The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence announced the reopening of its main chapel with the completion of its extensive restoration. If you find yourself in Florence within the next year, the scaffolding used for the restoration remains and visitors can have a rare opportunity to see upper registers up close. However, even those of…
The Ohio State University Libraries has published an online edition of the Popol Vol (Wuj) from the Newberry Library in Chicago. The manuscript (sometimes translated as Book of the Community) is the creation account of the Quiché (K’iche’) Mayan people — their stories of the cosmologies, origins, traditions, and spiritual history. According to the Newberry,…
Eighteen months ago we announced the launch of Your Paintings, a BBC-hosted site “which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real.” The site, co-funded by The Public Catalogue Foundation, announced it has completed its task. This translates into 3,217…
The Rembrandt Database is dedicated to gathering and presenting past and current scholarship (with their sources) about the 17th-century Netherlandish artist. Still in beta, the goal of the site is to foster “a platform for the presentation of new interpretations” through a collaborative effort between numerous museums, research institutions and individual scholars worldwide. Currently there…
The Courtauld Institute of Art has launched the Gothic Ivories Project, an online database of over 2800 images of ivory sculptures made in Western Europe between ca. 1200-ca. 1530 (with some neo-Gothic pieces as well). Search specifics, browse works by keyword, location and type, or visit the informational pages for site tips and tools. Additionally,…
There is an item in the New York Times today about how infrared photography revealed a portrait of a man with a mustache painted on the canvas before Picasso painted Woman Ironing. The painting was recently cleaned and the ghost portrait is quite clear. And the NYT employs some nifty technology to illustrate it: Rotate the…