Paolo Veronese (1565-70), Sposalizio mistico di santa Caterina Gallerie dell’Accademia #Venezia

As we approach the Winter Solstice, here's what Stonehenge looked like in the 16th century. #WinterSolstice BL Add MS 28330; Lucas De Heere, Corte Beschryvinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland; 1573 CE-1575 CE; England (London); f.36r

Cartography couture at The British Library Secret Maps exhibition. Lady Mountbatten’s post-war lingerie, cut from printed silk maps of Italy.

Spotted in BBC History Dec 2025: “A 2025 study sponsored by Microsoft sought to identify those occupations most at risk from GenAI. Historians came second, behind interpreters and translators. Dredge operators, last on the list.” 😳

Portrait of a girl, c. 1625-35 Attributed to the British School (Royal Collection, HM CIII)

Excellent news — it looks as though the British Library’s online catalogue for manuscripts and archives will soon be back.

A wonderful day at Lambeth Palace Library yesterday. The librarians could not have been kinder or more helpful. I still miss the old library, but the new wing — light, calm, beautifully designed — is a joy.

A neat tool I just came across: Viabundus, a digital road map of northern Europe 1350-1650, that lets you calculate contemporary travel routes/times. In 1500, going Amiens → Köln by horse took almost 7 days and 13 toll payments. #medievalsky www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstras...

C.S. Lewis responding to a letter from an American schoolgirl asking him for some writing advice. (Worth reading? ✅️)

Highly recommend ‘The House at Number 48’ on BBC Sounds — a haunting and fascinating journey into the past, beginning with a suitcase and ending in some remarkable revelations.

📢 Reminder about our CFP for the Mobility and Migration Seminar in collaboration with @ihr.bsky.social! Please see below for more information on the CFP, abstracts are due on 15th November! Please share widely!

English embroiderer and Pre-Raphaelite artist's model Jane Morris was born #OnThisDay in 1849. It is believed that the embroidery of intertwined floral sprays for this c. 1878 blue silk bag with a metal mount was designed and worked by Morris. V&A collection. #fashionhistory

Delighted to see the open access publication of Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms -- a superb volume featuring artists, poets, scholars, and a short essay by me on Dutch- and French-speaking women in 16th-century London telling their stories of migration. punctumbooks.com/titles/cross...

Would anyone like to take a guess at the word before “kebob”? Which predates OED - ms is 1660

We invite applications for British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships 2025. The scheme supports established and senior researchers in the humanities and social sciences wishing to complete research through a sustained period of leave for one year. Apply now: https://bit.ly/3VMeTZ9

I’m very tempted by this one-day course at the British Library:

The IHR Tudor and Stuart seminar has joined Bluesky! Please follow and RT! Our programme for the year is starting NEXT WEEK on Monday 29 September with Alison Knight @aeknight.bsky.social speaking on 'Certificates of Religion: Early Modern Belief on Paper'. Online and in-person, 5.30pm Book here:

Check out the new V&A exhibition about Marie Antoinette’s fashion, but first listen to our episode of BBC YOU’RE DEAD TO ME about her life — with me, Professor @100days1815.bsky.social, and comedian Jen Brister www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Welsh fashion designer and businesswoman Laura Ashley was born #OnThisDay in 1925. This empire-line cream cotton Laura Ashley dress, sprigged with blue and green flowers with brown foliage, dates from 1974. Aberdeen Art Gallery collection. #Fashionhistory #LauraAshley

#OTD , 7 September 1533, Elizabeth 1 was born at Greenwich Here she is in stained glass in Westminster Abbey. #stainedglasssunday #elizabethan #elizabeth1 #stainedglass

‘It’s been quite a ride!’ Melvyn Bragg to step down from Radio 4’s In Our Time after 27 years

French conservators are aghast at the proposed loan of the Bayeux Tapestry, warning its much too fragile to be moved www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

On a vaporetto this week, wedged beside someone polishing their Venice Film Festival speech. I longed to read every word, but had to balance my curiosity with an air of studied nonchalance.

