Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of Athens

Among the won­ders to behold at the Vat­i­can Muse­ums are the larg­er-than-life forms of the titans of Greek phi­los­o­phy. It’s wide­ly known that at the cen­ter of Raphael’s fres­co The School of Athens, which dom­i­nates one wall of the twelve Stanze di Raf­fael­lo in the Apos­tolic Palace, stand Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. In real­i­ty, of course, the two were not con­tem­po­raries: more than three decades sep­a­rat­ed the for­mer’s death from the lat­ter’s birth. But in Raphael’s artis­tic vision, great men (and pos­si­bly a great woman) of all gen­er­a­tions come togeth­er under the ban­ner of learn­ing, from Anax­i­man­der to Aver­roes, Epi­cu­rus to Euclid, and Par­menides to Pythago­ras.

Even in this com­pa­ny, the fig­ure sit­ting at the bot­tom of the steps catch­es one’s eye. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this, and gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne lays them out in his new Great Art Explained video on The School of Athens above.

It appears to rep­re­sent Her­a­cli­tus, the pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher asso­ci­at­ed with ideas like change and the uni­ty of oppo­sites, and a nat­ur­al can­di­date for inclu­sion in what amounts to a trans-tem­po­ral class por­trait of phi­los­o­phy. But Raphael seems to have added him lat­er, after that sec­tion of the pic­ture was already com­plete. An astute view­er may also notice Her­a­cli­tus’ hav­ing been ren­dered in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more mus­cu­lar style than that of the oth­er philoso­phers in the frame — a style more like the one on dis­play over in the Sis­tine Chapel.

In fact, Michelan­ge­lo was at work on his Sis­tine Chapel fres­coes at the very same time Raphael was paint­ing The School of Athens. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble, as Payne tells it, for Raphael to have stolen a glimpse of Michelan­gelo’s stun­ning work, then gone back and added Michelan­ge­lo-as-Her­a­cli­tus to his own com­po­si­tion in trib­ute. There was prece­dent for this choice: Raphael had already mod­eled Socrates after Leonar­do da Vin­ci (who was, incred­i­bly, also alive and active at the time), and even ren­dered the ancient painter Apelles as a self-por­trait. With The School of Athens, Payne says, Raphael was “posi­tion­ing ancient philoso­phers as pre­cur­sors to Chris­t­ian truth,” in line with the think­ing of the Renais­sance. In sub­tler ways, he was also empha­siz­ing how the genius of the past lives on — or is, rather, reborn — in the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

Artist Turns Famous Paint­ings, from Raphael to Mon­et to Licht­en­stein, Into Inno­v­a­tive Sound­scapes

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Story Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapestry Explained from Start to Finish

They say that his­to­ry is writ­ten by the vic­tors, but that isn’t always true: some­times it’s embroi­dered by the vic­tors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapes­try, which com­mem­o­rates the build-up to and suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of the Nor­man con­quest of Eng­land in 1066. Cre­at­ed not long after the events it depicts in what we now call the Unit­ed King­dom, the near­ly 230-foot-long cloth has been kept in France for most of its exis­tence. But as report­ed by Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Isa Far­fan, the Bayeux Tapes­try is now set for a year­long sojourn back in its home­land, and at no less an august insti­tu­tion than the British Muse­um, after spend­ing the bet­ter part of a mil­len­ni­um abroad.

In a style that may strike twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry view­ers as a pre­de­ces­sor to the graph­ic nov­el — or even to the straight-ahead com­ic book, with its grotesque exag­ger­a­tions — the Bayeux Tapes­try’s embroi­dery tells the sto­ry, writes Far­fan, of “the vic­to­ry of William the Con­queror, the Duke of Nor­mandy, over Eng­land in the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. William assem­bled a fleet of ships filled with thou­sands of men and hors­es to cross the Eng­lish Chan­nel and suc­cess­ful­ly claimed the throne from the last Anglo-Sax­on king, Harold God­win­son.”

