M.J. Rose

When Da Vinci’s sketches are brought to life, magic happens…The music is like a time machine, or a ghost…

 

 

Leonardo Da Vinci’s wacky piano is heard for the first time, after 500 years

 

 Take a bow: The viola organista’s strings are played in the same way as a cello. Photo: Tomasz Wiech/AFP

 

“A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up Leonardo da Vinci.

 

Da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance genius who painted the Mona Lisa, invented the ‘‘viola organista’’ – which looks like a baby grand piano – but never built it, experts say.

 

The viola organista has now come to life, thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making and the patience and passion to interpret da Vinci’s plans.

 

Full of steel strings and spinning wheels, Slawomir Zubrzycki’s creation is a musical and mechanical work of art.

 

‘‘This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba,’’ Zubrzycki said as he debuted the instrument at the Academy of Music in the southern Polish city of Krakow…”

 

Read full article here. Listen to the beautiful sounds, below…

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True romance…

 

Pyramid Age love story comes to life in Egyptian tomb’s vivid color

by Owen Jarus LiveScience

 

Photo by Ms. Effy Alexakis, (c) Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research Center

 

“Inside a tomb dating back to the age of the Pyramids in Egypt was this image, an embrace between a priestess and her husband, a singer in the pharaoh’s palace. The image has been recorded by researchers in full color.

 

She was a priestess named Meretites, and he was a singer named Kahai, who performed at the pharaoh’s palace. They lived about 4,400 years ago in an age when pyramids were being built in Egypt, and their love is reflected in a highly unusual scene in their tomb — an image that has now been published in all its surviving color.

 

The tomb at Saqqara — which held this couple, their children and possibly their grandchildren — has now been studied and described by researchers at Macquarie University’s Australian Center for Egyptology. Among the scenes depicted is a relief painting showing the couple gazing into each other’s eyes, with Meretites placing her right hand over Kahai’s right shoulder…”

 

Read the rest, here. See Photos of the Pyramid Age Tomb & Artwork here.

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We were out for a week, but now we’re back. We missed you.

 

Now, please enjoy some genuine old portraits, and then some newfangled alterations of old portraits.

 

Old portraits of children with creepy ‘ghostmothers’ in the background show how far mums would go for a good photo

 

By Daily Mail Reporter

 

 

“In the early days of photography, many well-off families jumped at the chance to have their precious children’s likeness captured for eternity.

 

The one trick that they had to deal with next, after finding photographers willing to set up the bulky equipment and travelling to the portrait location, was getting the little babies to sit still for the entirety of the session.

 

As a result, many photographers enlisted the help of the children’s mothers, with often creepy outcomes…”

 

Read more here.

 

 

And now these lovely wonders…

 

 

History Meets the Strangest Animated GIFs

 

by An Xiao

 

Decoy Howizter [Remastered] (all images via fluxmachine.tumblr.com)

 

“OAKLAND, Calif. — In an era of ubiquitous photography and advanced editing, it’s fun to look back on old images and bring new techniques to play with them. There’s the popular topic of colorizing historical images, which has been making the rounds lately. And the NYPL made waves when they turned old stereographs into animated GIFs that are surprisingly effective at showing their 3D quality. And meme land has given us the history photobomb.But what about completely deconstructing historic images all together? I recently encountered the wacky and amazing animated GIFs of Kevin Weird…”

 

The rest here.

 

 

 

 

 

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