Here is a set of essays on Historia general del Piru that discuss not only the manuscript's physical components – quires and watermarks, scripts and pigments – but also its relation to other Andean manuscripts, Inca textiles, European portraits, and...

Mantegna's magnificent painting, in the Getty collection, is based on one of Christianity's most beloved stories. The picture is much more than a Christmas-card image though. Dawson Carr explores Mantegna's life and milieu in fifteenth-century Padua...

In his History of Early Rome, the ancient historian Livy tells the story of a Roman girl named Cloelia who was taken prisoner by Larth Porsena, the king of the Etruscans. Cloelia came up with a daring plan of escape from her Etruscan captors and in t...

Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) – court physician to the King of Saxony – was a naturalist, amateur painter and theoretician of landscape painting whose "Nine Letters on Landscape Painting" is an important document of early German Romanticism and an ap...

Much has been written about the identity of the sitter in this portrait. In 1568, Vasari noted that "Pontormo" painted a beautiful work, a portrait of Francesco Guardi. In 1612, however, the name of Cosimo i de' Medici was attached to a description o...

Dosso Dossi has long been considered one of Renaissance Italy's most intriguing artists. Although a wealth of documents chronicles his life, he remains, in many ways, an enigma, and his art continues to be as elusive as it is compelling. In "Dosso's...

During the 1000-year history of Ancient Rome, the Romans developed a vast and sophisticated society that would produce a lasting legacy for Western culture. This is an overview of all facets of Ancient Roman society, including chapters devoted to Rom...

This is a translation of the 1802 introduction to studio practices for sculpture students by Francesco Carradori (1747-1824), a sculptor, restorer, and instructor of sculpture at the Accademia in Florence from 1786 to 1821. Carradori's instructions a...

During the last millennium BC, before the coming of the Romans, the Etruscans built a thriving civilization in the western Mediterranean basin, which was rich in natural resources. From the eighth century BC, Etruria became a destination on the Itali...

Edmund Teske (1911-1996) was one of the alchemists of twentieth-century American photography. Over a sixty-year period, he created a diverse body of work that explored the expressive and emotional potentials of the medium. His drive to experiment wit...