Raven, early 18th century, fashioned of hammered and embossed steel by master metalsmith Myōchin Munesuke.
Part of the Metropolitan Museum’s “Birds in the Art of Japan” exhibition.
Ague & Fever
This print by English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson was created during the 1788 influenza epidemic.
Title page illustration from The Cannibal’s Progress, or, The Dreadful Horrors of French Invasion, as Displayed by the Republican Officers and Soldiers, in their Perfidy, Rapacity, Ferociousness and Brutality, Exercised towards the Innocent Inhabitants of Germany, a 1798 book by Anthony Aufrere describing the French invasion of Swabia. Illustrated by William Wadsworth.
“Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas”
A wax Vanitas tableau, life-sized, resembling Elizabeth I, 18th Century.
From various sources: this gourd contained a handkerchief soaked in blood which recent DNA tests have recently confirmed came from King Louis XVI.
The gourd bears an inscription reading:
“On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation”
Louis was, of course, King of France during the French Revolution, married to Marie Antoinette, and executed after being found guilty of treason by the National Convention in 1793.
A gouache painting by Claude Cholat, one of the twenty-one wine merchants on the official list of the vainqueurs de la Bastille and an eyewitness to the storming of the fortress on 14 July 1789.
Cholat was in the crowd of about 900 citizens who arrived at the Bastille on that day. He reportedly manned one of the cannons brought in by the revolutionaries (perhaps the silver Siamese piece that had been given to Louis XIV?).
“Thomas More hears his death sentence”
(“Tommaso Moro mentre riceve la sentenza di morte da Enrico VIII/ Per non avere aderito al ripudio di Caterina sua moglie. Margherita sua figlia fu con lui sina alla morte”)
Drawing, Giuseppe Bezzuoli (1784 – 1855).
Philosophy Run Mad or a Stupendous Monument of Human Wisdom
Caricature of the French Revolution, 1792, by Thomas Rowlandson. A description of the etching and a few detail images are on Princeton’s site.
François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire. Terra-cotta sculpture of Voltaire by Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1781.
Voltaire died on May 30th, 1778; his remains are now in the Panthéon in Paris. Reports of the desecration of his tomb are greatly exaggerated.
