Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

17th century representation of a family tree in this German manuscript

Your Handy Grotesque Tapestry FAQs

Did you know we have a Periscope show, #LiterallyAnything, every Tuesday at noon Pacific Time? This week we talked about this grotesque tapestry with co-host, curator Charissa Bremer-David, and got so many questions we didn’t have time to answer them all. Here are your top questions from this week’s #LiterallyAnything in one handy spot:

What is this?  A large tapestry made of wool and silk titled The Offering to Pan. It’s one of four from the Grotesques tapestry series.

What’s going on? Three bacchantes are making an offering to a classic sculpture of Pan. One attendant is draping the sculpture with garland, and the other two are dancing with tambourines.

What is it based on? The sculpture, the female attendants, and the goat were all inspired by Nicolas Poussin’s The Triumph of Pan from 1636.

Okay. Who is Pan? The ancient god of shepherds, pastures, goats, and sheep.

What is a “bacchante”?  All of the attendants in the tapestry are know as bacchantes. A bacchante is a follower of Pan, the gods of shepherds and goats, and Bacchus, the god of vineyards and wine. They often appear in scenes of pastoral life.

What is a “grotesque”?  The art term grotesque derives from the word grotto, an underground cave sometimes found in nature. It’s used in art history to describe artworks like this, which feature fanciful, fantastic figures and foliage (fffff).

Who is that strange man at the bottom? This intense reclining figure is dressed as an ancient Roman figure, but he wears a blonde Mohawk and hanging mustache. All of these characteristics combined are meant to represent that he is ancient, from a faraway land.

What kind of bird is that at the center? What is it carrying?  This eagle and composition are borrowed from Pieter Boel’s Double Study of Eagles. Eagles commonly represented the god Jupiter. The eagle is holding an olive or a laurel branch, which represented victory.

Were these rich colors common for tapestries? The colors used were fairly common, but they are preserved particularly vividly in this work. Purple is a rare survivor in tapestries of this age.

What are the dimensions?  322.6 x 302.3 cm (127 x 119 in.).

When was this created?  About 1690 to 1730.

Did the artist do the weaving himself?  No! This tapestry was produced by the Beauvais Manufactory in France, and it was based on a design by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. Guy-Louis Vernansal assisted Monnoyer with the border design.

When can I watch #LiterallyAnything? #LiterallyAnything broadcasts every Tuesday at 12 noon Pacific Time at periscope.tv/thegetty. Follow @thegetty on Twitter for updates and weekly polls. You can catch the replay of this episode here.

Our blog, The Iris, is now Creative Commons–licensed. We’re nerdily excited!

1,000+ posts on art, conservation, and related topics are free to be used + adapted, with lots more coming. Creative Commons licensing for images arrives this summer, too.

{Iris logo going wheeeee inspired by an early-19th-century color wheel in watercolor}

The Diamond Sutra

Over 1,100 years ago, on May 11, 868, a man named Wang Jie commissioned a woodblock-printed scroll of the Diamond Sutra, which records teachings of the Buddha. This sutra has the name “diamond” because it is said to be uniquely strong, cutting through delusion to reveal the ultimate truth.

An inscription on the 17½-foot-long scroll reveals: “Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents.” Commissioning the reproduction of Buddhist paintings, sculptures, or texts was a way to obtain merit—good karma—for this life or next.

It’s on loan from the British Library for the Cave Temples of Dunhuang exhibition, which includes precious paintings, scrolls, and books from the so-called Library Cave of Dunhuang (Mogao). 

Diamond Sutra, 868 CE. Ink on paper. London, British Library, Or.8210/P.2. Images copyright © The British Library Board

Art Under the Microscope: Lacquer

This sample of wood is actually from the panel of Japanese lacquer that decorates this cabinet, which explains why a Japanese wood was found on a French furniture piece.

Bonus fact: Did you know there is an International Association of Wood Anatomists? 

Art Under the Microscope is a series that features, well, art under the microscope, as photographed by our conservators to better study and preserve our collections.

Spotlight: Hat or Food?

Gent #1: Hat or Ham Hocks?

Gent #2: Hat of Bell Pepper?

You be the judge. 

Engraved portraits from our massive, 1500+-page tome The Generall Historie of the Turkes, from the First Beginning of that Nation to the Rising of the Othoman Familie … ., the 5th edition printed in London in 1638 by Adam Islip.

This work spotted by Captain Alison in her English Short-Title Catalogue project.

Hmmm…food as clothing. Inspiration for Lady Gaga’s meat dress?

Hat or food? Wishing this was a real game show of some kind. 

Put Your Best Foot Forward

Votive Figures of the Ancient Romans, 1723-1743, Bernard Picart. Engraving. The Getty Research Institute.

#ProvenancePeek: Summer in Denver

Every art object has a story—not only of how it was made, but of how it changed hands over time until it found its current home. That story is provenance. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a Milanese artist of the Mannerist period. His anthropomorphic creations combine exotic and commonplace objects from the natural world into whimsical and unusual paintings like this one. Arcimboldo was far from an artistic outsider, though—his unorthodox approach was highly valued by his patrons, the Habsburg family, and he worked for their courts in Vienna and Prague. 

Arcimboldo’s best-known work is probably his Four Seasons series. Many versions of these paintings survive, though often not in complete sets. The Denver Art Museum happens to have two, Summer and Autumn. Though they were incorporated into the museum’s collection some 30 years apart, they share the same provenance: the Bridel-Boiceau collection in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Peeking into the stock books database of M. Knoedler and Co. at the Getty Research Institute, we see an entry from March 1960 for two paintings by Arcimboldo, sold by a “Mr. Bridel, 1 av. du Theatre, Lausanne, Switz.”

