Farnese

Il Cesare Farnese

The Pantheon, eye of Rome, and its glimpse of the sky

The Pantheon, eye of Rome, and its glimpse of the sky: The only natural light source of the Pantheon in Rome is its Oculus, a large opening at the top of the vault. Some literature proposed that the rays of the sun, passing through the Oculus, were actng as they could do in a huge sundial. The sun has been also imagined as being involved during some rituals made by the Roman emperors in the temple, to emphasize the celebratons of the foundaton of Rome. Besides to the sun, the temple could also have been linked to the heavens and the stars passing close to the Zenith. Inside this temple, which we could imagine as a huge eye, the gods were guarding the moton of the universe, Mundus, of which the city, Caput Mundi, was the head. In fact, a possibility exists that the architect who planned the temple had been inspired by the form of the human eye to create a building representatve of the link between Rome and the heavens, exactly in the place where Romulus ascended to them. In this artcle, besides proposing this idea, we give also some simulatons made by means of the sofware planetarium Stellarium, of the night sky and the stars visible through the Oculus at the tme of the Emperor Hadrian, who built the temple that we see today.

Wardrobe of Curiosities

Domenico Remps (1620–1699): Cabinet of Curiosities  wikidata:Q19939108 

Current location Opificio delle pietre dure , Firenze

The monk, the polyhedrons and the wardrobe

Fra Giovanni da Verona. Tarsia raffigurante un armadio con poliedri. Courtesy Laurom di Wikipedia in italiano. 

Fra Giovanni da Verona (1457 circa – 1525) è stato un intarsiatore, miniatore, scultore nonché architetto italiano, attivo tra la fine del XV secolo e l'inizio del XVI secolo. Artista poliedrico, è ricordato in particolare per la maestria nell'intarsio e nella prospettiva.

Sfere cinesi (puzzle spheres)

Sfera cinese, in avorio, fatta di diverse sfere concentriche (British Museum. Original photograph from Ged Carroll)

Wikipedia dice che questo tipo di lavori è diventato popolare in Europa grazie alla produzione Cinese del XIX secolo. Ma la creazione di questi rompicapo ha origini ben più lontane. Antikitera.net ci informa che i primi esemplari fecero la loro comparsa durante la Dinastia Song, intorno all'anno 1000 d.C.

http://www.antikitera.net/news.asp?ID=11753

Pierre MEYER and the puzzle dodecahedron

Pierre Meyer is an artist who works with ivory.

https://www.maitresdart.com/pierre_meyer-40/parcours_et_realisations.html

Great his puzzle dodecahedron!

A puzzle ball

Puzzle ball. This image is a courtesy of   " The Puzzle Museum http://puzzlemuseum.org". 

Chinese and European ivory puzzle balls

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_carving

"By the 18th century China had a considerable market in items such as figures made for export to Europe, and from the Meiji Period Japan followed. Japanese ivory for the domestic market had traditionally mostly been small objects such as netsuke, for which ivory was used from the 17th century, or little inlays for sword-fittings and the like, but in the later 19th century, using African ivory, pieces became as large as the material would allow, and carved with virtuosic skill. A speciality was round puzzle balls of openwork that contained a series of smaller balls, freely rotating, inside them, a tribute to the patience of Asian craftsmen."

Usually, many of these balls have a decorated stand made of ivory too.

Chinese puzzle ball, with openwork and a series of twelve smaller balls, ivory, 19th century. British Museum. Original photograph from Ged Carroll

Form http://tinglefactor.typepad.com/thetinglefactorbox/2013/07/where-is-the-seam-chinese-puzzle-ball.html

"Originally, they (Chinese puzzle balls) were made almost exclusively from ivory, or the tusks of elephants and were the playthings of rich men because of the time and effort involved in making them. ... Usually, puzzle balls are symbols of good luck, and are decorated with a variety of feng shui symbols. The outermost layer often features the phoenix and dragon, symbols of yin and yang. The phoenix represents the wife while the dragon is the husband and emperor, and balls decorated with these symbols are thought to bring good luck and happiness to a marriage. In fact, almost all of the symbols most commonly associated with puzzle balls are associated with ensuring a long and happy marriage. Some balls even have different symbols on different layers, though the most common is a highly decorative outer ball and ‘latticed’ balls inside (with geometric patterns of holes)."

Detail of an ivory ball on show in the German Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum. It has 16 layers, which can spin. Courtesy Till Niermann , Wikipedia.

