August 26, 2010

Color Film from 1922

These beautiful screen tests from 1922 were posted to Kodak's Thousand Words blog in March of this year. Although color motion pictures had been made earlier (see 1908's "A Visit to the Seaside") these tests used a new process that yielded some haunting results. There's something disorienting about seeing the past in color that I really love.

The amazing Prokudin-Gorskii photographs, a series of color photos taken throughout Russia in the period between 1907 and 1915, are another great example of this, which I'll probably devote a full post to in the near future...

August 18, 2010

Image of the Week 5: The Restitution of Bahia, 1631

This remarkable map was produced by the cartographer João Teixera Albernaz the Elder (d. 1662) as part of his 1631 atlas Estado da Brasil (The State of Brazil). Lavishly illustrated in watercolors, the map meticulously depicts the recapture of the city of Salvador -- the old colonial capital of Brazil -- from an invading Dutch army. The actual military expedition had taken place some six years earlier, in April of 1625, when a joint flotilla of fifty four Spanish and Portuguese ships invaded the harbor and rousted Dutch forces (helpfully labeled on the map as "Armada do Inimigo" - the enemy's armada). Teixera's decision to depict this patriotic event in 1631 may well have been significant, since the Dutch West India company was mounting a renewed assault upon Brazil in precisely this period, having conquered the key port city of Recife in March of that year.

What stands out most to me in this image is the remarkable level of attention lavished upon tiny details  -- a typical feature of seventeenth century Iberian maps, but one that is often difficult to notice since these beautiful works are so often viewable only in pixelated digital form or as blurry black-and-white reproductions in printed works. Below are some details I've picked out from the larger image:
Ortas - gardens - along the northeastern coast of Dutch-held Bahia. 

Colorful pink tents that bear an odd resemblance to contemporary cartographic
depictions of central Asian nomadic camps, but which are probably meant to
indicate the temporary shelters erected by Dutch-hired mercenaries. 

The captions to this image in the accompanying key (see main image above) tell us
that these are "casas que o inimigo derumbora fora dos muros" (houses that the enemy
built outside the walls) and "pecas que bater a cidade que assentarão os italianos"
(cannons that assaulted the city manned by Italians[?]).
And finally, a wonderful detail of two Dutch ships ablaze alongside the man of war commanded by the Portuguese captain:


The Camoes Institute website has a good (Portuguese-language) description of João Teixera and the larger Albernaz family of mapmakers here. For those interested in the Dutch conquest of Brazil and the Luso-Brazilian response, the best English-language works may still be those of Charles R. Boxer, a WWII era British naval spy turned historian of early modern maritime empires. Boxer's The Dutch in Brazil, 1624 to 1654 is the authoritative work on its subject, but is unfortunately out of print. His surveys The Portuguese Seaborne Empire and The Dutch Seaborne Empire are however widely available, and both are excellent. Finally, Boxer's The Tragic History of the Sea is a wonderful edited compilation of Portuguese narratives of naval battles and maritime expeditions.

August 12, 2010

Pseudo-Kufic: Renaissance Imitations of Arabic Script

Kufic script is a lovely and ancient variant of the Arabic alphabet that developed out of the Nabatean alphabet of Classical-era Petra. This example from a c. 8th century Koran highlights the characteristic angular style of the script, which made it uniquely well-suited for use in stone inscriptions, pottery and in rugs and other woven items:
Fascinatingly, this distinctive writing style appears in literally hundreds of examples of early Renaissance art, especially in oil paintings produced in the fourteenth and fifteenth century Italian city-states, where luxury goods from the Muslim world frequently flowed via Mediterranean trade channels. The European artists who aped the style usually had no knowledge of Arabic writing, and their 'Pseudo-Kufic' imitations were thus purely abstract decorations bearing the semblance of Arabic script. They can usually be noticed on items such as halos and the hems of robes. Some examples, most gleaned from Wikipedia's excellent entry on the subject, are reproduced below:
Antonio Vivarini (ca. 1415/1420–1476/1484), Portrait of St. Louis of Toulouse, c. 1460. 18 in x 14 in. Revoil Collection, Louvre. Note the interior of the halo.
Ugolino di Nerio (fl. 1317–1327), Madonna and Child, main panel of a polyptych. Painted ca. 1315–1320. 0.69 m X 0.47 m. Pseudo-Kufic script appears on the white portion of Mary's robe.    
Robert Campin (Master of Flémalle), Mérode Altarpiece (detail). c. 1425 Triptych, oil on wood. The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Pseudo-Kufic inscriptions prominently visible on blue and white masonry jar on table.
As this last image hints, Pseudo-Kufic designs also figured prominently in Renaissance ceramics and other everyday objects, such as this fifteenth century Spanish dish:

