke’s permission – to a lady, whom Croker declines to identify (The Croker Papers: Volume 3 (1888) p.279). In 1853 Croker wrote to Bedford’s niece, then owner of the present cloak, confirming that her cloak was not the one he had once owned and that Caroline Lamb was not the lady to whom his cloak had been given. This is unsurprising since Lamb’s cloak had already passed to Bedford when Croker lent his cloak to Lawrence.

The cloak, still splattered with mud from the battlefield, will be auctioned on July 14th. The presale estimate is £20,000 – 30,000 ($30,840 – 46,260).

Bulgarian Customs finds coin hoard smuggled in routers

Ancient, Looting, Modern(ish)

The Bulgarian Customs Agency discovered a hoard of 82 coins from the reign of King Philip II of Macedon smuggled inside three routers at Sofia International Airport. The coins were taped to the routers’ circuit boards. The routers were put in a box destined for the United States via courier, but officials from the Customs Intelligence and Investigation department at the Sofia Airport Customs House were able to seize the parcel just before it was smuggled out of the country.

The 82 silver tetradrachms date to the 4th century B.C. and experts believe they are all part of a single find. Minted between 359 and 336 B.C., some of the coins bear the idealized profile of King Philip on the obverse. Each of the 82 tetradrachms is considered of “extraordinary cultural, financial and scientific value” according to Bulgaria’s Law on Cultural Heritage.

It’s not clear whether the coins were unearthed in Bulgaria or whether they were just passing through Sofia. Sections of modern Bulgaria were part of the Macedonian Empire under Philip, and in any case there was extensive trade throughout the region so the coins could easily have been illegally excavated in Bulgaria. The country is plagued by looters who feed artifacts into organized crime networks that then sell the loot on the black market, finding infinitely creative ways to smuggle it out of the country, like inside routers, for example. Authorities estimate antiquities smuggling brings in 260 million euros ($293,000,000) a year, the second most lucrative endeavor for the Bulgarian mob after the traffic in drugs.

Little more information is forthcoming since Customs is continuing to investigate the case of the 82 silver tetradrachms. It seems to me they must have known to check that particular box, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were tipped off or if this was part of a larger investigation.


Magna Carta copied by church, not royal, scribes

Medieval, Modern(ish)

The peace treaty that has gone down in history as Magna Carta was negotiated over 10 days at Runnymede in June of 1215. The rebel barons and King John came to an agreement on terms on June 15th, 1215, which is why yesterday we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the Great Charter even though the formal copies were issued on June 19th. Only four of those original 1215 copies, called exemplifications, are known to have survived. Two of them are in the collection of the British Library; one belongs to Salisbury Cathedral and the last to Lincoln Cathedral.

As part of a project of extensive study of Magna Carta in anticipation of the 800th anniversary, scholars from the University of East Anglia and King’s College London compared the handwriting of the original copies. They have identified the scribe who wrote the Lincoln charter and probably the one who wrote the Salisbury charter as well. They were not scribes of the royal chancery, as long thought.

The Lincoln charter was written by a scribe who produced several other documents for the Bishop of Lincoln. The Salisbury charter was probably produced by a scribe working for the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury.

It makes sense that Magna Carta would be copied by cathedral scribes rather than the royal ones because the bishops, led by Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton, were in favor of the charter which guaranteed their rights as well as the barons’, while John had to be forced into it and had no real intention of living up to the agreement. If it had been up to John, Magna Carta would never have gotten nation-wide distribution.

A recent study of one of the British Library’s two copies, Cotton Charter XIII 31A, which was damaged in a 1731 fire and then damaged even harder by a botched restoration attempt a century later, has found that it too had an ecclesiastical origin. Multispectral imaging has made it possible to view text invisible to the naked eye and comparison of the charter text with transcriptions in a cartulary (a manuscript of transcribed documents relating to the foundation and rights of the church) from Canterbury Cathedral found that this exemplification was the one sent to the cathedral for its records in 1215. Since Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton played a pivotal role in the Runnymede negotiations, the discovery of a Canterbury Magna Carta that may well have passed through his hands is of major historical import.

King’s College London professor of medieval history David Carpenter:

“We now know, therefore, that three of the four surviving originals of the charter went to cathedrals: Lincoln, Salisbury and Canterbury. Probably cathedrals were the destination for the great majority of the other original charters issued in 1215.

“This overturns the old view that the charters were sent to the sheriffs in charge of the counties. That would have been fatal since the sheriffs were the very people under attack in the charter. They would have quickly consigned Magna Carta to their castle furnaces.

“The church, therefore, was central to the production, preservation and proclamation of Magna Carta. The cathedrals were like a beacon from which the light of the charter shone round the country, thus beginning the process by which it became central to national life.”

We know later reissues of Magna Carta were sent to cities and counties as well as churches, even more extensively than first realized, as the recent discovery of the Kent copy indicates, but by then the reissuing of Magna Carta was almost a given. Every king for 75 years did it whenever he got into disputes over taxes and forests and whatnot. It’s those original 1215 iterations that appear to have been primarily supported and preserved by church authorities. Church officials wrote them, distributed them, kept them safe in their archives.

Because nothing is ever simple, the Church in the person of the Pope was no fan of Magna Carta. After clashes over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury led to his excommunication, King John had submitted to Pope Innocent III in 1213 and become his vassal. This secured him the pope’s consistent political support against enemies foreign (France) and domestic (the barons, the bishops) and, just 10 weeks after Runnymede, garnered him a Papal Bull annulling Magna Carta as “illegal, unjust, harmful to royal rights and shameful to the English people.” The result was the First Baron’s War.

There are piles of events and resources out there right now because of the anniversary. The British Library has put together an excellent website dedicated to Magna Carta. There are articles, a zoomable image and translation of one of the original 1215 exemplifications and more than 150 other artifacts related to Magna Carta and King John in the library’s collection. If you can get to the library in person, they have a rich exhibition on the history of the charter and its evolution in meaning from a treaty between warring factions whose terms were regularly ignored by all parties to the foundations of democratic principles like trial by jury and due process.

One of the more unusual objects on display is entirely modern, an artwork by Cornelia Parker called Magna Carta (An Embroidery). It is a 13 meter-long embroidery of the Magna Carta Wikipedia page as it was last year on June 15th. More than 200 people were involved in this project, from lawyers to barons to 40 prisoners who embroidered the word “freedom.” Every color, image, table, bullet point, reference and footnote is duplicated in embroidery.

For a cool look at the history of Magna Carta scholarship, check out the English Historical Review‘s special online Magna Carta issue which is available for free on its website. It’s a selection of articles about the charter published in the EHR over its 130 history, which makes it as interesting from a historiographical perspective as it is a study of Magna Carta.

This video is a nice overview of the history and significance of Magna Carta featuring experts from King’s College London.

[youtube=https://youtu.be/4g5ZVF3EVUE&w=430]