Hats off to first selfie
QUESTION What was the first self-portrait of note?
A CARVED self-portrait on a stone stele, or slab, by Bak, sculptor to the pharaoh Akhenaten in Ancient egypt, is thought to be the earliest surviving self-portrait. It dates to 1345 Bc and depicts Bak with his wife Taheret.
Self-portraits in the ancient world were unusual. In egypt, detailed portraits were reserved for the gods and pharaohs. Labourers, merchants and farmers were depicted by generic representations of their professions. In carving his own image, Bak was demonstrating his elevated status as court artist.
Plutarch’s Life Of Pericles contains a written description of a self-portrait and shows just how dangerous such self-aggrandisement could be.
It says: ‘But the reputation of his works nevertheless brought a burden of jealous hatred upon Phidias, and especially the fact that when he wrought the battle of the Amazons on the shield of the goddess, he carved out a figure that suggested himself as a bald old man lifting on high a stone with both hands, and also inserted a very fine likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon.
‘Phidias, accordingly, was led away to prison, and died there of sickness; but some say of poison which the enemies of Pericles provided that they might bring calumny upon him.’
Jan van eyck’s 1433 Portrait Of A Man In A red Turban in the National Gallery is thought to be the first Western self-portrait after antiquity.
van eyck was a pioneering 15th-century early renaissance oil painter who lived in Bruges. There is debate over whether the subject of the portrait is the artist as there is no inscription. However, there is a faux engraving on the frame that points to a personal connection.
The words ‘Als Ich Kan’ painted in Greek letters at the top of the frame translate to van eyck’s signature phrase ‘As I can’, but may also be a play on words suggesting: ‘As only eyck can’.
The first definitive self-portrait in Western art was Self-Portrait At Twenty-eight
by German artist Albrecht durer. In 1494, while travelling in Italy he was amazed at the high status given to artists. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: ‘How I shall freeze after this sun! Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite.’
In 1500, he revealed his self-portrait that broke the boundaries of contemporary art. The most confronting element is the way in which durer positions himself. Front facing and engaging the viewer with his gaze, he is presented in a format reserved for images of Jesus christ.
The first ‘selfie’ or photographic selfportrait was taken in 1839 by robert cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast in Philadelphia.
Deborah Penman, Hay-on-Wye, Powys.
QUESTION What’s a Chandler wobble?
THE chandler wobble is named after Seth carlo chandler Jr, an American businessman and astronomer who discovered it in 1891.
It is the most prominent of several wobbling motions exhibited by the earth as it rotates on its axis.
The chandler wobble is a repeating 433-day lurch, in which the poles wander 30ft from their axis before settling. The wobble causes their latitude position to change over this 14-month period.
This means star charts must be updated regularly to reflect new reference points for the geographic poles.
It has puzzled scientists for more than a century because it was calculated that a wobble with such a short duration would peter out in 68 years unless some force kept prodding it along.
various theories have been put forward, such as atmospheric phenomena, continental water storage (changes in snow cover, river run-off and lake levels), interaction at the boundary of the earth’s core and its surrounding mantle, and earthquakes.
Geophysicist richard Gross of Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory solved the mystery in 2000.
He concluded that the principal driver of the chandler wobble was fluctuating pressure on the bottom of the ocean, caused by temperature and salinity changes and wind-driven changes in circulation. He determined this by applying numerical models of the oceans, which only became available with the formation of the International earth rotation Service in 1988.
Paul Southam, Leeds.
QUESTION What’s the origin of the expression cloud cuckoo land?
CLOUD cuckoo land entered the language in 1824 not as an expression, but as the word ‘cuckoocloudland’.
The idiom — used to describe someone in an unrealistic, ideal state of mind (‘If you expect immediate success, you are living in cloud cuckoo land’) — was translated by author Henry F. cary from an Ancient Greek compound coined by the comic dramatist Aristophanes.
Surviving works of the playwright born in Athens in 450 Bc include the whimsical and extravagant play The Birds. A man called Pisthetaerus persuades the world’s birds to create a city in the sky and gain control over communications between men and gods.
In the original transcript, the city was called Nephelokokkugia, from the Greek nephele meaning cloud and kokkux meaning cuckoo.
In cary’s 1924 translation, when one character wants to give their new home a grand name to do with birds and clouds, Pisthetaerus suggests: ‘cuckoocloudland, will that do?’ A more correct translation would be cuckoocloudcity.
It was altered to cloud cuckoo land when an unknown Oxford graduate published another translation of The Birds in 1830. Aristophanes’s play was acclaimed as a perfectly realised fantasy.
By the latter half of the century, cloud cuckoo land began to be used for a place of wildly fanciful dreams or unrealistic expectations.
Emilie McRae, Trowbridge, Wilts.