Behind the Scenes Minis: Laocoön and Lucy

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson Tracy. This week we talked about beautiful art, that being the Laocoon and his Sons or the Laocoon or Laocoon. It gets called many different things. I saw the Laocoon Group a lot. Yes, I don't love that name, which is why I didn't use it, even though I understand why it is used by art historians because it is a group of figures. I don't know. It sounds like a weird corporate name in a sci fi thing to me. The Laocoon group bringing you arms upraised. Um. There was a funny part of this that I didn't include in the episode, just so I could tell you it here. Okay, So, when the Laocoon was moved to Paris, we mentioned that the restored I'm using air quotes there since it wasn't the correct one. The arm that had been attached to it as a restoration had been taken off. And when it got to Paris. This is going to sound like I'm putting France on blast. I'm not. But Napoleon and his folks thinking no, but France understands art better than Italians had their own contest to decide what the arm should look like, and nobody entered. Oh that's awesome. So that's why the lawcud sat there with no arm in Paris for uh fifteen years or seventeen years it ever was. I just thought that was hilarious. They're like, that's fine. Um, it's totally possible that our tour guide in the group I was in told us more about this arm. She definitely told us something, because I was standing there long enough to take many pictures of the staff to you. But this was also during like the terrible jet lag a portion right of the trip for me, So there are some gaps well. And it was sweltering hot that day. Um. And this is in a courtyard that is shaded in some areas and not others, and that you could find cool spots where they had some air blowing, but if you were out of that cool spoton in the sun, it was like instantly broiling. And so that is never good for anybody's concentration or attention span. Um. I was very, very enamored of our Vatican tour guide because she clearly. I think they probably all do, but I only experienced the one had such a command of art history that anywhere, anytime we walked into a new gallery or room or courtyard, she would kind of see what people were grabbing, tating to and talk to them about that, rather than going through like a pat strict place to place to place. And so that might have been when we got a little more laucoon because the second I was like, and his arm was missing. I was like, tell me more, tell me more. Um. So she was really really wonderful Alexandra. She uses the X because while she is born and raised in Rome, her family is German, which is why she is not an Alessandra. She explained this to us um and was spectacular. I was so in love with her because of her. I mean, our dear friend that I have known since I was a kid. Fred was with us on this trip, and he was in my group, but we just kept looking at each other and be like, how does she know so much art history? Like she knows so much art history just off the cuff, uh, And we were blown away by her and she made it very, very fun. So that was good. I I loved when she was doing her presentation of the Sistine Chapel, which we mentioned earlier they have to do before you go in because you can't not supposed to speak in the Sistine Chapel. And when she got to the part where, um, she's explaining the story as it's being represented, and she said, and then God created the sun in the moon. And when she did that, she circled a naked butt on the painting and I was like, I am in love with you. You're exactly my person. She was very, very funny, and I did sit there staring at the Laocoon for a very long time. I never would have thought about the fact that his facial expression was not physically possible. No, and there's enough discussion about that that when I was just wanting to hear experts say his name, Um, that was one of the things that came up. Was like, all this discussion about eyebrow or I forehead wrinkles and and furrowed brows, and I was like, man, this is it's a lot. It's a lot. I mentioned it in the episode that there are lots and lots of papers analyzing the Laocoon from every possible angle. There are even people that make the case that the now pretty widely accepted as the correct arm might not really be the correct arm. Kind of discussions. Um, you know, it's one of those things that, because this is more than two thousand years old, it's a lot of guesswork. We're probably never gonna you know. I mean, if you don't accept the evidence at hand, you you are unlikely to ever get hard enough evidence that you will be convinced of anything. I was also pretty charmed in a grab the popcorn and watch kind of way by the discussion that popped up in two thousand five after Lynn Katterson was like, I think this was a forgery. There's not really any good evidence that suggests that. But art historians got their hackles so up and they were all like putting out statements that it was very fascinating to read about. You can pretty easily find it. It got covered in like the New York Times. It got covered a lot of different places, and almost always Richard Brilliant. I don't know if that's how you pronounce us his name, or of his brilliant always his