This is John Tenniel’s famous 1871 illustration of the poem “Jabberwocky,” the most famous nonsense poem in the English language. Linguists have long remarked upon the genius of the way Lewis Carroll’s poem explores questions about language and meaning. But Tenniel’s illustration better shows the new Victorian awareness of Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution and […]
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“Ostara” by Johannes Gehrts (1884). The word “Easter” comes from the name of a Germanic fertility goddess. Very little is known about her (as is often the case about western European pagan deities), but the English writer Bede recorded in the 8th century that pagans had been partaking in rituals celebrating the goddess during one
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Buddhist stele with the Thousand Buddhas motif, from the Northern Wei Dynasty, about 521 CE. Notice the Chinese-drapped sleeves of the historical Buddah in the center, but the surrounding Buddhas are wearing the off-shoulder monastic garb of Indian monks. Smithsonian, Sackler Gallery.
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The Temple of Dendur is a must-see in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Hundreds of tourists check out this Ancient Roman-era Egyptian building every day, where it stands in an enormous glass-walled room, surrounded by a huge moat of water evocative of the Nile River from whence it originally came. The
These six images of animals depicted in cave art come from an ice age dating up to 20,000 years ago, when hunter-gathering Homo sapiens created many vivid paintings such as the famous ones at Lascaux (15,000 BCE). This month in an article in the _Cambridge Archaeological Journal_ a team of researchers argue that they have
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Check out this 12th century mosaic on the west wall of the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, Venice, Italy. The animals that have eaten up humans have to barf them back up again when it’s resurrection time. Eww. But this picture gets at some of the crazy logic loops that Medieval people had
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This is a post about a legacy of surrealistic and evocative art that originated from a very old book and a nearly-as-old garden, which influenced a philosopher who lived hundreds of years later and an artist living even later still. Might I present to you, dear readers, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili? The famous printer Aldus Manutius
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Check out the exhibit “Empresses of China’s Forbidden City: 1644-1912,” at the Arthur K. Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.. This epic portrait of the last dowager empress, Cixi, was commissioned by her. I love the fingernails!
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A gargoyle, from Notre Dame (these famed water spouts were only installed in the 1800s). The term comes from old French “gargouille” meaning “throat” but also the gurgling sound made by liquid in the throat. This of course refers to the rain-spout functionality of the gargoyle. But it also pertains to a medieval legend about
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This finial crowning the top of an elaborately carved tusk from 19th-century Kongo depicts a nursing mother. A skilled artisan would have made the tusk as part of a commissioning by a community leader. The few women depicted on this tusk form a striking counter-narrative to most of the images. One woman carried a small
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This image of Pope Benedict IX (d. 1056) does not do his reputation justice. He was put in power by a male relative at the young age of 20, and lived such an immoral life that he was forced to abdicate twice. He managed to worm his way back into power, serving as pope for
“The Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came,” an 1859 painting by Thomas Mortan, illustrates a famous scene from an old Scottish fairy-tale, in which appears one of my favorite words: widdershins. “Widdershins” means to travel counter-clockwise, or in the northern hemisphere, in the path opposite the sun. It referred to a leftward-proceeding direction, and
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This painting by al-Qazwini (1203-1283) shows a monster from the Gog and Magog legend. The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an each mention Gog and Magog as either monstrous people or wild places. Their stories evolved, but usually referred to a threatening, beastly pseudo-human group that threatened a righteous (usually Godly) and civilized
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The Mongolian invasions of Japan were famously brought to an end in 1281 when a tumultuous storm destroyed the entire Mongolian fleet. But it was not just the kamikaze or “divine winds” that destroyed the invaders. The Japanese samurai showed a surprising flexibility in adapting their fighting style, working together more than they had ever
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This image shows the creation of Pandora, subject of an Ancient Greek myth. Although Pandora’s curiosity was said to have explained the source of all evils for mankind, I think the story does a better job showing how misogynist the Ancient Greek world was. In Hesiod’s work (7th c. BCE), the poet tells how Zeus
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Statue made of Birchwood of the Virgin Mary, with glass eyes. Autun region of France, c. 1130-40.
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If you wanted to feel special in the 14th c., you might have tried to get ahold of objects like these: reliquaries were sacred containers of the holy bodily remains of Europe’s medieval superheroes, the Christian saints. This shoe (suggesting that inside was part of a foot) depicts Saint Margaret just having busted her way
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Behold the Lycurgus cup, from the 4th c. Late Roman Empire. It is the most exquisite example of a glass-making technique used the the Romans to produce a color-changing effect. Viewed straight-on, the cup is green, but viewed with backlighting it appears red – the technique involved blending the glass with extremely fine-ground particles of
This is a near life-size wooden sculpture of the birth of the Virgin Mary with her mother Saint Anne. It comes from a church called Ebern in southern Germany and dates to around 1480. The sweetness of this pair really stands out, especially Anne’s exhausted but happy expression as she rests after giving birth, one
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Hieronymous Bosch, “Third Day of Creation,” (c. 1490-1510). Bosch was a proto-surrealist oil painter from the Medieval Netherlands with a wonderfully twisted imagination. This painting represents the world as he imagined it before the creation of animals. Here, the color scheme (typical for the exterior of tryptichs, which this was) brings out the drabness of
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