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irish-dress-history · 10 months ago

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Irish dress history sources online:

A list of sources for Irish dress history research that free to access on the internet:

Primary and period sources:

Text Sources:

Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT): a database of historical texts from or about Ireland. Most have both their original text and, where applicable, an English translation. Authors include: Francisco de Cuellar, Luke Gernon, John Dymmok, Thomas Gainsford, Fynes Moryson, Edmund Spenser, Laurent Vital, Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn

Images:

The Edwin Rae Collection: A collection of photographs of Irish carvings dating 1300-1600 taken by art historian Edwin Rae in the mid-20th c. Includes tomb effigies and other figural art.

National Library of Ireland: Has a nice collection of 18th-20th c. Irish art and photographs. Search their catalog or browse their flickr.

Irish Script on Screen: A collection of scans of medieval Irish manuscripts, including The Book of Ballymote.

The Book of Kells: Scans of the whole thing.

The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne by John Derricke published 1581. A piece of anti-Irish propaganda that should be used with caution. Illustrations. Complete text.

Secondary sources:

Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610) by Constantia Maxwell published 1923. Contains a nice collection of primary source quotes, but it sometimes modernizes the 16th c. English in ways that are detrimental to the accuracy, like changing 'cote' to 'coat'. The original text for many of them can be found on CELT, archive.org, or google books.

An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish By Joseph Cooper Walker published 1788. Makes admirable use of primary sources, but because of Walker's assumption that Irish dress didn't change for the entirety of the Middle Ages, it is significantly flawed in a lot of its conclusions. Mostly only useful now for historiography. I discussed the images in this book here.

Chapter 18: Dress and Personal Adornment from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland by P. W. Joyce published 1906. Suffers from similar problems to An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish.

Consumption and Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland Susan Flavin's 2011 doctoral thesis. A valuable source on the kinds of materials that were available in 16th c Ireland.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy Volumes 1 and 2 by William Wilde, published 1863. Obviously outdated, and some of Wilde's conclusions are wrong, because archaeologists didn't know how to date things in the 19th century, but his descriptions of the individual artifacts are worthwhile. Frustratingly, this is still the best catalog available to the public for the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology. Idk why the NMI doesn't have an online catalog, a lot museums do nowadays.

Volume I: Articles of stone, earthen, vegetable and animal materials; and of copper and bronze

Volume 2: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Gold in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy

A Horsehair Woven Band from County Antrim, Ireland: Clues to the Past from a Later Bronze Age Masterwork by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 1998

Jewellery, art and symbolism in Medieval Irish society by Mary Deevy in Art and Symbolism in Medieval Europe- Papers of the 'Medieval Europe Brugge 1997' Conference (page 77 of PDF)

Looking the part: dress and civic status and ethnicity in early-modern Ireland by Brid McGrath 2018

Irish Mantles, English Nationalism: Apparel and National Identity in Early Modern English and Irish Texts by John R Ziegler 2013

Dress and ornament in early medieval Ireland - exploring the evidence by Maureen Doyle 2014

Dress and accessories in the early Irish tale, ‘The Wooing of Becfhola’ by Niamh Whitfield 2006

A tenth century cloth from Bogstown Co. Meath by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 2004

Tertiary Sources:

Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia edited by Sean Duffy published 2005

Re-Examining the Evidence: A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress from 750 to 900 CE by Alexandra McConnell

#resources #dress history #irish dress #irish history #early medieval #bronze age #textile history #late medieval #16th century #historical dress

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coochiequeens · 2 months ago

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As modern science and better archeology methods reexamine historical sites more of women’s history will emerge

by Sarah Durn September 27, 2021

The National Museum of Stockholm's Ride of the Valkyries was painted during the Victorian period, which saw renewed interest in Vikings. Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images

In Atlas Obscura’s Q&A series She Was There, we talk to female scholars who are writing long-forgotten women back into history.

In 1871 on the sleepy island of Birka, Sweden, Hjalmar Stolpe, a Swedish entomologist turned archaeologist, discovered the lavish grave of a Viking warrior. Around the seated body were the remains of two sacrificed horses, as well as a double-edged sword, a scramasax (a long, thin knife), a bow, a shield, and a spear—every weapon known to the Viking world. It was an astonishing find, especially since Viking warrior graves rarely contain more than three weapons. There was also a full set of hnefatafl, the board game often known as Viking chess, which indicates the strategic thinking and authority of a war leader. A thousand years ago, the site would’ve abutted the Warrior’s Hall, where a garrison lived to protect the bustling Viking town of Birka. The weapons, game pieces, location: Everything told scholars that the man buried in what is known as grave Bj 581 was a prominent, well-respected Viking warrior. No one was really prepared when DNA tests were conducted in 2017 and a new story began to emerge. This was a prominent warrior, all right, but the occupant of Bj 581 wasn’t a man. She was a woman.

Viking historian Nancy Marie Brown’s new book, The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women, explores what life might have been like for the warrior woman of Bj 581.

Using more evidence from the recent tests conducted on the remains, Brown traces her journey from Norway to the British Isles to Kiev then, finally, to Birka. Brown imagines the unnamed warrior meeting other prominent Viking women, such as Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, or Queen Olga, ruler of the Rus Vikings in Kiev. She also explores the Viking sagas and contemporary sources with a new lens.

