Frescoes from the island of Crete depicting scenes of Hell and the punishments of the damned are the focus of a new research project led by historians in England and Germany.
Angeliki Lymberopoulou of The Open University, and Vasiliki Tsamakda, from the University of Mainz, aim to place and assess these representations within a wider geographical and cultural context involving both Greek-Orthodox and contemporary western examples (the Balkans, Cyprus, Cappadocia and Italy). The material will be accessible to scholars and will provide a stepping stone for future research in key iconographic subjects for understanding their social and historic context.
Dr Lymberopoulou, Lecturer in Art History, said: “The island of Crete was ruled by the Venetians from 1211 until 1669. This extended period was culturally very prolific and provides one of the most prolonged case-studies in cultural interaction between two different groups – the native Greek Orthodox population and the Venetian colonists. One of the lasting monuments to this thriving era is formed by the surviving churches with fresco decorations. No fewer than 77 of these fresco cycles contain representations of Hell and these will form the basis of our study.”
The subject has a wide range of cultural connotations, since it reflects religious and moral beliefs, social structure and expectations and the most common illegal activities (e.g. live stock theft). Moreover, while customarily depictions of Hell and of the sufferings of the damned form part of the wider context of the Last Judgement, this is not always the case on Crete. Hell and the punishment of sinners can be depicted independently on the island – a fact which underlines the importance that such representations had for patrons and the faithful. Furthermore, the scenes of Hell reflect more than anything the complex interaction between (Byzantine) East and (Venetian) West that took place on Crete during its Venetian occupation, especially since they often include Orthodox as well as western sinners burning in the eternal flames. Therefore, the choice of this iconographic subject carries a wider appeal and interest for cross-cultural studies in general, including the way different cultures influence each other today.
Around 750 Byzantine and Post-Byzantine frescoes survive in Cretan churches, but the majority remain unpublished or appear in general surveys but with no intention or space for in-depth analysis. The research team has received £176,600 from The Leverhulme Trust to photograph, catalogue, examine and publish all frescoes with representations of Hell within these churches.
Dr Lymberopoulou writing in the Leverhulme Trust newsletter, states, “our team aims to create a corpus of material accessible to scholarship. We will provide a stepping stone for future research in key iconographic subjects for understanding their social and historic context by studying the examples in depth in order to determine the intentions behind their commission, the religious and political aspirations and the moral and legal parameters in contemporary cross-cultural Cretan society. Equally important is the aim to place and to assess these representations within a wider geographical and cultural context involving both Greek- Orthodox and contemporary western examples (the Balkans, Cyprus, Cappadocia and Italy).”
Katedra Oliwa is located in the city of Gdańsk, in the Oliwa district of the city. On July 2, 1186, Sambor I Gdański, Prince of Pomerania, founded a Cistercian Monastery and the history of the Cathedral began.
The cathedral is 17.7m high, 19m wide and 107m long which making it the longest Cistercian church in the world. It holds works of art in the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo and Classical style. The church contains 23 altars in the Baroque and Rococo style.
The church was consecrated 14 August 1594. On July, 8 1976, the church was raised to the dignity of a minor basilica by Pope Paul VI. On March,25 1992, Pope John Paul II established the Archdiocese of Gdańsk with the seat in Oliwa and raised the basilica to Archcathedral status.
1. Entrance sign at the side of the Cathedral.
2. Side entrance to the Cathedral.
3. Front entrance to Cathedral.
4. Organ
5. Great organ. The organ is from the Rococo period and was made between 1763 – 1788.
6. Angels on the great organ.
7. Close up of angel with golden trumpet.
8. Stained glass window in the center of the organ.
9. Cherub detail on organ.
10. Organ front panel.
11. Organ pipes.
12. Tombstone in the wall of the church. There are many of these along the walls and built into the floor of the Cathedral.
