The History Blog – Page 332

17th c. Mexican national treasure for sale

Modern(ish), Renaissance

A rare 17th century folding screen that is officially classified a national treasure of Mexico is being offered at an online-only auction by Sotheby’s with an estimated price of $3-5 million. Bidding is open through October 11th. The starting bid is $2,800,000. No bidders yet. As a national treasure the screen cannot leave Mexico, so whoever buys it is going to have to be local or willing to lend it to a local institution indefinitely.

The screen is more than six feet high and 18 feet long, composed of 10 joined panels on a wooden frame. It is double-sided. On one side is a violently active depiction of the conquest of Tenochtitlán. Key events are shown in the locations where they took place as if they had occurred in the same moment and are numbered for identification with a key in the bottom left. Cortés’ arrival is in the upper right corner. Moctezuma II, the last Mexica emperor, is on the fourth panel from the left on a balcony as his assassins below aim fatal arrows at him.

In a deliberately stark contrast, the other side features an overhead map of the new Mexico City, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, a grid of clean, airy streets lined with stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs, churches, schools, hospitals, public squares, a Roman-like arched aqueduct in the foreground, mountains and lake in the background. Devoid of people, this is the idealized vision of colonial Mexico. All the fire, feathers and fighting replaced with the calm cleanliness of European civilization.

Entitled Biombo de la Conquista de Mexico y Vista de la Ciudad de Mexico, it was painted by an unknown artist in the second half of the 17th century. The fall of Tenochtitlán was based on the account in the True History of the Conquest of New Spain, a popular memoir of the conquest of Mexico written by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Hernán Cortés’ soldiers. The view of the colonial city was inspired by early 17th century decorative maps like the 1628 map of Mexico City by Juan Gómez de Trasmonte, now lost and known only from replicas.

The word “biombo” is a Hispanicized version of the Japanese “byobu,” literally meaning “protection from wind.” Byobu were luxury goods, first introduced to Japan from China in the 8th century, and imported into New Spain via the Manila Galleons that, in exchange for Mexican silver, transported Asian spices, silks, porcelain and other luxury goods from modern-day Cebu in the Philippines to Acapulco and many, many points in between. The trade between America and Asia had an enormous influence on Mexican decorative arts during the Viceroyalty period. Biombos took the Japanese form and replaced the pastoral landscapes, people and animals with narratives and urban locations that resonated strongly with the criollos (Mexican-born Spaniards) of the ruling class who commissioned them.

It is unquestionably of museum quality. The Museo Franz Mayer and the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City each have biombos of their own on the same theme. This is the finest and largest example still in private hands.

 

Nedjemankh’s gilded coffin repatriated

Ancient, Looting, Museums

The exquisite Late Ptolemaic gilded cartonnage coffin of the priest Nedjemankh was officially returned to Egyptian authorities in a ceremony in New York City Wednesday. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge for Homeland Security Investigations Peter C. Fitzhugh and Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Hassan Shoukry presided over the formal repatriation of the six-foot coffin that was looted from Egypt in the wake of the popular uprising that overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in January 2011.

The mummiform coffin decorated with thick layer of gesso reliefs and covered in an unbroken layer of gold was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017 for $4 million. The seller was French dealer Christophe Kunicki who gave the Met an export document from Egypt dated 1971 as proof that the exceptional, never-before-seen object had been legally removed from the country and been slumbering unknown in ye olde Swiss private collection. In February of 2019, after months of investigation, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit informed the museum that the export document was a forgery, the coffin very recently looted and the Met defrauded of four million dollars.

The investigation traced the movement of the coffin from its theft in the Minya region in October 2011 to the United Arab Emirates, Germany — where it was restored — the auction house in France and finally New York. This is just the tip of the iceberg and the investigation is ongoing, active in three countries.

At a press conference attended by Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs Sameh Shoukry on Wednesday, New York’s district attorney Cyrus Vance said the probe revealed “glaring inconsistencies” related to the coffin’s sale.

That the artifact first surfaced in 2011, a year that saw the revolution overthrow president Hosni Mubarak, “should have been a red flag,” Vance said.

Not to mention the reddest of red flags in the book, the Swiss private collection canard. I still can’t even believe I fell for that.

Vance said he had elaborated on details of the investigation “in the hope that folks in the industry will take note and perhaps use the lessons learnt in this case to better scrutinise their acquisitions.” […]

Vance said it was among hundreds of objects stolen by the same multi-national trafficking ring, and that “more significant seizures of prominent antiquities in the months and years to come” are possible.

Good. Can’t happen soon enough.