  • Deep Dish (brasero), ca. 1430
    Spanish (Valencia)
    Tin-enamelled earthenware
    Diam. 17 3/4 in. (45.1 cm)
    The Cloisters Collection, 1956 (56.171.162)

  • Deep Dish (brasero), ca. 1430. Spanish (Valencia). Tin-enamelled earthenware.  Diam. 17 3/4 in. The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
    As an interesting aside, pseudo-Hebrew script seems to appear in at least one prominent Renaissance painting. Notice the writing upon the hem of Mary Magdalen in this lovely work by Jan van Scorel:

    Jan van Scorel (1495–1552), Mary Magdalene, ca. 1530. Oil on panel, 26.38 × 30.12 in. Frans Hals Museum, Netherlands.

    August 6, 2010

    Witches' Familiars in 17th Century Europe (February 2011 update)

    Detail of a witch feeding her familiars. Woodcut, England, late sixteenth century.
    The frontispiece (see below) to the witch hunter Mathew Hopkins' infamous pamphlet The Discovery of Witches (London, 1647) is a classic image, and rightly so: few texts better evoke the strangeness of the early modern witch hunt. I suppose the author, publisher and artist expected their early modern readership to feel a chill when they gazed upon this crude woodcut depicting the moon-eyed familiars of a coven of witches that Hopkins claimed to have discovered in Essex, but to my modern eyes these little creatures are strangely endearing. I'm especially fond of little Newes (see lower left corner), who, Hopkins noted briskly, was "like a Polcat."


    Some details:
    Here's Hopkins' explanation from The Discovery of Witches itself, which is available online for free as a Guttenberg E-Book:
    The Discoverer [Hopkins] never travelled far for it, but in March 1644 he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of Witches living in the Towne where he lived... who every six weeks in the night (being alwayes on the Friday night) had their meeting close by his house and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the Devill, one of which this discoverer heard speaking to her Imps one night, and bid them goe to another Witch, who was thereupon apprehended, and searched, by women who had for many yeares knowne the Devills marks, and found to have three teats about her, which honest women have not: so upon command from the Justice they were to keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars, which the fourth night she called in by their severall names, and told them what shapes, a quarter of an houre before they came in, there being ten of us in the roome, the first she called was
    1. Holt, who came in like a white kitling.
    2. Jarmara, who came in like a fat Spaniel without any legs at all, she said she kept him fat, for she clapt her hand on her belly and said he suckt good blood from her body.
    3. Vinegar Tom, who was like a long-legg'd Greyhound, with an head like an Oxe, with a long taile and broad eyes, who when this discoverer spoke to, and bade him goe to the place provided for him and his Angels, immediately transformed himselfe into the shape of a child of foure yeeres old without a head, and gave halfe a dozen turnes about the house, and vanished at the doore.
    4. Sack and Sugar, like a black Rabbet.
    5. Newes, like a Polcat. All these vanished away in a little time. Immediately after this Witch confessed severall other Witches, from whom she had her Imps, and named to divers women where their marks were, the number of their Marks, and Imps, and Imps names, as Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel, Greedigut, &c. which no mortall could invent; and upon their searches the same Markes were found, the same number, and in the same place, and the like confessions from them of the same Imps...
    Detail of a witch riding a goat-familiar from Hans Baldung's 1510 woodcut "Witches' Sabbath."
    Female witches were not the only ones who kept pets with supernatural powers -- in the very same year that Hopkins made his supposed discovery, a bizarre pamphlet was published attributing magical powers to Boy, the famous war poodle of the Royalist Cavalier Prince Rupert of the Rhine. The crowded title page notes that the fearsome canine was only felled thanks to the counter-acting magical powers of a "Valiant Souldier, who had skill in Necromancy":
    Observant readers will also note the final title line, in which it is revealed that Boy -- "the strange breed of this Shagg'd Cavalier" -- was in fact "whelp'd of a Malignant Water-Witch."  It was said that Boy could catch bullets in his mouth, find hidden treasure and foretell the future, and his powers were so respected by his fellow Royalist soldiers that the dog was promoted to the rank of Sergeant-Major-General!
    Another contemporary depiction of Prince Rupert and the witch-dog Boy, from the anti-Royalist pamphlet "The Cruel Practices of Prince Rupert" (London, 1643). For more see the Pepys Diary site's entry on Rupert.
    Brian Levack's The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe is a good introduction to the subject of early modern witchcraft as a whole. For more on the specific topic of familiars see this essay by James A. Serpell. Stuart Clark's Thinking with Demons brilliantly elucidates the ideologies behind the witch craze. More works by Hans Baldung, the Dürer pupil who produced some of the most vivid and strange contemporary European depictions of sorcery, can be seen here.

