Category: Museums

Happy 1,911th anniversary, Trajan’s Column!

Ancient, Modern(ish), Museums

On May 12th, 113 A.D., Trajan’s Column was inaugurated, a masterpiece of construction and imperial self-promotion that has been broadcasting scenes from the emperor’s conquest of Dacia for 1,911 years. It was the first triumphal pillar, copied by later emperors, and today is the only intact monument remaining in the Forum of Trajan.

Before the first figure of the spiral frieze that winds around his entire height was carved, the column was already a marvel of engineering. Twenty drums of white marble, each 12 feet in diameter and weighing 32 tons, had to be quarried from Carrara, transported over land, sea and river to Rome and stacked on top of each other more than 98 feet high in the Forum of Trajan. Added to the pedestal, the total height of the victory column is 115 feet.

The exterior of the marble drums were carved with a spiral bas relief 620 feet long that wraps around the column shaft 25 times and boasts 155 different scenes populated by 2,662 figures, including Trajan himself who appears no fewer than 58 times. But wait, there’s more! The interior was then hollowed out, the hard marble removed to create a spiral staircase of 185 steps like an Archimedes screw that visitors in antiquity could use to reach the viewing platform at the top of the column. A small doorway in the base allowed access, and the long walk up was lit by 43 small windows.

The Syrian genius Apollodorus of Damascus, who had accompanied Trajan on his Dacian campaign in 105 A.D. as a military architect, was commissioned by Trajan to plan and execute this testament to his conquest. The frieze has a heavier emphasis on Roman military construction than on actual battle scenes, congruent with Apollodorus’ personal experience of the Dacian Wars but probably motivated more by Trajan’s desire to present himself as sober and effective rather than bloodthirsty. The carving is so detailed and realistic that the column is a unique record of Roman and Dacian clothing, weapons, armor, defenses, artillery, vehicles, religious practices and much more.

It is difficult to grasp the density of content on the column with the naked given the height and distance. The best way to get a real look at the narrative relief is through the plaster casts taken of the column. There’s a full set in the Museum of Roman Civilization, made in 1861-2 by order of Napoleon III. They are placed in four rows at eye level. The museum has been closed for renovations for years, and is scheduled to reopen later this year.

I recently discovered there’s another full set of casts in, appropriately enough, the National History Museum of Romania. This set is much more recent, created between 1934 and 1940 by Vatican craftsmen, although wars hot and cold prevented it from getting to Bucharest until 1967. It is visually even closer to the original because it’s not made of plaster. It is reinforced white cement mixed with white marble dust, so it’s basically a match for the look of the Carrara marble. The museum also has an exact replica of the pedestal.

The National History Museum of Romania has a 3D virtual tour of their copy of Trajan’s Column. They also have a VR option that puts you right in the middle of the museum’s Lapidarium where the copy is installed.

Lost Mantegna rediscovered in storage, restored

Museums, Renaissance

A worn and damaged painting in the stores of the Correr Museum in Venice has been restored and identified as a work by the Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. Madonna and Child, St. John and Six Saints has gone on display for the first time in centuries at the Villa Contarini in Mantegna’s hometown of Piazzola sul Brenta. The exhibition runs until October 27th.

The painting on panel depicts the Madonna and Child with the infant John the Baptist and six female saints. It dates to the end of the 15th century and was bequeathed to Venice by Teodoro Correr, abbot, art collector and scion of one of the city’s oldest patrician families, after his death in 1830. Fearing that his brother would sell off his beloved collection before he was cold in the ground, Teodoro wrote a will in January, just a month before he died, stipulating that his collection be kept intact, that it be named the Correr Collection, that it be open to the public and that it become a public institution under the protection of the city. This bequest created the first civic museum in Venice.

The small work, part of the original collection amassed by Teodoro Correr, was rediscovered last December by the museum’s curator who recognized the exceptional pictorial and compositional quality of the underlying work despite its dire condition. It had been neglected in storage for years. The colors were severely faded, there was paint loss on one hand and bad overpainting on the other. The painting needed extensive restoration before it could even be accurately evaluated, never mind attributed.

Conservators from the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia took on the project, utilizing X-ray and reflectographic analysis to examine the underdrawing. Meticulous cleaning and repairs revealed the chiaroscuro contrasts of light and dark and accents in pure gold paint. The fine execution and lavish materials marked it as the work of the master.

