117
Google image search brings this up pretty easily. (Image recognition technology is amazing these days.) It is The Abduction of Orithyia by Boreas, a late 17th century tapestry.
I gather it's currently in storage at a San Francisco museum rather than at a New England mansion.
102
The hexagram is not an exclusively Jewish symbol. For that matter, the Star of David as a symbol of Judaism (as opposed to a symbol used by Jews) is far newer than people realize, dating only to 1897 and the First Zionist Congress. Given that, seeing a six-pointed star on top of a Christmas tree in 1924 is no surprise.
Also, Jesus was of the house of ...
77
Art does not exist in a vacuum, but is rather only one part of the historical record. Just as people comment on our modern standard of beauty today, so does early modern writers on theirs. Fortunately, Baroque art dates from a recent enough period that the historical record is extensive.
For example, a 17th century commentary on a Van Dyck portrait of a ...
44
In principle, yes.
But it is not the 1943 Westinghouse poster of a "Rosie the Riveter"-like figure captioned "We Can Do It!" by J. Howard Miller that became conflated with "Rosie the Riveter" in postwar years
but the painting by Norman Rockwell from 1943:
The pose in the Rockwell painting does look a lot like the pose Michelangelo chose to display the ...
43
It's the Wedding at Cana.
The text is in Swedish, written with Gothic script (this was common up to the end of the nineteenth century in Sweden). The text is
... madd [sic!], som blir smakelig. Om Bröllopet i Kana i Galileen. JOHannis 2 Kap
In English
... food that becomes well tasting. About the wedding in Cana in Galilee. Chapter 2 of John.
The ...
39
This a picture called
"La foire du Lendit" Pontifical de Sens, France, 14th century
BnF Ms. Latin 962, fol. 264
Source: Medieval Trade and Travel: Home
And can be dated with additional detail to found here.
That image is at the source here, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France:
La foire du Lendit
Pontifical de Sens, France, XIVe siècle
Paris, ...
32
This is an example of decorative marginalia, which is quite common on medieval manuscripts. Sometimes the marginalia relates to the context of the subject of that page of the manuscript, but often it appears to have been quite random.
One fairly well-known group that I'm personally particularly fond of is the so-called animals at war which includes images ...
28
The painting shows Robert Walpole in his full regalia as First Earl of Orford. The "crown" is not, in fact technically a crown, but rather a coronet, which forms part of that regalia.
The Wikipedia article includes a series of images depicting the coronets for various British coronet rankings. I have reproduced the image of an Earl's coronet ...
26
It's obviously not due to lack of talent. It's important to ask first whether the ancients even aspired to photorealistic paintings. Consider that the ancients were adept at a form of artistic representation that was even more "realistic" than a photorealistic painting: sculpture. Even the Egyptians, famous for their stylized two-dimensional art, where quite ...
25
The image shows shows the Fair at Lendit in France. It is taken from a 15th century manuscript held at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris France.
MS Latin 962 folio 264.
The suggested date for the manuscript is 1405-1410, which should help narrow down your research.
The whole manuscript has been scanned, and is available online.
From the description:
...
25
A lot of the paintings were commissioned as portraits, why would people pay for themselves to be depicted in an ugly way?
Wealth nowadays is associated with a slim, tanned, and shaped body because those are traits of people who have enough free time, and money to achieve it. In that period, it would be the reverse, being more on the fat side would require ...
24
There’s a detailed description of the mosaic in Meyboom’s The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina, and in this answer I will be mostly quoting from this work.
Organization of the mosaic
It has always been agreed that there is an essential difference in content between the upper and lower half of the mosaic so that actually consists of two parts. In the upper part we ...
21
John Everett Millais, "Self Portrait" - 1880, Uffizi Gallery Florence
John Everett Millais
21
See Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus / auctore Olao Magno ... Magnus, Olaus, 1490-1558 (click here for full Hathi Trust catalog entry for the 1562 edition) or here for Wikipedia's description. Your explanation is in Book 3, Chap 2, folio 30 verso, near the bottom of the page of the 1562 edition, and on page 98 of the nicer-looking fuller 1555 edition....
20
Acknowledgement: this answer owes a debt to some of the comments posted under the question and under this answer, especially Kimchilover.
There is conclusive evidence that all three images are from after the 1789 revolution and strong evidence that at least one was made no later than 1834. However, there appears to be conflicting evidence on a more precise ...
