Love Actually at 20: Are we still in love with the controversial Christmas classic?

Star-studded festive rom-com Love Actually is 20 years old, but it's a film that some love to hate.

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Love Actually at 20: Are we still in love with the controversial Christmas classic?

Star-studded festive rom-com Love Actually is 20 years old, but it's a film that some love to hate.

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Ellie Middleton: 'Learning the way my brain works has changed everything for me'

Author Ellie Middleton on her late ADHD and autism diagnoses.

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Ellie Middleton: 'Learning the way my brain works has changed everything for me'

Author Ellie Middleton on her late ADHD and autism diagnoses.

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Praetorian’s military diploma gets dedicated exhibition

A unique 4th century Roman military diploma of a Praetorian Guard will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the Maremma Archaeological and Art Museum in Grosseto, Tuscany.

The diploma was discovered in 1958 near the town of Poggio Rotigli outside Grosseto. The two bronze tablets were brought to the surface during ploughing work. Despite their encounter with heavy machinery, the tablets were in excellent condition, and all four sides of them were inscribed with the inscriptions fully legible. They were immediately recognized as a highly significant epigraphic record of a member of the Praetorian Guard who was likely from the Maremma region of Italy.

Roman soldiers were issued diplomas at the end of 25 years of military service as attestations of their legal discharge from the army and the rights conferred to them, namely Roman citizenship, the right to marry, the legitimization of any children they may have fathered before being legally married, and the conferring of citizenship on said children.

The Poggio Rotigli military diploma belonged to one Valerius Clemens, described in the inscription as an Italian national who was discharged from the Ninth Praetorian Cohort on January 7th, 306 A.D. The early 4th century date makes this the most recent Roman military diploma known.

It consists of two rectangular tablets, one larger and thicker than the other, with two holes pierced through the center. The tablets were originally tied together with a cord passed through the holes and then sealed with a lead or tin seal. This sealing system kept the interior inscriptions of the tablets private and prevented them from being fraudulently duplicated without breaking the seal.

The long inscription includes the names and many, many titles of emperors Flavius ​​Valerius Constantius (Constantius Chlorus, r. 305-306, father of Constantine the Graet) and Galerius Valerius Maximianus (Galerius, r. 305-311), their predecessors Diocletian (r. 284-305) and Maximian (r. 286-305) and the Caesars Flavius ​​Severus (Caesar from 305-306) and Maximinus Daza (Caesar from 305-310).

The new museum exhibition will be an immersive experience for visitors.

The diploma, which at the end of the exhibition will be permanently included in the collection of our museum, will be visible until January 21, 2024 in an evocative setup where, thanks to the videomapping technique, some significant passages of the text will be projected onto the walls of the immersive room while a narrator will tell the story and life of the praetorian Valerius Clement.

Finally, in the multimedia room, it will be possible to listen to a video interview with the direct testimony of those who, back in 1958, made the discovery of the precious document.

* This article was originally published here

Strictly Come Dancing 2023: Winner of glitterball trophy announced

Bobby Brazier, Layton Williams and Ellie Leach all fought to land the glitterball trophy.

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Strictly Come Dancing 2023: Winner of glitterball trophy announced

Bobby Brazier, Layton Williams and Ellie Leach all fought to land the glitterball trophy.

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Eurovision 2024: Pop star Olly Alexander to represent the UK

The pop star will sing in Sweden next May, after a disappointing result for Mae Muller this year.

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Eurovision 2024: Pop star Olly Alexander to represent the UK

The pop star will sing in Sweden next May, after a disappointing result for Mae Muller this year.

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Smallest Rembrandt portraits rediscovered

A pair of portraits that are the smallest Rembrandt ever painted have come back to light after falling into obscurity in a private collection for 200 years. Before they were sold at auction this summer, Rijksmuseum experts were engaged to research the works and the subjects. Their exhaustive investigation confirmed the attribution to Rembrandt and the identities of the sitters. The portraits went on display at the Rijksmuseum on Wednesday.

The subjects are Jan Willemsz van der Pluym, a wealthy slater and plumber in Leiden, and his wife Jaapgen Caerlsdr. They were 69 and 70 years old respectively in 1635 when the 29-year-old Rembrandt painted them. He was the top portraitist in Amsterdam at that time. Wealthy burghers paid huge sums to be immortalized by the most sought-after artist in the city. The wedding portraits of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, now co-owned by France and the Netherlands, were the only life-sized, full-length portraits Rembrandt ever painted. The 19.9cm-by-16.5cm oval portraits of Jan and Jaapgen are the smallest portraits he ever painted.

