A venerable fake

Sotheby's has withdrawn an important "13th century" belt buckle from its 2 December old master sculpture and works of art sale . . .

We were contacted by Claude Blair, retired head of the V&A's metalwork department, who told us that the buckle is a modern fake. . .

Dr Blair, who left the V&A in 1982, is convinced that the buckle is one of the notorious Marcy fakes, marketed by Louis Marcy in the 1890s. Marcy worked as a dealer in both Paris and London, selling "medieval" metalwork.

The buckle surfaced in the collection of Dacre Kenrick Edwards, whose estate was sold at Christie's in 1961. It then passed to distinguished New York collector Germain Seligman, who lent it for an exhibition at The Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum, New York) in 1968. The buckle was offered at Sotheby's in 1995 (estimate £15,000-£20,000), but went unsold. It passed through two specialist dealers in New York and in 2004 was sold to an English collector via the London dealer Sam Fogg.

From the Art Newspaper. Interestingly enough, it seems that the buckle (and three related pieces) were exposed as recent French fakery way back in 1908.

Gelman collection in limbo

Somewhere a great collection of 20th-century Mexican art has been hidden.

The works, by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and their contemporaries have been removed from a museum in Cuernavaca, about an hour south of here, until further notice as a legal battle unfolds over the collection's rightful ownership.

The paintings belonged to Jacques Gelman, a Russian-born producer of Mexican films who died in 1986, and his wife, Natasha, who jointly began amassing art after they were married in 1941. The couple were best known for creating a sweeping collection of 20th-century European art that Natasha Gelman left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York upon her death in 1998.

There seems to be little doubt about the Gelmans' intentions, but bring in cousins with opportunistic lawyers eager to exploit any twist in Mexican law, and you have a shuttered museum and art on the run. From the International Herald Tribune.

The dispersal of the libraries

Victorian churchmen assembled them; now their heirs are selling them off:

The sale of a 63-volume Bible for £55,000 in December 2006 was a thumping great clue in a detective trail to a scandal over which church people are still fuming. . .

That Bible came from the same source as other old books sold by Sotheby's in June last year, which fetched £400,000. One was the great Complutensian Polyglot, printed for Cardinal Ximenes in 1520.

That is a proper Bible to be sure, with parallel texts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Syriac. Cranmer bought a copy. But this one, which fetched £69,000, bore the stamp of the Bishop Phillpotts Library in Truro.

It turned out that hundreds of old books from the library had been sold, for £36,000. What annoyed churchy people was that the dealer who bought them sold them on for more than half a million.

The bigger issue, though, is what is to be done with clerical libraries that are unused and neglected? It is sad to see such collections sold off, yet how much can the established public libraries of Britain afford to spend to acquire them in toto? Spotted via PalaeoJudaica.

Psoriasis: food for fish

A woman with the skin condition psoriasis has travelled to Turkey to sit in water and be nibbled by flesh-eating fish in a bid to find a cure. . .

The fish work by chewing away the excess cells caused by psoriasis, allowing the mineral water to reach the skin.

The spa water is rich in selenium - a mineral with skin-healing properties.

From the BBC.

Japanese toilet tech

No country takes toilets quite so seriously as Japan.

Machines with heated seats, built-in bidets and a dynamic range of flushing options are almost ubiquitous in homes and public buildings.

A poem recently published by a stressed-out salary man captured their comforting appeal with haiku-like brevity. "The only warmth in my life is the toilet seat," he mourned.

But lavatories here can do much more than keep you warm. One even sends a tiny electrical charge through the user's buttocks to check their body-fat ratio.

From the BBC.

"Oldest stash"

Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

From the Canadian Press.

Supersizing the Uffizi?

World Heritage attractions such as Rome's Colosseum and the preserved city of Pompeii will be made to pay their own way under a radical reform of Italy's cultural heritage.

Mario Resca, who worked for McDonald's for 15 years and was head of the fast food chain's operations in Italy, will this week start injecting the dusty world of museum curators with some 21st century business savvy.

His appointment as director general of museums and archeological sites is highly controversial and has raised fears among Italy's cultural guardians that he will seek to "McDonaldise" the country's treasures during his three year stint in the top job.

From the Telegraph. I don't know how this appointment will turn out, but I don't think anyone will argue that the status quo is acceptable. Commercialization of cultural assets may be distasteful, but at least should be reversible -- unlike the present alternative, which is neglect leading to widespread deterioration, theft, and vandalism. I'm not encouraged by this statement, though:

The former fast food manager said it was a huge failure that Italy's most visited museum, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, attracted 1.5 million visitors a year when the British Museum in London pulls in close to six million.

But according to its Wikipedia entry, the BM currently boasts

over 75,000 m² of exhibition space, showcasing approximately 50,000 items from its collection. There are nearly one hundred galleries open to the public, representing 2 miles (3.2 km) of exhibition space

Whereas the Guardian reported back in 2004 about the Uffizi:

The overall increase in exhibition space will be from 6,000sq metres to almost 13,000.

So on a per-area basis, the Uffizi is handily outdoing the BM -- which is obvious to anyone who's spent any time in them (though the prospect of the already-overcrowded Uffizi crammed with four times as many visitors is truly appalling).

Incidentally, I've not been able to reach the Nuovi Uffizi site, so I'm not sure the current status of the Uffizi expansion. How many of those 13,000 square meters are currently open?

Turtle ancestor found

A newly discovered fossil from China has shed light on how the turtle's shell evolved.

The 220 million-year-old find, described in Nature journal, shows that the turtle's breast plate developed earlier than the rest of its shell.

The breast plate of this fossil was an extension of its ribs, but only hardened skin covered its back.

From the BBC.

Acqua Altissima

The water's been especially high in Venice lately. As the AFP reports:

Venice suffered its worst flooding in 22 years on Monday as water in the Renaissance city stood more than 1.5 metres (five feet) deep before beginning to recede.

A change in the direction of the wind helped the "acqua alta" (high water) water start backing down from a high of 1.56 metres (5 feet, 2 inches), the tide monitoring centre said. . .

Nearly all the streets of the city, including the central tourist district, were already under water by mid-morning -- the famous Piazza San Marco by 80 centimetres.

The BBC has a collection of recent snapshots here. The Telegraph has a good video clip, as well.

Late Neolithic ivory sculpture find

The site at Zaraysk, 150km south-east of Moscow, has yielded figurines and carvings on mammoth tusks. . .

The new artefacts, discovered by Hizri Amirkhanov and Sergey Lev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, include a mammoth rib inscribed with what appear to be three mammoths, a small bone engraved with a cross-hatch pattern, and two human figurines presumed to be female.

From the BBC.

The heavens smile upon Australia

But not upon America:

Australians are getting a big hello from the heavens as Venus, Jupiter and a waxing crescent moon combine to create a celestial smiley face.

The best time to see the friendly phenomenon is about 20 to 30 minutes after sunset . . .

Stargazers in Europe and Africa will miss out completely. By the time the sun sets for them the moon will appear between the planets, pushing the "mouth" between the "eyes" to create more of a Picasso-esque effect.

In the United States, the effect will be inverted and will appear as a frown.

From Fox News.