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The Krakatoa Sunsets
When a volcano erupted on a small island in Indonesia in 1883, the evening skies of the world glowed for months with strange colours. Richard Hamblyn explores a little-known series of letters that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins sent in to the journal Nature describing the phenomenon – letters that would constitute the majority of the small handful of writings published while he was alive.
Labillardière and his Relation
When the French explorer Lapérouse went missing, a search voyage was put together to retrace his course around the islands of Australasia. On the mission was the naturalist Jacques Labillardière who published a book in 1800 of his experiences. Edward Duyker, author of Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist’s Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755-1834), explores the impact of his pioneering work.
Bugs and Beasts Before the Law
Murderous pigs sent to the gallows, sparrows prosecuted for chattering in Church, a gang of thieving rats let off on a wholly technical acquittal - theoretical psychologist and author Nicholas Humphrey explores the strange world of medieval animal trials.
Peter The Wild Boy
Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and author of Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court, on the strange case of the feral child found in the woods in northern Germany and brought to live in the court of George I.
Dog Stories from The Spectator
Dogs who shop, bury frogs, and take 800-mile solo round trips by rail - writer and broadcaster Frank Key gives a brief tour of the strange and delightful Dog Stories from The Spectator.
Robert Fludd and His Images of The Divine
Between 1617 and 1621 the English physician and polymath Robert Fludd published his masterwork Utriusque Cosmi, a book split into two volumes and packed with over 60 intricate engravings. Urszula Szulakowska explores the philosophical and theological ideas behind the extraordinary images found in the second part of the work.
Tales From Tahiti
In 1890 Henry Adams – the historian, academic, journalist, and descendent of two US presidents – set out on a tour of the South Pacific. After befriending the family of “the last Queen of Tahiti,” he became inspired to write what is considered to be the first history of the island. Through Adams’ letters, Ray Davis explores the story of the book’s creation.
Stories of a Hollow Earth
In 1741 the Norwegian-Danish author Ludvig Holberg published Klimii Iter Subterraneum, a satirical science-fiction/fantasy novel detailing the adventures of its hero Niels Klim in a utopian society existing beneath the surface of the earth. Peter Fitting, author of Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology, explores Holberg's book in the wider context of the hollow earth theory.
The Snowflake Man of Vermont
Weather scientist Keith C. Heidorn takes a look at the life and work of Wilson Bentley, a self-educated farmer from a small American town who, by combining a bellows camera with a microscope, managed to photograph the dizzyingly intricate and diverse structures of the snow crystal.
What Makes Franz Liszt Still Important?
Leon Botstein, President of Bard College and music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, explores what we can still learn from the life and music of Franz Liszt.
The Mysteries of Nature and Art
Julie Gardham, Senior Assistant Librarian at University of Glasgow's Special Collections Department, takes a look at the book that was said to have spurred a young Isaac Newton onto the scientific path, The Mysteries of Nature and Art by John Bate.
John Muir’s Literary Science
The writings of the Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir are known for their scientific acumen as well as for their rhapsodic flights. Terry Gifford, author of *Reconnecting with John Muir*, explores Muir's multifaceted engagement with 'God's big show'.
Almost as good as Presley: Caruso the pop idol
When he died in 1921 the singer Enrico Caruso left behind him approximately 290 commercially released recordings, and a significant mark upon on the opera world including more than 800 appearances at the New York Met. John Potter, singer and author of Tenor: History of a Voice, explores Caruso's popular appeal and how he straddled the divide between 'pop' and 'classical'.
The Unsinkable Myth
This week sees the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, one of the deadliest peacetime disasters at sea. Richard Howells, author of The Myth of the Titanic, explores the various legends surrounding the world's most famous ship.
Painting the New World
In 1585 the Englishman John White, governor of one of the very first North American colonies, made a series of exquisite watercolour sketches of the native Algonkin people alongside whom the settlers would try to live. Benjamin Breen explores the significance of the sketches and their link to the mystery of what became known as the "Lost Colony".
TRÜTH, BEAÜTY, AND VOLAPÜK
Arika Okrent explores the rise and fall of Volapük – a universal language created in the late 19th century by a German priest called Johann Schleyer.
