Andrea del Verrocchio, Bust of Giulano de’ Medici, 1475-8, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC By Andrea M. Gáldy – The art world likes to regard Leonardo as someone born a genius with pen and brush in his hands...
Hopperstad Stave Church above Vik on the Sognefjord (Photo P. Hunt) By P. F. Sommerfeldt – In the 10th-11th century when Norway was transitioning from a pagan Viking land to embrace early Christianity, churches were built out...
Sloebewrries or Blackthorn Berries – Prunus spinosa (image public domain) By Patrick Hunt – Otzi the Iceman from the Alpine Tyrol, found at the Similaun-Tisjoch summit of the Otztal Alps in 1991, is now the most famous...
Leonardo’s Self-Portrait, ca. 1512, Royal Library, Turin (Courtesy of University of Tübingen, University Museum) By Andrea M. Gáldy – Leonardo is dead,...
G. B. Piranesi, 1758, Tempio Cibele (Hercules Victor) 2nd c BCE in Forum Boarium (Photo P. Hunt) By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) is well known as a Neoclassical engraver of Roman monuments...
Andrea del Verrocchio, Bust of Giulano de’ Medici, 1475-8, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC By Andrea M. Gáldy – The art world likes to regard Leonardo as someone born...
Hopperstad Stave Church above Vik on the Sognefjord (Photo P. Hunt) By P. F. Sommerfeldt – In the 10th-11th century when Norway was transitioning from a pagan Viking land to embrace early...
Sloebewrries or Blackthorn Berries – Prunus spinosa (image public domain) By Patrick Hunt – Otzi the Iceman from the Alpine Tyrol, found at the Similaun-Tisjoch summit of the Otztal...
Leonardo’s Self-Portrait, ca. 1512, Royal Library, Turin (Courtesy of University of Tübingen, University Museum) By Andrea M. Gáldy...
G. B. Piranesi, 1758, Tempio Cibele (Hercules Victor) 2nd c BCE in Forum Boarium (Photo P. Hunt) By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) is well known...
James Gillray, "Britannia Between Scylla and Charybdis" 1793 (public domain) by Patrick Hunt How often do we use idioms as part...
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Photo in public domain) By Patrick Hunt – Most...
Castle Vaduz, Liechtenstein (Photo in public domain) By A.C. Williams – The feudal age of castles is well represented in the Rhine Valley...
Recent Stories
By Andrea M. Gáldy – The art world likes to regard Leonardo as someone born a genius with pen and brush in his hands and plans for superlative works of art already forming in his brain. Nonetheless, Leonardo like everyone else had to learn his trade. He was apprenticed to a master able to teach him […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – In the 10th-11th century when Norway was transitioning from a pagan Viking land to embrace early Christianity, churches were built out of wood in much the same way ships were constructed. I was recently in Norway (June 2019) on a National Geographic Expedition and marveled at how these churches were […]
By Patrick Hunt – Otzi the Iceman from the Alpine Tyrol, found at the Similaun-Tisjoch summit of the Otztal Alps in 1991, is now the most famous “mummy” of all time, eclipsing the mummy of Ramses II from New Kingdom Egypt (circa 1300 BCE) not only in what science can reveal from examining his preserved […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Leonardo is dead, but he has never been as popular as now. Almost exactly 500 years ago, he died in France. By then, Leonardo had long left his native Vinci, had been apprenticed to Verrocchio in Florence and had spent time working in Rome, Milan and Venice as well as […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) is well known as a Neoclassical engraver of Roman monuments and shadowed architectural fantasies (such as invented or imaginary carcere or “prisons”). But his work as a pioneer in archaeology is not as familiar, although his work provides ample details about the state of Roman ruins […]
By Patrick Hunt – Aachen Cathedral (also known in German as the Kaiserdom) is one of the most important monuments in the Early Medieval World, begun circa. 796, and symbolically identified with the end of the Dark Ages when literacy was finally resurgent in the Carolingian Age. Charlemagne built Aachen’s palatine church and adjacent palace […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Thomas Kren with Jill Burke and Stephen J. Campbell (eds.), The Renaissance Nude, Getty Publications: Los Angeles 2018. The Renaissance Nude, The Royal Academy of the Arts, London, 3 March to 2 June 2019, organised by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Royal Academy of the Arts The current […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – When you are first driven through the park gatehouse for the Schlosshotel Kronberg nestled in the lower forested slopes of the Taunus Mountains of Germany above Frankfurt and see its grandeur of towers and steep roofs, it is fairly obvious it was originally a royal residence. Chauffeured in one of […]
By Patrick Hunt – How many books do we read that fulfill three major vital requisites: open up realms of unexplored territory, correct long-held misapprehensions, and unearth and carefully document sources of some of what we take for granted? When Hilary Mantel [1] states Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell (Viking, 2018) is a book awaited four […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – When Captain James Cook left for the first of his three expeditions to the Pacific in 1768, he stood in a long line of naval explorers looking for new routes and continents. His ship was appropriately named Endeavour and the task ahead was daunting. Cook was a talented surveyor, as […]
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