There are legends that just live in European culture for centuries, since ancien Times till nowadays. There are motifs that keep coming back. One of those motifs – especially in Christian culture – is a story about a man who sold his soul to the devil. Source of inspiration for…
Depictions of Saints and their patronages is an infinite source of all kinds of curiosities. An art historian working on medieval religious art has to study carefully mysterious attributes and surprising storylines of the Saints’ lives. And as I currently work on the Polish version of the ICONCLASS database, I…
I must confess that when the worldwide popularity of the series “Game of Thrones” started, I was not interested at all in watching it. I am not a fan of fantasy – even though, as a proper medievalist, I do have interest in dragons. However, somehow around the premiere of…
Recently I had a pleasure to visit (last-minute visit, just before it closed) exhibition “Falza? Falza!” (“Forgery? Forgery!”) at the National Gallery in Prague. Among artworks on loan there were some famous forgeries by Han van Meegeren (I wrote about those earlier, HERE). The exhibition presented various – however somehow…
I am not a fan of modern art, but there are certain artworks – even the ones dating back to the 20th century – that I really like. One of them is undoubtedly “Us and the War” (or “The War and Us”) by Edward Okuń (National Museum in Warsaw). Okuń…