A Painting of Medieval Galley Combat

It might surprise you to learn that historians know very little about pre-cannon naval combat. One supposes that triremes, galleys, or longships tried to ram each other but otherwise came together and the crews fought. But how did they do that? Did they have some way of coming together without breaking all their oars, or did they just accept that battles meant breaking lots of oars? Were there special troops who stood in the bow and started the fighting, as certain Viking poems suggest?

Sadly, nobody bothered to write any of this down, so we are mostly reduced to guesswork.

Which brings to a fresco that resides in Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. It was painted by Spinello Aretino in 1407-1408. It depicts the naval battle of Punta San Salvatore, supposed to have been fought in 1177 between Venice and the emperor Frederick Barbarossa. There is no remotely contemporary evidence that this battle was ever fought, and the consensus seems to be that it was made up by some Venetian "historian." But for our purposes that is neither hear nor there, because what we are looking for is a depiction of galley combat in the age before artillery.

And here we have one. What does it show?

Well, for one thing we see that much of the fighting is done by soldiers who are clearly marked out from the oarsmen by their armor, shields and weapons. The soldiers include swordsmen and archers. The ships are depicted lying alongside each other, which may just have been to fit them into the painting, but anyway the are not shown meeting bow to bow. No ramming or fancy maneuvers, just coming together and fighting it out.

 It is not the best evidence, but given how little we have, it counts.

Asian Art at Christie's

Large (15 inches) floral scroll dish, 1403-1425 AD

Dragon Moon flask, 1736-1795 (20 inches tall)

Bronze dragon head finial, Han Dynasty or Six Dynasties Period, 206 BC to 589 AD

Figurine of a noblewoman, Han Dynasty, 12 inches tall

Ming Dynasty Horsemen

Striding dragon, gilt bronze, Tang Dynasty

Silvered bronze  mirror with a rabbit doing – well, what?

Pounding something with a mortar and pestle, apparently. A toad watches.

So this lovely being must be Chang'e, the moon goddess, and that must be the rabbit who was the great friend of Chang'e and mixed the elixir of immortality for her when she ascended to the Moon Palace.

The rather late story that Chang'e (an old goddess) ascended from earth to the Moon Palace, there to live forever but with only a rabbit and a toad for company, inspired many poets of the Tang and later periods. Here, via wikipedia, is an example:

Now that a candle-shadow stands on the screen of carven marble
And the River of Heaven slants and the morning stars are low,
Are you sorry for having stolen the potion that has set you
Over purple seas and blue skies, to brood through the long nights?

Gerard Trignac

French artist and printmaker born 1955. Above, The Defile of Fools.

The Archives

Waiting

The Temple of Doubt

Station Brobourg

The City of a Thousand Towers. More here.

A Classical Anglerfish

This small terracotta statue (12 cm long) depicts a deep sea anglerfish. Its provenance is obscure; it can only be traced back to about 2000, when it was listed in a private collection. The seller dates it to the 4th century BC, not sure on what basis. If so it most likely came from southern Italy, where they had a thing for the anglerfish motif, painting it onto pottery "fish plates" and so on.

The Gospels of John of Troppau

Wonderfully weird manuscript, completed around 1368.

Nineteenth-Century American Painting in the Met

John White Alexander, Repose, 1895. 

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1865

Jules Tavernier, Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California, 1878, Detail

John Vanderlyn, Self Portrait, 1800

Thomas Cole, The Titan's Goblet, 1833, and detail.

Charles Loring Elliott, portrait of photographer Mathew B. Brady, 1857

John Singer Sargent, Madame X, 1884.

Art of Ancient Persia at the Met

Cat rhyton, Parthian, 1st century BC

Plate with a hunting scene from the tale of Bahram Gur and Azadeh, Sasanian, ca. 5th century CE, and detail

Belt clasp, Parthian 1st to 2nd century AD

Sassanian sword and scabbard, 7th century AD, detail

Achaemenid plaque with "horned lion-griffons," 5th or 4th century BC.

Achaemenid gold vessel in the shape of a "fantastic leonine creature"

Parthian sculpture of a standing man, 2nd century AD

Detail of a plate showing a king hunting, Sassanian, 6th century AD