US photographer Ruth Orkin (1921-1985), who rode 2000 miles across the US age 17 and later captured Hollywood stars in her photography among other subjects #WomensArt

#Ootd is another Dior from the Enchanted Gardens section of #lagalreiedior. It is an embroidered peau de soie evening gown by Maria Grazia Chiuri for the 2023 high jewelry collection, appropriately named "Les Jardins de la Couture," as Victoire de Castellane, the creative director of fine jewelry,

Art Nouveau embroidered textile design (c.1906) by embroidery artist & Glasgow School member Ann Macbeth #womensart

This ensemble illustrates the underwear worn by stylish women in the late 18th century for #NationalUnderwearDay. To achieve the fashionable silhouette, a woman would wear a shift, stays reinforced with whalebone, and hoops to shape their petticoats. V&A collection. #Fashionhistory

Portrait of a girl, possibly Catherine of Aragon (or Juana, her sister) at age 11. Painted by Juan de Flandes, a Flemish artist in Spain, in 1496. Today is his day.

Lovely essay in the @lrb.co.uk on Renaissance era libraries and their influence www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Just FYI, if you listen to #BBC podcasts and radio while living outside the UK, BBC SOUNDS no longer works for you. Delete the app, download the new BBC app, and try BBC.com for live radio — I’m sorry that this means podcast availability may be delayed by 28 days www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

... and here's the complete list: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... Three new seminars for 2025/26: African History, Migration & Mobility, and Planetary Histories. Programmes coming soon. Watch this space...

English/French born miniaturist painter Esther Inglis, Self Portrait, 1595 artist who composed 60 miniature books using her calligraphic skill with paintings, portraits, and embroidered covers #womensart

Henrietta Maria by Cornelius Johnson in 1638, poised before some elegant architecture painted by Dutch artist Gerard Houckgeest, whose day is today.

Historical hottie du jour coming to you from Tudor England: Sir Nicholas Carew, master of the horse to Henry VIII. Wonderful miniature by Gerard Horenbout, whose day is today.

Baby St. John the Baptist getting a bath, detail of Artemisia Gentileschi, The Birth of St. John the Baptist, c. 1633. Oil on canvas, 727/16 × 1015/8 in. (184 × 258 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Looks amazing. Can’t wait to explore.

Thirty-year-old woman who had her portrait painted in 1549 by Antwerp’s foremost woman artist, Catharina van Hemessen. Her day was today.

Portrait of a young lady; beautiful and elegant later work (c. 1560) by Catharina van Hemessen of Antwerp, whose day is today.

📣 We are delighted to announce that the latest issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.1) has officially been published online! Take a look: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #RenTwitter #earlymodern #Renaissance

The Virgin Mary Reading to the Infant Christ Vittore Carpaccio, c.1460–c.1526. The Courtauld Gallery, #London

I'm teaching a session on medieval magic and witchcraft today at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social, which means I get to show my favorite medieval image! 'Vaudoises' in Martin Le Franc's Le Champion des dames, 1451. Beautifully linking heresy (Waldensians), gender, witchcraft and broomstick riding. 🗃️

I neglected to announce this #nuntastic text when it came out: Moran, S.J., "Women and Artistic Knowledge in the Family: Mechelen Beguinage Grand Mistress Clara Eugenia Brueghel." In Brueghel: The Family Reunion. Ed. Nadia Groeneveld-Baadj, WBooks, 2023. See independent.academia.edu/SarahJoanMoran

Decorator in today, taking an absurdly long time to paint the bathroom ceiling. I kept having flashbacks to Rex Harrison in The Agony and the Ecstasy, calling up, ‘When will you make an end?’

In the midnight hour she cried Moore, More, Moore With a rebel yell she cried Moore, More, Moore

Hans of Antwerp Oil Painting ca. 1532 This is one of the portraits that Holbein painted of mainly German merchants when he was resident in London, 1526-1528 & 1532-1543. The merchants resided in the Steelyard, which adjoined Dowgate. (V&A Museum, London)

V&A Storehouse opens on 31 May. Find out more (including how to order an object) here:

Tired of juggling dozens of browser tabs? Take a page from Queen Maria Carolina of Austria—she solved information overload in 1792 with this rotating lectern.

25 May 1586: Philip Sidney writes to Francis Walsingham from Arnhem #otd looking for payment of garrisons, especially that of Flushing/Vlissingen where the people are especially churlish (NPG

Cape of Empowerment' by and in memory of Louise Gardiner, British embroiderer #womensart #FridayFeeling