Restoration of Michelangelo’s Bandini Pietà complete

Museums, Renaissance

The restoration of Michelangelo’s Bandini Pietà at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo has been completed, revealing the original marble and answering questions that have long been asked about this iconic masterpiece. The restoration began November 23, 2019, and was supposed to be completed by summer of 2020, but a certain virus had other ideas. Conservators were able to get back to work in September of last year, and now the rejuvenated Pietà is back.

Michelangelo sculpted three pietàs over his lifetime. The first, now in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, features a preternaturally young Mary seated with Jesus’ body draped across her lap. The second, the Rondanini Pietà now at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, features a more mature Mary standing up, holding the body of her son. Only the Bandini Pietà has figures other than Mary and Christ, and indeed, the dominant figure in the composition is Nicodemus who looms large behind Mary the Mother, Mary Magdalene and the limp, twisted form of Jesus.

This was Michelangelo’s most audacious sculpture. He was inspired by the Laocoon Group, a large sculpture depicting the death of the Trojan priest and his sons that had been praised by Pliny in antiquity. The Laocoon was rediscovered in 1506 under a vineyard next to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Michelangelo, dispatched by Pope Julius II, was present to witness its excavation and its exceptional artistry had a strong influence on him. He too wanted to create a group of figures out of a single massive block of marble, only his masterpiece would beat the Laocoon in size and number of figures. It was meant to adorn a chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome where Michelangelo planned to be buried. That the face of Nicodemus is a self-portrait of Michelangelo was a sculptural representation of his devotion to Christ.

He worked on this group for almost a decade, starting in 1547 when he was in his mid-70s and concluding in 1555. The story told by Michelangelo’s friends and fellow artists Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi was that Michelangelo, enraged by the intractable flaws he kept encountering throughout the three-ton block of marble, took a hammer to the work until his servant Antonio da Casteldurante begged him to stop. Michelangelo agreed to let Antonio keep the sculpture and its broken pieces and to let Florentine sculptor Tiberio Calcagni, a friend and collaborator of his, repair it. Calcagni bought it from Casteldurante on behalf of banker Francesco Bandini.

Bandini kept it the garden of his villa in Rome and it remained in the family after his death. It passed through a couple of hands before being sold to Cosimo III de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1671. It took three years for him to figure out how to transport the huge piece to Florence. The Pietà has been in Florence ever since in several different locations.

Aside from occasional cleanings, no restoration work has been recorded after Calcagni reattached body parts and controversially altered Mary Magdalene’s face. There is one documented intervention. In 1882, a plaster cast was made of the sculpture. The residue from the plaster left the marble surface dry with large areas of bright white marring the surface. Restorers tried to fix that by applying layers of wax on top of the residue, and over time the wax darkened and mixed with dust to change the surface colors to a deep, uneven amber.

To address these issues in the least invasive manner possible, a multi-disciplinary team of conservators studied and documented the condition of the Pietà. They then cleaned and restored it in a custom-built “open laboratory” so visitors could see them at work behind a plexiglass wall. In the process, the team discovered that much of the origin story relayed for 500 years is likely apocryphal.

Diagnostic inspection led to the discovery that the marble came from quarries in Seravezza, in the province of Lucca, rather than from Carrara as had been believed. This discovery is significant because the quarries in Seravezza were owned by the Medici, and Giovanni de’ Medici, soon to be Pope Leo X, had enjoined Michelangelo to use marble from the quarry for the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. How this huge block of marble got to Rome where Michelangelo carved this Pietà from it between 1547 and 1555 is still a mystery.

