Michelangelo’s Pietà is one of the greatest works of art ever created. It’s divine beauty is so great, that it has driven people mad and made observers weep. Ever since Laszlo Toth’s attack of the statue in 1972, during which he damaged with work with a hammer, the Pietà has been kept under bullet proof glass in St. Peter’s Basilica ... Read More »
What may be one of the most wonderful discoveries of the past hundred years in Art History was found not in desert sands or buried deep in museum archives, but rather behind a couch in the modest home of a family in Buffalo, New York. A painting that thus far only family lore attributed to Michelanglo was rediscovered tucked ... Read More »
If you have ever visited Michelagelo’s breathtaking Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, you will know that much of the awe is marred by the shoulder to shoulder tourists filling the surprisingly small space. Tourists who are talking loudly and being shouted at by guards to not take pictures. So when last week the Vatican museum’s director, Antonio Paoluccio, announced ... Read More »
Being travel guides, we always advocate putting your heels to the pavement and seeking out art, music and film locations yourself. Flipping through a coffee-table book of Caravaggios naturally pales in comparison to seeing his Contarelli Chapel murals up close and in person. But even we have to admit that one can’t see every worthwhile piece of art or ... Read More »
A fascinating little piece in the New York Times today looks at the once-contentious relationship between the Renaissance arts scenes of Florence and Rome through two current exhibitions just a few neighborhoods away from each other in Manhattan. While Rome is represented in one corner by the Morgan Museum & Library’s Rome After Raphael exhibition, which features a slew ... Read More »
God bless the juvenile minds over at Cracked for going on a rather tawdry “Easter Egg hunt” in the European classics. They find a gigantic brain in Michaelangelo’s “Sistine Chapel” fresco (1475-83), porn in the same artist’s “Last Judgement” (1534-1541), and, yes, bared backsides in Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs” (1559, left). It’s a touch “The Da Vinci Code”, but ... Read More »
Stumbling, bumbling, a guest at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art fell into an early Picasso work on Friday, tearing a six-inch scar into one of its lower corners. It was nothing personal—the woman simply lost her footing during an adult education course at the museum—and, of course, museum staff quickly took the work, “The Actor” (1904, left), over to the ... Read More »
Yesterday we had a good laugh at the expense of the cast of ‘2012.’ But a look at the film’s official trailer got us thinking … is no landmark safe from Hollywood effects people? Can you spot the ones that get destroyed in ‘2012’? Let’s find them…after the jump. Read More »
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