Trafalgar Silver Vase, ca. 1806, estate of Lord Cottesloe (Image courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge) By Timothy J. Demy – Artistic trends and movements do not arise in a vacuum; they are birthed and shaped by the intellectual ideas, religious and cultural values, and current events of the era in […]
Heraclitus (6th-5th c BCE) and Shakespeare (images in public domain) By Walter A Borden, M.D. – “Character is destiny”. This is a simple, enigmatic aphorism written by the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus (ca. 540-480 BCE). It is a powerful message for all peoples, a message for then and now, as […]
Lord Byron, Portrait detail by Phillips, 1813 By Sara Olsen – Ovid: Metamorphosis XV.153 : “All Things Change; Nothing Perishes” George Gordon Byron, whom we can now call an influencer of the 19th century and beyond to the present, was born in London, England, in 1788 to Catherine Gordon Byron […]
Cover image of Tony Hall book D-Day: Operation Overlord, 1993, Smithmark Books (Image in public domain) By Timothy J. Demy – I walked the beach alone. It was an early Sunday morning and for several hundred yards on either side of me there was no one. No sound, except for […]
Jan Vermeer, The Astronomer, 1668, restituted to Rothschilds after WWII, then gifted to Louvre (Photo P. Hunt 2025) By Jann Perez – Deep questions about the ethics of collecting and also about repatriation of plundered art and antiquities are far more complex than they might at first appear from shallow […]
By Leah Mordehai – “A single Voltaire will do more honor to France than a thousand pedants, a thousand false wits, a thousand great men of inferior order.” Frederick the Great Why was Frederick II of Prussia an enlightened ruler? One of the most enlightened rulers of all time, Frederick […]
Tamara de Lempincka, Madonna, 1937 By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Tamara de Lempincka (1894-1980) was a gifted artist and an iconoclast, often considered a founding leader of the Art Deco movement from the 1920’s through the 1930’s. Art Deco was the perfect trope for an artist known for bold color, […]
By Patrick Hunt – One of the features found across Maya sculpture in different media and materials – stone relief, plaster relief, wood and ceramic figures – appears to be a certain amount of heightened caricature and lack of proportionality, in the opinion of this researcher possibly to accentuate imagery […]
By Alex Dortzbach – Media lies very near the heart of a culture in recording values. It can help create a cultural lexicon, build or reinforce a set of common ideals, and quicken the spread of new ideas. A hugely-insightful book, The Race Against the Stasi (2014) by journalist Herbie […]
By Jess Taylor – The defensive Athenian Long Walls were constructed over the course of the 5th Century BCE to maintain a secure corridor between the Athenian civic center, the city of Athens, and its principal port at Piraeus, located 7 km away.