One of the oldest children’s plays is making soap bubbles – soap was produced already in the antiquity. In European art soap bubbles appear mainly in Early-Modern times; however, late medieval manuscripts provide proves that soap bubbles appeared also in the medieval courtly culture. Check out this monkey on a…
Today I would like to tell you about my on-line work in the times of pandemics, when I am supposed to write an article about a painting on a few days notice. The text was supposed to have been about “Madonna under the Firs” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, commissioned…
Once again, at least virtually, I am coming back to York today, to tell you about certain Early-modern painting that stole my medievalist’s heart. Working in a project National Inventory of Continental European Paintings, I found in collection of York Art Gallery a beautiful portrait of a young woman. It…
One of the most surprising ancient sculptures in the collection of Louvre in Paris is probably Sleeping Hermaphroditus – it is a Roman marble statue, and a copy after lost bronze Hellenistic Greek sculpture (dating back to mid-second century B.C., mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his “Natural History”). It…
In some late medieval manuscripts of French Chronicles we can find an interesting image: ladies and knights gathered in a chamber, observing dancing Wild Men, who are actually on fire. It is an illustration of an event that is known as “the Ball of the Burning Men” (Bal des Ardents)…