non credible on any account comes up in almost every one of them, because he really, I mean, he's devoted a lot of his life to studying the locoon and its interpretation, and so I think most people look to him as the last word. I will say, though, there were a couple of people who were like, wait, but I read her paper and now I'm thinking about it. So even though most art historians say she is off the mark, there are a couple that are like, it's worth considering anyway. I don't. I don't want to vilify anybody, um. But the thing that comes up for me in that discussion is that she mentions in her research that if you go back and you look at like bank records from the time, there was this sudden deposit of money into Michele Anchel those bank account But I'm like, yeah, but there's a missing link to me in the logic because if this was buried and then found and of course I'm using the air quotes with the intent that the meta cheese would buy it and somehow he would benefit, Like how was that line of connection and ownership going to be established when it was found in a vineyard, not any property of his, so he did not get the tolls from the gate. It's just an interesting, fascinating little what if mental exercise to go through. But yeah, I don't. I don't think it's I don't think that holds any credibility Personally, I'm not an expert, but I sure love art, so hopefully we'll talk about some more art. There was also I realized while working on this project, the lesson who we mentioned it wrote a very heavy, heady discourse on the whole thing, including a lot of other things. His life story is very interesting, so he went on my list or possible future topics. Uh. And always, whenever I do a show like this and I'm researching it, I bump up against like seven other things I want to talk about, so, you know, shows, bighett shows. Oh, we talked about Lucy Hobbs Taylor this week. Yep. I have been wanting to talk about her since I did that dentistry episode because she's pretty interesting and I just love how tenacious she was. Yeah, okay, I'll find another way. Fine. Her story reminds me a bit of when I was in massage school, because I went to massage school when there was a wave of states regulating massage therapy for the first time, and so like a lot of states are figuring out what they wanted to do to require licensure, and North Carolina had just recently passed all the rules. And I was in massage school with a woman who had been practicing massage for like twenty years and she had to go back for this, and yeah, she had to get I can't remember if there was an option for people who had like documented work experience to opt out of stuff, but that she had to get um a certain amount of the formal training from our class, and I remember her just being deeply frustrated by like what she had been doing in her practice versus like the basics that we were learning. I think some of it was like that, like we had to have a certain number of hours of anatomy and physiology, and she was like, I've been doing this forever and now I am year with folks who have zero experience. That sucks. I can only imagine. Yeah, I didn't find a lot about how um that one session that Lucy did. That one session is a word that I haven't figured out if they mean she took one course through a semester um. It sounds in some ritups like that was the case, but I'm sure she was just like great, great, great well as by the way, I'm actually an expert on some of the newest technologies because identists. Um. Here's the thing that tickled me that one um Vermont paper that we that we quoted from where they talk about her being in New York visiting relatives. They never mentioned her husband by name, which is an inverse of what we normally see even today, like even a very accomplished woman will be like, you know, Dr John Smith and his wife were at the premiere of his wife's movie she directed, and she'll never get mentioned. And I just thought it was funny that this was a rare historical instance where they're like, she married some guy. I don't I don't know, I don't now somebody. Um, it's kind of funny. I also, like you, was very tickled by the dentist who can never retire. Yeah. Our dentist that we both used to have had a similar situation, except the pandemic kind of put an end to it. Yeah, because he moved to a different state and was then like, well, move from I'll come back from my my home in my new retirement um location, periodically I'll fly back and see patients. And then it was like flying was not safe at all for a while and he was like, I can't do that, guy, sorry, Otherwise I think he might still be doing it. I think it It might sound unusual to some folks for like the dental practice and the residents to be in the same place, because I mean, every dentist that I've ever gone to, it's the dental practice, and maybe it's in a building that has other medical and dental practices in but it's not somebody's home. But I actually know somebody who's whose dad was a dentist and had the combined home and practice in the same space. Uh. And then when when he stopped practicing, like converted the practice space into just more living space. Yeah, I mean I can see where that's beneficial in ways. I mean, it's almost like what we're dealing with