If you look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, you would never guess the artist who produced such a work didn’t care for painting.
Historians have variously described the Renaissance as an advance beyond the “dark ages”, and a nostalgic period looking back to the Classical age. Whatever it was, the 15th and 16th centuries produced some of the most gifted artists, in history.
None more so than the Italian Masters.
There was the polymath Leonardo and the Florentine sculptor, Donatello. There was Raphael, that prodigiously talented architect and painter whose enormous body of work belies an early death, at the age of 37. We remember Brunelleschi and Botticelli but only one had his biography written, while he was still alive. Not once, but twice. Only one of these men would have his home town renamed…after himself. Today, the Tuscan village of Caprese is known as Caprese Michelangelo.
He was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni.
If you look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, you would never guess the artist who produced such a work didn’t care for painting. “Along with the milk of my nurse,” he would say, “I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures”. Michelangelo was a sculptor.
Sistine Chapel
He was “Il Divino”, “The Divine One”, literally growing up with the hammer and chisel. He had a “Terribilità”, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur about him that made him difficult to work with, but he was widely admired and imitated. He was that insufferably cocky kid who wasn’t bragging, because he could deliver.
A massive block of Carrara marble was quarried in 1466, nine years before Michelangelo was born. That same year a commission to produce the work we now know as “David” went to the artist Agostino di Duccio. So difficult was this particular block that he never got beyond roughing out the legs and draperies.
Antonio Rossellino took a shot at it 10 years later, but he didn’t get much farther.
25 years later, the Guild of Wool Merchants decided to revive the abandoned project and went looking for an artist. The now infamously difficult slab had deteriorated for years in the elements, when Michelangelo stepped forward at the age of 26. The prevailing attitude seems to have been yeah, give it to him. That might even take him down a few pegs.
The sculptor began work on September 13, 1501. His master work would take him three years to complete.
The 17-foot, six-ton David was originally intended for the roof of the Florence Cathedral, but it wasn’t feasible to raise such an object to such a great height. A committee including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli was formed to decide on an appropriate site for the statue. The committee chose the Piazza della Signoria outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence.
It took four days on a specially constructed cart to move the David statue into position, the unveiling taking place on September 8, 1504.
Among the dignitaries gathered for the occasion was the Mayor of Florence, Vasari Pier Soderini, who complained that David’s nose was “too thick”.
Michelangelo climbed the statue with a handful of marble dust, sending down a shower of the stuff as he pretended to work on the nose. After several minutes, he stepped back and asked Soderini if it was improved. “Yes”, replied the Mayor, now satisfied. “I like it better. You have given it life”.
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness”. — Aristotle
In his 72 years on this earth Herman Melville wrote more than 90 books and short stories. He was no stranger to some small fame but it was only after death that the man’s magnum opus Moby Dick, came to be seen as one of the finest works of literature ever written. Edgar Allen Poe struggled as a writer. The Raven was sold for only $9 during his lifetime. Now a towering figure in the literary world Poe’s fame too, would only come after death. Shy and introverted in life, Emily Dickinson published only 8 poems during her lifetime. Her remaining body of work she hid carefully away, some 1,800 poems coming to light, only after she was gone.
Such a list could be long and include the likes of Franz Kafka, Henry David Thoreau and Jane Austen. Artists who became famous only in death contain a who’s who of painters including Monet, Gaugin, Cezanne and more but none so tragic, as Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent Willem Van Gogh was born and died on March 30, 1852, a stillbirth. The artist with the same name was born one year later, to the day. Confusingly, the church register even assigned the infant the same number, as his dead brother. Vincent van Gogh, #29. It wasn’t unusual in those days for grieving parents to give the same name as a child who had died. What it’s like to grow up a replacement, to visit a grave marked with your own name and birthdate minus a year, is something the rest of us can only guess at.
Vincent was close with his brother Theodorus, all but inseparable.
A successful Dutch art dealer, Van Gogh’s younger brother Theodorus (“Theo”) had an important impact on the world of French and Dutch art. Thanks to Theo van Gogh and his financial and emotional support of his older brother, that we’re able to enjoy much of the artist’s work.
Four years his junior it was Theo who encouraged his brother to paint in the first place. Vincent could always draw but he didn’t pick up a brush, until he was 27.
Vincent Van Gogh began to write letters in 1872, an average of one every ten days. He would continue this practice for the rest of his life, some 903 in all. His sister Wil was a frequent recipient as were the artists Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard and Émile Bernard, but none so much as his brother Theo. 663 of these letters are known to survive including this 1885 note describing the artist’s first masterpiece, “The Potato Eaters”. It is through these letters we know much of the life, of Vincent van Gogh.
2,300 years ago, Aristotle spoke of the confluence of Greatness and mental illness. Even now that place where genius meets darkness, is imperfectly understood. Definitive diagnoses of historical figures are elusive and yet, history abounds with stories pointing toward mental illness in some of the great figures of the past. Michelangelo displayed signs of autism, as did Isaac Newton. The famous “scream” painting by Edvard Munch may be autobiographical of a man, prone to panic attacks. Ludwig von Beethoven suffered mood swings likely amounting to bipolar disorder as did Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent tried his hand at dealing art but suffered depression during visits to London. There followed a period as Christian missionary in the south of Belgium before, feeling ill and depressed, van Gogh moved in with his parents. Theo, always the source of encouragement and support both financial and emotional convinced his brother, to take up the brush.
Vincent van Gogh had but ten years to live when he started to paint. In that time the man produced 2,100 artworks including 860 oil paintings, most of those, in the last two years of his life. First there were the dark colors of the “Dutch period” seen in peasant scenes, portraits and still life.
The Potato Eaters painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands
Vincent moved to Paris in 1886 where he met members of the avant-garde art world, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. These were the iconoclasts, the radicals, the unorthodox who opened a whole new vision. Here we see the burst of bright colors and bold brush strokes for which Vincent is now known.
