Cabinet of Curiosities

August 19, 2011

By Mary Jo Gibson

At the end of every research week I have an assortment of interesting bits I find on the web, but have nowhere to share them. Creating this small post gives me a depository for extra information that I can share with my readers.

The Museum Experience:

Rodolphe Bresdin may not be a household name, but a view of his work at the Boston Museum of Fine Art should bring him out of obscurity.  Born in 1822, the self-trained Bresdin taught a young Redon before fading into impoverished obscurity.  Known for small, almost miniature works; his masterpiece “the Good Samaritan” depicting a Muslim helping a Christian during the Syrian civil war, measures 22 by 17 inches; a collection of 124 images is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, accessible on line, and a personal favorite of this author.

The Wallace Collection has a great event for Adults only; iTea and Biscuits Out of the Frame.  A UK initiative, providing opportunities for an older audience to get a taste of benefits from digital technology; any museum looking to expand its audience online or through the museum experience can benefit from this type of program.  Also at their site, Treasure of the Month, with an archive going back several years.  Excellent articles accompany the objects telling the life of the artist, the subject, and the history of their time.  I expect to be spending an afternoon relishing these images.

The Thinker, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) Originally conceived as a depiction of the poet Dante, meant to occupy the center of the tympanum for The Gates of Hell, the intended doorway of the proposed Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.  The Legion of Honor shares the history of this sculpture representing all artists in the pivotal act of intellectual creation.

The National Gallery online offers an historical perspective on what goes on behind the closed doors of an artist’s studio.  Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries investigates workshop practices, collaborations, copies and replicas.  The Virgin and Child with Two Angels by Andrea del Verrocchio, 1476, is one of the chosen paintings examined in minute detail.   Infrared reflectograms revealed extensive underdrawing with evidence of pouncing on the heads, hands and the baby, while the remainder of the composition is underdrawn freehand.  Analysis of the pigments and technique showed that they were entirely consistent throughout, but the hands give away the obvious presence of two painters.  Read the exciting story of this painting and the slow, methodical process attempting attribution.

The Morgan Library & Museum shares a beautiful pen and brown ink drawing by Canaletto, Giovanni Antonio Canal; 1697-1768.  The artist worked primarily with affluent English clients, visiting Venice on the Grand Tour and depicting picturesque details of everyday life invoking the Venetian atmosphere.  This is a rendering of the eastern end of San Lorenzo with adjacent houses in the Castello neighborhood.  The Morgan has a great zoom feature to bring the detail into the greatest size for the best study of such topical work.

The Eastern State Penitentiary, once the most famous and expensive prison in the world, stands today in ruin, a haunting world of crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers.  Known for its grand architecture and strict discipline, this was the world’s first true ‘penitentiary’, a prison designed to inspire penitence of true regret in the hearts of convicts.
The vaulted, sky lit cells once held many of America’s most notorious criminals, including bank robber “Slick Willie” Sutton and Al Capone.  A haunting video on their site highlights images of the penitentiary today and shots from a 1929 silent film created to celebrate Eastern State’s 100th birthday.  Take a moment to view the online 360 tour with 20 areas of the prison available, including death row.

Best of the Blogs:

The Undeciphered Grimoire
Gene Lempp tells the story of the rare and undecipherable text, the Voynich Manuscript, in his Designing From Bones blog series.  Created in the 15th century, the author remains in dispute even after years of scientific research.  Named for Wilfrid Voynich, who re-discovered the volume in a box of books sold by the Collegio Romano in 1912, the illuminated manuscript now resides in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.  Vellum pages filled with drawings of nymphs, unknown plants, fold out pages of unknown destinations, written in a language with no punctuation or decipherable meaning.

That story grandfather used to tell really is true…
Legend passed down from the grandfather of a local archaeologist tells of a lost amphitheater in the northern province of Britain.  Aldborough was thought for years to have been a Roman fort due to impressive stonewalls with curved outlook towers, known for a strategic position on Dere Street where the Hispana legion marched to its unknown fate in Scotland around 120AD.  Britannia Inferior, the reference to northern Britain in Roman Times, has not received the scholarly attention in study more populated areas experienced, but a geomagnetic printout from scanning reveals the legend to be true; a great tiered bank of seats below ground in a field that is only frequented by a herd of cattle.

