giuseppina bakhita

Declared a saint of the Canossian order in 2000, Mother Josephine Margaret Bakhita—the first Black woman to be beatified by the Catholic Church in modern times—escaped from a life of enslavement in Darfur (*1869 - †1947) and eventually entered a sisterhood at a convent in Schio outside of Vicenza. Credited by villagers as sparing the town from casualties when it was bombed during World War II, Josephine Bakhita ( بخيتة ) Arabic for lucky, Fortunata, her family name lost to the trauma of her early life) is the patron protectress of Sudan, South Sudan and survivors of human trafficking. Upheld as an example of hope and determination, her legacy includes several charitable and social justice causes in her original and adopted homeland.

falò delle vanità

Though mostly used in the figurative sense, the term bonfire of the vanities is sourced back to an actual auto-da-fé of thousands of articles condemned as “occasions of sin”—that is, externalities that appeal to human frailties and lead to temptation—which occurred on this day in Florence in 1497. The Shrove Tuesday bonfire held in the central square saw the destruction of countless mirrors, cosmetics, finery, playing cards, musical instruments and works of art was organised by Fra Girolamo Savonarola, personally dedicated to combating luxury in all forms and the indolence it brought, but his zealotry and aestheticism didn’t win him many friends with Pope Alexander VI condemning Savonarola to death by crucifixion and immolation in that same public square a year later.

traho fatis

The Latin motto—drawn by fate—echoes through this intriguing Renaissance tarot deck called Sola Busca, limned with an anachronistic marshalling of ancient heroes, medieval bestiaries and then contemporary weapons and armour. Housed presently in a museum in Milan and the earliest known deck to illustrate the complete suites of the major and minor arcana—probably engraved in Ferrara in 1491 and later hand-coloured in Venice—the allegory of iconography informs later iterations, including the familiar Smith-Waite design.  Nebuchadnezzar II, Gaius Marius, the uncle of Julius Caesar and several members of the Greek and Roman panthea.  Peruse the entire deck and learn more about the provenance at Public Domain Review at the link above.

civitas germiniana

Venerated on this day in the occasion of the translation of his body and relics in 1106 to his namesake San Gimignano, Saint Geminianus was a fourth-century deacon and later Bishop of Modena. Rarely referenced outside of the region, his iconography usually depicts him as either a bishop bearing a model of his city or as a man calming the sea and residents credit his intercession to both sparing them from marauding Huns by shrouding the towers with a dense fog and casting out a demon from the daughter of the Emperor Jovian, the exorcism reportedly prompting Jovian to reverse some of the policies of suppression on the exercise of Christianity by his predecessor Julian.

6x6

teed-off: the worse examples of gerrymandered voting precincts in the US portrayed as formidable mini-golf hazards—via Print Magazine  

blursday afternoon is never ending: time reforms for 2022 

toponymy: Wordle (previously) place-names editions—see also 

la pista automobilistica: Nag on the Lake gives us the chance to revisit the incredible Fiat factory in Turin with rooftop test-track  

crying is for plain women—pretty women go shopping: season one Golden Girls are younger than the cast of the Sex in the City reboot and other essential reading  

undercounted: email traffic reveals how Trump interfered with US census to ensure polities with large immigrant populations didn’t gain clout

hello che si dice you getta happy in the feetsas

Despite a lack of airplay domestically as the American Broadcasting Company deemed it below their standards of “good taste,” the Bob Merrill number written for Rosemary Clooney, accompanied by the The Mellomen, a pop string quartet founded by Thurl Ravenscroft (the voice talent behind the Grinch, Tony the Tiger, the Ghost Host from the Haunted Mansion attraction) became an enduring standard and reached the top of the UK singles charts on this day in 1955. It was since covered by Dean Martin, Carla Boni (making it popular in Italy the following year) and British electronica duo Shaft in 2000 and has appeared in numerous film soundtracks.

daniel of padua

Venerated on the occasion of the translation (repatriation) to the cathedral of Padua on this day in 1064, the sainted deacon under Saint Prosdocimus, the city’s first bishop dispatched by Apostle Peter, Daniel helped win converts to the faith and was later martyred (†168 CE) and is represented with the iconography of a towel and laver to signify the importance of the ritual of feet washing and of cleanliness—in sense of purity, therapy and hygiene—in general. Patron and protector of both Padua and Treviso, Daniel is invoked by army wives to guarantee their husband’s return from war and, like fellow Patavino Anthony, is called upon to find lost articles.