How did you initially get interested in Vikings—and female Vikings in particular?

When I went to college, I actually wanted to study fantasy writing and, you know, learn to write like Tolkien. I learned very quickly that that was not appropriate for an English major in the 1970s, so I decided to study what Tolkien studied, and he was a professor at Oxford University, teaching Old English and Old Norse. So I started reading all of the Icelandic sagas that I could find in translation. And when I ran out of the English versions, I learned Old Norse so that I could read the rest of them.

One of the things I liked about [the sagas] the most was that they had really interesting women characters. There’s a queen in Norway who appears in about 11 sagas, Queen Gunnhild, Mother of Kings. She led armies. She devised war strategy. And then I was looking at the valkyries and the shieldmaids and thinking, you know, these are really interesting people that have always been considered to be mythological.

So when I learned in 2017 that one of the most famous Viking warrior burials turned out to be the burial of a woman, that just absolutely dazzled my imagination.

Is this the first confirmed grave of a female warrior that we have?

This is the one that has the best proof. There are one or two others that have since been DNA tested and proven to be female. But in each of these cases, it’s hard to say if the person in the grave, whether male or female, actually was a warrior, or if the object that we are interpreting as a weapon was used for hunting or for some other purpose.

In this case, it’s every Viking weapon known to history. So it’s such a clear result. And the DNA was so completely female.

When Stolpe discovered the Viking gravesite Bj 581 in 1887, he assumed the remains were of a man. That assumption was shown to be wrong 140 years later. Rapp Halour / Alamy Stock Photo

What do we know about the life of the Viking warrior woman in Bj 581?

In 2017, by testing her bones and her teeth, [scholars] could say she was between 30 and 40 years old when she died. They could also tell that she ate well all of her life. So she came from a rich family or maybe even a royal one. She was also quite tall, about 5’7”. By the minerals in her inner teeth, [scholars can determine] she may have come from southern Sweden or Norway, and also that she went west maybe as far as the British Isles before her molars finished forming. She didn’t arrive in Birka until she was 16.

We also have her weapons and a little bit of clothing that were found in the grave. And these link her to what is known as the Vikings’ East Way, which was the trade route from Sweden to the Silk Road.

We can link, through the artifacts and through the bones, that she could have traveled from as far west as Dublin to as far east as at least Kiev in the 30 to 40 years of her life.

How do we know that there were Viking warrior women?

They are mentioned many, many, many times in the literature. In most cases, they have been dismissed as mythological because, of course, we know warriors were men. But we don’t know that. That is an assumption that is based on traditional Victorian ideas that because women are mothers, they’re nurturing, they’re peacemakers, and they don’t fight.

That’s not historically true. Women have always fought. And they appear in most cultures until the 1800s, when Viking studies and archaeology pretty much started. So we sort of have this problem of bias in our earliest textbooks.

But now we have actual scientific proof of one warrior woman in the Viking Age. And as the scientists who did the study say they would be very surprised if she was the only one.

This small female Viking warrior figurine discovered in Harby, Denmark, has been interpreted as a mythological valkyrie. John Lee / National Museum of Denmark

There’s this assumption that the warrior men of myth must have been based on real people, but it’s not the same for the mythical warrior women. Why is that?

It’s just an assumption based on what people think women are like. Most of the material we have from the Middle Ages was written by men, and most of the material we have until the 1950s was written by men, and women are slowly making their way into the field of Viking scholarship. But many of them are still working under the assumptions that they were taught.

I noticed when I went back and reread some of the sagas in Icelandic that there wasn’t this clear distinction between the warrior women being mythological and the warrior men being human. When you actually look at the old Norse text, there’s a lot of words that have been translated as “men” that actually mean “people,” but it’s always been translated as “men” because it’s a warrior situation.

If you’re translating, you have to make decisions and sometimes your decisions have repercussions that you don’t expect, like writing women out of the history.

By the time Hjalmar Stolpe excavated Bj 581, he had become adept at recognizing where graves could be found in the hummocky Birka landscape. WS Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

Is it possible for historians to remove all of those biases?

No, I don’t think it is. I think we all are looking through our own lenses. But we have to revisit those sources every generation to see past biases. So when you have layer after layer after layer of removing biases, you may get closer to the truth.

What most surprised you in the course of researching your book?

One of the controversies right now in Viking studies is should we really be talking about men and women at all? Maybe there were all kinds of different genders. We don’t know if there were more than two genders in the Viking age. Maybe it was a spectrum.

If you look at this one group of sagas called the Sagas of Ancient Times that are often overlooked because they have all these fabulous creatures in them, like dragons and warrior women. It’s really interesting [because] these girls grow up wanting to be warriors. They’re constantly disobeying and trying to run off and join Viking bands. But when they do run off and join the Viking band, or, in another case, become the king of a town, they insist on being called by a male name and use male pronouns.

So it was very shocking to me to go back and read it in the original and say, “Wow, all this richness was lost in the translation.”

