What on earth is Palladio’s “Le terme dei Romani”?
When I started this little series on the Baths of Constantine, one of my references (from Wikipedia) was “Palladio, Le Terme, pl.XIV”. A quick search revealed that this was Le terme dei Romani...
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Serlio’s 1540 plan of the Baths of Constantine
The next item in our little series on the now-vanished Baths of Constantine in Rome is a plan, drawn by Sebastiano Serlio in the third volume of his Architettura and printed in 1540. A hard-to-use...
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Lanciani on the Baths of Constantine and some references
In this series of posts on the now-lost Baths of Constantine in Rome, I’ve posted renaissance drawings of what then remained. The list of these I took from Platner & Ashby’s Topographical...
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Early 16th century maps of Rome and the Baths of Constantine
This is the last in our little series of posts of renaissance images of the Baths of Constantine in Rome. The final group of witnesses are not strictly drawings at all. They are views taken from maps...
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Finereader 15 includes Fraktur OCR! Finally!
Excellent news this afternoon. It seems that the new version of Abbyy Finereader, version 15 (which for some reason they have renamed Finereader PDF 15) incorporates their excellent Fraktur...
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Christmas trees in Livonia? Balthasar Russow (1579) in the Livonian Chronicle
It’s time for a Christmas post. This may be out of period for us, but we can do a little digging into an obscure modern legend. Europe became Christian around 400 AD, and Christmas itself originates...
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Did Mithras say “He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood…”?
In 1999 two journalists named Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy published a book called The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “original Jesus” a pagan god? The book appealed to a “new atheist” demographic, and...
View ArticleChristmas Eve
I would like to wish a very Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this blog. It is Christmas Eve here, and everything is quiet. It has rained heavily today, and then turned cold. Ice is predicted,...
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An 18th century drawing of the Meta Sudans from the Spanish National Library
Here is a nice drawing from the 18th century of the Meta Sudans, the Roman fountain that used to stand outside the Colosseum until Mussolini decided to demolish it. This one is from the Biblioteca...
View ArticleFrom my diary
Happy new year, everybody, in a few hours. I’ve acquired some volumes of “The Saints of Cornwall”, by G. Doble. I think there may be six in all. Canon Doble was a Cornish antiquarian of the first...
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