An 18-carat-gold inscribed gold ring that was a gift from Oscar Wilde to a friend during his undergraduate days at Magdalen College in Oxford will be returning to its alma mater 17 years after it was stolen. The inside is engraved “O.F.O.F.W.W & R.R.H. to W.W.W., 1876,” the initials of gifters and receiver: Oscar Fingal […]
Heading south in the historic center shortly before one encounters a rhino in front of a quadrifons arch, there’s a lovely palazzo off Piazza Campitelli on the Via Montanara. The first time I happened past it was when I went to the Museo della Mura at the Porta Appia. That was Sunday and the portellone
One of the rare 16th century miniature boxwood carved prayer beads that was displayed at the groundbreaking 2016 traveling exhibition Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures sold for six times its presale estimate at a Sotheby’s London auction on Tuesday. The intricately-carved masterpiece was estimated to sell for £60,000 – 80,000 (S72,000 – 96,000), but bidding
It has been almost a decade since I first saved a draft post about Dr. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), the gynecologist and popular science writer who in 1926 designed an image you’ve almost certainly seen before: “Man as Industrial Palace,” an infographic depicting the functions of the human body as an industrial complex. It has taken
A painting by Vincent van Gogh was stolen from the Singer Laren museum just outside Amsterdam on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday. At around 3:15AM on Monday, March 30th, thieves smashed through the glass door, stole Van Gogh’s Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring and made a quick getaway. The burglar alarm
I didn’t set out to go on a hero’s journey, complete with call to adventure, ordeal by forces of supernatural power, abyss-despair-failure, overcoming all hardships to gain the reward, but that’s what ended up happening. This is the final part of the quest, wherein I return with the treasure to benefit humanity. So, like, you
Four years after a late 13th century painting by medieval master Cimabue was discovered in the kitchen of an elderly woman in Compiegne and sold at auction to a private buyer for $26.6 million, Christ Mocked has officially entered the collection of the Louvre Museum. It’s been a long, strange journey for the tempera-on-panel depiction
An excavation at the site of a medieval Benedictine abbey in Tomajmonostora, eastern Hungary has unearthed a burial containing a silver communion set dating to the 13th or 14th century. The chalice and paten (small plate for the host) were found in the hands of the deceased, placed there at the time of burial. The
The always excellent Historic Royal Palaces YouTube channel has three new videos about the Bacton Altar Cloth, believed to be the only surviving fabric from a dress worn by Queen Elizabeth I. If it wasn’t hers, it had to have belonged to a woman of the highest nobility or royalty. There were literally laws against
The plan was to go back to the Appia Antica, walk the ecological park of Valle di Carafella, check out its various columbaria and nymphae, maybe hit a catacomb or two. The Museo delle Mura had been such a treat on Sunday that I didn’t get very far down the ancient road after going through