#Nancy Marie Brown #The Real Valkyrie #Books by women #Books about women #Atlas Obscura #She Was There #Sweden #Birka #grave Bj 581 #Warrior women #Vikings’ East Way

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abwwia · 2 months ago

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Jan Nelson, Walking in tall grass, Shelby 2, 2011, oil on linen, 79 h cm, 56 w cm, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, warwick and Jane Flecknoe Bequest Fund 2015 © Jan Nelson/Copyright Agency

Jan Nelson (born 1955) is an Australian artist who works in sculpture, photography and painting. She is best known for her hyper real images of adolescents. She has exhibited widely in Australia as well as Paris and Brazil. Her works are in the collections of Australian galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, as well as major regional galleries. She represented Australia in the XXV biennale in São Paulo, Brazil.

#Jan Nelson #art by women #art

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gemsofgreece · 11 months ago

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Can you make a post about the evolution of Greek art from the ancient times until now in modern age?

Because we often talk about the evolution of art but unfortunately we don't appreciate after ancient times the other art movements Greece went through the centuries.

That’s true! I am sorry for taking ages to answer this but I don't know how it could take me less anyway hahaha I made this post with summaries about all artistic eras in Greek history. I have most of it under a cut because with the addition of pictures it got super long, but if you are interested in the history of art I recommend giving it a try! I took advantage of all 30 pictures that can be possibly attached in a tumblr post and I tried to cover as many eras and art styles as possible, nearly dying in the process ngl XD I dedicated a few more pictures in modern art, a) because that was the ask and b) because there is more diversity in the styles that are used and the works that are available to us in great condition in modern times.

History of Greek Art

Greek Neolithic Art (c. 7000 - 3200 BC)

Obviously, with this term we don’t mean there were people identifying as Greeks in Neolithic times, but it defines the Neolithic art corresponding to the Greek territory. Art in this era is mostly functional, there are progressively more and more defined designs on clay pots, tools and other utility items. Clay and obsidian are the most used materials.

Clay vase with polychrome decoration, Dimini, Magnesia, Late or Final Neolithic (5300-3300 BC).

Cycladic Art (3300 - 1100 BC)

The art of the Cycladic civilisation of the Aegean Islands is characterized by the use of local marble for the creation of sculptures, idols and figurines which were often associated to womanhood and female deities. Cycladic art has a unique way of incidentally feeling very relevant, as it resembles modern minimalism.

Early Cycladic II (Keros-Syros culture, 2800–2300 BC)

Minoan Art (3000-1100 BC)

The advanced Minoan civilisation of Crete island was projecting its confidence and its vibrancy through its various arts. Minoan art was influenced by the earlier Egyptian and Near East cultures nearby and at its peak it overshadowed the rest of the contemporary cultures and their artistic movements in Greece. Colourful, with numerous scenes of everyday life and island life next to the sea, it was telling of the society’s prosperity.

The Bull-leaping fresco from Knossos, 1450 BC.

Mycenaean Art (c. 1750 - 1050 BC)

Mycenaean Art was very influenced by Minoan Art. Mycenaean art diverged and distinguished itself more in warcraft, metalwork, pottery and the use of gold. Even when similar, you can tell them apart from their themes, as Mycenaean art was significantly more war-centric.

The Mask of Agamemnon in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The mask likely was crafted around 1550 BC so it predates the time Agamemnon perhaps lived.

Geometric Art (1100 - 700 BC)

Corresponding to a period we have comparatively too little data about, the Geometric Period or the Homeric Age or the Greek Dark Ages, geometric art was characterized by the extensive use of geometric motifs in ceramics and vessels. During the late period, the art becomes narrative and starts featuring humans, animals and scenes meant to be interpreted by the viewer.

Detail from Geometric Krater from Dipylon Cemetery, Athens c. 750 BC Height 4 feet (Metropolitan Museum, New York)

Archaic Art (c. 800 - 480 BC)

The art of the archaic period became more naturalistic and representational. With eastern influences, it diverged from the geometric patterns and started developing more the black-figure technique and later the red-figure technique. This is also the earliest era of monumental sculpture.

Achilles and Ajax Playing a Board Game by Exekias, black-figure, ca. 540 B.C.

Kroisos Kouros, c. 530 B.C.

Classical Art (c. 480 - 323 BC)

Art in this era obtained a vitality and a sense of harmony. There is tremendous progress in portraying the human body. Red-figure technique definitively overshadows the use of the black-figure technique. Sculptures are notable for their naturalistic design and their grandeur.

The Diskobolos or Discus Thrower, Roman copy of a 450-440 BCE Greek bronze by Myron recovered from Emperor Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, Italy. (British Museum, London). Photo by Mary Harrsch.

Terracotta bell-krater, Orpheus among the Thracians, ca. 440 BCE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hellenistic Art (323 - 30 BCE)

Hellenistic art perfects classical art and adds more diversity and nuance to it, something that can be explained by the rapid geographical expansion of Greek influence through Alexander’s conquests. Sculpture, painting and architecture thrived whereas there is a decrease in vase painting. The Corinthian style starts getting popular. Sculpture becomes even more naturalistic and expresses emotion, suffering, old age and various other states of the human condition. Statues become more complex and extravagant. Everyday people start getting portrayed in art and sculpture without extreme beauty standards imposed. We know there was a huge rise in wall painting, landscape art, panel painting and mosaics.

