Hats Off to Erwin

I was rather pleased to see a comment left on one of my posts, recently.

Although, I was a tad alarmed at the message itself:

It seems that the picture a woman killing herself by being crushed by her husband's tombstone. That's what the caption says in Dutch.
See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kintzertorium/3090689838/

Taken out of context (and keeping in mind, that I didn't immediately see which post it had been submitted to, before approving it for publication), it seemed irrelevant to this blog.

That is, until I viewed the link. For curiousity's sake, of course.

And boy, did that pay off!

The link in question leads to a certain image dealt with in "Bad Captions" and "A Note on Bad Captions". Except, it appears to be a scan of the original image!

You might remember that in Frayling's book, a reproduction of the image was captioned:

A vampire rises from the grave, illustrating an early eighteenth century treatise on the undead.

Fortunately, the owner of the Flickr account (Kintzertorium) has retained the original's caption, which appears to read:

BIANCA RUBEA, Gemalinne van BAPTISTA Á PORTA Verplenert zig met de Graf zark van haar Man.

A commentator on the image, by the name of groenling, has even translated the caption into English:

"BIANCA RUBEA [her maiden name, I assume], wife of BAPTISTA Á PORTA / crushes herself with the tombstone of her husband."

At this point, I think it's fairly safe to say that the image does not depict a vampire.

The question is, who's responsible for mislabeling it in that manner?

The author? The publisher? The designer?

Now that'll be interesting to find out...

Oh, and Erwin, if you're reading: I really appreciated that link! Much appreciated indeed!

Bad Captions

Yesterday, I was in the Rare Books Collection reading room at Monash University Library (Clayton), having a browse through Ornella Volta's Le Vampire: La Mort, le Sang, la Peur (Paris: Jean-Jaques Pauvert Éditeur, 1962).

When I came to page 26, I noticed a picture I had seen elsewhere.

I immediately thought of a plate (3) in Christopher Frayling's Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (London: Faber and Faber, 1992).

The difference, however, is in the way they're captioned.

In Volta's book, the image is credited thusly:

Jan Luiken : Bianca Rubea, 1711.
Coll. Henry Kahnweiler

Meanwhile, Frayling's version reads:

A vampire rises from the grave, illustrating an early eighteenth century treatise on the undead.

And sure enough, if we turn to Frayling's "Bibliography and Acknowledgements", we get a reference to a certain source consulted for his book:

On the erotic angle, Ornella Volta's Il Vampiro (1962) is interesting (if a little strange at times) and has some extraordinary illustrations (p. 424)

However, the riddle doesn't quite end there.

I thought it'd be easy to trace Bianca Rubea as a novel. Thus far, I haven't been able to trace anything by that name.

I've been able to track down Luiken (or Luyken, 1649-1712) easily enough, though. Turns out he was a Dutch engraver. But the only books I've been able to turn up, that fit the year Volta's caption gives (1711), are: De bykorf des gemoeds and Het leerzaam huisraad.[1]

Rest assured, these are not treatises of the "undead". Indeed, Luiken never illustrated any such treatise.

Looks like Faber and Faber and Frayling tried to pull the wool over our eyes!

[1] "Jan Luyken". DBNL auteur. 1 August 2008.