This too was a period of depression, of mental instability and psychotic episodes. The confrontation ending Vincent’s friendship with Paul Gaugin culminated in van Gogh cutting off his own ear, with a razor.
Still Life with Irises, Café Terrace at Night, The Starry Night
Thus began a period of mental decline. A period spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals, of heavy drinking, poor diet and declining health. One day, this tortured soul would be recognized as one of the finest artists who ever lived. For now he was just another madman, a failure in work, and in life.
Fun Fact: Following the self-mutilation episode in which Vincent removed his own ear, van Gogh spent time in an asylum outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in France. There he was fond of painting outdoors where he painted olive groves, and other pastoral scenes. If you look very closely just to the right of this 1889 portrait you will find the remains of a dead grasshopper, blown by the wind and trapped in wet paint. There are no signs of struggle, indicating the insect was deceased before hitting the canvas. As for the Master he either didn’t notice, or did not care.
Olive Trees, 1889
For the man, the last two years were a downward spiral from which there would be no return. For Vincent’s art this was the most productive, the most brilliant period of a short career.
Theo alone understood his brother. His talent. His madness. For Vincent, Theo was the only person he could open up to. Vincent received a never-ending stream of letters from his brother, words of love, of encouragement, and always the painting supplies, and the money. Theo received a stream of letters in return with day-to-day news, plans for upcoming works but all the while, it wasn’t enough.
Around this time, Vincent set out on foot to visit the French naturalist Jules Breton, a walk of some 80 kilometers. Unlike van Gogh, Breton achieved considerable success in his lifetime. Perhaps Vincent was intimidated by the high walls. The large estates. Nobody knows. After all that he turned and walked home. The man he intended to visit never knew he was there.
In Paris, Theo fell in love with one Johanna Bonger. The couple was married on April 17, 1889. Ten months later came a son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. The name was intended to honor his brother but, to Vincent, who knows? Perhaps in his madness the replacement felt that he himself, was now replaced. Theo had always been there with money, with painting materials and words of encouragement but to Vincent, he himself was nothing but a burden on a brother, now responsible for a family of three.
Visit allwallpapersfree.blogspot.com
In May of 1890, Vincent moved to a small attic room in the village of Ouvers-sur-Oisne. To be closer to Theo, and to Dr Paul Gachet, the quack homeopathic doctor Vincent himself described as “iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let’s say just as much.”
On July 27, 1890, Vincent departed his small apartment for the countryside. This time he carried no paints or brushes. Sick in body and mind and bereft of the Christian faith which had once buoyed his thoughts, Vincent had nothing to believe in anymore but his paintings and those, he couldn’t sell. No one knows where Vincent shot himself. The 7mm Lefaucheux à broche revolver. One bullet. In the stomach or the chest, depending on which version you happen to read. Vincent managed to stagger back to his lodgings. He lit up his pipe and lay down in his bed, to die. Gachet was called but the bullet was too deep.
Wheatfield, with crows.
Infection set in as Theo was called and rushed to catch a train, to be there. Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of the brother to whom a last, unposted letter was found in his pocket. In it, Vincent describes a recently finished painting, called Wheatfield with crows. The letter said it depicted “vast fields of wheat beneath troubled skies,” adding “I did not have to go out of my way to express sadness and extreme loneliness.”
Vincent van Gogh, a self portrait
Theo van Gogh was destroyed over his brother’s death both physically, and mentally. A sharp decline ended six months later with the younger man’s death, at the age of 33. The cause of death was ruled dementia paralytica caused by “heredity, chronic disease, overwork, sadness.” He was buried in Utrecht and later exhumed at the request of his widow to be re-interred, next to his brother
As for Johanna herself, she inherited the vast bulk of her husband’s paintings and drawings and spent the rest of her life, promoting his work.
On March 17, 1901, eleven years after his death, 71 van Gogh paintings were shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, in Paris. A failure in life, Vincent’s work hit the art world, like an electric shock. Today some of the artist’s works number among the most expensive paintings, ever sold.
Post script: Theo’s great-grandson, also called Theo van Gogh, was a Dutch film and television director, producer, actor and author. Working from a script provided by Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist and former politicianAyaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh produced a ten-minute short film called Submission, concerning the plight of women in Islam. Both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats to which Theo responded “nobody kills the village idiot”. He often used that term in describing himself. On November 2, 2004, Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri shot and stabbed the director while bicycling to work, leaving a note pinned with a knife to his dead chest, containing threats against Jews, the west, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
From Betty Boop to the hula hoop, popular culture is always primed and ready to dive into the latest fad.
Established by act of Congress on July 9, 1918, the Silver Star is the third-highest decoration is the system of military honors awarded to members of US armed services for valor in combat, against an enemy of the United States. A search of public records reveals a long list of recipients of the Silver Star including the name “Ball, Harvey A. HQ, 45th Infantry Division, G.O. No. 281”.
Harvey Ball earned the silver star medal “for Conspicuous Gallantry in Action” in the 1945 battle for Okinawa. He went on to serve most of his life in the United States Army Reserve and retired in 1979 with the rank, of Colonel.
A member of the greatest generation his was a name you may not know but I guarantee you will know the man, by his work.
Harvey Ross Ball worked for a sign painter in Massachusetts while attending Worcester South High School, and went on to study fine arts at the Worcester Art Museum School.
After the war, Ball came home to Worcester and worked for a local advertising firm later opening his own ad agency, Harvey Ball Advertising, in 1959.
Harvey Ball, surrounded by his creation
In 1963, the State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester (now Hanover Insurance) bought out the Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. Employee morale tanked with the new acquisition. Director of Promotions Joy Young was tasked with solving the problem. Young hired Harvey Ball as a freelance artist to create a visual icon. A pin to be worn as part of the company’s ‘friendship campaign’.
