“Look Here Upon This Picture”, Hamlet’s demand to his mother that she hold his dead father’s picture in one hand and new husband Claudio’s in the other, becomes our cue for a weekly opportunity to compare works of art inspired by Shakespeare by walking through each picture’s frame and into his plays. In painting after
A divided Europe pitted Calvinist restraint against the flamboyance of Catholic church and courts, served by an extraordinary array of artists and art forms - landscape in Holland, extravagant allegory for the courts, the drama of baroque architecture, and portraits which captured the personalities of the age. This series will concentrate on three exceptional near-contemporaries,
Story-telling is a key component of human culture. This series of illustrated lectures will look at some of the many different traditions of narration that have pervaded the art of the West since its inception, addressing the universal stories of myth, religion and history, as well as the innumerable personal and private stories of individuals.
Boasting a world‐class collection of Italian art, the chic city of Milan is a must for lovers of the Gothic and Renaissance. With alpine views, its rival, Turin, is much more than an industrial centre. Elegant streets and a beautifully‐preserved historic centre, make it the perfect place to trace the legacy of the Savoia royal
Vienna and Paris are rarely brought into ‘conversation’ with each other. Yet the cross-currents between these two great cities around 1900 powered exciting, sometimes disturbing new visions in European art and thought which resonated throughout the twentieth century. We will examine the ways artists and other cultural figures – writers, musicians, and architects – shaped
Harry Mount, author of Amo, Amas, Amat and All That and Odyssey - Ancient Greece in the Footsteps of Odysseus, tells the history of the classical world from 1200 BC to 410 AD through London's buildings in five delightful walks.
This series of illustrated lectures surveys the collecting cultures of Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Italy by focusing on the artistic production and consumption of five powerful Italian dynasties and their artists. Some of the original more portable works have been dispersed to the art market over the centuries and we will study the subsequent provenance of
This course will bring together the Golden Age of Dutch, Flemish and early to late Netherlandish Art. We will examine their changing face from the 14th to 16th century and how and why the meaning and function evolved and why artists were drawn to particular subject matters.
In just 3 generations, the upstart Tudor clan not only produced some of the more dramatic personalities and legends of the monarchy but took the country from the Middle Ages into the great artistic “rebirth” of the Continent, from stained glass and manuscripts for Henry VII to Renaissance portraits for his son and grandchildren, from
“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners” Virginia Woolf All the writers in this short series draw inspiration and support from those closest to them. Where would Jane Austen have been without the support of her sister Cassandra, or Virginia Woolf without
The ideal city or home has long been a preoccupation of thinkers, rulers, and architects. These lectures, mostly focused on western examples, range widely over time, and are loosely themed to discuss particular visions of models for dwelling, working and display. We will discuss both those which were built (or at least attempted) and schemes
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