Iron Age gold snake-tipped collar found in Estonia

Ancient

A metal detector hobbyist has discovered a rare 1,700-year-old gold collar in Estonia.  On September 8th, Jegor Klimov was exploring a field at the ancient sacrificial site of Saaremaa as part of a search team led by archaeologist Marika Mägi when his metal detector alerted. The team had already decided to pack up and leave, but Klimov started to dig and revealed a tell-tale yellow glint. Archaeologists joined in and excavated a coiled up ring of gold with a serpent head on one end.

The collar dates to the Roman Iron Age, around the 3rd century A.D. Neck rings from this period were marks of high rank in Scandinavia, the more complex the design and construction, the more elite the wearer. Almost all the ones that have been discovered were found in bogs; none of them were found in graves. A few more simple arm rings and neck rings have been found in cremation burials. Studies of artifacts have found that objects buried in bogs were not, as a rule, the same as those buried in graves. Votive deposits were more precious, the best possible objects dedicated as sacrifices at sacred sites. Of the 60 or so extant gold neck rings from the Scandinavian Iron Age, almost all of them have been found in Sweden and Denmark. A handful have been found in Finland; one in Poland. This is the first of its kind found anywhere else in the Baltic states.

Very few artifacts from this period have been discovered in Estonia and gold objects from any period are extremely rare in the Estonian archaeological record. They can literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. At 175 grams in weight, this piece is the heaviest, most valuable gold archaeological artifact ever found in Estonia and must have belonged to someone of the highest rank among the Nordic elite. Its discovery supports the hypothesis that what is now western and northwestern Estonia had meaningful cultural contact with the peoples around the Baltic Sea and in Scandinavia as well as with the tribes in the modern-day Baltic states and Russia.

The Saaremaa piece may have been a bracelet, spiral collar or necklace. It’s difficult to say because, as is common with sacrificed objects, it was deliberately deformed, but its heavy weight and length suggests it was probably a neck ring.

“One can say that this is likely the most valuable single find,in the material sense, to be unearthed in Estonia,” Mägi explained to ETV news broadcast “Aktuaalne kaamera.” “It is believed that whoever wore these, they were a symbol of belonging to the highest echelons of society. So these are not regular bracelets. How this particular bracelet ended up in Saaremaa is an exciting question in its own right, and one we’ll likely never get a real answer for. This is a type of jewelry which throughout Scandinavia is considered one of the most significant items of the Roman Iron Age, and it is associated with royal power and royal families.”

Cimabue masterpiece found in French kitchen

Medieval

A painting that for years hung over a hotplate in a Compiegne kitchen has been identified as a 13th century tempera-on-panel by Cimabue. Its owner, a woman in her 90s, knew nothing about it. She thought it was a Russian religious icon and had no recollection of how or when she’d gotten it. Even though it had been perched over the hotplate for years, it was in good condition. When the elderly lady decided to move out and sell her 1960s home and its contents, she contacted a local auctioneer to see if there was anything worse selling. The appraiser had a week to go through the house before the owner sent everything to the dump.

She noticed the painting over the hotplate right away and thought it might be something special, an Italian primitive piece worth several hundred thousand euros, at least. She suggested they get expert from Paris to assess it. Old Masters specialists from the Turquin gallery in Paris examined the painting in detail, including under infrared light, and determined that it is was painted by Cimabue.

“It’s a major discovery for the history of art,” Pinta said of the newly discovered work measuring about 10 inches by 8 inches (24 centimeters by 20 centimeters). Other experts agreed.

The Florentine painter Cenni di Pepo (c. 1240 – c. 1302), nicknamed Cimabue, was a pioneering artists of the late medieval period who introduced naturalistic emotion and perspective into the two-dimensional, heavily symbolic Byzantine painting style. In so doing, he and contemporaries like his student Giotto were key to the transition of the static, stylized painting of Middle Ages into the Italian Renaissance. There are only 11 known panel paintings by Cimabue and none of them are signed.

The newly discovered panel, Christ Mocked, depicts Jesus surrounded by a jeering mob after his trial before the Sanhedrin, an event described in all three Synoptic Gospels. It was originally part of a larger piece, perhaps an altarpiece diptych, that depicted several small scenes from Christ’s Passion and death. It was dismembered and sold off in individual lots, a sadly common fate for rare early panel paintings during the frenzied souvenir collecting of the Grand Tour era. Scholars believe that two other panels from the piece are now in the Frick Collection in New York and National Gallery, London.

The Frick acquired its panel, The Flagellation of Christ, in 1950, but at the time it was loosely attributed only to the Tuscan school. It wasn’t confirmed as the work of the innovative medieval master until 2000 when the companion piece now in the National Gallery, The Virgin and Child with Two Angels, was rediscovered in the ancestral home of a Suffolk aristocrat and was accepted by the government in lieu of Inheritance Tax. The wood — type, carpentry and condition, down to the wormholes — and paint — material and style — comparison marked the two panels as having been painted at the same time by Cimabue.

