A Pennsylvania museum has solved the mystery of a Renaissance portrait in an investigation that spans hundreds of years, layers of paint and the murdered daughter of an Italian duke.
Among the works featured in the Carnegie Museum’s exhibit Faked, Forgotten, Found is a portrait of Isabella de’Medici, the spirited favorite daughter of Cosimo de’Medici, the first Grand Duke of Florence, whose face hadn’t seen the light of day in almost 200 years.
Isabella Medici’s strong nose, steely stare and high forehead plucked of hair, as was the fashion in 1570, was hidden beneath layers of paint applied by a Victorian artist to render the work more saleable to a 19th century buyer.
The result was a pretty, bland face with rosy cheeks and gently smiling lips that Louise Lippincott, curator of fine arts at the museum, thought was a possible fake.
Before deciding to deaccession the work, Lippincott brought the painting, which was purportedly of Eleanor of Toledo, a famed beauty and the mother of Isabella de’Medici, to the Pittsburgh museum’s conservator Ellen Baxter to confirm her suspicions.
Baxter was immediately intrigued. The woman’s clothing was spot-on, with its high lace collar and richly patterned bodice, but her face was all wrong, ‘like a Victorian cookie tin box lid,’ Baxter told Carnegie Magazine.
After finding the stamp of Francis Needham on the back of the work, Baxter did some research and found that Needham worked in National Portrait Gallery in London in the mid-1800s transferring paintings from wood panels to canvas mounts.
Paintings on canvas usually have large cracks, but the ones on the Eleanor of Toledo portrait were much smaller than would be expected.
Baxter devised a theory that the work had been transferred from a wood panel onto canvas and then repainted so that the woman’s face was more pleasing to the Victorian art-buyer, some 300 years after it had been painted.
Christ men have been Photoshopping women to make us more “pleasing” since for-fucking-ever.
Also, Isabella de’Medici is nice looking, but also has that look in her eye of all Medicis: “I haven’t yet decided whether I’m going to kick your ass, buy you and everything you own, or have sex with you. Perhaps all three.”
What she means: Yes, fine, Bitty SHOULD call home but that’s not all on him. His mother is calling but is she leaving messages? Couldn’t she have texted something to Bitty just to de-escalate his fear? If she knows her son so well then she should know that he’s possibly freaking out. And don’t get me started on Coach. Call your mama? SIR YOUR SON IS WORRIED SICK! Just acknowledge that something big happened and set a time to talk! Plus is calling during the biggest party of the year really the best time to talk? No…go to bed Suzanne, get your head together and be the grownup…
Bitty’s post-kiss conversation with his parents goes better than he’d feared, though they need some time to adjust to the triple surprise of “our son is gay,” “our son is dating a rising NHL star,” AND “we learned about it on national tv.”
Yet the next time Jack’s in Madison, he and Bitty can’t help but notice that Coach’s behavior toward him has… cooled. He’s not overtly rude or dismissive, but the effusive welcome of Jack’s first visit is nowhere to be found. It hurts, knowing that Coach’s regard was conditional.
Jack tells Bitty it’s no big deal, but Bitty sees right through that, like always. He’s not up to confronting Coach directly, but he hauls Jack into the kitchen while Suzanne’s making dinner and demands to know what the heck Coach’s problem is.
Suzanne laughs and says, “Of course he’s standoffish. Oh, it was all well and good when we thought Jack was just your friend, Dicky. Now that we know he’s your boyfriend, your daddy can’t be too nice ‘til he’s sure Jack’s good enough for you.”
Bitty’s appalled. Given Jack’s challenging relationship with his own dad and the endless criticism of sports journalists, what a blow it must be to hear that his boyfriend’s father doesn’t think he’s “good enough” (to say nothing of the fact that he should be the judge of that, not Coach, thank you very much).
But, no, Jack is over the moon. Because finally, after almost two decades of being judged on something he has no control over—the fact that he’s not Bob—someone is judging him by a standard he actually has a say in. I mean, obviously he’s also terrified, because he’s not always sure he’s good enough for Bitty, either, but he gets this. He’s got this.
The fact that the location of the world’s oldest tree has to be kept secret encapsulates everything that’s bad about humanity.
There’s a story about that, actually.
