Should they (as in Roman times) simply have detachable heads?

Would that have made Bristol easier for the angry people?

What happens if the head stays the same but the body has to be replaced? (ie. Victoria between 1830 and 1900)

Should we even have statues dedicated to the memory of people whose real-life heads contained brains less able than the ones produced by the masons?

Should LiR and Paul now come in and talk about freemasonry?

Discuss:

Well, ask a silly question and you end up feeling an idiot. But I was genuinely curious about the detachable head thing. Found this very interesting reply to the query.


While the idea of the "detachable head" is something of a misnomer, there is some truth to the statement. I've heard this periodically on the internet as well, and your instincts were correct. Generally speaking, no, for the most part, the Romans did not purposely make their sculptures with interchangeable heads. There are a couple exceptions to that which I'll discuss later, but first, here are some examples of why this isn't the case and how we know.


First of all, you have to put yourself into the mindset of an ancient Roman of high enough status to commission a full-body portrait in the first place. We're talking about emperors, the wealthiest Patricians, and the highest-level politicians and military leaders, etc, not the average citizen. These would all be people of pride and status. I'll take emperors as an example. When an emperor commissions an imperial portrait sculpture, the last thing he wants is the image of public disapproval. Think about the connotations of a detachable head. This would paint the emperor as disposable and suggests that he will eventually be obsolete, or even hated. This isn't the type of system that would have been agreeable to a man of power. I can only imagine what a sign of insubordination and disrespect that would have been. Additionally, this detachable head idea falls apart when considering bronze sculpture. While modern viewers get the impression that most ancient sculptures were marble, a great many were bronze. Most are lost, having been melted down for their raw materials. The ancient method of bronze casting requires the entire sculpture to be cast at once, or welded together permanently. No detaching would be happening in this case.


As for marble sculptures, we know that this "head switching" didn't occur because of a practice known as damnatio memoriae. This term translates literally to "damnation of memory" and was a practice in Imperial Rome. When a hated man (in this case an emperor) died, the Senate could issue an order for the damnatio memoriae of the dead man. This practice included the defacing his portraits, the scratching-out of his name, and the destruction of his monuments. It's important to note though, that the evidence of the emperor would NOT be erased from history, simply defaced. This was intended as both a warning and a condemnation. The Romans did not want the emperor forgotten, but remembered as hated and terrible man (this notably happened to Domitian and Geta). This directly contradicts the idea of a detachable head, as that would erase the subject, when the Romans preferred to remember and condemn.

I would imagine this rumour of detachable heads began because of the marble sculpting process. The nature of marble sculpture is that sometimes, separate pieces of stone were required to make a statue the size of even a standard 6' tall man, let alone a colossal that could be upwards of 10' tall. By sculpting the torso, limbs, and head as separate pieces, the process became cheaper and easier. The quarrying and transportation of a single block of marble the size of a standard Roman sculpture could be incredibly expensive, as well as risky. A broken or cracked marble block is often rendered totally useless. Many of these sculptures of important figures were made of Parian marble, the highest grade of marble available in the ancient Mediterranean. This type of marble had to be imported fro Paros, Greece, a long journey for a marble block. In these instances, there would be a seam on the neck where the head was connected to the body. This, presumably, could be detached, but I don't know of any confirmed cases of this.


Another possible source of this thought is the occasional recarvings of the later emperors. As the economy of the Roman Empire declined in the third and fourth centuries, it became somewhat common for an emperor to recarve an older image of a previous emperor tp look like them, and display it as their own. A notable example of this is the many images of Constantine that actually portraits of Hadrian, but the sculptor has removed the beard to better resemble Constantine.


That said, there is a bit of truth to the idea of head switching. For those who wanted sculptures but could not afford a fully custom piece, some workshops offered pre-carved stock bodies. The patron could select a body, and have a custom head sculpted to be added to it. In this case, I guess the detachable head theory is true. It was by no means the standard though. Long story short, if you were wealthy and powerful enough to commission a sculpture of yourself, you were also wealthy and powerful enough that the artist would not want to disrespect you.


Sources:

Galinsky, Karl. "Recarved Imperial Portraits: Nuances and Wider Context." Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 53 (2008): 1-25.

Third time trying to post.  I'll try tomorrow on the computer - posting on the mobile phone is hit and miss.

Sandstone used to be used quite a bit in my hometown.  Hardly surprising as there were sandstone quarries in the area.  Not statues per se but some of the sandstone tombstones in older graveyards faded because of exposure to the elements.  I know tombstones do that anyway.

Ok. So Roman tradition (or sandstone quarriers) couldn't help the poor bastards doing Victoria over the years then?

Would a replaceable bosom and a series of bigger sized horses have helped? In fact, is that how they actually got away with it?

When I first tried to post I referred to Temp's trying to cheer me up when I lost my cat, Pebbles.  She posted a picture of a statue (not in sandstone) of Hodge, Dr Johnstone's cat, but I lost that post to cyberspace.

With regard to the current hand-wringing over what to do with 'sensitive' statues ... perhaps we should just leave them all in place but simply change the inscriptions, no?

For example regarding Edward Colston's contoversal statue in Bristol that has just been overturned into the docks, the inscription could have been simply changed to read something like:

Well wished, Meles M, but it's not going to happen.

LiR - Nope, I'm still not getting it.

Is this to be a thread about cats or statues with historical significance and interchangeable heads? Or both?

Or neither?

The Johnson (note spelling) cat statue is actually very recent (1997, unveiled by Sir Roger Cook, the then lord mayor). Cook has nothing of worth to his name by way of reputation besides the cat statue, except that when he was inaugurated in the Guild Hall, and some bolshie alderman shouted out "No Relation to Thomas I assume? (reference to the previous mayoral Cooke of Henry VI fame), the bold Roger wittily replied - "I have never even been to Margate".

