Month: April 2022

Greco-Roman-Egyptian culture and the mummy of Herakleides

Ancient

It’s been a molasses-slow weekend as far as bloggable news goes, so a video from the Getty it is. The video is less than 10 minutes long, but it manages to cover the interesting subject of how the beautifully painted cartonnage mummy of one Herakleides exemplifies the melding of Greek, ancient Egyptian and Roman cultures in post-Ptolemaic Egypt.

The mummy dates to the Roman period — ca. 120-140 A.D. — and is complete with intact linen wrapping and a fine wood portrait panel depicting a beardless young man with curly hair wearing a gilt laurel wreath. The linen shroud was painted red, symbolic of eternal life, and then decorated down the length of the body with the iconography of Egyptian deities including Osiris, Horus and Isis. The bottom of the shroud is painted with a representation of the youth’s feet with gilded toes, incorporating the pharaonic funerary tradition of golden toe caps. Above the feet is a Greek language inscription: ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΔΗC ΘΕΡΜΟΥ, meaning Herakleides, son of Thermos.

The portrait panel, painted in realistic Greco-Roman style, was a Roman-era addition to the traditional Egyptian mummification practices that had continued, albeit in altered form, under the rule of the Ptolemies. A CT scan of the mummy confirmed that Herakleides was 18-20 years old when he died, so the portrait is at least accurate to his real age.

The CT scan also found a surprise inside: a mummified ibis placed on his abdomen just under the ibis painted on the shroud. Mummified animals were not usually incorporated into the mummies of humans. Ibises were sacred to Toth, so it’s possible Herakleides had a particular connection to the god, perhaps as a priest.

Anyway, awesome video follows. If you like that, have a browse through the Getty’s YouTube channel because this is one in a series of six collaborations between the museum and Smarthistory that highlights select pieces in the collection. The Victorious Youth, an exceptional Greek bronze that has been the subject of a 15-year legal struggle between the museum and Italy over the highly dubious legality of its sale and export, is one of the other subjects. 

The Roman ships of Fiumicino

Ancient, Museums

The Museum of the Ships of Fiumicino is home to the remains of five Roman ships from the imperial era that were discovered during construction of the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. It is one of the most important discoveries ever made as regards Roman civilian naval technology, and an invaluable source of information on imperial shipbuilding.

The ships are of three different types. Ships Fiumicino 1-3 are caudicarii, barges with flat bottoms and high sides that were used as transport vehicles on the canals and lagoons linking the sea at Portus inland to the Tiber and on to Rome. They played a vital role as the primary modes of transport of people and merchandise from the port to the Eternal City.

For the principal waterway servicing the capital of a vast empire, the Tiber is not very accommodating. It is shallow, winding, floods in the rainy season and churns with treacherous currents and rocky shoals. These barges had to be towed with ropes by pulling crews on the river bank to reach Rome’s main inner port in what is now the Testaccio neighborhood. Fully laden at its 70-ton capacity, the largest of the caudicarii would have taken three days to travel the 20 miles from sea to city.

The fourth is a sea-going vessel. It is small with a 4-5 ton capacity, and was likely used for commerce rather than longer voyages in the open sea. It may have been small, but was extraordinarily well-made, from the design to the execution. It has a streamlined hydrodynamic design and was expertly crafted from high-quality materials. It was highly maneuverable

Fiumicino Five is a fishing boat, navis vivara, a modest little rowboat  that is unique in the world. It is in an excellent state of preservation, the hull almost complete. What makes it one of a kind is that it still contains the wooden well the fisherman would use to hold his catch alive before heading to shore at the end a day’s fishing. The square well was built in the middle of the boat consisted of four wooden walls inclined slightly inward centered over the keel. Holes on either side of the keel could be unplugged to ensure the exchange of water for the catch no matter how long the work day. The pine plugs are still present. The well could hold about 80 gallons of water.

Sea fish were a luxury food, sold for high prices to the homes of the rich and aristocratic in Rome. Fresh water wish were the staples of the budget-conscious diet. A fisherman who could deliver his catch still living to the markets of Rome would make good money for his trouble.

