Around the Portland Vase are pictured two basic scenes, each about half the circumference of the vessel’s body. One scene features a foreground of a man and a woman resting on long, flat slabs of stone to the left and a woman sitting upright on a narrow pile of flat stone slabs to the right. The man is naked, although one end of a garment hangs by his left leg and his hands hold different points of the garment. Garments are draped around the lower halves of the two women. The woman in the middle of the scene, sprawled on the long, flat stones next to the man, has her right arm raised and bent at the elbow, with her hand resting on top of her tilted head. The man at the left and the woman at the right have their heads turned and are looking to the woman at the center of the scene. In the background a single column is at the extreme left, and a column with an entablature is at the extreme right. A tree stands behind the long slab of stones upon which rest the man and woman, and at the far right a mask with a mustache and beard, and horns rising out of thick hair that is parted in the middle and flows down to the sides of the face, is suspended in midair.
The two scenes of the famous Portland Vase. One of the mysteries of the vase of the meaning of the scenes. Do they signify life? death? a mythical representation? Long studied and debated, they will probably never be definitely understood.
In the other scene are two men and a woman, a Cupid-like figure in the air, and a mask hanging at the extreme right, with two trees and a structure of two columns and an entablature in the background. One man, at the left foreground, is standing naked, his right foot in front and flat on the ground, his left leg behind him with the ball of his foot on the ground and his heel raised. The man’s right arm is holding a garment; his left arm is locked with the arm of a woman, who is sitting on the ground with a garment draped over her extended legs and a snakelike creature crawling up her left arm. The other man is standing also, with a garment draped around his left arm. His body is turned to the other people, and he is looking at them. His left leg is straight; his right leg is resting on top of a small pile of stones. The man’s right arm is bent, with the elbow resting on his right leg and his chin resting on the top of his right hand. The mask is similar to the one in the other scene.
The vase was apparently constructed for a specific purpose, and its scenes were fashioned to tell a particular story or impart some message, but what? Like any great artistic object of antiquity, it raises a hodge-podge of questions: Why was it made? Who made it? For whom was it made? What do the scenes mean? What symbolism is there? Answering these questions as they pertain to the Portland Vase requires a comprehensive knowledge of ancient Rome—its people, culture, and mythology—and even then, at best, one may offer only educated explanations. Since the vase’s discovery hundreds of years ago, scholars have diligently studied and analyzed it and attempted to interpret its scenes. These scenes almost undoubtedly reflect the intended use of the vessel, and therefore the variety of their interpretations shed light on why the vase was made.
In their book Glass of the Caesars, Donald B. Harden, Hansgerd Hellenkemper, Kenneth Painter, and David Whitehouse examine various interpretations put forth by scholars, dating back to the 1630s. Many of the interpretations consider the figures to be characters of Greek mythology, such as Thetis, Peleus, and Achilles. Other interpretations regard the figures to be real-life Romans of historical importance, perhaps the parents or relatives of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who ruled from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14. In some scholars’ view, the vase was made as a funerary urn; this theory is based on various interpretations of the scenes and figures, such as the identification of one of the figures as the Greek mythological hero Theseus, who in legend was killed by being thrown into the ocean. Other scholars have determined the scenes to celebrate the romance and courtship of Achilles’ mother, Thetis, to the king of Phthia, Peleus, and therefore have deemed the vase a wedding gift. Numerous other interpretations of the scenes and figures have been made, and these have included birth and death.
The identity and symbolism of the snakelike creature and the masks have also been a subject of debate. Exactly what are they, and what or whom might they represent? Explanations have included mythological figures and real-life people.
Not much is known about the history of the vase. Scholars cannot determine who owned the vase in ancient Rome, and even its emergence during the Renaissance period is shrouded in mystery. It was said to have been discovered in a sarcophagus outside Rome in the early 1580s, but there seems to be no contemporary documentation of its unearthing at this time. Whatever its Renaissance provenance, by the early seventeenth century it was owned by Cardinal Francesco Maria Borbone del Monte, who died in August 1626 and whose heir, Alessandro, sold it to Cardinal Antonio Barberini. The vase remained in the possession of the Barberini family, distinguished collectors of art in Rome who exhibited majestic paintings and sculptures in their palace, for 150 years.
The vase was next acquired by a Scottish architect living in Italy, James Byres, who in the early 1780s sold it to Sir William Hamilton, an Englishman with a rather interesting background.
The grandson of a duke, Hamilton was an archaeologist who had frequently climbed Vesuvius, wrote about discoveries at Pompeii, and sold ancient Greek artifacts to the British Museum. From 1764 to 1800 he was the British minister in Naples. He served as host to Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson in 1798, after the eminent English naval commander destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile.
Around 1784 Sir William Hamilton was in England, and Margaret, the duchess of Portland, saw the vase he had brought with him from Naples. She was enthralled with it and sought it for her collection. It was a pastime of wealthy Britishers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to collect and display antiquities, rare books, curios, and paintings by great artists. Indeed, it was a sign of great prestige to own a piece of history: an original such as a Greek sculpture, a Spartan relief, a frieze of a famous structure. In their country homes or city residences, the English collectors would set up galleries of antiquities for friends to visit and marvel over—acquisitions for which the collectors dispensed fantastic sums. Some private collectors, like Henry Blundell (1724-1810) and Charles Towneley (1737-1805), acquired valuable artifacts during their lifetimes (many of these later finding their way into museums). The duchess of Portland purchased the vase along with some other relics Hamilton offered.