The thicker the cream, the more it rises to the top - as they say everywhere except among the elite ....

Who knows nordmann what it will be.  I've been unwell today and with a few downpours today have lost prospecti e  posts which might have been more coherent.  Anyway I'm not going to try again tonight.  Anyway I'm off to study the turtle - not to do with Res Hist but my Spanish homework which is to research an endangered animal which in my case is the 'tortuga del mar' which I assume isthe turtle but I'd better check in the dictionary.

Ok. Get better soon, and I hope the weather improves.

Who knows what what will be?

One statue that has definitely had an interchangeable head is the fantastic Betjeman statue by Martin Jennings which stands in St Pancras station. Apparently it was third time lucky for Jennings after the previous two heads were rejected by John's daughter and grand niece. The final result however is certainly one of London's best - (until the Nazi Churchill supporters & Co lay eyes on it and decide to "defend" it, I suppose)

Meles meles wrote:

For example regarding Edward Colston's contoversal statue in Bristol that has just been overturned into the docks, the inscription could have been simply changed to read something like:

Here stands Edward Colsten (1636 – 1721).
Merchant, slaver and philanthopist of the city of Bristol.

He made a personal fortune trading in human slaves but in later years,
whether to assuage his guilt or simply to try and perpetuate his memory,
he donated a large part of his ill-gotten gains to founding some of the institutions
that now form part of the University of Bristol.

This statue was raised 140 years after his death by other city councillors,
similarly concerned more with glorifying themselves,
rather than addressing the ills that he and they represented.

I think MM's suggestion is in the best tradition of the Roman damnatio memoriae: it condemns wrongdoing, but allows us, not to erase unpleasant history, but to remember - and hopefully learn - from the past.

The British establishment used a lack of statue to condemn the conduct of one of its most famous daughters. There is no likeness of Diana, Princess of Wales in the capital - her only official memorial is a dreadful "water feature" - a sort of irrigation ditch - in Hyde Park that looks as though it is is the handiwork of the Thames Water Authority.

But there was the unofficial monstrosity - the Innocent Victims statue erected by Al-Fayed near the escalators in Harrods. A hideous thing, it nevertheless attracted thousands of tourists/shoppers to gawp at the images of the dead Princess and Al-Fayed's son, Dodi. Plus what appears to be a large seagull. It was removed in 2018 when Harrods was sold. The new owners of the store did not want to offend the Royal Family by leaving the statue as an "attraction".





PS I am very embarrassed that my name is in the title of this thread. I would appreciate it if the thread could be called simply "Statues - and other memorials" - or something like that.

Title changed to something less embarrassing ....

Context is everything with statues, especially those depicting real people. Ugly and all as the Harrods monstrosity may have been, its context couldn't have been more clear, and nor could its intended "message".

Betjeman in St Pancras looking up at the timetable is also perfect context - if one knew nothing about the man at all then the provocative stance of the character in the location where it has been placed gives one just enough visual clues to excite a little curiosity about the guy based on the very accurate and well thought out interaction between the man and his immediate surroundings.

Colston's context in Bristol was also equally thoughtful, but not at all in a good way. It spoke volumes about the attitudes of those who had it erected in that spot, as did the complete absence of any associated dedication outlining the man's actual source of his wealth that had made him a prominent Bristol citizen in the first place.

Most statues which are currently coming under a highly critical spotlight in fact could be easily "corrected" simply by adding a little context in the form of a well written accompanying plaque. Some would need only to be moved from a location which itself implies official endorsement of the subject's character and behaviour in their lifetime. Only a very few, I reckon, would need to be "disappeared" altogether. They would have to be ones that simply cannot ever be adequately contextualised, no matter where they are placed. However that's why we have historical museums, so it would have to be a very strong argument indeed that would deny them being exhibited in that context at all.

After he fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Hungary took all of it's Communist era statues and placed them in a park.

Memento Park, Budapest:

In Ireland there was a frenzy of statue removal after independence - basically any British royal or any British individual whose only connection with their Irish location was either tenuous or vile was swiftly removed by the Office of Public Works before the IRA helpfully expedited the process with dynamite (poor William III ended up spread over St Stephens Green and adjoining streets). However, the OPW being the OPW, nothing that they managed to shift got destroyed and they all ended up in the central courtyard of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham (now a beautiful public space housing the national Museum of Modern Art). I was fortunate enough back in the 1980s to be allowed entry to the Hospital on a daily basis (the OPW canteen there was allowed feed us fellow servants of the state working next door) and regret very much that I never thought to take a photograph or two of what was an extremely surrealistic but historically fascinating graveyard of British ambition in Ireland in which one could repose with a sandwich on a fine summer's day.

The piece-de-resistance was Old Vic herself, whose ample form had once dominated the approach to Leinster House, the new national parliament, so obviously one of the first to take a hike up to Kilmainham. When the government decided to convert the Hospital into a museum and private apartments for visiting political leaders they finally got round to disposing of their haul. Victoria was purchased by some Australians in her eponymous state there, and the British government also purchased quite a lot of the royals. Lesser figures were offered gratis to any descendants of the individuals who cared to pay for the post and packing (nearly all of them were moved) and the residue were then either doled out to willing buyers at auction or melted down if they had scrap value. Hardly anything got scrapped.

