Cantigas de Santa Maria

Alfonso X, El Siabo (the Learned) was King of Castile and León in the second half of the thirteenth century. The moniker arises from his progressive attitude towards education, law and particularly to the fostering of scientific knowledge. He established a translation school at Toledo which helped circulate knowledge from the Arab world about the Ptolemeic cosmogony and the philosophy of the ancients.

His greatest direct legacy comes from the commissioning (and part authorship) of the 425 poems with accompanying musical script that constitutes the largest body of solo (monophonic) songs from medieval times. Written in the Castilian lyrical language of Galacian-Portuguese the hymns, which include some chanting, are extremely diverse in metrical composition and all of them either mention or directly praise the Virgin Mary.

Today the work is spread between four codexes that were written and illuminated in the 14th and 15th centuries. Information about this great body of work is spread haphazardly around the internet and reflects a dearth of scholarship about the three areas of its excellence, art, music and literature, despite being popular with medievalist musicians and many recordings having been made. In fact, it was recently reported that Oxford University have established a centre devoted to studying the Cantigas.

All but one of the images here come from a Japanese website which appears to have the largest number of illustrations (from the E codex).

If you have even a passing interest in world +/- medieval music, I would recommend listening to some samples. I was impressed and didn't expect it. This amazon page has a few examples with a Moroccan orchestra, though I don't suppose that is the main reason one senses influence from the Arab world. All of the tunes (and all the lyrics) are available in midi format from this French website - but the samples sound like they were made with an electronic synthesizer or the like.

• The best site to see the illuminations, despite there not being high resolution images available.
• Further illuminations (and copies) in colour and black and white with higher resolution format (although I don't think they are better) and their homepage.
• This other French site has quite a few low quality images but they have what I presume is a scan of an actual manuscript page.
  
• A couple of images from another codex.
• English translation of some verses - Washington University.
• A fine general review of the Cantigas from the Minstrels' Guild of Drachenwald.
  
• Wikipedia: Cantigas de Santa Maria & Alfonso X.

Jenský Codex

OK I give up. Between computer, photo loading and now translating problems I've stumbled to get this far. The striking imagery seen here derives from a manuscript produced at the end of the 15th century, the Jenský kodex from the Czech Manuscriptorium. I posted another item from their collection a couple of weeks ago.

The subtitling has Antithesis Christi et Antichisti and that is certainly reflective of the total of the images present. It is definitely religious but with a great dose of poetic license to the story of Christ I learned as a youngster. He is burned on the crucifix in this rendering, unless of course that's the antichrist. There are quite a few other images involving Jesus but they are diluted by the unusual collection of devilry as above or seemingly incongruous crowd and landscape and clergy images included in the document.

Obviously its all conjecture without translation but the pattern of pictures is interesting to say the least. One further thing that I also noticed last time I was at this site - they must log the IP address because I'm unable to view any pages now except as a very small jpeg. They also employ a context menu disabler.

[click on the images for slightly larger versions]

Around the World in 1815

Louis Choris, a painter from the Ukraine, was 20 years old when he boarded the Kotzebue in 1815 for a 3 year world tour. He eventually published Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, avec des portraits de sauvages d'Amerique, d'Asie, d'Afrique, et des iles du Grand ocean; des paysages, des vues maritimes, et plusieurs objets d'histoire naturelle in 1822. The text, which makes up about half the nearly 300 pages was by Baron Cuvier and a couple of others.

The captions for each picture are in their URL and clicking on them will give a slightly larger version.

The whole book has been digitized by the European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) project at the Max Planck Institute and via the Humboldt Project. However, it's a slow server and although it's easy to use and has zooming capabilities, you will want some serious time to hone in properly on the details of these hand painted intaglio prints. I suggest I've probably picked out the gems, although it's worthwhile having a look at the thumb views of them all if you're keen.

• Some further information about the voyage and Louis Choris with a few gaudy versions of some of the images from the California Academy of Science's Science Under Sail exhibition.
• A brief summary of the episode with a couple of images.

One War Artist

JM was a member of the Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery and he was stationed in France and Belgium in 1917 and 1918. He survived the war and presented his 2 artbooks to his daughter Adele. That is about all that is known. But whether caricature or faithful rendering, ink or watercolour, JM's sketchbooks contain a sizeable number of funny or poignant or solemn depictions of the great war. (inadvertently via)

Both sketchbooks have been digitized and are hosted by British Columbia's University of Victoria Special Collections website.

De Re Metallica

"I have omitted all those things which I have not myself seen,
or have not read or heard of from persons upon whom I can rely."

Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer) (1490-1555) was a classics scholar born in Germany who studied medicine in Italy and ended up with a medical practice in Joachimsthal in the present day Czech republic. It was here that his interests in physics, chemistry and geology were able to flourish, Joachimsthal being a principal mining town.

He published a number of treatises on mineralogy, religion and disease but his magnum opus, De Re Metallica, a 500+ page study, became the leading manual on mining and metallurgy for 2 centuries. He had been dead a year by the time it was finally published, with the inclusion of 290 highly detailed woodcut illustrations.



De Re Metallica documents methods for assaying and enriching ores, the geology of ore bodies and use of machinery, the application of water power in mining, legal and labour management, an historical review of knowledge of the industry to that time and virtually every other facet of the mining and related industries.

Agricola was highly regarded by both contemporaries and modern day philosophers and scientists. Erasmus expected in 1531 that Agricola would "shortly stand at the head of the princes of scholarship". Goethe likened him to Francis Bacon. Melanchthon praised his "grace of presentation and unprecedented charity" (Agricola was a lifelong Catholic which caused problems later in life during the reformation) Herbert Hoover, as a mining engineer before his presidency, was so taken by Agricola's scholarship that he had De Re Metallica translated into english in 1912. Hoover regarded him as an originator of the experimental approach to science, "the first to found any of the natural sciences upon research and observation, as opposed to previous fruitless speculation".