This engraving of the "Portland Museum" was in the catalog of Lady Portland's estate that was auctioned after she died in 1785.
Margaret wasn’t able to enjoy her new vase for long, since she died on July 17, 1785, about a year after acquiring it. Following her death, her illustrious “Portland Museum” of valuable works of art was auctioned. From April 24 to June 7, 1786, more than three dozen sessions were held to sell the duchess’s collection, which had been divided into some four thousand lots.
Margaret’s son, the duke of Portland, purchased the ancient Roman vase and in 1810, after a family friend broke off the vase’s base, lent it to the British Museum, where it presumably would be safe and could be enjoyed by a wide audience. In 1845, however, William Mulcahy, a young man who had been drinking for several days leading up to his visit to the museum, grabbed an object and shattered the glass display case housing the vase, and then the vase itself. Mulcahy, who falsely gave his name as William Lloyd, was sentenced to a jail term for breaking the case—although not the vase, because, peculiarly, British law did not provide penalties for destroying items of high value—but was soon released after an anonymous person paid his fine. The duke of Portland, meanwhile, received notice from the museum about the smashing and pronounced the culprit “mad.” Exactly one century after William Mulcahy smashed the vase, the Portland family sold it to the British Museum.
The Portland Vase has been restored three times. After Mulcahy broke it into some two hundred pieces, it was repaired by the museum’s John Doubleday, who was unable to fit in all the chips. Over time the glue’s color changed, and in 1949, four years after t
he British Museum purchased the vase from the Portland family, a conservator named James H. W. Axtell carefully broke it apart and repaired it again, using a transparent glue. In 1986 Nigel Williams, the chief conservator of ceramics at the museum, and a team of assistants broke the vase, then restored it with a modern epoxy and other materials. They were also able to insert more than a dozen of the chips left over after Doubleday’s repair.
In a way, the Portland Vase has come full circle in its two-thousand-year history with respect to its creation and preservation, as craftsmen of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have painstakingly preserved a delicate glass vessel meticulously produced in an ancient workshop. Indeed, after two millennia, this great work of art continues to draw people to contemplate its beauty.
LOCATION: British Museum, London, England.
THE VEIL OF THE VIRGIN
DATE: Circa 6 B.C. to 4 B.C. (by tradition).*
WHAT IT IS: A piece of clothing that Mary supposedly wore at the birth of Jesus.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The cloth measures approximately 83½ inches long by 18 inches wide. It is beige and made of silk fabric and has some stains caused by humidity.
According to the evangelists Luke and Matthew, the following are the circumstances of the birth of Jesus Christ:
The expansive Roman Empire enjoyed great prosperity for about two centuries beginning in 30 B.C. But in the land of Judea in the early part of this period, Herod was king and under him the Jews suffered. A shrewd ruler who gave unflagging allegiance to the emperor Augustus Caesar, Herod not only imposed cruelty on the Jews but was unduly paranoid about potential successors dethroning him. Indeed, overcome by chronic mood swings, he would frequently order even sons and relatives to be put to death. At this time, grappling with the severity of their lives, some Jews put their full faith in the belief that the Messiah’s arrival was imminent.
A priest in the temple at Jerusalem named Zechariah was one day visited by an angel and was told his wife would give birth to a boy who would precede the Messiah and unite broken families, straighten out the unrighteous, and prepare the Messiah’s people for his arrival. As Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, were both of mature years, he expressed incredulity at this prophecy and was consequently rendered mute. Yet Elizabeth did become pregnant.
During Elizabeth’s sixth month of pregnancy, the angel Gabriel went to Galilee, where there lived a relative of Elizabeth, a woman named Mary who was engaged to Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel told Mary that she would become pregnant with a boy she would name Jesus, who would be the Son of God and a king as David was. But Mary said she was a virgin and could not imagine how this could come to be. Gabriel explained that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, as he had upon Elizabeth, who was beyond childbearing age.
Mary then went to Judea to visit Elizabeth, whose baby stirred inside her when Mary arrived. Elizabeth told Mary that she was honored that the mother of the Lord should come to visit her. A few months later Elizabeth gave birth to a boy she wanted to name John. Friends pointed out that she had no relatives by that name, and asked her husband what he wanted to name the baby. Zechariah wrote down the name John, and his voice came back to him.
A census for tax purposes had been ordered at this time by Emperor Augustus, and all subjects of Rome were ordered back to their hometowns. Mary and Joseph, who lived in Nazareth, went to Bethlehem, where Joseph’s ancestor David had been born. Joseph had been shocked that Mary was pregnant but was told of the circumstances in a dream. He was also told not to be afraid to marry his betrothed, and that her son, Jesus, would be the salvation of his people.
