Technonormal?

An interesting article on the BBC website ranges far and wide, anchored on the concept of what makes sense for the pace of technological change, and what may actually be 'necessary' replacement rates for gadgets and tools. It's very thought provoking, I think.

If technological change feels like a blur now, what'll it be like in 20 years? Night lights, Vancouver. [James]

(Angela Saini's article includes thoughts on sewing machines, the creativity of making and repairing 'stuff' and the ownership of your technology. Unfortunately the dreadful picture selection was done in someone's smoko.)

Much of what the author's got to say makes a lot of sense, but one thing I'd like to have seen is what seems to me to be the benchmark requirement. Personally, I want tools that work, and stay working for a reasonable period of time, without fiddling or demands.

Using Macs, in the personal computing sphere, this has been our experience for getting on for a couple of decades now*. However I recognise that this slow change has been enabled by a remarkably aggressive development and replacement cycle that needs the 'early adapters' our author talks about. The iPad and iPhone and their developed versions may be crack-cocaine for tech-heads, but they are also useful tools and both Bev and I have found the i-tool we use worth having as a tool.

Missing the full command?

I'm happy to take things apart and see how they go; occasionally repairing them too, but I'm not kidding myself I'd ever be able to repair even a dial-telephone, nor am I in a society where me being able to repair one is necessary. On the other hand I'm not interested in the latest tool to impress others, but I appreciate that drive has accelerated technical solutions at affordable prices for many of us. Between the make-do-and menders and the tech-heads may be technonormal?

James - not iJames

*Bev and I both used 'tombstone' Macs for many years, Bev's mother having one before that even. In the late 1990s we had Duncan the iMac, joined by Penny the iBook in 1998 and 1999. Duncan was retired when we emigrated in 2004 and an unnamed flat screen iMac was bought in 2005, and an iBook in 2008 for an around the world trip to replace Penny which didn't have a CD burner etc. Adding to these this year are my iPhone and Bev's iPad 2, both of which have been invaluable and very flexible work and leisure tools. Penny still works, and only Duncan has died, in his case after we'd passed it on.

Rare Inspiration I

"When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied . "It's so seldom I have one."

— Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)

See: Rare Inspiration 1 and spot the difference.

James

Severe Weather Warning

When it rains here, it's a news item. Normally, it's because we need the water, but as per the previous post relating to the one-day floods here, sometimes it's because it's news to us. We keep an eye on the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) Weather Radar, but I'd never seen dark brown 'heavy' rain on it before:
This was preceded by a new noise we'd never seen before like someone chucking large ball bearings on our naturally noisy tin roof. It sounded like that because it was, essentially. Before the rain proper arrived we had the 'golf ball' hail.

Well, OK, it wasn't golf balls, but it was much bigger than I'd ever seen (no news to Bev) so in the interests of precise blogging and my obsessively non-fiction writing nature, here's a shot of a couple of the slightly melted hailstones with coins to measure against. The hail's about the size of a 5c piece (slightly smaller than a Euro 5c, or bigger than a TTC token!) For those in England, the 50c piece is the same size as the British 50p, the 5c about the size of the 5p.

Now awaiting the showers of fish. Blue Grenadier, please.

James

PS - Someone else got the golf ball hail. This photo from the Age.


PPS: And my friend Rob found this mention of showers of fish in the Northern Territory, here. Be careful what you joke about!

USB Wine

At last, no need to drive to drink. Finally those clever French people have found a way to make the internet truely useful - the USB Wine attachment. Cliquez ici just like it says!

Coming soon?

Rats.

60 Years of Lego Part 1

The plastic brick building system Lego was developed 60 years ago in Denmark in 1949. In the first of two parts about this remarkable toy, I was lucky enough to be able to interview Joseph, my local Lego expert, aged nine.

Taccola: What’s your favourite Lego set?
Joseph: The Dino Attack Helicopter.

The Dino Attack Helicopter.

T: How long have you had it?
J: Two or three years.

T: Why is it your favourite?
J: Because it’s big, and I like big sets, and it’s long so it’s easy to carry and it’s not delicate.

Indiana Jones Flying Wing

T: What’s your favourite single piece?
J: The wing from the Indiana Jones Lego Set ‘Fight on the Flying wing’. It’s the biggest piece. I bought this one with my own money.