13. Close-up detail of the tombstone in the previous picture.
14. Another wall tombstone.
15. Close-up of tombstone crest.
16. Close-up of inscription on the tombstone.
17. Oliwa Cathedral pew seats.
18. Altar are.
19. Close-up of altar area.
20. Mściwoj’s tomb – Prince of Pomerania d. 1294.
21. Close up of Mściwoj’s tomb.
22. Prayer area.
23. Art along the wall of the Cathedral.
24. Close-up of Latin inscription.
25. Beautiful art.
26. Door inside the Cathedral behind main altar area.
27. Altar area of Oliwa Cathedral.
28. Angel’s heads in the ceiling of Oliwa Cathedral.
29. Stained glass window of Oliwa Cathedral.
30. Altar painting.
31. Stars on the ceiling of Oliwa Cathedral.
32. More beautiful artwork.
33. Another organ in Oliwa.
34. Area to the right side of the altar.
35. Altar area expanded.
36. Latin inscription.
37. Painting of Mary along walls of Oliwa above the pews.
38. Painting of monk along the walls above the pews.
Bielsko-Biała is a city in southern Poland located 1 hour south of Katowice and approximately 1 and 1/2 hours south-west of Kraków. Bielsko-Biała is composed of two former cities on opposite banks of the Biała River, Bielsko and Biała. Bielsko-Biała is one of the most important cities of the Beskidy region.
A fortified settlement was discovered in the 1930’s in Stare Bielsko (Old Bielsko). The settlement was dated to the 12th – 14th centuries. The current center of the town was probably developed as early as the first half of the 13th century. At that time a castle, Zamek Sułkowskich,(which still survives today – and is shown in these pictures) was built on a hill. In the second half of the 13th century, the Piast Dukes of Opole invited German settlers to land between Silesia and Lesser Poland in order to colonize the Silesian Beskidy. The town was first documented in 1312 when a Duke of Cieszyn granted a town charter. From 1457 the Biała River was the border between Silesia (within the Holy Roman Empire) and Lesser Poland.
During the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Biała was annexed by Austria and included in the crown land of Galicia. In 1918 both cities became part of a reconstituted Polish state, with the majority of the population being ethnic German.
During World War II the city was annexed by Nazi Germany and its Jewish population was sent to Auschwitz. After the liberation of the city by the Red Army in 1945, the ethnic German population was expelled westward.
The city of Bielsko-Biała was created on 1 January 1951 when the cities of Bielsko and Biała were unified.
1 Zamku Sułkowskich (Sułkowski Castle).
2 Street view from the castle.
3 Various street views.
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5 Cobblestone alleys – many streets around the castle are cobblestone since they are part of the Stare Miasto/Starówka (Old City).
6 Side view from the castle.
7 Polish Poczta (post office) and Theatre.
8 Theatre.
9 Poczta.
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12 The castle at night.
13 Armour room.
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19 Gorgeous medieval art in this museum
20 Unknown sculptor – Madonna and Child, 15th/16th century.
21 Unknown German painter – St, Ann with Virgin and Child, 15th century.
22 Unknown sculptor – The Holy Family, 15th/16th century.
23 Unknown German or Silesian sculptor – Madonna and Bird,14th century.
24 Sculptor, Marcin Czarnego (? – 1509) – Archangel Michael, culmination triptych of Łękawica, 1510 – 1530.
25 Sculptor, Marcin Czarnego (? – 1509) – Chrystus Bolesny (Pained Christ), side of Św.Bartłomiej wing of the Łękawica triptych.
26 Antwerp Guild of St. Lukas – triptych of the prostate pastors, 15th/16th century.
27 Unknown sculptor – Our Lady of the Mantle, 16th century.
28 Close up of sculpture; beautiful detail.
29 Unknown sculptor – from the Mary Virgin and Child Group, 15th century.
30 Close up of upper part of Antwerp triptych.
31 More detail from the Antwerp triptych.
32 View of the theatre from inside the castle museum.
33 Miniature of the castle from the and outlying areas during the 14th century.
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37 Castle in the 15th century.
38 Medieval pottery.
39 Coins.
40 The medieval city walls and the western elevation of the oldest building of the castle.
41 Medieval walls being excavated within the castle.
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44 Castle approximately around 1600.
45 Medieval and Renaissance walls excavated.
46 The oldest element of what is now a brick castle was a medieval fortified wall surrounding the city built during the first half of the 14th century.
In the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, the walls were demolished and on their foundations, new, thinner walls were built.
Simultaneously with the construction of a new wall, a stone tower was built positioned perpendicular to the former defense wall in the southeastern part of the castle.
In the northern facade of the castle, a stone keyhole for shooting was set.
During the second half of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, a communication passage was built leading from the courtyard to the castle garden. At this period comes the structure probably representing the foundation stone stairs to the garden wing and the stone drainage channeling water from the site of the castle courtyard.
47 Standing on a glass floor above the medieval walls.
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50 The arrangement of the layers of the castle between the 13th – 17th centuries.
