Happy Darwin's birthday!

“Bernini and the Barberini,” which explores the complex relationship between Gianlorenzo Bernini and his most important patron Pope Urban VIII, opened today at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome

Allegory of the Superiority of Sculpture over Painting, attributed to Guercino (Musée du Louvre, Paris, from an album said to have belonged to Carlo Maratta) In this satirical sketch, a blind beggar enjoys a sculpture while ignoring a painting. Caption reads: "Della scoltura sì, della pittura no."

Allegory of the Superiority of Sculpture over Painting, attributed to Guercino (Musée du Louvre, Paris, from an album said to have belonged to Carlo Maratta) In this satirical sketch, a blind beggar enjoys a sculpture while ignoring a painting. Caption reads: "Della scoltura sì, della pittura no."

If Bad Bunny can cover the history of Puerto Rico, colonialism, transatlantic slavery, hemispheric consciousness, as well as contemporary life and politics in under 14 minutes, you can do your 15- or 20-minute conference presentation with time to spare.

[Account posts genuinely beautiful work of art] Bluesky moderation: WOAH WOAH WOAH, YOU SICKO

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, acquired Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy.” It’s the first work by the Italian Baroque artist to enter the institution’s collection.

Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Baby Boy, probably one of the sons of Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora da Toledo, 1540-1549, oil on poplar panel (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

Rumor has it that this rare, diminutive work by Antonella da Messina, which was just purchased by the Italian state for $15 million, is headed to the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples. An excellent decision!

"Let me tell you this: every little hair on my neck knows more than you and all your scribes, and my shoe buckles are more learned than your Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your high colleges." -Paracelsus (1530)

Grete Stern, Dream 41: The Phone Call. 1949(?). Photomontage, gelatin silver print (Davis Museum at Wellesley College) Born in Germany in 1904, Stern fled in 1933 and ended up in Argentina. Her best-known works are surreal photomontages for the women's magazine Idilio, representing readers' dreams

God forbid a woman have hobbies

Nature at Work making Birds, Animals, and People on Her Anvil, circa 1405, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 121v (Getty)

Bruce McCall, "A Brush with Greatness," New Yorker, Jan. 13, 2020

How it started / How it's going

In a busy week for Artemisia Gentileschi, this small Florentine self-portrait sold for $5.7 Million at Christie’s

National Gallery of art in Washington acquires a key Mary Magdalene by Artemisia Gentileschi (until recently on long-term loan to the Palazzo Ducale in Venice)

Timeline cleanse. Santiago Rusiñol, Path in a Park, 1920-1925, oil on canvas, 89 x 110 cm (Fundación Banco Santander)

A 17th-century fresco of an angel in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome changed to look like PM Giorgia Meloni. Pope Leo XIV echoes the Council of Trent: images “cannot be misused or exploited, as they are intended exclusively to support liturgical life and personal and communal prayer."

Caravaggio’s masterpiece has been installed in our new exhibition Metamorphoses. The story of Narcissus tells of a man who fell in love with his own reflection, a fatal illusion that led to his transformation into a flower. 👁️ https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/metamorphoses

Feast of St Blaise today. Get out there and get your throat blessed.

Andrew Wyeth, Groundhog Day, 1959 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Fascinating story of a painting by Goya that Franco intended to give as a gift to Hitler -- in part because a design in it resembled a swastika. (As well as a historical example of a dictator stiffing a contractor)

Illustrations from the Logbooks of Nantucket Whaleships, from @publicdomainrev.bsky.social

Sheila Barker speaks at the St. Louis Art Museum on "Reframing Artemisia Gentileschi’s Success: The Market Appeal of Feminist Art in the 17th Century," Saturday, March 21, 2026

Jusepe de Ribera, Jacob's Dream, 1639, Oil on canvas, 179 x 233 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)

This season's writers are getting a little lazy

A rare signed portrait by Sofonsiba Anguissola being shown by Robert Simon at the Winter Show, held at the Park Avenue Armory

Timeline cleanse [Jean-Étienne Liotard, The Lavergne Family Breakfast, 1754, pastel on paper (National Gallery, London). The little girl has paper curlers in her hair.]