now right where most we certainly are working from home all the time, a lot of other people are, And like, on the one hand, it's so handy. I don't have to drive through traffic to commute anymore. It's very very easy. I'm you know, in and out. I have access to my stuff if at lunch I want to go sit on the couch and watch TV. But also there's no separation of your life and your work. It's a it's two edges, two edges. One interesting thing that I bumped up against in doing research but didn't really fit in the episode. It was about Eclectic Medical Institute. Yeah, I had not heard of this before. Well, it actually rubs up against another UM podcast subject we've had, which is Elizabeth Blackwell, because she applied there while they were accepting women and was accepted. Maybe I heard of this and forgot, Well, she didn't. She didn't go there because the school didn't have hospital privileges for students. She was like, yeah, but how are you gonna like really learn and take care of patients? Then? So she she was like, I'm not I'm not going there. I'm sorry. UM, it's a weird one. I kind of a very narrowly avoided going down a rabbit hole about that institution in its history because I was like, the s Really, I don't need to be bogged down with all of that for this. The important thing is that it took women and then it didn't so right, And I wanted to just make sure I had those facts straight because otherwise it seems like Lucy Hobbs was like La la La La la go to medical school without really thinking it through, when in fact she had every reason to think they would take her because they had been taking women until just before she decided that that was her path. So Lucy's malpractice, m h, don't love it. I don't love it, especially because there's been some writing recently about like the prevalence of over treatment in the field of dentistry. And I've talked about my own personal story of having a dentist telling me that I needed to get a bunch of crowns and that then no other dentist ever suggested was even a thing. Um. And so the idea of of filling a healthy tooth bothers me. Yes, I can completely. I mean, like I said, it is, it is malpractice. There's no getting around it. Once again, less regulated field. At the time, she was not she did not have her DDS degree. Um. It's interesting though, I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to have a dude roll into your office and be like, well, little lady, do you think you know enough to look at my teeth? Um? I don't know why I did that voice, but I understand her frustration. Yeah, yeah again, Lucy I'd rather you hadn't done that, but I get where you're coming from, right, Um, it was very interesting to me to try to look for where other women were documented as having practiced in history. It's very hard to find stuff because like, we don't use Wikipedia as a source, but I will go look at it as a jumping off point because they may have connections or list sources that I might have a hard time finding otherwise. And there is a page of like first women dentists in any country, but a lot of them are not links. It's just a name in a year and so or the links are in a foreign language that like, um, a browser translator won't translator, and so I was like, I can't verify any of this. Yeah, Well, we've also talked about how many women there have been who've who've been doing critical work with their like husbands and brothers and fathers, and those men could not have done what they did without the work of whatever woman was in their life. And it's so it seems incredibly likely that this included women who were essentially acting as like an apprentice level work or like an assistant, or basically helping treat patients with their husband or whoever h and not ever being written down anywhere. Well, and even um, I didn't go deep into her research, so hopefully I'm not spouting off anything incorrect. But even Emmiline Roberts Jones, who he mentioned, who was practicing dentistry in the US before Lucy Hobbs was she had started out as her husband's assistant and he didn't seem to think she could handle like the actual work of being a dentist, and I don't. There was something she did where she's like, no, I have this, and he was like, okay, well, I guess you can also treat patients then, um so I And she's you know, documented as having done that. But even so, you don't find a lot about her beyond that one story in any write ups. So, and that's recent enough that we would have more documentations. So I'm sure they are just cajillions of people that do not have any attribution for their work, right dentistry. I'm grateful are good depists. If this is your weekend coming up, I hope it is grand and you get some relaxation. If you have a dental visit, I hope it goes smoothly. If you don't have time off coming up this weekend, and that is a part of your regular work, or you have other responsibilities. I hope that those go smoothly, that nothing is too terribly stressful, and that you still managed to squeak out a little bit of time to just do something for yourself. We all deserve it. Uh. You will find us right back here tomorrow with a classic, and then on Monday we will once again start a week of new episodes. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.