All this takes place over “58 scenes fea­tur­ing more than 600 wool-thread­ed peo­ple and 200 hors­es. Though it focus­es on the his­tor­i­cal bat­tle, the embroi­dery also reveals fix­tures of broad­er eleventh-cen­tu­ry life, includ­ing archi­tec­ture and armor, and includes almost 400 Latin words accom­pa­ny­ing the images.”

Those words are inter­pret­ed by YouTu­ber Lindy­beige in the video above, which offers a humor­ous ani­mat­ed tour of the full length of the Bayeux Tapes­try — or, in any case, a very close repli­ca made in Eng­land in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. The elab­o­rate­ness of its treat­ment under­scores that the Nor­man con­quest was one of the most momen­tous events, if not the most momen­tous event, in all of Eng­lish his­to­ry; the extent of its glo­ri­fi­ca­tion under­scores how much the con­querors felt the need to legit­imize their rule. Noth­ing would ever be the same for Eng­lish cul­ture, Eng­lish law, and even, as recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the Eng­lish lan­guage. If you go to Lon­don next year to behold the Bayeux Tapes­try for your­self, you’ll hear the usu­al ambi­ent grum­bling about the state of Eng­land — with a refreshed empha­sis, per­haps, on how wrong it all went after 1066.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Behold a Cre­ative Ani­ma­tion of the Bayeux Tapes­try

How Eng­land First Became Eng­land: An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry

The Bayeux Tapes­try Ani­mat­ed

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Albert Einstein Tells His Son That the Key to Learning & Happiness Is Losing Yourself in Creativity (or “Finding Flow”)

As one par­tic­u­lar­ly astute observ­er of human emo­tions might put it, it is a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged that we can’t all be Albert Ein­stein. In fact, none of us can. That unique expe­ri­ence was denied even Einstein’s son Hans Albert, though he did go on to his own dis­tin­guished career as an engi­neer and pro­fes­sor of hydraulics. Ein­stein father and son had a strained rela­tion­ship, yet the great physi­cist had a hand in his son’s suc­cess, inspir­ing him to pur­sue his sci­en­tif­ic pas­sion. But Einstein’s pater­nal encour­age­ment extend­ed fur­ther, beyond sci­en­tif­ic pur­suits and toward a gen­er­al the­o­ry of learn­ing and enjoy­ment that sug­gests we can be hap­pi­est and most pro­duc­tive when being most our­selves.

While liv­ing in Berlin in 1915, Ein­stein wrote a poignant let­ter to his son, just two days after fin­ish­ing his the­o­ry of gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty. His tone swings from buoy­ant to pained—lamenting his family’s “awk­ward” sep­a­ra­tion and propos­ing to spend more time with Albert, as he calls him. His son can “learn many good and beau­ti­ful things from me,” writes Ein­stein, “These days I have com­plet­ed one of the most beau­ti­ful works of my life.”

Ein­stein also writes, “I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and car­pen­try are in my opin­ion for your age the best pur­suits.” An ama­teur musi­cian him­self, Ein­stein under­stood the val­ue of devel­op­ing an infor­mal avo­ca­tion. “Main­ly play the things on the piano which please you,” he tells his son, “even if the teacher does not assign those.” Doing what you love, the way you like to do it, he goes on, “is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing some­thing with such enjoy­ment that you don’t notice that the time pass­es.”

This great theme of total immer­sion in a cre­ative endeav­or sur­faced sev­er­al decades lat­er in anoth­er scientist’s work, that of Hun­gar­i­an psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, described by Mar­tin Selig­man—for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association—as “the world’s lead­ing researcher” in the field of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy. Pre­sent­ed in his pop­u­lar TED talk above, and at more length in his books on the sub­ject, Csikszentmihalyi’s insights into human flour­ish­ing mir­ror Einstein’s: he calls such cre­ative immer­sion “flow,” or the state of “being com­plete­ly involved in an activ­i­ty for its own sake.”

The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, move­ment, and thought fol­lows inevitably from the pre­vi­ous one, like play­ing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.