T: Why is Lego good stuff?
J: Because you build it, and then you can play with it and the characters, or you can break it and build it again.

T: How many Lego sets do you have?
J: Around 30.

T: How old were you when you got your first Lego set, and what was it? J: About six – it was an old style set called ‘Wookie Attack’. I’m nine now.

T: What’s the smallest piece you’ve got?
J: Probably the single round flat piece.

T: What’s the biggest thing you’ve made that is your own design or invention?
J: Dino Attack Base.

T: How did you design it?
J: I broke most of my Dino Attack Lego, and then I got the tracks from the tank and attached them to the base that I built and then I built onto it. I put stuff onto it that I liked like cannons and characters.

T: What is the most important thing about Lego?
J: That it’s not Mega Bloks! It’s bits and pieces – it’s not just one thing.

T: What’s the biggest Lego set in the world?
J: The $1,000 dollar Millennium Falcon limited edition.

T: What’s your favourite type of Lego?
J: Star Wars Lego – not the Clone Wars, the older type.

T: What Lego do you want next?
J: There’s a few; the AT-AT Walker; the Dino Attack jeep thing; the Ahsoka Starfighter and droids and the Hailfire droid.

T: What do you think you’ve learned from using Lego?
T: Everything I know about Star Wars!

Building Bionicles in a couple of minutes. Building Lego much quicker and not needing any help.

T: What don’t you like about Lego?
J: Nothing except the new style the Clone Wars – because they have the worst designs and the characters with big eyes.

T: Would you like to go to Legoland in Denmark?
J:Yes!

T: Thank you Joseph!

Women & radio wars - the Y Service's 'Corona'

Some aspects of warfare throw up the most bizarre events, even though the sequence leading to it might seem rationally inevitable.

Who would expect a British woman of reducing a German woman to fits of giggles (and to collapse from laughter herself) in the middle of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II?

In the latter part of that war, the night skies over Germany became a new kind of battleground where the aircraft of the RAF's Bomber Command were tackled by the night fighter aeroplanes of the German air force, the Luftwaffe. It was a bloody war with (in some measures) as much attrition on both sides as the Western Front in the Great War of 1914-18.

But this was a new kind of war in other ways.

It was the first war that was invisible, but as hard-fought as hand-to-hand combat; where men, and women, remote from the fighting, strove to give their colleagues an edge or advantage. And those advantages swung back and forth dependant on the newest technology, but also on the most unlikely of skills, and where only words and very quick wits were sometimes as powerful as other weapons. This was the war of the 'specials' -- now called electronic warfare -- but then a secret art known to few.

Radio operators in action in this uncaptioned Imperial War Museum image. (IWM)

These men and women were cramped into tiny rooms in the air or on the ground, staring intently into cathode ray tubes and manipulating dials, while their arena was huge - from Southern Britain to Eastern Germany.

One particular aspect of this was the 'Y service' where German speakers (men and women) were recruited in Britain to sit in cramped quarters and listen in (on captured German aircraft radios, where possible), eavesdropping on German transmissions between the night fighter crews and their ground-based controllers. Initially listening was all they did, using the information to revise counter strategies, but in a unique twist, the British based operators could intervene. The BBC, GPO (Post Office) and the RAF developed 'high power transmitters that bounced signals off the ionosphere deep into Germany.'

The Lancaster I NG128 dropping its load over Duisburg on Oct 14, 1944. The aircraft is carrying Airborne Cigar (ABC) radio jamming equipment, as shown by the two vertical aerials on the fuselage. (RAF Pathfinder Museum)

Another ingredient was an extra man aboard a Lancaster, using very secret radio equipment codenamed 'Airborne Cigar' or ABC. Peggy West, one of the women operators, tells us the story:

Then in October 1943 something quite different was introduced – 'Corona'. At Kingsdown, using those high power transmitters to reach far into enemy country, specially selected men and women began annoying voice interference on the 3–6 megacycle range. Pseudo controllers issued false tuning counts to prevent the Luftwaffe going operational, gave false fog warnings to get aircraft to land, read poetry, or relayed Hitler’s speeches to disrupt and frustrate, and gave direct, contrary orders to cause confusion.

