Wesołych Świąt - Merry Christmas & Feliz Navidad

Salve Friends,
Wesołych Świąt - Merry Christmas & Feliz Navidad - all the best to you and tour loved ones, especially health, joy and some delicious home cooking as we celebrate this most important Christian and family holiday!
Some of my favourite and most beautiful paintings showing the Nativity.
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Happy Holidays :) - best Persian, late Antiquity, costumes one can image in this Three Wise Men aka Magi mosaic  :)

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Sketches in pen

Salve,
 preparations for the feasting of Christmas are in full swing.  For example we have finished baking a pork roast, out of organic pork loin.
There were 4 separate chunks of a pound each, so I had to put them 'together' so to speak with a twine, but first for 24 hours we soaked them in  brine out of olive oil, honey, apple vinegar, garlic, salt and some herbs like sage and basil. Then it was  baked for 1 hour 40 minutes and voila - thanks to my friend Valdi, the master sausage maker, for all the advice.
My wife also finished making the Old Poland ginger bread cake aka piernik staropolski. Instead of regular flour she used almond meal, buckwheat flour and ground flax seed.

The sketches, first two drawn in a regular BIC ballpen, the last one with a Pentel Tradio pen - all 'cartoon-ised' with GIMP

Enjoy

Christmas is coming and so are the Parthians - :)

Salve,
a couple more days and the great holiday will begin, with us Poles around the world, some 50 million souls :) and hopefully growing, it begins with Wigilia or Christmas' Eve.
When I think about Christmas in historical sense, apart from the Jesus and His family, king Herod and recounting the story of Flight into Egypt etc,  I always think about the Parthians  too.

(note the bridle and curb-bit on the donkey in this beautiful painting by Carpaccio)
Why you may rightfully ask. Well, usually because they sat there beyound the Euphrates Rives across from the border of Roman East, looming large in the trade (spices, incense, slaves, silk and horses) and cultural exchange of the region. Ever since Herod broke off his relationship with the Parthians, executing Hyrcanus, the last Hasmonean, while preserving his throne and gaining a modicum of grace with Octavian Augustus,   Parthian kings could have their armies visit this particular Friend of Romans, and bring chaos to Herod's petty 'kingdom'.

Instead The Magi (Three Wise Men of the East) came to visit newly born Jesus in his temporary adobe in Bethlehem, and later mercenary Parthians and Arabians of the army of king Herod hunted after the Holy family and killed infant boys in an even known in the Gospels as the Massacre of the Innocents.

So I decided to sketch a new Parthian for my collection of Parthians :) -
first I started reworking my older sketch

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Then sketched a generic rider and his mount

From this I will move forward time permitting

Stirrup and medieval spur from National Museum in Wrocław

Salve,
in October I said I will publish some of the photos of my trip to Poland.
Today I would like to share some of my photos from Wrocław, the capital of Lower Silesia.  Unfortunately my photos of the Silesian Piast stone sculpted funerary monuments displayed at the National Museum are disappointing.

First, the photo of a stirrup and a spur,  they come  form the National Museum in Wrocław, and according to the description the stirrup comes from the vicinity of the city, and is dated to late XV century.

The spur is also dated to XV century.

The figure of an unknown saint as a knight, wooden painted sculpture from XV century, also at the Museum.

Piast  late X- early XI century spear points found on Ostrów Tumski, also at the Museum.

Some views of the medieval Saint John the Baptist Cathedral at Ostrów Tumski, destroyed during World War II and painstakingly rebuilt by Polish people during the post-1945 era.

with the detail of the main portal, a stone sculpted full body portrait of Bohemian King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in an interesting armour.  This monarch was one of the greatest knights of the Late Middle Ages. In this portrayal his shield is naturally adorned with the Bohemian Lion. Nota bene Charles IV brought Wrocław and most of Lower Silesia under his rule, adding Piast Silesia to the Crown of Bohemia.

In the wall of the south tower of the Cathedral there is a stone sculpture - head of a man - integrated into otherwise brick wall structure of the tower. There are various legends about this head, perhaps to be told some other time.

Enjoy :)
Happy Holidays
ps
my own photos worked over with GIMP and several images from Wikimedia Commons  - the Cathedral page

Curb bit form the Louvre

Salve,
  I visited the Louvre Museum last spring and amongst the thousands upon thousands of art objects displayed there (imagine the many more thousands they have in their storage), I photographed this curb-bit, in Morisco fashion, from northern India, as far as I can recall, located in the section of the Museum dedicated to the Asian arts. Perhaps someone saw it there and could add some more info about this artefact.
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ps
pardonez moi the quality of the photos, poor light inside and prohibition on the usage of  flash.

Nomad sketch and some articles from Academia.edu

Salve,
I did a ball pen sketch of a nomad, generic ancient Scythian/Saka perhaps, last weekend.
I took a quick photo of this sketch with my Canon Power Shot  and then it occurred to me to work it over with GIMP
Hence the results:

The new articles I do recommend from academia.edu
Florin Curta, The image and archaeology of the Pechengs
Mario Fales, Everyday Life and Food Practices in Assyrian Military Encampments
Michel Kazanski, Les Alains et les Sarmates en Occident romain a l'epoque des Grandes Migrations: Donnes archeollgiques.
Petr Žákovský, Dussacks with broad blades and a probable method of their manufacturing
...

Louis Edward Nolan - the training of cavalry remount

Salve,
archive.org is one great repository of books, articles, audio, video etc. Searching amongst the books on cavalry and horsemanship, I came across a British cavalry officer's book on training cavalry remounts.

The author is none other but captain Louis Edward Nolan of King's Hussars, student of Baucher and the hero of the Crimean War, and the book can be had here. (1861 edition).

Nota bene what a great century XIX century must have been :)

I collected the plates, which are quite interesting to say at least, in the following order below:

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ps
Last week my dear friend and compatriot  Dariusz Śliwkiewicz died suddenly - pacem aeternam!

Winged hussar circa 1770 - Osprey 1

Salve,
 two days ago I blogged about a reconstruction of a late winged hussar towarzysz by Osprey's team of authors - Mr. Vincent W. Rospond,writer,  and  painter Raffaele Ruggeri.

Today, again I am looking at the Osprey's winged hussar towarzysz and  I am showing my quick sketch - attempt to add some elements in that Osprey illustration to show how such late winged hussar could have appeared - it is rather conjectural,as period iconography is rather limited, or I should say it is limited to me. For now he is missing a bullet box and his sword.

 By the way his lance was called 'proporzec' and was longer than the 'pancerni'or 'light cavalry' (uhlans, pułki straży przedniej etc) 'dzida' or lance.

But I am not sure how long it was, but you can see some of its size in Bellotto's painting.
I took off his gloves as I do not know any period painting showing national cavalry wearing gloves during this period.

Nota bene another Polish military costume researcher Karol Linder (his book is titled 'Dawne wojsko Polskie') did reconstruct some period cavalry men wearing gloves (1950s ).
Additionally, according to the uniformed reforms introduced by the grand Crown Hetman Branicki of XI 1763, winged hussars were supposed to wear armour .
It is wonderful that Bellotto painted a proporzec-carrying towarzysz unit of Crown  winged hussars, even if the horsemen are this small :)

    Perhaps I should try to reconstruct a retainer, those soldiers carried no proporzec lance but fire arms and had a special uniform and headgear, and several musicians - a trumpeter and drummer, as drummers were particularly important in the late winged hussar  'chorągiew' (banners/companies).
Until the next time