Excavations at the time of the airport’s construction unearthed structures from the Roman port and, between 1958 and 1965, five ships in close proximity to each other. The ships were conserved inside a wooden hangar built at the find site ensuring the fragile wood vessels would be preserved for eventual public display within the confines of the ancient port basin built and expanded by Claudius and Trajan. The hangar became the Museum of the Ships of Fiumicino in 1979.

Structural problems forced the museum’s closure in 2002, and kept it closed for almost 20 years. The museum recently completed an extensive renovation program and reopened its doors in October 2021. It certainly could not be more conveniently located for visitors flying into Rome. You can literally see the airport a few hundred feet away from the museum windows. Two minutes on an airport shuttle, and you can while away a layover exploring ancient Roman modes of transportation.

Intaglio gem sale part III: even tinier

Ancient

The ancient carved gemstone collection of Roman art dealer Giorgio Sangiorgi had so deep a bench that Christie’s is now on the third auction dedicated to his impeccably curated miniature masterpieces. There are 48 Greek, Roman and Etruscan intaglio gems crafted between 1700 B.C. and the 3rd century A.D. on offer in this third and final auction.

Giorgio Sangiorgi had an art gallery in the Palazzo Borghese on tony Via Ripetta in Rome. Founded by his father Giuseppe in 1890, the gallery specialized in European art and antiquities. It also ran auctions and exhibitions, so father and son had close business connections with all the major museums, institutions and private collectors. Giorgio developed a special interest in ancient glass and gems. He became an avid collector, keeping the greatest pieces he could get his hands on and publishing numerous scholarly articles on the subject. (Interestingly, he never published his own collection. Nobody outside the family even knew this treasure existed until 2018.)

In the late 1930s, Giorgio Sangiorgi saw the writing on the wall and decided to get his precious collection to safety before Italy was mired in war. He moved it to Switzerland for its protection. Sangiorgi died in 1965 and his collection remained in the family until the first part of it appeared at auction in 2019. The collection was sold in parts to ensure the market wasn’t glutted and so that the most spectacular stones didn’t overshadow the ones of lower appraised value.

The auction is currently open online and closes on April 14th. The catalogue is a wonderful browse, and every one of the miniature masterpieces is worth exploring zoomed-in to see all the fine details.

Speaking of fine details, this 1st century A.D. Roman circular ringstone in banded sardonyx has to have the most minute carving I’ve ever seen. It is barely over an inch in diameter, smaller than a half dollar coin, and a good part of that is the uncarved white band that frames the chocolate brown center. On that carved surface of maaaybe 7/8ths of an inch are eight deities, six horses and two chariots. Oh, and a row of fluffy clouds.

The row of clouds divide the hemispheres of the carves surface. Above it are the Capitoline Triad — Juno, Jupiter and Minerva — enthroned. Jupiter sits in the center holding a tall scepter in the right hand. Minerva, wearing a helmet seated at Jupiter’s left, holds a shorter scepter in her lap. Juna to Jupiter’s right does as well. She also holds a phiale Emerging from the very end of the clouds are two wind deities blowing shell trumpets. Under the clouds are the moon goddess Selene driving a biga (two-horse chariot) followed by the sun god Sol driving his quadriga (four-horse chariot). Below them is Oceanus, reclining languorously on a toppled vase.

So how big could that quadriga with its four overlapping horses and realistic articulated hooves, possibly be? Maybe a quarter inch? How tiny were the blades the engraver used to carve those horses’ legs? Intaglio carving is always mind-blowingly tiny, but these figures are by far the tiniest I’ve encountered. The pre-sale estimate for this piece is a modest $15,000-$20,000.

I’m going to put another amazing gemstone on offer behind the jump because it’s an explicit scene of a satyr copulating with a donkey and most definitely NSFW. It is not, I repeat, NOT short on the phalluses. Pun very much intended.