In the above image we see an example of Canton ivory carving. From Wikipedia (on the Lingnan culture or Cantonese culture). "Canton ivory woodcarving is another well-known product from Lingnan. With a history of 2000 years, it traditionally uses ivory as raw material to make sculptures, with the Canton-style renowned for being particularly delicate and detailed without being brittle. The Cantonese people have also successfully produced the legendary craft product - Ivory ball. After the 1980s, however, international ivory trade has been banned. This results in the Cantonese people now trying to find substitute materials - materials that look and feel like but are actually not ivory - in their attempt to pass on this ancient art."

From http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/chinese-puzzle-balls-the-rubiks-cube-of-the-ancient-world.html

"Chinese puzzle balls are ornate decorative items that consist of several concentric spheres, each of which rotates freely, carved from the same piece of material. ... These detailed works of art are usually made up of at least 3 to 7 layers, but the world’s largest puzzle ball is actually made of 42 concentric balls all enclosed one within the other. Although the inner balls can be manipulated to align all the holes, Chinese puzzle balls got their name from people who, through the ages, pondered the mystery of making such objects. So how exactly are puzzle balls made? .... Chinese masters rotate a solid ball on a lathe and start by drilling holes toward the center of the objects. Then, using special “L”-shaped tools, they begin to separate the innermost balls. ...  Because it is easier to work with, the exterior shell is the most elaborately carved, usually featuring an intertwined dragon and a phoenix."

Antikitera.net tells us that the first puzzle balls appeared during the Song Dynasty, around 1000 d.C.
http://www.antikitera.net/news.asp?ID=11753

After having shown the Chinese ivory balls, it seems that the puzzle balls became popular in Europe thanks to Chinese products of the later XIXth century. However, puzzle balls existed in Europe in XVI or XVII century. Here an example.

European puzzle ball, XVI-XVII Century (Image Courtesy: Maureen and Renato Bucci, Italy). It was exhibited with a rosary having the beads made in the same manner of the ball. 

The rosary, XVI-XVII Century (Image Courtesy: Maureen and Renato Bucci, Italy).  

The ball shown in the image is remarkable because it looks like a Roman Dodecahedron. Actually Renato Bucci was so kind to send me the picture because of this similarity. Probably, this was an object of a Wunderkammer (in italiano, camera delle meraviglie o gabinetto delle curiosità o delle meraviglie), encyclopedic collections of objects of the Reinassance Europe.  

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities

"The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction."

An example of Kunstkammer
http://wonder-cabinet.sites.gettysburg.edu/2017/cabinet/carved-ivory-puzzle-balls/

Besides the balls, we have also the polyhedra. Here the dodecahedra created by Egidius Lobenigk (1581 - 1584). From https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m0t50361?categoryid=artist we can see them. 

These dodecahedra are at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, (courtesy image from Jürgen Karpinski, photographer).

Let me conclude remarking that today puzzle balls are created too. Here the image of one of them, which is showing a contempoary "puzzle dodecahedra". The artist that created it is Pierre Meyer is an artist who works with ivory. https://www.maitresdart.com/pierre_meyer-40/parcours_et_realisations.html

Pierre Meyer's ivory "puzzle dodecahedron".

Also "new production of ornamental turning ivory of '600" is evidenced by the works of Andrea Pacciani, architect in Parma, by the web https://www.etsy.com/it/listing/225172225/tornitura-ornamentale-da-un-modello-in. A piece "is inspired by a piece of the museum's collection of Rosenborg in Denmark (*). Another piece is inspiered to the drawings of Grollier de Serviere, (1596–1689), French inventor and ornamental turner.
According to Andrea, "Thanks to the new generation of 3D technologies we could bring back the light of contemporary production about this object collection of great visual impact". That is, new technologies for creating objecs for our modern Wunderkammer.

(*) the reader can see the pieces at http://www.bobkatsjaunt.com/denmark.html.

A drawing from a book on the works of  Grollier de Serviere

La fragole di Sophia

Ho trovato questo articolo, molto bello.

Sofia e la scoperta delle fragole, di Marco Bersanelli
"Il valore dell'ipotesi positiva nella ricerca scientifica. L'imprevisto, un avvenimento che porta a una novità irriducibile al già noto. L'adeguatezza della realtà all'io"
http://diesselombardia.vigevano.biz/imgdb/Scopertascientifica1997.pdf

Marc Antony's speech

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest – For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men – Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.