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Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

Jul 12, 10 12:05 AM

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
By Andrew Graham-Dixon, review from The Economist

Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, died in Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast on July 18th or 19th 1610. No one knows for sure because he died alone. Even so, we know more about him now than any of his contemporaries did. Persistent research has found much fresh evidence in Italian and Maltese archives. The most recent discovery, announced in Rome last month and based on a postmortem of bones that were probably Caravaggio’s, suggests he died of sunstroke and syphilis, aggravated by lead poisoning from the paints he mixed. This news came too late for Andrew Graham-Dixon’s absorbing biography, which otherwise leaves no stone unturned.

Caravaggio was a violent man living in violent times, but, says the author, he was not “the freak, the misfit, the absolute outsider that he has often been painted to be”. Mr Graham-Dixon’s case is not proven. For instance, he recounts in detail one example of Caravaggio’s wilful self-destructiveness. Having killed a man in a duel in Rome, he travelled to Malta, hoping to join the Order of the Knights of St John, with whom he might find freedom and forgiveness. The Order’s Grand Master thought highly of Caravaggio’s work, and commissioned him to paint a large altarpiece, “The Beheading of St John” (detail, above right), for a new oratory in Valetta, and he bent the rules to have Caravaggio admitted to the Order. However, Caravaggio was one of a gang that viciously attacked a fellow Knight. The day before the unveiling he was jailed. He escaped, and fled again, but was caught in Naples and badly wounded by men from Malta, bent on revenge. Nine months later he was dead, aged 38.

That he was so mad, bad and dangerous to know makes his life a compelling story. But the reason why art historians are so fascinated is the conviction that Caravaggio was one of the most original and influential of all painters. He had a fine opinion of his work, placing himself in the same league as Michelangelo. Rubens and Velásquez freely acknowledged his influence. Most of his work was sacred. His taste for the profane was exhibited in a few libidinous portraits of young boys, and it is generally assumed that he was a homosexual. Mr Graham-Dixon suggests his sexuality was ambiguous, or “omnisexual”. He might even have pimped for some prostitutes who were friends.

Caravaggio’s artistic style, self-taught and hugely inventive, is instantly recognisable—stark, vivid and naturalistic, with emphasis on light and shadow, or chiaroscuro. His religious paintings are like theatrical set pieces in confined spaces with subjects modelled on people he had picked up on the streets of Rome. The fact that the Virgin could be recognised as a whore of his acquaintance did not help his cause with the establishment, and he inspired dislike among academic painters who preferred to depict not the poor but the majesty of God in heaven. Neither was the papacy impressed. Caravaggio received only one commission to paint for St Peter’s and the work was rejected.

Mr Graham-Dixon concentrates on the drama of the paintings. He avoids jargon in his writing and is an entertaining art historian, as is shown by his popular television series on Spanish and Russian art, and by his weekly art criticism. He took ten years to come to terms with a very obdurate and highly original painter. Time well spent.

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Col du Tourmalet

Jul 1, 10 12:02 AM

From Cycling News:

Feared Pyrenean climb honoured with two ascents at 2010 Tour

Scaled twice in this year’s Tour de France, the legendary Col du Tourmalet climb has been part of the race since 1910 when it was first introduced in stage 10 by race director Henri Desgrange as the capstone to what would be referred to as the “Circle of Death”: the Pyrenean foursome of the Col de Peyresourde, Col d’Aspin, Col du Tourmalet and the Col d’Aubisque.

Fifty-nine brave souls set out that July 21st morning to tackle the monstrous stage and the Col du Tourmalet’s mystique was born. Following are 30 facts about the iconic Col du Tourmalet‘s role in Tours past. Here’s hoping another 100 years are in store for the mythical mountain.

