For those of you who have visited Westminster Abbey's gallery displaying various treasures of our ancient abbey, you may have well have failed to notice an illuminated manuscript known as The Cramp Ring manuscript. In 2006 when I was researching my Master’s dissertation I was allowed to photograph the whole manuscript and the images of the… Continue reading The Good Friday Ceremony of the blessing of cramp rings and the curing of the King’s Evil
Recently, Rebecca Larson of www.Tudor’sDynasty.com and I were communing about how to amuse ourselves during this Covid-19 crisis and what we could do if we ended up having to self-isolate. We came up with the idea of creating a new Decameron, the first version was written by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) in around 1353. So we are throwing it out… Continue reading The Tudors Dynasty Decameron 2020 project
When undertaking a study of both European history and art history, it is essential to understand the way people of that period thought. It is one of the first things you are taught at university and for this you do need to delve into the classical texts and understand the various major events that affected all… Continue reading The influence of Renaissance learning on the visual arts
As the Red Army rolled across Poland towards Berlin during the cold winter of 1944/45 it came to the notorious death camp where over a million people were exterminated, most of them Jewish on 27th January 1945. The horrors of what was being whispered about in the lands free from Nazi oppression, but being denied,… Continue reading Today we remember the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz, & commemorate those lives
Some years ago my curiosity was piqued by an Indian ring-necked parakeet in an early 15th century Flemish altarpiece, Detail of the Madonna and Canon van der Paele (1434): Jan van Eyck (c1390-1441): Groeninge Museum, Bruges and an Australian sulphur crested cockatoo in one of 1496 painted for the Dukes of Mantua in Italy. This altarpiece was… Continue reading Study Day – Hidden in Plain Sight. 7th December, 2019. West House, Pinner, London.
