#walters art museum

[lionofchaeronea]

Octagonal reliquary (bone on a wooden frame, with gilding and red and green paste inlays), made by an unknown artist active in Cologne (Köln), Germany, in the mid-13th century. Each face of the reliquary features a sculpted image of an apostle.

Dimensions: 20 × 13.2 × 13.3 cm (7.8 × 5.1 × 5.2 in). Location: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, USA. Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.

[didoofcarthage]

The Death of Caesar by Jean-Léon Gérôme. French, 1858-1867. Oil on canvas. In the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

According to Suetonius in his Vita Divi Juli (translated by J.C. Rolfe):

As he took his seat, the conspirators gathered about him as if to pay their respects, and straightway Tillius Cimber, who had assumed the lead, came nearer as though to ask something; and when Caesar with a gesture put him off to another time, Cimber caught his toga by both shoulders; then as Caesar cried, "Why, this is violence!" one of the Cascas stabbed him from one side just below the throat.​ Caesar caught Casca's arm and ran it through with his stylus,​ but as he tried to leap to his feet, he was stopped by another wound. When he saw that he was beset on every side by drawn daggers, he muffled his head in his robe, and at the same time drew down its lap to his feet with his left hand, in order to fall more decently, with the lower part of his body also covered. And in this wise he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, "You too, my child?"​ All the conspirators made off, and he lay there lifeless for some time, and finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down. And of so many wounds none turned out to be mortal, in the opinion of the physician Antistius, except the second one in the breast.

[thatshowthingstarted]

The "Rubens Vase," an Agate Hardstone Carving of c. A.D. 400,

Carved in high relief from a single piece of agate, this extraordinary vase was most likely created in an imperial workshop for a Byzantine emperor.

It made its way to France, probably carried off as treasure after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, where it passed through the hands of some of the most renowned collectors of western Europe, including the Dukes of Anjou and King Charles V of France.

In 1619, the vase was purchased by the great Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). A drawing that he made of it is now in Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, inv. 5430.

The subsequent fate of the vase before the 19th century is obscure. The gold mount around its rim is struck with a French gold-standard mark used in 1809-1819 and with the guarantee stamp of the French departement of Ain.

A similar late Roman agate vessel, the "Waddesdon Vase" or "Cellini Vase," in now in the British Museum, London.

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.

[arthistoryanimalia]

#RattlesnakeAppreciationDay :

Knotted Rattlesnake

Aztec, Postclassic 1100-1520 CE

Basalt, H 11 1/4 x W 16 in. (28.5 x 40.64 cm)

The Walters Art Museum 29.2

“Compact and smoothly polished, this rattlesnake displays typical Aztec sculptural techniques. Both the musculature of this snake's body and its head have been sculpted in great detail. The eyes were probably once inlaid, and ferocious fangs descend from the snake's upper jaw. Snakes were powerful symbols throughout Mesoamerican history, linked with the sky, rain, and agriculture. Aztecs may have seen the snake's shedding of its skin as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth.”

[pointandshooter]

Hackerman House, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

photo: David Castenson

[blondebrainpowered]

Hellenistic burial necklace with butterfly pendant, symbolizing the soul. Gold, amethyst, chalcedony, emerald, rock crystal, pearl, and colored glass Late 1st-2nd century BC

It was found in 1891 in a tomb near (Pontic) Olbia, an important Greek colony on the Black Sea coast of modern Ukraine (west of the Chersonese). The piece dates to the Hellenistic period, 2nd-1st century BC (i.e., ca. 200-101 BC).

[baebeylik]

Horse Head. Parthian Iran. 2nd to 3rd Century CE.

The Walters Art Museum.

[empirearchives]

Napoleon’s mother had a watch made for her as she lost her eyesight that was designed for her to tell the time by touch instead of reading numbers.

According to the Walters Art Museum:

This unusual watch has no numbers, it belongs to a type called "montres à tact" or discrete watches. The clever design allows the time to be told by touch alone, feeling the four diamonds on the hour and the quarters, and the pearls that mark the remaining divisions of the twelve hours. The raised arrow, also in diamonds, contrasts with the smooth surrounding enamel, taking the place of watch hands. It was made for Maria Letizia Bonaparte, Napoleon’s mother, who lost her sight as she aged.

The case employs a process called guilloché, where subtle but kaleidoscopic effects are created through mechanical means. Geometric shapes are carved into metal by engine turning. The resulting patterns of fine lines are covered with transparent enamel, when light hits them it creates oscillating optic effects.

Pierre Benjamin Tavernier (Jeweler), Basile Charles Le Roy (Clockmaker), Early 1800s

[yama-bato]

via

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 Jeffrey Totaro 

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[lionofchaeronea]

Ivory crozier (staff of authority for a bishop or abbot), made by an unknown French artist in the 1350s. Side A depicts the Virgin and Child, attended by angels bearing candles. Side B depicts the crucified Christ, flanked by the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist. The crozier is now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, USA. Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.

[mythologypaintings]

Pandora

Artist: Alexandre Cabanel (French, 1823 - 1889) 

Date: 1873

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Description

Cabanel, a professor of painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, specialized in portraits of "High Society." Here, he depicts the Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson as Pandora, the woman in Greek mythology who opened a forbidden box, releasing all the troubles that afflict humanity.

[arthistoryanimalia]

Happy #WorldAnteaterDay!

From House of Fabergé menagerie, here is a diamond-eyed jasper anteater figure purchased by The Walters Art Museum founder Henry Walters on a trip to St. Petersburg in 1900. Now in the museum’s permanent collection.

Anteater

House of Fabergé (Russian, est. 1842) (Manufacturer)

Peter Carl Fabergé (1846-1920)

c. 1900

jasper, diamonds

The Walters Art Museum

"This tiny diamond-eyed anteater was purchased by Henry Walters, founder of the Walters Art Museum, on a trip to St. Petersburg in 1900. The House of Fabergé began making hardstone animals in the 1890s and they proved popular with their elite clients. Queen Alexandra (wife of the British King Edward VIl) built a large collection, and production peaked in the years immediately before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Objects such as this anteater were inspired by Japanese netsuke. Carl Fabergé owned over 500 of these. He married this admiration of Asian art with the rich Russian tradition of hardstone carving. The anteater is unusual among Fabergé's menagerie, although examples in bloodstone and quartz are also known.”

[pointandshooter]

Hackerman House, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

photo: David Castenson

[angelnumber27]

Chinese snuff bottle

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Thomas Couture (1815-1879) "Daydreams" (1859) Oil on canvas Located in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

[baebeylik]

Single leaf with Christ's entombment and resurrection. Lake Tana, Ethiopia. 14th Century CE.

The Walters Art Museum.