Sunday 19 February 2012

Case no 0002 - Daughter of Herodias

INVESTIGATORS: Helen Smith and Lauren Smith

Notes: There is a painting in the National Gallery in London (Rm 12, level 2) by Sebastiano del Piombro called The Daughter of Herodias. Lauren's friend Katie Pitts, aged around 14 or 15, is depicted as Salome with the head of John the Baptist on a plate.

According to the National Gallery, del Piombro painted it while living in Venice in 1510. He later moved to Rome and became friends with Michelangelo.

What does it mean? It's evidence of time travel.

Anything else? Did Katie travel to Venice in 1510 or did del Piombro come to south London in 1999 or 2000? If SdP came to London, how did he avoid detection? If Katie travelled to Venice, how did she avoid detection? Wouldn't it be great to put Katie in a blue satin dress and get a peaky-looking long-haired chap to lie his head on a tray, and recreate the picture in a photograph?

Categorised under: Time travel.

Edit: When contacted for comment, Katie said she had no memory of time travel but thought it possible that she had posed for a photo similar to the painting, and the painting was therefore actually painted from a photo. She said, 'I think someone travels through time selling these photos for very high prices.' It's a very interesting theory. It means neither Katie nor SdP are time travellers, but there is some unknown intermediary who is stealing photos (from Facebook?) and travelling through time to sell them, perhaps to struggling artists who later become famous, perhaps to established artists who have run out of inspiration or run out of models. If so, he or she will have done it more than once. We need to look out for evidence of other examples of this happening.

6 comments:

  1. oh god, we've got our case numbers mixed hups already! xxx

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  2. have altered, mine had the wrong posting time xxx

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  3. hurrah! brilliant! it shows we don't always get the answers we expect. very interesting. I love the red eye background by the way, I think it is perfect. xxx

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  4. LOL re: case numbers. I wondered whether to spread out the postings. We are mopping through them. Soon there won't be any mysteries left to solve.

    Re: not always the right answers. I know! Katie is very wise. It just goes to show that expecting an either/or answer to a question is a mistake if one doesn't actually know the answer. Better to ask - What does it mean? than - Does it mean this or this? That's a useful lesson for life, I think. I hope I'm not too old to learn from it.

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  5. ahhh, yes re: mopping through cases. I think it's like a Hugh Dennis joke I saw once about toasty makers - Instructions: eat nothing but toasties for a week, then never use again. I did think this morning that we may post madly for a week and then never investigate again, but if so, then so be it. xxx (I may have to stop putting three kisses at the end of each comment as the page is littered with them) xxx

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  6. Oh yes. I like doing things madly in a rush and then giving up on them. The trick is to realise you're going to do it and enjoy the mad rush part.

    I remember once I asked someone to write a reference for me for a job I had already started. It was a formality and the job was not high-powered - just typing and filing. When the reference came in, it was much too detailed and personal: 'She tends to start projects enthusiastically and then loses interest.' When you're writing a reference like that, you're just supposed to say, 'She is a good team player' (although, see above on the Our Investigators page, maybe I'm not) or 'She was always polite and punctual.' Something like that. Something anodyne. Not musing about my failings to a stranger who had already offered me employment. Quite embarrassing and inappropriate.

    Also, everyone starts projects enthusiastically and then loses interest, so what did he expect? As we were discussing with yr Dad today in the context of his latest romance, that's the trajectory of everything in life, from a job to a love affair.

    I'd say we'll probably get sick of this in about a month. But maybe lots of paranomic things will present themselves, demanding to be solved, and we'll have no choice but to see it through until the end (where death or the removal of the internet = the end).

    Haha 'paranormic' is funny, isn't it? Why is it funnier to say 'paranormic' than 'paranormal'? Is it because it's a made-up word? (Or is it not funny at all..?)

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