Peter Paul Ruebens

Hotties of Art History
This irreverent blog is full of images culled from every page of art history.  The snappy commentary makes a great read, “for anyone who appreciates the sexiness of the old masters”. You never knew Peter Paul Ruebens looked like this!

Why Pierre de Fermat is the patron saint of unfinished business; in 1637, the mathematician jotted a cryptic conjecture in the margins of a textbook.  Google celebrated Fermat’s Last Therorem, a marvelous proof, which “this margin is too narrow to contain” found after his death in the pages of an edition of Diophantus.

an + bn ≠ cn for n>2

From 1637 until 1994, the mystery remained elusive, receiving notoriety in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Most Difficult Math Problem.  The legend of unfinished business was solved by Andrew Wiles in 1994, his proof taking seven years to complete and ran over 100 pages.

Join me on Museum Monday as I finish my virtual tour of the Getty Museum! If you know of any great art or history sites, please feel free to share in the comments below. What interests you more, the art or the history?

Cheers!
MJ

Cabinet of Curiosities

At the end of every research week I have an assortment of interesting bits I find on the web, but have nowhere to share them. Creating this small post gives me a depository for extra information that I can share with my readers.

August 5, 2011

By Mary Jo Gibson

This cabinet resides at the Rijksmuseum, noted as built in the fourth quarter of the 17th century.  Hidden behind large doors are 15 drawers, fourteen have decorated mirrors etched with ships, the double steps in the front of the niche are the handle of a drawer, as is the balustrade above it.  The final niche contains a mirror with gilded woodcarvings of the classical gods Mars, Venus and Mercury.  Different types of wood and bone depict the facade of a house, reflecting into the mirror giving the illusion of two complete houses.

Great Museum Finds:

Paris: Life & Luxury, the Getty Museum
The physical exhibit is closing this Sunday, but the Getty Iris blog offers a choice set of clocks from the luxurious lifestyles of well-heeled Parisians. Included as a bonus are the downloadable ringtones of three separate clocks of the era.  The page includes separate stories about the accouterments of the luxurious lifestyles depicted in the exhibit, with a virtual room that lets you explore the history of the objects displayed in a painting of Gabriel Bernard de Rieux, a wealthy French magistrate.
The Museum Experience virtual tour provides the viewer with great images even after the exhibit closes, and the Getty uses all their interactive expertise to make this tour memorable.

Period Rooms from the Heilbrunn Timeline
Looking for some inspiration to a historical storyline?  The Metropolitan Museum of art has 44 period rooms available for online viewing, completely furnished with interiors and accessories.  The varied choices include a frescoed interior from a Roman house, ca. 40-30 BC from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, the Great Hall of Van Rensselaer Manor House, Albany, NY, ca 1765-69, Nur al-Din Room 1707 AD, Ottoman, Damascus, Syria, Shoin Room from 17th c. Japan, the Wisteria Dining room, 1910, from Lucien Levy-Dhurmer and the Living Room from the Little House, Wayzata, Minnesota, 1912, by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Some of these groupings are only available to view online, but include detailed descriptions and historical framework of the period.

What was once a pool, is now a museum
There once was a municipal indoor swimming pool in Lille, France, built in 1927; it became structurally unsound in 1985.  The French solution to this particular problem has its own twist.  Instead of destroying a beautiful art deco building including a wall of stained glass, they reinforced the pool and turned the open space into a museum, incorporating the pool with the displays.  Now reopened as La Piscine, the beautiful result features a number of sculptures.  Visits were estimated at 80,000 but surpassed that expectation with a record 200,000 visitors.

