Posts
All the articles I've posted.
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Uffizi Gallery Reservations: How to Book, What to Skip
Published:• 13 min readUffizi Gallery reservations are now mandatory in peak season. How to book on the official site, what to skip, when free days are, and the entrances most visitors miss.
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The Adoration of the Magi: Botticelli, the Medici, and the Self-Portrait at the Right
Published:• 14 min readThe Adoration of the Magi by Sandro Botticelli is a Bible scene that is also a Medici family portrait. Cosimo, Piero, Giovanni, Lorenzo, Giuliano — and Botticelli himself, looking out from the right.
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La Primavera by Sandro Botticelli: The Season, the Story, the Patron
Published:• 15 min readPrimavera by Sandro Botticelli is a nine-figure dance in an orange grove painted around 1482, almost certainly for a young Medici cousin. Here is the story it tells, the season it sets, and why it has been argued over for five hundred years.
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The Uffizi Gallery, Italy: The Ten Works to Know and Why the Museum Exists
Published:• 15 min readThe Uffizi Gallery in Italy holds the most important Renaissance collection in the world. Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio. Here are the ten works to know and why the museum exists at all.
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The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli: Meaning, Mythology, and Why It Stops You
Published:• 17 min readThe Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli is a goddess on a shell painted around 1485, the first life-size female nude in Western art since antiquity. Here is what it means and why it stops you.
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Orsay, Orangerie, Marmottan: A Paris Impressionism Itinerary
Published:• 17 min readImpressionism museum Paris guide. Three buildings hold ninety percent of the canvases. The Orsay, the Orangerie, and the Marmottan. Here's what to see and the order.
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Eyes or Nerves? Impressionism vs Expressionism in One Question
Published:• 16 min readImpressionism vs expressionism comes down to one question. Are you painting what your eyes see, or what your nerves feel? Both answers are right.
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Why the Impressionists Couldn't Stop Painting Flowers
Published:• 14 min readImpressionism flower paintings span Monet's water lilies, Manet's peonies, Renoir's bouquets, and Fantin-Latour's roses. Here's a guide to the eight that matter.
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The Eight Friends Who Made Impressionism: A Painters' Field Guide
Published:• 17 min readThe Impressionism painters were a small group of around fifteen friends in Paris in the 1870s. Here are the eight that mattered most, and what each one actually did.
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The Painting That Named a Movement: Monet's Impression, Sunrise
Published:• 15 min readImpressionism sunrise was painted by Claude Monet in Le Havre in 1872 and gave the entire movement its name. Here's the painting and the joke that named it.