Collectio Antiquitatum - Visualizing Rome

Vivarium

Sacophagus of Emperor Hadrian (Castel Sant'Angelo) and
the Ponte Sant'Angelo, beneath which flows the Tiber river

The City Gate with turreted towers

Necropolis with elaborate Sarcophagus bearing inscription
to Mark Anthony, Pythagoras, Romulus and Remus.

Tarpean Rock

Baths of Diocletian

Vatican Obelisk
(see post from the other day)

The Roman Forum

Equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
with ancient monuments in the background

Monte Testaccio with ancient urns on the ground, several broken

Tournament in a circular pavilion

Campidoglio

Arch of Titus, with elaborate carvings and a procession of soldiers

Animal sacrifice outside temple

Campagna - winding river with boats outside the city walls

Crete - centaur at the centre of a labyrinth

Cesena - Votive relief depicting a man standing on
the back of a bull and flanked by a bird of prey and
a putto placing a wreath on the man's head.

[click images for much larger versions]

This 209 page parchment manuscript (Garrett MS 158) from ~1471 is only available as a 50Mb pdf file from Princeton University. It is one of (I think) 3 to 5 extant copies of 'Collectio Antiquitartum', which is a compilation of works produced by Giovanni Marcanova (c. 1410 - 1467), who was a physician in Padua, an antiquary and bibliophile in Venice and a Professor in Bologna.

The manuscript opens with 18 full page ink and wash drawings of Roman antiquities "in the manner of 'fantasy architecture'". The latin text may or may not have been transcribed by another noted antiquarian, Felice Feliciano and is in general, a collection of antiquarian inscriptions. It derives in part from earlier inscription texts and includes apocryphal letters, excerpts from standard classical works and occasional miniature drawings of monuments, sarcophagi, vases, inscribed steles, mottos and seals.

Illustrated Fables

This 56 page book of traditional childrens' fables from ~1900 with illustrations by the great Maurice Boutet de Monvel is online at the Library of Congress. They have enormous images available if wanted - hence, clicking the above images will give larger versions. Fulltable have an abbreviated set of english pages in thumbnail format. Also see previously: Vielles Chansons.

100 Years of Illustration on Maurice Boutet de Monvel, from last year.

And while on the subject of kiddywinks...

• Storybook England is a great site that maps childrens' classics (via Boynton)
• Mariana from Gatochy has been busy uploading portuguese childrens' book scans to a relatively new site, Histórias da Carochinha (see the September archives)
• Patricia from Agence Eureka has also been uploading some great scans to webshots.
• The russian LiveJournal KidPix site has an eclectic set of scans and links (hint: head for the links in brackets at the bottom of most entries)

Britannia Illustrata

Williamstrip, the Seat of Henry Ireton, Esquire¹

The Seat of the Honourable Sir William Blackett
with Part of the Town of Newcastle upon Tyne²

Rendcombe, the Seat of Sir John Guise Baronet¹

Southam, the Seat of Kinard de la Bere Esquire³

St James Palace Park⁴

Syston the Seat of Samuell Trotman Esq.⁵

Coberly, the Seat of Jonathan Castelman, Esq.^1,6

Seavenhampton, the Seat of Sir William Dodwell¹

Dyrham, the Seat of William Balthwait, Esq.¹

The Seat of William Chaloner Esq. of Gisborough
in Cleaveland in the County of Yorke²

Doddington in the County of Lincolne, the Seate
of the Honble. Sr. Thomas Hussey Barrett⁴

Broadwell, the Seat of Danvers Hodges, Esq.¹

[click on the images to enlarge - almost all are a fair size]


1. The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco have 54 images, with about a dozen in colour [all the above selection from FAMSF are splices from the zoom interface of 6 to 8 screencaps]

2. The British Library's Collect Britain website have about 3 or 4 images [search on 'kip'] - the watermarks were removed from the above examples.

3. Fulltable have (at least) one large image with high resolution details (always a slow load irrespective of your connection speed).

4. Donald Head Antique Prints have 19 images, all in colour but modestly sized (click 'view pictures' at the bottom of each entry). [from the french publication - 'Nouveau Theatre de la Grande Bretagne: ou description exacte des palais de la Reine, et des Maisons les plus considerables des Seigneurs; des Gentilshommes de la Grande Bretagne.']

5. Panteek Prints have 10 colour and 12 black and white prints in large size format (the image above had the watermark removed)

6. This particular image was spliced together from 8 screencaps using a demo version of the Autostitch program posted to Metafilter yesterday. It requires no brain whatsoever and does a very good job. I think the end result is better when I do it myself but not by much. It's intended for creating panorama photo shots - 'the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher'.


Johannes (Jan) Kip and Leonard Knyff were both expatriate dutch artists who settled in Britain towards the end of the 17th century. They collaborated to produce one of the preeminent historical works on British topography, landscaping and architecture with the release in 1707 of 'Britannia Illustrata: Or Views of Several of the Queens Palaces, as Also of the Principal seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain, Curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates'.