51 Looking down at the Medieval walls.
52 Front view of Św. Mikołaja (St. Nicholas).
53 I tried to capture the Cathedral as close as possible – it was a bit tricky, but the detail of the church is lovely.
54 View of the Cathedral from a side alley.
55 Side view of Katedra św. Mikołaja
56 View of the entrance during Mass.
57 Standing in the front entrance after the Mass has finished.
This fall, the Cleveland Museum of Art will premiere a groundbreaking exhibition examining the role of relics and reliquaries in the development of Christianity and the visual arts. Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe is the first major exhibition in the United States to consider the history of relics and reliquaries and will feature more than 150 works of art from Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. The exhibition runs at CMA from Oct. 17, 2010, to Jan. 17, 2011, before traveling to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the British Museum in London.
The museum will also be showing The Glory of the Painted Page, from November 6, 2010 to February 27, 2011, which will offer medieval manuscript illuminations from its permanent collection.
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe will feature many relics and reliquaries that have never before been seen outside of their home countries. Included in Treasures of Heaven are metalwork, paintings, sculptures and illuminated manuscripts drawn not only from celebrated public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe, but also from important church treasuries.
In addition to the three organizing museums, institutions such as the Vatican, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., are lending works to the exhibition. Seventeen objects will come from the CMA’s own extensive collection of medieval art; nine travel from the Vatican collections, including three reliquaries from the Sancta Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies, the medieval papacy’s private relic chapel.
“People who think of the Middle Ages as a dark period for art and culture will find their perceptions challenged by this exhibition,” says Griffith Mann, chief curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art and co-curator of Treasures of Heaven. “The relics and reliquaries showcased in Treasures of Heaven provide evidence of religious objects traveling across tremendous distances and of people making pilgrimages across the Mediterranean to walk in the footsteps of important figures from sacred history. The medieval devotion to relics gave birth to new forms of monumental architecture, supported extensive pilgrimage networks and prompted significant developments in the visual arts.”
The physical remains of holy men and women and other objects associated with them play a central role in a number of religions and cultures and were especially important to the development of Christianity. To convey the sanctity of these relics to the faithful, medieval artists created precious containers, or reliquaries, for churches, shrines and personal use. Often covered in gold and silver or encrusted with precious and semi-precious stones, these objects commanded attention. Their outward appearance reminded worshippers of the extraordinary nature of the matter they contained.
Powerful in inspiring religious devotion among believers, relics also captured the imagination of medieval arts patrons. By the height of the Middle Ages, artists had developed highly imaginative containers for sacred remains, combining innovative techniques with beautiful design.
Visitors to the exhibition will witness the transformation of reliquaries from simple containers for the earthly remains of Christian holy men and women to lavishly decorated objects of personal and communal devotion. “By the first centuries of Christianity, the ashes, bones and body parts of Christian saints and martyrs were considered ‘more valuable than precious stones and finer than fine gold,’ and were therefore treated with utmost reverence,” says Holger Klein, CMA’s former Robert P. Bergman curator of medieval art and co-curator of the exhibition. “As substances believed to be endowed with the power and living presence of the saint or martyr, they were frequently enshrined in containers that matched their spiritual importance. Their precious materials facilitated their use in both liturgical and secular contexts.”
Highlights of Treasures of Heaven include:
Bust Reliquary of St. Baudime, c. 1180-1200; Romanesque (French, Auvergne); gilded bronze, gems and enamel with a wood core; Parish Church of Saint-Nectaire, Puy-le-Dôme. This nearly life-sized bust is one of the earliest surviving objects of its kind and travels outside of France for the first time. The stippling of the beard, the rhythmic curls of hair and the elegant patterning of the saint’s vestments conjure a human presence even as its gold surfaces assert the holy nature of the effigy.
Portable Altar of Countess Gertrude, c. 1045; Ottonian (German, Lower Saxon, Hildesheim); gold, cloisonné enamel, gems, red porphyry and pearls on an oak wood core; Cleveland Museum of Art. CMA is renowned for its collection of objects from the Guelph Treasure, one of the most important church treasuries to have survived from medieval Germany. Also included in the exhibition will be the Arm Reliquary of the Apostles, which belonged to this distinguished ecclesiastical collection as well.
Reliquary Shrine of Saint Amandus, 1250-1275; Gothic (Flemish, Western Belgium); gilded copper, silver, champlevé enamel and semiprecious stones; Walters Art Museum. This large, church-shaped shrine is said to have once housed the relics of a seventh-century saint who served as a missionary and bishop to the western regions of present-day Belgium.