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Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Jun 30, 10 12:02 AM

Via ArchDaily, by Adelyn Perez:

Architect: Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill
Location: New Haven, Connecticut
Client: Yale University
Project Area: 125,262 square feet
Project Year: Completed in 1963
Photographs: Courtesy of Ezra Stoller of Esto Photographics
References: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill

Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is the largest building in the world dedicated to the containment and preservation of rare books, manuscripts, and documents. It was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill and is located in New Haven, Connecticut. Prior to the completion of this project, Yale University placed its rare books on special shelving in Dwight Hall, which was the Old Library in the late 19th century. In 1930 these special books were relocated to Rare Book Room collection in the Sterling Memorial Library. The Beinecke library was a gift from the Beinecke family, and since 1963 has accomodated six major collections in its rare and marvelous structure that coincides with the literary gems it stores, including those from the Rare Book Room. The major collections are the General Collection, which are divided into the General Collection of Early Books and Manuscripts and the General Collection of Modern Books and Manuscripts, the Collection of American Literature, the Collection of German Literature, the Collection of Western Americana, and the Osborn Collection of British Literary and Historical Manuscripts

The main concern that both SOM and Yale University considered in the design of the library was the preservation of the documents within it. The challenge was to provide ample lighting in the interior for people to study and read and to make it a pleasantly habitable space while limiting the amount of light that affects the stored volumes. The response became a beautiful choice of classic materials gleaming amongst the neo-Classical and neo-Gothic buildings surrounding the library in the Hewitt University Quadrangle on the campus.

Made of Vermont marble and granite, bronze and glass, the exterior gives the illusion that the building is completely solid when viewed from the outside. It’s “windows,” blocked in a consistent linear rythmn along the exterior, consist of white, gray-veined marble panes that are one and one-quarter inches thick and are framed by shaped light gray Vermont Woodbury granite. The sleak marble allows for enough light to filter into the interior spaces without damaging the collections. The structure that frames these rectangular blocks consists of of Vierendeel trusses, high, and 88′ and 131′ long, which transfer their loads to four massive corner columns. The trusses are made out of of prefabricated, tapered steel crosses which are covered with grey granite on the outside and with precast granite aggregate concrete on the inside.

The beauty of the library is enhanced by the large open plaza in which it is located. Visitors enter from the ground level into a glass-enclosed lobby that reveals the grand exhibition hall that holds the books. Beneath this level are two stories which contain the mechanical equiptmnt and large book stack space on the lower level, and another stack space, catalog and reference room, reading room and staff offices arranged around a sunken court designed by Isamu Noguchi on the upper level.

When visitors first enter the building they are faced by two large marble staircases that ascend up to the mezzanine level and a large glass tower that is the central core of the building. The mezzanine level allows for people to rotate around the glass tower which holds 180,000 volumes, centralizing the main purpose of the library. In total the library presently holds 500,000 volumes and several million manuscripts, and SOM’s design serves to preserve and glorify the billions of words inscribed inside each rare book.

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Science Historian Cracks the Plato Code

Jun 29, 10 12:06 AM

Via PhysOrg:

A science historian at The University of Manchester has cracked “The Plato Code” – the long disputed secret messages hidden in the great philosopher’s writings.

Plato was the Einstein of Greece’s Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy’s findings are set to revolutionize the history of the origins of Western thought.

Dr Kennedy, whose findings are published in the leading US journal Apeiron, reveals that Plato used a regular pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure. A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the planets and stars made an inaudible music, a ‘harmony of the spheres’. Plato imitated this hidden music in his books.

The hidden codes show that Plato anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, discovering its most important idea – the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. The decoded messages also open up a surprising way to unite science and religion. The awe and beauty we feel in nature, Plato says, shows that it is divine; discovering the scientific order of nature is getting closer to God. This could transform today’s culture wars between science and religion.

“Plato’s books played a major role in founding Western culture but they are mysterious and end in riddles,” Dr Kennedy, at Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences explains.

“In antiquity, many of his followers said the books contained hidden layers of meaning and secret codes, but this was rejected by modern scholars.

“It is a long and exciting story, but basically I cracked the code. I have shown rigorously that the books do contain codes and symbols and that unraveling them reveals the hidden philosophy of Plato.

“This is a true discovery, not simply reinterpretation.”

This will transform the early history of Western thought, and especially the histories of ancient science, mathematics, music, and philosophy.

Dr Kennedy spent five years studying Plato’s writing and found that in his best-known work the Republic he placed clusters of words related to music after each twelfth of the text – at one-twelfth, two-twelfths, etc. This regular pattern represented the twelve notes of a Greek musical scale. Some notes were harmonic, others dissonant. At the locations of the harmonic notes he described sounds associated with love or laughter, while the locations of dissonant notes were marked with screeching sounds or war or death. This musical code was key to cracking Plato’s entire symbolic system.