After examining the French kitchen find, Turquin gallery specialists concluded with “certitude” it bore hallmarks of Cimabue’s work, Pinta said.

They noted clear similarities with the two panels of Cimabue’s diptych, one displayed at the Frick Collection in New York and the other at the National Gallery in London.

Likenesses in the facial expressions and buildings the artist painted and the techniques used to convey light and distance specifically pointed to the small piece having been created by Cimabue’s hand.

The work will go under the hammer at the Acteon auction house in Senlis, north of Paris, on October 27. It is estimated to sell between four and six million euros ($4.3 million – $6.6 million), but the sky is the limit really. This is the first time a Cimabue has ever come up for auction and museums and collectors with the deepest pockets imaginable are going to be gunning for it.

Assyrian reliefs (and beards) at the Getty

Ancient, Museums

The British Museum has the largest collection of Assyrian reliefs in the world, with 240 panels on display and another 80 in storage. Only lack of space and funds keeps those 80 out of public view, not any inferiority of quality. Indeed, one of them, the Banquet Scene from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, is regarded by many as the finest Assyrian single panel relief in the world. They used to be on display in a basement gallery but it was closed in 2006 and these priceless treasures have only rarely been exhibited at the BM or loaned to other institutions in 13 years.

Now 14 of them, including the Banquet Scene, the Royal Lion Hunt and the Attack on an Enemy Town, will re-emerge from the penumbra into the bright sunshine of Malibu where they will go display at the Getty Villa for three years. The Banquet Scene is one of the 12 gypsum bas-relief panels that form the core of the Getty’s new show Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq starting on October 2nd and running for three years.

The Banquet Scene and several other of the British Museum’s relief panels were discovered in the 1850s by Hormuzd Rassam in what was then Ottoman territory. Rassam’s team excavated the ancient Assyrian site of Nineveh near what is now Mosul, Iraq, for the British discovering the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal (r. 668-627 B.C.). The walls had been adorned with elaborate bas-reliefs of the king in action — hunting, fighting — and at leisure, although even his famed banquet scene directly references his deadly power as a king and warrior by including the decapitated head of the vanquished King Teumman of Elam hanging from a tree behind the queen.

Other reliefs in the exhibition were discovered in the palaces of  Kings Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 B.C.), Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745–727 B.C.) and Sargon II (r. 722–705 B.C.) in the mid-19th century. All of the Assyrian royal palace reliefs were originally painted in vivid polychrome that would have emphasized the fine details, but even with the paint long faded, the exceptional quality of the designs still shines. The pattern of the king’s clothes, the ringlets in the hair, the muscles and bones of the animals, are carved with painstaking artistry. These were not just wall decorations, after all; they played a key role in conveying the all-encompassing power  of the king (in battle, at the hunt, in religious significance) in the most important public rooms and in his private rooms.

“The British Museum possesses the largest and most important collection of Assyrian reliefs in the world. The fourteen panels on view at the Getty Villa create a compelling overview of the subjects, styles, and artistic achievements of Assyria’s sculptors, including outstanding masterpieces such as the ‘Banquet Scene’ of the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, reviled as ‘Sardanapalus’ in the Old Testament,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “At the time of their discovery, taste in Britain—and Europe generally—hewed strongly to classical models, by which standard some saw these Assyrian monuments as unrefined; but this attitude soon subsided, and they are now universally appreciated as artistic achievements of great visual and emotional power. In our own day the historical and cultural importance of these sculptures has increased with the tragic destruction by ISIS of many of the reliefs that remained in Iraq.  We hope therefore that this display will raise awareness of the need to protect major heritage sites that remain at peril around the world.”

While the panels are on loan, the British Museum is working on creating a new space to display all of their Assyrian reliefs. That’s a very long-term project, however, and given the huge sums involved and all the red tape that has yet to be cut through in approving the project, it could be a decade or more in the future. In the short-term, the museum is building a state-of-the-art archaeological storage facility in Reading which is scheduled to be completed in 2023.

To complement the Assyrian exhibition, the Getty will be offering a free talk on one of the most striking iconographic elements of the reliefs: beards. Ancient facial hair expert (yes it is a thing and yes it is awesome) Christopher Oldstone-Moore will give a talk entitled The Meaning of Beards from Antiquity to Today on October 26th at 3PM. You must book tickets in advance but they are free. Even cooler, though, right before the lecture the Getty will be offering a drop-in program during which a stylist will recreate ancient beard looks from Assyria, Greece and Rome. Attendees will also be able to get their hands dirty — fragrantly perfumed and moisturized, actually — making their own beard or body oil using ancient scents. What better way to usher in No-Shave November than to get spruced up Ashurbanipal style.