Victoria's (and Albert's) Secret

I like QI.  It's a TV show that I can relate to, given that I seem to collect random bits of knowledge like an old lady collects random bits of string.  Apparently, I now use it to give me ideas when I'm stuck with writer's block like I was two weeks ago.

When we picture Queen Victoria, we picture the very straight-laced "Widow of Windsor"; a woman lost in perpetual mourning and the mother of the British Empire:

Queen Victoria, 1887, around 68 years old.  Although she never said "we are not amused", you can see why people thought that she did!

Of course, she wasn't born old.  It's easy to forget given that the pictures we see of her are largely like the ones above.  In her earlier years, she was absolutely besotted with her husband, Albert, although she had to ask him to marry her because of her royal position.  He became The Prince Consort in 1840 and the marriage lasted 21 years, until his death from typhoid fever in 1861.  It was his death that plunged her into the dark widow that we recognise today.  But before that, she was much different:

Vic & Al, 1846.  Painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.  Pictured here with five of her children.  As a side note, she was one of the first women to use anesthetic during childbirth, against the advice and will of the clergy, who believed that women should suffer the pain of Eve in order to bring a healthy child into the world.  She helped to break that belief.

Thing is, despite having nine children in total, Victoria hated being pregnant.  She thought babies were ugly and she really didn't like the idea of breast feeding at all.  She did, however, really like sex with her properly wedded husband.  In fact, after her last child was born she was told by her doctor, James Reid, that any more pregnancies would be dangerous to her health.  Her reply?  “Oh, Sir James!  Am I not to have any more fun in bed?”  She was far from the picture of Victorian repression that we picture today, by all accounts.  And fair play to her.

She was apparently very flirtatious as a wife, and as such, on Albert's 24th birthday, she surprised her husband with a portrait known for years after as "The Secret Picture".  Albert kept it in his private chambers and it was said to be his favourite picture of her.  At the time, it was seen as being a bit risqué, so he had every reason to keep it out of sight and very much to himself:

Queen Victoria's Secret:  The portrait deemed "too overtly sexual" to be shown to the public until 1977.  Of course, posing for such a picture would also have been seen as been scandalous by some.  That's 1843 for you!  Still, it's a beautiful picture and you can see why Albert liked it -- and why the royal family wished to keep it secret in order to keep Victoria's "proper" image intact.

The picture went on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2009 as part of an exhibition called Victoria & Albert:  Art & Love, which focused on the years between Victoria's accession to the throne and Albert's death.  I have no idea what Victoria or Albert would think about it going on display, but it humanises her, her husband and her relationship; it allows us to relate to a couple in love, rather than the sadness that followed.  I'd like to think that they wouldn't mind it being shared 170 years later.

Why Doctor Who Fails at Time Travel in Medieval and Renaissance England

Today, I was doing some research into New Year's during different time periods and checking out some of the awesome calendars people made hundreds of years ago.  Calendars tended to last longer in those days and generally came in book form.  Rather than being the ephemeral items they are today, they were works of art and skill:

 A 1496 copy of the German calendar created by Johannes Von Gmunden (c.1380-1443).  It sold recently for £73,250 ($117,347).  Astrological in nature, but the book also contains a liturgical section.  The moon looks smug though.  It bothers me.

However, I was reminded of something I learned years ago in school -- these medieval and renaissance types used a different calendar back then.  At that point, as I was discussing the nuances of the Julian vs the Gregorian calendars to the other half, he just exclaimed "That's why The Doctor can't ever get anywhere or any-when at the correct time or place!  It's not a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff -- he's just not taking calendars into account!"

I thought about this a moment and was going to disagree because, well, Time Lord.  But then I remembered that The Doctor couldn't even think to save Rory and Amy from the weeping angels by going to 1935 to pick them up.  So it makes sense to me that he could miss the whole calendars thing, which I should probably now explain, given that I've had caffeine and it's showing.

