Art

Stranger Magic

by PamelaToler May 18, 2013

by Pamela Toler I’m fascinated by the Arabian Nights. By the stories themselves and the way they fit together into their complicated frame story. By their transformation from Arabic street tales to a established position in the Western canon. By their echoes in Western culture, from the Romantic poets to Disney. So I was delighted [...]

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The Jeffers Petroglyphs: Historical Treasure in an Unexpected Place

by JackEl-Hai May 9, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor The Upper Midwest of the U.S. is not well known for its archaeological treasures, and it’s easy to see why. The region has utterly transformed over the past 200 years through the loss of 99 percent of its tall grass prairie, the felling of most of its original [...]

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Does my bottom look big …? Bizarre Roman Beauty

by CarolineLawrence November 15, 2012

by Caroline Lawrence Magnusne culus meus in hac videtur? ‘Does my bottom look big in this?’ A first century Roman woman would have asked this question hoping for the answer maximē! (You bet!) Ideals of female beauty have always varied throughout the centuries, from the well-padded women of Rubens’ time to the androgynous flappers of [...]

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Diana, Callisto and Philip II

by Helen King August 10, 2012

By Helen King Between 1553 and 1562, Titian painted a number of mythological scenes for Philip II. Among these was a painting of Diana and Callisto. In the story, told most famously by the Roman poet Ovid, Callisto is one of the unmarried girls forming the virgin goddess’s entourage. Jupiter catches sight of her, and [...]

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The Art of the Book

by PamelaToler February 19, 2012

By Pamela Toler The Islamic world created illuminated manuscripts that rivaled anything that came out of a medieval monastery: Qu’rans, historical chronicles, stories of the prophets, the deeds of kings, lyric poetry, heroic epics, philosophy, scientific treatises, and romantic tales. Caliphs, courtiers, and wealthy merchants commissioned manuscripts from the ninth century until well into the [...]

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Man’s Best Friend: Dogs in Pharaonic Egypt

by Marc Merlin February 14, 2012

by Annie Shanley (Atlanta Science Tavern Contributor) Dogs were popular pets in ancient Egypt and were the objects of genuine affection by kings, nobles, and laborers. While not all ancient animals were given names, over 75 dog names have been identified and usually refer to the color or character of the dog. That owners cared [...]

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Goya’s Madhouse

by Holly Tucker December 28, 2011

By Nabeela Ahmad (Vanderbilt University) In 1789, the French National Assembly proposed a radical document, “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” which delineated what would later become the basis of the French Constitution. In 1790, the Assembly released several decrees to ensure provisions within the declaration. The following decree provides a startling [...]

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A Marvelous Dinner Party

by cjones November 18, 2011

Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, had a serious passion for porcelain. She took a leading role in patronage and artistic influence at the French manufactory at Vincennes, which produced the finest objects in the realm in the 1750s. The king provided the economic support to ensure that Pompadour and his court could [...]

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Mozart and Machine Guns

by Holly Tucker November 6, 2011

By Matt Rees The last time someone shot a machine-gun at me, I remember listening to the ricochets off the nearby rocks and thinking: Mozart sounds a lot better than this. I was crouching behind a concrete block on the edge of the West Bank town of Ramallah and I still don’t know if the [...]

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The woman who almost married Mozart

by stephaniecowell October 29, 2011

by Stephanie Cowell (Wonders & Marvels contributor) Mozart almost didn’t marry his lovely wife; he almost married her older sister. And if he had married the sister, I believe we’d be missing a great deal of his music today. When Mozart was twenty-one and unemployed, he was invited to the home of a violinist Fridolin [...]

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The Lost Wife

by Holly Tucker October 26, 2011

By Alyson Richman “The Lost Wife”, began as a personal journey for me. I wanted to write about artists during the Holocaust because I wanted to explore how the creative spirit couldn’t be suppressed, even in the most horrific circumstances. The initial seed of inspiration originated after reading in The New York Times about an [...]

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Louis XIV and his Marvelous Legs

by cjones October 22, 2011

By Christine A. Jones (Wonders & Marvels contributor) The young Dauphin loved the stage. He famously danced the role of the Sun to the delight of the court at the age of 13. Later, when he began his personal reign at the age of 21, he adopted this allegory as his legendary alter-ego. Louis XIV [...]

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Conisbrough Castle, Yorkshire

by Holly Tucker October 11, 2011

By Charles Stephenson By the second half of the 12th century, great towers were becoming ever more architecturally exuberant. One famous example is the whimsical keep built in the 1160s by King Henry II (1154-89) on the Suffolk coast at Orford. Another is the tower built a decade or so later at Conisbrough by the [...]

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The Architecture of Romance

by cjones September 24, 2011

By Christine A. Jones (W&M Contributor) Not long after the construction of the legendary Taj Mahal, Louis XIV built a monument to passion, but it was not for his wife, Queen Maria Theresa. Over the course of his reign, he fell in love with other women who came to live at Versailles. His second paramour, the [...]

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An Old Man and His Garden: The Story Behind Giverny

by Holly Tucker September 9, 2011

By Stephanie Cowell Claude Monet always wanted a garden, but his years as a struggling artist had seldom allowed it. He was forty-three years old and still rather poor when he first rented the house at Giverny. He had recently lost his beloved wife Camille. He moved in with his two sons, his new sweetheart [...]

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