The Classics Department of Harvard University, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, the English Department at the University of Missouri and the Perseus Project at Tufts University launched a cooperative digital network, The Archimides Project which "will create a testbed for developing and exploring model interactive environments for the history of mechanics. It will also serve as a proof-of-concept project for open digital libraries for topics in the history of science designed to integrate research and knowledge dissemination in new ways."

• Their German website hosts a full copy of De Re Metallica - this is the thumbnail page and and the icon top right of each page will launch a zoomable interface. (Some higher resolution images are missing but all the thumb pages are online)
• A review of De Re Metallica
• Quincentennial paper
• Wikipedia on Agricola
• This page has a little information about the illustrations
• Arizona Gold Prospectors page (with a few images)
• Addit: University of Illinois page & cache page from UK.
  

Yongle Dadian : Encylopedia Maxima

This fragment of esoteric characters belongs to what was arguably the greatest literary undertaking in the history of the world. At the beginning of the 15th century, Ming dynasty Emperor Yongle had the literati comb Chinese intellectual history for worthy material to include in a compilation of their cultural heritage.

After some revisions and extensions to the original mandate, 2000 scholars ultimately produced more than 11,000 volumes of the Encyclopedia Maxima or Complete Record of Literature.

Cornell University have a modest exhibit that outlines the history of production and eventual destruction of (all but a few hundred volumes) the few copies that have ever existed of this massive work. It's an interesting story on a number of levels.

The Stuttgart Festival of 1616

I was loitering at the Wake Forest University Research Online link page (itself a portal to weeks of entertainment) when I came across the first image above (quite well known I think). That sent me over to the Folger Shakespeare Library searching for its origin, which in turn led me via google to the Wolfenbeüttel Digitale Bibliothek which has all the scans of Repraesentatio der furstlichen Aufzug und Ritterspiel. (And now I wonder if I should have looked around the renaissance festival digitized material at the British Library? Oh well..so it goes. And talking too much today.)

It took me a long time to work out which of these images to post. I love the renaissance festival depictions. And with blogger having a capacity of something like 350Mb I'm perhaps helping to ensure an early end to this odyssey. I actually saved 25 of the 80 or so images before cropping, resizing and editing them down.


From the Royal Danish Library we learn..

"Allegorical entertainments during festivities held in Stuttgart in 1616 by Duke Johann Friedrich of Württemberg on the occasion of his son's baptism. Princely festivities with tournaments and carnival-like parades with imaginative tableaux served a ceremonial function and were attended by numerous invited guests from other princely courts. The festivities at Stuttgart lasted for eight days and resulted in a publication of 77 plates, most of them done by the engraver Matthæus Merian, who later became famous as a publisher of topographical works. It was published in 1616 by the artist Esaias van Hulsen with the title Repræsentatio der furstlichen Aufzug und Ritterspiel".

The URLs of each image here contain the associated german caption. If there is any text with this book, it isn't scanned at the Bibliothek site. A lot of the character labels on the engravings are Homeric, or at least, derived from the Greek pantheon - you can just make them out near the people in the chariot above and in the horsemen engraving2nd from the top.
Marvellous stuff.

Fish Binding

Fish skin binding (carp)

Fish skin (brown carp)

Eel skin from Korea - mosaic and collage

Artiste du Livre © Odette Drapeau

(et en Montréal: La Tranchefile : atelier de reliure d'art situé au Québec, garant d'un métier traditionnel tourné vers l'avenir)

Fish Fashion

These surreal images come from a book, Fishes, crayfishes, and crabs, of diverse colours and extraordinary form, that are found around the islands of the Moluccas and on the coasts of the southern lands (translated from french and truncated) originally published in 1719 by Louis Renard, and it was claimed it took 30 years to compile. The 460 engravings on 100 copper plates were later hand coloured and a 2nd edition of the book was published in Amsterdam in 1754.



Renard himself, comes across as a rather curious character..

"As well as spending some seventeen years as a publisher and bookdealer, Renard (c.1678-1746) also sold medicines, brokered English bonds and, more intriguingly, acted as a spy for the British Crown, being employed by Queen Anne, George I and George II. In this capacity he helped guarantee the Protestant succession to the throne by preventing stores from reaching the 'Old Pretender' James Stuart. These supposedly clandestine activities were not particularly secret. In fact, Renard used his status as an 'agent' to help advertise his books. This particular work is actually dedicated to George I while the title-page describes the publisher as 'Louis Renard, Agent de Sa Majesté Britannique'."

These embellished images are said to mark an important milestone in the depiction of marine creatures. Much of the exaggeration may have crept in from repeated copying and colouring from verbal directions but, perhaps the authority on the subject, Theodore Pietsch, considers that the patterns and key character features present allow association of each drawing with a real creature.

• There are 17 plates on display at the State Library of NSW, Sydney - thumbnail page (higher resolution images available)
• Most of the information here (indeed, on the internet it seems) derives from this 1 page Special Collections exhibit at Glasgow University Library - there are a few different plates on display here.

The engravings (many done from secondary source drawings) are meant to depict creatures from the East Indes. There is no text, save for the commentary next to each animal. Not suprisingly there are many commercial representations of Renaud's beasts around in such forms as posters and address books &c. I also find it interesting that the original title includes the words Terres Australes - a geographic location descriptor, not name of course (interesting just because those of us who live in Oz hear variations on the terra australis nomenclature all our lives and we associate it with the name Australia, so an early 18th century reference is just .... strange or something).