First came that silly grin. That part was easy but the pair soon realized, the button could be inverted. Now we’ve got a “frowny” face and we can’t have that. Ball added eyes, the left drawn just a bit smaller than the right to “humanize” the image.
The work took ten minutes and the artist was paid $45, equivalent to $330 today. Neither Ball nor State Mutual Felt the need to copyright the graphic.
From Betty Boop to the hula hoop, popular culture is always primed and ready to dive into the latest fad. State Mutual ordered 100 buttons. It wasn’t long before manufacturers were taking orders for thousands at a time.
Seven years later the Philadelphia brothers Bernard and Murray Spain seized on the image producing coffee mugs, t-shirts, watches and bumper stickers by the millions, emblazoned with the happy face and the slogan “Have a happy day”. That was later revised to, “Have a nice day”.
The image was everywhere, second only to the ubiquitous “Peace Sign” of the era.
Frenchman Franklin Loufrani copyrighted the graphic in France in 1972, using the image in the “good news” section of the newspaper France Soir and developing a line of imprinted novelty items. Loufrani’s son Nicolas took over the family business and launched the Smiley Company, in 1996.
Unsurprisingly, the younger Loufrani is skeptical of Harvey Ball’s claim to have created such a simple design, pointing to cave paintings found in France dated to 2500BC and a similar graphic used in radio ad campaigns, of the early 1960s.
Of course, that didn’t prevent the company from seeking US trademark rights to the image and kicking off a years-long legal battle with retail giant WalMart, which had been using the happy face in its “Rolling Back Prices” campaign.
The 2007 film “Smiley” depicts the story of a lazy actress who eats marijuana laced brownies baked by a stoner roommate and embarks on a series of life-changing misadventures. If you don’t remember the film you’re in good company. The thing was delisted less than three months later on February 4, 2008.
The Smiley Company is one of the 100 largest licensing corporations in the world with revenues of $167 million in 2012, holding rights to the Smiley Face in over 100 countries. Notably, the United States is not one of them.
Harvey Ball wasn’t the first to draw a smiley face, or at least something similar. When archaeologists pieced together the broken shards of a Hittite jug there appeared looking back from some 3,700 years in the past a round circle with upturned mouth and two little dots, for eyes.
The Czech monk Bernard Hennet used something like very much like it in his signature, around 1741.
And yet it is one image we remember, the perfect yellow circle with the dots and lines that could only come, from Harvey Ross Ball.
Characters flew to Mars in the 2009 superhero film “Watchmen” , landing in a crater that looks very much, like Harvey Ball’s creation. The red planet’s own smiley face is very real I assure you. It’s an enormous impact basin located in the Argyre quadrangle in the southern highlands of Mars and named after the astronomer, Johann Gottfried Galle.
Would I kid you about something like that?
The Galle Crater, on Mars
As for Ball himself, he didn’t seem to mind never copyrighting his creation. His son Charles says his father never was a money driven kind of guy. “Hey”, he would say, “I can only eat one steak at a time. Drive one car at a time”.
The artist is gone now but his work lives on in the popular imagination. And in the place where Harvey and his wife Winifred went to their eternal rest in the Notre Dame cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts. If you’re ever in the area stop on by. It’s one of the happier places on earth as cemeteries go with Harvey Ball’s creation emblazoned on both sides and looking back at you as if to say, “Have a Nice Day”.
Händel himself was no slouch when it came to being the Temperamental Artist. He was lucky even to be alive following a furious argument in 1704 when a button was all that stood in the way of the skewering blade of fellow composer, Johann Mattheson.
George III King of Great Britain and Ireland ascended to the throne in 1760 declaring that, “Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain”. It was his reassurance that, unlike his father and grandfather before him, George III would rule, as an English King.
Kings George I and II were in fact Hanoverian and as such, did not speak English. At least not, fluently. Queen Victoria, that most quintessentially British of monarchs was in fact of German ancestry and spoke German, as a first language. George I, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland in August 1714, the first of the British Kings, from the House of Hanover.
The German composer George Frideric Händel was well known by this time, in German and Italian opera. He became Kapellmeister to the German prince in 1710, “Master of the Chapel Choir”. Chorale works Händel composed around this time for Queen Anne and the young and wealthy “Apollo of the Arts” Richard Boyle made it almost natural, that Händel would settle in England.
George I enjoys the River Thames with George Frideric Händel, in 1717
In Italian opera, a prima donna is the leading female singer in the company, the “first lady” opposite the male lead or primo uomo. Usually (but not always) a soprano, prima donne could be demanding of their colleagues with grand and sometime insufferable personae both on- and off-stage. Opera enthusiasts would divide into opposing “clubs” supporting or opposing one singer, over the other. The 19th century rivalry between fans of Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi is an infamous example despite a personal friendship, between the two singers. When prima donne detest one another pandemonium, is sure to follow.
Händel’s work was popular in Georgian era society, so much so he was given free reign to hire his own performers. One such was Francesca Cuzzoni, a fiery soprano with the reputation as being among the greatest, of 18th century divas. Unkindly described by one opera historian as “doughy” and plain, a “short, squat” performer she nevertheless sang, with the voice of the angels. Widely regarded as one of the finest Sopranos in all Europe Händel hired Cuzzoni, in 1722.
Händel himself was no slouch when it came to being the Temperamental Artist. He was lucky even to be alive following a furious argument in 1704 when a button was all that stood in the way of the skewering blade of fellow composer, Johann Mattheson.
On rehearsal for her London debut, Cuzzoni became furious over one aria claiming the role was written, for someone else. She refused even to perform when Händel, a great bear of a man physically picked the woman off the ground by her waist, and threatened to throw her out a window.
Problem solved.
Francesca Cuzzoni, by James Caldwall
Francesca Cuzzoni went on to become a smashing success, for four years the undisputed Queen, of the London opera. In 1726, Händel sought to capitalize on this success and reached out to his Italian agents, for a second Star. So it was the mezo-soprano Faustina Bordoni was hired, for the following season.
