Art historian with an interest in visual messages
Maundy Thursday marked the beginning of the most solemn part of the Easter festival for the Christian Church and is also the festival of Passover in the Judaic faith. Services would normally take place in churches and synagogues, but in these days of Covid-19 the sacred places remain shut in order to contain the spread… Continue reading The Events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday through the eyes of the Northern European Masters
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
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.
Below is the outline for the paper I will be presenting at the international conference titled Maritime Animals being held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, between 25-27th April 2019. This paper will discuss just one element of my research into the visual evidence of trade with the Far East that is evident in surviving… Continue reading Hidden in Plain Sight :Visual evidence of travellers’ tales & trade in birds & other marvellous beasts
Nicholas Hilliard was England’s first English artist to become internationally famous. His self portrait (© Victoria & Albert Museum, London) is a mere 41mm in diameter (1.6 inches) and it is for these exquisitely delicate and miniature images of Elizabeth I and her court that he becomes famous. I fell in love with Hilliard’s miniatures… Continue reading Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) & Isaac Oliver (1565-1617): Painters to the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts
Melanie V Taylor 