Head Reliquary of St. Eustace, c. 1200, Romanesque (Swiss, Upper Rheinish, Basel), silver and silver gilt on a wooden core; British Museum. The shape of this reliquary, containing fragments of the skull of the Roman military leader Saint Eustace along with other relics, was intended to bring worshippers face to face with the heavenly visage of the venerated man.
Other media — including painting, photography, audio and video — will provide contemporary visitors with insight into how relics and reliquaries would have been encountered by medieval audiences. Although the objects in the exhibition primarily cover the time period from Late Antiquity until the Reformation, connections made to the living traditions of Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches, as well as a fascination with souvenirs and mementos in contemporary secular society, demonstrate their important legacy.
Tickets for Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe go on sale in mid August. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, lectures, performances and scholarly symposium. Got to www.ClevelandArt.org for more information.
Following its Cleveland run, the exhibition will be presented in Baltimore from Feb. 13 to May 15, 2011, and in London from June 23 to Oct. 9, 2011. It was developed by Griffith Mann, chief curator of the Cleveland Museum of Art; Holger Klein, associate professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University; and Martina Bagnoli, Robert and Nancy Hall associate curator of medieval art at the Walters Art Museum.
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe was organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum and the British Museum. Support for the exhibition has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Vidimus, the on-line journal of Stained Glass studies, is soon to celebrate its fourth anniversary. The Journal, launched in late 2006, is the only ‘free-to-view’ publication that deals with all aspects of stained glass and associated studies. As a ‘free-to-view’ service the editors of the journal are keen to encourage both scholars and members of the public to make use of the ever expanding archive of past issues. Containing detailed features, up to the minute news, book reviews and the popular ‘Panel of the Month’ Vidimus has become one of the major resources for anyone interested in the study of stained glass in all its forms. In addition, the news editor, Roger Rosewell, has been responsible for bringing a number of internationally important and significant finds and discoveries to the attention of the stained glass community and the world’s media.
“Vidimus is unlike any other traditional journal”, states Roger Rosewell, “in that it brings together the scholarly article and the news story within the same publication. We have been lucky enough to work with some fantastic scholars and have, as a result, had several media scoops.
“The archive”, continues Rosewell, “has become a major resource and we are continually grateful for the support that the project has received across the globe. Everything about Vidimus is free. It’s free to subscribe and we positively encourage scholars to spread the word about this amazing resource. The journal was one of the first of its type and we want to ensure that it remains an expanding a growing resource over the coming years.”
Vidimus is fully supported, and is published by, the UK branch of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA). The CVMA is the international research project dedicated to recording medieval stained glass. In Great Britain, the CVMA is a British Academy Research Project, hosted by the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. A Project Committee oversees the programme of activities, including our publications, which are undertaken by volunteer authors.
Further details concerning the publication, including information regarding submission of articles or news items, can be obtained from the news editor (news@vidimus.org)
Mehmed the Conqueror and the Equestrian Statue of the Augustaion
By J. Raby
Illinois Classical Studies, Vol. 12:2 (1987)
Introduction: One of the landmarks of Constantinople was the colossal equestrian statue which stood on top of a hundred-foot-high column outside Hagia Sophia. Known as the Augustaion from the square in which it stood, the bronze statue was erected by Justinian, although in all probability it was not his own but a re-used work of Theodosius I or II, The statue’s size alone — some 27 feet in height—would have ensured its fame, but it was particularly esteemed as a symbol of Byzantine dominion and a talisman of the City. Christianity’s triumph over the world was signified by the globus cruciger which the rider held in his left hand, while with his extended right he was believed to gesture apotropaically towards the Orient, commanding the Eastern enemy, successively Sasanians, Arabs and Turks, to stay back behind the Byzantine border. The statue was so prominent, its symbolic and magical character for the Christians of Constantinople so commonly acknowledged, that it is hardly surprising it failed to survive under the Turks.
Some time between 1544 and 1550 Peter Gyllius saw fragments of the statue, which he claimed had long been kept in a courtyard of the Sultan’s palace, being transported to a cannon-foundry, which was presumably the one at Tophane; and he furtively measured a few of these disjecta membra, the rider’s nose and the horse’s hooves being nine inches long, the rider’s leg taller than Gyllius himself. It has never been satisfactorily explained how the statue came to be removed to the imperial Saray. The answer, however, is to be found not in European or Greek, but in Ottoman, sources.