Or this.  They could have done this.  That would have been fine too.  HOW DID HE NOT SPOT THAT?  Okay, calm.  But it illustrates the point.  No common sense.  Or perhaps New York is just too full of flanginium, that rarest, yet most common of metals.  Incidentally, if you know who the artist for this is, I'd love to give them credit -- this is something that I saw floating around the Internet... :(

See, people have found different ways of measuring time.  The Romans had a few ways, the last of which being the Julian Calendar, brought in by Julius Caesar in 46BC to start in 45BC (by our calendars).  Romans of course measured from the founding of their city, Rome, (Ad Urbis Condita) so this change happened in 708AUC and 709AUC.  For perspective, by their calendar, we're now living in 2676, by the way...

The Julian calendar was all very well and good, except for the fact that it was 11 minutes longer per year than nature allows for.  Doesn't sound much until you realise that over the course of four centuries, it gained around 3 calendar days.  By the time the more accurate Gregorian calendar that we use today was introduced to the Catholic countries of Europe in 1582, the vernal equinox was taking place on the 11th March instead of the church's date of the 21st, meaning that 10 calendar days had been unintentionally inserted over time.  This was unacceptable given that the celebration of Easter was tied to the equinox and the seasons were getting out of sync.

This was further compounded by the fact that yes, under the Julian calendar, the year sensibly started on 1st January.  But of course that didn't take Roman Catholic religious observances -- the liturgical cycle -- which began on 25th March.

A Medieval Calendar:  A page from an English Book of Hours (1401-1414) held at the British Library, helpfully filed as "Royal 2 A XVIII".  This page illustrates 25th March (the Feast of Annunciation), which according to tradition is the day Mary was told "Yo.  You're pregnant."  This was therefore the start of the New Year for countries using the Julian calendar.  

So in practice, there was a secular New Year's Day and a religious one.  The year, however, only went up on the religious New Year's Day, 25th March.  Therefore, if Queen Elizabeth were to write a letter dated on the 1st January, 1567, which is correct from her perspective, we'd view it now as 1st January, 1568, which is correct from ours.  She'd also go to bed on 24th March, 1567 and wake up on 25th March, 1568 and this would be entirely normal.

To make matters even more complicated, note how I mentioned that the Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582.  So most of Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, Poland, the Netherlands and all their territories) took this on board.  Britain didn't.  It was Protestant and firmly so; this new calendar thing was clearly a Catholic plot by the Pope to bring Britain back into line!  Many Protestant countries felt this way.  However, the new calendar eventually caught on, in time, because it was more accurate.

Britain, her American colony and her territories took on the Gregorian Calendar in 1752.  By this time, the calendar was in something of a bind, so some trickery was used to fudge the dates and bring them into line.  On 24th March, 1751, the next day was 25th March, 1752.  This was actually normal (religious New Year, remember).  But, it was decreed that the year ended on 31st December, 1752, and therefore the year went up, the next day, on 1st January, 1753.  The calendar was also still out by 12 days, however, so 2nd September, 1752 was followed by 14th September, 1752.  1752 was 72 days shorter.  I kid you not.  They just decided to not have those days that year.

A page from William Hunter's Virginia Almanack for September 1752.  Despite 1752 being 72 days shorter than every other year ever, I doubt he gave 20% off his Almanacks (source).

Apparently, this is all even confusing to historians, mostly because half of them update and half of them don't.  Not exactly helpful, but at least they generally state it at the start of their works.  The Gregorian calendar became the worldwide standard over time, though the last country to accept it was Greece in 1923.  The Greek Orthodox churches, however, still use the Julian calendar.

Just as a note:  This will blow my mind at 4am tomorrow night -- when I remember it and I've had a few.  Although no time travelers ever make note of any of these discrepancies, I'm really glad they don't.  It'd just be confusing.  But you'd think The Doctor could at least install some kind of upgrade for it!

The Jesse Tree

It's been a little while since my last posting... You know how it is -- December is a month for family and friends visiting and for panicking and shopping and, well, failing to get stuff done.  I even got a little bit of writer's block, if I'm honest, so I decided to turn to my leatherworking muse to try and shift it.  In doing research for tree designs, I came across the idea of a Jesse Tree -- an unfamiliar idea that actually should be very familiar, as it turns out.