As well as Diana Spencer, another prominent figure, now deceased, that currently has no public statue is Margaret Thatcher. She has a statue inside the Houses of Parliament (but then so does John Major and he's still alive), another in London's Guildhall and there's a bust in Conservative headquarters, but she has no statue in any public place. As PM Theresa May supported an application by The Public Memorials Appeal Trust to erect a 3m bronze statue of Thatcher in Parliament Square (alongside Churchill) but planning permission was rejected by Westminster Council. The statue, now already cast, was then offered to the town of Grantham (her hometown) but fears that it would attract vandals mean it still hasn't been put up. One plan was to site it in the middle of a deep pond to make it difficult to get to, but the latest proposal is to site it on an unusually tall 3.5m plinth, again to keep it well out of reach. Furthermore the current plan is to delay putting it up until at least 2023 (ten years after her death) in the vain hope that passions about her might have cooled somewhat.

Sorry about the adverts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYv9SsSxd8g

Dubliners (actual Dubliners, not the group) greatly lamented Nelson's demise in 1966. At one point in the 1980s Dublin City Council toyed with the idea of rebuilding it but of course with a new occupant on top. National newspapers were invited to get their readers to submit suggestions and of course the usual culprits were inevitably proposed, including a hopefully non-mobile statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bob Geldof who was riding high in public opinion at the time, Douglas Hyde, the first president of the "Free State" who was both a protestant and a mad fan of all things Gaelic so seen as a "compromise candidate" promoting peace and reconciliation "up north" (fat chance), and a string of other local notables such as Matt Talbot, "Bang Bang", and Johnny Forty Coats.

However by far the best suggestion in my view was submitted by a reader of the Irish Times who humbly suggested we show solidarity with a certain Mr Mandela, then still a prisoner of the state in Robin Island, and the downtrodden people of apartheid South Africa. However this incredible gesture of support for the black population of that benighted country was really just a bonus. The whole point of the exercise was of course that Dubliners would at last get back their much missed "Nelson's Pillar", and this time with a Nelson who no one could get bomby about!

nordmann wrote:

In Ireland there was a frenzy of statue removal after independence - basically any British royal or any British individual whose only connection with their Irish location was either tenuous or vile was swiftly removed by the Office of Public Works before the IRA helpfully expedited the process with dynamite (poor William III ended up spread over St Stephens Green and adjoining streets).

This reminds me of the 1946 film I See a Dark Stranger in which a young Irishwoman living in England and played by Deborah Kerr (couldn’t they have cast an Irish actress in the part?) throws a pot of paint over a statue of Oliver Cromwell in the village. From memory, the statue in the film looks like the one at St Ives in Huntingdonshire but in the film (for some reason of dramatic licence) is supposed to be located in Devon:

nordmann wrote:

Lesser figures were offered gratis to any descendants of the individuals who cared to pay for the post and packing (nearly all of them were moved) and the residue were then either doled out to willing buyers at auction or melted down if they had scrap value. Hardly anything got scrapped.

The Cromwellians themselves, of course, were not averse to iconoclasm. The brass equestrian statue of King Charles I currently at Charing Cross was cast in 1638 but not yet erected by the time civil war broke out in 1642. Following Charles’ capture by parliamentary forces in 1647 it was tasked to brazier John Rivett to break up and melt down the now redundant piece. Rivett, however, chose to bury the entire statue in his back yard (no mean undertaking when one thinks about it) and there it remained before being dug up following the Restoration in 1660.

Thank you for changing the title, nordmann. I am no longer embarrassed.




Here is a picture of the statue of Queen Victoria that may be seen in Kensington Gardens. It shows the young monarch, but was actually erected in 1893. I had no idea who the sculptor was until I saw a Netflix documentary about the nine unfortunate offspring of Victoria, queen and empress, who appears also to have been the wife, mother and mother-in-law from hell. This was a serious production, and several historians of repute took part. One speaker was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, Lucinda Hawksley, who in 2013 published a biography of Princess Louise, the daughter born to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria in the year of revolutions - 1848.

I knew nothing about this Princess Louise, who later became the Duchess of Argyll, but, learning of her tempestuous life has certainly set me off on a new "historical education" path. She, to my amazement, was the sculptor of the Kensington statue - a work showing a mother whom she both loved and hated. Her story would be interesting for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of feminism, but also for teaching young girls the danger of thinking how wonderful it must be to be a pretty, privileged, protected "little princess". Louise was a fighter - she was beautiful, artistic, intelligent and a sexual rebel, and she could not - would not - tolerate the life she was expected to lead. Her mother described her as "backward and difficult"; others in the royal circle, shocked at her drive for self-expression and independence, called her "unhinged and paranoid".

But they let her learn how to sculpt: Louise was taught by Mary Thorneycroft and by the eminent artist, Joseph Edgar Boehm, with whom she was reputed to have had a passionate affair (he died in her arms in his studio) - one of many unconventional liasons, according to her biographer. Her marriage, to the future Duke of Argyll, was also unconventional: he was known in Society to be a discreetly gay man, and she no doubt was happy to give him sexual freedom, if it was understood she was allowed to be free also.

Here is more about this fascinating royal sculptress. I know nothing about this art form, but the statue was considered to be so good that the princess's critics said she couldn't have possibly have produced it - it must the work of her tutor, Boehm.

The secrets of Queen Victoria’s sixth child, Princess Louise, may be destined to remain hidden forever. What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumor and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view.

Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother’s controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers-especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the “masculine” art of sculpture and go to art college-and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school.


PS Here is a picture of Louise as an old lady - she has a very modern look about her - very amused and "knowing"! A handsome old lady too, I think.

