Posted on 09/19/2016 11:07:43 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Eugene Delacroix's most famous painting, "Liberty Leading the People," hangs in a revered spot in Paris' Louvre Museum. Inspired by the 1830 Paris Uprising, it has been held up as an embodiment of the French national ethos, and most recently as a justification for the country's controversial burkini ban.
But "Liberty Leading the People" may also have been literally painted with people.
From at least the 16th century until as late as the early 1900s, a pigment made from mummified human remains appeared on the palettes of European artists, including Delacroix. Painters prized "mummy brown" for its rich, transparent shade. As a result, an unknown number of ancient Egyptians are spending their afterlife on art canvases, unwittingly admired in museum galleries around the world.
The use of mummy as a pigment most likely stemmed from an even more unusual use—as medicine. From the early medieval period, Europeans were ingesting and applying preparations of mummy to cure everything from epilepsy to stomach ailments. It's unclear whether Egyptian mummies were prized for the mistaken belief that they contained bitumen (the Arabic word for the sticky organic substance, which was also believed to have medicinal value, is mumiya), or whether Europeans believed that the preserved remains contained otherworldly powers.
What is clear to researchers is that early artist pigments were derived from medicines at the time, and were commonly sold alongside them in European apothecaries. And just as mummy was waning in popularity as a medical treatment, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt at the end of the 18th century unleashed a new wave of Egyptomania across the Continent.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
soylent green is people. It’s people!
Alizarin yellow. Titanium white. Soylent green.
A gal with no bra and a dead guy on the ground with no pants or underwear..........that’s weird.
I knew Burnt Sienna was made from cremated Siennans!
I always figured mummies were used in Cairo practice
Mummies were also used as locomotive fuel in treeless areas.
And two guys staring at her boobs while she shouts “You pigs! Watch for the enemy, not me!!”
Make that three guys admiring her rack.
And the guy has on only one sock!
Blown out of his pantaloons? That is weird.
“Hey, the flag is up here you pigs.”
wiki: “Paris, 1789. Henri Weiner was enjoying a sponge bath from a buxom mademoiselle and became a little frisky, ripping her bodice. All hell broke loose and the rest is history.”
Whether it’s the flag or her breasts, they’ll follow her anywhere!
They got caught?
Non, mon ami, c'est tres Francais (No, my friend, it's very French...)
the infowarrior
Not quite:
It was a joke from The Innocents Abroad (1869) by Mark Twain:
"The fuel [Egyptian railroaders] use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and … sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, 'D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent — pass out a King!'" Lest anyone fail to realize it's a joke, Twain then adds, "Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe anything."
Deplorable.
Needs to shave her pits... ;)
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