Composition and effects of different types of varnish, with its visual effects, and how it can make a painting unreadable when it contains accumulated dirt.
Category Archive: Life
How Dante meets up with Virgil, and is guided by him down to the deepest circle of Hell. About the other two books, covering Purgatory and Paradise.
The Monets and Sisley’s moved on in 1878, leaving only Renoir to visit and paint in the summer. Then in 1881, Gustave Caillebotte got a property nearby, and continued to paint the river here.
Claude Monet and family rented a house there, and were joined by Alfred Sisley and his family. Renoir came to visit, and the three painted the river and its bridges together.
Half a millennium later, a British artist paints the interior of Botticelli’s studio, with members of the de’ Medici family. How accurate could that be?
They tried to lure Odysseus and his crew to their deaths, and the same with Jason and his Argonauts. With the head of a beautiful woman and the legs of a bird, their singing was alluring to sailors.
With much of the Dutch Republic close to water, views of the coast became marines, those of cities showed boats busy nearby, and the countryside was overrun by rivers.
The new medium of the latter half of the 20th century, and how pioneers like Sam Golden transformed it to make it suitable as a replacement for oils.
To the depths of Hell, to see the giant triple-headed Lucifer eating Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. Then as dawn draws near, back to the world above.
How Lycurgus got the Spartans to keep his laws, the 300 at Thermopylae, a Spartan poet supporting warriors in the 2nd Messenian War, and the role of Sparta in the start of the war against Troy.
The Eclectic Light Company 