By Adrian Arima – How long have humans brewed beer? Patrick McGovern, the world’s foremost historian of ancient brews, hints in Ancient Brews (2017) that this activity has been around possibly at least for 11,000 years based on vessels from Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia (Turkey). How sophisticated was brewing in […]
By Alessandra Scola- Villa Monastero is one of the several monumental villas mostly built or enlarged between the 17th and 19th centuries on one of the long coasts of Lake Como (also known in antiquity as Lago Lario) the deepest Italian lake. The villa is located in Varenna, an enchanting […]
Fig. 1 Filippo Lippi, Portrait of a Young Man, ca 1480-5, National Gallery, Washington DC, Andrew Mellon Collection (image courtesy National Gallery of Art) By Andrea M. Gáldy – If it would not look so catty, temptation would be […]
Mesopotamian seal impression of ISHTAR (planet VENUS) – from Sumerian Inanna – standing on feline, Bronze Age, British Museum (image public domain) By Patrick Hunt – We often frequently use words that are many thousands of years old whether we know it or not. Indo-European language etymology is typically not […]
Giovanni Segantini, La Natura detail, 1897-8, Segantini Museum, St. Moritz (image public domain) By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Giovanni Segantini (1858-99) was not only a pastoral artist who loved mountains, especially the Alps around the Engadine above St. Moritz, but one who captured their majestic beauty in a landscape shared […]
Marriage of Eleanor and Louis VII and Louis Leaving for Crusade, 15th c., Chroniques de St. Denis (image public domain) By Emmanuel Zilber – Defying so many male imposed status quo “rules”, Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1124-1204) was remarkable, but not only for […]
End of Mark’s Gospel, Codex Vaticanus, Early 4th c., mostly ch. 16 By Patrick Hunt – “While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of [pure] nard, and she […]
Hatchards 1801 facade at 189-90 Piccadilly, London By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Not many booksellers can claim to have been around since 1797. Fewer have hosted so many famous authors for signings and how many have three royal patents? Hatchards was founded in Piccadilly in 1797 and has moved only […]
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, 1483, Uffizi Gallery, Florence (image pubic domain) By Andrea M. Gáldy – It’s the Globalisation … Kathleen Christian and Leah Clark, eds. European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550. Published by Manchester University Press, Manchester 2017 (Art and its Global Histories Series), […]
Eagle and Snake, Imperial Palace Mosaic Museum, Istanbul, circa 6th c. (image in common domain) By Patrick Hunt – Courtesy of the Nikia and Hippodrome revolts of 532 that destroyed part of the Imperial Palace of Constantine in Constantinople, subsequent rebuilding by Justinian (reigning 527-65) and possibly added to by […]