Mosaic from Thmuis, Egypt, created by the Ancient Greek artist Sophilos (signature) in about 200 BC, now in the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria, Egypt. The woman depicted in the mosaic is the Ptolemaic Queen Berenike II (who ruled jointly with her husband Ptolemy III) as the personification of Alexandria.

Agesander, Athenodore and Polydore: Laocoön and His Sons, 1st century BC

Greco-Roman Art (30 BC - 330 AD)

This period is characterized by the almost entire and mutually influential merging of Greek and Roman artistic expression, in light of the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world. For this era, it is hard to find sources exclusively for Greek art, as often even art crafted by Greeks of the Roman Empire is described as Roman. In general, Greco-Roman art reinforces the new elements of Hellenistic art, however towards the end of the era, with the rise of early Christianity in the Eastern aka the Greek-influenced part of the empire, there are some gradual shifts in the art style towards modesty and spirituality that will in time lead to the Byzantine art. During this era mosaics become more loved than ever.

A mosaic from the island of Kos (the birthplace of Hippocrates) depicting Hippocrates (seated) and a fisherman greeting the god Asklepios (center) as he either arrives or disembarks from the island. Second or third century CE.

Introduction to Byzantine Art

Byzantine art originated and evolved from the now Christian Greek culture of the Eastern Roman Empire. Although the art produced in the Byzantine Empire was marked by periodic revivals of a classical aesthetic, it was above all marked by the development of a new aesthetic defined by its salient "abstract", or anti-naturalistic character. If classical art was marked by the attempt to create representations that mimicked reality as closely as possible, Byzantine art seems to have abandoned this attempt in favor of a more symbolic approach. The subject matter of monumental Byzantine art was primarily religious and imperial: the two themes are often combined.

Early Byzantine Art (330 - 842 AD)

The establishment of the Christian religion results in a new artistic movement, centered around the faith. However, ancient statuary remains appreciated. Most fundamental changes happen in monumental architecture, the illustration of manuscripts, ivory carving and silverwork. Exceptional mosaics become integral in artistic expression. The last 100 years of this period are defined by the Iconoclasm, which temporarily restricts entirely the previously thriving figural religious art.

Mosaics in the Rotunda of Thessaloniki, 4th - 6th century AD.

Macedonian Art & Komnenian Age (843 - 1204 AD)

These artistic periods correspond to the middle Byzantine period. After the end of the Iconoclasm, there is a revival in the arts. The art of this period is frequently called Macedonian art, because it occurred during the Macedonian imperial dynasty which generally brought a lot of prosperity in the empire. There was a revival of interest in the depiction of subjects from classical Greek mythology and in the use of Hellenistic styles to depict religious subjects. The Macedonian period also saw a revival of the late antique technique of ivory carving. The following Komnenian dynasty were great patrons of the arts, and with their support Byzantine artists continued to move in the direction of greater humanism and emotion. Ivory sculpture and other expensive mediums of art gradually gave way to frescoes and icons, which for the first time gained widespread popularity across the Empire. Apart from painted icons, there were other varieties - notably the mosaic and ceramic ones.

Paris Psalter, 10th century AD. Prophet Isaiah from the Old Testament in the company of the symbolisms for night (clear inspiration drawn from the ancient deity Nyx) and morning (Orthros, not to be confused with the mythological creature).

Palaeologan Renaissance (1261 - 1453)

The Palaeologan Renaissance is the final period in the development of Byzantine art. Coinciding with the reign of the Palaeologi, the last dynasty to rule the Byzantine Empire (1261–1453), it was an attempt to restore Byzantine self-confidence and cultural prestige after the empire had endured a long period of foreign occupation. The legacy of this era is observable both in Greek culture after the empire's fall and in the Italian Renaissance. Contemporary trends in church painting favored intricate narrative cycles, both in fresco and in sequences of icons. The word "icon" became increasingly associated with wooden panel painting, which became more frequent and diverse than fresco and mosaics. Small icons were also made in quantity, most often as private devotional objects.

Detail of Anástasis (Resurrection) fresco, c. 1316–1321, Chora church, Constantinople (Istanbul) (photo: byzantologist).

Cretan School (15th - 17th century)

Cretan School describes an important school of icon painting, under the umbrella of post-Byzantine art, which flourished while Crete was under Venetian rule during the Late Middle Ages, reaching its climax after the Fall of Constantinople, becoming the central force in Greek painting during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. By the late 15th century, Cretan artists had established a distinct icon-painting style, distinguished by "the precise outlines, the modelling of the flesh with dark brown underpaint, the bright colours in the garments, the geometrical treatment of the drapery and, finally, the balanced articulation of the composition". Contemporary documents refer to two styles in painting: the maniera greca (in line with the Byzantine idiom) and the maniera latina (in accordance with Western techniques), which artists knew and utilized according to the circumstances. Sometimes both styles could be found in the same icon. The most famous product of the school was the painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, internationally known as El Greco, whose art evolved and diverged significantly in his later years when he moved in Spain and was involved in the Spanish Renaissance, and though it often alienated his western contemporary artists, nowadays it is viewed as an incidental early birth of Impressionism in the mid of the Renaissance’s peak.

