"There are many bas-reliefs, particularly those carved underneath the seats of the choirs of different religious structures, that represent grotesque , and even obscene subjects, altogether at variance with the sacred character of the buildings in which they are placed. Something of this kind may be observed in Worcester cathedral, in Ely cathedral, in the priory church of Great Malvern, and in many other ecclesiastical edifices.
"What may be thought most singular, is, that these sculptures sometimes represent priests and other religious persons, engaged in actions of a very profane description. For a satisfactory reason for this, I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Cottingham. The sculptors who executed those carvings were the caricaturists of the time and, as different religious communities were frequently at variance with each other, they employed these artists to satirize their mutual follies and vices.
"Under their seats they concealed from the public eye, but exposed for their own private gratification, a series of pictorial libels. In one place, the monks of a certain order are represented as licentious, ridiculous, and depraved: -in the building belonging to these holy fathers, will, probably, be found a similar series of bas-reliefs, exposing the secret debaucheries of the sacred brotherhood by whom they have been libelled- but never, in any church, will a priest of that order be represented in an unholy character. He will very likely be discovered thus pictured in the church of the Franciscan, while the follower of St. Francis receives the same treatment from the Carthusian brethren in their own buildings.
"The various monastic establishments, which at one time were exceedingly numerous in England, generally regarded each other with considerable jealousy and, more than once, their animosities and squabbles have disturbed the peace of the kingdom, and brought disgrace upon the un-reformed religion. This occasioned some of our most ancient ecclesiastical edifices to be disfigured with grotesque and offensive designs"
This is the story of a gigantic (so to speak) scholarly “oopsie”-
The “old warrior” (he had a white beard and was emaciated, somewhat like, as one observer commented later, a Giacommetti sculpture) was soon followed by a massive four-foot tall terra cotta warrior’s head, and there was even talk of a greater treasure waiting to be found...
After selling the figure to the Metropolitan, the pair began work on another figure, this time a gigantic warrior's head. Working from a description by Pliny of a 25-foot tall statue of Jupiter in a Roman temple, the pair made the head four and a half feet tall. This was broken into 178 pieces, fired, and shipped off to the Met. And then Riccardo and Alfredo had to leave to serve their time in the Italian Army.
In 1921 the Met. purchased the warrior for an undisclosed price said to have approached 5 million dollars in today’s money. The statue was reconstructed from the fragments by the Met's experts with one odd exception- the genitals, which had been carefully modeled (the warrior, like many Etruscan statues, was partially nude from the waist down) were left off and apparently kept in storage. It may have been just as well. One story that came to light later related that while the body of the figure was based upon that of Riccardo's cousin and helper Teodoro, the "privates" were modeled after Riccardo's own, and had been recognized by a number of young Italian ladies of his hometown...
A much more detailed account of the warriors was written by David Sox in his excellent book “Unmasking the Forger, The Dossena Deception” (1987), from which most of the material for this essay was taken; Thomas Hoving, the former Director of the Met., also deals with the story, and speculates on the role of John Marshall, in his book "False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes" (1996).
The Book Elves have a tradition of being hard on pots and plates- there was the time they decided to "Class Up" the greenhouse by repotting all the cacti in the 18th century Sevres; there was that regrettable incident after too much eggnog last Christmas when they tried to find out how high "too high" was when it came to stacking the Wegdwood dinnerware; and we're all trying to forget last July 4th's infamous "Great Minton Shoot"...
It was an odd January here at Foggygates- lots of cold, but no snow. That, however, was not going to stop the Book Elves from enjoying themselves, so after a hard day in the Cataloging Cave they planned to hit the “slopes” in the neighbor’s field, making snow with the help of two garden hoses, 300 feet of heavy duty extension cord and a dozen old industrial fans they picked up cheap at a local farm auction. 