March 2018

  • The ‘Romanesque Hall’ in Budapest

    The ‘Romanesque Hall’ in Budapest

    At last, after several years of closure for renovations and transformations, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest is emerging from its chrysalis of scaffolding and tarpaulin. Stretching out its wings to dry at the moment is the Romanesque Hall, a spacious rectangular room inspired by the basilica architecture of…

  • Dürer in Milan

    Dürer in Milan

    A major exhibition is in progress (until 24 June) in the Palazzo Reale in Milan: Dürer and the Renaissance (between Germany and Italy). One wonders if the title was chosen rather to entice visitors than to explain the true content of the show: ‘Dürer’ without ‘the Renaissance’ may have been…

  • Re-interpreting the Trojan Horse

    Re-interpreting the Trojan Horse

    When is a horse not a horse? Nowhere in the Iliad is it mentioned that the Greeks brought the ten-year siege to a successful conclusion by tricking the Trojans into towing into their city a large wooden horse in which sufficient Greek warriors had been hidden to create havoc and…

  • Fleming and Honour Remembered

    Fleming and Honour Remembered

    Susanna Johnston, John Fleming and Hugh Honour Remembered. Gibson Square, London, 2017. John Fleming and Hugh Honour’s A World History of Art (1982 and later editions, the 7th as recently as 2009) was one of those books one had to have on one’s shelves. My copy, now 30 years old,…

  • Charles I: King and Collector

    Charles I: King and Collector

    This magnificent display of Old Master paintings from the royal collection amassed by King Charles I, many of them reunited for the first time since the mid-17th century at the Royal Academy in London (running until mid-April) has been met with frenzied enthusiasm. And rightly so. There are some stunning…

  • Pictures from Lake Maggiore

    Pictures from Lake Maggiore

    Blue Guide Lombardy, Milan and the Italian Lakes is timetabled to appear at the end of this year. Here are some images from a recent research trip to Lake Maggiore. The castle of Angera looms tall over the southern end of the lake. In the possession of the Borromeo family…

  • A late Art Nouveau treasure in Budapest

    A late Art Nouveau treasure in Budapest

    On one of the leafy residential streets opening off Andrássy út, the great 19th-century radial boulevard of downtown Budapest, stands the Schiffer Villa, slightly ponderous and ungainly from the outside, but an extraordinary treasure trove within. Since the 1990s it has been the headquarters of the Hungarian Customs and Tax…

  • Anna: Female destinies in Transylvania

    Anna: Female destinies in Transylvania

    “Anna: Fictitious Female Fates” (Anna: Változatok székely asszonysorsra) is the title of a disarmingly thought-provoking exhibition at the Hungarian National Museum, on tour from the Rezső Haáz Museum in Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania). It follows the fortunes of the imaginary Anna, a Hungarian-speaking Székely, born in east Transylvania in 1920,…

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