This image looks very old, but it was taken in 1984 — it is a picture of a sacred pillar in the religious shrine, or “terreiro,” called the Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká. It is the oldest shrine in Brazil of the syncretic religion Candomblé. And if you’ve never heard of Candomblé, that’s not very […]
Terreiro – The Oldest Religious Shrine in Brazil Read More »
“The Veiled Christ” is famed among art historians, and with good reason. Crafted in 1752 by the artist Giuseppe Sanmartino, the sculpture seems to defy the medium it was made of, with the fabric of the shroud covering Christ’s body appearing translucent and thin — you can see nail holes in his hands, the contours
“The Veiled Christ” Statue Read More »
These Chinese tiny stick drawings contain precious information — very few could understand it in the second century BCE when they were inscribed in silk and placed in the famous Mawangdui tomb, but modern astronomers have studied such markings to learn about the history of celestial objects of the distant past.These are renderings of different
Chinese Stick Drawings of Comets Read More »
I have a good story for this Mother’s Day in the U.S.. It comes from a Hindu myth found in a sacred text called _The Bhagavata Purana_ (8th-10th c), which tells the story of the maternal love of Yasoda for her foster son, the God Krishna.Yasoda had no idea that she was raising a divine
Yasoda and Her Foster Son God Krishna Read More »
There is a stereotype about how vikings loved their beer and mead, and it wasn’t invented by Marvel Comics. Here, you see a stone carved with a scene of Scandinavians from the Early Middle Ages and they are enjoying their alcohol. In the Old Norse poem _Grímnismál_, some of the deceased warriors await the final
Traditional Norse Beer Drinking Read More »
The sculpture you see here shows two decidedly feminine figures, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they face the sea, their hair whipping in the breeze. It is an utterly modern imagining of two real-life woman pirates from the early 1700’s, and says even more about 2020, when this artwork was unveiled, than it does about the actual
Female Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read Read More »
Until my student @pookastanley did a research project on the role of the Evil Eye in the Ancient Greek tradition, I had not realized how enduring and powerful this idea has been. Its history extends at least as far back as the 6th century BCE when Greek “eye cups” appear in the archaeological record, as shown in
The Evil Eye in Ancient History Read More »
Maybe because this was my first post-COVID museum, or maybe because I have a thing for eccentric homes built by ultra-rich early 20th-century Americans, but I have only superlatives to say about Fonthill Castle in rural Doylestown Pennsylvania.Henry Chapman Mercer, an independently wealthy archaeologist and tile manufacturer, had this palace made between 1908-1912. Influenced by
Henry Mercer’s Fonthill Castle Read More »
Why do the same themes repeat in folklore — are they accidental? Do they reflect transmission of ideas? Or do they emerge out of a common social pattern? The tale of Bluebeard, first famously inscribed by Charles Perrault in 1697, tells a story featuring the trope of “young beautiful women whose curiosity results in bad
Charles Perrault’s “The Tale of Bluebeard” Read More »
This is the super cool Nebra Sky Disk, which most archaeologists think is the oldest picture of an actual astronomical scene. Looking at the bronze (the blue-green patina might have been deliberate) background with the gold ornamentation, ancient peoples could have been able to figure out when it was time to put an extra month
Ancient Nebra Sky Disk Read More »
It might look like this is a Medieval European painting at first glance, but it isn’t — check out the writing, the orange and blue dominant tones, the clothing of the small figures, and the directional patterns of the lines. This is an Ethiopian mural from the 1600s.And what it depicts is suggestive regarding a
Ethiopian Artwork and the Black Plague Read More »
This is ink drawing by the Medieval Japanese master artist Sesson Shūkei dates from around 1570 and represents my favorite elements of this type of art. Called “Gibbons in a Landscape,” it shows the animals trying to take hold of the moon’s reflection in the water. You can see a closeup in the second slide
Japanese Ink Drawing “Gibbons in a Landscape” Read More »
“The Great City of Benin,” at one time called Edo, is a place I wish I could time-travel back to. It was completely destroyed by Bristish armies in the late 19th century, but in pre-colonial times it was one of the largest Medieval cities in the world, the capital of the Benin Empire.The walls of
The Great City of Benin Read More »
This is a divination tray, or “opon ifá”, dating from the early twentieth century. Used for hundreds of years by the Yoruba peoples of west Africa, the opon ifá belonged to a diviner-priest called a “babalawo” who would consult the Gods and ancestors in order to help someone make an important decision or find a
Divination Trays of 20th Century West Africa Read More »
In Rome during the first and second centuries, explicit evidence abounds about heterosexual desire for women, such as in the story of Europa, featured here in this first-century fresco from Pompeii. Another appears in the novel __Leucippe and Clitophon_, which relays the repeated abductions of the heroine Leucippe, who successfully escapes and consumates her romance
Ancient Roman Female Heterosexuality Read More »
Slavery in the Ancient Roman Empire was an entrenched and ubiquitous part of life. Around one of every seven people in the second century was enslaved, and that fact shaped the social lives of Romans in all sorts of ways, including how they thought about sex.This is a sketch of a fourth century CE slave
Ancient Roman Slavery and Prostitution Read More »
The prevalence of slavery in Ancient Rome impacted the sex lives of Roman men, both free and slave. One of the ways it did was by how people thought about male-to-male sexual intercourse.In Classical Athens, there was a common practice of pederasty among men of different ages: an older man was a sort of tutor
Ancient Rome and Homosexuality Read More »
The Ancient Romans were not shy about generating erotic sex scenes in their art and literature. In the Late Empire of the second and third centuries, so much evidence surrounding the pleasures of sex abounded that it can be easy to imagine the Romans (well, the male citizen Romans) solely as pleasure-seeking sensualists.But we also
Ancient Rome and Sexual Restraint Read More »
Here is a picture of the Flemish artist Hans Memling’s _Allegory of Chastity_, and although it was done in the 15th century, it testifies to the long-term effects of Christianity’s radical sexual revolution that had begun a millennium and a half before.Here you see Chastity, besieged by the lions of sexual behavior that would threaten
Hans Memling’s “Allegory of Chastity” Read More »
The Italian city of Ravenna boasts the highest concentration of mosaics from the Late Antique period of Roman history. And featured here you see one of the most famous — a scene from the Procession of the Virgins in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Set against the tiled background of shimmering gold, these two women calmly march forward.
Portion of the Italian Mosaic “The Procession of the Virgins in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo” Read More »
