*(John Ruskin’s joke.)
I found this ivory image of St. Paul, with its extraordinary elongated nose and crudely-rendered classical columns and mouldings in the background (the scallop shell is nicely made, but why the hole?). It’s supposed to be 6th or 7th Century Byzantine — hence the crummy rendition of the streets of Rome, presumably — and it’s kept at Cluny in the Musée national du Moyen Âge.
Except for the beard the face reminds me of Pete Townshend, but really the nose is so long he doesn’t look human at all.
More like a lion, perhaps the cowardly lion of the Wizard of Oz . But that lion has a very short nose:
The lion in Cluny… sorry, I mean the image of St. Paul in Cluny, looks more like a real lion:
Perhaps this is the answer: the face just needs foreshortening, as I can do here using Photoshop…
That looks more human, though the Spock ears are still taking off. I bet that’s it. Who knows if it was elongated by accident or deliberately? It seems like material for a Ph.D. thesis: Spatial Manipulation In VIth-Century Byzantine Ivory Artifacts, anyone?
If anyone nose of another explanation, I’d love to hear it.
A Bad Guide 
His ears are too high up for a human (if those are ears). And, apart from the big flat nose, there are some grooves on either [sic] side of it that suggest feline whiskers.
Thank you. So it’s not just me. I thought the same about the ears and then I forgot to write it. Note that grooves also occur on the real lion — I mean “on the lion”, I keep forgetting the other one’s supposed to be St. Paul.
“the scallop shell is nicely made, but why the hole?”: because it’s modelled on a particular shell that was worn as decoration by someone? The stonemason’s wife, perhaps?
Compare the faces on the Saint-Lupicin gospels in the BNF, perhaps from the same workshop. Even clearer on the other side, but this is the best picture I can find online.
Aren’t they two or three hundred years later? They do have similarly “drawn” noses, though. I think this one has an elongated head, as if it had been made by someone who was looking at it from a slanted viewpoint not perpendicular to the ivory. I think I’ll try (fore)shortening the image in Photoshop…
Are you, like, even in the rightballpark?
Maybe it’s not really of ivory, but clay that sagged in a half-heartedly heated kiln before hardening.
Another possibility: since even ivory flows over hundreds of millions of years, perhaps St. Paul was around before the dinosaurs. Or flourished during their age, and was just looking down his nose disdainfully at a velociraptor.
It’s astonishing how easy it is to think like a creationist. Some of them actually believe that man scuttled around between the feet of dinosaurs. All you have to do is ignore the evidence and let your fancy fly.
I’ve always known I could have made big dollars as an evangelical TV preacher. Now I have a second string to my retirement bow.
They aren’t very hairy. A tapir wearing a fake beard or just a tapir disguised as a lion?
What’s the first string? There’s not much money in atheism, you know. You have to be creative to be a creationist, you don’t just sit there and watch the money roll in; some of those guys (people?) are very talented (others, admittedly, less so).
You have to be creative to be a creationist, you don’t just sit there and watch the money roll in
You impugn my creativity, sirrah ? Never been taken in by my blarney ?
The head is curiously larger than the chest and shoulders, points out someone.
The adorable small pot belly, à la Buddha, implies the feedings were ample at the Pharisee House.
Aren’t they two or three hundred years later?
I think it says the book is 9th century, but the ivory is 6th.
Actually, besides the book, an iconographic attribute of St. Paul is a sword. In this case the sculptor put it on the face (LOL). Sometimes the long nose is on the sword:
http://www.flg.es/html/Obras_8/SanPablo_8413.htm
Seriously, it’s curious the text on the link that MMcM gave us: “Les artistes carolingiens se voient obligés de réutiliser des plaques plus anciennes”. It’s like the palimpsests !
I suppose ivory was hard to come by. I’m surprised that they can’t tell whether it’s from a walrus or an elephant.
I attend an American Episcopal Church that is fitted with stained glass windows made in England. One morning while gazing at the center window over the altar I realized that Christ Triumphant reminded me overwhelmingly of Pete Townsend, very long nose there too. Now I tend to look at his bare feet so as not to be distracted by that. I wonder if Pete Townsend realizes his powerful resemblance to a New Testament church father.
Tom, I thought the same.
>Grumbly Stu
“…perhaps St. Paul was around before the dinosaurs.”
According to tradition*, Paul fell off his horse so it might be an Eohippus.
*Actually, the Acts don’t say everything about that. I’ve just known it.
Nimble, I don’t suppose you’ve got any pictures? The only explanation I can think of is that Townshend has a nose that looks like a child’s drawing (or a tapir); one where a line gets drawn down both sides and underneath.
