In the summer of 1610, the 39-year-old painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was on the run, sleeping with his hand on his sword. He had risen from selling his art on the streets of Rome to the heights of national fame. Now, he was traveling through Tuscany, hoping the law didn’t pick up on his trail before he reached Rome, ... Read More »
News comes today that the somewhat controversial “La Belle Ferronnière”, a painting most likely from the 18th Century and once questionably attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, has sold through Sotheby’s auction house at the princely sum of $1.5 million, about twice what it was expected to garner. Beautiful as it is, “La Belle” has been through the critical ringer ... Read More »
In Vienna, Austria, today, the Kunsthistorisches Museum unveiled a masterful restoration of Joannes Vermeer’s legendary masterwork, “The Art of Painting” (c.1666, left). More than just an example of one of time’s greatest painters portraying the practice of his own craft while at the height of his powers, the work is a political and historical hot potato—a national treasure of a ... Read More »
Back when “Avatar” was just a gleam in James Cameron’s eye, a photographer took some shots of China’s “Southern Sky Column” (above, right), a series of finger-like mountain peaks in Zhangjiajie in the country’s southern Hunan province. Somehow, the story goes, pictures of this natural wonder and UNESCO World Heritage site made their way to the director, who recycled ... Read More »
Even though the area has only recently been populated in the scheme of human history, the sprawling mansions of Southern California have whipped up quite a tradition of hauntings in a relatively short amount of time. There’s the famous Winchester Mystery house (filled with trap doors, false stairways, and Native American spirits) in San Jose, the home of ’50s ... Read More »
In film, a medium where commerce meets creativity like no other, there’s a yawning chasm between the hack directors who churn out the latest studio fodder on time and on budget, and the auteurs who stand by their personal visions come hell, high water, or test audiences. The decision to stick by your guns or bow to studio pressure can ... Read More »
As one of the Michaelangelo works at the Vatican that have just undergone a $4 million restoration, a critical debate is brewing over “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter” and the naughty bits of the martyred saint. You step into the Pauline Chapel at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and there he is, twisting his neck and shoulders to lock ... Read More »
It was one of those “I want to go to there” moments — Werner Herzog, perhaps the most mavericky maverick director ever, was convening a one-time-only “Rogue Film School”. It was almost as much as a surprise as the news that the director of “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” and “Grizzly Man” would also be the director of “Bad Lieutenant: ... Read More »
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