17
According to many Hellenistic accounts, photo-realistic painting was well developed and popular at that time. The legend says that an artist made a picture of a boy with some fruits, and it was so realistic that the birds tried to peck the fruits. The artist however considered this a failure, because the birds who did recognize the fruits as real, were not ...
17
I have dealt with this question in my article, "Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art," in American Journal of Archaeology 1989, which can be accessed either through JSTOR or through Academia.com, under my name. I am also editing a multi-author book, Nudity as a Costume in the Ancient Mediterranean, where I take up the subject of Greek nudity again.
The ...
16
Based on your reading of the signature I did some googling and can offer the hypothesis (just a guess, really) that the artist might be Rudolf Claudus. He was a naval painter of note who was particularly active in Italy during WWII so the timeline fits well.
I am not any kind of expert on art so I cannot say with any degree of authority whether your ...
16
I understand that there are four surviving accounts of de Soto's expedition.
Three of those accounts were written by survivors:
Rodrigo Rangel or Ranjel, who was de Soto’s personal secretary;
Luys Hernández de Biedma, the Spanish King’s representative;
and an individual known as the “Gentleman from Elvas”, who is
believed to be a Portuguese mercenary ...
16
There are many theories & interpretations, but relatively little evidence to support most of them. Of course, there are no written sources from the Ubaid period to support them.
You are absolutely right that there hasn't been a great deal of published material on the subject. However, a good, and relatively recent (2006), paper on the subject is A ...
15
After going through every Roman Emperor, I found only six who served over a year and did not have a bust or statue in known existence. Here is the list:
Glycerius
Anthemius
Majorian
Julius Nepos
Libius Severus
Aurelian
My basic methodology for finding this list was
Open every emperor Wiki page who served over one year and hope Chrome doesn't crash
Close ...
14
The reason there are errors you can't reconcile is that this is not painted from life. This is a lady of 1850.
After this the hoop skirts only get bigger.
This is a gentleman of 1855, who wears trousers and a frock coat.
The people you see here are from decades earlier. The gentlemen wear swallowtail coats with breeches and stockings. The women wear the ...
14
From this website http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/clothing-ii , in a section concerning historical clothing it goes into length on several styles of headgear. This style falls under the designation 'tiara'.
In any event, the tiara had a top like a hood, often lined inside with
luxurious animal fur. Ordinarily it was worn flat, either pressed down
...
14
Lowbrow culture have always existed in human society, they're just not necessarily that well preserved in the historical record, or in modern popular consciousness. Jokes about sex, farts, penises, and bodily functions in general were particularly common.
A mainstay of medieval entertainment was fart jokes, which seem to be popular throughout human history. ...
14
Here is a virtual tour of a temporary exhibit Magritte La Ligne de vie that was held at MASI Lugano in Switzerland in late 2018 to early 2019. (I found this by way of an Italian language blog post which does not seem to include any details about the painting itself, except for an image.) If you navigate toward the back of the gallery in this virtual your, ...
13
On very many statues from antiquity exserted parts are broken, in most cases hands, but noses are also very often. The purely mechanical reasons are evident. There are no reasons to conclude that this statue was defaced.
Here is one example of the many:
They say this is Cleopatra VII. I do not think anyone hated her so much as to break the nose on her ...
13
SHORT ANSWER
As with most such images in medieval manuscripts, it's hard to tell. The artist may not have intended any particular meaning, but I've listed some possibilities at the end of the long answer.
LONG ANSWER
There are many such strange illustrations in medieval manuscripts, especially in the margins (known as marginalia). In many (maybe most) ...
13
Q How do we know baroque art depicted obese ladies because of a different ideal of beauty?
Do we really?
We don't. The anthropological constant to be observed is: "women are considered 'attractive' if: young and healthy" (both more or less relating to fecundity; Whether socio-biological, evolutionary, or just cynical):
Differences in the historical record ...
13
It's cuitlatl, a symbol of excrement, sin, perhaps fire.
We see plate 57 from the Codex Borgia. It depicts Tlazolteotl goddess of earth and filth, here as a moon goddess and goddess of pulque, together with her consort Patecatl god of healing, fertility, peyote and pulque again, as a moon god. He represents a monkey, she movement. Both are the lords of the ...
13
There are.
Monument of Aemilius Paullus was erected in the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi shortly after 167 BCE in order to commemorate the Roman victory at the Battle of Pydna over King Perseus of Macedon.
— David Gibbins: "Destroy Carthage: The Triumph Of Aemilius Paullus", 2013.
— Jeremiah B. McCall: "The Cavalry Of The Roman Republic. ...
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