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The Sacred Made Real in Zurbaràn's Crucifixion
Francisco de Zurbaran, The Crucifixion, 1627(Art Institute of Chicago)We contemplate, analyze and even fall in love with works of art, but encountering them in sterile museum settings, away from their...
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Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrunn and Jean Metzinger - A Dialog About Maternite
Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrunn, Madame Vigee LeBrunn and Her Daughter, Jeanne Lucie Louise, 1789(Musee du Louvre)Jean Metzinger, Femme a la Fenetre (Maternite), 1911(Private Collection, Switzerland) Last...
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Happy Birthday Mary Cassatt - A True Feminist
Mary Cassatt, A Woman and A Girl Driving, 1881(Philadelphia Museum of Art)Mary Cassatt was a maverick among her peers that broke all the conventions of 19th century society while living a perfectly...
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THE STEINS COLLECT @ the Met
Pablo Picasso, Pomme, 1918(Gertrude's Apple is a similar watercolor)The incredible exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, THE STEINS COLLECT: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde, is...
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Berthe Morisot -The Wet Nurse
Berthe Morisot, The Wet Nurse and Julie, 1880(Private Collection)Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mother Nursing Her Child, 1886(Private Collection)Art history is full of female mavericks that not only overcame...
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Berthe Morisot from the Philadelphia Museum of Art Collection
Berthe Morisot, Branch of Plums, 1891(Philadelphia Museum of Art)Philadelphia Museum of Art has a wonderful collection that includes some of the most renown Impressionist paintings from art history....
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A Chance Rendezvous with Sublime Images @ MOMA
Being in close proximity to New York with all its museums is one of my life's greatest gifts. I love to just walk around this wonderful city and capture images that I come across during my...
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Byzantium and Islam : Age of Transition
Although my ancestors are from Asia Minor, the geography that has been identified as the Heartland of Byzantium, and I spent most of my life in its capital city, Istanbul (Constantinople) where the...
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Cross-Cultural Comparisons Between Colonial Latin America and the Islamic World
"Threads of Every Color" by Michael Schreffler Ceiling, 16th century, Spain(Metropolitan Museum of Art)The exchange of ideas, the fusion of diverse cultures and the expressions that emanate from the...
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The Bellelli Sisters - Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Sisters, 1865-66,(LACMA)Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas, one of the most well known and beloved (all those ballerinas...) of Impressionist artists is also one of the most...
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A Procession of Virgin Martyrs -Francisco de Zurbaràn
Francisco de Zurbaràn, Saint Rufina, 1635Francisco de Zurbaràn, Saint Rufina, 1635There are two full length, life size female portraits in the Hispanic Society's collection in New York hanging amongst...
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Contemplating Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres on his birthday
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,Josephine-Eleonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Bearn, Princesse de Broglie, 1851-53(Metropolitan Museum of Art)"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My...
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Turkish Embassy Letters 2012
I hope the name of this diary will not give anyone pause, for I am no Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and neither is my husband the ambassador to Turkey. But almost two hundred and fifty years after it was...
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Michelle Obama, The Queen of Cyprus, Eleonora of Aragon and Isotta degli Atti...
Andrea Mantegna, The Meeting Camera degli Sposi, the Ducal Palace, Mantua,1471-74 "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players."The last week of August and the first in September,...
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"I won't trouble you with a relation of our tedious journey, but I must not omit what I saw remarkable at ... one of the most beautiful towns in the Turkish empire..."...
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The Renaissance Portraits from the Courts of Italy to the Ottoman Empire
Gentile Bellini, The Sultan Mehmet II, 1480(National Gallery, London)"Bellini portrayed Sultan Mehmed from life so well, that it was considered a miracle."...
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Searching for traces of Byzantine Empire in Modern Istanbul
View from the Golden Gate, 2012 "When I was subsequently dwelling in the "City of the Sultan", and that reality had succeeded to anticipation, much of the mist of romance, indeed, rolled away: but the...
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Byzantine Pilgrimage Objects - Phenomenon of Sacred Artifacts or Contemporary...
Qual-at Sem-an© Thomas Roth 2003As fascinating as we may find a slab of stone, an object or a painting from the past, these objects we study as art historians or archaeologists may seem irrelevant or...
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Queen Elizabeth I to Sultan Murad III - Imperial Imagery
att. George Gower, Queen Elizabeth I, 1588(National Portrait Gallery, London) This portrait of Queen Elizabeth I painted in honor of the biggest victory of her reign over the Spanish Armada of 1588...
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Reading History Through Jewellery
Square emerald aigrette, TSM 2/313, 18th century(Topkapi Palace Musem)"Made up of the glories of the most precious gems, to describe them is a matter of inexpressible difficulty. For there is amongst...
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