Sam Brooks (on the BBC 'People's War' website) remembers:

The Germans tried all manner of devices to overcome the jamming, including having their instructions sung by Wagnerian sopranos. This was to fool our operators into thinking it was just a civilian channel and not worth jamming.

Back to Peggy:

Corona led to some amusing incidents. A German controller was trying to direct his aircraft to Kassel. Kingsdown’s 'ghost' was trying to stop them and told them not to take any notice of the Englander who was trying to confuse them. After an exchange or two, the German became pretty agitated, lost his temper, and swore. Our 'ghost' replied, “The Englander is now swearing” and was met by an infuriated shriek from Germany: “It's not the *%$#@$ Englander who is swearing, it's *%$#@$ me”!

An 'atmospherically lit' Messerschmitt Bf 110 night fighter, one of the Luftwaffe's main types in the role, in the RAF Museum, Hendon. Author.

The British had an operator aboard a Lancaster jamming (or distracting) German ground transmissions. To 'spoof' them, he might work with a British operator broadcasting in German, from Kingsdown while pretending to be the 'real' German controller. Confusing? Very.

When a 101 Squadron Lancaster with its ABC 'Special' was shot down over Berlin, the Luftwaffe assumed Kingsdown’s 'Corona' voice interference came from that ABC equipment. They reasoned, correctly, that the RAF would not allow women to fly operationally over Germany and switched to women ground controllers. Since we had anticipated that, we did the same.

An uncaptioned photograph of a woman operator - probably radar rather than radio - on the Imperial War Museum website. (IWM)

So the real female German controller had a British based female 'spoof' controller relayed onto her German wavelength to distract and misdirect her and her night fighter crews. The frustration of the previously-mentioned male German controller was encountered by his female successor:

One of our girls got into a similar battle of wills, the only difference being that both women ended up laughing with each other and had to shut down. We all enjoyed the incident very much – but did wonder what happened to the lass over there!

Such moments of bizarre amusement were few in such a terrible war, but who could ever have predicted such an event ever coming to pass?

James

Peggy West's account of the work of the Y Service can be found here, as part of a 2003 conference on the Air War in Europe at the Australian War Memorial. More on the Y Service on this page from The Secret War's website, and some of the background to the RAF's special aircraft can be found here on 100 Group. More firsthand memories on the excellent BBC People's War Website can be found here, with an ABC Operator and a WAAF Y Service operator.

An electric turn of phrase

A view past a lightning conductor from inside the tower of the Duomo, Florence.

"upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground;...Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!"

Benjamin Franklin

In Response to Sahlah's comment below:
As is often the case as an editor I was distracted while checking a fact on the web. After establishing, as my author had claimed, that Benjamin Franklin had indeed invented the lightning conductor, I was impressed by his writing about it; including the scattering of capital letters and what is to us an antique vocabulary of concerns - yet he achieves a clarity that few designers today manage - what will they expect for their bright ideas a century or two hence?

Benjamin was on any measure a remarkable man, one of the many that I didn't get to learn about at school in England, because he was on the 'other side' of that war.

We never learned about the incredible courage required to challenge a government and king and seeking independence as Franklin's fellows and he did (just though we were taught their cause was). The American War of Independence, was important, however it is but one event of Benjamin Franklin's life and works. His achievements, intellect and virtue are exceptional, on the level of a true Renaissance man - so much so that it's a relief he had a face like a second-hand pear, with spectacles, for if he had good looks as well, he'd have been all-too-much.

Where are our Benjamin Franklin's today?

James

British Steampunk is alive and recordbreaking...

From the British Steam Car website.

Another land speed record falls to the UK. Perhaps one that's not exactly facing ferocious competition these days, but it is the fastest steam-powered car in the world.

On August 25th, 2009 at Edward's Air Force Base in California, USA, the British Steam Car, driven by Charles Burnett III broke the existing land speed record by a steam powered vehicle with an average speed of 139.843 mph over two consecutive runs over a measured mile. This was recorded and has since been ratified by the FIA.

On August 26th, 2009 the British Steam Car, driven this time by Don Wales, broke a second record by achieving an average speed of 148.308 mph over two consecutive runs over a measured kilometer. This was also recorded and again, has since been ratified by the FIA.

From the Steam Car website.

