By Andrea M. Gáldy – Whether one likes dogs or not, the current exhibition Treue Freunde: Menschen und Hunde (“True Friends: Humans and Dogs”) at the Bayerische Nationalmuseum in Munich is a must-see. It charts the cultural history of the relationship between humans and dogs back to the earliest times when tame […]
by Patrizia Passerini – A green heart in the centre of the peninsula, like a treasure chest protected by valleys and hills that follow one another across long distances. Umbria is an Italian region that welcomes visitors with its beauty, rich landscapes and an ancient and amzing history. Once you […]
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 […]
By Patrizia Passerini – A land surrounded by woods and hills, composed of vineyards and lush fruit trees, overlooked by beautiful and imposing castles, embellished by ancient churches. It’s Roero, in the heart of the Piedmont wine region, in northern Italy. Roero is situated between Langhe and Monferrato, in the […]
By Andrea Gáldy – In sixteenth-century Florence, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici succeeded his murdered predecessor Alessandro in 1537 and, even though the murderer was a close relative, knew very well what he needed to do to stay alive and in office. He had inherited a guard staffed by Italians […]
By Malia Maxwell – To read the poet Sappho (Archaic Greek, 7th-6th c. BCE) is to embrace painful incompletion. Little of her work remains, and what we do have left carries with it the stain of absence. While no amount of longing for a “completed” text can fill in her […]
By Patrick Hunt – Gehenna is an old Hebrew toponym (place name) that began as a literal, physical location – the Valley of Hinnom – and gradually transformed into a metaphor for hell through various processes including religious defilement. One of the immediate problems of any hermeneutics about Gehenna is […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy - Around the mid 1610s, Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629), Gerard van Honthorst (1592–1656) and Dirck van Baburen (c.1592/93–1624) spent time in Italy, particularly in Rome, where they came face to face with Caravaggio’s work. Similar to what happened to Caravaggisti from other parts of Europe, the […]
By Patrick Hunt – Historians know disease often stalks armies in history. [1] The specter of invisible pathogens haunting ancient warfare may have at times seemed instead like a punitive deity taking sides. Sometimes it’s merely a much simpler question of contagion and the inability to protect against it. While […]
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 […]