Solid horn 4 lens D-shaped spectacles, turnpin sides, unusual |
Ortolano (Giovanni Battista Benvenuti) (1485-1527):
Woman Taken in Adultery,
oil on panel, 71.6 x 87.3 cm, P.1947.LF.301, Courtauld Institute of Art
Gallery, London. Like
the Mazzolini painting at Strossmayer’s Gallery in Croatia |
Minus 35 lenses, 12 mm thick at the edges, first half 19th century,
Ramstein Collection Basel. Likely unique. It is interesting to speculate
(1) how, before the birth of Donders, the patient’s eyes were examined,
(2) how the prescription obtained, (3) what was the wearer’s acuity
(uncorrected and corrected), and (4) how were these lenses ground? |
Central panel of triptych the “Quatre Couronnes” originally from the St.
Catherine’s Church, about 1560, anonymous, The Brussels City Museum,
Brussels, Belgium. The triptych of the four crowned saints comes from
the altar of the craft of stone cutters of the St. Catherine’s Church.
This work provides a great deal of information about the construction
practices during those times. The four patron saints were Christian
sculptors. Because of their fine reputations the Emperor Diocletian
(284-305) commissioned them to build an idol of him. But they refused
and therefore they were martyred on the tyrant’s orders. The four crafts
associated with construction (Masons, stone-cutters, slate-workers, and
sculptors) are all shown. (The inscription on the plate at the bottom of
the frame (in French and Dutch) is: "The Triptych (XVI century) depicts
the legend of the craft’s four patron saints in the central panel and on
the volets the workers are building a church and laying slates on a
roof”) |
All glass spectacles, Waldstein, Austria, circa 1840s, Museo dell’Occhiale,
Pieve di Cadore, unique |