Younger and considerably more attractive than the older Cuzzoni the pair had been rivals, back in Italy. Notwithstanding, Händel and other composers wrote a series of operas featuring a two-female lead taking great care to give the two, equal prominence.
You know where this is going, right?
Faustina Bordoni pastel, in 1724
Baroque opera loved nothing more than a love triangle and the two were often cast, as rivals for the affections of one man. The degree to which the two divas’ professional rivalry bled into their personal lives is a matter of some discussion but the behavior of their fans, is not.
The “clash” between the two soon became public knowledge. Opera-going aristocrats began to take up sides enthusiastically egged on, by the press. Society ladies would dress in the respective fashion of their particular heroine and hiss and catcall, at the appearance of the other.
Things got out of hand during a performance of Bononcini’s Astianatte. Fights broke out among the audience when Cuzzoni turned and unleashed a torrent of Italian invective, at her rival. The pair hurled insults at one another. You know the words. These two, knew ALL of them them. Verbal combat soon became physical the performance, be damned. The scene beggars the imagination. A wild west bar fight in stalls and stage alike as two divas tore at each other’s costumes, and pulled each other’s hair.
In the end, the two were physically dragged from the stage their performance, abandoned.
Theater management canceled Cuzzoni’s contract. King George would have none of that and threatened to withdraw their allowance, and that was the end of that. The two divas kept an uneasy truce for the following season, but something had to give.
In the end, Faustina Bordoni was offered a guinea more for the 1728 season. One schilling, one pence. Predictably, Francesca Cuzzoni threw a tantrum and immediately resigned, and returned to Italy.
Faustina Bordoni lived on to a happy and prosperous old age and died on November 4, 1781. No so Francesca Cuzzoni who faded into poverty and obscurity eking out a living it is said, making and selling, buttons.
Back in 1728, theater management dearly wished the whole sorry mess would just go away. No such luck. John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera was a smash hit that season, “the most popular play of the eighteenth century” satirizing Italian opera with its perpetually feuding heroines Polly Peachum, and Lucy Lockit.
Hat tip “Rival Queens” featuring Simone Kermes, and Vivica Genaux
Artistic types are fond of talking about the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, the “Gioconda smile”, and what it may mean. Perhaps it’s nothing more than the sad smile of a mother who lost a daughter in 1499 before giving birth to a son, in 1502.
Something like 7.8 billion people lived on this planet in 2020, roughly 7 percent of all those, who have ever lived. In all that humanity precious few have ever been known in all times and all places, by a single name. Napoleon. Michelangelo. Ghandi. Leonardo.
Funny how many of them, are Italian Renaissance guys.
The Italian polymath Leonardo, the illegitimate son of a teenage orphan named Caterina, painted his most famous work (Italian Monna Lisa) in stages, between 1503, and 1506. Evidence suggests he was adding finishing touches, as late as 1517.
Self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. (Credit: DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI/Getty Images)
Mona Lisa was painted in oil on a panel of poplar wood, measuring thirty inches by twenty-one. It’s a very small object to hold the Guinness World Record for highest insurance valuation: US $100 million in 1962, equivalent to $870 million, in 2021.
The model is believed to be Lisa Gherardini, an Italian noblewoman otherwise little known, to history. She was married in her teens to Francesco del Giocondo, a much older merchant of cloth and silk who lived an ordinary middle-class life in which she bore him, five children.
Artistic types are fond of talking about that “enigmatic smile” of the Mona Lisa, the “Gioconda smile”, and what it may mean. Perhaps it’s nothing more than the sad smile of a mother who lost a daughter in 1499 before giving birth to a son, in 1502.
Leonardo could stare at a portrait for hours on end before adding a single brush stroke, and walking away. It may explain why Mona Lisa remains “Non-Finito”. Not finished. This in turn may explain why the artist never gave the portrait to the Giocondo family. He was never paid.
In the last years of his life Leonardo suffered some sort of paralysis, on his right side. While that didn’t impede the left-handed artist’s sketching, to stand for long periods and hold a painter’s palette, proved increasingly difficult.
It is believed Leonardo willed the portrait to his favorite apprentice Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, better known as Salaì, but the artist died, in France. So it is the most famous painting in the world, “La Jaconde”, remains in French hands from that day, to this.
Sort of.
When the French Revolution abolished the Royal Family, Mona Lisa made her way to the Louvre. She lived for a time in Napoleon’s bedroom in the Tuileries Palace. During the Franco Prussian war of 1879-’81 she was moved to the arsenal at Brest, for safekeeping.
On August 21, 1911, Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre.
Sunday August 20 was a big social night, in Paris. Come Monday morning half the city, was hung over. Three Italian handymen were not hung over though they may have been, tired. The three hid out when the museum closed and spent the night, in an art supply closet.
ITALY – CIRCA 2002: Theft of the Mona Lisa. Illustrator Achille Beltrame (1871-1945), from La Domenica del Corriere, 3rd-10th September 1911. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
With the Louvre still closed the trio lifted 200 pounds of painting, frame and protective glass from the wall. Then it was off to the Quai d’Orsay station to catch the 7:47 train, out of town.
Dorothy and Tom Hoobler wrote about the heist in a book, called The Crimes of Paris. According to these two it was 28 hours before anyone noticed, those four bare hooks.
The man who noticed was himself an artist, painting a portrait of the gallery itself. Even then there was no cause for alarm. The museum had a project at that time, to photograph every painting in the gallery. The cameras of the day didn’t photograph well indoors, so it was that each work was brought to the roof, to be photographed.
A fussy little man, the artist “just couldn’t work”, without that portrait in place. He persuaded a guard to find out when Mona Lisa was coming back down, from the roof.
Oops.