JOHN MARTIN AND THE THEATRE OF SUBVERSION
Max Adams, author of The Prometheans, looks at the art of John Martin and how in his epic landscapes of apocalyptic scale one can see reflected his revolutionary leanings.
THE FORGOTTEN TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM
To mark the 200th year since the Brothers Grimm first published their Kinder-und Hausmärchen, Jack Zipes explores the importance of this neglected first edition and what it tells us about the motives and passions of the two folklorist brothers.
THE CURIOUS WORLD OF ISAAC D’ISRAELI
Marvin Spevack introduces the Curiosities of Literature, the epic cornucopia of essays on all things literary by Isaac D’Israeli: a scholar, man of letters and father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
STILL BOOKING ON DE QUINCEY’S MAIL-COACH
Robin Jarvis looks at Thomas de Quincey’s essay “The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion” and how its meditation on technology and society is just as relevant today as when first published in 1849.
JOSEPH BANKS: PORTRAITS OF A PLACID ELEPHANT
Patricia Fara traces the changing iconography of Joseph Banks, the English botanist who travelled on Captain Cook’s first great voyage and went on to become President of the Royal Society and important patron for a whole host of significant developments in the natural sciences.
AS A LUTE OUT OF TUNE: ROBERT BURTON’S MELANCHOLY
In 1621 Robert Burton first published his masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy, a vast feat of scholarship examining in encyclopaedic detail that most enigmatic of maladies. Noga Arikha explores the book, said to be the favorite of both Samuel Johnson and Keats, and places it within the context of the humoural theory so popular at the time.
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Maureen S. O’Brien
An Unlikely Lunch: When Maupassant met Swinburne
Julian Barnes on when a young Guy de Maupassant was invited to lunch at the holiday cottage of Algernon Swinburne. A flayed human hand, pornography, the serving of monkey meat, and inordinate amounts of alcohol, all made for a truly strange Anglo-French encounter.
Lost Libraries
In the latter half of the 17th century the English polymath Thomas Browne wrote Musaeum Clausum, an imagined inventory of 'remarkable books, antiquities, pictures and rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any man now living'. Claire Preston explores Browne's extraordinary catalogue amid the wider context of a Renaissance preoccupation with lost intellectual treasures.
The Polyglot of Bologna
Michael Erard takes a look at The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, a book exploring the extraordinary talent of the 19th century Italian cardinal who was reported to be able to speak over seventy languages.
American Kaleidoscope
In 1906 the American physician and neurologist Henry Morton Prince published his remarkable monograph The Dissociation of a Personality in which he details the condition of ‘Sally Beauchamp’, America’s first famous multiple-personality case. The writer George Prochnik discusses the life and thought of the man Freud called “an unimaginable ass”.
Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno
The poet Christopher Smart – also known as “Kit Smart”, “Kitty Smart”, “Jack Smart” and, on occasion, “Mrs Mary Midnight” – was a well known figure in 18th century London. Nowadays he is perhaps best known for considering his cat Jeoffry. Writer and broadcaster Frank Key looks at Smart’s weird and wonderful Jubilate Agno.
The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi
Andrew McConnell Stott, author of The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, introduces the life and memoirs of the most famous and celebrated of English clowns.
The Life and Work of Nehemiah Grew
In the 82 illustrated plates included in his 1680 book *The Anatomy of Plants*, the English botanist Nehemiah Grew revealed for the first time the inner structure and function of plants in all their splendorous intricacy. Brian Garret, professor of philosophy at McMaster Univerity, explores how Grew's pioneering 'mechanist' vision in relation to the floral world paved the way for the science of plant anatomy.
Accuracy and Elegance in Cheselden’s Osteographia (1733)
With its novel vignettes and its use of a camera obscura in the production of the plates, William Cheselden’s Osteographia, is recognized as a landmark in the history of anatomical illustration. Monique Kornell looks at its unique blend of accuracy and elegance.
Aspiring to a Higher Plane
In 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott published Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, the first ever book that could be described as ‘mathematical fiction’. Ian Stewart, author of Flatterland and The Annotated Flatland, introduces the strange tale of the geometric adventures of A. Square.
