Inside the Strange World of Mannerism

Mannerism arrived when the calm of the High Renaissance started to crack. That crack matters. A ...

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How Artists Use Edges to Control Attention

Most people think attention in a picture follows subject matter. A face grabs the eye. A bright ...

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Gouache gets treated like watercolor’s sensible cousin. That’s a mistake. This ...

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Egg tempera keeps returning like a tune that refuses to die, and that return says something ...

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Gold leaf changed painting long before oil paint took center stage. That thin skin of metal ...

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Baroque painting refuses to sit still. That’s the first fact worth stating, and it explains the ...

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Beauty rarely arrives in a neat package. Art history proves that point. One age praises ...

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Observation sounds simple until a pencil touches paper. Then the fraud appears. Most people ...

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A Renaissance portrait never merely shows a face. It makes a claim about character, rank, ...

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Light and darkness don’t just decorate an image. They decide what matters. That’s ...

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