    August 4, 2010

    Art and Architecture of the Dogon

    The Dogon people inhabit a rocky and mountainous territory in the center of the West African state of Mali. Their settlements range along the massive Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone outcrop of some one hundred miles that divides central Mali in two.
    Bandiagara Escarpment, central Mali.
    Map showing Dogon settlement patterns.
    Dogon migration into this inhospitable region had a clear historical rationale: notable for their early refusal to convert to Islam, the Dogon were forced by the antagonism of their neighbors to seek more defensible and remote positions in the desolate interior of Mali from around 1400 AD onward.

    This unique historical trajectory has also shaped their architecture: remarkable mud brick structures stacked vertically on seemingly impassable cliff faces.

     Dogon cliff village, Bandiagara Escarpment. Photo credit Victor Engelbert.
    A cliff village originally built by the Tellem people, a civilization aboriginal to the region that the Dogon displaced.
    Individual Dogon buildings are quite beautiful as well, exhibiting a seamless integration of painting and sculpture with architecture that I find quite appealing. The following photos are from the rather good Wikipedia page on the Dogon:

    A Toguna, or meeting house and resting place for Dogon men.
    Crocodile totem house in the village of Banani.

    Dogon wall painting depicting circumcisions.
    Dogon ancestral figure held by the Louvre, wood, c. 17th-18th century AD.
    Bamana maternity figure, wood, date unknown.
    Detail.
    For more on Dogon architecture see this database of images and floorplans put together by a consortium of European ethnographers. Thanks to an influx of tourism in the last few decades there are countless images of the Dogon online; the Smithsonian Institution has a good image database.

    Before stumbling across these images, my only exposure to the Dogon had been some passing references to a rather bizarre theory promulgated by the photographer of the black and white image posted above, the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule (1896-1956). According to Griaule, the Dogon people somehow possessed knowledge of Sirius B, a star that is not visible to the naked eye. In common with many other European intellectuals of the inter-war period, Griaule adhered to a rather eclectic set of mystical beliefs drawn from a melange of religious traditions (one scholar has coined the interesting phrase "ethnographic surrealism" to describe the relationship between his personal mysticism and anthropological practices.) Its not clear to me how far Griaule himself pushed the argument about Sirius B, or whether it was attributed to him by later quack authors, but it certainly offers an interesting insight into the preoccupations of the first wave of European anthropologists and ethnographers in the early 20th century.

    Carl Sagan offers a skeptical overview of the controversy in his 1981 book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. A pamphlet on the Dogon co-authored by Griaule is online here.