Ice Dance

With the World Ice-skating championships on at Turin, Italy, Mar 22-28, I can't resist posting this photo of Meryl Davis and Charlie White (USA)  who frustratingly win Silver medal yet again. I've been following this sport for 25 years now and, like many am puzzled and amazed by the marks sometimes awarded by the judges.

Fast forward to February 17th 2014 Winter Olympics Ice Free Dance, Sochi, Russia.

Thorpe Water Frolic

The masterwork of Joseph Stannard (1797-1830). The Norwich School of painters lost one its greatest artists with his early death.

The Thorpe Water Frolic was an idea of the wealthy merchant Thomas Harvey from his witnessing water-festivities at Venice while on the Grand tour of Europe. Begun in 1824 the Thorpe Water-Frolic attracted crowds of over 30,000 when the population of Norwich was at that time little more than 10,000. A welcome day of rest for the many weavers of Norwich who often worked in cramped conditions, the Water-frolic was enjoyed as a rare day of recreation in the fresh air.

The division of the social classes was maintained throughout the event with gentry and aristocracy upon the left-bank, and workers to the right-bank of the canvas. Harvey who commissioned the painter Joseph Stannard to record the events of the Water-Frolic can be seen standing centre-left as if wading. Stannard has placed himself in the painting wearing red, shading his eyes and looking towards Harvey.

There appears to be several weather conditions depicted in the bright and busy sky-scape. A storm may be just clearing and better weather arriving. In any event its been suggested that Stannard was influenced by the writings of Berchem and his observations upon light and clouds. Stannard had also traveled to Holland in 1821 and and may well have seen the master-works by Dutch painters such as Ruisdael and Hobbema.

Water frolics held a special interest for Stannard beyond the aesthetics and social. He was a skilled oarsman and owned a prize-winning boat, the Cytherea, a four-oared skiff...It was certainly on view at the frolic of 1824, steered by an urchin and rowed by four youths in a uniform of blue-netted waistcoats, scarlet belts, white trousers and yellow straw hats with a laurel leaf and Cytherea in gold...If the Thorpe water frolics were really great pageants , as the Norwich Mercury suggested, and if the multitudes who attended were all actors, then Stannard played his part thoroughly. The Cytherea in 1825 appeared richly transformed:

'its colour is purple; the inside is adorned with an elegant gilt scroll, which completely encircles it; on the back-board where the coxswain sits, is a beautiful and spirited sea piece, representing a stiff breeze at sea, with vessels sailing in various directions, painted in oils are nearly covered with gilt dolphins.....

(from article by Trevor Fawcett-Roper in Norfolk Archaeology 1976)

Swan Lake

Probably the greatest ballerina I've ever had the pleasure of seeing dance is Irina Kolesnikova who danced Odette/Odile in Tchaikovsky's perennial classic, Swan Lake at the Theatre Royale, Norwich in January 2003. I also saw her twice in January 2007 and luckily, have a  DVD of her performance to remember her.

Postscript December 8th 2010 : - There is doubt as to whether Irena will be the principal dancer when Saint Petersburg ballet company visits Norwich in January 2011

Frog

With the Vernal Equinox just past love is in the air and spawn is in the water. Ever curious of the natural world Sir Thomas Browne took a zoological interest in the amphibious creature. Of as great an interest is the idiosyncrasy of his spelling!

Froggs taken in the first season of coition containe in their bellies spawne of the same figure and connexure as it appeareth in the water, as may bee discovered in the bellies of the female, which are the greater sex; observable it is how large a proportion the seminary vessels & parts of generation doe make unto other parts, and seemes to occupie the cavity of the lower belly, wherein the testicles are also very conspicuous & turgid in the male.

2 froggs coupled wee put in a cistern of water at the first promising dayes of the spring: wherein they continued just about twentie days, nor did they seperate although in divers dayes the water froze them over, at length the female dyed, the male notwithstanding an hard complexure at least 3 dayes after. In the cisterne more spawne was found then both their bodies wayghed, beside some part remaining in the body of the female, whereof some hanging out discovered manifestly that passage which at other times is very obscure, some remaining in the body more black stiff & clamie.

2 lived coupled the yeare succeeding, 3 weekes, & though frozen mayntained copulation. Remarkable it is with strong complication the male fastneth unto the female belowe the forleggs, & unto what largeness & under a downy black colour like catstayles of the water the thumbs of male froggs doe swell, which wee have not observed in the complexure of the male toade out of the water.

Of this spawne singular uses may bee made in physick, & though for the preservation thereof it may bee only distilled, yet may it bee kept fresh all the yeare under oyle, making choyce of fresh spawne, which will either hold its proper figure or else the black specks subsiding and separating will leave the white & aqueous part entire; the whole masse of spawne may also bee imbibed by bole or frankincense or minium or cerusse incorporated by agitation or subaction.

from British Museum Sloane 1875

Fasciculus Chemicus

Frontispiece to Elias Ashmole's publication of  Arthur Dee's alchemical anthology Fasciculus Chemicus (1651). 

