Diane Tucker wrote the loveliest blog post on the frescoes done by Giotto, in a chapel called the Scrovegni. The pictures are glorious. I would only add that, when I read the story I didn’t pay enough attention to the picture showing the entire chapel interior. Look closely and realize that all the frescoes are [...]
Category: national gallery of art
Michel-Eugene Chevreul, French Catholic scientist
Michel-Eugene Chevreul was a French chemist who lived to be 103 (1786—1889). The Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent* calls him a physicist, and philosopher, as well as chemist. His work on fats and fatty acids was so useful to the French soap and candle industries in the 19th century that he is one of the [...]
Two fun reads…
... this week. Plus an update. Diane Tucker has a website called The Shy Museumgoer. I happen to love museums and am not shy about them, but never mind. She has gorgeous pictures on her website, and she wrote an article about Saint Joseph in November. https://theshymuseumgoer.com/2023/11/01/why-look-at-paintings-of-saint-joseph/ Diane has a brief discussion of his depiction [...]
Pictures today!
For some reason this post disappeared once already... Anyway I was reading something about Dante and there were beautiful pictures of manuscripts of the Divine Comedy from the 1300s. I never thought about what they would have looked like. This one probably is a little fancier than most. Don Simone Camaldolese 1300's Public domain. Next [...]
Dante: Art from Paradiso.
Nora Hamerman, the friend who took me to the National Gallery last week, did a lecture series on Dante in Paradise last year. I completely missed it. (To be honest, I was just getting started on Dante and was intimidated.) It has PICTURES. And quotes. Gorgeous pictures. Gorgeous quotes. You can look at her slide [...]