The works were given the stock numbers A7539 and A7540, respectively. A7539 (Summer) was sold, just slightly less than one year later, directly to the Denver Art Museum. The path of A7540 (Autumn) to Denver is slightly more complex, but it, too, joined the collection when it was gifted to the museum in 2009.

The stock books of the Knoedler Gallery have recently been transformed into a searchable database, which anyone can search for free.

Summer, 1572, Guiseppe Arcimboldo. Oil on canvas, 36 x 27 ¾ in. Denver Art Museum; funds from Helen Dill bequest, 1961.56. Below: pages from the stock and sales books of M. Knoedler & Co.

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#ProvenancePeek is a monthly series by research assistant Kelly Davis peeking into provenance finds from the M. Knoedler & Co. archives at the Getty Research Institute.

Typology of 15th-18th Century Decorative Bowls

Top row: Marbled glass, fish-scale pattern, blue coppa Middle row: Imari porcelain, blue and white porcelain, floral-pattern porcelain Bottom row: Flora and Zephyr, Austrian gray glass, Gilded porcelain 

#ThyCaptionBe: Hey Ladies

You captioned this detail. And we’re revealing the full story now.

Medieval surfer dudes or 15th century Rent? It’s really a celebration of a victorious invasion. 

Here’s the full story:

#ThyCaptionBe is a celebration of modern interpretations of medieval aesthetics. You guess what the heck is going on, then we myth-bust.

A Chat with Photographer Tomoko Sawada

A conversation about Japanese matchmaking traditions, self-portraiture, clothes, and identity.

When did you start photographing yourself? I began making self-portraits when I was 19. It was an assignment for a photography class. I can’t even explain in Japanese why I liked them so much. It was instinctual. It’s as if I knew that this was going to be my style, that this is what I wanted to do. And I’m still doing it because I love the self-portrait, but I don’t know why. 

What themes are you exploring in your work? I’m interested in the relationship between inside and outside. If you wear a sexy dress or if you wear kids clothes or casual clothes, people treat you differently. Even though you are you no matter what you wear. It’s that relationship that makes me think. 

My new work is from when I was living in New York. When I was in New York, people didn’t think I was Japanese. Sometimes they thought I was Korean or Chines or Mongolian. Even Singaporean. It was funny, when I would go to the Japanese market, they would speak to me in English. When I went to the Korean market, they would speak to me in English again. I don’t seem to look Japanese outside of Japan. I was surprised because I think I look totally Japanese. It’s funny that people’s points of view are totally different.

Could you talk a little about OMIAI, the series that represents a traditional Japanese matchmaking technique. OMIAI is a tradition that is somehow still working today. Usually, there is a matchmaker and photographs are exchanged before meeting. If both sides are interested, they can meet for lunch or dinner accompanied by their parents and steps for marriage proceed from there. In the old days, some people chose their marriage partner just through photographs, without even meeting each other. 

When OMIAI was exhibited in Japan I saw people making various comments in from of the work. People would say things like, “she looks like a good cook; surely she would prepare delicious meals every day,” or “ this girl could be a perfect bride for my son,” or “I can tell she would not be a good housewife,” or “she’s such a graceful girl; she must be the daughter of a decent family.” Comments like that. 

What was the process of making that work? I gained 10 pounds before I started taking the pictures, and in six months I lost forty pounds, because I wanted to look different in each photo. I wanted to change the way my legs looked. 

Every weekend I went to the hair salon and put on a kimono. Then I went to the photo studio on the street in Japan. I would take a picture and then change my clothes to western dress. Then I would go to the studio again the next weekend. 

Did you tell the photographer how you wanted it done? I told him I was an artist and wanted to make photographs with him. I told him to think that each weekend new girls would show up to make the OMIAI. I didn’t want him to think of me as the same girl who came every weekend. He understood the concept. 

We had fun. While he was taking pictures, his wife would tell me how to lose weight. She gave me many tips.

Tomoko Sawada’s work is on view at the Getty until February 21, 2016 in “The Younger Generation: Contemporary Japanese Photography”

The moment when this cheetah realizes he’s been labeled “leopard.”

How did this happen? More on this drawing on The Getty Iris. 

The Original Ent?

The form of a man emerges from the roots of a tree shot by Eugene Atget in Saint-Cloud Park.

This photograph’s subject was unusual for the time and in fact Atget was criticized for trying “to make photographs look like paintings or charcoal drawings.”

The Ruins of Palmyra, Captured in Vintage Photographs

An album of 47 photographs offers a glimpse at how Palmyra, Syria, looked 150 years ago. It includes views of Palmyra’s 3,000-foot-long colonnade, the tombs bordering the city, and the Temple of Bel and the Temple Baal Shamin, both of which have been reportedly destroyed during the Syrian war.

The negatives were made by Louis Vignes, a French naval officer who was trained by famed photographer Charles Nègre, and the prints by Nègre himself.

The album recently joined the collections of the Getty Research Institute.

Laundry Basket Hot Air Balloon (about 1863)

Made as a business card to promote his ballooning adventures, Nadar posed himself in his studio with a backdrop of painted clouds. 

#ThyCaptionBe: Crying Over Skimmed Milk

You captioned this detail. And we’re revealing the full story now.

It’s not a medieval whoopee cushion, pony rump, or a fart-collector at work, but rather this image deals with the legal consequences of skimming milk. The horror!

#ThyCaptionBe is a celebration of modern interpretations of medieval aesthetics. You guess what the heck is going on, then we myth-bust.

Written in Middle French, the Romance of Gillion de Trazegnies tells the story of a knight who is unwittingly married to a Christian noblewoman and a Muslim princess at the same time—while leading the army of the sultan of Egypt.

Hear passages from the manuscript read aloud in medieval French by UCLA professor Zrinka Stahuljak:

Medieval Manuscripts Alive: Middle French