Slavery in North Africa – the Famous Story of Captain James Riley
When Captain James Riley published in 1817 the account of his and his crew's capture and enslavement at the hands of a group of North African tribesmen it became an immediate hit, readers being enthralled by this stark reversal of the usual master-slave narrative they were all so used to. Robert C. Davis looks at the story in the context of other similar tales of Europeans being taken as slaves on the North African coast.
On Benjamin’s Public (Oeuvre)
On the run from the Nazis in 1940, the philosopher, literary critic and essayist Walter Benjamin committed suicide in the Spanish border town of Portbou. In 2011, over 70 years later, his writings enter the public domain in many countries around the world. Anca Pusca, author of Walter Benjamin: The Aesthetics of Change, reflects on the relevance of Benjamin's oeuvre in a digital age, and the implications of his work becoming freely available online.
The Tragedy of Fate and the Tragedy of Culture: Heinrich von Kleist’s The Schroffenstein Family
On 21st November 1811, on a lake's edge near Potsdam, a 34 year old Kleist shot himself dead in a suicide pact with his terminally ill lover. He left behind him just under a decade of intense literary output which has established him as one of the most important writers of the German romantic period. On the bicentenary of his death, Kleist scholar Steven Howe explores the importance of his first dramatic work and how in it can be seen the themes of his later masterpieces.
Richard Dadd’s Master-Stroke
Nicholas Tromans, author of Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum, takes a look at Dadd's most famous painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke.
Remembering Scott
A century on from his dramatic death on the way back from the South Pole, the memory of the explorer Captain Scott and his ill-fated Terra Nova expedition is stronger than ever. Max Jones explores the role that the iconic visual record has played in keeping the legend alive.
THE IMPLACABILITY OF THINGS
Jonathan Lamb explores the genre of ‘it-narratives’ – stories told from the point of view of an object, often as it travels in circulation through human hands.
THE LAST GREAT EXPLORER: WILLIAM F. WARREN AND THE SEARCH FOR EDEN
Of all the attempts throughout history to geographically locate the Garden of Eden one of the most compelling was that set out by minister and president of Boston University, William F. Warren. Brook Wilensky-Lanford looks at the ideas of the man who, in his book Paradise Found, proposed the home of all humanity to lie at North Pole.
HENRY MORTON STANLEY AND THE PYGMIES OF “DARKEST AFRICA”
After returning from his disastrous mission to central Africa to rescue a German colonial governor, the explorer Henry Morton Stanley was eager to distract from accusations of brutality with his ‘discovery’ of African pygmies. Brian Murray explores how after Stanley’s trip the African pygmy, in the form of stereotype and allegory, made its way into late Victorian society.
THE EROTIC DREAMS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
During the time of his ‘spiritual awakening’ in 1744 the scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg kept a dream diary. Richard Lines looks at how, among the heavenly visions, there were also erotic dreams, the significance of which has been long overlooked.
THE REDEMPTION OF SAINT ANTHONY
Gustave Flaubert, best known for his masterpiece Madame Bovary, spent nearly thirty years working on a surreal and largely ‘unreadable’ retelling of the temptation of Saint Anthony. Colin Dickey explores how it was only in the dark and compelling illustrations of Odilon Redon, made years later, that Flaubert’s strangest work finally came to life.
MARY TOFT AND HER EXTRAORDINARY DELIVERY OF RABBITS
In late 1726 much of Britain was caught up in the curious case of Mary Toft, a woman from Surrey who claimed that she had given birth to a litter of rabbits. Niki Russell tells of the events of an elaborate 18th century hoax which had King George I’s own court physicians fooled.
VESALIUS AND THE BODY METAPHOR
City streets, a winepress, pulleys, spinning tops, a ray fish, curdled milk: just a few of the many images used by 16th century anatomist Andreas Vesalius to explain the workings of the human body in his seminal work De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Marri Lynn explores.
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However, a few featured works may not be so in all jurisdictions, so do please check your local laws before reusing. See here for more details.
All articles published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. If you wish to reuse our material please refer to our attribution policy.
