Scribal Terror

Ewer not a claret jug

No harm no foul for Christie's, as a formerly "French" "19th century" "claret jug" is properly reclassified as a thousand-year-old Fatimid ewer. Now it's worth a heckuva lot more, as Reuters reports:

A 1,000-year-old carved rock crystal ewer, one of only seven known surviving examples, fetched 3.2 million pounds at auction on Tuesday, Christie's said.

The ewer is the same one that came up for auction in Britain in January this year, when it was catalogued as a 19th century French claret jug and valued at 100-200 pounds.

In fact experts now believe it is an extremely rare ewer from the Fatimid dynasty which ruled parts of northern Africa and the Middle East in the 10th-12th centuries.

Michelangelo's compass

This is a compass Michelangelo used while working on the Sistine ceiling. It's part of a "Vatican Splendors" exhibit bound for Minneapolis.

What is it? A medieval mousetrap

For Scribal points, what is the wooden gadget on the table and how does it work?

Jake says, "The proverbial better mousetrap," and indeed it is since it was constructed by St. Joseph himself. It comes from the right side of the Mérode altarpiece, by the fifteenth century Master of Flémalle -- probably Robert Campin. Art historian Meyer Schapiro writes:

In the Mérode Altarpiece by the Master of Flémalle, the figure of Joseph appears in a wing beside the Annunciation as an artisan who fashions mousetraps.... [T]his detail of the mousetrap is more than a whimsical invention of the artist, suggested by Joseph's occupation. It has also a theological meaning that was present to the minds of Christians in the Middle Ages, and could be related by them to the sense of the main image of the triptych. St. Augustine, considering the redemption of man by Christ's sacrifice, employs the metaphor of the mousetrap to explain the necessity of the incarnation. The human flesh of Christ is a bait for the devil who, in seizing it, brings about his own ruin. "The devil exulted when Christ died, but by this very death of Christ the devil was vanquished, as if he had swallowed the bait in the mousetrap. He rejoiced in Christ's death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was then his own undoing. The cross of the Lord was the devil's mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord's death...." (Qtd. at Oneonta.edu art history website)

I don't know exactly how the mousetrap in the painting would have worked, but Paul Gans of the Medieval Technology Pages has found this description by Chretien de Troyes of a gate designed to work like a rat trap :

This gate was very high and wide, but had such a narrow entry-way that two men or two horses could not pass through together or meet one another in the gate without crowding or great difficulty; for it was built just like a trap that awaits the rat on its furtive scavenging:  it had a blade poised above, ready to fall, strike, and pin, and triggered to be released and to fall at the slightest touch.

The Pictish stones of St. Vigeans

According to 24-Hour Museum:

The  [Pictish stones of St. Vigeans], which date back to the decades before the nation of Scotland was born in the 9th century, depict ornate Christian crosses and fantastic beasts and bear both Latin and Pictish writing (the latter now indecipherable). . . .

The stones are a great early Christian treasure of Angus. They include the Drosten Stone, a cross slab with ornate cross and fantastic beasts, plus a rare Latin and Pictish inscription which might have commemorated King Uoret who died around 842AD. In 843AD, the Pictish kingdom was united with Gaelic Dalriada under a single monarch – leading to the birth of Scotland.

Read more about the Picts here.

World's earliest oil paintings

National Geographic reports:

Buddhist murals from Afghanistan's famed Bamian caves are the world's earliest known oil paintings, according to a new chemical analysis. (See photos of the paintings and the cliffs that housed them.)

The finds, dated to around the 7th century A.D., predate the origins of similar sophisticated painting techniques in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean by more than a hundred years.

The discovery may also provide insights into cultural exchange along the Silk Road connecting east and west Asia during that time period. . . .

Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, scientists found that samples from 12 caves and the two destroyed giant Buddhas contained oil- and resin-based paints—likely the earliest known use of either substance for painting.

Yoko Taniguchi of the Japan Center for International Cooperation in Conservation in Tokyo presented the findings at a recent international symposium held there.

The analysis showed the murals were painted using a structured, multilayered technique reminiscent of early European methods.

Memento mori prayer beads

These remarkable ivory beads are from a collection of 14th century Parisian carvings soon to be on exhibit at Courtauld Institute of Art. The legend around the skulls reads, Ainsi serons nous, wi ou demain -- Thus will we be today (wi = hui) or tomorrow. The beads show faces on one side and skulls on the other. More information on the collection at 24 Hour Museum.

Classical images in color

We usually picture classical statuary as pure white, but the Vatican Museum is featuring an exhibit of famous classical statues restored to their (probable) original colors. The statue above is a red-headed Emperor Augustus, resplendent in red, white, and blue. From The Roman Hideout, circuitously via Neatorama. More photos here, including Caligula looking particularly puerile.

The essential Jewishness of the American carousel

This Coney Island carousel horse is the work of carvers Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein, Yiddish speakers who immigrated from Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. These two carvers were responsible for "the largest carousels ever made: sixty feet across, with up to six rows of horses, and able to accommodate more  than a hundred people." But they were not alone. Many other Jewish artisans of the time contributed to the style of the American carousel as well. According to a fascinating online exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum, called Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel, their work is based on traditional imagery of sacred Jewish art:

Some of the same Jewish  artisans who arrived in America at the turn of the twentieth century  and carved for their local synagogues also found work carving horses and other animals for the flourishing carousel industry. Inspired by the majestic Torah arks, gravestone carvings, and papercuts from their homelands in Eastern and Central Europe, they helped transform carousel art into a powerful sculptural expression of dynamic and animated forms. Although fanciful carousel animals have long been exhibited in museums, the religious carvings by these artisans have primarily been appreciated within the setting of the synagogue. Until now, the important historical and aesthetic link between the synagogue and the carousel has never been documented.

The exhibit traces the connections between the public work of Jewish carvers and the tradition of carving in the synagogue, such as these lions of Judah, attributed to Isaac Sternberg  (Itzok the Schnitzer), Philadelphia, c. 1918:

Here is a Coney Island lion, by Marcus Charles Illions, for comparison:

 

Hell is where they make you eat frogs

No, wait, that's France . . . Hell is where they make you eat frogs NAKED. The illustration comes from a sixteenth century "Shepherd's Calender," which was like the Farmer's Almanac but with prancing demons. Via BibliOdyssey

Down syndrome in a Flemish nativity

As Medgadget reports, "Several years ago, psychiatrist Andrew Levitas and geneticist Cheryl Reid made an interesting discovery:

[They] identified a 16th-century Flemish Nativity painting in which one angelic figure appears distinctly different from other individuals in the painting with an appearance of Down syndrome. . . . This may be one of the earliest European representations of Down syndrome.

The British Medical Journal elaborates:

The 1515 Flemish painting, by an unknown artist, . . . shows an angel (next to Mary) and possibly one other figure, the shepherd in the centre of the background with the syndrome.

"If our diagnosis is correct, this implies that Down's syndrome is not a modern disease," say [Levitas and Reid] (American Journal of Medical Genetics 2003;116:399-405).

The diagnosis of Down's syndrome in the angel was based on a number of features: a flattened mid-face, epicanthal folds, upslanted palpebral fissures*, a small and upturned tip of the nose, and downward curving of the corners of the mouth. The hands, crossed over the breast, have short fingers, especially on the left.

*The palpebral fissure is the separation between the upper and lower eyelids.