A Jesse Tree from the Winchester Psalter, a 12th century book of psalms from England, made for the brother of King Stephen.  It depicts the line of Christ.  Yep, it's a family tree.

The chap lying down at the bottom is Jesse, father to David, who is the chap on the first fork of the tree.  It ascends up to Mary and then Jesus at the top.  The chaps at either side are actually prophets, holding the scriptures that point to the prophesy of Christ as the Messiah.  It's a fairly common theme in these scriptural family trees -- but they're not just kept to books.  Trees of Jesse are also depicted in stained glass windows in churches and as time went on, good grief, they got grand:

 

Stained glass Jesse Tree at Saint-Étienne's church in Beauvais, France, created between 1522-1524.  Jesse is the chap in the four-poster bed at the bottom.  To his left is Francis I of France and to his right is the Holy Roman Emporer Charlies V.  The rest are misc kings of Judea plus St. Louis.

It took two years for this to be put together -- it's no wonder really to look at it.  It's amazingly beautiful and detailed.  If you'd like to see better and more in detail pictures, check out this article by Professor Moriarty. 

It wasn't just stereotypical churchy things that got the whole Jesse Tree treatment either.  I came across a liturgical comb fragment that features this design:

Ivory comb fragment from Bavaria, Germany.  It's from between 1180-1220 and measures 3 5/8"x4" in size and has an insane amount of detail.  Each of the scriptures have writing in Latin, in incredibly small lettering...  How much skill?

Isiah is stood on the left, holding a scroll that translates to "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse...".  I don't think they could have thought of a more unattractive way of putting it.  Yeesh.  That was probably the point though.

I've always wondered where the idea of a family tree actually came from.  Incidentally, the Jesse Tree bears no relation to the Christmas tree, even though I really looked for that connection -- well, you know.  It's December.  Everything has to be Christmas related, right?

17th Century Playing Cards -- Made from Silver

So, in my inbox this morning I found a news story about the re-discovery and sale of a set of playing cards created in Augsburg, Germany, in 1616.  These are no ordinary cards though -- these are actually made of silver and gilded with gold using an archaic mercury gilding technique.  The process is entirely illegal today; given that he would have added gold dust to mercury and then painted that solution onto the silver before firing it in a kiln... yeah.  I'm kind of glad it is illegal.  What's even more mad is that the artist creating this work (a chap named Michael Frömmer) knew it was dangerous at the time; no one really knew how or why it was a health hazard though.

Photograph by Jay Weston.  Visit here for a bigger and better picture.

Thing is, these cards weren't even for playing with.  They were Renaissance bling.  They sat inside a kunstschrank (art cabinet) and looked nice.  It was a way of saying "I have so much money, I can have this work of art and human engineering created for me."  Of course, should the owners fall on hard times, they also had an awful lot of silver on hand that could be melted down.  Security, currency, art and wealth all in one shot.  It'd be a crying shame if it had happened to these though.  The level of detail on these cards is immense and apparently on the same level as copper plates for print.

 King of Swords, dressed as the Holy Roman Emporer -- Likely Charlemagne.  That's an insane amount of detail -- though given it's mercury gilding, insane is possibly the correct word.  Photo by Patrick Debremme.

The Cavalier (or Knight) of Batons, dressed in early 17th century military gear, rocking the popped collar.  I'd love to know what his dog is looking at.  Photo:  Patrick Debremme, via LiveScience. Though I totally object to their use of the term "ancient".  400 years is not ancient!

You may have noticed that these aren't your standard suits that you find in playing cards today.  Back when these cards were produced, most countries in Europe had their own suits.  This German-made deck actually uses Italian suits, which are those of swords, coins, batons and cups (ace to 10).  Like modern decks, there are three face cards in each suit, although these comprise of king, cavalier/knight and knave.  The deck therefore contains 52 cards -- no jokers.

Each card is blank on the back and only around 1mm thick -- thin enough to play with, but not to shuffle.  They measure 3.4" by 2" and are one of only five sets of silver cards... and the only complete set in the world. 

