New Zealand Digital Art Entropy (19-20th C)

This costume sketch was originally designed by Mollie Rodie in 1940 for the Red Cross Pageant held in Wellington Town Hall on 18 September 1940. Mollie may have redrawn this sketch for the grand finale of the Victory Queen Carnival in Wellington Town Hall 3-5 June 1941, which featured the same pageant again. Pageants and queen carnivals were popular ways to raise money during World War II (1939-45).

Stick insect seen from above

Certificate shows a map of Antarctica in the centre, penguins at the left, men with a ski sled at the right, and a photographic portrait of Sir Edmund Hillary below. The whole is bordered by a yellow "rope". The certificate is signed by Charles M Bowden on behalf of the Ross Sea Committee. The manuscript signatures of George Lowe and E P Hillary are at lower right

Lane, John (Publisher), Date(s): 1894, 1895, 1896 and 1897...Showing four covers of 'the Yellow Book'. I was unable to find this books digitized this time...

Single storey thatched roof house, with an outbuilding behind and to the left, viewed through trees. A large exotic tree, possibly a willow is growing to the right of and close to the house. This mission station was moved from Mokoia Island to Te Ngae, on the eastern side of Lake Rotorua in July 1840. The Reverend Thomas Chapman ran the station for a period then later shifted to Maketu.

Vast majority of posted images are online available at the artwork section of the DigitalNZ project (link provided)

Sometimes I move from strictly “ancient manuscripts” –which is my main leitmotif in facsimilium- to almost “contemporaneous” art pieces. I discovered today the amazing project “New Zealand digital content” and for sure I’ll be back to other sections of this site...

Der Fechtkampf, 16th C. (Illustrated sword fighting manual)

Found this “manuscript” about sword fighting at State Library of Berlin, I provide direct link to the codex here

 

Said manuscript but there is no accompanying text, beyond occasional notes in some pages. Presumably it was intended as a training manual. Scenes are fairly narrow in terms of the weapons portrayed, with long swords, daggers and bucklers. Codex consists of about 140 pages, featuring ink and watercolour/ink-wash illustrations.

Novae theoricae planetarum, 16th Century

 

 

I found this manuscript –has an amazing set of volvelles- at Penn Libraries , online available with tag LJS 64. The work is titled “Theoricae novae planetarum”, by 15th-century Austrian astronomer Georg von Peurbach, who taught at the universities in Padua and Ferrara. 

The diagrams demonstrate increasingly complex planetary motion (at least for 15^th Century). The Theoricae Novae was an attempt to present Ptolemaic astronomy in a more elementary and comprehensible way. The book was very successful, replacing the older Theoricae Planetarum Communis as the standard university text on astronomy.

Von Peurbach was very precise taking in account 15th Century astronomy resources & instruments: In 1457 he observed an eclipse and noted that it had occurred 8 minutes earlier than had been predicted by the Alphonsine Tables, the best available eclipse tables at the time. He then computed his own set of eclipse tables, the Tabulae Eclipsium (remained highly influential for many years).

About this codex provenance, was formerly owned by Francesco Rolandi of Turin, teacher of mathematics (There is an inscription dated 1655, inside upper cover). After Francesco Rolandi, books had other owners but was finally sold by William Patrick Watson Antiquarian Books (London), cat. 7 (1996), no. 79, to Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2011. (link to their manuscript initiative provided).

Ancient alchemy Labs, 16th C

'Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae' 

by Heinrich Khunrath, 1595

'L'Alchimiste'

Original painting by David Teniers (before 1690).

This version engraved by Jacques-Louis Pérée, 1769

'Laboratory for metallurgy and the industrial arts'

Original painting by Samuel Wale. This version engraved by Pierre-Charles Canot, 1765. The illustration appeared IN: 'Commercium Philosophico-Technicum' (The Philosophical Commerce of Arts) by William Lewis.

'A Design for a General Laboratory'

Artist: Cornelius Varley; Engraver: AW Warren, 1822.

This illustration formed the frontispiece of the 10th Ed. of 

'The Chemical Catechism' by Samuel Parkes (about: 1860s/1870s).

