The resplendent art of the Italian Renaissance sometimes blinds us to the fact that the Renaissance was not a joyful time in which to live. Famines, plagues, and above all wars made life uncertain and unsettled; and the thought that God might one day, and perhaps one day soon, put an end to it all…
The world didn’t come to an end in the year 1000, as some had predicted it might; and in the years after the millennium, a grand and beautiful style of architecture, decorated with astonishing sculpture, burst forth, to meet the needs of the faithful and particularly of the pilgrims who marched across France on their…
History begins with the cities of ancient Sumer, in southern Iraq; it is here that writing was first invented. But this first writing was used almost exclusively to record financial transactions; and so the visual arts, developed into a disciplined system to promote the power of the rulers of early Mesopotamia, give us access to…
In the middle of the 18th Dynasty, in the period of Egypt’s New Kingdom, a young pharaoh suddenly changed his name to Helper of the Sun, closed the great temples, moved the country’s capital, and declared worship of the Aten, the disc of the Sun, to be the sole state religion. To promote this radical…
Soon after ascending the throne at age 13, King Louis XV of France decided to abandon governance in favor of a life of sensual pleasures, to be enjoyed with his wife, mistresses official and unofficial, and countless encounters with young adventuresses brought to him from many parts of his country. The formalities and complexities of…
We see Greek vases standing in quiet dignity in museum galleries, their lovely shapes designed for service and display. But more than any other art form, the decorations on them give us a most vivid insight into the lives and character of the ancient Greeks. Painted with the greatest artistry, often by artists who signed…
France was the most advanced and most prosperous country in the world during the 19th century. It was also dynamic and politically unstable, undergoing four changes of constitution before 1900. The visual arts, and in particular painting, played an important role in the social turmoil of the French republic. Controversies about social class, gender, and economic equity played out in art as much as in the press. This lecture explores many of these topics and the painters who alternately championed or turned their backs on the great causes of their time — including David, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet.
Modern viewers often see the icon — a type of religious image still in use in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches — as a charming and somewhat primitive type of painting. Nothing could be further from the truth. The icon, from its earliest inception, is a highly intellectual and consciously spiritualized image. The beliefs with which icons are infused are so powerful that they have led to their being outlawed for a time in the 8th and 9th centuries, but their meanings are so profound that their use has survived even the most concerted attempts to stifle them. In this lecture, Dr. Schrader introduces the theology behind the icon, briefly recounts the history of icons in the West, and explains the meanings behind some of the most important individual types of religious image.
Decorating walls with paintings made on fresh plaster is a grimy, laborious practice, which in the Middle Ages was thought to be the most mechanical and craftsman-like task of the painter. Beginning in the 14th century, however, higher artistic standards began to reveal just how splendid a chamber transformed by fresco painting could be. By the end of the 15th century, the fresco painter was hailed as the most ambitious and able artist of all. In this lecture we learn the techniques — good and bad — that mural painters used. See how truly great painters, such as Botticelli and Ghirlandaio in the 15th century and Michelangelo and Raphael in the 16th century, triumphed as fresco artists above all others.
The motives behind forging art are simple. Art objects are often worth a great deal of money, and those who want to buy them can’t always recognize the difference between an original and an imitation. Some of the most interesting and outrageous episodes in the history of collecting art have been instigated by forgers and their victims. This lecture outlines forgery from ancient Rome until modern times. Recounted are scandals involving artists as famous as Michelangelo, and stories of forgers who bested some of the great collectors and museums of modern times.