mysterium hoc arcanum

Located to the left door jamb of the Baptistery of Pisa, one of the other ensemble of buildings in the Piazzia dei Miracoli often upstaged by the cathedral’s campanile, the structure designed by architect Diotisalvi and built from 1153 to 1363 contains an undeciphered epigraph, which while representing an unknown script, is not unique—lost though having

appeared in Lucca and other places in Tuscany—is suggested to in a sense a kind of gamification to hunt for such mystery inscriptions and debate, contemplate what they might mean without any definitive interpretation established. Courtesy of one of the commentators, here is the puzzle to solve.

il bronzino

Passing away on this day in Florence, where he had spent his entire life, in 1572 (*1503), Agnolo di Cosimo, better known by his sobriquet for his dark complexion and red hair, was from his late thirties on engaged as a court painter for the grand ducal family of Tuscany, the Medicis—specifically for Cosimo I and Eleonora, which the Mannerist-trained painter portrayed here as Orpheus, musical virtuoso, around 1538.

The style curried disfavour from the general art world (see previously) from the late-Romantic to early Modern eras, but the disciplined poses and idealised renderings have seen somewhat of a resurgence recently.

Such impressions of poise and unchanging elegance made a lasting influence on aristocratic portraiture though not many others employed heroic nudity for public figures, patrons or otherwise. Many of his commissions were also allegories of classical mythology and biblical passages, including his 1533 depiction of the popular subject of Saint Sebastian—see previously.

narthex and nave

On this day in 1626, on the thirteen-hundredth anniversary of the consecration of old St Peter’s by Pope Sylvester I, the new papal basilica (Basilica Santci Petri Vaticano) planned by Popes Nicholas V and Julius II with construction starting more than a century earlier was heralded as complete. Financed chiefly through the selling of indulgences, with the Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg being a major advocate for this fund-raising method, sparking the objections of a certain Augustinian monk.

facce di bronzo

Via the always superb Everlasting Blört, we are not only introduced to the sensational discovery of the so-called Riace bronzes in the early 1970s but how the Italian mayor of the namesake town is planning a museum and further excavations on the fiftieth anniversary of their recovery from the waves off the Calabrian coast to see if there are more Greek warrior statues yet to be uncovered. Made in the fifth century BCE using the lost wax casting technique are among the few surviving examples of Greek artistry, most being melted down, and were found by accident by a snooping chemist called Stefano Mariottini in 1972 and are conjectured to be either anonymous Delphic soldiers as part of an ensemble monument to the Battle of Marathon or possibly as depictions of Erechtheus, foster son of Athena and legendary king of Athens, and Eumolpus, son of Poseidon and inventor of viticulture.

museo pio-clementino

Through the lens of Michelangelo failing in a competition to restore the iconic sculptural ensemble Laocoön and His Sons (previously) affords us another chance to examine the subject matter, a priest of either Poseidon or Apollo, who respectively was either guilty of the transgression or potential crossing the line in exposing the Trojan Horse for what it was or for breaking his vow of celibacy. Pope Julius II commissioned a contest to determine the best design proposal to restore a conspicuously absent arm for the central figure. Both Michelangelo and Raphael—related to the judge, the Vatican’s chief architect—lost to an artist called Jacopo Sansovino’s outstretched arm. During an excavation in 1906, the arm was recovered and positioned in accordance with Michelangelo’s original suggestion.

nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

A prolific and popular salon painter in his own time—though figural portraits of classical subjects fell out of fashion until a revival in the 1980s, William-Adolphe Bourguereau of La Rochelle born this day in 1825 (†1905) counts as his most famous work in his 1879 La Naissance de Vénus.  This painting does not actually depict the birth of the goddess by her transported to Cyprus as a fully mature figure in a sea shell—first gained attention and notoriety after winning the 1850 grand prize in the Prix de Rome, submitting two entries for that year’s competition, triumphant with a rather pedestrian depiction of the rescue of Zenobia, half-drowned, by a group of shepherds. The more evocative alternate submission was the pictured Dante and his guide Virgil (where have you brought me?) in an encounter from Canto XXX of the Divine Comedy in the Circle of the Imposters (Falsifiers—perjurers, counterfeiters, etc.) with an alchemist called Capocchio forever condemned to be gnashed by a Florentine knight named Gianni Schicchi de’ Cavalcanti who forged the will of a wealthy merchant to leave a horse for him, whose punishment seems a little extreme. Aside from being immortalised in the epic and this painting, Giacomo Puccini produced an eponymous light-hearted opera in 1918.

movimento unionista italiano

Formed in the aftermath of World War II on Columbus Day 1944 by a sociologist called Corrado Gini—who developed the Gini coefficient as a metric for income inequality, an academic and activist called Santi Paladino best remembered for his theory that Michelangelo was the real author of the works of Shakespeare and a statistician named Ugo Damiani, the goal of their political party was to persuade the United States of America to annex Italy. More over the founding members believed that it was incumbent on the US to take in all free and democratic nations and become a world government, enshrining the values of liberty and ensuring perpetual peace and employment. During the general elections held two years later, the Italian Unionist Movement only garnered one seat out of over five-hundred and fifty representatives in the Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s lower house of parliament. The party opted to dissolve itself ahead of the next national vote in 1948.

