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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
 Posted: 11-03-2007 15:54 Post subject: History rewritten |
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| Quote: | Caravaggio was actually Merisi of Milan
Malcolm Moore in Caravaggio, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:25am GMT 11/03/2007
Each year, the sleepy northern Italian town of Caravaggio throws a week-long festival to honour its most famous citizen, the fiery Renaissance artist who took his home town's name.
This year, however, the celebrations are likely to be muted. An art historian in Milan has discovered that Michelangelo Merisi - the artist's original name - was not born in Caravaggio. He was born in Milan, on September 29, 1571, and baptised at the church of Santa Maria della Passarella.
The revelation has shocked the town's 15,000 inhabitants. In one main street, a public notice board displays a selection of newspaper articles about the discovery. Two old ladies stood nearby digesting the news.
The mayor, Giuseppe Prevedini, has decided not to give up his town's only claim to fame without a fight. After all, there is the income from the two million tourists who visit every year to consider.
He said he had no idea why Milan wanted to "steal" Caravaggio.
"Perhaps they are lacking a famous 16th century artist to call their own," he said. "This is Italy, there is probably someone who has a birth certificate claiming Leonardo Da Vinci was also from Milan."
The attempt by Milan to claim Caravaggio centres on a document discovered by accident in the diocesan archives at the parish of Santa Stefano, in the city's Brola district.
Leafing through volumes of church records, Vittorio Pirami, a retired employee of Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest conglomerate, claimed a "special light" guided him to a page which records the baptism of Caravaggio.
"Today, the 30th, Michel Angelo, the son of Mr Fermo Merisi and Mrs Lucia Aratori, was baptised. Mr Francesco Sessa was present," read the Latin document.
No other records of the artist's birth or baptism have been found, although his parents were married at the St Peter and St Paul church in Caravaggio.
"It was just like any other day," said Mr Pirami, who began studying art history in his retirement. "I went to the archive and studied. When I turned the page, I needed to turn the light on because the paper was a bit worn. But the parents were clearly marked."
The discovery has been applauded by Milanese scholars. Francesco Tresoldi, the author of Caravaggio: Assumptions and Truth, said it supported the legend that Caravaggio was the son of Marchese Francesco Sforza, a member of Milan's ruling family. The Sforzas were considered to be the equivalent of the Medici family.
"I think there could have been a relationship between his mother and the marchese. Her subsequent marriage to [Caravaggio's father] Fermo Merisi, one of Sforza's loyal men, could have been a way of dealing with the birth of an illegitimate son, who, not by chance, was then baptised in the St Stefano church, just steps away from where Sforza lived," he said.
However, residents of Caravaggio are dubious about the claims. "Lots of people say he was born in Milan, but lots of others say he was born here," said Diletta Doldi, at Bar Caravaggio.
"The only real document we have was his own statement, for membership of the Knights of Malta, that he was from Caravaggio. Everything else is just lies and fantasy," added Mr Prevedini.
There is much at stake for the small town. The mayor has landed a €2.5 million grant to convert the church in which Caravaggio's parents were married into a "House of Caravaggio".
Reproductions of the artist's works will be displayed, and there will be a library, an artist's studio and a conference and exhibition centre. "We are also in discussion with public museums in Italy and the United States to take some of his works on loan," Mr Prevedini said.
There are currently no Caravaggio paintings in the town. Mr Prevedini said the works were taken away during the 19th century by rapacious Venetian bishops.
Still, he is proud of the annual festival, at which people celebrate by drinking L'Anima di Caravaggio, or The Soul of Caravaggio, a strong spirit made from the seeds, stems and skins of grapes. Caravaggio would have been proud; he was renowned for being drunken and quarrelsome and had to flee Rome and Naples because of his atrocious behaviour.
"The actual physical birthplace of a person is irrelevant," said the mayor. "My son was born in the hospital in Treviglio, but he calls himself a Caravaggino. What is important is that the artist said he was from here. He never signed a painting: Merisi from Milan."
The church has now stepped in to settle the dispute. "The document will be examined by experts in order to carry out the necessary verification," said Monsignor Bruno Bosatra, the head of the diocesan's archive in Milan.
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rynner the ubiquitous |
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akaWiintermoon Great Old One Joined: 04 Jan 2002 Total posts: 994 Location: Southampton, Hampshire, UK. Age: 39 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 11-03-2007 16:33 Post subject: |
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Reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Lisa discovers the truth about town founder Jebadiah Springfield. 
History is so inacurate anyway. There's a lot of stuff women have done that's hidden or ignored. Also of course, as this proves, new evidence comes to light all the time. |
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| OldTimeRadio Great Old One Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Total posts: 5539 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio USA Age: 72 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-03-2007 01:46 Post subject: |
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| Reminds me of the old schoolchild boner - "Homer never existed and his poems were actually written by somebody else with the same name." |
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| RealPaZZa A Very Naughty Boy &
Great Old One Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Total posts: 616 Location: lincoln, UK, Earth Age: 83 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-03-2007 20:20 Post subject: |
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| akaWiintermoon wrote: | | ...There's a lot of stuff women have done that's hidden or ignored... |
I have to agree, women never get credit for all the cooking and cleaning they do!
sorry  |
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| kevinjwoods Great Old One Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Total posts: 174 Location: johnstone Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-03-2007 16:25 Post subject: |
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| this reminds me of the Wallace monument in stirling which is the famous monument to william wallace that everyone has heard of, so much so that the actual wallce monument in Elderslie where he was actually born is virtually unknown. |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17896 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 15-03-2007 18:21 Post subject: |
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| Yup. And that Greyfriars Bobby, he sat by the wrong grave, he did. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-03-2007 18:25 Post subject: |
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| escargot1 wrote: | | Yup. And that Greyfriars Bobby, he sat by the wrong grave, he did. |
Bet he savaged sheep as well and chased them over cliffs. |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 20-03-2007 07:25 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Captain Cook is scuppered by book
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 20/03/2007
The image of Captain Cook stepping onto the shores of Botany Bay has been a staple of British history books for generations but now it seems the explorer may have been beaten to Australia by the Portuguese, who arrived 250 years earlier.
