A grocery list, illustrated, written for an illiterate servant by Michelangelo, 16th Century.
A translation is on Metafilter.
A grocery list, illustrated, written for an illiterate servant by Michelangelo, 16th Century.
A translation is on Metafilter.
Sometimes people will say something like, “I could listen to Patrick Stewart read a phone book.” For you youngsters, a phone book was just a list of numbers, and the phrase means that a great talent can make even the most mundane activity a pleasurable experience. Open Culture posted a grocery list written by the artist Michelangelo in the 16th century. See, this household task was a necessary chore 500 years ago.
But when Michelangelo scrawled, he scrawled with both a craftsman’s practical precision and an artist’s evocative flair. “Because the servant he was sending to market was illiterate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin in a review of a Seattle Art Museum show, “Michelangelo illustrated the shopping lists — a herring, tortelli, two fennel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quarter of a rough wine’ — with rushed (and all the more exquisite for it) caricatures in pen and ink.” As we can see, the true Renaissance Man didn’t just pursue a variety of interests, but applied his mastery equally to tasks exceptional and mundane. Which, of course, renders the mundane exceptional.
-via Metafilter, where you can read a translation.
By: Airships: The Hindenburg and other Zeppelins
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://www.airships.net/blog/merry-christmas-eve
Philippe Charlier, forensic pathologist and indefatigable researcher of historical medical conundrums, and Philippe Froesch, facial reconstruction specialist with Visual Forensic in Barcelona, Spain, have created an intense facial reconstruction of French Revolutionary leader Maximilien de Robespierre. The main source for the image is a plaster copy of a death mask Madame Tussaud claimed* to have made from his decapitated head after he was guillotined on July 28th, 1794.
Froesch used a hand-held scanner to create a 3D computer model of the face. He then added details to the smooth-faced model, like the more than 100 pockmarks caused by a bad case of smallpox he suffered 30 years before his death when he was a boy of six. The eyes were a particular challenge because the closed eyelids didn’t leave an impression in the plaster so they were drawn on. Using an FBI technique that allowed him to calculate the eye size and position from marks left on the mask by the corneas, he was able to correct the crude eyelid line. (There are some pictures of the eye work on the Visual Forensic website.)
Open Elevator Shaft Illusion http://youtu.be/vlA5znMDIPc The floor in this London shopping center elevator appears to be missing, thanks to a 3D illusion image created by artist Andrew Walker. The stunt, which genuinely…… |
from John Hussey – Google+ Posts
Vanishing Cultures, Documenting Americans with a 35 Foot Camera Vanishing Cultures, Documenting Americans with a 35 Foot CameraVanishing Cultures is an ambitious photography project by Dennis Manarchy to document people who represent different fading corners of Am… |
from John Hussey – Google+ Posts
Paintings by Akihito Takuma
Title: Greg Egan
Atley
By: but does it float
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://butdoesitfloat.com/I-can-t-catalogue-these-visions-for-most-mercifully-are-blurred-by