Experts believe he may have painted them as a favor because Jan and Jaapgen were family friends and relatives by marriage. They were visiting Amsterdam for a baptism at that time and Jonathan Bikker, the Rijksmuseum’s curator of 17th-century Dutch painting, believes he may have asked Rembrandt to scare up a couple of portraits right quick which he would then make large copies of later.

The van der Pluyms had a close bond with Rembrandt’s family, which began in 1624 when Jan and Jaapgen’s son Dominicus wed Rembrandt’s cousin Cornelia Cornelisdr van Suytbroek. Suspicions that the portraits were by Rembrandt’s hand were confirmed after extensive technical research conducted by the Rijksmuseum using X-radiography, infrared photography, infrared reflectography, macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF), stereomicroscopy and paint sample analysis. When taken together the various research results amount to compelling evidence. First of all, the bold and vigorous style used to render these portraits corresponds with Rembrandt’s rapid execution of other portraits and tronies from 1634 onwards. Similarly, the manner in which changes were made during the painting process is also consistent with other paintings by the artist. These alterations are visible in both collars and Jaapgen’s cap. Examination with a stereomicroscope revealed that the portraits were built up in a similar manner to other portraits painted by Rembrandt in this period. Moreover, the pigments match those frequently used by Rembrandt, including lead white, lead-tin yellow, bone- or ivory black, various earth pigments, vermilion and red lake. The same brown, iron-containing paint was used for both inscriptions, along with the signature and date on the portrait of Jan. The portraits also bear striking similarities regarding the buildup and composition of the paint compared to other portraits painted by Rembrandt in 1634 and 1635 – especially in the construction of the facial features and the loose brushwork.

The portraits remained in Jan and Jaapgen’s family until they were sold after the death of their great-great grandson Martenten Hove in 1760. They passed through a few titled hands after that, eventually being sold by James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon, at a Christie’s auction in 1824. The portraits entered a private UK collection after that sale and were unknown to scholars until a descendant decided to sell them.

They were sold in July in an auction at Christie’s in London for £11.2 million. The buyer was Henry Holterman, who then turned around and gave them to the Rijksmuseum on long-term loan. Holterman said:

The Rijksmuseum has the largest and most representative collection of Rembrandt paintings in the world. Given my close relationship with the museum and the fact that the team of experts has been conducting research into these portraits over a period of years, I feel that these works belong in the museum.

* This article was originally published here

Question of Sport stops production, BBC confirms

There had been just two series with current host Paddy McGuiness and captains Sam Quek and Ugo Monye.

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Question of Sport stops production, BBC confirms

There had been just two series with current host Paddy McGuiness and captains Sam Quek and Ugo Monye.

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Medieval lead curse tablet found in latrine

A lead curse tablet invoking Satan and two other devils has been discovered in a 15th century latrine Rostock on the north coast of Germany. This is the first curse tablet from the Middle Ages found in Germany.

Curses, known as defixiones in Latin, inscribed on lead were widespread in ancient Greece and Rome well into the Christian era. They invoked demonic or divine powers to destroy rival businesses, rival sports teams, rival in love, opponents in lawsuits, people who had done them a wide variety of wrongs. They were also love/sex spells, intended to compel a target’s love or passion, or compel a wrong to be righted.

The curse was scratched on a small sheet of soft lead, rolled or folded up with the text on the inside and placed in an area considered to be a gateway to the chthonic powers like a grave, a well or a temple, places where the targets could not find them and the gods of the underworld could. There are about 1,500 ancient curse tablets known on the archaeological record, with new ones cropping up regularly, sometimes by the dozens as certain locations were popular curse receptacles for centuries.

The era of the lead curse tablet came to an end in the early 7th century. While curses have been found from later eras, they were in different formats. Apparently the ancient tradition was still in practice in medieval Rostock at least once.

The tablet was discovered during an excavation preliminary to the expansion of Rostock’s town hall. At first it seemed like just a random rolled up piece of metal, but when it was unrolled the inscription “sathanas taleke belzebuk hinrik berith” was found inside. Written in Gothic minuscule script, the inscription is a list of names. Satan, Beelzebub and Berith (aka Baʿal Berith, a Canaanite deity which in the Rabbinic tradition is equated with Beelzebub) are the invoked devils. Taleke and Hinrik are the apparent targets of the curse. Was this perhaps a spurned lover sicking devils on a couple to break them up? That would certainly be in keeping with the ancient approach to curse tablets.

So is the location where the curse was stashed. A latrine is even closer to the underworld than a well, and there was no way the targets of the curse could happen upon it down in the depths of human waste collection.

* This article was originally published here