Born March 6, 1475 not far outside of Florence, Italy, Michelangelo di Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni seemed already to have the credentials to become the quintessential Renaissance Man. His hometown—Caprese—has since been renamed Caprese Michelangelo in honor of this most highly celebrated of artists. Michelangelo’s early life, however, was notable for
At first glance, being a sixteenth-century lord doesn’t sound half bad—live in a castle, commission vast paintings and sculptures, and occasionally cast a vote to elect a Holy Roman Emperor. Easy, right? Wrong. In The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation, historian Steven Ozment
What does it mean to be a prophet? In his new biography Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, Donald Weinstein gives us one answer to this question, tracing the story of religious visionary Girolamo Savonarola from his early loss of faith in society to his later attempts
Following his “Eminent Biography” post on his new book, Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen, presenting a striking re-characterization of this often misunderstood monarch, John Edwards now writes on his own research experiences and how he came to carefully retell her life. John Edwards— Anyone who tackles a biography of
The National Gallery’s “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” opened this fall, and is the most complete display of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever held. Today we look at this landmark event, and the beautiful exhibition catalogue that accompanies it, which has been described by the UK Telegraph
Michelle Stein— I am familiar with the conflicting images and identities of shifting or presumably unchanging institutions. New York City may have been immortalized in the arts, and its landmarks might be recognized the world over, but underneath there is constant change. Whether the shuttering of one shop and
The Ides of March, George Clooney’s latest directorial turn, stars Ryan Gosling as a campaign manager in a hotly contested Democratic primary that evokes both recent and ancient history. The film, adapted from a 2008 play by the name of Farragut North, plays on memories of the past two presidential
Follow @yaleSCIbooks The early days of scientific investigation resulted in extraordinary collaborations between the artistic community and the scientific one. Many examples of these concerted efforts to explore, chart, map, test and record are beautifully documented and eloquently explained in Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,
Photographs from this month’s Perseid meteor shower from the International Space Station follow a long tradition of science and art blurring boundaries between each other. As curator Susan Dackerman argues in Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, the catalog for Harvard Art Museums’ exhibition opening September 6, art and science often have a close relationship with only vaguely definable boundaries.
How could a man who lived a millennium and a half after Jesus have drawn him from life? Because Rembrandt was the first artist to use a live model for Christ, the origins of his portraits remained a mystery for a long time. Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, edited by Lloyd DeWitt, discusses these paintings and drawings from an exhibition opening tomorrow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.