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With performances from Peter Capaldi, imagine. marks the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's notorious book The Prince. Imagine Who's Afraid of Machiavell. This video has been recorded at the international conference on 'Machiavelli's The Prince: Five Centuries of History, Conflict, and Politics' at Brunel Unive. Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of Nicolo Machiavelli's seminal work The Prince The BBC's Tim Wilcox discusses Machiavellian ideals vs modern Italian politics.

Michelangelo's Sistine chapel frescoes are threatened by the effects of too many visitors, experts have warned on Wednesday, as the masterly painted ceiling celebrated its 500th anniversary... Many visitors just stare, tranfixed, at one of the most notable artwork ever created. Indeed, Pope Julius II and 17 cardinals reacted in the same way when the vaulted ceiling was revealed in all its blue glory on the Eve of All Saints, 31 October, 1512, during a vesper Mass. But others are "drunken tourist herds" disrespectful of the unique setting they are visiting, according to leading literary critic Pietro Citati. The "herds"...

The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks. On the other flank are the cultural relativists, and multiculturalists. This camp opposes the ideas of truth, beauty, and intrinsic quality. It seeks to suppress the literary, philosophical, and artistic heritage of...

Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award Friday for an image of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen. ... the image has religious 'almost Biblical' overtones and noted its resemblance in composition to Michelangelo's Pieta -- but in a Muslim setting. ..." - CBC, Feb 10, 2012 "Almost Biblical." Not... even... close... Comparing Michelangelo's Pietà to some snapshot of a burqa-ed Muslim woman holding some injured Yemeni street protester is an ideal example of Westerners wearing rose-colored glasses. Many Western "intellectuals" are bending...

A painting of Christ’s crucifixion believed to be the work of Michelangelo has been hanging in the residence of a small Jesuit community at Oxford for more than 70 years.Purchased at auction by the Campion Hall community in the 1930s, the painting was believed to be the work of Marcello Venusti, one of Michelangelo’s 16th-century contemporaries. But recent tests revealed that the work was indeed created by the Renaissance painter, reports the National Jesuit News.The discovery was made by historian and conservationist Antonio Forcellino, who used infrared technology to uncover who he believes is the true creator of the painting.BBC...

This unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary could be a lost Michelangelo, potentially the art find of the century. But to the upstate family on whose living-room wall it hung for years, it was just "The Mike." When the kids knocked the painting off its perch with an errant tennis ball sometime in the mid-1970s, the Kober clan wrapped it up and tucked it away behind the sofa. There it remained for 27 years, until Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober retired in 2003 and had some time on his hands. His father gave him a task -- research the...

An unfinished painting of the Virgin Mary and Christ owned by a former American pilot has been hailed as a lost masterpiece by Michelangelo, says an Italian art historian and restorer in a new book. Antonio Forcellino, who has worked on Michelangelo's masterpieces, first came across the pieta, a 63cm x 48cm oil painting on a panel made of fir, when he was contacted by email by its owner, said a report in The Australian. If confirmed, the work will rank alongside only three surviving panel paintings by the Italian master, potentially making it worth more than the record $118...

People view one of Raphael's tapestries hanging from a wall of the Sistine Chapel July 14. (CNS photo) By Carol GlatzCatholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Like long-lost twins, two halves of an artistic masterpiece conceived by the Renaissance master Raphael will be reunited for the first time. The Vatican Museums and London's Victoria and Albert Museum will exhibit side-by-side some of Raphael's enormous tapestries for the Sistine Chapel and his preparatory paintings. The joint initiative is meant to coincide with Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to the United Kingdom in September. Since the Renaissance, "the cartoons and...

A sandstone sculpture of a kneeling man sharpening a knife could be a long forgotten work by Michelangelo, according to an Italian scholar who has rediscovered the statue in a private collection. Measuring 111 centimeters (3.65 feet), the statue is now on display for the first time after more than 120 years at the exhibition, “And There Was Light. The Masters of the Renaissance,” in Göteborg, Sweden. The powerful sculpture is a copy of a marble statue known as the “Arrotino” (the Blade-Sharpener) on display at the Uffizi gallery in Florence. Representing the Scythian slave who served Apollo and flayed...

According to Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo, in their paper in the current issue of Neurosurgery, Michelangelo hid his sketches of the human brain, including the spinal column inside his depiction of God. The theory was first posited by physician Frank Meshberger in 1990, who maintained that the artist's rendering of the central panel on the ceiling, depicting God creating Adam was a perfect anatomical illustration of the human brain in cross section. Meshberger speculated that Michelangelo surrounded God with a shroud representing the human brain, suggesting God was endowing Adam with supreme human intelligence. Michelangelo took four years to...