According to the smithsonianmag.com, the world’s oldest bristlecone pine was a nearly 5,000 year old tree later named Prometheus. In 1964, a man named Donald Rusk Currey decided to use an increment borer to determine its age (a process that cuts a small hole into the center of the tree trunk, and is not intended to kill the tree). Unfortunately, the borer got stuck. He and a park ranger cut the tree down to remove the equipment, and when they counted the tree rings, they realized their mistake. Oops. This incident lead to better protection of the remaining bristlecone pines.
There’s some wiggle room about what can be called “the world’s oldest living tree.” The world’s oldest living single tree is the tree that the OP is referring to. Its name is Methuselah,and it is also around 5,000 years old. Since its location is unknown, nobody knows what it looks like. But it might be this tree here:
But technically, it isn’t the oldest living tree. Let me explain.
It turns out that root systems of trees can send up genetically identical saplings (aka clones) via their root systems. Like so:
Which means the original trunk can die, but since the root system is attached to other trees which give it nutrients, it lives on. The root system can theoretically do this indefinitely. So the tree trunks could be fairly young, but the roots could be large and very, very, very old. So the oldest “tree” isn’t a small grove, it’s a logic-defyingforest.
I’d like you to meet Pando.
This male quaking aspen covers 106 acres and is ancient. I’m talking an estimate of 80,000 years. The trees you can see are just “shoots” he sent up, and their average age is 130 years old. He is his own forest. If trees could talk, I’d love to hear what he had to say.
He might be dying, due to insects and drought (hmm, wonder what could have happened to cause that). A section of Pando is being studied in an attempt to find a solution. But in the meantime, we can enjoy him for his beauty.
Wonder Woman greeting T’Challa with the Wakanda Forever salute, but forgetting what happens when she clashes her gauntlets like that
Accidentally blowing him through three walls, a car, and M’Baku
He is, of course, completely fine, but that was certainly not the greeting he expected from the suddenly VERY apologetic Princess
Bonus: T’Challa runs back to Diana and does the salute again, channeling the power from the improved kinetic absorption and redistribution on his suit, and launches Diana straight into the sky. They laugh about it later.
This is the wholesome content I signed up for
Further bonus: during a later team-up, the villain has T’Challa by the throat and is threatening to snap his neck if Diana comes any closer. She hesitates, at which point the villain laughs and asks if T’Challa has any last words. Of course he does:
There’s something really terrifying about the concept of being pursued by something that can only walk slowly after. Just slooowly following. You can chill for a while if you get far enough away but it’s still coming.
That’s called “persistence hunting” and it’s how humans hunted all sorts of megafauna to extinction, as well as what let our species become so disperse and so numerous. Our existence is a horror story told from the monster’s perspective.
So you’re telling me zombie is absolutely a valid career path
Watch the movie on Netflix called “ It Follows” lol
Basically our hunting super power is that we are really smart, good at tools and can walk/run forever.
If my roommate ran 20 miles twice in one day (possible if she does one in the morning and one in the afternoon) she would out travel a horse.
She is not FASTER than a horse, but if a horse was walking away from her for 8 solid hours, Kait could catch up to it. She could probably also walk after it for an additional 5-10 miles after the run and then stab it when it got too tired to go on.
But kait’s athletic.
I, on the other hand, am a fatty fat who weighs 210 and never exercises ever.
I once, completely spontaneously because i had no money for the train, walked 17 miles in the winter from one end of Chicago to the other. I had also not eaten and was wearing a backpack. It took me 3 hours, but I accomplished it with ease. If i wasn’t a chub goddess, and had eaten and it was summer and I wasn’t wearing a backpack with a laptop in it, imagine how far and fast I could have gone.
Now. Horses can only sustain a run for about 15 miles ( at 8-10mph it takes them a little over an hour).
If my fat ass was walking towards a horse for 3 hours and it was literally running away from me. It would become exhausted after 15 miles and unless it can recover completely in 2 hours for another lengthy sprint, I can reasonably catch up to it and stab it. (not that i would ever stab a horse. horses are terrifying and should be regarded with suspicion, respect and fear)
The longest run ever was 350 miles over 80 hours without sleep.
We are endurance monsters.
humans terrify me
“Our existence is a horror story told from the monsters perspective” is one of the coolest and most terrifying sentences I’ve ever thought about
She deserves shaming.. Fascism is at play here in America, we must resist in every civil peaceful way
Fascism cannot be met with peace you must crush fascism and fascists at every turn they do not deserve peace they deserve fierce retribution, consequence and reckoning