Icon by Andreas Pavias (1440-1510), Cretan School, from Candia (Venetian Kingdom of Crete). The Latin inscription suggests the icon was meant for commercial purposes in Western Europe. National Museum, Athens. (Source: https://russianicons.wordpress.com/tag/cretan-school/)

Crucifixion (detail), El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), ca. 1604 - 1614.

Heptanesian School (17th - 19th century)

The Heptanesian school succeeded the Cretan School as the leading school of Greek post-Byzantine painting after Crete fell to the Ottomans in 1669. Like the Cretan school, it combined Byzantine traditions with an increasing Western European artistic influence and also saw the first significant depiction of secular subjects. The center of Greek art migrated urgently to the Heptanese (Ionian) islands but countless Greek artists were influenced by the school including the ones living throughout the Greek communities in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the world. Greek art was no longer limited to the traditional maniera greca dominant in the Cretan School. Furthermore, the Heptanesian school was the basis for the emergence of new artistic movements such as the Greek Rocco and Greek Neoclassicism. The movement featured a mixture of brilliant artists.

Archangel Michael, Panagiotis Doxaras, 18th century.

Greek Romanticism (19th century)

Modern Greek art, after the establishment of the Greek Kingdom, began to be developed around the time of Romanticism. Greek artists absorbed many elements from their European colleagues, resulting in the culmination of the distinctive style of Greek Romantic art, inspired by revolutionary ideals as well as the country's geography and history.

Vryzakis Theodoros, The Exodus from Missolonghi, 1853. National Gallery, Athens.

The Munich School (19th century Academic Realism)

After centuries of Ottoman rule, few opportunities for an education in the arts existed in the newly independent Greece, so studying abroad was imperative for artists. The most important artistic movement of Greek art in the 19th century was academic realism, often called in Greece "the Munich School" because of the strong influence from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Munich where many Greek artists trained. In academic realism the imperative is the ethography, the representation of urban and/or rural life with a special attention in the depiction of architectural elements, the traditional cloth and the various objects. Munich School painters were specialized on portraiture, landscape painting and still life. The Munich school is characterized by a naturalistic style and dark chiaroscuro. Meanwhile, at the time we observe the emergence of Greek neoclassicism and naturalism in sculpture.

Nikolaos Gyzis, Learning by heart, 1883.

Rallis Theodoros, The Booty, before 1906.

20th Century Modern & Contemporary Greek Art

At the beginning of the 20th century the interest of painters turned toward the study of light and color. Gradually the impressionists and other modern schools increased their influence. The interest of Greek painters, artists changes from historical representations to Greek landscapes with an emphasis on light and colours so abundant in Greece. Representatives of this artistic change introduce historical, religious and mythological elements that allow the classification of Greek painting into modern art. The era of the 1930s was a landmark for the Greek painters. The second half of the 20th century has seen a range of acclaimed Greek artists too serving the movements of surrealism, metaphysical art, kinetic art, Arte Povera, abstract excessionism and kinetic sculpture.

Yiannis Moralis, Two friends, 1946.

Art by Giannis Gaitis (1923-1984), famous for his uniformed little men.

By Yorghos Stathopoulos (1944 - )

Art (detail) by Nikos Engonopoulos (1907 - 1985)

Folk, Modern Ecclesiastical and Secular Post-Byzantine Art

Ecclesiastical art, church architecture, holy painting and hymnology follow the order of Greek Byzantine tradition intact. Byzantine influence also remained pivotal in folk and secular art and it currently seems to enjoy a rise in national and international interest about it.

A modern depiction of the legendary hero Digenes Akritas depicted in the style of a Byzantine icon by Greek artist Dimitrios Skourtelis. Credit: Dimitrios Skourtelis / Reddit

Erotokritos and Aretousa by folk artist Theophilos (1870-1934)

Example of Modern Greek Orthodox murals, Church of St. Nicholas.

Ancient Greek philosophers depicted in iconographic fashion in one of Meteora’s monasteries. Each is holding a quote from his work that seems to foreshadow Christ. Shown from left to right are: Homer, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato and Plutarch. This is not as weird as it may initially seem: it was a recurrent belief throughout the history of Christian Greek Orthodoxy that the great philosophers of the world heralded Jesus' birth in their writings - it was part of the eras of biggest reconciliation between Greek Byzantinism and Classicism.

Prophet Elijah icon with Chariot of Fire, Handmade Greek Orthodox icon, unknown iconographer. Source

If you see this, thanks very much for reading this post. Hope you enjoyed!

#greece #art #europe #history #culture #greek art #artists #greek culture #history of art #classical art #ancient greek art #byzantine greek art #christian art #orthodox art #modern art #modern greek art #anon #ask

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blueiscoool · 6 months ago

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The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft

Five things you probably didn’t know about the biggest art heist in history

Most art galleries and museums are famous for the art they contain. London’s National Gallery has Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”; “The Starry Night” meanwhile, is held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, in good company alongside Salvador Dalì’s melting clocks, Andy Warhol’s soup cans and Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, however, is now more famous for the artwork that is not there, or at least, that is no longer there.