Con­trary to our usu­al con­cep­tions of using one’s “skills to the utmost,” Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi tells us that the reward for enter­ing such a state is not the mate­r­i­al ben­e­fits it gen­er­ates, but the pos­i­tive emo­tions. These emo­tions, as Ein­stein the­o­rized, not only moti­vate us to become bet­ter, but they also pro­vide a source of mean­ing no amount of finan­cial gain above a min­i­mum lev­el can offer. “The lack of basic mate­r­i­al resources con­tributes to unhap­pi­ness,” Csikszentmihalyi’s data demon­strates, “but the increase in mate­r­i­al resources does not increase hap­pi­ness.” While none of us can be Ein­stein, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi tells us we can all ben­e­fit from Einstein’s advice, by doing what­ev­er we do to the best of our abil­i­ties and with­out any motive oth­er than sheer plea­sure.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Com­mand: Peak Per­for­mance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Min­utes

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

How to Get into a Cre­ative “Flow State”: A Short Mas­ter­class

How to Enter Flow State, Increase Your Abil­i­ty to Con­cen­trate, and Let Your Ego Fall Away : An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Rabbit Rides a Chariot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosaic (2nd century AD)

If you head to the Lou­vre, make sure you vis­it the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple. But then swing by the Depart­ment of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. There you might find (no guar­an­tee!) a Roman mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a rab­bit rid­ing a char­i­ot pulled by geese. Dis­cov­ered at Hadri­an’s vil­la in Tivoli, Italy, the mosa­ic dates back to the 2nd cen­tu­ry. About the mosa­ic, the His­to­ry Cool Kids writes:

This kind of humor­ous scene is an exam­ple of asária, a type of ancient visu­al joke where ani­mals behave like humans (anthro­po­mor­phism). Such mosaics were pop­u­lar in Roman domes­tic dec­o­ra­tion, often as floor or wall pan­els in vil­las and bath­hous­es.

This par­tic­u­lar mosa­ic is part of the Louvre’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. It illus­trates how Roman artists loved play­ful or satir­i­cal imagery along­side more seri­ous mytho­log­i­cal and real­is­tic scenes. The rab­bit, a sym­bol often asso­ci­at­ed with fer­til­i­ty and speed, paired with the absur­di­ty of it dri­ving a char­i­ot of geese, reflects both Roman wit and their fond­ness for dec­o­ra­tive exu­ber­ance.

Some schol­ars believe the mosa­ic plays on a line in Ovid’s Meta­mor­phoses: “Cytherea [Aphrodite] was rid­ing in her dain­ty char­i­ot, winged by her swans, across the mid­dle air mak­ing for Cyprus, when she heard afar Ado­nis’ dying groans, and thith­er turned her snowy birds.” But it’s hard to know for sure.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

The Medieval Man­u­script That Fea­tures “Yoda”, Killer Snails, Sav­age Rab­bits & More: Dis­cov­er The Smith­field Dec­re­tals

How a Mosa­ic from Caligula’s Par­ty Boat Became a Cof­fee Table in a New York City Apart­ment 50 Years Ago

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Glass Bowl in Per­fect Con­di­tion

 

How Four Masters—Michelangelo, Donatello, Verrocchio & Bernini—Sculpted David

More than a few vis­i­tors to Flo­rence make a bee­line to the Gal­le­ria del­l’Ac­cad­e­mia, and once inside, to Michelan­gelo’s David, the most famous sculp­ture in the world. But how many of them, one won­ders, then take the time to view the three oth­er Davids in that city alone? At the Bargel­lo, just ten min­utes’ walk away, reside two more sculp­tures of the young man who would be king of Israel and Judah, both of them by Michelan­gelo’s fel­low Renais­sance mas­ter Donatel­lo. The less renowned, he made of mar­ble in the late four­teen-hun­dreds; the more renowned, of bronze in the four­teen-for­ties, is the sub­ject of the Smarthis­to­ry video at the top of the post.