I really just want to post artworks and fun observations on early modern culture but these monsters make it impossible bsky.app/profile/jben...

If you acknowledge Anne Frank's family did not, in fact, have legal status, you have to acknowledge "citizenship" is neither a moral nor ontological state, but a political category that can be removed to define the out-group. And this makes Trump Jews uncomfortable. www.jta.org/2026/01/27/p...

Hendrick Bogaert, A Man Dancing with a Dog, oil on panel, 26.5 cm × 22.3 cm, c. 1655-c. 1665 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Nunca creí que los leopardos comerían MI cara

Felix Nussbaum, Self-Portrait in the Camp, 1940, 52.5 x 41.5 cm (Neue Galerie New York). A successful artist until the Nazis came to power, Nussbaum escaped from the notorious Saint-Cyprien camp in France, represented here. He was later arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where he died in 1944.

I haven't read it, but I assume she had enough of Uncle Sol's complaining and turned him into a brisket

Current status of the fundraisers for those killed by ICE: Renee Good: $1,499,580 Alex Pretti: $1,289,249 Keith Porter, Jr. $302,423 Parady La: $45,848 Heber Sanchez Dominguez: $47,991 Luis Beltrán Yanez Cruz: $18,640 Victor Manuel Diaz: $2,538 Geraldo Lunas: $2,260 Luis Gustavo Núñez: $1,935

Plans for the day from the "Almanacco purgativo 1914" by futurists Ardegno Soffici and Giovanni Papini (translation in alt-text)

New post on the #ArtHerstory blog! Early Modern Women Artists at Auction in 2025 artherstory.net/early-modern... In which we revisit sales at auction in 2025 of works by European women artists of the 17th and 18th centuries...

Tips on coping from the Renaissance Inkstand with a Man Distilling his Brains, maiolica, probably Urbino, ca. 1600. Inscribed in black on back of chair: “[…] CERV[...] IOTUTO LIETO” (Mi lambico il] cerv[ello] io tutto lieto; I distill my brain and am totally happy) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Abolish ICE

The family of three, who have a pending asylum application, went to urgent care on Jan. 15 to get medical help for their 7-year-old daughter. They only made it to the parking lot as immigration officers detained them. It's the same location where federal officers recently shot two people.

Our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are.

This gesture means: I am reading, f*ck off.

The Four Conditions of Society. You have to choose one. 1. L’Homme Riche ou La Noblesse (The Rich Man or Nobility) 2. L’Homme Misérable ou l’Etat de Pauvreté (The Wretched Man or the State of Poverty) 3. L’Artisan ou Le Travail (The Craftsman or Labor) 4. L’Homme Sauvage (The Wild Man)

Alexandre-Isidore Leroy de Barde (1777-1828), A Variety of Foreign Birds, 1.29 m x .9 m, gouache and watercolor (Musée du Louvre)

For those outside the Twin Cities, the person posting this GoFundMe is a member of Minneapolis city council (and among the many locals doing absolutely heroic resistance to ICE), so it's legit.

"When the director of Rome’s National Gallery is murdered and posed like a figure in an Artemisia Gentileschi painting, a sophisticated art expert (Spollon) and a working-class policeman (Lattanzi) must team up to solve the case." 😮

Charles-Antoine Coypel, Don Quixote Led by Folly, oil on canvas, 1714-1734 (Musée national du château de Compiègne)

Federico Zuccaro, Taddeo in the House of Giovanni Piero Calabrese, about 1595, Pen and brown ink, 27.5 × 26.6 cm (10 13/16 × 10 1/2 in.), Getty, Los Angeles. Taddeo Zuccaro’s mean teacher keeps food suspended from the ceiling with a bell attached so none of the apprentices can steal it

Have they tried this yet? [Hieronymus Bosch, The Cure of Folly (Extraction of the Stone of Madness), 1475-80, Oil on panel, 48 x 35 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)]