Film Review
Four Centuries Later, We Still Don't Get Caravaggio
A British docudrama serves as a salutary primer on the Baroque master’s greatest works, but we should be wary of what it tells us about the personality of its subject.
Anthony Majanlahti
Anthony Majanlahti is the author of the bestseller “The Families Who Made Rome: A History and a Guide” and other books about Rome.
Art Review
Portrait of a Papal Artist
In Rome, an exhibition explores Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s relationship to his most powerful patron, Pope Urban VIII.
Art Review
How Baroque Rome Saw the World Through Art
Global Baroque surveys the triumphant internationalism of a new age of vast and rapid interchanges of art and culture, with Rome at its center.
News
Remembering Arnaldo Pomodoro, Who Uncovered Worlds Within Sculptures
The artist and my dear friend, who died this week just before his 99th birthday, was always curious, always carving away at a shiny surface.
Art Review
The Intense Intimacy of Caravaggio
He seems to speak to us directly and clearly, given his love of striking light and shadow. We experience him personally.
Books
How Michelangelo’s Dome Survived Through the Centuries
A new book resurrects the oft-overlooked story of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, whose dome was saved from collapse by a team of mathematicians and the Pope.
Art
A Collection of Ancient Roman Statues Finally Gets Its Due
A new exhibition in Rome focuses on collectors’ obsession with “completing” ancient artworks through restorations that often permanently transformed them.
Art
The Fugitive Ghost of Ancient Greece’s Greatest Sculptor
Although his work is legendary in ancient Greek sculpture, Phidias himself remains fugitive, a blank space whose outlines can be discerned in the copies of his works.
Art
The Dark Clouds Closing In on Mark Rothko
A retrospective exhibition in Paris holds so much beauty that visitors may miss how the artist, exhausted, painted himself into a corner.
Art
Gormley and Rodin Go Head to Head
In Antony Gormley’s Critical Mass at the Musée Rodin, the dialogue between the artists becomes a devastating boxing match in which Rodin delivers a knockout every time.
Art
How Rubens Brought Antiquity to Life
Instead of making copies of statues, Rubens made works that imagined the statues as living models, creating works that seem to have been done from life.
Art
The Ephemeral Geography of the Eternal City
How Romans altered the very geography of their city throughout the centuries.