BBC Report here.

Well done, team, and that'll teach them to say steam power is dead! Not to mention the recent construction of an all new mainline steam engine in the UK. (That would be the 170 tonne 18 year project locomotive No. 60163 Tornado.)

Oh, and for those that might be puzzled by the headline, Steampunk (Wiki page) refers to an aesthetic and idea combining generally 19th century concepts (such as steam power) and style with more modern developments, usually along an alternative history line - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine being often cited as a pioneer of the idea - and a rattling good yarn too. But they didn't foresee this real-world steam development.

(Thanks to Ross for the pointer.)

James

That's not a sundial...

...THIS is a sundial.

Or "Don't stand just there at noon."

Thinking back on last year's big trip, one of the stand outs was the Musée des Arts et Metiers (previous posts here and here) and this is one of the items from the first gallery of instruments.

I don't recall what it is, but I reckon it's pretty ace. I mean - with one of these in the [stately home] garden you should be able to pull off a top notch locked-room mystery, no problem, and shoot the Pope while proving the curvature of the earth. Your only problem was going to be coming up with something better and teaching the butler to load it while keeping clear of the barrel.

I'd like to thank Greg for making sure we didn't miss this. With the Pitt Rivers Museum, it's one of the great 'secret museums' of the world.

James

The engine on the 'plane goes around...

In the early days of aviation, one form of aero engine was the rotary. This was one where the engine was bolted to the propeller and the whole engine rotated around the crankshaft. Here's an example with the prop and mounting removed so you can see into it:

I filmed this at the RAF Museum's Great War Grahame White Factory building at Hendon, North London.

An excellent technical description and animation of how they work is shown here on Matt Keveney's fascinating engine site. Because it runs on a total loss oil system (can't get it back to the tank in a revolving engine) and the oil has to go through the same pipes as the petrol, and not mix, an organic rather than mineral oil is used - castor oil. The burnt remnants of the oil was thrown out of the engine a good deal of which covered the pilot, with the otherwise well known effect of castor oil. Thanks to Sahlah for a reference from The Rise and Fall of Castor Oil which touches on the origin of the oil, and use in World War One:

Since castor oil was needed for lubricating airplane engines, 100,000 acres of land in the southern United States had to be planted in castor beans. Castor Oil used by the radial engine was supplanted by Voltol, an oil derived from coal. The Germans tried to use Voltol since the Allies had am embargo to stop shipments of castor oil.

What does a Rotary engine look, sound and smell like in action? There are a few in action if you know where to look. at la Ferte Alais in France, and The Shuttleworth Collection in England. This bit of film (see 'Shuttleworth 2008 trailer') can be downloaded and gives a great feel for pioneer aviation. The first aeroplane featured is the Bristol Boxkite, and has a modern engine.

RAAF Museum Archive.

(To digress a moment; here's a picture of Richard Williams, the 'father' of the Royal Australian Air Force, with a rotary engine on a Boxkite when he was learning to fly in 1914. The Boxkite is a 'pusher' so the engine is behind the wing, pilot and fuel tank, and even behind the propeller! I'm lending a hand to a team, Project2014, building a replica of this aircraft, for the centenary.)

The second aircraft in the film (the monoplane) is the oldest airworthy British aircraft in the world, the 1912 Blackburn, and is flown here by chief pilot of the Collection (and qualified test pilot) Andy Sephton, who makes it look easy. Yes, they do call "Contact!"

Andy Sephton aloft in the Blackburn 1912, last year. James

You'll note Andy 'blipping' the engine - the bits where it goes quiet. The pilot carefully juggles the fuel/air mixture by hand, so the engine doesn't stop accidentally - but power variation is done by deliberately stopping the engine and re-starting it before it gets fouled or cold - rather like having a stuck-on accellerator, no gears and driving the car by using the ignition key...

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the Vintage Aviator team have built a brand new replica German rotary, the Oberursel and have video of it on the test stand here. (Well worth a look.) The wooden propeller is a sculptural work of art, I feel. Note the castor oil dripping from the engine at the end of the film.

The details and how they did it are here. Amazing. (The Vintage Aviator team are funded by Peter Jackson, the film-maker, so hobbits are useful after all.)

From when 'planes were wood, wire and linen, and engines took skill; when men were men - and regular!

