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One of the great delights of wandering a museum in person (rather than online or in a book) is serendipity. I hadn't realized the gilded plaster cast of Sherman's Memorial…
I'll soon be visiting the National Gallery in D.C. for the first time in at least ten years. This batch of must-see favorites are portraits of fascinating women, 15th-19th centuries.…
Over drinks with James Bond, Domino describes her first hero: the sailor whose face appears on Player's Cigarettes. The story she made up about him fills 3 or 4 pages in Thunderball, Ian Fleming's…
The Scots gave us "Hogmanay" (their name for the celebration of New Year's Eve) and Robert Burns, whose version of a Scottish folk song, "Auld Lang Syne," is popular from…
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, museums were built to impress: when you walked into the grand entrance, there would be a moment when you stopped in your…
One of the genres of that reappeared during the Renaissance was portraiture: hundreds of meticulously executed paintings have survived. Sculptured portraits are far fewer, and sculptured portraits with added color are even…
Years ago when I first started to work on Innovators in Painting (it was called the Crash Cruise Course then), I found it difficult to appreciate Raphael. He didn't have Leonardo's…
After I've spent time looking at medieval art, this Italian Adoration of the Magi of the mid-15th century always makes me smile. Peacocks! Arches! Parades! Linear perspective! Lavish costumes and almost-naked men! There's…
Since it's the week of Christmas, here's two more of my favorite works from the National Gallery that happen to be on religious subjects. This one was done about 120…
I'm a fan of all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo), but this work at the National Gallery also made it to my favorites list. This is…
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