I'm not really sure why this news story has become prominent now, given that these cards were re-discovered (and went on sale) in 2010 at Christie's for a small fortune -- $554,500 to be precise.  But it was an interesting thing to find in my inbox this morning.

If you want to read more about the provenance, Christie's has more info here.

The Geese Book

By the name of it, you'd think it was another falconry manuscript like De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus, but it's actually a two volume liturgical book that was created in Germany between 1503 and 1510.  It's called The Geese Book due to this illustration in the first book:

 Illustration from the bottom of a page showing a wolf leading a choir of geese, with a fox standing over them.  Keeping the fowl singers in line?  ...I'll get my coat...

The volumes largely contain musical notation for chants with several very decorative illuminations.  It's believed that one monk acted as scribe, whilst another chap was the artist.  Having researched it a bit, I found out that this book is huge -- 25.75" x 17.5" -- and made of vellum with pigskin bindings.  That's a lot of book, which doesn't sound massive until you see pictures:

 Left:  The cover of volume II of The Geese Book.  Sooo very pretty!  

Right:  Pictures of the book being digitised by the good people at The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 

The book contains a variety of chants for use at different times, some with some gorgeous illuminated margins and letters.  Some of these chants are suggested for use at very precise days, such as the first Sunday in Advent, which, incidentally, has a really beautiful page, with a really odd illustration at the bottom:

Bear and bear hunter in a bear hug.  It looks oddly like a reconciliation rather than the bear attacking...

Even after all these centuries, the gold on these pages is bright and looks absolutely stunning.  The best example is a page with notation for chants on Trinity Sunday.  The whole page is beautiful and in fantastic condition:

Look how shiny that gold is!  Also, I totally agree that the best time to shoot a deer with antlers like that is when it's asleep.  For a higher res and zoomable image, check this page out.

ACMRS has been digitising this manuscript since at least 2004.  It became available online yesterday.  I genuinely feel the need to thank the people who worked on this project for putting it online in this fashion.  Without their work, I would never have lost myself in these two books which were created by two talented men.  If you want to know more, examine the manuscript or even hear the chants (yeah, that hard work was part of the project too!), here's a link that'll take you straight to the online versions of the book:  http://geesebook.asu.edu/volumes.htm.  Enjoy!

Medieval Leather Caskets

This beauty turned up in my feed today, from the Cleveland Museum of Art:

This is a gorgeous casket that dates between 1350-1400.  It's a French casket made of wood but decorated with iron mounts and incised leather.  Needless to say that as a leatherworker myself, I find it really interesting to see some of the techniques I use in my workshop now being put into practice by folks centuries before!  I've often thought about making something similar, but this is definitely giving me the shove to.

It's dimensions are h:  4 1/8" (10.5cm), w: 9 7/8" (25.2cm) d:  7 7/16" (19cm).  This particular box would have been commissioned by someone who had money -- probably aristocratic in nature.  It has a scene of romantic love stamped into the surface, which means it was likely given as a love token or betrothal gift.  The box features banderoles, with text written in Old French with mutual expressions of love.  On the lid of the box, the lady asks "Hold my heart".  The man on the lid replies "But you already have it".  On the front of the box, the man is shown holding a heart saying "have it once more".

These boxes were usually created for the secular market and used for storing personal items such as books, documents, letters or jewelry.  Often wooden cored boxes were guilded or covered with ivory or leather.  In Germany, they were referred to as "minnekastchen" or "minneskästchen".  Below is a similar minnekastchen  from Germany, dated between 1351-1375.

The picture is from http://www.jmrw.com/Chess/Tableau_echecs/pages/198.htm, but it doesn't have a whole lot of info on the page.  It simply states that the box shows a man and a woman playing chess.  This box looks like it's been carved from wood with a cutaway wood layer over the top, which itself has been painted.  The site does, however, provide a closeup of the detail:

We can see in close up that both carry birds, which are noble signifiers, though I've no idea about the chap's strange green outfit.  Answers on a postcard, anyone?

Either way, these boxes are awesome little things.  If you'd like to read more about them, there's a really good site for it (with lots of pictures) over here:  http://thomasguild.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/kolner-minnekastchen.html