Sorry we can't bring you the smell of a rotary powered aircraft, but the internet has it's limitations. It's one of my favourite smells anyway.

James

Contrails

As we came to the end of our trip, one of the things I got to thinking about was those white crayon lines in the sky. Watching them while on the ground; and probably leaving them behind our airliner as we headed for home.

Contrails over Oyama Lake.

I'm sure we are all too familiar with contrails as one of the graffiti marks of modern technology on our world - it seems wherever you might be, there are contrails overhead. They are modern, but the first examples were not only harbingers of the new world, but literally a matter of life and death.

As far as I know, there are no photos of the Photo Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) aircraft 'contrailling' on their reconnaissances in World War Two over Europe. These would have been the first regularly-seen contrails, put up by high-flying specially adapted aircraft, primarily Spitfires and later Mosquitoes. These aircraft were an 'eye in the sky' - and while we take things like satellites and Google Earth for granted today, back then aircrew laid down their lives trying to get the pictures back.

One of the most famous reconnaissance photos ever, taken after the dams raid.

I understand they could 'pull a contrail' without realising, drawing a big 'here I am' arrow at themselves. Their Camotint camouflage wouldn't be much use then. They had no guns, an aircraft full of fuel or (worse) fuel vapour. Yes, they were high and fast, but not always, nor always high enough and fast enough. They were hard to catch, but that didn't mean they were invulnerable - sometimes there might be an enemy fighter up-sun.

Today there are a few Spitfires and Mosquitoes in Photo Reconnaissance (PR) colours, including examples in the National Museum of the United States Air Force (something the Brits had sorted and the Americans thus used) and in the RAF and RAAF Museums. However, they've never got the credit they deserve, because they were top secret during the war.

A rare Spitfire PR.XI seen at IWM Duxford some years ago, in its high-altitude blue scheme and American 'star and bar' markings.

A Spitfire PR Mk.IA about to leave on one of the first reconnaissance mission of World War Two, in 1939-40.

The PR boys were the original 'Alone, unarmed and unafraid' flyers. But in reality they were alone, unarmed, and fools if they weren't aware of the risk they ran. They all had fellow airmen that just didn't come back. Usually that was all they knew. What had happened (mechanical failure, hypoxia, enemy attack, navigation errors) was unknown...

That then meant someone else had to go until someone did get back with the photos.

A publicity photo of an oblique F-24 aerial camera being fitted to a PR Spitfire as the pilot 'looks on'. This example is one of the earlier unpressurised machines, as indicated by the side access door, done away with when the cockpit was pressurised in later versions. Either way, it was a very uncomfortable, cramped ride.

A very interesting underside photo of a Spitfire PR.XI. The underside (vertical) camera ports can be seen as dark circles under the rear fuselage. The two cameras were angled slightly, allowing a wide swathe (10 miles or so) of ground to be photographed in one run - provided that the camera didn't fog up, freeze or the mechanism fail - which it sometimes did. The little teardrop shaped bumps on the wings cover the fuel pumps for the 'wet' wing - the entire forward wing section was rubberised inside and then used as a fuel tank. The stripes are D Day recognition strips to assist in avoiding friendly fire incidents, placing this photo sometime soon after June 6th 1944.

They flew for up to ten hours, any minute of which could be their last, and they'd almost certainly not see what killed them. Or perhaps worse - while straining to see in an inadequate rear view mirror was spotting a small dot, below and behind - an enemy fighter slowly gaining ground and altitude. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I've heard: "Oh, they flew a Spitfire without guns?" Quiet heroism takes many forms.

High over London

But the earliest days of massed contrails were the marks of a new battlefield, famously photographed over St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1940:

And St Paul's was image of the centre of 'home' to those fighting for the future of civilisation. High up there were young men (of an average age of 20) flying, fighting, and dying at 300 or more miles an hour. Later, the Germans turned to bombing London.

On 29 December 1940, Daily Mail photographer Herbert Mason braved an air raid to spend the night on the roof of Northcliffe House in Fleet Street. He captured what became the defining image of the Blitz - St. Paul's emerging defiantly from the smoke of surrounding burning buildings. The image appeared in the Daily Mail two days later, with evident retouching, under the headline 'St. Paul's Stands Unharmed in the Midst of the Burning City'. Ironically, only four weeks later, the photograph was reproduced by the Berliner Illustre Zeitung who used it not to show the resilience of the blitzed city, but to show that London was burning to the ground.

