Tag: Arts & Tradition

Love, in Sickness and in Health, Springs Forth From Rembrandt’s Floras

Rembrandt sketched, drew, and painted his beloved wife, Saskia, throughout their marriage—in sickness and in health, right until her death parted them. He depicted her in every way he could. In his artworks, we see Saskia the woman, wife, mother, and muse. We see her disheveled upon waking; laughing with her husband; and as majestic…


A Detectorist in a Royal English Court

A popular children’s pastime of hunting for buried treasure begins with dreams of unearthing pots of gold or a cache of jewels, but usually ends with potholes in a backyard revealing nothing more than sticks and stones. Those who continue to try their luck as adults use a better tool than a spade and shovel:…


Ocean Grove: Jersey Shore’s Unique Victorian Town

In the mid-1970s, my friend and I were riding along Route 71, south of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ready to explore the Jersey Shore. I was riding in her green Camaro on Sunday afternoon, when we drove past a community entrance road that was chained shut with a safety barricade out front. “That’s Ocean Grove,”…


Mapping Art: How Maps Guided a Texas Artist to a Successful Career

Christopher Alan Smith’s journey to becoming a prominent artist in Texas is a rather direct one. Born in 1971, decades before the rise of the internet and when families still climbed aboard their four-wheeled vessels for road trips, Smith fell in love with maps. Seated in the backseat with the multi-fold map stretched from end-to-end,…


Rare First Edition of Winnie the Pooh to Go on Sale

A first-edition copy of the beloved children’s classic Winnie the Pooh will be among the literary treasures for sale at an Australian rare book auction. The work by Alan Alexander Milne features the original green cloth cover with gilt illustrations and Christopher Robin’s map of the ‘Hundred Acre Wood.’ “We were thrilled to receive Winnie…


A Lost Tool of Learning: Rhetoric and Why It Matters

Search online for “the meaning of rhetoric,” and you’ll find the word typically defined as speech or writing intended to persuade others. Some sources list as a secondary meaning bombastic or sentimental speech and writing, often deceitful in their attempts at persuasion. “He’s just gaslighting us,” someone might say of a politician’s appearance. “It’s all…


‘The Lusiads’: An Epic Poem Celebrating the Portuguese Nation

The weapons and barons marked, That from the western Lusitana beach, By seas never sailed before. Most Portuguese people know these opening lines of “The Lusiads” (“Os Lusiadas”), a Portuguese epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões, first published in 1572. Written three years after the poet’s return from India, it narrates Vasco Da Gama’s…


Giovanni Bellini: A Pioneering Renaissance Artist

While a photograph of Giovanni Bellini’s “Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan” may give the illusion of a photographed actor in costume rather than a painted portrait; the artwork displays exquisite but restrained beauty. The doge’s robe and face appear to have the realistic textures of silk and skin: The folds in the silk and creases…


Marie de’ Medici and the Continuation of the Medici Family Art Patronage

Of all the masterpieces in the Louvre, none has a more appropriate home than the 24 paintings glorifying the life and reign of Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France. Painted by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, the series known as the “Marie de’ Medici Cycle” (1622–1625), are among the greatest artistic achievements of their age….


Explainer: Music and the Hierarchy of Experience

Consider these two sets of English words: “My cat Gracie has thick gray fur and a cold wet nose.” “Gracie fur My thick has cold and nose gray cat a wet.” The first group is a standard sentence conveying information about a cat with thick gray hair named “Gracie” who belongs to me and has…