Louise is certainly a fascinating character Temp. I was unaware of her story. Thank you for posting it. It's actually worthy of a feature film: “The princess, who defied convention, to become a sculptor, and shocked a nation, to save an empire!” (or some such trailer). I agree about her appearance in later life - deep, intelligent and sympathetic eyes. Quite different from that sort of startled, forever-juvenile, bulbous-eyed look which so many in the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor line can exhibit.

That said - I’ve never been a great fan of statuary or sculpture generally. It’s an art form which tends to leaves me cold. I’m almost Islamic in that respect. Meissen figurines? You can keep ‘em. I certainly wouldn’t condone anyone smashing up public monuments though and certainly not the relatively modest ones which we have in England. Meles’ solution is eminently reasonable and sensible in these cases. Yet Trike’s point about the massive number of statues (often endless reproductions of exactly the same people) which were erected in the totalitarian communist states is a very valid one. They could become problematic in terms of long-term storage. ‘Statue parks’ might make sense for 1 or 2 generations but after that then they really might need to be thinned out which probably means the destruction of many of the artefacts.

Then there are those literally, colossal, in-your-face statues which were put up in those countries such as the former Lenin statue in Kharkov or the Lenin head in Ulan-Ude etc. The wrecking ball and the sledgehammer readily spring to mind here. And yet such a solution really is no different to how the Taleban dealt with the Bamiyan buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001, which was roundly condemned as a cultural outrage. My own thought at the time was that I condemned the blowing-up of the buddhas because a) I didn’t like the Taleban and b) the monuments were very old. As for the actual sculptures themselves, however, then I couldn’t have cared less. A hypocritical stance.

Even the Bamiyan buddhas and the former gigantic Stalin monument in Prague, however, pale into insignificance, in terms of human sculptures defacing the natural environment, when compared to the most grotesque sculpture of all which (to my mind) is Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. A truly monstrous monument. And in terms of the currently framed debate, then George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slave-owners, Abraham Lincoln thought that freed slaves should emigrate (because they wouldn’t be welcome in America) while Theodore Roosevelt was an aggressive imperialist who enforced segregation in education. Compared to Mount Rushmore, then the little bronze statue of Edward Colston in Bristol doesn’t even qualify as pathetic.



(The huge Stalin monument which dominated the Letná Park in Prague during the 1950s before being demolished in 1962.)

This is the largest statue in Europe, built to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad.

Mamayev Kurgan Complex: "The Motherland Calls"

statues you said...

we had here near Bruges a bust (does a bust also counts?). It was erected by ex-pupils in honour for their teacher, who educated them in the way to later life. (Yes so it was in times before)



One day the head was disappeared and the city workers spoke about a beheading
http://legebuurt.brugsebuurten.be/weetjes/eenentachtig/PaulBrulez
From the article:
The secret of the beheaded bust...
There were a lot of conspiracy theories, but in my opinion it was just that the bust was located on a main street from Bruges leading to a big football stadion. And each "risico" match there were street fights between the "fans" of the opposite football teams...so who cares about such a stupid bust...

I think it is therefore that that never happened with a statue of a well known poet from Bruges: Guido Gezelle on a quiet place in the middle of the city...



But nowadays, even on quiet places as in a godforsaken municipality as Sleidinge...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleidinge_railway_station
last week a statue was "molested" (oops now I see that in English it means quite another thing than overhere) "wrecked?"...
It happened to be a statue of a former Prime Minister of ours, while it was his birthplace...
I have with all my historical and political knowledge of the recent decades in Belgium not the slightest idea why that man was chosen...

Know the readers of this board from Great Britain also about a statue of a PM that got wrecked during recent times?...and do they know why?  ...

Kind regards, Paul.

Yes nordmann, I WILL post a link to a statue of a cat (Tomboli late of Istanbul).  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/05/tomboli-istanbuls-deceased-meme-cat-honoured-with-a-statue/

See your cat and raise you a dog.

Triceratops wrote:

the largest statue in Europe, built to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad.

Mamayev Kurgan Complex: "The Motherland Calls"

Despite its size I actually quite like that one. I suppose it’s because it doesn’t represent any individual in particular. It also seems to augment the otherwise rather dull-looking city in the background.
 
If we’ve got a cat and a dog on the thread – then how about a duck. Or a drake to be precise. The statue of Sir Francis Drake in my father’s hometown of Tavistock:



My sister lives about 500 yards from Drake’s statue and apparently it too was targeted for protest last week:

'Slave trader' sign put on Tavistock's Sir Francis Drake statue

The presence, or absence, of the duck (a mallard, of course) in this statue is and was a continuing source of dispute.

I won't explain why, I'm sure you can work it out!

Dear Gil, I have to confess that I now some months ago learned to post photographs on some fora ...copy link address...and ...seeking picture in google...and so...

https://www.railwaymuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/mallard-75
https://www.change.org/p/the-gresley-society-trust-reinstate-the-mallard-on-the-proposed-statue-of-sir-nigel-gresley
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35960407

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard




And yes the record of 1938...203 km/h...
But our record on the Brussels-Ostend railway 121 km/h and a peak of 165 km/h is also not bad me think?
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_12_(SNCB)


 
PS: And was there any railway line in Britain, where you could run a speed of 203 km/h?
PPS: I learned this evening for the first time in my life that a "mallard" is a "wilde eend" (wild duck?)...

Kind regards from Paul.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1

InterCity 225s could do 225 kph (140 mph), but mostly are limited to 125 mph (201 kph) by signalling restricions away from HS1. Bit faster than our Old Gent ("The Earl") at Welshpool. Beacuse the line was built under the Light Railway Act, he can only do 15 mph max (24 kph). He's being repaired at the moment, but we are fundraising to finish the job. 

this mallard wouldn't break any speed records as it weighs a ton.