SISTINE CHAPEL

Speaking of harnessing the beauty of the Catholic faith…the Vatican just did a little harnessing themselves and to one of the most beautiful beauties in the world: The Sistine Chapel. That’s right. This great world wonder and treasure of the Church has gone web 2.0 with a virtual tour. This new, interactive website allows you to explore just about every inch of the Sistine Chapel in fairly decent detail. I’ve yet to visit the Sistine Chapel in person. I hope to one day, of course! But this gave me a neat little preview. And if you’ve been before, I’m...

After being hidden under scaffolding for five years, the Vatican has unveiled the restored Cappella Paolina, the Pauline Chapel. While there, most visitors go to St. Peter’s Basilica as well as Vatican City, which contain some of the finest art in the world. There one will find the famous Sistine Chapel as well as other glorious places of worship. Another one of these is the Pauline Chapel. After being hidden under scaffolding for five years, the Vatican has unveiled the restored Cappella Paolina, the Pauline Chapel. Named after Pope Paul III who commissioned it to be built in 1537,...

St. Peter's crucifixion is portrayed in a mural by Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to inaugurate the chapel July 4 after a five-year, $4.6 million renovation. (CNS/courtesy of the Vatican Museums) VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Work on the Pauline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace was not so much a restoration as a restitution of the pope's prayer space, said the director of the Vatican Museums. Containing the last two murals Michelangelo ever painted, the private papal chapel had been under scaffolding for more than five years; it was...

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has acquired what some scholars now say is the first known painting made by Michelangelo. And if he created it, he did so when he was only 12 or 13. This latest research holds that Michelangelo painted “The Torment of St. Anthony” between 1487 and 1488. That would make it one of only four known easel paintings by Michelangelo — another is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and two unfinished ones are in the National Gallery of Art in London — and the first to enter an American museum. The painting’s attribution...

Is it or isn’t it a Michelangelo? That is the question being pondered by art experts after the Italian state spent 3.3 million euros, or $4.2 million, last year to buy a small wooden crucifix attributed to that Renaissance genius. Works by Michelangelo don’t come up for sale often, but the occasional drawing has nabbed as much as $20 million at auction. By comparison, the linden wood crucifix, which was sold by the Turin antiques dealer Giancarlo Gallino, is a bargain. But there’s the rub. If it isn’t a Michelangelo, as some critics charge, then the state may have squandered...

Michelangelo 'hid secret code in Sistine Chapel' By Malcolm Moore in Rome 20/06/2008Michelangelo hid a secret code in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel made up of mystical Jewish symbols... according to a new book. The Sistine Chapel was intended to be decoded, the authors believe The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,...is actually a "bridge" between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish faith", according to The Sistine Secrets: Unlocking the Codes in Michelangelo's Defiant Masterpiece. --snip-- Scanning...the arrangement of figures on the...14,000 square foot ceiling, the authors have found shapes that correspond to Hebrew letters. --snip-- For example, the...

A long-missing Michelangelo sketch for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, possibly his last design before his death, has been discovered in the basilica's offices, the Vatican newspaper said Thursday.The sketch, drawn in blood-red chalk for stonecutters who were working on the construction of the basilica, was done by the Renaissance master in the spring of 1563, less than a year before his death, L'Osservatore Romano reported."The sureness in his stroke, the expert hand used to making decisions in front of unfinished stone, leave little doubt, the sketch is Michelangelo's," the newspaper wrote about the discovery, which it said will...

VATICAN CITY - A 450-year-old receipt has provided proof that Michelangelo kept a private room in St. Peter's Basilica while working as the pope's chief architect, Vatican experts said. While going through the basilica archives for an exhibit on the 500th anniversary of the church, researchers recently came across an entry for a key to a chest "in the room in St. Peter's where Master Michelangelo retires."The Renaissance painter and sculptor whose frescoes adorn the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican was put in charge of the restoration of St. Peter's basilica by Pope Paul III at age...

What is it, in this age of hype and empty celebrity, that makes the name of Michelangelo so magnetic? One can perhaps understand the draw when Van Gogh or the Impressionists take over a museum. These are the prophets of a modern sensibility: lyrical, colorful, yet with an edge of experimentation and a tinge of revolt. Michelangelo, by contrast, is remote, often deliberately unapproachable, cerebral, scathingly hard on himself (and all around him), and devoted to values, both aesthetic and spiritual, that are now long gone.