“For a thou­sand years, the Chris­t­ian West had looked to the soul as the place to focus. The body was seen as the path to cor­rup­tion, and so it was not to be cel­e­brat­ed,” says the video’s host Steven Zuck­er. “What we’re see­ing here is a return to ancient Greece and Rome’s love of the body, its respect for the body.”

And to the Flo­ren­tines of the mid-fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, as co-host Beth Har­ris explains, this par­tic­u­lar body was­n’t just that of “King David from the Bible,” but that of their own repub­lic as well. See­ing them­selves as the David-like under­dog vic­to­ri­ous over the Goliath that was the Duke of Milan, “they felt blessed and cho­sen by God” as the “heirs of the ancient Roman Repub­lic.”

Whether or not most every­day cit­i­zens of the Flo­ren­tine Repub­lic felt that way, the bank­ing Medici fam­i­ly, who effec­tive­ly ran the place for cen­turies, sure­ly must have. Also at the Bargel­lo is anoth­er of the Davids they com­mis­sioned, sculpt­ed in bronze by Andrea del Ver­roc­chio in the four­teen-sev­en­ties. “Ver­roc­chio gives us a very self-assured young man,” says Har­ris, with the beau­ty to be expect­ed of a work of this genre, but also with a cer­tain degree of anti-clas­si­cist ado­les­cent awk­ward­ness. In that, the work con­trasts with Bernini’s, though both artists cre­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous David, stand­ing over the head of Goliath. Michelan­ge­lo, of course, did things quite dif­fer­ent­ly thir­ty years lat­er, sculpt­ing a David out of mar­ble eter­nal­ly steel­ing him­self for the bat­tle, at just the moment when his colos­sal foe comes into view.

Donatel­lo, Ver­roc­chio, and Michelan­gelo’s Davids all date from the Renais­sance. The oth­er unig­nor­able sculp­ture in this tra­di­tion was cre­at­ed much lat­er, in the six­teen-twen­ties, and also far from Flo­rence. The David by Gian Loren­zo Berni­ni, who would become syn­ony­mous with the dra­mat­ic extrav­a­gance of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Rome, is “like a spring that’s about to unwind,” as Zuck­er puts it. Unlike when we behold Michelan­gelo’s con­tem­pla­tive ren­di­tion, Har­ris adds, “here, we’re emo­tion­al­ly, bod­i­ly involved,” not just because of the action pose, but also of the phys­i­cal effort evi­dent in the face. This was the Baroque era, when “the Catholic church is using art as a way to affirm and strength­en the faith of believ­ers.” Ideas about the pur­pose of art may have changed in the four cen­turies since, but that has­n’t stopped even the less­er-known Davids from receiv­ing a steady stream of impressed vis­i­tors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

How Michelangelo’s David Still Draws Admi­ra­tion and Con­tro­ver­sy Today

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

School Prin­ci­pal, Forced to Resign After Stu­dents Learn About Michelangelo’s “David,” Vis­its the Renais­sance Stat­ue in Flo­rence

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Discover the Only Painting Van Gogh Ever Sold During His Lifetime

It may have crossed your mind, while behold­ing paint­ings of Vin­cent van Gogh, that you’d like to own one your­self some­day. If so, you’ll have to get in line with more than a few bil­lion­aires, and even they may nev­er see one go up on the auc­tion block. This would prob­a­bly come as a sur­prise to van Gogh him­self, who died des­ti­tute — and prac­ti­cal­ly unknown — after an artis­tic career of just ten years. In that time, he man­aged to sell exact­ly one paint­ing, at least accord­ing to cer­tain def­i­n­i­tions of “sell.” Van Gogh did barter paint­ings for food and art sup­plies, and he did accept com­mis­sions, begin­ning with one from his art-deal­er uncle Cor. But as for sales made to non-rel­a­tives through an offi­cial show, we only know of one: La vigne rouge.

