PAGE CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED--SEPTEMBER 12, 2023.

Christopher R.W Nevinson (1889-1946), "The Unending Cult of Human Sacrifice", 1934, oil on canvas, 46 cm x 61 cm (18.11 in x 24.0 in). International War Museum, London.

"For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure and it amazes us so...”   Rainer Maria Rilke

Art & Power
Summer 2023

Select Features

BEAUTY AS TERROR: 
​The Vision of C R W Nevinson 

SUNDAY AT THE LODGE WITH HERMANN GÖRING: Reflections on Civilized Brutality

THE FINE ARTS OF WAR: Holbein, Cranach and Dürer As You Never Knew Them  

"It was a thrilling period: the Renaissance of English art was at hand. The artists were ready, and the canvas was the battlefield of Europe..."--Nevile A.D.  Wallis, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts
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"A world of men enslaved to a terrific machine of their own making..."--Laurence Binyon  (1869-1943)

“For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which are barely able to endure and it amazes us so...” Thus wrote the poet Rilke with his characteristic grace and mystery, capturing the peculiar uneasiness that is felt in witnessing works of Nature or art that seem to overwhelm the senses.  Then, there is a form of Beauty-as-Terror that takes this sentiment a step further: the stunning Renaissance tradition of craftsmanship in weapons of dignified destruction.

THE BATTLE OF THE BATTLES OF LEPANTO

​The naval clash of civilizations that inspired some of the most breathtaking interpretations in the history of art. Herein a selection of the top six.  Continued...

​They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun....
                                       --Lepanto, G. K. Chesterton,  1927

"This wave of Christian chivalry that thus swept Cervantes with it culminated in the famous battle of Lepanto, one of the world's great sea-fights. That day the 7th of October, 1571 was the finest moment in the life of Cervantes. He was weak and ill of a fever when the battle began, he received three gunshot wounds in the course of it, and his left hand was permanently maimed, yet his share in the glory of that day was ever afterwards a source of pride and joy."
                     --Havelock Ellis The Tercentenary of "Don Quixote", The North American Review, May 1905                    

THE MELANCHOLY OF GOYA

The Disasters of War is a series of 82  prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746–1828). The name by which the series is known today is not Goya's own. His handwritten title on an album of proofs given to a friend reads: Fatal Consequences of Spain's Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices (Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte, Y otros caprichos enfáticos

Regular Feature:
What Makes This Painting Great?
Conversations with a Curator

Gabriele Reina, PhD.   
The Luigi M. Koelliker Collection
Summer 2023

The mystery of the Davide e Golia (1625) of Tanzio da Varallo, the beautiful and little-known Pinacoteca that is home to this splendid work and many more and other erudite expositions across a wide canvas of imagination, ideas and inspiration. 

Antonio d'Enrico (Tanzio da Varallo), 1575/1580, Davide e Golia, ca. 1625, oil on canvas. Museo civico, Varallo

​Special: Old Piemonte

TORINO NOBILISSIMO:
​Italy's Savoyard Saint Petersburg 

THE LOVE OF LIBERTY: 
The Great Liberty Villas of Biella 

     TOMORROW IN NOVARA:
​     A Secret Stunner at the Crossroads of History

GRAND TOUR:
MARVELLOUS MONFERRATO

GOURMANDISES:
​​The Wines of Gattinara & Ghemme; Tomino Among the Walser; Dreaming Piemontese: L'Assiette Fromage 

MASTERPIECES & MASTERMINDS:
Riccardo Gualino (1879-1964): The Art of the Grand Seigneur

MASTERPIECES & MASTERMINDS:
An Architectural Holy Trinity

The World of Yesterday: Regular Feature

Stresa and Pallanza: The Mood of a Northern Aristocracy

Literature & Essays: Regular Features

CLASSICS YOU'VE MISSED

My Life
 Benvenuto Cellini

The first, last and best word on the relationship between art and power.  The Thomas Roscoe 1822 translation, please.

THE CHRONICLES OF DAMNATIO MEMORIAE


Castles & the Heir