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Beatus of Liébana
In a monastery in the mountains of northern Spain, 700 years after the Book of Revelations was written, a monk set down to illustrate a collection of writings he had compiled about this most vivid and apocalyptic of the New Testament books. Throughout the next few centuries his depictions of multi-headed beasts, decapitated sinners, and trumpet blowing angels, would be copied over and over again in various versions of the manuscript. John Williams, author of The Illustrated Beatus, introduces Beatus of Liébana and his Commentary on the Apocalypse.
The Vision of the Lamb (Apoc. 4: 6 – V: 6-8), in Maius' Morgana Beatus, Pierpont Morgan Library M644, fol. 87r
Towards the end of the eighth century Beatus, a monk in the monastery of San Martin de Turieno, near present day Santander, compiled a Commentary on the Book of Revelation, or Apocalypse, from the writings dedicated to the topic by such patristic authors as Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose and Irenaeus. Recognition of Beatus of Liébana has survived to our time thanks to his decision to illustrate the sixty-eight sections into which he divided the text of the Book of Revelation. It was a decision that could not easily have been anticipated, for it is not at all clear that Beatus had ever seen an illustrated book, and it is almost certain these illustrations were invented by him or an assistant. The pictures would remain integral to the many – some twenty-six – copies of the Commentary that have survived.
Some have assumed that Beatus’s great work was linked to his campaign against “Adoptionism,” the heretical position on the nature of the Godhead espoused by the bishop of Toledo, but it antedated that campaign. More commonly the book has been linked to the fact that Christian Spain had been conquered and occupied by Muslims. Perhaps some monks, who expected to adopt an allegorical mode for much that they read, identified the assailants of the righteous in the Book of Revelation with their Andalusian neighbors, but the texts harvested by Beatus were all written before Muhammad’s time and can not explicitly target Islam. In fact, the few passages that can be attributed to Beatus himself, make it clear that he chose the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible and the one that prophesies the future, because of the common belief that the world would end in A.D. 800 and usher in the Last Judgment. The fact that most copies date after the tenth century, when millennial expectations might have been revived, shows that the tradition had a life of its own. The illustrations must have played a major role in survival of the tradition.
And the fifth Angel sounded the trumpet: and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit (Apoc:9 - V:1-11) - in the Beatus de Facunda
The Apocalypse dramatically exposes the future as a contest between the people of God and a triumphant Godhead and the Anti-Christ and his minions, often in the guise of fantastic beasts. Lacking any copy from before the tenth century, we cannot be sure of the appearance of Beatus’s original illustrations, but those in copies of the tenth century employ a dramatic and colorful style eminently suited to the visions offered by John in the Apocalypse. From the copies that preserve the version of the text closest to the original, we know the pictorial format chosen by Beatus placed the figures directly on the vellum within one of the two columns of text. This format was radically revised in the middle of the tenth century by the scribe and painter Maius in the monastery of San Salvador de Tábara in the southern part of the kingdom of León, as first witnessed in the Commentary in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Inspired by the manner in which biblical subjects were illustrated at the French monastery of Saint-Martin de Tours, Maius enlarged the pictures, sometimes spreading them in an inventive way across two facing pages. With the addition of frames the backgrounds were painted, often – and again Touronian painting was influential – in horizontal bands of contrasting colors. No one would mistake this polychromatic expressionistic style for the classicizing style of Tours, nor can it be traced, as is sometimes assumed, to the influence of the art of Andalusia. In the succeeding centuries, however, native style would give way to successive phases of pictorial language invented north of the Pyrenees. The last illustrated copy surviving dates to the middle of the thirteenth century, a time that coincides with the decline of monastic culture.
John Williams (B.A. Yale, PH.D University of Michigan) taught twelve years at Swarthmore College, retired as Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh. He is Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and author of The Illustrated Beatus, 5 vols, London, (1994-2003).
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Tags: apocalypse, beatus of liebana, book of revelations, commentary on the apocalypse, illustrated beatus, medieval spain, religion, revelations
This entry was posted on 18th April 2011 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Art and Illustrations, Articles, Books, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.