Abstract: Max Dvořák is known primarily for his book Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte as well as for his modernist interpretations of Tintoretto and El Greco which led to the rehabilitation of Mannerism. It may thus come as a surprise that, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, his former assistant Karl Maria Swoboda remarked that Dvořák actually devoted his lifework not to the art of the sixteenth century, but above all to the ‘universal-historical’ interpretation of the Middle Ages.
We are all familiar with praying monks, but playing monks? A Book of Hours from Flanders finds them deep in a game of “Blind Man’s Bluff,” while on the opposite page peasant boys enjoy a rigorous game of hockey. Such delightful images of play are unexpectedly ubiquitous in medieval manuscripts. Neither stodgy nor perpetually pious, medieval people found time for amusement in the margins of their lives and their manuscripts.
This is the theme for a new exhibition at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Checkmate! Medieval People at Play looks at many different aspects of medieval play, including board games, sports, free play, visual ciphers and even games of love. Drawn entirely from the Walters’ own stellar collection, the exhibition features 26 manuscripts, original medieval game pieces and a 13th century toy soldier. In the pages of these books, knights battle with dice instead of swords, children shirk their winter duties to lob snowballs at each other, monkeys dance gleefully to “Ring-Around-a-Rosy,” and damsels forget their distress and go out for an afternoon of butterfly hunting. Through these images, this exhibition encourages visitors of all ages to explore a sense of whimsy and fun that is uniquely medieval, yet remarkably relevant to us today.
Planning for the exhibition was already underway when Lynley Herbert, Carol Bates Fellow at the Walters Art Museum, became the exhibit curator. ”The idea was to put together an exhibition from our medieval manuscript collection that would compliment the exhibition we have coming in the fall, of children’s book illustrator Walter Wick, whose work often includes games and visual ciphers,” she said in interview with Medievalists.net. ”I was given the theme of ‘Games’ and that was it, so I proceeded to search through our manuscripts, and the collection as a whole, looking for anything that would qualify as games or play. I tried to interpret this as broadly as possible, so I included sports, free play, visual and intellectual games that the artist plays with the viewer, and even games of love.”
Surprisingly, playful images are most often found in religious books, where artists tended to populate the margins with humorous, even outrageous or irreverent imagery. The medieval mind loved juxtaposing the profound and the frivolous. Sometimes the artist’s playfulness was meant for the most serious ends, intended to help one remember a prayer or the Gospels. But often the artists were simply having fun, creating delightfully lighthearted images for the entertainment of the reader.
Lynley Herbert notes that these images, “open up new ways of thinking about the medieval mindset as a whole – these images show they took pleasure in fun, witty, and even somewhat sacreligious imagery, and that they didn’t take themselves too seriously. The old idea of this period being the “dark ages” is such a misnomer, and I really hope images like these will help revise that perception – medieval people were sophisticated and creative, and enjoyed play and relaxation just as much as we do now!”
Hebert also explains that while some of the drawings were done by monks, many others came from the secular artists: “it was not uncommon for an artist to be brought in to do the images, especially during the later medieval period, so we have to be cautious about reading these images as only the work of monks. In fact, some of these manuscripts were probably written by secular scribes as well, so again we should try to get away from the idea that they were all done by monks.”
One of Herbert’s favorite images is from Hours of Jean de Mauléon, a French manuscript from ca. 1524, which shows a peddlar playing dice in a rich man’s home. “But after studying it closely,” she said, “I discovered that they are playing a game called raffle – similar to a modern slot machine – where rolling 3 of the same number at once wins. If you look closely, the peddlar has rolled three “3s”, and has therefore won. He smiles smugly, but the angry expression on the wealthy man’s face, and both of their gestures pointing to the dice, suggest that there is some conflict. I discovered in my research that weighted dice was a major problem, especially in this game, and that people would often use their own dice to cheat, and then run away with their winnings before the loser realized he had been duped. So I think this is the story being told by our artist, and it was a fun and rewarding journey of discovery for me.”
Herbert, a PhD student in medieval art history at the University of Delaware, describes working at the Walters Art Museum as “a dream come true for me.” The Walters is home to a vast collection of historical art, including Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Ethiopian and western medieval pieces. It has over 900 illuminated sacred and secular manuscripts from all over the world, as well as 1,300 books printed before 1500. Earlier this year, the Art Museum announced that it creating an online project to digitize over 38 000 pages from its manuscript collection – see our earlier article Museum’s digitization projects offers access to medieval manuscripts for more information.
