Posts

All the articles I've posted.

• Bitten in the Eighth Circle: Bouguereau's Dante and Virgil in Hell

  Published: 27 May, 2026

  • 11 min read

  A twenty-five-year-old academic painter spent eight months painting two damned souls biting each other in the eighth circle of hell. The Salon hung it on the back wall.

• The Glare That Outlasted the Salon: Cabanel's Fallen Angel

  Published: 27 May, 2026

  • 11 min read

  Cabanel was twenty-three when he painted Lucifer's tears of rage. The painting was rejected from the Salon. A century later it became the most-shared image on Tumblr.

• The Painting That Looks Back: Velazquez's Las Meninas

  Published: 26 May, 2026

  • 13 min read

  Velazquez painted himself painting the king and queen, who are not in the picture except as a reflection, in a Madrid room you can still stand in.

• The Painting He Could Not Stop Repainting: Monet's Woman with a Parasol

  Published: 25 May, 2026

  • 10 min read

  Monet painted his wife Camille standing on a windy hilltop in 1875. Eleven years later, four years after she died, he painted her again from memory.

• The Last Provence Picture: Van Gogh's Road with Cypress and Star

  Published: 23 May, 2026

  • 10 min read

  Van Gogh's Road with Cypress and Star is the last picture he painted in Provence. It is also the one where he finally told Theo what cypresses meant to him.

• The Painter Who Made the Bosphorus Famous: Aivazovsky's Tophane, 1884

  Published: 22 May, 2026

  • 9 min read

  Ivan Aivazovsky painted Constantinople nearly forty times. The 1884 view of the Tophane mosque is the one that explains why he kept going back.

• The Mirror That Does Not Work: Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere

  Published: 21 May, 2026

  • 11 min read

  Manet's last great painting, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1882), hides a mirror that does not work. Here is what is actually broken about it, and why.

• Primavera Analysis: Figure by Figure, Right to Left

  Published: 29 Apr, 2026

  • 17 min read

  Primavera by Botticelli has nine figures. Here is a figure-by-figure decode of each one — Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Cupid, Flora, Chloris, Zephyr — read right to left, the way the painting wants to be read.

• The Birth of Venus at the Uffizi: Where to Find It, How to See It

  Published: 29 Apr, 2026

  • 12 min read

  The Birth of Venus is in the Uffizi, in Florence, in the Botticelli room. Here is exactly where to find it, what is on the walls around it, and how to actually see it through the crowd.

• Uffizi Gallery Florence: A First-Timer's Walkthrough

  Published: 29 Apr, 2026

  • 16 min read

  Uffizi Gallery Florence first-timer walkthrough. Where it sits in the city, the route through the U-shaped building, where to enter and exit, and what to do before and after on the same day.