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“O Uommibatto”: How the Pre-Raphaelites Became Obsessed with the Wombat

- January 10, 2019 in Art & Illustrations, australia, Cheyne Walk, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Featured Articles, Jane Morris, poetry, Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti's wombat, Top the wombat, william morris, wombats

Angus Trumble on Dante Gabriel Rossetti and co's curious but longstanding fixation with the furry oddity that is the wombat — that "most beautiful of God's creatures" which found its way into their poems, their art, and even, for a brief while, their homes.

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Elephants, Horses, and the Proportions of Paradise

- November 5, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, geometry, how to draw, ideal elephant, ideal horse, noah's ark, paradise, perfect elephant, perfect horse, proportion

Does each species have an optimal form? An ideal beauty that existed prior to the Fall? And if so could this be recreated on both paper and in life? These were questions that concerned both artists and breeders alike in the 17th-century. Dániel Margócsy on the search for a menagerie of perfect prelapsarian geometry.

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Grandville, Visions, and Dreams

- September 26, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, Books, caricature, Featured Articles, grandville, illustration, J.J. Grandville, satire, surrealism

With its dreamlike inversions and kaleidoscopic cast of anthropomorphic objects, animals, and plants, the world of French artist J. J. Grandville is at once both delightful and disquieting. Patricia Mainardi explores the unique work of this 19th-century illustrator now recognised as a major precursor and inspiration to the Surrealist movement.

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Bringing the Ocean Home

- June 21, 2018 in anemones, aquariums, Art & Illustrations, Books, fish, inventor of the aquarium, philip henry gosse, Religion, Myth & Legend, Science & Medicine

Bernd Brunner on the English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse and how his 1854 book The Aquarium, complete with spectacular illustrations and a dizzy dose of religious zeal, sparked a craze for the "ocean garden" that gripped Victorian Britain.

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Early Modern Memes: The Reuse and Recycling of Woodcuts in 17th-Century English Popular Print

- June 6, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, ballads, Books, Culture & History, internet memes, meme culture, woodcuts

Expensive and laborious to produce, a single woodcut could be recycled to illustrate hundreds of different ballads, each new home imbuing the same image with often wildly diverse meanings. Katie Sisneros explores this interplay of repetition, context, and meaning, and how in it can be seen a parallel with the meme culture of today.

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Exquisite Rot: Spalted Wood and the Lost Art of Intarsia

- May 16, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, Charles V, craftmanship, Featured Articles, Fra Damiano da Bergamo, intarsia, marquetry, Renaissance, Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio, Studiolo Gubbio, woodwork

The technique of intarsia — the fitting together of pieces of intricately cut wood to make often complex images — has produced some of the most awe-inspiring pieces of Renaissance craftsmanship. Daniel Elkind explores the history of this masterful art, and how an added dash of colour arose from a most unlikely source: lumber ridden with fungus.

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Exquisite Rot: Spalted Wood and the Lost Art of Intarsia

- May 16, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, Charles V, craftmanship, Featured Articles, Fra Damiano da Bergamo, intarsia, marquetry, Renaissance, Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio, Studiolo Gubbio, woodwork

The technique of intarsia — the fitting together of pieces of intricately cut wood to make often complex images — has produced some of the most awe-inspiring pieces of Renaissance craftsmanship. Daniel Elkind explores the history of this masterful art, and how an added dash of colour arose from a most unlikely source: lumber ridden with fungus.

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Iconology of a Cardinal: Was Wolsey Really so Large?

- May 3, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, cardinal wolsey, Culture & History, eating in tudor times, hans holbein, henry viii, iconography, Painting, power, thomas wolsey, tudor, weight

Characterised as manipulative, power-hungry, and even an alter rex, Henry VIII's right-hand man Cardinal Thomas Wolsey has been typically depicted with a body mass to rival his political weight. Katherine Harvey asks whether he was really the glutton of popular legend, and what such an image reveals about the link between the body, reputation, and power in Tudor England.

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Fallen Angels: Birds of Paradise in Early Modern Europe

- April 4, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, birds, birds of paradise, conrad gesner, conrad gessner, Religion, Myth & Legend, Ulisse Aldrovandi

When birds of paradise first arrived to Europe, as dried specimens with legs removed, they were seen in almost mythical terms — as angelic beings forever airborne, nourished by dew and the "nectar" of sunlight. Natalie Lawrence looks at how European naturalists of the 16th and 17th centuries attempted to make sense of these entirely novel and exotic creatures from the East.

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Pens and Needles: Reviving Book-Embroidery in Victorian England

- March 21, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, arts and crafts movement, book arts, Books, embroidered book covers, embroidery, may morris, queen elizabeth, victorian, victorian england, william morris

Fashionable in the 16th and 17th century, the art of embroidering unique covers for books saw a comeback in late 19th-century England, from the middle-class drawing room to the Arts and Crafts movement. Jessica Roberson explores the bibliomania, patriotism, and issues around gender so central to the revival.

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