Herbert adds, “With this exhibition I had the opportunity to go through dozens of manuscripts, and each was more amazing than the last. I felt like a kid in a candy shop! There is nothing like holding a thousand year old manuscript or object in your hands…imagining all the history it’s seen, all the other people who have held it before you…there is no way to describe that feeling, and only the original object can truly have that effect. Having the freedom to look through these precious works and choose whichever I felt fit my exhibition was unbelievably exciting! The quality of the Walters collection is truly remarkable, and it has been such an incredible privilege to have access to it!”
The Checkmate! Medieval People at Play exhibition will be on display at the Walters Art Museum until October 10, 2010. Click here for more information.
How did Leonardo Da Vinci manage to paint such perfect faces? For the first time a quantitative chemical analysis has been done on seven paintings from the Louvre Museum (including the Mona Lisa) without extracting any samples. This shows the composition and thickness of each layer of material laid down by the painter. The results reveal that, in the case of glazes, thin layers of 1 to 2 micrometers have been applied. The study, led by the team of Philippe Walter, of the “Laboratoire du Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France” (LC2RMF, CNRS/Ministère de la culture et de la communication), with the collaboration of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the support of the Louvre Museum, is published in the July 15th, 2010 issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings fascinate, partly due to a range of subtle optical effects that blur outlines, soften transitions and blend shadows like smoke. Known as “sfumato”, this technique is not only the result of the genius of the artist but also of technical innovations at the beginning of the 16th century. Minute observations, optical measurements and reconstitutions have already described the sfumato, but new analysis can confirm the procedure of this technique, especially related to how the gradation is done.
For the first time, Philippe Walter (LC2RMF) and his team, in collaboration with the ESRF and the Louvre Museum, have brought new insight on the sfumato thanks to a quantitative chemical study of the different painted layers. Seven paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci have been analysed without extraction, directly in the rooms of the Louvre Museum (Virgin of the Rocks, Mona Lisa, Saint John the Baptist, Annunciation, Bacchus, Belle Ferronnière, Saint Anne, the Virgin and the Child). The scientists concentrated on the study of the faces because they have the characteristics of the sfumato. They used a technique called X-ray fluorescence to determine the composition and thickness of each layer in nine faces (including Mona Lisa’s) painted by Da Vinci throughout 40 years of career.
The scientists have also found different recipes used by Da Vinci to do the shadows on the faces. These recipes are characterized by a technique (the use of glaze layers or a very thin paint) and by the nature of the pigments or additives. In the case of the glazes, thin layers of 1 to 2 micrometres were applied to obtain a total thickness of no more than 30 to 40 micrometres. The results obtained in this study help to understand Da Vinci’s search towards making his art look alive.
Scholars attending the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds heard today about the role of graffiti in the Middle Ages. In 2010, graffiti is widely seen as an eyesore and an act of vandalism, holding for many distinctly negative connotations. Like today, graffiti was common in the medieval society. However, it held an entirely different significance.
Rebecca Williams, from the University of Liverpool, will tell the IMC that in a paper-short world, graffiti offers an invaluable and unique insight into the thoughts and popular culture of medieval society.
Often found on the walls, pillars and arches of medieval churches, surviving graffiti can shed light on very specific parts of medieval life, such as the function of the church or the way people practised their devotions.
“This research looks at a familiar practise that is widely condemned today, but one that is less familiar in a medieval context, where the use and purpose of graffiti was rather different than in modern times,” said Williams.
Williams’ paper, ‘The Writings on the Wall: Scratching the Surface of Late Medieval Graffiti’ was presented earlier today. In May, she also gave a paper entitled, ‘Location, Location, Location: Contextualising the graffiti of the late medieval church’ at the University of Liverpool, where she is currently working on her PhD dissertation, The cultural implications of English medieval graffiti.
The International Medieval Congress (IMC)is currently running until July 15th and is the largest academic conference in the UK, drawing over 1,500 scholars from around the world. It offers a unique forum for lively discussion and debate on some of the most interesting part of our medieval past, with this year’s special theme being Travel and Exploration.
Frescoes from the island of Crete depicting scenes of Hell and the punishments of the damned are the focus of a new research project led by historians in England and Germany.