On March 18 1990 the museum fell prey to history’s biggest art heist. Thirteen works of art estimated to be worth over half a billion dollars — including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer — were stolen in the middle of the night, while the two security guards sat in the basement bound in duct tape.

The robbery is a treasure trove of surprising facts and unexpected plot twists. Here are five things that make the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and its famous theft, so interesting.

The woman behind the building:

Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum’s founder and namesake, is a fascinating character. The daughter and eventual widow of two successful businessmen, Gardner was a philanthropist and art collector who built the museum to house her stash.

“When she opened the museum in 1903 she mandated that it be free of charge, to gain the appreciation and the attendance of all of Boston,” Stephan Kurkjian, author of “Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist”, said in the programme. “Her museum, at that point in time, was the largest collection of art by a private individual in America.”

Gardner also had links to the fledgling campaign for women’s political rights. The museum displays the photographs and letters of her friend Julia Ward Howe, an organizer of two US suffrage societies, and a print of Ethel Smyth, a composer and close friend of the English Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

Gardner met Smyth through their mutual friend, the painter John Singer Sargent, whose portrait of Gardener raised eyebrows for the low-cut neckline he gave her.

Gardner seemed to enjoy flirting with scandal and gossip: she once arrived at a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance in a hat band emblazoned with the name of her favorite baseball team, Red Sox, and an illustration in a January 1897 edition of the Boston Globe showed her apparently taking one of Boston Zoo’s lions for a walk.

Somewhat ironically, when the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, Gardner told her museum guards that, if they saw anyone trying to rob them, they should shoot to kill.

The art not taken:

The thieves’ loot is estimated to be worth over half a billion dollars. However, they left the building’s most expensive artifact: “The Rape of Europa” by Titian, which Gardner bought from a London art gallery in 1896, then a record price for an old master painting.

Why commit history’s greatest art heist and leave without the priciest piece in the museum? Well, size may have played a role. The largest artwork taken was Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” famous for being Rembrandt’s only seascape and measures roughly 5x4 feet. “The Rape of Europa,” meanwhile, is larger, at nearly 6x7 feet.

The Napoleon factor:

Around 2005, the investigation into the stolen artworks took a detour to the French island of Corsica in the Meditteranean Sea. Two Frenchmen with alleged ties to the Corsican mob were trying to sell two paintings: a Rembrandt and a Vermeer. Former FBI Special Agent Bob Wittman was involved in a sting to try and buy them — but the operation eventually fell apart when the men were arrested for selling art taken from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice instead.

Why would “Corsican mobsters,” as correspondent Randi Kaye described them in the programme, be interested in robbing a Boston art museum? The answer could lie in the Bronze Eagle Finial, the 10-inch ornament stolen from the top of a Napoleonic flag during the heist.

“It was sort of an odd choice for the thieves to take (the Finial),” Kaye said, “but it turns out that Corsica is essentially the homeland of Napoleon.” The French emperor was born on the island in 1769, and a national museum is now housed in his former family home.

“It is a very compelling notion,” Kelly Horan, Deputy Editor of the Boston Globe, said in the programme, “that a Corsican band of gangsters might have tried to steal back their flag and pull off the entire rest of the heist in the process.”

A rock’n’roll suspect:

March 18 1990 was not the first time a Rembrandt had been stolen from a Boston museum. In 1975, career criminal and art thief Myles Connor walked into Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and walked out with a Rembrandt tucked into his oversized coat pocket. He was the FBI’s first suspect in the Gardner case, however the walls of federal prison — where he was incarcerated on drugs charges — gave him a pretty solid alibi.

When he wasn’t lifting famous artworks from their displays, Connor was a musician. It was through gigging that he met Al Dotoli, who worked with stars including Frank Sinatra and Liza Minelli.

In 1976 Connor was jailed for a separate art theft committed in Maine. Hoping to use his stolen Rembrandt to leverage a lesser sentence, he needed Dotoli — who was on tour with Dionne Warwick — to turn the painting in to the authorities on his behalf.

An invisible thief?

One of the stolen artworks, Édouard Manet’s “Chez Tortoni,” was taken from the museum’s Blue Room on the first floor. The painting stands out for two reasons, the first being its frame. The thieves left almost all of the frames behind, cutting some out of the front.

“To even leave remnants of the painting(s) behind was savage,” Horan said. “In my mind, it’s sort of like slashing someone’s throat.”

The “Chez Tortoni” frame was unusual for where it was left, though: not in the room it was stolen from, but in the chair of the security office downstairs. Even more remarkable, not a single motion detector was set off in the Blue Room. Bar investigating the possibility of ghost robbers, investigators wondered if this pointed to the plot being an inside job.

“At the FBI we found that about 89% of museum institutional heists are inside jobs,” Wittman said. “That’s how these things get stolen.”

By Caitlin Chatterton.

