peripherialpal

Editing photographs wasn’t so easy before the advent of the smartphone or Photoshop, but people always found a way to alter images. Our current display entitled “Trying to Forget: The Removal of Figures from Early Photographic Images,” guest curated by Madison Brown, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Curatorial Fellow in Photography at Harvard Art Museums, examines our desire to forget or erase certain memories. Madison selected examples that show the creative and sometimes laborious modes of alteration in early photographic work. Some tintype photos, as shown in this post, figures carved out with shears or faces roughly scratched out. These scratches and rough edges only highlight the very act of erasure, rather than achieving a complete annihilation of memory.

These objects from Special Collections at the Fine Arts Library demonstrate an enduring desire to forget, as well as the persistence of visual evidence that often forces us to remember.

The Fine Arts Library is open to all Harvard ID holders. We recently switched out tintypes and turned pages in the case, so check out the new images currently on display!

The French 15th century Arthurian heraldry book "Armorial des chevaliers de la Table Ronde" not only shares the coat of arms of the knights of the Round Table, but it also shares their appearances as well. That includes their hair colour. As such as I decided to compile and share with you all a list of all the most well-known knights. They're the following:

Arthur – golden hair, thinning at the top of his head

Meliadus of Lyonesse (father of Tristan)– slight curly, golden thick hair with a large beard

Ban of Benoic – red hair

Bors of Gaunes (father of Bors)– black hair

Brunor, the Good Knight Without Fear (father of Dinadan and Brunor) – thick, dark hair

Urien of Gorre – blonde hair

Loth of Orkney – black hair

Leodegan of Carmelide – blonde hair

Rions of Gallefort, near the border of Wales – hair as dark as mulberry

Pellinor of Listenois – golden hair

Morholt of Ireland – somewhat curly hair

Balan of Ireland (twin brother of Balin) – dark hair

Balin of Ireland (twin brother of Balan) – black hair with a little bit of a beard

Galehaut of the Distant Isles – reddish hair

Lamorat of Gales (son of Pellinor) – fair hair with a very not thick beard

Galahad – hair blonder than fine polished gold

Perceval de Gales (son of Pellinor) – white, blonde hair

Lancelot – fair hair, clear and bright

Gawain – hair neither white nor red but somewhere in between, with a full beard

Tristan of Lyonesse – golden hair (the text says that he likes to wear his hair long)

Lionel of Gaunes (brother of Bors) – hair not too blonde and not too black with a little beard

Hector of Maris (half-brother of Lancelot) – hair blacker than any other colour

Gaheriet/Gareth(brother of Gawain) – black hair

Kay the Seneschal – blonde, thick hair

Yvain (son of Urien) – blonde hair

Brunor the Black, the Knight of the Ill-Fitting Coat (son of Brunor and brother of Dinadan) – black hair

Bedivere – dark hair

Agloval de Gales (son of Pellinor) – black hair

Esclabor the Unknown (father of Palamedes) – curly hair with a great beard

Saphar (son of Escablor and brother of Palamedes) – red hair with a beard

Guerrehet/Gaheris (brother of Gawain) – dark hair

Agravain the Proud (brother of Gawain) – blonde hair

Mordred (brother of Gawain) – blonde, curly hair

Dinadan of Estrangorre – blonde hair

Lanval – black hair

Kahedin (brother of Iseult of the White Hands) – blonde hair

Lucan (brother of Bedivere) – blonde hair

Palamedes (son of Esclabor and brother of Saphar) – hair streaked with blonde and black hair

Tor (illegitimate son of Pellinor) – fair hair

References

Alea evangelii (Game of the Gospels) is described and pictured in Oxford, CCC MS 122 (f. 5v pictured). This 11th-century Irish manuscript suggests that this version of Tafl was created at King Æthelstan’s court by an unknown scholar named Frank and Israel the Grammarian. The diagram contains a mix of Latin and Old Irish captions.

Close-up and enhancement of the replica of the Ockelbo Runestone, Sweden. In this scene from the Sigurd legends, two men play hnefatafl. 10th? century, destroyed by a church fire in 1904.

You know, I've seen manuscript abbreviations that looked like text-speak, but hand-drawing emojis to stand in for the word ceann (head) in a passage about Cú Chulainn being beheaded is taking that all to a new level

(The line from another manuscript: "Is ann sin d'éirgedar datha aille iongantacha do cheann Choingculoinn")

He just keeps doing it. Every time somebody gets beheaded in this text, the word "ceann" gets replaced with 😐 And a lot of people get beheaded in this text (thanks Conall), so this happens a lot.

Today’s #FragmentFriday is from the binding of LJS 470, which is a 16th century Italian collection, written in Hebrew, of medical and magical texts. The fragments are deep in the spine, and haven’t been cataloged or identified. Can you tell what this is?

🔗:

Les Grandes Heures de Rohan (c. 1430).

In the 13th-century, a Dominican preacher linked real graves in Burgundy to the legendary Knights of the Round Table. Étienne de Bourbon’s account reveals how medieval belief, archaeology, and Arthurian myth intertwined in the mysterious tombs of Saint-Émiland.

“The November Meteors”, from The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, 1882.

“The flying Dragon is somewhat troublesome to compose…”