Masterpiece of Renaissance Italian art though she might be the Mona Lisa was barely known, outside of art circles. Now that all changed. The New York Times’ headline all but screamed from the front page, “60 Detectives Seek Stolen ‘Mona Lisa,’ French Public Indignant.”
Literally overnight, Mona Lisa became the most famous painting, on the planet.
The French art world was convinced at this time that evil American millionaires, were buying up French art. Never mind Mona Lisa was an Italian piece, but I digress…
American tycoon and art collector John Pierpont Morgan was suspected in the theft as was the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso. The international tinderbox which brought a world to war in 1914 awaited only the right matchstick, in 1911. Maybe the Kaiser did it.
Meanwhile the three Italians who really DID steal Mona Lisa, two brothers, Vincenzo and Michele Lancelotti and the ringleader, Vincenzo Perugia (who just happened to be the guy who built that protective glass case in the first place), didn’t know what to do.
They thought they could sell the thing, maybe even repatriate the portrait, to Italy. Now Mona Lisa was too hot, to hawk.
Twenty-eight months came and went with Mona Lisa, in a trunk. Finally, Perugia approached an art dealer, in Florence.
They said they’d get back to him but it wasn’t a half hour, before the police were at his door. Perugia claimed to be an Italian Patriot, just trying to bring Mona Lisa home. Where she belonged.
He was sentenced to eight months, for the theft.
Somewhere around this time, an Archduke was assassinated, in Sarajevo. World War 1 began just a few days, after Perugia‘s trial.
History has a way of swallowing some events whole. As if they had never happened. Like the early Monday morning in 1911 when that most famous of smiles, just disappeared.
Italy has no fewer than ten towers with an other than perpendicular relationship to the ground. Three in Venice, one each in Bologna, Caorle, Burano and Rome and two others, in Pisa.
In the world of architecture, a campanile [kampəˈnēlē] is a tower, usually built beside or appended to a larger structure and most often associated with Italian architecture. Since the 19th century, such structures have served as clock or bell towers for factories, colleges and apartments. Earlier examples are mostly associated, with churches.
The earliest Campaniles date to the 5th and 6th centuries, such as those in Classe (c. 532–49) and Ravenna (c. 490). The most famous is the leaning tower of Pisa, construction for which began on this day, in 1173.
Standing 55.86 metres (183.27 feet) on the low side and 56.67 metres (185.93 feet) on the high side and weighing in at 16,000 tons, early planning began on January 5, 1172 when the widow Donna Berta di Bernardo bequeathed 60 Soldi for the purchase of stones, to form the foundation.
Footings were laid on August 9 of the following year, the distinctive white marble of the ground floor begun, five days later. The lean set in in 1178 with the construction of the second floor due to shallow foundations, and unstable subsoil.
Italy didn’t become a nation in the modern sense, until 1861. In the 12th century, Pisa was an independent city-state, often at war with other such polities, on the Italian peninsula. Construction halted for nearly a century while Pisa made war on Genoa, Lucca and Florence allowing the soft soil, to stabilize. Otherwise, the thing would surely have toppled.
Interior view of the leaning tower of Pisa
Construction unfolded in three major stages over 199 years. Engineers built the upper floors taller on one side than the other, to compensate, for the tilt. It’s why the thing appears curved, at certain angles. The last of seven bells representing the seven notes of the major musical scale was installed, in 1655.
Surprisingly, the Campanile in Pisa is not the only leaning tower in Italy. It isn’t even the only one, in Pisa. Italy has no fewer than ten towers with an other than perpendicular relationship, to the ground. Three are in Venice, one each in Bologna, Caorle, Burano and Rome and two others, in Pisa.
The Italian polymath Galileo Galilei was from Pisa and famously dropped two cannonballs of different sizes from the tower, to illustrate the Law of Free Fall. Galileo ended his life under house arrest for the heretical notion that the earth, revolved around the sun. The cannonball story was published long after his death, told in a biography written by Galileo’s student and personal secretary, Vincenzo Viviani. To have published such a work earlier would have significantly increased the chances, of the author’s burning at the stake.
Plaque memorializing the experiments, of Galileo
Four severe earthquakes have stricken the region since 1280 but the leaning tower, stands secure. Ironically, the soft soil which produced the lean in the first place has dampened the vibration so the tower, remains still.
The leaning tower was suspected of harboring German observers during World War 2 and US Army Sergeant Leon Weckstein was sent, to investigate. Weckstein was so impressed with the beauty of the cathedral and its campanile he refrained from calling, an artillery strike.
In 1989, the abrupt collapse of the civic tower in Pavia resulted in 280,000 cubic feet of brick and granite rubble leading to the closure to visitors, of the leaning tower of Pisa.
Civic tower of Pavia
Over the centuries, efforts to compensate for the lean have accomplished little. Some even made the problem, worse. More recent innovations have reduced the lean by some 17½-inches including counterweights, excavations and cables. These and the removal of bells to reduce weight have returned the tower to its 1838 position. In 2008, engineers declared the tower stable, for 200 years. In the end, the Italian government has no desire to straighten the thing, all the way. The leaning Tower of Pisa is far to great a draw, for the tourist dollar.
No sooner did the Abbey Road album hit the streets, than the “Paul Is Dead” enthusiasts were off and running. It was a funeral procession, couldn’t anybody see that? Lennon, dressed in white, symbolizes the preacher. Ringo Starr was dressed in black. He was the mourner. George Harrison was wearing blue jeans and a work shirt. Anyone could see, he was the gravedigger.
In January 1967, an automobile belonging to singer/songwriter and Beatles’ band member Paul McCartney, was involved in an accident. He wasn’t driving it at the time, but no matter.
The rumor shifted into gear and the story was told, and retold. Before long, not only had McCartney himself been involved in a violent crash. Now the story was, he’d been killed in it.
