including headings The art of our species, Cave paintings, The Egyptian style, Minoan art, The Greek classical ideal, ...
including headings Engraved texts, A Buddhist invention, The printed book, Cutting round the characters, Chinese publishing, ...
During the 15th century, the great formative period of the Italian Renaissance, Venice lags far behind Florence and Rome in responding to the spirit of the time. The reason is partly the long centuries of Byzantine influ...
In the heyday of classical Chinese culture, a civilized gentleman - meaning a Confucian official - should be adept in three different artistic fields. When he settles down before a fresh sheet of paper and dips his brush...
An invention as useful as printing, in a Europe of increasing prosperity, readily finds new customers. The first Italian press is founded in 1464, at the Benedictine town of Subiaco in the papal states. Switzer...
The name of Gutenberg first appears, in connection with printing, in a law case in Strasbourg in 1439. He is being sued by two of his business partners. Witnesses, asked about Gutenberg's stock, describe a press and a su...
The earliest known printed book is Chinese, from the end of the T'ang dynasty. Discovered in a cave at Dunhuang in 1899, it is a precisely dated document which brings the circumstances of its creation vividly to life. <...
When the first European prints are published, in the early 15th century, they are the work of craftsmen supplying a demand for cheap holy images or for playing cards. Artists only become interested in the possibilities o...
The age of European exploration, from the 16th century, leads to interesting encounters between traders accustomed to a cash economy and traditional tribes valuing shells (cowries in Africa, wampum in America) as preciou...
Paintings of the 15th and 16th century reveal that simple houses of the time have nothing but wooden shutters to hinge across the window opening. Sometimes the shutters are divided into two or three separate sections, of...
The painting, completed in 1608, can be seen as the first baroque masterpiece. St Gregory, wrapped in gorgeous swirling robes (and with a hand thrust out at the viewer as dramatically as in Caravaggio's Supper at Emma...
The paintings commissioned by the Moghul emperors are superb, but it is their architecture which has most astonished the world - and in particular the white marble domes characteristic of the reign of Shah Jahan.
The paintings in Egyptian tombs and temples usually depict the incidents which will occur during the journey of the dead into the next world. The practical purpose is to provide the sacred details required for this journ...
Egyptian paintings, from as early as about 1400 BC, depict another eternal appeal of dancing. Scantily clad girls, accompanied by seated musicians, cavort enticingly on the walls of tombs. They will delight the male occu...
Images in Egyptian paintings, Assyrian sculptures and Roman mosaics reveal that by the time of these civilizations there are many different shapes and sizes of dog. To use the word 'breed' may be anachronistic, though th...