The newly-revealed painting was the twin of a painting that is now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Conservators compared imaging results of the two works and found the outlines of the underdrawings were identical. They were created by a single cartoon (the composition drawn on cardboard/paper then perforated at guide points so it could be transferred easily onto a panel or canvas or other surface). The two paintings were likely created around the same time by the same workshop. The are only small differences in the details and colors. The Correr version is also unfinished, but just barely. It was a hair’s breadth from completion when the artist stopped. They were both probably commissioned by the same person, perhaps a noblewoman from the Gonzaga family, rulers of Mantua and patrons of Mantegna.

Massive Bronze Age torc stolen from Ely Museum

Ancient, Looting, Museums

One of the largest gold torcs ever discovered was stolen from the Ely Museum Tuesday. Thieves broke into the closed building in the wee hours on the morning of May 7th and stole the Bronze Age gold torc and a heavy gold bracelet from the same period. Only the two gold objects were taken.

Both of the stolen artifacts were found by metal detectorists in East Cambridgeshire. The solid gold bracelet was discovered in 2011. The torc was discovered in a recently ploughed field in September 2015. The four-flange spiral twisted bar torc is more than 4’10” long from trumpet terminal to trumpet terminal and weighs 732 grams (1.6 pounds). It dates to around 1300-1100 B.C. Not only is it exceptional for its size and weight, but also for its purity. Analysis found it is composed of 86-87% gold and 12-13% silver, which makes it 20-21 carat gold by today’s standards.

Dr Wilkin, who is responsible for the British Museum’s British and European Bronze Age Collection, described it as “one of the most important Bronze Age finds that’s ever been made in England”.

He said the torc is the “largest of its type in the whole of Europe” and its diameter is “larger than any adult male trousers that you can buy in a shop today”.

He speculated the torc could have been worn over bulky clothing or by a sacrificial animal but its use “remains a guessing game”.

At this time in the Bronze Age, people were no longer being buried with important objects – instead they deposited them at “important places in the landscape”.

Dr Wilkin said: “We don’t necessarily know why, but we think it was a gift to the gods, designed to secure good harvests or a healthy family. I’ve calculated you could probably make 10 smaller objects out of this one, so it’s a really big sacrifice of wealth and status.”

The Ely Museum acquired the torc in September 2017. After it was determined to be treasure at a coroner’s inquest, the British Museum’s valuation committee assessed its fair market value at £220,000 ($275,000). Local museums are given first crack at raising the sum, and the Ely Museum secured grants, including a large one of £138,600 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and donations from the public to reach the goal. A month later, the torc was on display at the Ely Museum, the pride and joy of its permanent collection.

Elie Hughes, curator at Ely Museum, said: “We are devastated by the loss to the museum and to the local heritage of the region. It is a huge blow after the incredible support from the community in acquiring the torc in 2017. As a culturally significant object, it cannot be replaced. Our priority now is working with the police to locate the stolen objects.”

The museum is housed in Ely’s Old Gaol building since 1997.  The 700-year-old building was extensively redeveloped to improve access, display space and security in 2021, so it’s not like its systems are old junk. The break-in was just swift and targeted. The worst part of this is that the torc is obviously completely unsalable. It is far too famous and unique to be passed off on the sly, and the odds of this being a commissioned theft for an unscrupulous private collector are miniscule. The real danger is that the priceless archaeological artifacts will be melted down for their mere gold value.

The Cambridgeshire Constabulary are investigating the crime. They are currently looking for two people seen on e-scooters in the vicinity of the museum between midnight and 2:00 AM Tuesday. Anybody with information can contact the police by dialing 101 in the UK or through its online chat service.

Liberty Leading the People‘s true colors revealed

Modern(ish), Museums

Liberty Leading the People, French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix’s iconic tribute to freedom won by armed revolution, has been restored to its brilliant original colors. Eight layers of oxidized varnish, applied in misguided previous attempts to revive its colors that backfired spectacularly when they yellowed, were removed. The heavy grime and dust that had settled in the varnish layers were removed with them.

The allegorical representation of Liberty as a bare-breasted woman in a Phrygian cap brandishing the French tricolor flag in her right hand and a bayonetted musket in her left as she exhorts Parisians from different social classes to the barricades was a depiction of current events, not the French Revolution of 1789. Delacroix painted it in October 1830, just three months after the July Revolution that had driven King Charles X (youngest brother of the guillotined Louis XVI) to abdicate and enthroned his distant cousin Louis Philippe I as constitutional monarch.

