Adam Norwood: Tumblr

Megana-ya (Seller of Eyeglasses), by Hokusai, circa 1811-1814, part of a incredibly great collection of health-related Japanese woodblock prints housed at the University of California, San Francisco. Having recently bought a new pair of glasses, I can relate.

(Via Pink Tentacle)

Judith Beheading Holofernes, animated. A unique way to look at art history (I wish the animation continued with Judith and her handmaiden walking off with the head in a basket — lots of good paintings of that scene too). I recognize the Caravaggio, the Valentin de Boulogne, and the Artemisia Gentileschi, but who did the one that’s a near copy of Gentileschi’s?

notational:

sixstepsback:

ledelorean:(via sovietcunt)

Ancient pigment history is fascinating. From dried beetles (carmine) to sea snails (Tyrian purple) to ground up human and feline mummies (the rather uncreatively-named Mummy brown), colors come from some weird places. I’d heard of Maya Blue before, but didn’t realize that it’s more of a process rather than a specific mineral pigment. The color was made by intercalating indigo (añil) into fine clay over continuous heat. The slow fusing with clay made the paint exceptionally resistant to weather and acidic conditions (and even modern solvents), and the process wasn’t fully understood / rediscovered until a few years ago. Cooking it up may have been ritualistic, as the incense copal was often burned in the same bowls. The color was important in sacrifice rituals as well: when the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza was dredged back in 1904, a a layer of blue silt 14-feet-thick was found at the bottom (sensationalism aside, the silt was likely more from all of the blue-painted pots tossed in than the blue-painted people…I hope).

From Discoblog:

The researchers knew that the Mayans made their blue by heating the pigment with palygorskite (a type of clay); their analysis showed that this heating allowed the pigment to enter tiny channels in the clay which are sealed after the mixture cools, protecting and keeping the pigment true blue for centuries.

From Concealed Neuroanatomy in Michelangelo’s Separation of Light From Darkness in the Sistine Chapel in the May, 2010, issue of Neurosurgery:

In the winter of 1511, Michelangelo entered the final stages of the Sistine Chapel project and painted 4 frescoes along the longitudinal apex of the vault, which completed a series of 9 central panels depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis. It is reported that Michelangelo concealed an image of the brain in the first of these last 4 panels, namely, the Creation of Adam. Here we present evidence that he concealed another neuronanatomic structure in the final panel of this series, the Separation of Light From Darkness, specifically a ventral view of the brainstem.

Could be pareidolia, but given Michelangelo’s breakthroughs in anatomical rendering and that God is depicted here with a rather non-standard bearded neck, who knows?

(Via NYTimes.com)

William Hogarth’s final engraving, a self-satirical illustration of the end of time, parodizing the bathetic imagery in his contemporaries’ works. I admire a guy who can go out on a bit of pessimist humor. (see also this explication of the print)