Known in Eng­lish as The Red Vine­yards near Arles, or sim­ply The Red Vine­yard, the paint­ing depicts a land­scape van Gogh came across “on a late after­noon walk with Paul Gau­guin on 28 Octo­ber 1888, five days after his friend’s arrival in Arles.” So writes Mar­tin Bai­ley at The Art News­pa­per, who adds that “pick­ing the grapes nor­mal­ly takes place in Sep­tem­ber in Provence, but the har­vest seems to have been late that year.”

To his broth­er Theo, Vin­cent described the scene thus: “A red vine­yard, com­plete­ly red like red wine. In the dis­tance it became yel­low, and then a green sky with a sun, fields vio­let and sparkling yel­low here and there after the rain in which the set­ting sun was reflect­ed.” The artist was not, how­ev­er, moved to set up his can­vas then and there; rather, he paint­ed the vine­yard the next month, from mem­o­ry.

Vin­cent let Theo hang the result­ing can­vas in his Paris apart­ment until he asked for it back in order to exhib­it it in the annu­al Brus­sels show put on by a group called Les Vingt in ear­ly 1890. The Red Vine­yards’ buy­er was one of their num­ber, a cer­tain Anna Boch, the sis­ter of van Gogh’s col­league in impres­sion­ism (and one­time por­trait sub­ject) Eugène Boch. Though she was no rela­tion, Anna did pay full stick­er price for the paint­ing, and van Gogh lat­er expressed some regret about not giv­ing her a “friend’s price.” But what­ev­er it cost her, it was sure­ly a steal com­pared to its val­ue today, after its pur­chase by a Russ­ian col­lec­tor, its rev­o­lu­tion­ary expro­pri­a­tion, and its long Sovi­et sup­pres­sion fol­lowed by proud exhi­bi­tion at Moscow’s Pushkin State Muse­um of Fine Arts — which, owing to the paint­ing’s fragili­ty, won’t even lend it out.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

1,500 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How 16th-Century Artist Joris Hoefnagel Made Insects Beautiful—and Changed Science Forever

In Eng­lish, most of the words we’d use to refer to insects sound off-putting at best and fear­some at worst, at least to those with­out an ento­mo­log­i­cal bent. Dutch, close a lin­guis­tic rela­tion though it may be, offers a more endear­ing alter­na­tive in beestjes, which refers to all these “lit­tle beasts” in which the artists and sci­en­tists of Europe start­ed to take a major inter­est in the late six­teenth cen­tu­ry. As was the style of that era, the mag­is­te­ria of art and sci­ence tend­ed to over­lap, a phe­nom­e­non nowhere more clear­ly reflect­ed — at least with regard to the insect king­dom — than in the work of Joris Hoef­nagel, a Flem­ish artist whose illus­tra­tions of beestjes com­bined beau­ty and accu­ra­cy in a man­ner nev­er seen before.


You can now see Hoef­nagel’s art up close at the exhi­bi­tion Lit­tle Beasts: Art, Won­der, and the Nat­ur­al World, which will be up at the Nation­al Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton, DC until ear­ly Novem­ber. If you won’t be able to make it out to the muse­um, have a look at the exhi­bi­tion’s web site, which shows off the splen­dor of Hoef­nagel’s work as pub­lished in The Four Ele­ments, a col­lec­tion of about 300 water­col­ors grouped into four vol­umes in the fif­teen-sev­en­ties and eight­ies, each one named for an ele­ment: Aqua con­tains water ani­mals; Ter­ra land ani­mals; Aier birds and plants; and Ignis, or “fire,” insects.

“We don’t real­ly know why Hoef­nagel put insects in the fire vol­ume,” says Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak in the new video above. “Maybe because both fire and insects sym­bol­ize trans­for­ma­tion.”


