Christiane Gruber Mosque and grove, ancient wall and garden, palace and courtyard, are full of song, of the cheerful sound of twittering and chirping; everywhere there is the rush of wings, everywhere the busy, active little lives go on.[1]—Edmondo de Amicis (1878) In Istanbul and further afield, a number of…
Zirwat Chowdhury Contemporaries of the architect George Dance the Younger had little doubt that his new façade (built 1788-1790) for the City of London’s Guildhall (Fig. 1) made some form of reference to the artist Williams Hodges’s recently published views of Indian architecture (Fig. 2). As the City’s Clerk of…
Carolyn Yerkes A revolutionary referent opens the second architectural book published in the American colonies, a new edition of Abraham Swan’s A Collection of Designs in Architecture, Containing New Plans and Elevations of Houses, for General Use, published in Philadelphia in 1775 (Fig. 1). A central column or pillar, gripped…
Heeryoon Shin Overlooking the sacred Ganges River, the Amethi Temple blends seamlessly into the riverfront vista of Banaras, the celebrated north Indian Hindu pilgrimage city (Fig. 1). Its curvilinear towers mark the building as a Hindu temple following a longstanding architectural tradition, a choice befitting the temple’s location in a…
Susanna Caviglia, History, Painting, and the Seriousness of pleasure in the age of Louis XV (Oxford: Liverpool University Press on behalf of Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, 2020). 330 pages, 87 illustrations (63 black and white, 24 colorplates) In this fascinating and important book, Susanna Caviglia invites us to reconsider new contexts and…
The Palace of Versailles remains a subject of interest and fascination for scholars and curators alike. Recent exhibitions and publications reveal that there are still new angles to explore of this already much-studied seat and symbol of power. The Versailles Effect: Objects, Lives, and Afterlives of the Domaine (New York:…
In a 1994 interview with Jerome Brooks for The Paris Review, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe reflected on his impetus to write: There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until…
On March 1, 1720, the London theater entrepreneur and critic Richard Steele wrote of an opera rehearsal in an essay for his journal The Theatre: “At the Rehearsal on Friday last, Signor Nihilini Beneditti rose half a Note above his Pitch formerly known. Opera Stock [climbed] from 83 and a…
Marking Time: Objects, People, and Their Lives, 1500-1800, ed. by Edward Town and Angela McShane (New Haven and London: Yale University Press and the Yale Center for British Art, 2020). 512 pages, 460 color + b-w illus., $65. With essays by Glenn Adamson, Justin M. Brown, Edward S. Cooke Jr.,…
Exotic? Switzerland Looking Outward in the Age of Enlightenment, Palais de Rumine, Lausanne, September 24, 2020 – February 28, 2021. Curated by Noémie Etienne, Claire Brizon, and Chonja Lee in collaboration with Etienne Wismer and Sara Petrella. Scenography: Atelier Frédéric Dedelley in collaboration with Jocelyne Fracheboud. Interactive visit of the…