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Mermaids Under Water
Félix Ziem (France, Beaune, 1821-1911)
France, 1874
Paintings
Oil on canvas
14 1/4 x 26 in. (36.20 x 66.04 cm)
The Ciechanowiecki Collection, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.2000.179.42)
European Painting

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erikkwakkel:

A time capsule from the Middle Ages

In the Book History class I am running with the book historian Paul Hoftijzer we recently discovered the remains of a medieval archive. It concerns 132 notes, letters and receipts from an unidentified court in the Rhine region, jotted on little slips of paper. Such objects rarely survive from medieval society because they were normally thrown away after use.

In fact, the same happened with these slips, be it that an early-modern bookbinder fished them out of the bin and recycled them as boards. The importance of the notes is not just connected to their low survival rate, but also because they tell us every-day things that we normally rarely hear about in historical sources. “Could you please send me 6 guilders?,” writes the Steward to the Chamberlain. “Could you please send me some wild roses, preferably not yet in bloom?,” says a note from the duke himself.

Here are five samples from the large pile, charming and vulnerable stowaways that traveled through time hidden inside a binding. The book with the archive is part of the Bibliotheca Thysiana, a seventeenth-century library in Leiden, established by Johannes Thysius (d. 1653). Thysius bought the volume second-hand and had likely no idea of the hidden treasures it contained. The discovery featured in Dutch and Flemish national newspapers on 25 April, 2013. More information is available on the website of Leiden University’s Arts Faculty (in Dutch).

The images in this blog were taken by Giulio Menna (@sexycodicology). Check out some other discoveries made in our Book History course on our Flickr stream. I am tweeting new discoveries via #thysiana (@erik_kwakkel).

Post-Secular Artist? Nine Reflections on the Art of Patrick Heron

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Four Cultures

The last few years have seen a deep questioning of the central tenets of the theory of secularisation. Far from growing less religious, as the prophets of the post-war period supposed to be our destiny, the world has become more infused with religious attitudes than ever. It is now intellectually respectable, if not yet fully intelligible,  to talk and write about a ‘post-secular’ age. At the same time it is possible to re-examine the high points of the supposedly nonreligious era we have now passed beyond, and see it anew as the site and source of an intense and distinctive spirituality.  It is strange for an art collection like the Methodist Church’s Collection of Modern Christian Art to have almost no abstract works in the collection, as though properly religious art could only ever be representational. Yet until recently abstract art was regarded by many religious people as at the…

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Art in the Streets: Patti Astor, Fab 5 Freddy, Jean Michel Basquiat (MOCAtv Episode18)

 

Interviews and Text – Marc H. Miller

Video and Video Production – Paul Tschinkel

Directed by Marc. H. Miller and Paul Tschinkel

Produced by Paul Tschinkel

Copyright 1982/83 – Inner-Tube Video 

 

Courtesy @MOCATV

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)