respubliko de la insulo de la rozoj

Sadly short-lived and not tolerated by Italian authorities, regarding it as a ploy for tax avoidance (and perhaps to provide cover to marauding Soviet submarines), after the declaration of Rose Island (so named in Esperanto, its official language) on 1 May 1968, subsequent occupation at the end of June and eventual demolition the following February, engineer Giorgio Rosa, namesake and self-appointed president, we glean from Messy Messy Chic, designed and built the host platform in the Adriatic, off the coast of Rimini and in international waters.

The structure supported by nine pylons (see also) was not only the seat of government, issuing stamps and possibly a currency, the Mill—₥, now an abstraction for economic discussion, once also used in Cyprus, Mandatory Palestine, Hong Kong and Malta but also a bar and nightclub as well as a souvenir shop. A lightly fictionalised version of the story of the founding of the micronation was released in December of 2020 with the blessing of Rosa, whom aged ninety-two, passed away in 2017 during production.

iceman

Discovered on this day in 1991, the human, natural mummy named Ötzi (previously) was found by a pair of German tourist on the east ridge of the Ötztal (Venoste) Alps spanning the Italo-Austrian border believing that this five thousand year old corpse was the remains of a more recently departed mountaineer and immediately summoned the authorities, the forensics department turning the case over to the archeologists. Frozen and exquisitely preserved, scientist were able to study his clothes, shoes and tools as well as the contents of his stomach, bodily composition, toxicity and glean a lot of about his civilisation’s lifestyle, diet and technical prowess.

6x6

pontifices maximi: the denatured bridges of euro notes 

top banana: the fruit label collecting community—via Weird Universe  

toccata and fugue: Bach’s compositions—see previously—from eight perspectives  

trolley problem: pedestrians recruited involuntarily in self-driving car trials—see also 

trivia killed the video star: a look back on how quiz games replaced arcade fascination  

soli cui fas vidisse minervam: polymath Lauri Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti, nacknamed after the goddess of wisdom, first salaried female professor

ālea iacta est

Via the ever excellent Everlasting Blört, we are directed to this pair of Roman anthropomorphic dice, silver squatting figurines weighted (equitably presumably) to fall in one of six (tesserae, though usually in games in the Empire tossed in threes) positions.

The above phrase attributed to Julius Caesar by the historian Suetonius when the general brought his provincial army into the capital is like other quotations a likely translation from the Greek borrowing from the humorist Menander, «Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος», let a die be cast in either form the phrase meaning metaphorically reaching a point of no return from whose juncture the decisions are irreversible.

second triumvirate

Of course while the lurch towards despotism by the government and the governed did not go unnoticed, Rome never acknowledged that it shifted from being a republic to an imperial power and maintained the trappings of democracy amid tyranny and some aspects of the transformation were gradual and inuring but one pivot point is the Battle of Actium, which took place on this day in 31 BCE, with the fleets of Octavian, ambitious politicians and grand-nephew of Julius Caesar and adopted ‘son,’ and Cleopatra VII Philopator and Mark Anthony fighting in the Ionian sea. First allied (read more), Octavian had a falling out with Mark Antony after he abandoned his wife Octavia Minor, Octavian’s sister, to go to Egypt and foster a long-term liaison with Cleopatra, raising the son of Julius Caesar, Caesarion by the Pharaoh, as his own. Octavian convinced the Senate that the couple were a threat to Rome and were forming a separatist faction that would undermine Roman unity, installing a child king and moving the capital to Alexandria, and with this propaganda campaign and was able to gather his forces. With superior numbers, Octavian was able to claim victory, pursuing Antony and Cleopatra and their defeated ships for nearly a year back to the Egyptian capital where trapped they both dispatched themselves, and consolidated power ubi et orbi, adopting the title Princeps, Number One Citizen, and awarded the title of Revered One—Augustus—by the Senate for saving Rome.

♄ viii

Discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1671 and later dubbed after the titan Iapetus after the naming convention established by William Herschel—with the antiquated adjectival form of Japetian that points to the conflation of the deity with Japheth, brother of Moses—and explored more thoroughly during the 2007 mission named after its discoverer, the satellite of Saturn first loomed large in human imagination when on this day in 1981 the Voyager 2 probe relayed the featured image back to Earth. The prominent equatorial ridge, named the Voyager Mountains after the photograph are among the highest in the known Solar System, and ring the object almost perfectly, giving rise to the theory that the feature is a reabsorbed ring and the probable but yet unseen occurrence of sub-satellites.