Knyff orginally produced the imaginative and detailed bird's eye view pictures which were engraved by Kip, but Kip later took over both roles and is commonly cited as the author. In fact there are many contradictory reports about the number of illustrations and reprints, volume numbers and years of publication across the many eminent sites that mention their work. I get the feeling that the term "Britannia Illustrata" came to encompass the many works of both book and printed art that were produced by Kypff/Kip or Kip alone; although it is clear that there were several distinct books released by Kip. Nothing online seems authoritative particularly, but the wikipedia article gives some basic facts.

What is certain is that many of the houses and gardens have been changed dramatically, or destroyed completely and that Kip and Knyff's artwork provide a valuable early 18th century snapshot of the development of garden design.

All of the major commercial print sites have example Knyff/Kip work. The only other links I consider worth seeing are the MetMuseum which shows how an engraving appears in the book format and this 'Eighteenth Century Garden History' site which I've posted before.

On the Inconstancy of Witches

[click images to enlarge]


The full text title -

"Tableau de l'Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons ( Tableau de l'Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons. Ou il est amplement traicté des Sorciers, & de la Sorcellerie. Livre tres-utile et necessaire non seulement aux Iuges, mais à tous ceux qui viuent sous les loix Chrestiennes. Auec un Discours contenant la Procedure faite par les Inquisiteurs d'Espagne & de Nauarre, à 53. Magiciens, Apostats, Iuifs & Sorciers, en la ville de Logrogne en Castille, le 9. Novembre 1610. En laquelle on voit combien l'exercice de la Iustice en France, est plus iuridiquement traicté, & avec de plus belles formes qu'en tous autres Empires, Royaumes, Republiques & Estats. Par Pierre de Lancre, Conseiller du Roy au Parlement de Bordeaux. Maleficos non patieris viuere. Exod. 22. Reueu, corrigé, & ) Published: 1613; 642 Pages."

It is far, far beyond the scope of this humble establishment to venture any distance into the complex and convoluted world of witches, witchcraft and the abominations of the Inquisition in the middle ages. I have perused a considerable amount of online material relating to both the factual and folkloric elements and feel more than my usual level of inadequacy when it comes to distilling out some salient information.

Suffice it to say that I came across this intriguing engraving when I was raiding the Rare Books Image Archive at Cornell University last week and went back to grapple again with their LunarInsight browser architecture. Some of the above images are therefore constructed from 6 or 8 screencap splices. And as usual I found a more easily accessible version afterwards - at Glasgow University (note there is a key explaining each scene in the illustration, albeit in french). The above images are superior in quality and of higher resolution however.

"In 1612, Pierre de Lancre, counsellor in the Parliament of Bordeaux and prosecutor under King Henry I's commission, published his Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges at démons. His book catalogues the classic sexual perversions of witches. "The powerfully sexual nature of the dominant imagery begins with the broomstick ride, continues with exciting whippings, the fascinative close-up look at devilishly huge sexual organs, the baby-eating (possibly sublimated incest or infanticide?), and, finally, the frenzied orgy itself""

As the book title indicates, the 'perversions' reported come from the Spanish Inquisition interrogations of 53 people in 1610. Cornell University also have 'On the Inconstancy of Witches' in its entirety in transcription and (photocopy) page images. There are no other illustrations.

I wonder if there are earlier depictions of a witch riding a broomstick??
[Macbeth quote redacted]

--------------

I'm not an historian but of course the wonderful illustrations in prints and books we are priviliged to have access to online continually immerse me - us - in weird and amazing events and stories from history. The images obviously act as enticements (often) for me to go on discovery missions into worlds I didn't study at school.

But there are real historians out there with weblogs on a huge variety of subjects and sometimes they regale their readerships with 'carnivals' or 'roundups', reviewing posts the author has found interesting in their online wanderings. Despite the inclusion of the 'oDd biB', you might discover something of interest in these posts at Archaeoastronomy and Recent Finds.

19th Century Austrian Fashion Plates

"Mein Herr, ich kleide mich nach der letzten Mode, Sie nach der vorletzten, ich dulde daher keine Zurücksetzung!" [something vaguely like: 'My good sir, I dress according to the latest fashion and you according to an outdated fashion, so I bear no neglect']


One of these images bears a pencilled date as 1853 and all are Vienna Theatre plates - either posters or program illustrations from the Vienna Museum. {Some background artifact has been removed or cleaned up from a few of these images}.

They are part of a site that went live this week: 'The Art Database of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria'.

"The site aims to restore art treasures looted during WWII to their rightful owners or heirs. According to Austrian law, works of art, which were looted under National Socialism in Austria, shall be returned to the original owners or to their legal successors. It is a statutory task of the National Fund to sell those objects of which no rightful owner can be found and to distribute the proceeds to victims of the National Socialist regime. Before the actual sale of the objects, the National Fund offers the possibility to identify restitutable art-objects by providing an art database in the internet."

The site divides up into prints, paintings, furniture, sculpture etc but there is only a modest number of images available at present ('druck grafiken' holds about 140 images - not just fashion - I seem to recall). There is only a single page in english at the moment, although they expect to expand this next year. Spiegel news story - [translation] [via Netbib]