I don’t normally write reactionary pieces, but this bit of news has me frothing at the mouth. This Prof. Vito Franco from the pathology department in Palermo has taken to diagnosing illnesses in famous Renaissance …

At a conference on the use of internet by libraries, archives and museums that I attended the other day (live blog here), Elena Farinelli brought up an interesting fact: if you search “Biblioteca Firenze” on …

Folks! my comprehensive book review of Jane Fortune’s “Invisible Women” is now online and in the paper! Read the article in The Florentine and see below to win your own copy!
Short summary: Invisible Women is …

People seem really busy right now, so I have decided to extend the contest deadline:
The extended writing contest deadline is September 27 2009. 
It’s not hard to write a short “post” - don’t be shy! You do not …

Pat Byrne of Kids Europe’s Italy Discovery Journal is not a guidebook to Florence, Rome, and Venice. It’s an activity book dedicated to children traveling in all of Italy (with some focus on the major …

Art historians are able to do more and more research from home with the availability of many articles on JSTOR and many books at least in part on Google Books and even on Amazon.com’s “search …

This is the text of a talk that I am giving at 7pm on Monday July 6th at Florence Inn (Bagno a Ripoli FI). It is the introductory talk in an evening’s informal discussion of …

It’s the end of term and you have to study for your art history exam…
Make like Dewey the Library Cat and hit the books…
The classic art history test and exam format is the dreaded two-slide comparison. …

Exposing children to art from a young age develops cognitive and verbal skills, arguably good things. But it may be daunting to enter a museum with kids: they may be easily bored, they probably won’t …

Students in my advanced seminar on “Women and the Arts in Early Modern Italy” have been assigned the production of a short film biography on a female artist of the Renaissance or Baroque period.

This video and article are part of the Female Artist biographical film project described here.
Summary: Lavinia Fontana was born into an artistic and middle class family in Bologna in 1552. Her talent and promise as …

The Funerary Procession of Elisabetta Sirani
Summary: Elisabetta Sirani was a 16th century female painter from Bologna. She exceeded the expectations for her sex by painting scenes atypical for a female artist. Unfortunately, not much is …