Time Travel Is Almost A Reality

The quote is from Isaiah 39.2, that forms the title in effect of the painting by Rembrandt which has been lost since the 18th century.

Its subject is not difficult to imagine. It will be one of those pictures that has a strong moral message, simply because of the subject matter.

In my imagination, the fact that it has been lost to history is tied up inextricably with that moral message.

So for the purposes of my novel, I have imagined that the picture itself would have been considered a treasure worthy of appropriation by somebody powerful and barbaric, just as in the bible reference.

In full, my understanding of it is Hezekiah showing the treasures of the Temple to the King of the Babylonians.

The scene represented in the painting is described elsewhere in the Bible, in Kings two.

And no doubt potentially elsewhere, since the destruction of the First temple by the barbarian hordes is something well documented as an act of sacrilege and barbarism.

it is always tantalising to imagine that something as valuable as a Rembrandt painting might still exist somewhere in the world.

In my novel, I go so far as to describe the painting, when it is displayed in a small private gallery somewhere in London prior to its intended auction.

Such a sale would indeed attract international interest.

There have been many examples in the past, of works by the great masters being discovered and authenticated by experts who can use modern techniques to examine every aspect of a painting, even going so far as to perceive under painting which can shed light on the origins of a canvas, and link it with a particular artist or studio.

This potential lost masterwork came to my attention because of the PhD thesis of a friend of mine, who was attempting to establish which paintings were being displayed at Temple Newsome in the 18th century.

Such a task is by no means straightforward.

Suffice to say that my friend did obtain his PhD, and has been the curator of a fabulous country house in rural Yorkshire, looking after a varied collection that has been associated for many centuries with this relatively intact estate.

It is a sad fact of history that little remains of the lives of ordinary people, what survives in museums and archives are so often the stories and artefacts of the wealthy and well heeled.

Although increasingly in modern times there is a distinct bias towards trying to redress this imbalance by attempting to discover something of those people for whom personal possessions might have meant simply the clothes that they wore, and the simple utensils that enabled them to eat.

It is a sobering thought that so little remains of so many that have lived before us, and often indeed those that have been the people on whose shoulders we stand as the modern inheritors of the world that supports us.

I am reminded that some of the most moving museum exhibits are those that are most personal to someone that may have lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago.

Such as a pair of leather shoes excavated from somewhere close to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.

There is somehow an instant sense of connection with the person that the shoes fitted, and to stand before them in some sterile museum case, is to stand before someone real and tangible. History comes to life for a strange moment, tantalisingly bridging all of the years between us and another time.