Not a statue, but ....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-53089528

PaulRyckier wrote:

One day the head was disappeared and the city workers spoke about a beheading
http://legebuurt.brugsebuurten.be/weetjes/eenentachtig/PaulBrulez
From the article:
The secret of the beheaded bust...
There were a lot of conspiracy theories, but in my opinion it was just that the bust was located on a main street from Bruges leading to a big football stadion. And each "risico" match there were street fights between the "fans" of the opposite football teams...so who cares about such a stupid bust...

Paul – I found the story of the students’ devotion and regard for their former teacher ‘Meester Pol’ quite touching. The casual vandalism of drunken soccer fans is one thing. The deliberate and cynical tit-for-tattery emanating from Bristol (going by GG’s link) is, however, a much bleaker prospect.
 
With reference to Philippa of Hainault (on the France-England thread), then she is closely linked to the story of one of the world’s most famous sculptures – Les Bourgeois de Calais. The town was besieged by King Edward in 1346 for almost a year before its starving inhabitants agreed to capitulate. The siege had been a huge logistical operation involving tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors (including Edward’s Flemish allies) being supplied and reinforced for months on end. Think Julius Caesar at Alesia meets Eisenhower in Normandy and you sort of get the picture.

A popular story related by chronicler Jean Froissart (Philippa’s personal scribe) says that, at the time of the capitulation, Edward offered to show leniency to the townsfolk if six of the town’s aldermen, who had led the resistance and thus cost him so much blood and treasure, would agree to surrender themselves for execution. Led by Eustache de Saint-Pierre, six aldermen did indeed volunteer and present themselves before Edward carrying the keys to the town and dressed only in their shirts and with ropes around their necks. Kneeling before the king they asked for mercy but Edward ground his teeth ‘grigna le roi les dents’ and told them to prepare to have their heads cut off – ‘fasse venir le coupe-tête’. At which moment Froissart tells us:

‘Adonc fit la noble roine d’Angleterre grand’humilité, qui étoit durement enceinte, et pleuroit si tendrement de pitié que elle ne se pouvoit soutenir. Si se jeta à genoux pardevant le roi son seigneur et dit ainsi: «Ha! gentil sire, depuis que je repassai la mer en grand péril, si comme vous savez, je ne vous ai rien requis ni demandé : or vous prié-je humblement et requiers en propre don, que pour le fils sainte Marie, et pour l’amour de moi, vous veuilliez avoir de ces six hommes mercy.»’

'Then the noble queen of England with great humility and who was heavily pregnant, wept so tenderly with a pity which she could not hold back. She threw herself on hers knees before the king her lord and spoke thus – “Ah! Gentle sire, ever since I crossed the sea at great risk, as you know, I have never requested or demanded anything of you, yet I ask you humbly and request a true favour that, for the son of Holy Mary and for my love, you have mercy on these six men.'

This did the trick as it softened Edward’s heart ‘lui amollia le cœur’ and he handed them over to her custody whereupon she took the ropes off from around their necks, got them dressed and ordered food brought for them.

The 500th anniversary of the Siege of Calais in the 1840s had prompted the town council to seek to commemorate the event in sculpture. It then took another 40 years before they commissioned sculptor Auguste Rodin for the task whose work was finally unveiled in 1889. As well as the original in Calais, there are several copies of the sculpture around the world including at Westminster, Paris, Basel, Washington and Morlanwelz in Hainaut.



(Les Bourgeois de Calais at the Musée Rodin in Paris displayed at ground level as intended by the sculptor, and not elevated as with the original in Calais, or on a pedestal as with the copy in Westminster.)

Thank you so much Vizzer for your immediate reply.
And thank you also for comments on that story of "meester Pol" (he was a time the headmaster of my father's school).
I thought first that Paul was family of the better known Raymond Brulez
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Raymond-Brulez
but no...at least on internet...and "Brulez" is a common name in West-Flanders...but Paul was from Bruges and Raymond from Blankenberge...you never know... ...

And thanks also for the moving story of Philippa...and yes "Jean Froissart" I met several times in my search for events of that time...and he seems to be (according to studies) a less biased chroniqueur to the "bosses" and their "stories" than most of his kind...

And Rodin: really an extraodinary artist as I saw in (I think a documentary of 90 minutes) a documentary from the French-German channel ARTE;
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/074947-000-A/auguste-rodin/
Nowadays you can't watch it later anymore as even a year ago...now you have to pay for the DVD... and no pirate downloads on the net anymore as before...
I particularly remember a statue, if I remember well of Victor Hugo, in which he had put all his artistic mastership (for the city councel of Paris?), and once on its place, everyone, from the public, said that it was a disaster...it remembers me of what nordmann said about art...

Kind regards, Paul.

Green George wrote:

InterCity 225s could do 225 kph (140 mph), but mostly are limited to 125 mph (201 kph) by signalling restricions away from HS1. Bit faster than our Old Gent ("The Earl") at Welshpool. Beacuse the line was built under the Light Railway Act, he can only do 15 mph max (24 kph). He's being repaired at the moment, but we are fundraising to finish the job. 

 
Gil, I think that it overhere for the intercities is 160 kph, perhaps not for signalling restrictions, but more because that Belgian tracks aren't that good as the British ones...  ...

And good luck with your Old Gent...I am pulling for you and your companions...

Kind regards from Paul.

Iconoclasm 1566 Start of the Eighty Years War between the Low Countries and Spain.

Dirck van Delen in 1630

There has been a lot of nastiness and nonsense about statues here in the UK in recent days. To be honest, I think we are all sick to death of the rabble of ranting extremists, whatever their colour or political views. Hopefully good will and good sense will prevail - eventually.

