The Morthouse

Since exhumations are all the rage right now, I thought I’d share my favorite: Elizabeth Siddal, artist and model to the Pre-Raphaelites.

Siddal died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32 in 1862 in London. Her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, left a journal containing the only copies of many of his poems in her coffin, tucking it away in her famous red hair.

Illustration by Angelo Jank in the German art magazine Jugend, No. 13, 1897: “Der Tod im Baum.”

(Source: kickmeinthefaceplease, via theblurofserenity)

Reliquary from Spain, ca. 1525. V&A Museum, London:

This empty reliquary portrays a young girl in a brocaded dress with a fashionable square-cut bodice. Her identity is unknown, but she probably represents a virgin martyr, perhaps St Ursula who, according to legend, was martyred with 11,000 virgins. The reliquary may originally have held a relic of her head.

Find another Ursula virgin reliquary here.

Reliquary Box with Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist. Byzantine, 14th century.

Source: The Cleveland Museum of Art, via Treasures of Heaven:

The Christian cult of John the Baptist emerged early as a result of his prominence in the account of the Gospels, which credit him as the first to recognize Christ as the promised Savior. After his execution at the fortress of Machaerus, his remains were allegedly moved to Sebaste. Despite reports that John’s coffin “was opened, his bones burned, and his ashes scattered” during the reign of Julian the Apostate (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 3.3), Christian pilgrims such as Egeria in the 380s continued to visit his tomb. His head, however, was taken to the capital, where it was solemnly deposited on 18 February 391 in a church, richly endowed by Emperor Theodosius I. Over the centuries, at least thirty-six churches were dedicated to St. John the Baptist in Constantinople alone, attesting to his exceptional status among the saints and martyrs venerated in the Byzantine Empire.

The painted wood box likely served as a container for one of the saint’s relics. Several such relics—two fragments of his skull, his right arm, and locks of his blood-clotted hair—were kept and venerated in churches and monasteries at Constantinople into the late Byzantine period.

The Shrine of St. Amandus; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Flemish, early 13th century with significant later additions. From Kathryn B. Gerry’s article on the Treasures of Heaven exhibit:

Amandus was the bishop of Maastricht and the founder and abbot of the Monastery of Elnon, near Tournai, where he was buried after his death (ca. 679). Before the end of the seventh century, he was considered a saint, and a pilgrimage cult developed at Elnon, eventually requiring that his bones be housed in a reliquary that could be shown to the faithful. In addition to being visited by pilgrims and carried in procession on feast days, the relics of St. Amandus were taken on a tour of the region around Elnon at least twice: once in 1066 to raise funds to rebuild the monastery after it was destroyed by fire, and again in 1107 to remind ambitious nobles of the monastery’s power and privileges. At least one earlier reliquary for St. Amandus must have existed, but it was destroyed or lost prior to the thirteenth century, perhaps in the fire of 1066. The figure at one of the gable-shaped ends is presumably Amandus; the other end, now empty, probably originally contained a figure of Christ. Although many such reliquaries were destroyed or sold to collectors during periods of religious reformation and political revolution, some continued to be used into the modern period: a reliquary similar to that of St. Amandus is still owned by the religious brotherhood of St. Symphorian in Belgium, and carried in public procession on several occasions during the year. Over the centuries, reliquaries such as this were likely to suffer some wear. Extensive scientific testing has shown that this reliquary was made in the early thirteenth century, but that it has been repaired and modified throughout the centuries as it continued to be used in the service of the cult of St. Amandus. The most recent modifications, however, were made by a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century art dealer hoping to “improve” the piece and make it more marketable.

I’m an Amanda, so this appeals to me greatly. However, if I were a saint, I would have preferred the tour of Flanders before dying.

Reliquary of the Tooth of Mary Magdalene. Tuscan, 14th century (goldsmith’s work: 15th century). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 

Source: Treasures of Heaven online exhibit.

Ostensorium with “Paten of St. Bernward.” German (Lower Saxony [Hildesheim?]), ca. 1180-90 (paten); ca. 1350-1400 (monstrance). The Cleveland Museum of Art.