Dr Kennedy, a researcher in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, says: “As we read his books, our emotions follow the ups and downs of a musical scale. Plato plays his readers like musical instruments.”

However Plato did not design his secret patterns purely for pleasure – it was for his own safety. Plato’s ideas were a dangerous threat to Greek religion. He said that mathematical laws and not the gods controlled the universe. Plato’s own teacher had been executed for heresy. Secrecy was normal in ancient times, especially for esoteric and religious knowledge, but for Plato it was a matter of life and death. Encoding his ideas in secret patterns was the only way to be safe.

Plato led a dramatic and fascinating life. Born four centuries before Christ, when Sparta defeated plague-ravaged Athens, he wrote 30 books and founded the world’s first university, called the Academy. He was a feminist, allowing women to study at the Academy, the first great defender of romantic love (as opposed to marriages arranged for political or financial reasons) and defended homosexuality in his books. In addition, he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery before being ransomed by friends.

Dr Kennedy explains: “Plato’s importance cannot be overstated. He shifted humanity from a warrior society to a wisdom society. Today our heroes are Einstein and Shakespeare – and not knights in shining armor – because of him.”

Over the years Dr Kennedy carefully peeled back layer after symbolic layer, sharing each step in lectures in Manchester and with experts in the UK and US.

He recalls: “There was no Rosetta Stone. To announce a result like this I needed rigorous, independent proofs based on crystal-clear evidence.

“The result was amazing – it was like opening a tomb and finding new set of gospels written by Jesus Christ himself.

“Plato is smiling. He sent us a time capsule.”

Dr Kennedy’s findings are not only surprising and important; they overthrow conventional wisdom on Plato. Modern historians have always denied that there were codes; now Dr Kennedy has proved otherwise.

He adds: “This is the beginning of something big. It will take a generation to work out the implications. All 2,000 pages contain undetected symbols.”

Plato quoted:

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”

“Ignorance: the root of all evil.”

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”

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Oldest Apostle Images Revealed by Laser

Jun 28, 10 9:28 AM

From National Geographic, by Brian Handwerk, photograph by Pier Paolo Cito, AP:

The Apostle John

A newfound painting of the Apostle John (pictured in an underground Roman tomb on Tuesday) is among the oldest known depictions of some of the original 12 Christian Apostles, experts say.

The Santa Tecla catacombs—situated beneath an office building in Rome’s Ostiense area—contain fourth-century-A.D. paintings of the Apostles Paul, Peter, John, and Andrew, who were early followers of Jesus Christ.

The ancient art was revealed by lasers that burned off inches of calcium carbonate, which had accumulated on the paintings over the centuries in the humid chamber, according to Italian news reports.

The two-year restoration effort cost the Vatican—which maintains the catacombs—some $73,400 (60,000 Euros).

Catacomb Painting

Paintings adorn the walls and ceiling of a Roman tomb (pictured Tuesday) where the oldest known icons of the Apostles were recently discovered.

Experts believe the Apostle depictions were painted to watch over the remains of a devout Roman noblewoman buried in the tomb, according to Italian news reports.

Early Christians—as well as other faiths—buried their dead in extensive networks of catacombs outside Rome.

Catacomb Fresco

Catacomb archaeological superintendent Fabrizio Bisconti describes frescoes found in the Santa Tecla catacombs on Tuesday.

In 2009 the Vatican announced that the oldest known icon of the Apostle Paul had been found on the catacomb’s ceiling.

New laser-restoration efforts have revealed that Paul’s image is part of a larger work that also includes the Apostles Peter, John, and Andrew—as well as Christ himself, depicted as the Good Shepherd, according to Italian news reports.

Restorers also discovered more artwork, including the frescoes.

“I think the way they’re positioned indicates a devotional dimension,” Bernard P. Prusak, chair of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, said in an interview.

The Good Shepherd

An image of Christ as the Good Shepherd (pictured Tuesday) centers a square painting that also features iconic likenesses of four Apostles at its corners.

Villanova’s Prusak noted that these four Apostles represent a rather odd grouping because they’re not closely associated in the Gospels. But there’s no doubt why Peter and Paul were included.