(more…)

17th c. polychrome wall paintings found in salt castle

Modern(ish)

Renovations at the Saltworks Castle in Wieliczka, southern Poland, have revealed surviving sections of the original 17th century polychrome decorative painting on the walls of five rooms. The headquarters of the UNESCO World Heritage Wieliczka Salt Mine for 700 years, the Castle is now home to the Krakow Saltworks Museum dedicated to the history of salt and of the mine. The museum has been undergoing a refurbishment of previously unused rooms to expand the castle’s exhibition facilities. The paintings were discovered when 300 years of plaster and paint covering them were removed.

The polychrome paintings include floral and plant motifs — bouquets in vases, leafy wreaths — arabesque decorations and the coat of arms of the Vasa family.  One of the rooms has a particularly spectacular array of trompe l’oeil architectural elements in classicist style like columns, arches and landscapes in the distance between them.

They were found on the first floor of the eastern part of the castle which has rooms dating back to the 16th century. The directors of the salt mine lived there in the 18th and 19th centuries, but there were no records describing the wall decoration, so the discovery of a large number of paintings with well-preserved color came as a shock to restorers.

The plan to use the rooms as temporary and permanent exhibition space will now have to find a way to showcase the treasures they’ve found on the very walls.

“The preserved layers, from different periods, intertwine; in some places they are preserved only in small fragments, and in some – in large ones “- emphasized the conservator. “We plan to expose all layers to show them as the history of this object. If such possibilities arise and such a decision is made, we can possibly remove some of the outer layers – this is called a transfer, transfer to a new substrate – and display them in a different part of the castle , wherever the available exhibition space will allow it “- explained Chojkowski.

The “delamination” method allows the reconstruction of a larger area of ​​earlier polychromes. “The fact that one of them is younger does not mean that it has a lower value, because it can be much more interesting. For us, partial removal or transfer of layers to a new substrate is so important that there are probably even earlier plasters here. now it is difficult to say whether there is also any layer of polychrome there “- said the conservator.

Update: stolen Darwin notebooks returned in hot pink gift bag

Looting, Modern(ish)

Two of Charles Darwin’s notebooks stolen decades ago from the Cambridge University Library, have been returned anonymously, left on the floor outside the Librarian’s office in a hot pink gift bag. Inside the gift bag was the blue archive box custom-made to contain the notebooks. Both notebooks were inside the box, snugly wrapped together in plastic wrap. Also inside the bag was a brown envelope with the printed note:

Librarian

Happy Easter

X

The two notebooks have been carefully examined and are in excellent condition, thankfully. There are no missing or damaged pages.  

The notebooks were last seen in the fall of 2000 when they were removed from Cambridge’s Special Collections Strong Rooms to be photographed in high-resolution for the library’s digital collection. If they were returned, there’s no record of it and a routine check in January of 2001 discovered that the notebooks and the custom blue box that contained them were not back in their previous location. Despite the inestimable historical value of the notebooks, one of which contains the Darwin’s 1837 Tree of Life drawing which has become an iconic image in the history of science, this did not immediately trigger a massive search. The Darwin archives in the Cambridge University Library are enormous, by far the largest collection of Darwiniana in the world, so the staff figured they’d just been misplaced and would be found sooner or later.

Limited searches over the years turned up nothing, and in 2020 the library launched a comprehensive targeted search of the archives and storerooms. That process was expected to take years, but in the interim, the university officially reported the missing patrimony as theft to local and international authorities and launched a public appeal for the recovery of the missing notebooks.

The appeal made the news around the world, and obviously it worked because somebody’s small conscience grew three sizes that day and the notebooks are back where they belong. This time they should stay put, at least if Cambridge University Librarian Dr. Jessica Gardner has anything to say about it:

“The building has transformed significantly since the notebooks were first reported as missing. In the last 20 years this has included completion of new high security strong rooms, new specialist reading rooms and a range of additional security measures.

These include CCTV, card-and-pin access to secure areas, a dedicated Security Team onsite and further root-and-branch reviews of all our security protocols to come – to make sure we minimise any future risk as far as humanly possible.”

Police are continuing to investigate the theft and now the return of the notebooks. The prodigal notebooks will go on public display this summer in Darwin in Conversation, a Cambridge University Library exhibition dedicated to Darwin’s extensive correspondence of 15,000 letters written over a lifetime.