'The Dissolution, or The Alchymist producing an Aetherial Representation'

Hand-coloured etching made by James Gillray, 1796, in reference 

to the dissolution of Parliament announced on 19 May.

'Le Plaisir des Fous'
(The pleasure of fools)

Original painting by David Teniers (before 1690). This version engraved by Pierre-François Basan sometime in the 1700s. 

 

'Le Chimiste
De la Galerie de S.A.S. Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans'

Original painting by David Teniers (before 1690). "Alembic and crucible sit on furnace in center of image; miscellaneous apparatus in foreground."

All images found at:

Edgar Fahs Smith Collection at the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image (SCETI) at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Norse mythology (Iceland, 18th C)

  

 

 

 

'Sæmundar og Snorra Edda' is a 1760 Icelandic manuscript by Ólafur Brynjúlfsson.  

There are two major sources that chronicle the legends of Norse mythology:

The 'Poetic Edda' is a collection of alliterative poems (Edda) from the 13th century Icelandic Codex Regius. The poems are thought to date from the 10th century.

The 'Younger Edda' which includes a narrative of Norse mythology and a manual for understanding the nuances of the alliterative poetics, was written by the Icelandic historian and parliamentarian, Snorri Sturluson an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as a lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He was the author of the Prose Edda or Younger Edda, which consists of Gylfaginning ("the fooling of Gylfi"), a narrative of Norse mythology, the Skáldskaparmál, a book of poetic language, and the Háttatal, a list of verse forms. He was also the author of the Heimskringla, a history of the Norwegian kings that begins with legendary material in Ynglinga saga and moves through to early medieval Scandinavian history.

The Ólafur Brynjúlfsson manuscript contains material from both the Younger and Elder Edda and is online at the Royal Danish Library, (link provided)

Paris street scenes, 19th Century

Title: Tourelle au coin de la rue du Temple et de la rue Ste Croix de la Bretonnerie
Designed by: Jules-Adolphe Chauvet
Date: 1870s
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France) -- 2ème et 3ème arrondissements
Format: dessin : aquarelle, plume et encre ; 24,2 x 12 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Title: Vieille enseigne à l'ours rue du faugourg St Antoine n° 95
Designed by: Jules-Adolphe Chauvet
Date: 1894
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France) -- 11ème Arrondissement
Format: dess. sur calque appliqué : plume et encre, aquarelle ; 24,4 x 15,5 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Title: Rue Mondétour
Designed by: Jules-Adolphe Chauvet
Date: 1893
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France) -- 1er et 2ème arrondissements
Format: dessin sur papier bistre : encre, plume, aquarelle ; 21,6 x 11,7 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Title: Paris Montmartre : 18è Clignancourt
Designed by: Auguste Louis Marie Ottin
Date: 1883
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France) -- 17ème et 18ème arrondissements
Format: dessin : crayon, aquarelle, plume et encre ; 35 x 25 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Title: La rue St Bon, escalier qui conduit à la rue de la Verrerie
Designed by: Jules-Adolphe Chauvet
Date: 1891
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France) -- 2ème et 3ème arrondissements
Format: dessin sur calque appliqué : lavis d'encre brune, crayon, aquarelle ; 35,7 x 19,9 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Title: La rue des 7 voies au coin de la rue de l'école polythecnique
Designed by: Jules-Adolphe Chauvet
Date: 1880
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France)
Format: dessin : crayon, aquarelle, rehauts de gouache ; 27,1 x 12,8 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Title: De la porte St Denis à la porte St Martin
Designed by: Vincent Blatter
Date: 1800s
Collection Chauvet. Dessins sur Paris et ses environs, Paris (France) -- 2ème et 3ème arrondissements
Format: dessin : aquarelle ; 34,5 x 22,6 cm
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie

Most of these aquarelle sketches were created by Jules-Adolphe Chauvet (1828-1906), a French draughtsman, printmaker and illustrator. 

There are more than 1400 sketches in the Chauvet Collection, available online at BnF's digital library, Gallica (digitised and placed online in May 2012) ::link provided::

The vast majority of the collection was commissioned from Chauvet by a rich benefactor, Auguste Lesouëf, and the drawings were produced in all of the twenty municipalities (arrondissements) of Paris, although with some specific districts covered more extensively than others.