Arthur Dee was none-too-pleased when the inquisitive antiquarian Elias Ashmole published his alchemical writings under a pseudonym only a day after Charles I execution, 31st January 1649. Piqued, Dee wrote to Ashmole-

I am sorry you or any man should take pains to translate any book of that art into English. for the art is vilified so much by scholars that do daily deride it, in regard they are ignorant of the principles. How then can it be in any way advanced by the vulgar? but to satisfy your question, you may be resolved that he who wrote Euclid's Preface was my father. the 'Fasciculus' I confess, was my labour and work'.

Arthur Dee (1579-1651) was the eldest son of the Elizabethan magus, John Dee. When aged 8 he accompanied his father on his peregrinations through Europe. At Prague they were guests of Rudolph I, the great alchemy-loving, Holy Roman Emperor whose court attracted many talents. After enduring fourteen years as Court physician to the first Romanov Czar at Moscow, Arthur Dee  became court physician to Charles I. Sometime after his 14 years in Moscow. Arthur  Dee retired to Norwich, where he befriended Thomas  Browne.

The decade of the 1650's saw the greatest publication of esoteric literature England has ever witnessed. This was due not only to a liberalisation of printing-press licenses during the Protectorate of Cromwell (1650-1659) but also to the social and psychological uncertainties which the newly-established Republic engendered. Arthur Dee however was not to witness this surge of interest in esoterica for he died in September 1651. Upon his death he bequeathed several manuscripts and books of an alchemical nature to Browne. A manuscript edition of Dee's anthology is listed as once in Browne's library.

An allusion to the name Ashmole can be seen in the tree and mole in the bottom left corner of the frontispiece which depicts Sol et Luna along with their cheeky off-spring, the trickster figure and emblem of alchemy, Mercurius. The respective left and right side columns  are left - an inventory of the arts and sciences ruled by the goddess Minerva ruler of learning, and right - the instruments of  Mars, god and ruler of strife, conflict and war.

In many ways the publication of Fasciculus Chemicus tested the waters for Elias Ashmole and prepared for the reception, readership and a profitable book-sale of his collection of British alchemical authors, ranging from medieval to contemporary, in the compendium  Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum (1652).

A facsimile edition of Dee's book can be found here

Throughout the 1650's decade many notable first publications on Paracelsus, the Cabala, Hermetic philosophy, alchemy, the Rosicrucians and Hermes Trismegistus were printed. Its worth noting that seven years after Arthur Dee's Fasciculus Chemicus  appeared, his one-time Norwich associate,  Sir Thomas Browne, published in 1658 the very peak year of books printed of an esoteric subject-matter, his alchemical diptych, the discourses, Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus. 

Finally, it's a curious coincidence worth noting that according to Wikipedia John Dee (b.1527) and his son Arthur, shared the same birthday, July 13th. Thus John Dee was 52 years old when his first-born child Arthur was born !
Notes

Adam Maclean's scholarly web-site devoted to the study of alchemy lists the following manuscripts of interest -

573. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1790.
160 folios. Paper. 17th Century.
I. f 1-19v  Spiritual actions of John Dee in Prague 1586.
II. f 22-33  Original papers relating to Dr. Dee's Actions with spirits.
III. f 34-65  Ashmole's observations and collections concerning Dee's magical or spiritual transactions, and collections concerning Dr. Dee, his son Arthur Dee and his associate Sir Edward Kelly. IV. f 68-77  Some of Ashmole's correspondence relating to Dr Dee and his family.

Sea the Stars

Hard on the hooves of Cheltenham Festival, the new Flat season looms. I don't think I will in my life-time ever see another horse like the amazing Sea the Stars who made the unparalleled equestrian achievement of winning in 2009 the following races - the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, the Derby at Epsom, the Coral Eclipse, at Sandown Park, the Juddmonte at York,  the Irish Champion stakes at the Curragh, Ireland and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, France.

Underwater

A long-time  resident Shubunkin  of the Aquarium; sadly recently gone.

The city of Norwich has historically the distinction of association with two Christian mystics. Both Dame Julian and Sir Thomas Browne's writings includes imagery of the submarine, that is, life at the bottom of the sea, perhaps because of the close proximity of the North Sea.

Julian’s spiritual meditations in her Revelations of Divine Love lead her to the seabed-

On another occasion I was led in imagination down on to the sea-bed, and there I saw green hills and valleys looking as though they were moss-covered, with sea-weed and sand.

Browne’s underwater image occurs in his inventory of lost and imaginary books, pictures and objects Museum Clausum (c.1675) which includes-

9. A Sub Marine Herbal, describing the several Vegetables found on the Rocks, Hills, Valleys, Meadows at the bottom of the Sea, with many sorts of Algae, Fucus, Quercus, Polyonum, Gramens and others not yet described.

Such matching pieces of imagery could excite a student of comparative religious literature. However, this coincidence of imagery may simply be the result of both Julian and Sir Thomas having a complete knowledge of the Bible.

Julian’s seabed image, which is only in the Long Text, is probably inspired from Scripture; submarine imagery occurs in the Book of Jonah when Jonah is on the seabed, wrapped in seaweed, and in the Psalm which he cites while there; even at the bottom of the seabed God is with Jonah.