#The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft #The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston #Rembrandt #Govert Flinck #Édouard Manet #Johannes Vermeer #Edgar Degas #stolen art #looted art #painter #painting #art #artist #art work #art world #art news #long post #long reads

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theaskew · 10 months ago

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Ģederts Eliass (Latvian, 1887-1975, lived and worked in Riga, Latvia), Pie spoguļa (By the Mirror), 1918. (Source: Latvian National Museum of Art, Rīga, Latvija)

#art #artwork #modern art #contemporary art #modern artwork #contemporary artwork #20th century modern art #20th century contemporary art #Latvian art #Latvian artwork #modern Latvian art #contemporary latvian art #modernist Latvia #Latvian artist #Latvian painter #Ģederts Eliass #Latvian National Museum of Art #Latvian modernism

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hairpintvrns · 3 months ago

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TERRY LOWENSTEIN + instagram profile.

Terry recently created an account on Instagram, making use of their moniker in the forums of old (Web 2.0), everydayterry. They follow exactly five people (because why would they follow anyone else if they could just text?) but on account of a few of their bird drawings going viral, they have gained a semi-decent following. Their way of speaking has led people to assume that they were a 70-year-old grandfather, to which they say, well, the public is only about 17 years short.

DESCRIPTION:

Top left: Terry's sketch of a loggerhead shrike. (photo source.)

Top middle: Terry's watercolor drawing of a yellow-rumped warbler. (photo source.)

Top right: Terry's illustration of a gunnison sage grouse.

Middle left: A photo of Opus 40 by Harvey Fite, taken in their travels. (photo source.)

Middle: An illustration of the Beth Sholom Synagogue, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Terry's own rendering.

Middle right: Terry's watercolor sketch of yet another yellow-rumped warbler.

Bottom left: A photo from the Glenstone Museum, which houses both contemporary and modern art, taken in their travels. (photo source.)

Bottom middle: A photo showing the tri-material facade of the National History Museum of Utah, taken in their travels. (photo source)

Bottom right: The First Baptist Church in Columbus, Indiana, considered to be a mecca for modernist architecture, taken in their travels. (photo source.)

#musings. terry #socials. terry #//let it be shown on the record that soph bullied me into making this #//not to out myself as an ho/t/d fan but this was inspired by rha//enicent fic <3

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creations-by-chaosfay · 11 days ago

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#Quilt museum #quilt #quilting #sewing #museum

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southeastasianists · 8 months ago

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Often described as the world’s largest Buddhist monument, Borobudur rises from the jungles of central Java: a nine-leveled step pyramid decorated with hundreds of Buddha statues and more than 2,000 carved stone relief panels. Completed in 835 AD by Buddhist monarchs who were repurposing an earlier Hindu structure, Borobudur was erected as “a testament to the greatness of Buddhism and the king who built it,” says religion scholar and Borobudur expert Uday Dokras.

Though Buddhists make up less than one percent of Indonesia’s population today, Borobudur still functions as a holy site of pilgrimage, as well as a popular tourist destination. But for the Indonesian Gastronomy Community (IGC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating Indonesian food culture, Borobudur is “not just a temple that people can visit,” says IGC chair Ria Musiawan. The structure’s meticulous relief carvings, which depict scenes of daily life for all levels of ninth-century Javanese society, provide a vital source of information about the people who created it. Borobudur can tell us how the inhabitants of Java’s ancient Mataram kingdom lived, worked, worshiped, and—as the IGC demonstrated in an event series that ended in 2023—ate.

The IGC sees food as a way to unite Indonesians, but the organization also considers international gastrodiplomacy as a part of their mission. Globally, Indonesian food is less well-known than other Southeast Asian cuisines, but the country’s government has recently made efforts to boost its reputation, declaring not one, but five official national dishes in 2018. To promote Indonesian cuisine, the IGC organizes online and in-person events based around both modern and historical Indonesian food. In 2022, they launched an educational series entitled Gastronosia: From Borobudur to the World. The first event in the series was a virtual talk, but subsequent dates included in-person dinners, with a menu inspired by the reliefs of Borobudur and written inscriptions from contemporary Javanese sites.

In collaboration with Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other partner organizations, the first meal in the Gastronosia series was, fittingly, held at Borobudur, with a small group of guests. The largest event, which hosted 100 guests at the National Museum in Jakarta, aimed to recreate a type of ancient royal feast known as a Mahamangsa in Old Javanese, meaning “the food of kings.” The IGC’s Mahamangsa appeared alongside a multimedia museum exhibition, with video screens depicting the art of ancient Mataram that inspired the menu and displays of historical cooking tools, such as woven baskets for winnowing and steaming rice. Another event, held at Kembang Goela Restaurant, featured more than 50 international ambassadors and diplomats invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

But how does one translate 1,000-year-old stone carvings into a modern menu that’s not only historically accurate, but appetizing? “We have to have this very wide imagination,” says Musiawan. “You only see the relief [depicting] the food…but you cannot find out how it tastes.” The IGC designed and tested a Gastronosia menu with the help of Chef Sumartoyo of Bale Raos Restaurant in Yogyakarta, and Riris Purbasari, an archaeologist from the Central Java Province Cultural Heritage Preservation Center, who had been researching the food of Borobudur’s reliefs since 2017.