Another thing that bothers me is why is he wearing a sponge on his head?
And why is he holding a canasta board in his left hand ? Maybe not canasta, but there’s some card game I saw in the States as a kid in which a narrow board with holes was used to keep score. There were wooden pins (of different colors ?) inserted in the holes to keep score. They were moved when the score changed.
The pins were moved, not the holes.
Cribbage?
That’s it, thanks dearie.
Moving the goalposts?
perhaps from the same workshop
It reminds me of the famous works of Βαλδιζνηστύδιος.
I’m sure this is a perspective play avant la lettre. These ivory covers for wax writing tablets were usually laying horizontally on the table, and in this visual shortening their elongated motifs appeared just normal, and even had a 3D impression.
I don’t remember much about cribbage. “And one for his nob” is about all.
Studiolum, I’m sure too. They were trying for 3D with his ears, I think. And foreshortening would account for the elongation in the Greek cross on the back of the tablet.
I remember my grandparents’ generation saying “one for his nob” and other peculiar stuff in connection with cribbage. It sounds more fun than it could possibly be; is it a betting game?
I like how the upper side of the figure looks static, but the lower side has some movement: it seems to be walking.
Is a tricky Vulcanian-Lion named Paul
That sounds almost like the first line of a limerick.
I hadn’t thought of it, but of course you’re right. It gives him an absent-minded demeanor, as if he’s trying to remember where he parked the car.
hahaha!
As always, you were reading LH too much: limericks everywhere. It’s a healthy thing to do, of course (reading Language Hat, composing limericks, I’m not sure)
Now we have to write four more verses, we already have the first one:
“A tricky Vulcanian lion named Paul”
(oh! I must work and instead of this I’ll be all afternoon searching for rimes)
A Vulcanian lion named Paul
Said “There’s elephant poo in the hall”
…
Next?
“Now my book,
Look so foul!”
…
(Is just a suggestion. English speakers are gracefully invited to change it: I reckon I can’t manage the meter nor the words. ¿Para qué lo intento, entonces? I’m feeling socially suicidal )
A curious writer named Julia
Flew over to visit Apulia.
“Its towns are baroque,
but some churches are mock-,
And they think it’s so easy to fool-a yer!”
(This only works using non-US pronunciation.)
A bird with the first name of Dearie
Was always relentlessly cheery.
Pictures of goats
And unlikely quotes
Issued from holes in his aerie.
There once was a wag name of Crown
Who hated the sight of a frown
So at whatever cost
In spite of the frost
He…
well, er, couldn’t quite fit in “goats”, there.
Oh well Artur, I’ve spent the past two extremely cold (32 degrees F.) nights pondering the monumental issue of whether your pond has yet frozen over; and, if so, whether, in venturing out upon it, one might possibly be able to feel the feet of water babies pressing up from below.
That’s a very nice thought. I’ll go down there and look for the water babies in their snowsuits. I wish it was 32F here.
:-D
Había en Noruega un inglés
que vivía en un mundo al revés
a sus cabras dejó
al calor del buró
y él al frío del lago se fue.
Yes! Limericks in Spanish! I’m going to learn to recite it aloud so I can do so in public — possibly in the checkout line at the supermarket, I haven’t decided.
Muy bonito su limerick, Julia!
Gracias, marie-lucie, no sé si se merece tanto halago…
Let’s see now one in French!
Yes AJP I’d like to hear you speaking Spanish, do practice, please.
The supermarket could be a good place, though perhaps the memorable event deserves a more solemn place. Do you have to go to the City Hall in the coming days?
I was going to start at the supermarket – I like listening to people’s conversations there – and maybe work my way up if things went well. There aren’t very many Spanish speakers here; but I could try reciting it to my daughter’s Spanish class, I’m sure she’d love that. It’s hard to crash the Nobel award; when the gave it to Obama, last year, they welded all the city’s manhole covers closed. I don’t know if they ever got them unstuck.
Yeah, sure she’d love that!
What teen-age girl would not be thrilled to have his father at her class?
And if he manages to make a fool of himself, even better.
I know you’ll be making her dream come true!
No it’s okay, I always lighten things up by wearing funny bright clothes and singing.
Perfect, I’m glad you mentioned, because I had forgotten to recommend you that.
Also remember this: talking to her friends, like you were old pals and one of them, is another winning move.
That would work. They love my jokes, but sometimes they forget and I have to tell them twice.
¡¡JAJAJAJAJA!!
Translation: hahahahaha (not in capital letters, you know, English is less expansive than Spanish)
Uf, I have a bunch of exams to mark (to grade?) but your line made my day :-)
Au revoir!