I really hope Jack Leslie gets his statue: he was shamefully treated. England's loss back in the 1920s...


A Bronze Statue For Leslie

Have the active Green    lot yet got round to destroying old smoky steam engines that put a grit in yer eye? Railways in general may be targeted for carving up the land and crossing animal tracklands.
 Ah nostalgia - of those who were about then - who could  forget the sulphurous scent of old railway stations?

Museums will be next on the list until this wave of intolerance for what cannot be changed  wanes into sanity. .

I find it very hard to see just what can be offensive about Hans Christian Andersen's 'Little Mermaid' but it seems these days there's always someone who's ready to be upset:

Drawing attention to a half naked, height challenged female aberration of a normal fish might be reason enough for a mob daub - or was it because the mermaid was a Danish invention? For which then they might also be blamed for heavy iced pastry wads that garner flies on many a counter. No, perhaps not - are pastries racist?.... Hold on, woman. what about Mr Kiplings French Fancies? Now there's a monument to bad taste if ever.

I wonder how a vandalising select committee makes its selection? This could be quite creative.

Meles meles wrote:

I find it very hard to see just what can be offensive about Hans Christian Andersen's 'Little Mermaid' but it seems these days there's always someone who's ready to be upset:

 
MM, I was there...if you as I are a law abiding person   and you stay at the permitted esplanade, you will need a tele photo lens to see what's going on...




MM, yesterday came the statue of the "mossel" (mussel) into my mind, when I saw the photo of the "mermaid"...
I was there too in Bruinisse (Zeeland)





I don't say that it is great art, but "ieder zijn goesting" (Dutch voorkeur, smaak) (everyone his preference?)

I thought to say today: take now that statue of a "mussel" as a tribute to the mussel culture of that region...
And I wanted to add: who in godsname can now take offence to a statue of a mussel? But perhaps, you never know nowadays: because the mussel culture damages the ecosystem ( a word of the day in the last years) and there is always a lost "green" one, who reasons...

And see, I don't kid you, when seeking for a photo:

https://www.pzc.nl/schouwen-duiveland/mossel-beeld-in-bruinisse-is-vernield-door-een-vuurwerkbom~a05a9f68/

statue of mussel destroyed in Bruinisse by a "vuurwerkbom" (the word seems to be typical Northern Dutch and they give nowhere synonyms) (firework packed together to form a bomb)

I guess it is just "vandalism" not related to "green ones", although you never know: the Animal Liberation Front set some years ago a Shell petrol station on fire in Holland (and the complot was together with the British branch)

Kind regards, Paul.

We have sea shells on the sea shore to honour composer Benjamin Brittain….and with a racist name like that  I doubt it will last long

Priscilla wrote:

We have sea shells on the sea shore to honour composer Benjamin Brittain….and with a racist name like that  I doubt it will last long

 
Yes Prisicilla, that nowadays hype of the Left and Greens, in my humble opinion, will scare the centrum (the floating mass (de vlottende massa)) and play into the hands of the far right. Today in the news an interview with the leader of the far-right overhere, broad smiling, while he is significantly up in the polls...The centrum parties trying to form a federal government after more than a year, being serious parties, in constant quarreling about their respective agendas...the leader of the far-right has it easy to make them ridicule...
And the problem in all this is, that we have that far right only in the Flemish region, while it is in the Walloon region more the far left, which is up in the polls too...and of course both ask for new elections...perhaps we will have a cooperation at the end between the two extremist parties, as in the time in the Weimar Republic...

Yes, the Covid 19 damaged Trump, can still win with  all these stupid turmoil...see yesterday 4 July...in my humble opinion...
I hope that if I further criticise these far right boys, they don't come at my doorstep to paint my house in red...or worse...

Red is the colour nowadays in Belgium to paint statues...as the one of Leopold II..."red rubber" you know...but at least they don't blow up the statues up to now...with damage to the inhabitants of the surroundings...damage of hand grenades and kalashnikovs as the drugs barons cause in Brussels and Antwerp nowadays...some inner drugs related settlements?...

And we have in all these special times the unluck of the 60th anniversary of the independence of the former Belgian Congo...
And in that light we have to be very cautious with the relations with the nowadays Democratic Republic of Congo...even the far right...while "our" former Congo is one of the richest countries of the world in mineral resourches...many countries are jealous from us...always money you know...

PS: If I would live in Hong Kong I would have to ask for a British passport...or is it for Britains only...

Kind regards, Paul.

Getting back to the original question of this thread - and in defence of our little aquatic friend in Köbenhavn - I thought the "Racist Fish" slogan, as a commentary on the questionable genuineness of white people voluntarily assuming offence on behalf of their black neighbours, was pretty funny. "Black Mermaids Matter" might have been even more apposite, but it would have taken longer to write, I suppose, though given the girl's history since the early 1960s it doesn't seem that time taken to vandalise her plays a part in the rationale of the vandals in question, who have never seemed to care much if their action be executed in a flash or if their nefarious deed takes half the night to accomplish.

Over the intervening years the poor little mite has been beheaded twice, lost her supporting arm fully and partially, and has been painted every colour you might wish - blue and red being by far the most popular. She has been dressed in every conceivable costume, has had numerous "companions" sharing her rocky plinth, including various sex dolls and an inflatable Trump. Worst of all she has even been blown up (not in the sex doll sense) and had to be retrieved from where she landed 50 metres out to sea.