The range of human activities depicted in the reliefs of Borobudur is so wide that it has inspired research in areas of study stretching from music to weaponry. There have even been seaworthy reconstructions based on the “Borobudur Ships” displayed on the site’s lower levels, exquisitely rendered vessels like the ones that facilitated trade in ancient Southeast Asia. So it’s no surprise that Borobudur has no shortage of depictions of food-related scenes, from village agricultural labor, to the splendor of a royal Mahamangsa, to a bustling urban marketplace. Baskets of tropical fruit, nets full of fish, and even some modern Indonesian dishes are recognizable in the reliefs, such as tumpeng, a tall cone of rice surrounded by side dishes, which is still prepared for special occasions. Some images are allegories for Buddhist concepts, providing what Borobudur archaeologist John Mikic called “a visual aid for teaching a gentle philosophy of life." Uday Dokras suggests that these diverse scenes might have been chosen to help ancient visitors “identify with their own life,” making the monument’s unique religious messaging relatable. The reliefs illustrate ascending levels of enlightenment, so that visitors walk the path of life outlined by the Buddha’s teachings: from a turbulent world ruled by earthly desires at the lowest level, to tranquil nirvana at the summit.

Musiawan says that the IGC research team combined information from Borobudur with inscriptions from other Javanese sites of the same era that referenced royal banquets. While Borobudur’s reliefs show activities like farming, hunting, fishing, and dining, fine details of the food on plates or in baskets can be difficult to make out, especially since the painted plaster that originally covered the stone has long-since faded. Ninth-century court records etched into copper sheets or stone for posterity—some accidentally uncovered by modern construction projects—helped fill in the blanks when it came to what exactly people were eating. These inscriptions describe the royal banquets of ancient Mataram as huge events: One that served as a key inspiration for the IGC featured 57 sacks of rice, six water buffalo, and 100 chickens. There are no known written recipes from the era, but some writings provide enough detail for dishes to be approximated, such as freshwater eel “grilled with sweet spices” or ground buffalo meatballs seasoned with “a touch of sweetness,” in the words of the inscriptions, both of which were served at Gastronosia events.

Sugar appears to have been an important component in ancient Mataram’s royal feasts: A survey of food mentions across Old Javanese royal inscriptions revealed 34 kinds of sweets out of 107 named dishes. Gastronosia’s Mahamangsa ended with dwadal, a sticky palm-sugar toffee known as dodol in modern Indonesian, and an array of tropical fruits native to Java such as jackfruit and durian. Other dishes recreated by the IGC included catfish stewed in coconut milk, stir-fried banana-tree core, and kinca, an ancient alcohol made from fermented tamarind, which was offered alongside juice from the lychee-like toddy palm fruit as an alcohol-free option.

Musiawan describes the hunting of animals such as deer, boar, and water buffalo as an important source of meat in ninth-century Java. Domestic cattle were not eaten, she explains, because the people of ancient Mataram “believed that cows have religious value.” While Gastronosia’s events served wild game and foraged wild greens, rice also featured prominently, a key staple in Mataram that forms the subject of several of Borobudur’s reliefs. It was the mastery of rice cultivation that allowed Mataram to support a large population and become a regional power in ninth-century Southeast Asia. Rice’s importance as a staple crop also led to its inclusion in religious rituals; Dokras explains that in many regions of Asia, rice is still an essential component of the Buddhist temple offerings known as prasad.

The indigenous Southeast Asian ingredients used in Gastronosia’s Mahamangsa included some still widely-popular today, such as coconut, alongside others that have fallen into obscurity, like the water plant genjer or “yellow velvetleaf.” Musiawan acknowledges that modern diners might find some reconstructed ancient dishes “very, very simple” compared to what they’re used to “because of many ingredients we have [now] that weren’t there before.” But in other cases, ninth-century chefs were able to achieve similar flavors to modern Indonesian food by using their own native ingredients. Spiciness is a notable example. Today, chillies are near-ubiquitous in Indonesian cuisine, and Java is especially known for its sambal, a spicy relish-like condiment that combines pounded chillies with shallots, garlic, and other ingredients. But in ancient Mataram, sambal was made with native hot spices, such as several kinds of ginger; andaliman, a dried tree-berry with a mouth-numbing effect like the related Sichuan pepper; and cabya or Javanese long pepper. “It tastes different than the chili now,” Musiawan says of cabya, “but it gives the same hot sensation.” Chillies, introduced in the early modern era by European traders, are still called cabai in Indonesian, a name derived from the native cabya they supplanted.

Gastronosia is just the beginning of IGC’s plans to explore Indonesian food history through interactive events. Next, they intend to do a series on the food of ancient Bali. By delving into the historic roots of dishes Indonesians know and love, the IGC hopes to get both Indonesians and foreigners curious about the country’s history, and dispel preconceptions about what life was like long ago. Musiawan says some guests didn’t expect to enjoy the diet of a ninth-century Javanese noble as much as they did. Before experiencing Gastronosia, she says, “They thought that the food couldn't be eaten.” But afterward, “They’re glad that, actually, it's very delicious.”

#Southeast Asia #Indonesia #Ancient History #Mataram #Food History #Gastronomy #Borobudur

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