Like the child’s game of “telephone”, the story picked up details with each retelling. There had been an argument at a Beatles recording session. McCartney left in anger, and crashed his car. To spare the public from grief, the Beatles replaced him with “William Campbell”, the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest.
The February issue of “The Beatles Book” fanzine tried to put the issue to rest, but some stories die hard. A cottage industry grew up around finding “clues” to McCartney’s “death”. Hundreds were reported by fans and followers of the legend. John Lennon’s final line in the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” sounded like “I buried Paul”. (McCartney later said the words were “cranberry sauce”). When “Revolution 9” from the White Album is played backwards, some claimed to hear “turn me on, dead man”.
On this day in 1969, photographer Iain MacMillan shot the cover photo for the Beatles’ last recorded album, Abbey Road. The ten-minute photo shoot produced six images, from which McCartney himself picked the cover photo. The image shows the band crossing the street, walking away from the studio.
No sooner did the album hit the streets, than the “Paul Is Dead” enthusiasts were off and running. It was a funeral procession, anybody see that. Lennon, dressed in white, symbolizes the preacher. Ringo Starr was dressed in black. Clearly, he was the mourner. George Harrison was wearing blue jeans and a work shirt. Anyone could see, he was the gravedigger.
Then there was McCartney himself, barefoot and out of step with the other members of the band. Clearly, this was the corpse.
He later explained he’d been barefoot that day, because it was hot. No one ever satisfactorily explained, nor did anyone ask, to my knowledge, how the man got to march in his own funeral procession. No matter, the Abby Road cover put the rumor mill over the top.
On October 12, one caller to Detroit radio station WKNR-FM told DJ Russ Gibb about the rumor and its clues. Gibb and his callers then discussed the rumor on the air for the next hour. Roby Yonge did the early AM shift at the powerhouse WABC out of New York. Yonge spent a full hour discussing the rumor, before he was pulled off-air for breaking format. WABC’s signal could be heard in 38 states at that time of night, and at times, other countries. The Beatles’ press office issued a statement denying the rumor, but it had already been reported by national and international media.
The November 7, 1969, Life magazine interview with Paul and Linda McCartney finally put the story to rest. “Perhaps the rumor started because I haven’t been much in the press lately“, he said. “I have done enough press for a lifetime, and I don’t have anything to say these days. I am happy to be with my family and I will work when I work. I was switched on for ten years and I never switched off. Now I am switching off whenever I can. I would rather be a little less famous these days“.
If they had Photoshop in those days, we’d still be hearing the rumors, today.
Artists who became famous only in death read like a who’s who of painters including Monet, Gaugin, Cezanne and more but none so tragic, as Vincent van Gogh.
Herman Melville wrote more than 90 books and short stories in his 72 years. He was no stranger to some small fame but it was only after death that the man’s magnum opus Moby Dick, came to be seen as one of the finest works of literature, ever written. Edgar Allen Poe struggled as a writer. The Raven was sold for only $9 during his lifetime. Now a towering figure in the literary world his fame too, would only come after death. Shy and introverted in life, Emily Dickinson published only 8 poems during her lifetime. Her remaining body of work she hid carefully away, some 1,800 poems coming only to light, after she was gone.
Such a list could be long and includes the likes of Franz Kafka, Henry David Thoreau and Jane Austen. Artists who became famous only in death contain a who’s who of painters including Monet, Gaugin, Cezanne and more but none so tragic, as Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent Willem Van Gogh was born and died on March 30, 1852, a stillbirth. The artist with the same name was born one year later, to the day. Confusingly, the church register even assigned the infant the same number, as his dead brother. Vincent van Gogh, #29. It wasn’t unusual in those days for grieving parents to give the same name, as a child who had died. What it’s like to grow up a replacement, to visit a grave marked with your own name and birthdate minus a year, is something the rest of us can only guess at.
Vincent was close with his brother Theodorus, all but inseparable.
A successful Dutch art dealer, “Theo” had an important impact on the world of French and Dutch art. It is thanks to Theo van Gogh and his financial and emotional support of his older brother, that we’re able to enjoy much of the artist’s work.
Four years his junior it was Theo who encouraged his brother to paint, in the first place. Vincent could always draw but he didn’t pick up a brush, until he was 27.
Van Gogh began to write letters in 1872, an average of one every ten days. Vincent would continue this practice for the rest of his life, some 903 in all. His sister Wil was a frequent recipient as were the artists Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard and Émile Bernard, but none so much as his brother Theo. 663 of these letters are known to survive including this 1885 note describing the artist’s first masterpiece, “The Potato Eaters”. It is through these letters we know much of the life, of Vincent van Gogh.
2,300 years ago, Aristotle spoke of the confluence of Greatness, and mental illness. Even now that place where genius meets darkness, is imperfectly understood. Definitive diagnoses of historical figures are elusive and yet, history abounds with stories pointing toward mental illness in some of the great figures of the past. Michelangelo displayed signs of autism, as did Isaac Newton. The famous “scream” painting by Edvard Munch may be autobiographical of a man prone, to panic attacks. Ludwig von Beethoven suffered mood swings likely amounting to bipolar disorder as did Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent tried his hand at dealing art but suffered depression during visits to London. There followed a period as Christian missionary in the south of Belgium before, feeling ill and depressed, van Gogh moved in with his parents. Theo, always the source of encouragement and support both financial and emotional convinced his brother, to take up the brush.
Vincent van Gogh had but ten years to live when he started to paint. In that time the man produced 2,100 artworks including 860 oil paintings, most of those, in the last two years of his life. First there were the dark colors of the “Dutch period” seen in peasant scenes, portraits and still life.
The Potato Eaters painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands
Vincent moved to Paris in 1886 where he met members of the avant-garde art world, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. These were the iconoclasts, the radicals, the unorthodox who opened a whole new vision. Here we see the burst of bright colors and bold brush strokes for which Vincent is now known.