From the Treasures of Heaven exhibit:

This unusual ostensorium (from the Latin ostendere: to show) was made to facilitate the display and veneration of ten relics, most prominent among them an elaborate liturgical paten—a shallow plate for the elevation of the Eucharist during Mass—associated with St. Bernward of Hildesheim (d. 1022), and a relic of the True Cross.

On the back, eight more relics are visible:

They’re wrapped in silk and are identified—by an inscription on parchment accompanying the piece—as the remains of Saints Godehard, Nicholas, Auctor, Silvester, Servatius, John Chrysostom, Alexis, and Lawrence.

There’s a nice little video about this piece—showing a curator/smart person opening it up and revealing the (sadly, empty) compartments inside—on the website for the exhibit Treasures of Heaven.

The reliquary is believed to have held bits of skull and breastbone purported to belong to one of the 11,000 slaughtered maiden-followers of Saint Ursula.*

Image: Unknown female saint. Source: britishmuseum on Flickr.

Reliquary bust of an unknown female saint, probably a companion of St Ursula.
South Netherlandish, c. 1520 – 1530.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

*Allegedly.

Rudolf Schiestl: Der Tod von Basel, ca. 1910. Via Wikipedia.

John Everett Millais, The Vale Of Rest, 1858-59. Tate Museum, London. Via WikiPaintings.

From the Tate’s website:

Of all the pictures that Millais created, this was his favourite. […] The nun on the left is digging a grave, which is positioned in such as way that the viewer appears to be in it alongside her. The second nun’s rosary has a skull attached to it. In the background a coffin-shaped cloud—a harbinger of death, according to Scots legend—appears in the evening sky. […]

One October evening, he was so taken by the beauty of the sunset that he fetched a large canvas and set to work immediately. Following the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic of truth to nature, he painted the bulk of the picture, including the figures, in the open air. The setting—excluding the tombstones, but including the terrace, shrubs and the wall in the background, with poplars and oak trees behind it—was Effie’s [Millais’ wife’s] family’s garden at Bowerswell, Perth. […] The grave and gravestones were painted some months later at Kinnoull old churchyard in Perth.

I’m lucky to have so many alert and knowledgable readers. For instance, a few of you (via reblog) recently corrected my post from a while back about Robespierre. While I wrote that he attempted suicide the night before his execution, you pointed out that this is actually debatable. 

Newest case: Alison M., who emailed me about (the possibility of) retaining consciousness after decapitation. As I’ve mentioned, 1) I’ve been meaning to post on this for a while; and 2) Josh and Chuck over at Stuff You Should Know have done a whole podcast on this. In it, they discuss rat decapitation (de-rat-itation?). I guess this is the favored method among researchers for dispatching lab animals. Tiny and sad, right? If anything, at least it’s quick.

Or is it? Perhaps, as Josh and Chuck suggest, smothering with a tiny pillow (while petting) might be more humane. Recent EEG evidence from the Netherlands indicates that the rats’ brains continued to operate consciously for a few seconds after decapitation.

For centuries, accounts of lucid decapitation have circulated anecdotally. Alison pointed me to this article by Alan Bellows on Damn Interesting. Bellows mentions some famous accounts of lucid decapitation from the Guillotine, and he also quotes a more recent account of an accidental decapitation in a car crash:

In 1989, a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Korean war was riding in a taxi with a friend when it collided with a truck. The witness was pinned to his seat, and the friend was decapitated by the collision:

“My friend’s head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression … and he was dead.”

Go and read the full article, and listen to that podcast.

Image: Francisco de Goya, “The French Penalty,” 1824-28.  Source: Wikipedia.

Ria Munk was a wealthy young Viennese woman who shot herself after an unhappy love affair in 1911. Klimt painted this picture at the time of her suicide, and was later asked by her family to paint a few more portraits of her, living. She was the niece of another Klimt subject, Serena Lederer.

Image source: Gustav Klimt: Ria Munk On Her Deathbed by deflam on Flickr.