Louis Philippe’s Ministry of the Interior bought the painting in 1831, seeing it as great PR for the “citizen king” who had come to power thanks to the revolution it depicts. They even planned to hang it in the throne room of the Palais du Luxembourg, then the home of the French senate. That plan fell by the wayside when another revolution, the anti-monarchist Paris Uprising of 1832 sparked by the death of popular reformist general Jean Maximilien Lamarque, suddenly made the idea of revolutionary violence, barricades and bodies stacked like cordwood distinctly less palatable to the government. It was returned to Delacroix who stashed it at his aunt’s house to keep it out of harm’s way.

It would not be seen in public again until after yet another revolution, the Revolution of 1848, established the Second Republic. It was only on display briefly and then went back underground until it reappeared in the Salon of 1855. Finally France, now on its Third Republic, bought the painting for good this time in 1874 and it entered the collection of the Musée du Louvre.

The first extensive restoration took place in 1949 to repair damage inflicted during the hasty moves museums were forced to do during World War II. After that, it received minor touch-ups and repainting on a regular basis. It was loaned out only once, to Japan in 1999, and at that time the frame was replaced.

The canvas is so large (8.5ft x 10.5ft), that it was taken down from the wall, the frame removed and the six-month restoration done in situ. Before the cleaning began, the painting was analyzed with X-ray, UV and IR imaging that were compared to archive photographs to give restorers a baseline to work from. They then tested the cleaning process on tiny snippets of the painting.

As the varnish layers were removed, details emerged that had been obscured by the flattening effect of the yellow varnish. Delacroix layered color and textures to create contrasts that differentiated figures in the complex, dynamic composition and covey the illusion of three dimensional depth. For example, the cleaning revealed that the boy with the pistol is actually running slightly in front of Liberty instead of by her side, that there’s a shoe in the bottom left that previously blended into the paving stones and how the facades of the buildings on the right are each different from the one next to it.

Liberty herself proved to be a surprising revelation. Her tunic, heretofore believed to be yellow, is actually light grey with yellow added more saturated at the bust and then thinning and fading down her legs. The thick, even yellow coverage was overpainting applied in a 1949 restoration.

Benedicte Tremolieres, one of the two restorers to clean the canvas, said it was “enchanting” to see the painting reveal its secrets.

Her colleague Laurence Mugniot agreed.

“Delacroix hid tiny dabs of blue, white and red all over in a subtle sprinkling to echo the flag,” she said.

She pointed for example to the “blue eye with a speck of red” of one of the characters.

Rare 18th c. clock returned to Brighton museum 23 years after theft

Modern(ish), Museums

A rare 18th century musical automaton clock stolen from Preston Manor in Brighton in 2001 has been recovered by Sussex Police and returned to the museum. It was rediscovered when it was offered for sale at auction last year. The auction house subscribes to the Art Loss Register (ALR) due diligence service which checks items against the lost art database before a sale, and its experts recognized it as the stolen clock.

Lucy O’Meara from the Art Loss Register said: “The ALR’s research team identified the item as a match, despite extensive restoration and alteration to the clock.

“It had different urn finials and different feet making it appear at first glance to be a different clock. This was one of over 400,000 items our expert team checks against our database every year.

“Our recovery team used their detective skills to compare the wood grain which matched up exactly. After we identified the match, our team liaised with the auction house and notified Brighton & Hove Museums of the location of the stolen clock. Sussex Police’s Rural Crime Team then recovered the item from the auction house and returned it to the Museum.”

The clock was stolen on February 12, 2001, in broad daylight when Preston Manor was open to visitors. Staff pressed the alarm buttons and called the police but the thieves fled in a getaway car they had parked near the entrance. The Sussex Police investigated the theft, but no suspects were ever found. Two years later, the clock was sold at auction. At that time, the auction house had no information about its ownership history and it was not subscribed to the ALR, so the sale went through with nobody the wiser. The collector who bought it 20 years ago relisted it with the same auction house, only this time the ALR’s crack team stepped up to the plate.  The trail from the sale 20 years ago was too cold for the police to track down anyone involved in the theft.

The clock was made by Thomas Hunter Jr. of London, one of the top clockmakers in the country, in around 1760-70. It is a bracket table clock with painted maritime decoration above the clock face. It is both an automaton and a musical clock: ships above the clock face sail to the music every hour on the hour. The clock was acquired by the Stanford family of Preston Manor and was in the estate by at least 1905. It was placed in the south-facing Morning Room with a view of the sea, linking the maritime motif of the timepiece with Brighton’s own history as a seaside town.

When Preston Manor and its contents were given to the city in 1932, the clock was part of the gift. It quickly became one of the more popular features of the estate. Visitors assembled in the room to hear the music play and the ships sail among the painted waves. Brighton & Hove Museums plans to restore the clock back to working order so it can return to delighting visitors at Preston Manor.