a place for renaissance and early modern visual culture
Five Fun Things: The Queen of Hearts Edition (February 2023)
1. Did you know that there was a vogue for heart-shaped books in the fifteenth century? I learned this fact last weekend, when I heard a wonderful talk by Niki Dinensis. Here’s a fun short piece on the heart-shaped book in fifteenth-century Europe (mostly northern Europe), and if you would like to make your own…
Keep readingFive Fun Things: January 2023
I know – January is almost over. But better late than never, right? Did you notice, on your visits to the Frick, that none of their Italian Renaissance portraits depicted female subjects? It probably says something about me that I never noticed this deficiency. (I was probably too busy looking at their small bronzes…) In…
Keep readingFive Fun Things… & One Cool Object
Introducing a new monthly column, where we feature five fun things that caught our attention, and one cool object. Because sometimes you just need a list, yeah? No extra verbiage. 5 Fun Things Michealina Wautier at the MFA, Boston. Much Ado about Vermeer: 3 contested Vermeer paintings included in the Rijksmuseum show as autograph works,…
Keep readingA Recipe for Gingerbread, courtesy of a 17th-century manuscript
Clara Peeters, A glass of red wine, a sprig of rosemary, and sweetmeats on a pewter platter (also known as Allegory of Marriage), c. 1607. Current whereabouts unknown. In early November, I participated in EMROC’s Transcribathon, and I ended up transcribing a seventeenth-century recipe for gingerbread. The recipe opened up a fascinating window into the…
Keep readingIn the generally-accepted opinion of experts
This month marks the five-year anniversary of Christie’s historic Salvator Mundi sale. A piece on authenticity warranties by Anny Shaw made me think more deeply about what the concept of “scholarly consensus” means in a scholarly or academic setting, and why the “generally-accepted opinion of experts” might take on a different resonance in a legal…
Keep readingYour Kitchen is a Time Machine: An interview with Marissa Nicosia of Cooking in the Archives
By Cynthia Houng I’ve been following Marissa Nicosia and her food history/cooking blog, Cooking in the Archives, for a few years now. I was delighted when Marissa graciously consented to an interview with Ars Longa. Marissa is a true polymath: a scholar of Renaissance/Early Modern literature, food history, and political theory, a professor at Penn…
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