tamburina:

In Palermo’s Capuchin monastery, the bodies of men from the 1800s hang in ghoulish rows. In 1599 naturally dried bodies inspired friars to mummify clergy. Soon laypeople asked to be preserved too. “Mummification was seen as a miracle,” says anthropologist Dario Piombino-Mascali. “A direct intervention from God.”

Read the article

Jun 2nd • 480 notes

tamburina:

This is one of the earliest known photographs of a human. A self portrait taken in 1839, it shows a young Robert Cornelius (1809-1893) standing outside his family’s lamp-making shop in Philadelphia. Cornelius was an American of Dutch descent whose knowledge of metallurgical chemistry was to help in perfecting the process of silver-plating, then employed in the production of daguerreotypes.

It had previously been assumed that the time necessary for a photograph to be exposed was simply too long for portraiture to be considered. But, by making this striking image, Cornelius proved the consensus wrong and then went on to develop a chemical means of accelerating the process.

Source

Mar 27th • 255 notes

tamburina:

Titian, Venus of Urbino (detail), 1538

Mar 13th • 97 notes

deejaeismyname:

blurringrealitylines:

My prayers go to everyone in Japan :’(

Wow, about an hour ago this post had only 400 notes, now it has over 25,000! This shows you how powerful just one picture can be.

This just makes me sad :(

:((

:(( This is the saddest picture I reposted in my tumblr :(

Mar 13th • 91,394 notes

tamburina:

The Julia Legare legend

Sometime in the 1800’s a young girl was visiting family on Edisto Island, in South Carolina. While there, the girl took ill with malaria or some other disease fatal in that time period. She died shortly after becoming ill, and since people then believed that diseases could be caught from the dead, a coffin was hastily constructed and she was interred in the Legare family tomb.

Years later, another death occured, and the tomb was re-opened for its new resident. To the shock of everyone present, a skeleton tumbled out in front of them. Seems the girl they had interred years before was only in a coma, and once awakened, fought her way out of her flimsy coffin but was too weakened by disease to budge the masoleum door. Scratch marks covered the door from her panic before she died, trapped. The tomb still stands but there is no door.

via

Mar 13th • 4,752 notes