Italian silent film divas in their photographic postcardsMany ordinary women saw Italian silent film divas as influences on daily dress and behaviour; much of this came from the consumption of photographic postcards, nowadays still avidly collected
The artistic fate of the windOver the centuries, the wind has always been an iconographic presence for artists, touching upon fate, religion, chaos, love, and nature
On Giulio Romano’s tableware designsTableware designed by Giulio Romano invites us to re-consider the false binary between works of art and functional objects.
Joseph Yoakum and adventurous factsJoseph Yoakum has us going between the mundane quality of things in front of us and the extra-ordinary quality of their reasons in the world
Paolo Pagani and the marvels of transformationBetween failed aristocratic ambition and ungraspable styles, Paolo Pagani is the forgotten figure of Italian Baroque painting.
Symbol by symbol, dust piles upRead about artists' obsession with dust, from enigmatic depictions in 16th and 17th century painting to post-war imagery and symbols
Death helps life in the anatomical theatreAnatomical theatres were the literal and metaphorical houses of anthropocentrism. Are they resuscitating today?
Luca Pacioli and the mathematical RenaissanceThe Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli is the crystalline symbol of his shattered dream: an orderly word expressed in numbers
Horace Pippin is a misunderstood realistLabels such as "primitive," "naive," and "folk" can conceal prejudice and racism. Horace Pippin was a realist instead
To the zodiac and backPhaethon changes sex, the gods are sick, the Earth is burned, the seas are drained: the zodiac is all these turns and more