Michelangelo was unhappy with the quality of the marble from these quarries because it revealed sudden veining and minute cracks difficult to detect from the surface. Thanks to the restoration, it has proven possible to confirm that the block used for the Pietà was indeed flawed, as Vasari tells us.  In his Lives of the Artists, Vasari describes it as hard and full of impurities and that sparks flew from it with every blow of the chisel. Numerous small inclusions of pyrite were discovered, and they most certainly would have caused sparks when hit with a chisel. More importantly, the presence of numerous minute cracks, particularly on the back and front of the base, suggests that Michelangelo may well have encountered them when carving Christ and the Virgin’s left arms and was forced to stop working on it. This is a more likely hypothesis than that of a now ageing Michelangelo, unhappy with the result, trying to destroy the sculpture in a moment of distress and frustration by taking a hammer to it, because the restorers found no sign of any hammer blows, unless, of course, they were erased later by someone else.

Based on these discoveries, it was decided to proceed by first conducting cleaning trials in order to identify the most suitable methodology. Once established, the restoration process proper began where the deposits were thickest, using a non-invasive, gradual, and controlled method of cotton pads soaked in deionised and lightly heated water. For the wax build-up applied to the group’s surface, small, closely spaced splashes and drippings caused by candles on Florence Cathedral’s high altar, behind which the group had stood for 220 years, cleaning with water was supplemented with the use of a scalpel in the toughest areas.

The open laboratory will remain in place for six months so that visitors to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, accompanied by guides, can see the Pietà up close. The tours of the laboratory run through March 30th, 2022.

3,500-year-old stone mosaic floor found in Turkey

Ancient

A mosaic composed of natural stones has been unearthed at the ancient Bronze Age Hittite site of Usakli Hoyuk near Yozgat in central Turkey. It was first discovered in 2018 in the remains of temple to Teshub, the Hittite god of thunder and storms. The temple dates to around 1500 B.C., which makes this mosaic the oldest patterned mosaic known.

The site has been known since the early 20th century, but it was first officially explored by archaeologists in 2008. The geophysical survey indicated the presence of a large building of Hittite origin. Excavations between 2013 and 2015 revealed a monumental temple with walls of roughly-hewn megalithic stone blocks built without mortar. Small but complete pieces of pottery — an unguent vase, a conical cup –typical of ones found at Late Bronze Age Hittite temples identified its purpose.

The mosaic pavement was located in a courtyard of the temple. It is ten feet wide and 23 feet long and today consists of 3,147 stones in shades of white, red and black. They are irregular in size were laid flat onto a beaten earth floor. The stones were placed in contrasting color arrangements creating geometric patterns.

Other Hittite-era paved floors and courtyards have been found at sites in Anatolia, but they were paved with flagstones or compacted pebbles, not deliberately arranged to form geometric designs of different colors. The Usakli Hoyuk floor is unique both in the size of the medium size of the stones (neither large flagstone nor small pebble) and in their careful selection and installation based on shape and color.

Before this discovery, the oldest mosaic floor was considered to be a Mycenean-era pavement in the palace of Tiryns in Greece, also from the mid-2nd millennium B.C., but its pebbles are not multi-colored and there are no unmistakable patterns. It’s in the Iron Age that pebbles of different colors, the forerunners of tesserae, were used to create geometric and abstract designs. The pavement in the temple at Usakli Hoyuk is something of a missing link between the flagstones and the colorful pebbles.

The eagle’s head made of Lincoln’s hair

Ex Cathedra

In the collection of a small historical society in Syracuse, New York, is a unique and seldom-seen object: an 1864 eagle on a globe made entirely of hair contributed by leading politicians and their wives, most notably President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

It was created for the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair, an exposition to benefit the United States Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency supporting the sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army. Local women’s charitable groups affiliated with the USSC had successfully thrown fairs before in Chicago and Boston, and the Beneficent Ladies of New York followed suit in April of 1864. (These unapproved initiatives caused some consternation among the all-male Commissioners at USSC headquarters in Washington, but they could not deny the hundreds of thousands of dollars the fairs brought in.)

When the Metropolitan Fair was still early in the planning stages — the venue hadn’t even been determined yet — the committee appealed to individuals and businesses in New York and around the world for contributions of money and exhibits to entice visitors and raise funds for the cause. The expositions had pavilions showcasing all kinds of militaria, memorabilia, crafts and curiosities with heavy emphasis on Union patriotism linking the dramatis personae of the Civil War (Grant’s sword) and Revolutionary War heroes (Washington’s camp chest).

