By Patrick Hunt – Seldom has ancient literature been so psychologically riveting as the biblical peripety of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel II and following to the conclusion of the book with David’s diminished end. King David’s multiple mistakes with Bathsheba – adultery and the requested murder of her […]
By Patrick Hunt – Introduction Significant prior studies have summarized and at times specifically delineated the ways Vermeer employed music in his carefully-wrought and subtly staged mise-en-scène genre paintings. One of the most recent and fairly comprehensive is Marjorie Wieseman’s excellent Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – A day at the National Prado Museum in Madrid is never enough, but there are always my landmark works of art to see when there. More Titians than one can easily count, and the Velazquez portraits are a Spanish Baroque force majeur, and the Goya […]
By Patrick Hunt – Olaf Tryggvason Olaf I Tryggvason (ca. 960-1000 CE) was the Viking king who forcibly began to Christianize the people of Norway at the end of the 10th century, a change suggested at times by his detractors as conversion forced at swordpoint. If depicted as a bloody […]
By Chelsea Glickman – The rise of nationalism in Egypt is often associated with the political agenda espoused by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties and sixties, yet it may also be possible to view the politically-charged artistic practices that transpired in Cairo in the preceding decades as attempting […]
“I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.” Henry David Thoreau Although Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond is his most famous residence, historians also credit several other sites that served as “home” to this American literary figure. Looking into Thoreau’s past provides a glimpse […]
By Susanne Houfek – Unless you’re a medievalist you may not know Guillaume de Machaut was an important 14th century French poet and composer. Living from 1300-1377, he was prolific, innovative and influential, creating over 400 poems, 235 ballades, 76 rondeaux, 39 virelais and more, both secular and religious, in […]
By Patrizia Passerini – History of Fattoria de Celle Fattoria di Celle is an estate dating back to the 15th century, located in Santomato (near Pistoia) about thirty kilometres from Florence, in the heart of Tuscany. It represents a unique reality, where art, history and nature meet in an amazing venue […]
By Hilary Letwin – Sitting for one’s portrait is not the first thing one might expect to do in self-isolation during a global pandemic. But, that is precisely where I found myself on a recent gray Tuesday morning, posed on my balcony in Vancouver at 9 am, my morning coffee […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – At the moment several exhibitions explore the many ways, in which the art and artists of the North influenced the production and style of particular works and collections as well as the direction of patronage. While the Duchy of Burgundy had played a major role in […]