Mary gave birth to an infant boy, whom she covered in cloths and named Jesus, and laid him in a manger in Bethlehem. Some Magi, or “wise men” (who were probably Chaldean astrologers), observed a star rise in the east and associated this with a passage in Hebrew scriptures that predicted a baby was to be born king of the Jews, and set off on a journey to worship him. When they came to Jerusalem, they inquired as to the whereabouts of the baby who would be the Jewish Messiah. Word about the men’s arrival to worship the baby reached Herod, and he became distressed. He summoned Jerusalem’s religious leaders and asked where the Messiah will be born and they told him in Bethlehem, for the prophet wrote that from Bethlehem will come a leader to guide the people of Israel. Herod then secretly invited the three men to a meeting and asked them when the star had appeared. Then he told them to go to Bethlehem, requesting that when they had found the young child, they bring him word so that he too might worship this future king of the Jews. Guided by the same star they saw before, the men found Mary and her child and offered the infant gifts.
In a dream, the men were warned to avoid Herod and consequently returned home by another route. Herod, infuriated, ordered the killings of all boys up to the age of two in Bethlehem and its surrounding areas. The boy Jesus was saved, however, when an angel told Joseph in a dream to flee. Joseph took Mary and their son and escaped to the land of Egypt.
The first appearance, in a cathedral in Chartres, France, of a cloth believed to have been a fragment of the clothing Mary wore at the birth of Jesus was sometime during the Middle Ages. It is not known precisely when the cloth came to the cathedral; one story holds that it was acquired during the reign of the ninth-century king of France Charles II. At that time Chartres had a bishop named Gislebert, who had for many years been affiliated with the imperial chancery. Because of the king’s admiration for the bishop, for the dedication ceremonies of Chartres’s cathedral, which began construction in 859, he may have bestowed upon its inhabitants the holy object.
Located in north-central France, Chartres had a long history, dating back to Roman times. The Normans laid waste to the town in 858 and returned again in 911 to destroy it. This time, however, the bishop Gantelme called upon the sacred cloth to offer protection. The city was enclosed by a wall at the time, and Gantelme had the cloth placed on one of the outer sides. So inspired were the city’s soldiers that the enemy soon fled. The people of Chartres rejoiced, and the Virgin’s dress was placed in a boxlike reliquary in the cathedral’s choir.
In 1194 a miracle was reported in Chartres. A raging fire swept the sanctuary of the revered relic of the Virgin Mary, the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The fire was looked upon as a major catastrophe for Chartres since the people deemed it a kind of withdrawal of divine favor. Mary’s veil had been an attraction for pilgrims, the centerpiece of religious festivities and fairs that brought prosperity to the area. The people despaired, lamenting all they had done wrong and their consequent fall into disfavor with the Lord.
Three days after the church burned down—three being a symbol of the Resurrection, no doubt—something incredible happened. Clerics emerged from the ashes carrying the tunic of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The priests had been in the crypt of the church when the fire broke out and miraculously were saved, along with the cloth. (Two priests sequestered it in a “hiding place” where precious vases were stored during invasions or fires.) That the cloth survived was taken as a sign that Mary was dissatisfied with the cathedral and wanted a new one built. This new task was taken up with relish, and over the next half century a grand new church was built exactly above the crypt. The western facade of the old church survived the fire and was utilized and enhanced for the new cathedral.
The veil in the cathedral.
For centuries the cloth was venerated by pilgrims, who could barely see it in its reliquary. But there is a record of the bishop of Mérinville verifying it in 1712. Although the cloth was originally more than sixteen feet long, during the revolution of 1793 it was cut into several fragments to hide it more easily; the pieces were distributed among different families.
The largest piece was recovered in 1819 and restored to the cathedral. The church commissioned a study in 1927, and the “Monsieur le Conservateur” of the Historical Museum of Fabrics in the Chamber of Commerce in Lyon concluded his expert report with the following: “The wrapping around the Chartres relic
very likely dates back to the eighth or ninth century. It is far more difficult to determine the time of the relic itself because it is a piece of fabric which is quite plain, and usually the main characteristic of a fabric is essentially its decoration; but there is nothing stopping us from considering this veil as belonging to an earlier antiquity. It is quite allowed to think that the Virgin Mary wore this veil at the time of Jesus’ birth, but it is only a hypothesis.”
Today the Veil of the Virgin (Le Voile de la Vierge) is presented for the veneration of the faithful on the first Sunday of each month and on important feasts.
LOCATION: Notre-Dame Cathedral, Chartres, France.
Footnote
*By tradition, the date of the Veil of the Virgin would coincide with the birth date of Christ. The exact date of Jesus’ birth is not known, but many scholars agree that it is most probably between 6 B.C. and 4 B.C., because according to the New Testament, Herod the Great ordered the death of all children in the vicinity of Jesus’ birthplace two years or younger (Matthew 2:13-15), and Herod died in 4 B.C.
THE CROWN OF THORNS
DATE: A.D. 30 (by tradition).
WHAT IT IS: A wreath that has been venerated through the centuries as the crown placed on Christ’s head when he was mocked by the Roman soldiers as the “King of the Jews” before the Crucifixion.
Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 7