This too was a period of depression, of mental instability and psychotic episodes. The confrontation ending Vincent’s friendship with Paul Gaugin culminated in van Gogh cutting off his own ear, with a razor.
Still Life with Irises, Café Terrace at Night, The Starry Night
Thus began a period of mental decline, ending in Vincent’s suicide. A period spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals, of heavy drinking, poor diet and declining health. One day, this tortured soul would be recognized as one of the finest artists who ever lived. For now he was just another madman, a failure in work, and in life.
Fun Fact: Following the self-mutilation episode in which Vincent removed his own ear, van Gogh spent time in an asylum outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in France. There he was fond of painting outdoors where he painted olive groves, and other pastoral scenes. If you look very closely just to the right of this 1889 portrait you will find the remains of a dead grasshopper, blown by the wind and trapped in wet paint. There no signs of struggle, indicating the insect was deceased before hitting the canvas. As for the Master he either didn’t notice, or did not care.
Olive Trees, 1889
For the man, the last two years were a downward spiral from which there would be no return. For Vincent’s art this was the most productive, the most brilliant period of a short career.
Theo alone understood his brother. His talent. His madness. For Vincent, Theo was the only person he could open up to. Vincent received a never-ending stream of letters from his brother, words of love, of encouragement, and always the painting supplies, and the money. Theo received a stream of letters in return with day-to-day news, plans for upcoming works but all the while, it wasn’t enough.
Around this time, Vincent set out on foot to visit the French naturalist Jules Breton, a walk of some 80 kilometers. Unlike van Gogh, Breton achieved considerable success, in his lifetime. Perhaps Vincent was intimidated by the high walls. The large estates. Nobody knows. After all that he turned and walked home. The man he intended to visit never knew he was there.
In Paris, Theo fell in love with one Johanna Bonger. The couple was married on April 17, 1889. Ten months later came a son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. The name was intended to honor his brother but, to Vincent, who knows? Perhaps in his madness the replacement felt that he himself, was now replaced. Theo had always been there with money, with painting materials and words of encouragement but to Vincent, he himself was nothing but a burden on a brother, now responsible for a family of three.
Visit allwallpapersfree.blogspot.com
In May of 1890, Vincent moved to a small attic room in the village of Ouvers-sur-Oisne. To be closer to Theo, and to Dr Paul Gachet, the quack homeopathic doctor Vincent himself described as “iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let’s say just as much.” On July 27, 1890, Vincent left his small apartment for the countryside. This time he carried no paints or brushes. Sick in body and mind and bereft of the Christian faith which had once bouyed his thoughts, Vincent had nothing to believe in anymore but his paintings and those, he couldn’t sell. No one knows where Vincent shot himself. The 7mm Lefaucheux à broche revolver. One bullet. In the stomach or the chest, depending on which version you happen to read. He managed to stagger back to his lodgings, lit up his pipe and lay down in his bed, to die. Gachet was called but the bullet, was too deep.
Wheatfield, with crows.
Infection began to set in as Theo was called and rushed to catch a train, to be there. Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of the brother to whom a last, unposted letter was found in his pocket. In it, Vincent describes a recently finished painting, called Wheatfield with crows. The letter said it depicted “vast fields of wheat beneath troubled skies,” adding “I did not have to go out of my way to express sadness and extreme loneliness.”
Theo van Gogh was destroyed over his brother’s death both physically, and mentally. A sharp decline ended six months later with his own death, at the age of 33. The cause of death was dementia paralytica caused by “heredity, chronic disease, overwork, sadness.” He was buried in Utrecht and later exhumed at the request of his widow to be re-interred, next to his brother
As for Johanna herself, she inherited the vast bulk of her brother-in-law’s paintings and drawings and spent the rest of her life, promoting his work.
On March 17, 1901, eleven years after his death, 71 van Gogh paintings were shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, in Paris. A failure in life, Vincent’s work now hit the art world, like an electric shock. Today some of the artist’s works number among the most expensive paintings, ever sold.
Post script: Theo’s great-grandson, also called Theo van Gogh, was a Dutch film and television director, producer, actor and author. Working from a script provided by Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist and former politicianAyaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh produced a ten-minute short film called Submission, concerning the plight of women in Islam. Both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats to which Theo responded “nobody kills the village idiot”. He often used that term in describing himself. On November 2, 2004, Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri shot and stabbed the director while bicycling to work, leaving a note pinned with a knife to his dead chest, containing threats against Jews, the west, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
The elegy has been set to music and featured in television series and movies the world over and even appears in the multi-player on-line game, World of Warcraft. Even so, the name and even nationality of the author, remained unknown.
For many among us, 2020 has been a time of grievous loss. My family is no exception.
During the 1930s, Mary Elizabeth Frye was a Baltimore housewife and amateur florist, the wife of clothing merchant, Claud Frye.
A young Jewish woman was living with the couple at this time, unable to visit her sick mother in Germany, due to anti-Semitic violence of the pre-war period. Her name was Margaret Schwarzkopf.
Margaret was bereft when her mother died, heartbroken that she could never “stand by my mother’s grave and shed a tear.” Mrs. Frye took up a brown paper shopping bag, and wrote out twelve lines. Eighty-seven words arranged in iambic tetrameter, save for two lines.
She didn’t title the poem, nor did she ever publish, or copyright the work. People heard about it and liked it. Frye would make copies and send them to those who asked, but that’s about it.
“Do not stand at my grave and weep…“
The short verse came to be read at funerals and similar occasions, the world over. The first four lines appear on the Chukpi Lhara, that cold and silent memorial to climbers who never returned, from the slopes of Everest. “Desperate Housewives” character Karen McClusky recited the verse as she spread the ashes of her best friend on a baseball field and yet, for three-score years and more, few knew from whence the elegy had come.
Chukpi Lhara
There were many claims to authorship, including attributions to traditional and Native American origins.