“The two important figures for Rome were Peter and Paul, who were both said to have died in Rome,” he explained, “so [their images in the tomb] is a clear connection to the city.”

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Tourmalet Exhibition

Jun 27, 10 4:51 PM

Via Rapha Blog, by Joe Hall:

Rapha Cycle Club LDN is currently running an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Col du Tourmalet.

On 21st July 1910, Stage 10 of the Tour travelled over the Col du Tourmalet for the first time. It was Alphonse Steinès, wingman to Tour founder Henri Desgrange, who first suggested the race send riders over the Giant of the Pyrenees. As well as bikes from circa 1910 the exhibition contains the notebooks of Alphonse Steinès.

In early 1910, Steinès had undertaken a reconnaissance of the mountain. Having stopped his car four kilometres from the summit, he continued on foot. Rumour has it he retuned to Barèges on the western side of the Tourmalet with hypothermia, having escaped the clutches of a bear, to send a telegram from the gendarme station to Desgrange in Paris, which read:

PASSE TOURMALET. STOP. TRES BONNE ROUTE. STOP. PARFAITEMENT PASSABLE. STOP. SIGNE: Steinès.

This “Perfectly Acceptable” mountain would then go on to feature more times than any other climb in the history of the Grand Boucle.

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Caravaggio Death Mystery Solved

Jun 18, 10 9:59 AM

Via ArtInfo:

Italian anthropologists came to the conclusion that a Tuscan skeleton exhumed in 2009 indeed belonged to the Baroque master painter Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio.

A team of experts from the universities of Bologna and Ravenna — led by Georgio Grupponi, and working under Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage — unearthed the bones last year in an attempt to solve the mystery of the artist’s heretofore unexplained death in 1610. For the next few months, the anthropologists worked to match DNA from the bones and teeth found in an ossuary in Porto Ercole with that of other skeletons buried within tombs bearing the artist’s family name, as well as with modern Merisi descendants. The researchers further employed carbon-dating techniques to determine if the skeleton belonged to the painter.

The conclusion: The bones once belonged to the quick-tempered master of chiaroscuro, who is said to have murdered a man over a game of racquets. “All these elements, put together with others allow us to say with certainty, speaking as an historian, that these remains belong to Caravaggio,” Silvano Vinceti, head of the National Committee for Cultural Heritage, confirmed.

Four hundred years after Caravaggio’s death, moreover, Italy may finally have some clues as to its cause. It seems that the level of lead in his bones — derived in part, no doubt, from his artistic medium — is high enough to have killed him, and to have driven him to the kind of madness that incites rowdy tavern brawls.

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Séraphine

Jun 3, 10 2:17 PM

From Music Box Films:

Director: Martin Provost
Starring: Yolande Moreau, Ulrich Tukur, Anne Bennent

SÉRAPHINE is the true story of Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), a simple and profoundly devout housekeeper who in 1905 at age 41 — self-taught and with the instigation of her guardian angel — began painting brilliantly colorful canvases.

In 1912 Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), a German art critic and collector — he was one of the first collectors of Picasso and champion of naïve primitive painter Le Douanier Rousseau — discovered her paintings while she worked for him as a maid in his lodgings in Senlis outside Paris. Uhde became her patron and grouped her work with other naïve painters – the so-called “Sacred Heart Painters” — with acclaimed shows in Paris, elsewhere in Europe and eventually at New York’s MOMA.

Director Martin Provost builds his story around the relationship between the avant-garde art dealer and the visionary cleaning lady, forging a testament to the mysteries of creativity and the resilience of one woman’s spirit.

A sleeper hit in France, SÉRAPHINE went on to a surprise win of the Best Picture and Best Actress for Yolande Moreau along with five other awards at the 2009 Cesars, the French equivalent of the Academy Awards.

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Botticelli’s Lascivious Painting of Venus and Mars

May 28, 10 2:33 PM

Via The Times:

One of the National Gallery’s best-known paintings, a scene of pastoral bliss by Botticelli, is officially regarded as a story of the all-conquering power of love, but a new study suggests that it has a more racy meaning. Venus and Mars may also be an illustration of the potency of hallucinogenic drugs.

A fruit held by a satyr in the bottom right of the painting has been identified as belonging to Datura stramonium, a plant with a history of sending people mad and making them want to strip off their clothes. Its hallucinogenic effects were recorded in Ancient Greek texts and it has since been used as an aphrodisiac and a poison.

