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…
Indecent old print
[This post is unsuitable for underage readers] During calligraphy workshops called ABC of a Scribe (run in Atelier Landowska & Bodziony in Cracow) I have lectures on medieval paleography (about scripts) and codicology (about books). The last lecture of this series gets to the issue of incunabula and Early Modern…
Career of little people in past centuries
Recently I’ve had a pleasure to attend a conference in Ostrava, entitled: “Visualizing the Other in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art (1300–1550)”, so today I decided to write about otherness… in size. Not only in the Middle Ages. But, of course, I will start with something medieval, as I…
Masculinity of the 16th century
Federico II Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua, decided one day that he wants to have a nice summer residence, and he commissioned Palazzo del Te, completed in 1525-1534 by an architect and painter Giulio Romano, pupil of Raphael. I have once mentioned Giulio Romano before, in a post on erotic…
Other Mona Lisas
There’s no doubt that Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the World, and it is commonly considered as priceless masterpiece that everyone recognises. A lot has been written about this painting, including popular or even sensational articles. I always wondered why one of the Leonardo’s paintings…