“What we do know,” Puschak adds, “is that these insect minia­tures are mag­nif­i­cent­ly ren­dered.” Hoef­nagel even made improve­ments on the nature illus­tra­tions of his artis­tic pre­de­ces­sor Albrecht Dür­er, whose own abil­i­ties to ren­der our world with fideli­ty had been regard­ed as near­ly super­hu­man. One par­tic­u­lar work that sur­pass­es Dür­er is Hoef­nagel’s depic­tion of a stag bee­tle, which he accom­pa­nied with the Latin inscrip­tion “SCARABEI UMBRA,” or “the shad­ow of the stag bee­tle”: pos­si­bly a ref­er­ence to the unprece­dent­ed real­ism of the insec­t’s shad­ow as Hoef­nagel ren­dered it, but in any case a com­mon say­ing at the time about hol­low threats. For how­ev­er fright­en­ing the stag bee­tle looked, as Hoef­nagel well knew, the actu­al crea­ture was gen­tle — just anoth­er wee beast­ie after all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Albrecht Dür­er Revealed in Four Self-Por­traits

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Cap­ti­vat­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Cre­ate Gold­en Sculp­tures

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Scientists Recreated Ancient Egypt’s Long-Lost Pigment, “Egyptian Blue”

Pho­to cour­tesy of Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty.

It’s become fash­ion­able, in recent years, to observe that we live in an increas­ing­ly beige-and-gray world from which all col­or is being drained. Whether or not that’s real­ly the case, all of us still enjoy easy access to a range of col­ors that nobody in the ancient world could have imag­ined, and not just through our screens. Look around you, and your eye will soon fall upon some object or anoth­er whose hue alone would have looked impos­si­bly exot­ic in the civ­i­liza­tion of, say, ancient Egypt. My cof­fee cup offers a sim­ple but vivid exam­ple, with its blue-green, and maybe yours does too.

“Most ancient pig­ments were derived from nat­ur­al resources — ochre, char­coal, or lime, for exam­ple,” writes Ben Seal at Carnegie Muse­ums of Pitts­burgh. “In some cas­es, Egyp­tians were able to use lapis lazuli, a meta­mor­phic rock that was only found in Afghanistan, to rep­re­sent the col­or blue.” But such a “cost-pro­hib­i­tive and com­plete­ly imprac­ti­cal” source, as Seal quotes Carnegie Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Egyp­tol­o­gist Lisa Haney describ­ing it, moti­vat­ed ancient Egyp­tians to come up with “a process to emu­late its intense ultra­ma­rine hue. With­out a con­sis­tent way to rep­re­sent the beau­ti­ful blues of the world around them, they had to get cre­ative.”

Just this past May, Haney and a team of oth­er researchers from CMNH, Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s Muse­um Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute pub­lished a paper on their work of re-cre­at­ing what’s called “Egypt­ian blue,” the ear­li­est known syn­thet­ic pig­ment. Extant on arti­facts and used also, it seems, in ancient Rome, and at least once in the Renais­sance (by no less a Renais­sance man than Raphael) its orig­i­nal recipe has since been lost to his­to­ry. Using peri­od mate­ri­als like “cal­ci­um car­bon­ate that could have been drawn from lime­stone or seashells; quartz sand; and a cop­per source” heat­ed to around 1,000 degrees Cel­sius, Seal writes, “the researchers pre­pared near­ly two dozen pow­dered pig­ments in a stun­ning range of blues.”

Pho­to cour­tesy of Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty.

The key was to repli­cate cupror­i­vaite, “the min­er­al that gave Egypt­ian blue such res­o­nance,” and one of those exper­i­men­tal pow­ders turned out to be 50 per­cent cupror­i­vaite by vol­ume. The result­ing pig­ment, as Art­net’s Bri­an Bouch­er writes, is of more than his­tor­i­cal inter­est, with poten­tial mod­ern uses “due to its opti­cal, mag­net­ic, and bio­log­i­cal prop­er­ties. It emits light in the near-infrared part of the elec­tro-mag­net­ic spec­trum, which peo­ple can’t see. For that rea­son, it could be used in appli­ca­tions like dust­ing for fin­ger­prints and for­mu­lat­ing coun­ter­feit-proof inks.” Here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, we may have all the blues we need, but as in the ancient world, the job of stay­ing one step ahead of coun­ter­feit­ers is nev­er done.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

Why Most Ancient Civ­i­liza­tions Had No Word for the Col­or Blue

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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