Around 1455, a medieval French painter and miniaturist named Jean Fouquet painted a small diptych with two panels, one of which depicts St. Stephen holding a strangely shaped stone—usually interpreted as a symbol of the saint’s martyrdom by stoning.
The left panel depicts Etienne Chevalier, who served as treasurer to King Charles VII, clad in a crimson robe while kneeling in prayer.
Just last year, Monja Schünemann of Chemnitz University of Technology suggested that Fouquet painted the two panels so that folding them reveals a hidden image.
Past technological studies revealed that Fouquet had corrected the heads of both Chevalier and St. Stephen in such a way as to ensure that certain points in the painted image would meet up in a specific way when the hinged diptych was closed.
Co-author Steven Kangas, an art historian at Dartmouth, had long been fascinated by the jagged stone in the left panel because it looked like a prehistoric tool.
Rather, numerous recorded oral histories describe such objects as “thunderstones,” since it was believed they “shot from the clouds” whenever lightning struck the ground—although at least one 16th-century German scholar, Georgius Agricola, dismissed that popular belief.
The original article contains 585 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It is kind of a miss, yeah. Missing both the prehistoric axe and what happens when the pictures are superimposed. They reveal it in the article, but check the linked paper in the article for the illustration.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Around 1455, a medieval French painter and miniaturist named Jean Fouquet painted a small diptych with two panels, one of which depicts St. Stephen holding a strangely shaped stone—usually interpreted as a symbol of the saint’s martyrdom by stoning.
The left panel depicts Etienne Chevalier, who served as treasurer to King Charles VII, clad in a crimson robe while kneeling in prayer.
Just last year, Monja Schünemann of Chemnitz University of Technology suggested that Fouquet painted the two panels so that folding them reveals a hidden image.
Past technological studies revealed that Fouquet had corrected the heads of both Chevalier and St. Stephen in such a way as to ensure that certain points in the painted image would meet up in a specific way when the hinged diptych was closed.
Co-author Steven Kangas, an art historian at Dartmouth, had long been fascinated by the jagged stone in the left panel because it looked like a prehistoric tool.
Rather, numerous recorded oral histories describe such objects as “thunderstones,” since it was believed they “shot from the clouds” whenever lightning struck the ground—although at least one 16th-century German scholar, Georgius Agricola, dismissed that popular belief.
The original article contains 585 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Saved 67% (the content)
Kept 33% (the filler)
It is kind of a miss, yeah. Missing both the prehistoric axe and what happens when the pictures are superimposed. They reveal it in the article, but check the linked paper in the article for the illustration.