Hindsight sometimes blinds us to what is commonplace today but was shockingly new then. Official War Artist Paul Nash put contrails in his painting of the Battle as an iconic aspect of that combat.

Paul Nash, Battle of Britain, 1941, Imperial War Museum IWM16756 © Imperial War Museum.


USAAF Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses pulling contrails in the high, cold, blue. Note also the prop-tip vortices also creating contrails.

Without aircraft to stop the Germans that high...

Without the Battle in 1940...

Without Britain's intransigence, in the face of the Blitz...

Without the United States Army Air Forces by day and the Royal Air Force by night...

Without the knowledge from photo-reconnaissance...

Churchill's 'new dark age' of 'perverted science' might have come to pass.

(Perverted science: A PRU photo of the German research station at Peenemunde. In fact, Peenemunde test stand VII, with a V-2 ballistic rocket launch set up. At Peenemunde, using slave labour, the German Army under Werner von Braun laid the groundwork for both intercontinental ballistic missiles and the space race.)

The faces and injuries of Federico da Montefeltro

Another fascinating aspect of Federico da Montefeltro (see the post here for more) is that he has one of the most memorable faces of the middle ages (perhaps, arguably, in all art) with a hook nose and left profile that is unique.

Right: A detail from his portrait, which has him together with his young son, Guidobaldo, is by the Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete in Urbino's Ducal Palace. A reader, a Duke, a man of war, and a man of God. Yet (we are assured) only ever seen in left profile. The full frame of this painting is seen below; sadly the colour is not as rich as in the gallery brochure's detail image.

His profile was unique, we learn, because he lost an eye, and had the bridge of his nose destroyed in a jousting accident; and most accounts say we only have left-hand portraits of the man, but this is not quite true.

The reverse of the famous diptych with his wife shows his 'triumph' with him riding towards his wife, and seen from the right.


The front is, perhaps the most famous portrait we have of him, and is that famous profile:


Fascinatingly, this reconstruction by Roberto Sambonet appears after a brief internet search, showing (literally) another side to a famous face.

Roberto Sambonet, Federico da Montefeltro, manifesto per la Pinacoteca di Brera, 1977

There are many others; and like other motifs, once you are looking, his face appears everywhere, even in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum:


And another aspect came to light as I was researching this article. It appears that even when the patient is safely dead 500 or more years, physicians can't help but investigate. Two New York authors, Anthony V D'Antoni and Stephanie L Terzulli, have come up with the theory that he suffered from 'Hyperkyphosis', a curvature of the spine.

Their paper, Federico di Montefeltro's hyperkyphosis: a visual-historical case report, uses two of Piero della Francesca's paintings (below) featuring Frederico to discuss this possibility.

Madonna of the Egg (1472) by Piero della Francesca. Pinacoteca of the Brera Academy, Milan, Italy. In this painting, the 50-year-old Duke is genuflecting and is again depicted in a left lateral view.

"Based on the available evidence, the Duke's thoracic hyperkyphosis could have been caused by repetitive trauma to the spine due to numerous hours on horseback with heavy armor. The role that osteoporosis played in the development of the hyperkyphosis is unclear, as is whether the Duke had the convexity during childhood. The hyperkyphosis as a stylistic variant by Piero della Francesca is unlikely."


The Duke and Duchess of Urbino (1465) by Piero della Francesca. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. The left panel is a portrait of Battista Sforza in a right lateral view. She faces her husband, Federico di Montefeltro, who is depicted in a left lateral view. The Duke was 43 years old when this diptych was painted. Notice the missing nasal bridge [5], moles on the cheek, and the skin folds on his jaw due to a facial skin disease that he had as a young man [13]. In addition, observe his prominent thoracic hyperkyphosis with the apex of the convexity roughly at the level of the T6–7 vertebrae. Battista, in contrast, does not have this anomaly.

Portraiture is a very challenging art. Finding more than a representation of the subject is the demand taken on by the portrait painter. But here it would be nice to know as much of the Duke's thoughts as we do of his ravaged physique.

James