Summer Day in Hyde Park
The Museum of London shares a summer scene from William Powell Frith’s panoramic paintings, circa 1858.  Viewing all the activity at the water’s edge, imaging the heat wave we are now experiencing during the Victorian time, I wonder how these individuals coped with all the containment their clothing required.  There seems to be little room for personal space, the crush of the scene indicative of a time without air conditioning, where it seems all your neighbors are out seeking relief in the smallest area possible.

Tampering with art history
Florence, Italy, the name alone brings to mind storied artworks, legendary artists and dynasties of power.  Michelangelo’s kind of town; but the artist’s career is littered with unfinished business, such as the San Lorenzo Basilica.  After years of planning for an all-marble facade, it languished with only the plainest of designs due to the cost and the death of two Medici men immortalized in the mausoleum.  Using surviving sketches and a wooden model, the mayor of Florence has suggested that contemporaries finish the 1515 structure by 2015.  Skepticism abounds, arguments over changing the aesthetic is tantamount to changing history, and so forth.  Is there an architect talented enough to execute this daunting task?

From the Blogs:

Morbid Anatomy
The Morris Museum of Morristown, New Jersey contains a surprising treasure trove of gems; the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection, over 700 automata and mechanical musical instruments, mostly produced in the 19th century.  A large grouping of European automatons still capable of their original movements, indicative of the Marie Antoinette harpsichord from the Google Art Project automata,  and the many masters of this lost art based in France.  The priceless items from Murtogh D. Guinness, heir to the Guinness beer fortune who amassed these treasures and ultimately bequeathed them to the Morris Museum.

Mythical Beasts
The Forest of Dean in Glouchestershire, England hides a mythical creature known as the Beast of Dean.  Large enough to fell trees, the beast caused devastation in the surrounding region during the late 1700’s.  Gene Lempp explores the story behind the Moose-Pig in his tour of the Zoo Arcane.  Another of his wonderful series Designing From Bones.

Iron Age Scotland
Brochs are Iron Age dry stone towers found mainly in the northern and western coastal regions of Scotland.  First excavated between 1890 and 1904 by Sir Tress Barry, these chambered cairns were largely ignored by the archeological community.  With his passion for excavation and disinterest in publication, Sir Barry provided the presentation of archaeology to others while creating an archive of photographs documenting all that he found.  The site is sponsored by the Caithness Archaeological Trust and the Highland Council.

Young Michelangelo
The Torment of Saint Anthony by Michelangelo Buonarotti, ca 1487-88, Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, and the sole Michelangelo in an American collection.
Inspired by an etching of Martin Schongauer, “The Temptation of Saint Anthony”, Michelangelo’s student and biographer Ascanio Condivi, recounts that the young artist visited a market to examine fish scales.  While this detail was absent in the engraving, Michelangelo painted a brilliant piece at the age of 12 or 13, stunning his contemporaries with his abilities.

Virtual tours of medieval churches in Transylvania
Zsombor Jekely has a fantastic blog on all things medieval in Hungary.  One of his posts highlights the 360-degree panorama of Treasures of Szeklerland and 24 additional links to these various World Treasure sites.  Important fresco cycles and unique 14th century architectural decorations survive with an additional panorama of the outside grounds.  The rose window at the Gyulafehaervar rivals any mainstream European cathedral, but the haunting interiors would make a great inspiration for any gothic story.

Online Archiving Continues…
The Yale Center for British Art now includes a viewing selection to peruse objects without having the vital artist or cataloging information.  Art available includes sculpture, books, illuminated manuscripts and paintings.  Special links to the object page with all dates, attributions, and a downloadable version of the image are only a click away.  Such as Peter Paul Rubens’ “Peace Embracing Plenty”, from the Mellon Collection, or John Everett Millais, “L’Enfant du Regiment”.   Paintings are available 100% on line, but Rare Books and Manuscripts are only available at a 2% level, as their work continues.

Any of these inspire you to take a closer look?  Perhaps add the information to your own treasure collection for future reference?

That is all for this week’s Cabinet, join me for Museum Monday when I take a virtual tour of the Getty Museum’s furniture collection.  If you have any museums or sites of interests you wish to see researched on my blog, please feel free to post in the comments below.

Cheers!

MJ