As a social history of Danish discontent therefore she continues to play a valuable educational role - a brief fish-tailed summary of a myriad disaffections for which she became a target ranging from saving whales to toppling capitalism, and along the way doing her bit to help free political prisoners, liberate women, sack the Danish royal family, and even lower the price of beer (admittedly the last one was probably only devised by the perpetrators after they had sobered up sufficiently to let the police know why they'd gone berserk with a hacksaw at 2 o'clock in the morning).

Here she is in order of sequence doing her bit for women's rights, free beer, and whales' rights. If anyone ever gets it into their heads that female whales have the right to get pissed out of their skull for free she'll be really screwed!

Paul :
As a member of, and councillor elected for, the Green party of England and Wales, I take strong exception to your (baseless in my view) insulting suggestion that defacing or toppling statues is an action of "The Greens".

Green George wrote:

Paul :
As a member of, and councillor elected for, the Green party of England and Wales, I take strong exception to your (baseless in my view) insulting suggestion that defacing or toppling statues is an action of "The Greens".

Sorry Gil, I apologise, but in every country you have perhaps other "greens". The lot overhere is perhaps more daring, but again one can not generalize as I did. Apologies again, and here as especially in Germany they have caused a "Trendwende" (trend reversal) for the good.

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul's faux-pas and Green George's prompt response, along with another story I read in the news yesterday, throw some light on a feature of iconoclasm that had long puzzled me when in the past I read about zealous protestant mass destruction of perceived catholic idolatrous statues, early christian defacing of Roman and Greek statuary, etc. In such situations as we apparently find ourselves in again with statues and icons becoming physical targets for destruction on the part of self-appointed arbiters of social values, even though history may record the actual destruction as the most salient feature of these phases in social evolution from which we can conclude a zealousness and particular attitude on the part of the destroyers, what history is less adept at recording is the general polarisation of attitudes among populations as a whole which itself gives rise to these rather visible instances of material destruction. If recent developments have anything to teach us then iconoclasm is only one - probably less important - feature of what happens within internally polarised societies, but arguably more important than this destruction itself is the huge increase in a susceptibility to manipulation and a consequent deterioration in normal discourse and resort to rational resolution of differences that the phenomenon also engenders.

The news story related to a particular statue, erected in 1998, outside York Minster in England, depicting the Roman emperor Constantine - he who traditionally is credited with opening the Pandora's Box of organised Christianity within the Roman world and who, by tradition, learnt of his accession to the role of emperor in that very spot while on military duties in Britannia. Historians might have quibbled about the actual evidence linking him to York, but in 1998 the tradition alone had acquired a venerable historical lustre so, as statues and commemorative statements go, I remember seeing no problem at all with this addition to York's street landscape - modern day Eboracorii would be as appreciative of the statuary statement as Dubliners might be of Molly Malone, Copenhageners of the previously mentioned mermaid, Rio de Janeirians of their "super-Jesus", or residents of almost any other city in the world in which a long-standing and convenient blurring of history and tradition in the past has resulted in any character, however fictional their representation, being rightly associated with their location and duly commemorated in stone or bronze.

This in itself was never newsworthy or even a subject of "debate" until recent weeks. Then, in the wake of a few noteworthy topplings widely reported, accounts started appearing - especially in Britain's more right-wing newspapers - claiming that Constantine was now under threat of also being displaced from his perch outside the cathedral in York. The tone of these accounts was consistently one of indignation, not against Constantine, but against those who were apparently massing in the shadows to effect this de-perching of the emperor, allegedly because they harboured a common view that his position as leader of the Roman world meant that he endorsed slavery by definition, encouraged its growth indeed, and therefore had even more blood on his hands than Coulston in Bristol or any Southern USA plantation owner and military leader in the Confederate cause.

The news stories went on to relate how the local council was being inundated with protests from these aspiring iconoclasts demanding his immediate removal, and also that it was only a matter of time before the angry hordes of social-justice warriors descended on Constantine armed with ropes, sledgehammers, axle-grinders etc, so what were the authorities going to do about this threat, and in fact should not every truly blue-blooded son of English soil now be thinking of massing themselves to defend this venerable icon of tradition? Etc etc.

The Church of England was itself approached to add its opinion. Was it, the journalists asked, on the side of the rabid anti-slavery warriors or indeed on the side of Constantine, one of "their boys"? This led to a lot of internal hand-wringing apparently among clerics and church leaders when faced with this moral dilemma, who were forced in turn to devise as diplomatic and intelligent a response as is feasible in these very undiplomatic and unreasonable times - namely that yes, Constantine endorsed slavery, but no, it wasn't the "same" slavery as Coulston's, which still carries material effect in modern society, but a form now so historically ancient that it should not be exciting bile at all.

But, to give the C of E top brass their proper credit, when put on the spot like this they started making some inquiries of their own. They "reached out" (as modern ecclesiastic parlance has it) to the people of York themselves, presumably to their own flock there, to solicit local views - only to be met with a resounding "dunno" of total indifference. Along with some journalists from other media they then approached the unfortunate council apparently inundated with petitions and demands for the statue's removal. No such petition existed, it emerged. In fact not a single demand of any description had even been received. The entire "frenzy" of debate, it emerged, amounted to a handful of repeated reports by lazy journalists in a few bad newspapers, along with a plethora of comments posted to various "social" media (what a travesty of semantics that phrase is), which had indeed mushroomed in amount and angry intensity among interlocutors spread far and wide geographically, though apparently very few actually from York itself.

Constantine, it seems, can now breath out and relax for a while longer on his plinth, in blissful stony ignorance of the whirlwind of bile, disgust, recrimination and rage that was whipped up on his behalf over the last few weeks, a maelstrom of acrimony engaged in by those who would depose him as well as those who would (presumably also equipped with pitchforks as tradition also demands) defend his throne.

