From Neatorama: Negative Campaigning in Medieval Time:

Negative political campaigns and mudslinging aren’t anything new – in fact, the practice harks back to medieval time. [continue, see image of mural, oh my.]

From The Telegraph: Lost Queen Elizabeth I portrait found in attic.

A lost portrait of a young Elizabeth I that was discovered in the attic of a country house has intrigued historians after X-rays revealed that it was painted over an earlier picture of the monarch.

The painting, which had lain unnoticed in the dirty loft for more than a century, depicts the Queen as a pale, pious and austere young woman, and is one of the few pictures to show the 16th century royal in the early years of her reign.

Elizabeth, who is dressed in simple black clothes and clutches a Bible, was believed to have been around 26 when the portrait was painted.

But X-ray scans of the canvas have uncovered [continue]

From the Beeb: New method used to date cave art.

Experts from the University of Bristol are to attempt to accurately date prehistoric caves.

The team from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology travelled to northern Spain to collect samples of paintings from more than 20 caves.

They will use a new method, based on the radioactive decay of uranium, to date the paintings. [continue]

From the Guardian: Solved: mystery of The Ugly Duchess – and the Da Vinci connection.

She is one of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery, whose rather unfortunate looks inspired illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But one question has always puzzled: did the poor lady really look like this?

Today the Guardian can reveal that she did and was suffering from an exceptionally rare form of Paget’s disease – an abnormality of the metabolism that enlarges and deforms the bones.

The portrait, An Old Woman, painted by the Flemish artist Quinten Massys in 1513, is popularly known as The Ugly Duchess and will be part of the National Gallery’s eagerly awaited exhibition Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, which opens next Wednesday.

Curators are particularly excited about this painting because [continue, see painting]

From The Guardian: Fire lays bare prehistoric secrets of the moors in Yorkshire.

A catastrophic fire which "skinned" a precious moorland to its rocky bones has unexpectedly revealed some of the most important prehistoric archaeology found in Britain.

The uncontrolled six-day blaze on Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire has exposed a lost landscape dating back 3,000 years which is now to be made accessible to the public by English Heritage.

Unique rock art and unprecedentedly clear bronze age field boundaries have emerged from the soot and cinders [continue, see photo]

Continue reading →

From the BBC: Ancient rock carvings discovered.

More than 100 new examples of prehistoric art have been discovered carved into boulders and open bedrock throughout Northumberland and Durham.

The 5,000-year-old Neolithic carvings of circles, rings and hollowed cups, were uncovered by volunteers.

One of the most interesting discoveries was [continue]

From The Telegraph: New X-ray technique reveals colour of hidden van Gogh.

A portrait of a woman by Vincent van Gogh that he later painted over has been revealed in more detail than every before thanks to a new X-ray technique.

Previous research had discovered an outline of the peasant’s head behind the Dutch painter’s later work, Patch of Grass.

But this latest technique, which has never been used before, has unveiled the pigments van Gogh used in the original painting.

Over two days the scientists bombarded the painting with a powerful pencil-thin beam of X-rays, which caused the atoms in the picture to release "fluorescent" X-rays of their own which the scientists measured.

As the different chemicals that van Gogh used to paint the image release differing amounts of fluorescence, they were able to map the picture in great detail. [continue]

Continue reading →

From The Times: Many hands painted Lascaux caves.

The painted caves of Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France are one of the most famed monuments of Ice Age art. Dating back about 17,000 years, the great Hall of the Bulls and its adjacent chambers proved so popular with visitors that a generation ago the cave had to be closed to save the paintings from encroaching mould. A replica, Lascaux II, was built nearby and has proved equally popular.

One thing that strikes the visitor is the exuberance of the compositions, with hundreds of animals, including bison, horses and deer, parading along the walls and ceilings, often overlapping. A big problem in sorting out possible groupings of animals, and possible motives for painting them, has been the issue of contemporaneity — what was painted when?

A recent study by scientists at the Louvre’s research and conservation laboratories has suggested [continue]

Oh my. From the Guardian: Carpet of stone: medieval mosaic pavement revealed.

The wraps have come off one of Westminster Abbey’s least known treasures, a medieval marble pavement foretelling the end of the world, while conservation experts consider how to preserve the ancient stones for the next 740 years.

Few modern visitors have ever seen it, although since 1268 kings and princes, queens and cardinals have walked across a symbol laden mosaic as intricate as a piece of jewellery.

It is made up of rare marbles and gemstones, including some recycled from monuments 1,000 years older, and pieces of coloured glass, set in complex allegorical patterns into a framework of Purbeck marble cut as intricately as a jigsaw puzzle.

"When this floor was new it would have blazed with colour," Vanessa Simeoni, the abbey’s head of conservation said. "The materials were chosen for their brilliance and shine, and the quality of the craftsmanship is actually shocking, the ultimate that could be achieved."

The mosaics are known as Cosmati work, after the four generations of a Roman family of marble workers who perfected the technique. The Westminster one, regarded as the finest north of the Alps, uniquely has an inscription boasting of its makers – and a cryptic message about the end of the world. [continue, see photo]

From discovery.com: Oldest Oil Paintings Found in Afghanistan.

The oldest known oil painting, dating from 650 A.D., has been found in caves in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, according to a team of Japanese, European and U.S. scientists.

The discovery reverses a common perception that the oil painting, considered a typically Western art, originated in Europe, where the earliest examples date to the early 12th century A.D.

Famous for its 1,500-year-old massive Buddha statues, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, the Bamiyan Valley features several caves painted with Buddhist images.

Damaged by the severe natural environment and Taliban dynamite, the cave murals have been restored and studied by the [continue]

From discovery.com: Mona Lisa’s Identity Confirmed by Document.

The mystery over the identity of the woman behind Leonardo da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" painting has been solved once and for all, German academics at Heidelberg University announced on Tuesday.

Mona Lisa is "undoubtedly" Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, according to Veit Probst, director of the Heidelberg University Library.

Conclusive evidence came from notes written in October 1503 in the margin of a book.

Discovered two years ago in the library’s collection by manuscript expert Armin Schlechter, the notes were made by Florentine city official Agostino Vespucci, an acquaintance of Leonardo da Vinci, in an edition of letters by the Roman orator, Cicero.

In his annotations, Vespucci wrote that [continue]

From sciencemag.org: Crimson Clues from the Ancient Past.

Chemists have confirmed something that archaeologists and art historians have long suspected: Ancient sculptures found in western Africa contain blood from ritual animal sacrifices in their patina. The study, which used new diagnostic techniques, should yield a greater understanding of the practices of artists from long ago, and it could open the way for more detailed analyses of the world’s most precious artifacts.

Anthropologists and ethnologists have uncovered much cultural evidence, from oral histories and illustrations, that ancient African artists often used ritual animal blood in their creations, generally as attempts to please or appease their deities. In the empire of Mali, for example, which flourished from the early 13th century to the late 15th century C.E., the Dogon people decorated or painted their sculptures with various pigments thought to be composed partly of blood. But because of the age of the artifacts, the composition of the patina has eluded standard chemical analyses.

So a team from the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France in Paris and other institutions in France employed a quartet of new techniques. [continue]

From the BBC: Castle unveils medieval tapestry.

A tapestry that recreates part of a priceless Renaissance work of art has been unveiled at Stirling Castle.

The intricate 12ft by 14ft tapestry, entitled The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle, has taken a team of weavers four years to complete.

It forms the third part of the famous 16th century Hunt of the Unicorn series of tapestries, being recreated at the castle at a cost of £2m. [continue]