Do you start your morning with a steaming cup of coffee? Though coffee smells great, most kids don’t like it. And yet, so many adults do. Is it because grown-ups have more sophisticated palates? Actually, taste buds tend to be more sensitive in youth. You were made to have great taste! But, you knew that…
The Grass Is Not Always Greener: ‘The Sword of Damocles’
The “Sword of Damocles” is a moral tale that comes from the Roman scholar Cicero. Damocles was a servant to a fourth- and fifth-century king named Dionysius II. Dionysius II was a miserable king who ruled his empire with a cold heart, making many enemies in the process. He was always afraid of being assassinated,…
Exceptional French Gold Embroidery
For the past 26 years, gold-thread embroiderer Sylvie Deschamps has headed Le Bégonia d’Or, a gold-embroidery workshop in the historic town of Rochefort, just south of La Rochelle in the west of France. The town dates back to the 11th century, when Rochefort Castle was built to prevent a Norman attack. But the modern fortified town…
Finding Rest in Art: Moritz von Schwind’s ‘A Player With a Hermit’
Amid our daily interactions and pursuits, we may dream of a quiet life out in the middle of nowhere, a place where there’s no social media and no mention of politics but instead harmony and peace—a place where we might simply get away from it all. I recently came across “A Player With a Hermit”…
Imagine 2,300 Years of Musical Instruments Under One Roof!
My work as a composer has taken me with some regularity to New York City, and each time I’ve had a bucket list of things I’ve either always wanted to do or wanted to do again during my free time there. One of those “do agains” has been to visit the huge Metropolitan Museum of…
A Journey of True Love: ‘Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion’
Irrespective of our backgrounds, so many of us have endured what seemed like insurmountable hardship, and, somehow, we made it through. But what were our hearts like during those hardships? What type of mindset were we strengthening and reinforcing during our turmoil? Did we let faith be our guide and love be our aim, despite…
Reflecting on Johannes Vermeer, an Exceptional Dutch Master
Since 1742, visitors have delighted in seeing Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” at the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden, Germany. But the scene is not the same as it was when the painting first left Vermeer’s studio around 1659. In 1742, the elector of Saxony and king of Poland,…
Film Review: ‘The Lost Leonardo,’ A Divine Painting Lost to an Opaque Art World
PG-13 | 1h 40min | Documentary | 20 August 2021 “The great design of art is to restore the decays that happened to human nature by the Fall, by restoring order,” English critic John Dennis wrote in 1704. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” painting, by its very title—Latin for “Savior of the World”—fulfills Dennis’s description…
Delving Into an Incomparable Work of Renaissance Portraiture
The double portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza by Piero della Francesca in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, is an intriguing masterpiece by one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance. Most familiar to art lovers are its superb profile portraits of two notable early Renaissance personages. But it also comprises, on the…
The Voyage of Divine Faith: ‘The Voyage of Life’ Series
Our lives can be fascinating. We are born into a world preset with culture, tradition, language, and so on; and through sensual experience, we learn how to survive and, for some of us, thrive. However, many of us sense that there is something beyond mere sensuous experience—something we must believe without evidence, something we believe…
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