So, statues aside, and purely in the interest of good historical analysis of iconoclasm in general, maybe we should be shifting our focus from these stony sentinels of human tradition and historical interactions from long ago, and instead encourage it to rest upon those actual living humans at this moment in our times who now apparently invest so much attention and engagement in their destruction or survival. But I would advise the focus to be even more refined than that - not let it be distracted by the ones with the actual pitchforks, or even by those "leaders" under whom both sides assemble pitchfork in hand, but instead bring it to bear on those among us who are writing the agenda under which both sides communicate their bile. A focus in other words on those who then manipulate and broadcast this agenda to encourage everyone to obtain and keep close to hand any pitchfork or similar weapon of their choice, or simply encourage the rest for whom pitchforks hold no great appeal to convince themselves that the others are doing so. Iconoclastic appeals, or indeed vehement appeals to violently oppose them, are simply rallying calls from at least some people for whom the anticipated responses such calls then elicit must comprise a form of confirmation in themselves. So who, it must be asked, is doing the actual calling, and why?

And even more to the point, where a statue is beheaded in any city then some "proof of concept" test has surely been passed at least to someone's satisfaction that a less figurative version of the same exercise might also be possible. After all, tests produce results on which actions can be based. But how often would a laboratory rat really want to know the actionable result of any test that they may even have passed, and even more gloomily, how often would it actually benefit the rat to either know result or to have helped the scientist arrive at it when contrasted with the ultimate fate that awaits him in any case whether he passes or not? Knowledge of that, it might be argued, would be of far more importance - at least from the rat's perspective.

So simply put: who, it might be asked, is manipulating the manipulators of the generally manipulated?

Or, even more directly put: Cui Bono? (as usual) ....


Photo credit Gernot Keller - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6572307

Connie, not for the first time the unwitting focus of someone else's vicious manipulation of the truth

Thank you nordmann for again an excellent desription of what is going on. I love your inimitable "style".

I especially was seduced by your:
"(presumably also equipped with pitchforks as tradition also demands)"

I saw before me some pictures from a Belgian cartoon album on an island (Amoras) about a struggle between the rich (the fat ones) and the poor (the meager ones) and those "meager ones" revolt complete with pitchforks and all...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_and_Suzy

nordmann, I didn't found the picture from the album on google, but only this one to picture your saying...



Kind regards, Paul.

Paul, given your previous comment about the "greens" I am tempted to paraphrase one of the better moral instructions recorded by the New Testament authors, borrowed (inevitably as with most of the better ones) from Stoic philosophy but no less true for all that:

Thou hypocrite, first cast the pitchfork out of thine own hand ...

nordmann wrote:

Paul, given your previous comment about the "greens" I am tempted to paraphrase one of the better moral instructions recorded by the New Testament authors, borrowed (inevitably as with most of the better ones) from Stoic philosophy but no less true for all that:

Thou hypocrite, first cast the pitchfork out of thine own hand ...

nordmann,

we learned in the Catholic college in Belgium during childhood:
"kijk niet naar de splinter in andermans oog, maar naar de balk in uw eigen oog"
https://palestinaindemedia.blogspot.com/2009/01/omar-golan.html
It is normally said that way in Flemish Dutch and is a "normal" saying overhere...
Don't look at the splinter in someone other's eye, but at the beam in your own eye
But seemingly in Dutch it is not said the same way and it seems to come from Matheus 7: 3-5 
https://www.yssa.nl/nl/whatjesusdid/1177/mattheus-7-3-5.html

As in Belgium in a Catholic college we had no bibles as guide (only the priests and the nuns), I didn't knew it
But I saw it also in an entry about Lucas...do they plagiarize each other?
We have also: "wie zonder zonde is werpe de eerst steen" and now with my new knowledge of the bible I see:
https://biblia.com/bible/esv/john/8/7
7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, h“Let him who is without sin among you ibe the first to throw a stone at her.”

PS: nordmann!!! I always blindly trust you and what do I see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_7:5
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Or is your version perhaps from the Lucas source? After all I guess you too did't learn that much about the bible in your I guess Roman-Catholic school in I guess Ireland?

Kind regards, Paul.

That's a lot of off-the-point links, just there, Paul. Why didn't you use Google to look up "paraphrasing"? Could have saved you a lot of time (and pixels).

nordmann wrote:

That's a lot of off-the-point links, just there, Paul. Why didn't you use Google to look up "paraphrasing"? Could have saved you a lot of time (and pixels).

nordmann, sigh...I think I take it all too literal...is that an habitude of Nothern folks?...found with "paraprhasing" a link with "Aristotle". Is that a Stoic?
At the end I start to think that it is a "paraphrasing" à la nordmann...
Perhaps not "armed" for the "finesses" of the expressions of a person based in all those different fields of knowledge and at home in Ireland, Britain, Norway and whatever to add that I don't know...Greece, Bavaria? to call but some?
I need perhaps clear and unmistakable wordings? I think it is not my fault, but my parents' one...

Kind regards, Paul.

I have never associated nordmann with applied paraphrasing - tho on reflection, I suppose in those long posts his condensed style already is. If I    attempt to read them I first do a quick scan to  find any commas and to spot the main clause. I am far tou frail to get my mind round some of it. 

As    for the topic, to be honest I have rarely been interested in  people statues in situ apart from appreciating the added ambience to a view. The reasons for putting up one and by whom is often telling of its time, however. Memorials are so very different from expressive art forms. And memorials.....where did that begin? Single standing stones? Cairns?  That someone needs to attempt a permanent memorial to someone or a notion reflects what in humans?