» Listings for February 2019

1. Head of the Omphalos Apollo, National Archaeological Museum of Naples

   Posted on 12:00pm Monday 25th Feb 2019

   I photographed this beautiful head at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples - which I very highly recommend. Top tip: go early, go often. Due to staff shortages, some rooms may be closed at any given time. I visited 3 times in one week and never did get to see one room of the garden frescoes from Pompeii, though if I were more of a morning person, I might have succeeded. The earlier you go, the better your chances. But even if you can't see everything, it is a phenomenal museum which is worth as many visits as you can give it. 
   This head of the Omphalos Apollo came from Baia, a Roman seaside resort on the north side of the Gulf of Naples, and is a Roman copy of a Greek original dating to about 470 BCE. The original Omphalos Apollo may have been mis-named; it was associated with an ‘omphalos stone’ base which was found nearby, but is not now considered to have belonged to the statue. 
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos

   

2. Welcome to the Historiana Blog!

   Posted on 12:00pm Monday 25th Feb 2019

   

   I've been posting interesting images and snippets to Instagram for some time; it's a format that works well for concise content. I post the same content on my Facebook feed, although I also intend to share some more personal material on Facebook as I go along, telling more of the story of how I research & create my pieces, and sharing news about markets and outlets. If you'd like to follow Historiana on either of those platforms, please click on the icons on the site footer. I also share the posts in truncated form on Twitter (likewise, access via the icon).
   However - I realise that not everyone wants to mess with social media, and they are necessarily quite brief posts. So, I'm going to be replicating some of that content here on my blog, generally in longer form and with more images - feel free to follow me for some colourful, intriguing content! I spend a lot of my time digging around in interesting corners of the internet, reading, visiting museums, and generally following my own magpie tendencies - that's how Historiana came about in the first place - and many of the gems I find are shared here. Paintings and prints, scientific nuggets, natural history, museum highlights, people from history, quirky illustrations, photographs, and plenty more - variety is definitely the spice of life, in Historiana's view. I'd also be delighted to read your comments, so if you have any queries or observations, please do add them. If you prefer to contact me directly, please use the contact page. 

   Best wishes,

   Helen Historiana.

   p.s. The image I use as my avatar is from a reproduction of a Minoan fresco depicting saffron gatherers, from the ‘Xeste 3’ house at Akrotiri, on the island of Santorini, dating to about 1600 BCE. I do love the Minoans.