Do you suppose there is a Nobel for speaking Spanish in the supermarket?
In this country, at this time of year, the supermarkets are so overcrowded with the glut of holiday shoppers that in the maelstrom, one may as well be speaking Spanish, Icelandic or Chinese for all the difference it makes. Pure pandemonium. So if you’d like to hop on over for an hour or two, you would be able to practise your supermarket Spanish with no fear of embarrassment. No one around you would be making sense, either.
The limericks are great fun.
Once having conquered Spanish, should you be interested in branching out into Portuguese limerick (?), Artur, you might be interested in this informative poetry lesson.
Well, it’s not the Portuguese original — in fact, I think there may not even BE a Portuguese original — but still.
Julia: You’re now published in Norwegian:
En engelskmann bosatt i Asker
blant adel og steinrike slasker
lar dyra på farmen
stå inne i varmen
mens han sjøl går på isen og basker.
Oh, Trond, that’s fantastic!! :-D
This should go directly to my CV.
Why, Tom, go to the States when Crown and his crowd could come to Buenos Aires? Tourism is something relatively new here, so we all like alien visitors (we’ll treat you better than in Spain)
I should explain that tomorrow in the USA is Thanksgiving, turkey day, one of their biggest eating events.
Tom, why do you say there mightn’t be a Portuguese original?
I recommend Tom’s link to everyone.
Trond, thank you. I’ll take that with me to Oslo City Hall, though I had to ask my family what slasker are (I simply don’t meet such people).
I’ll bet the weather is better than Spain at this time of year too.
Sure, no doubt is better now. October and November are the best months to come here.
Second “sure”, Tom’s posts are always a must.
Humm! Now (24:00), 14 º C in Badajoz (Spain).
Once, in school, while waiting for the science teacher to show up for class, an artistically gifted and irreverent classmate of mine did a hastily executed chalk drawing on the blackboard. It showed Jesus on the cross, viewed from beneath, his feet much bigger than his head. Below the drawing he wrote “Oh Lord, why have you foreshortened me?”
“’Oh Lord, why have you foreshortened me?’”
A brilliant encapsulation of one of the Myriad Mysterious Ways in which His Wonders Are Worked.
I can’t recall Charlotte Corday’s last words, but she may have been making a joke (and what a good one that would have been); in any event her decapitated head was said to have been smiling madly from the bucket.
“Tom, why do you say there mightn’t be a Portuguese original?”
Artur, thank you for enquiring.
(You are credited by the brains of the organization here with being that rare entity in the cybersphere, somebody who is capable of “reading tone”.)
In response to your enquiry, I shall before long be offering evidence of the Bocage Method put into practise, if you will, and if the gods be willing.
(At least puttering about foolishly with that will represent a suitably innocuous activity on a no-harm no-fowl fast day, for me.)
Coldest night in many a year, here, by the way. But I will not insult the Vikings, Lapps et al. in the crowd by citing the temperatures, merely a few icicles below freezing.
The cats, however, are insulted by the cold, regardless of their fur. They take it personally.
The cats, however, are insulted
Give them an a.
You are credited by the brains of the organization here with being that rare entity in the cybersphere,somebody who is capable of “reading tone”.
That’s certainly made my day. I can’t remember the last time anyone said anything half so insightful… well, half so flattering, anyway. I think I’ll paint it in Baskerville continuously around the top of the living room walls.
At least puttering about foolishly with that will represent a suitably innocuous activity on a no-harm no-fowl fast day, for me.
Good for you. (Literally.) But I do hope you’re warm.
Jesùs: Humm! Now (24:00), 14 º C in Badajoz (Spain).
That’s a lot warmer than I thought. (It’s 25C degrees cooler here.)
>A. J. P. Crown
So, today the weather has changed: 14 º C now (19:40) but it isn’t normal; there is a deep depression.
Hot!
29º here al 4 PM a bit much, I know. But, did I mentioned the jacarandas? I love Buenos Aires in this time of year…
By the way, Crown, we may have dancing and photographer dogs, but you have dancing goats! Who can beat that?
I love empty’s story. And Tom has always the mote just for make you feel good!
Now, back to my exams (they never end!).
al = at
Julia, you should now be prepared to grade exams in upside-down Baskerville typography.
Trond, speaking of letters, A is of course the grade the cats award themselves continuously, in any case, insulted or no.
Yes, Artur, a slim feast. The no harm to fowl practise is real, though evidently unpatriotic.
At any rate, thank you for your generous interest in the (unsolicited!) Poetry Lesson, and to send along in return this humble bit of Copper (Poem Composed After the Manner Prescribed by Bocage).