“I am not there. I do not sleep...“
The unknown poem has been translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Ilocano, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog and other languages, appearing on countless bereavement cards and read over untold services.
In the United Kingdom, many heard it for the first time in 1995, when a grieving father read it over BBC radio in honor of his son, a soldier slain by a bomb in Northern Ireland. The son had left the poem with a few personal effects and marked the envelope ‘To all my loved ones’.
“I am a thousand winds that blow…“
For that year’s National Poetry Day, the British television program The Bookworm conducted a poll to learn the nation’s favorite poems. The top picks were published in book form, the preface describing the untitled work as “the unexpected poetry success of the year…despite it being outside the competition.”
The elegy has been set to music and featured in television series and movies and even appears in the multi-player on-line game, World of Warcraft.
Even so, the name, even nationality of the author, remained unknown.
“I am the diamond glints on snow…“
Abigail Van Buren, better known as “Dear Abby”, researched the history of the poem in 1998 and determined that Mrs. Frye was, after all, the author.
Mary Elizabeth Frye passed away in Baltimore Maryland on September 4, 2004. She was ninety-eight.
The Times of Great Britain published the work on November 5, as part of Frye’s obituary. ‘The verse demonstrated a remarkable power to soothe loss”, wrote the Times. “It became popular, crossing national boundaries for use on bereavement cards and at funerals regardless of race, religion or social status”.
And finally it came, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The church bells rang out in celebration that day in 1918, even as his mother and father, opened the dread telegram. “Deeply regret to inform you, that…”
The words come down to us some 2,000 years from the Roman poet, Horace. Dulcē et decōrum est prō patriā mōrī. It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.
When the “Great War” broke out in 1914, Wilfred Owen was working as a private English tutor, in Bordeaux. At first in no hurry to sign up, Owen considered joining the French Army before returning home, to England.
In October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles Training Corps. Originally formed in 1859, the Artists Rifles was a British special forces regiment, raised in London and comprised of painters, musicians, actors and architects, symbolized by the heads of the Roman gods Mars and Minerva.
It must have felt natural. Wilfred Owen was a poet, a talent first discovered about ten years earlier, at the age of ten or eleven.
Owen was commissioned Second Lieutenant after six-months training, and posted with the Manchester Regiment of line infantry. An application to the Royal Flying Corps was rejected in 1916 and he was shipped to France, joining the 2nd Manchester regiment near Beaumont Hamel, on the river Somme.
He was contemptuous of his men at first, considering them all to be louts and barbarians. He wrote home to his mother Susan in 1917, describing his company as “expressionless lumps”. The war was soon to beat that out of him.
Owen was close with his mother, his letters home telling a tale of mud and frostbite, of endless hours under heavy bombardment, sheltered only by a muddy, flooded dugout, of the fall through shell-shattered earth into the cellar below, that earned him a trip to the hospital. It would not be his last.
He was caught in an explosion during the bitter battle of St. Quentin, blown off his feet and into a hole, there to spend days fading in and out of consciousness amidst the mangled remains of a fellow officer.
Following this experience, soldiers reported Owen behaving strangely. He was diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia or shell shock, what we now understand to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, for treatment.
There, Dr. Arthur Brock encouraged Owen to work on his poetry, to overcome shell shock. There he met another patient, the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. The chance meeting would elevate Wilfred Owen to one of the great war poets, of his generation.
Owen’s work was different before this time, vaguely self important but never self pitying. Never the pacifist – he held those people in contempt – Owen’s nightmares now brought forth a savage honesty and bottomless compassion for the burdens of the ordinary soldier. Tales of trench life: of gas, of lice, of mud and death, of hell and returning to earth, steeped in contempt for the patriotic sentimentality of non-combatants and the slurs of cowardice, so lightly dispensed by the women of the “White Feather” movement.
Anthem for Doomed Youth gives a sense of this period:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? — Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
Owen continued to write through his convalescence, his fame as author and poet growing with the late months of 1917 and into March of the following year. Supporters requested non-combat postings on his behalf, but such requests were turned down. It’s unlikely he would have accepted them, anyway. His letters reveal a deep sense of obligation, an intention to return to the front to be part of that life and to tell the story of the common man, thrust by his government into uncommon conditions.
Wilfred Owen well understood his special talent. He wanted to return to front line combat, made all the more urgent when Sassoon was once again wounded, and removed from the front.
Back in France, Owen captured a German machine gun position on September 29, for which he was awarded the Military Cross. Posthumously.
He wrote home to his mother on October 31, from the shelter of a cellar in a small wood called Bois l’Évêque, near the Sambre–Oise Canal. It was the last such note she would ever receive. “Of this I am certain” he wrote, ” you could not be surrounded by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here.”
Sambre-Oise Canal, now
The 44-mile Sambre-Oise Canal flows through the Meuse river basin, a network of 38 locks directing the water’s flow and connecting the Netherlands and Belgium with the central waterways of France. Forces of the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex forced the canal on November 4 in coordination with elements of the 2nd Manchester Regiment and the Lancashire Fusiliers. British forces were to cross surrounding fields lined with high hedges, then to traverse the canal by portable foot bridges or climbing across lock gates.
The battle of the Sambre–Oise Canal was one of the last Allied victories of the Great War, but not without cost. Lock houses on the opposite side formed strong points for German defensive fire, from small arms and machine guns.
Wilfred Owen was leading a raiding party when the German machine gun barked and chattered to life, the bullets tearing into his body. The armistice ending the ‘War to End All Wars” was to come a week later, nearly to the hour.
Sambre-Oise Canal, then
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The church bells of Shrewsbury rang out in celebration that day in 1918, even as Tom and Susan Owen, the 25-year-old’s mother and father, opened the dread telegram.
“Deeply regret to inform you, that…”
Wilfred March 18, 1893 – November 4, 1918
“Dulce et Decorum Est”
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
You must be logged in to post a comment.