A new appraisal of 16th century maps offers evidence that a small Portuguese fleet charted much of Australia s coast as early as 1522.
It has long been known that Cook was preceded by Dutch navigators, whose ships were wrecked on the coast of western Australia as they made for their colony of Batavia - present day Jakarta - in the 1600s.
The Portuguese thesis was put forward yesterday MONDAY by historian and journalist, Peter Trickett, in his book Beyond Capricorn. It describes how Portuguese adventurers secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand 250 years before Captain Cook.
Eight years ago he stumbled on a portfolio of reproduced maps from the Vallard Atlas, a priceless collection of charts which represent the known world in the early 16th century.
The maps, now kept in a vault in the Huntington Library in California, were based on Portuguese charts but drawn up by French cartographers.
Modern scholars had noticed that one of them closely resembles the coastline of Queensland, aside from a point where it suddenly shoots out at a right angle for a distance of about 900 miles.
After studying the map himself, Mr Trickett came up with a new theory - that the French map-makers had wrongly spliced together two of the Portuguese charts they were copying from.
With the help of a computer expert, he divided the map in two and rotated the lower half by 90 degrees.
Suddenly the chart fitted almost exactly the east coast of Australia and the south coast as far as Kangaroo Island, off present day South Australia.
"I know it s very hard to believe because this was taking place decades before the birth of William Shakespeare," he told ABC radio.
"But the maps show the entire east coast of Australia, virtually the entire west coast and a very large part of the south coast, as far as Kangaroo Island and the Great Australian Bight, which the Portuguese called Golfo Grande." Mr Trickett believes the charts were made by a Portuguese seafarer, Christopher de Mendonca, who was sent from the Portuguese fort at Malacca, in present day Malaysia, to search for a fabled land of gold alluded to by Marco Polo.
His secret mission took him along Australia's north coast, down the eastern seaboard and around the bottom of the continent. He then sailed back to Malacca via the North Island of New Zealand.
The maps were kept secret because the Portuguese wanted to keep the discovery to themselves.
"The Portuguese were obsessed with secrecy because of their rivalry with Spain," Mr Trickett said. "They didn't colonise Australia because they didn't have the manpower or the resources, and then their empire started to collapse."
He believes his theory is backed up by the discovery in 1976 of a lead fishing sinker, unearthed by scientists from the sands of Fraser Island, off Queensland.
An analysis of the lead showed that it came from Portugal or the south of France and was made around 1500. "It ties in with what the map tells us," he said.
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| Anome_ Faceless Man
Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2002 Total posts: 5377 Location: Left, and to the back. Age: 45 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 20-03-2007 09:21 Post subject: |
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Well, if they didn't want to tell anyone about it, can we really take their claim seriously?
There's always the possibility this will turn out to be another 1421, IE: it's all been made up or misinterpreted to boost sales of a book. |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 20-03-2007 09:51 Post subject: |
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| Anome_ wrote: | | There's always the possibility this will turn out to be another 1421 |
...
..which would be another good topic for this thread!
http://www.1421.tv/ |
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| OldTimeRadio Great Old One Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Total posts: 5539 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio USA Age: 72 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 21-03-2007 05:56 Post subject: |
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What I learned about Captain Cook during my schooldays (yea, even over here in these dark and dismal frontier hinterlands) was that his enduring fame didn't result so much from him being a great navigator and a great explorer, but on being an even greater SCIENTIST.
Earlier stumble-upon mariners simply didn't possess that remarkable combination of qualities. |
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| wembley8 Home of Legends Joined: 24 Jan 2003 Total posts: 2001 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 21-03-2007 23:30 Post subject: |
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| OldTimeRadio wrote: | | his enduring fame didn't result so much from him being a great navigator and a great explorer, but on being an even greater SCIENTIST. |
Cook was quite a cartographer (...obviously...) but what did he do by way of science? |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 21-03-2007 23:54 Post subject: |
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| wembley8 wrote: | | OldTimeRadio wrote: | | his enduring fame didn't result so much from him being a great navigator and a great explorer, but on being an even greater SCIENTIST. |
Cook was quite a cartographer (...obviously...) but what did he do by way of science? |
His first South Sea Voyage was a scientific expedition to observe a transit of Venus from Tahiti (I think).
These observations would help determine the size of the solar system.
For the times, this was a scientific endeavour that can be compared to the modern explorations of space....
..and this is why NASA named one of their shuttles ENDEAVOUR (after Cook's ship), rather than using the American spelling of 'Endeavor'.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/endeavour.html
There was a science team on board Endeavour, including an astronomer, botanist, etc, but Cook himself was also pioneering navigation using the new-fangled Harrison chronometers. So, if he wasn't exactly a scientist himself, he was well immersed in the science of his age. |
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| BlackRiverFalls I wear a fez now.
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Total posts: 8716 Location: The Attic of Blinky Lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 24-03-2007 11:53 Post subject: |
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| Roots seems to be back in the news atm, with everyone banging on about how terribubbly culturally important it was... but, um, wasn't the plot supposedly totally made up by a white guy? |
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| Anome_ Faceless Man
Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2002 Total posts: 5377 Location: Left, and to the back. Age: 45 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 24-03-2007 12:32 Post subject: |
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| No, Alex Haley was a black man, and Roots is supposed to be his family history. |
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