According to press accounts of the Fair, Mrs. Caroline Wright, wife of the former Governor of Indiana and Senator Joseph A. Wright, commissioned Brooklyn jewelers Spies & Champney to create a national symbol out of the hair of nationally-important politicians. The letter Spies & Champney sent to President Lincoln in January 1864 soliciting “as large a lock as you can well spare” is in the Library of Congress.

It’s pretty remarkable that from January they were able to receive locks of hair from dozens of top politicians and their wives in time to weave such a large, intricate, detailed design which was completed and framed in time for exhibition at the Fair on April 4th. It hung on one of the piers of the Temple of Flora, the pavilion showcasing dramatic floral arrangements.

“The Hairy Eagle” was singled out for praise in the New York Herald‘s account of the fair printed on opening day, April 4th, 1864, issue.

The curiosities in the Fair may be numbered by the thousand; but of all the strange and curious things, the hairy eagle is, without doubt, entitled to take the highest flight. It has winged its way from Indiana, having been donated to the Fair by Mrs. Governor Wright, of that State. It measures about twelve inches in length, and the head, eyes and back bone of this curious bird are formed of hair from the head of President Lincoln. The bill is formed of Secretary Chase’s hair, being symbolical of greenbacks and other bills. The wing feathers are made of hair from the heads of thirty-four prominent Senators, arranged in the order of their age. The tail and parts of the body are also of hair. Crowning this airy nothing is a wreath formed of the hair of the wives of representative men. It will be hung at the front of the pillar on the right of the Floral Temple, and underneath will be a small book, in which all admirers of President Lincoln will be allowed to enter their names on paying one dollar for the privilege of doing so. The money will go for the benefit of the Fair. The eagle, together with the book of autographs, will ultimately be presented to President Lincoln.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper edition of April 23, 1864, sang the fair’s praises on the front page, and in a humorous take on the exhibits and visitors, recounted that the book had nothing like a thousand signatures yet. It also threw in a couple of burns on Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the only cabinet member not to contribute hair as he “had none to spare,” and Senator Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who was “innocent of a single hair, and has sported a wig for the last 20 years.”

Whether the goal of $1000 and 1000 signatures was met is unknown, but the report of the fair compiled three years later noted that the book was so popular 400 signatures and $400 were collected within the first three days of the Fair. We do know the Hairy Eagle was never presented to Mrs. Lincoln or the President. Instead, it hung in the window of the Champney & Smitten shop in Brooklyn for many years. It moved upstate in the 19teens with Francis Champney’s wife Ida. After his death, she moved to Syracuse to live with their daughter Mrs. Sarah Wanamaker. The family donated the Hairy Eagle to the Onondaga Historical Association some time before 1917. With the weaving she donated a key that maps and lists all the different hair contributors.

No OHA records of the acquisition survive, but one undated newspaper clipping in the OHA archives calls Ida’s gift “both historic and extremely artistic,” adding, “There is no better specimen of patience and wonderful intricate weaving.”

According to OHA curator Thomas H. Hunter, the wreath has never been loaned out to another organization. A man alleging to own an article of Lincoln’s bloodstained clothing once requested to remove some of the president’s hair from the sculpture for a DNA test, but as Hunter recalls with a droll smile, “I said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.'”

Encased in a wood frame covered with convex glass, the Hairy Eagle’s reverse is covered with plaster of Paris. “Basically, it’s hermetically sealed; there’s never been any examination of [the wreath],” Hunter says. “If it were opened now, the deterioration process would be exponentially accelerated. … I would never want to chance that.”

The OHA only displays the Hairy Eagle only on rare special occasions to keep it out of the light as much as possible. The last time it was exhibited was February 2019 to celebrate the 210th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.

