Even before changing the architecture, the nightclub changed people’s desires. By the late 1960s, the Romagna Riviera already boasted a highly developed entertainment infrastructure: hotels, guesthouses, dance halls, restaurants, swimming…
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“This is the true way to cook roasts.” Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, 1452 – Amboise, 1519) is not the sort of man to make such a categorical statement in a treatise on natural philosophy or a fortification design: in fact, he…
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“When the last shipment from the Marche region arrived in Rome, some of the most notable works were unpacked from their crates in a hall at Palazzo Venezia so that their condition could be assessed before they were transported to the…
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Alex Da Corte was born in Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest cities in the United States, and grew up in New Jersey, Pittsburgh, and Caracas. This biographical detail is not merely incidental: it is the center of gravity of his entire…
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For several decades now, sharing one’s travel experiences in a wide variety of ways—from blog posts to Instagram Reels and live streams—has been all the rage, and talking about travel experiences is considered cool, but this…
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While historiography on Caravaggio’s*Saint Francis* has struggled to find its bearings, it is in *The Arrest of Christ* that the house of cards of bureaucratic exegesis collapses spectacularly under the weight of geometry. Documents…
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When I began collecting my first RAUs (Urban Archaeological Finds) in 1995, I was searching for traces of a daily life that was slipping away: the remnants of a civilization devoted to consumption and, ultimately, to a slow…
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After Mark Rothko’s death, the critic Harold Rosenberg, a theorist of Action Painting, wrote an obituary for the painter in *The New Yorker*, in which he described him as a “reductive theologian of painting.” He intended…
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The changing of the seasons exists because Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, wanted a woman to love. But what young woman would agree to leave Earth to live in the Underworld forever? The solution was abduction, a recurring plot device in…
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In the center of Lucca and many other cities in Tuscany, as summer gives way to fall and the days begin to cool and the sun sets early, a scent rises from the small braziers placed at street intersections—a scent that everyone by now…
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Archival research, when conducted with expertise and diligence, always yields positive results: this is evident from the research that Giuseppe Petralia conducted in various archives on topics related to the medieval history of Tuscany and…
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On the night of 1864, a devastating fire swept through the Schielandshuis Palace in the heart of Rotterdam, reducing to ashes more than two-thirds of the art collections accumulated up to that point by the city museum, which had been…
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The title of the major Allegri exhibition in Dresden is surprising; it certainly stands apart from any other current designation for an art event, particularly one focusing on historical art. There is no doubt that, over the generations…
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Anyone who happened to be on Madison Avenue in New York in early February of this year certainly couldn’t have failed to notice the gleaming Breuer Building, which had just been restored and recently reopened to house the new global…
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With Christ at the center and the apostles arranged on either side—Judas recognizable among the diners—when viewing aLast Supper, the eye is drawn first and foremost to the scene and its figures. But in large, monumental Last Supper…
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There are surfaces that embrace color, and then there are surfaces that put it to the test. When you stand before a painting by Michael Armitage (Nairobi, 1984), the first thing you realize is that the paint, there, had to carve out its…
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