The fruit was overlooked by art historians until David Bellingham, a programme director at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, showed it to experts at Kew Gardens, where they have a specimen of the plant, which is also known as thorn apple and Devil’s trumpet.

The National Gallery description of the painting notes: “The scene is of an adulterous liaison, as Venus was the wife of Vulcan, the God of Fire, but it contains a moral message: the conquering and civilising power of love.”

Mr Bellingham, who spotted the detail while researching an academic study of Venus in art, believes that Botticelli’s message is more subversive. “This fruit is being offered to the viewer, so it is meant to be significant,” he told The Times. “Botticelli does use plants symbolically. In the background are laurel [bushes], for example, which are a reference to his patrons, the Medicis. Datura is known in America as poor man’s acid, and the symptoms of it seem to be there in the male figure. It makes you feel disinhibited and hot, so it makes you want to take your clothes off. It also makes you swoon.”

Mr Bellingham believes the 15th-century painting was intended not only as a depiction of Venus and Mars but also of Adam and Eve. He believes that the Datura may represent the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that Eve offered to Adam, triggering their ejection from the Garden of Eden. The fruit is commonly depicted as an apple, but was not specified as such in the Bible.

Alison Wright, an art historian at University College London, said: “The fruit is not being proffered by her or in any other way directly associated with her, though the lascivious-looking satyr also presumably alludes to their lovemaking. He seems to me to be mischievous rather than serpentine and evil … For some viewers an allusion to Eve and Adam might have been perceptible but I doubt whether it was intentional. Perhaps that doesn’t matter.”

The plant is highly poisonous. Guy Barter, of the Royal Horticultural Society, said that it became notorious in the late 17th century when it was eaten by British soldiers visiting Jamestown, Virginia. “They went off their heads for a few days,” he said.

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Musée des Arts et Métiers Drops Foucault’s Pendulum

May 18, 10 4:25 PM

Via Nature News, by Geoff Brumfiel:

A French museum has apparently dropped the ball, quite literally, with one of Foucault’s original pendulums. The Times Higher Education newspaper reports that the pendulum, housed at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, came crashing down last month, after the cable holding its brass bob snapped. The 28 kilogram sphere smashed into the marble floor and has been irreparably dented, according to curator Thierry Lalande.

For those of you who have not suffered through a course in Newtonian mechanics, Foucault’s pendulum is one of the hardest, and frankly coolest, classical physics problems out there. The idea is this: make a really big pendulum and set it swinging back and forth. Now if the earth stood still, the pendulum would just keep on swinging like that forever. But because it spins, the pendulum’s plane of rotation keeps changing. Over the course of the day, the pendulum’s swing will precess 180 degrees. It’s all about conservation of momentum and angular coordinates and such.

Of course, when Focault demonstrated his pendulum in 1851, everybody already knew the earth was rotating, but the device was an impressive demonstration. From a physics perspective, the maths required to solve the pendulum problem are also key to understanding the rotation of hurricanes, orbital dynamics, space launches (especially ballistic missiles), and a lot of other stuff.

The Musée des Arts et Métiers seemed to have a spotty record of looking after its pendulum. In 2009, Lalande admitted that a party goer at a museum cocktail soiree had swung the ball into a security barrier. There aren’t a lot of details about how the cable snapped.

Anyway, a lesser Frenchman might have succumbed to ennui, but Lalande seems to have found the bright side of the situation: “It’s not a loss, because the pendulum is still there,” he says, adding that the accident was a failure on the part of the museum.

Fortunately, there’s still at least one other original Focault pendulum out there. An original bob still swings from the Panthéon in central Paris. And actually, there’s no reason the dented pendulum couldn’t swing on…

Léon Foucault’s 1851 experiment remains a mesmerizing evidence that the Earth does, in fact, rotate. Scientists were aware of this, but the fact that the pendulum swings through 180 degrees over the course of a day provides tangible proof that we are on a planet spinning in space.

The Umberto Eco novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, made the mid-19th-century physics demonstration famous. The novel even opens at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The pendulum played a key role in the high-literary conspiracy involving the Knights Templar at the heart of the novel.

Photo: Graham Chandler/Flickr

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