Early medieval silver figurine found in Poland

Medieval

Archaeologists excavating the site of an early medieval hillfort in Chodlik, eastern Poland, have unearthed an unusual silver anthropomorphic figurine among other artifacts that shed new light on the settlement’s history.

Chodlik, 30 miles west of the city of Lublin, is one of the most archaeologically rich areas in the Lublin Voivodeship. It was site of a heavily fortified stronghold built and occupied by the Slavs between the 8th and the 10th century. It was the largest stronghold of the period in Poland, and its location at the junction of the major east-west and north-south roads made it an epicenter of settlement in the region.

The site has been excavated off and on for 60 years, revealing burials mounds, remains of fortifications and the largest early medieval granary ever found in Europe. The last two seasons focused on an area that geophysical surveys indicated might contain man-made structures. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of fragments from clay vessels and weapons including arrowheads and spears. Decorative objects, including a lunula (a pendant shaped like the crescent moon), were among the artifacts uncovered.

A two-inch-high silver figurine was the stand-out find, discovered less than eight inches beneath the surface at the early medieval archaeological layer. The figure has clasped hands crossing its chest and clearly-defined feet. Facial features have been lost from wear and tear. It’s possible the figurine once held an object, now worn away, in its hands. Researchers are looking for comparable objects in an attempt to identify the figurine, but thus far have come up empty handed.

The discovered fragments of ceramic vessels come from the 8th-10th centuries, which confirmed the earlier findings of archaeologists regarding the centuries of the defensive foundation. Their great number means, according to [Polish Academy of Sciences archaeologist Dr. Łukasz] Miechowicz that the place was teeming with life. In turn, the military was discovered at the base of the outer rampart.

“These monuments may be traces of military actions. The Chodel Basin is a very strongly fortified settlement microregion – there are 4 very close castles, additional fortifications in the form of a longitudinal embankment, and two important trade routes intersected here. It was certainly a rich place and a tasty morsel” — said the scientist.

This year, archaeologists also found two early medieval denarii at the base of the embankment in Chodlik. According to experts, they come from the beginning of the 11th century. Until now, researchers believed that the stronghold ceased to exist in the 10th century. and Podgórze. “The new finds of coins give impetus to research on the chronology of the hillfort in Chodlik and its possible shift to the 11th century, here we also count on the results of absolute dating using the radiocarbon method,” Miechowicz added. Until now, it was believed that the stronghold in Chodlik ceased to exist when the Piast state was established. The reason for its end, however, remains a mystery to this day. Perhaps a natural disaster, perhaps an armed invasion, contributed to this.

Gas pipe workers find 800-year-old burial bundles

Ancient

Last week, workers installing new gas pipes in the town of Chilca, 40 miles south of Lima, Peru, discovered a group of funerary bundles containing human remains and offerings that dates to the 13th century. The natural gas company Cálidda contracted archaeologists to excavate the find. They found the remains of eight individuals, adults and children, wrapped with vegetable ropes and brown cloth.

Placed around the bundled bodies were offerings of different types of corn in a bowl made from gourds, decorated textiles and musical instruments, including a double-row panpipe and a traditional Peruvian flute. There were shells on the heads of some of the bodies.

Inside some of the bundles archaeologists found hand spindles, used to spin cotton, camelid or sheep’s wool into the richly colored and patterned textiles that have been characteristic of Andean culture for millennia. They also found chuspas, pouches used to carry coca leaves and the alkaline substances (lime in this case) they were chewed with to increase the practice’s effectiveness against altitude sickness, in some of the bundles.

The bundles were placed inside a chamber dug into the sand, then topped with wood logs and mats of plant fiber hardened with mud. Archaeologists believe the burials were part of a pre-Hispanic cemetery in Chilca, as bodies have been found during utility work before, most recently in 2018 when Cálidda workers discovered the ancient remains of 30 individuals.

The human remains and archaeological materials will be entrusted to experts at Peru’s Ministry of Culture, who will assess their conservation needs and determine where they will be exhibited in the future.