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To: mairdie; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...
"Renaissance Unchained" is free with ads right now on Amazon Prime. The guy's voice is a detriment IMHO, but very nice job! And great art.

2 posted on 09/11/2024 4:22:02 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv
Januszczak is hilarious. I love his presentation, especially when he goes through an entire episode with his back turned to the camera. And he relishes in being the iconoclast, doesn't mind in the least sticking his thumb in the eye of the art establishment.

I know very little about the "art" of art but I have got quite an education in the history of art thanks Waldemar, Simon Schama and Andrew Graham-Dixon.

My favorite story from Waldemar relates to Cellini's bronze of Perseus on Florence's Piazza della Signoria, where he (Cellini) specifically had it positioned so it would look as if Michelangelo's statue of David, where it used to sit just outside the Palazzo Vecchio (and where an exact replica stands today), was looking in that general direction.

So why would Cellini want David to be looking at his Perseus? Because most of the great Renaissance artists were homosexual. Michelangelo and Cellini were part of that crowd and in that era there was non-stop cat-fighting between Florence's old queens. Cellini's Perseus is holding forth the head of Medusa, who he has just slain, and gazing on any of the Gorgon sisters turns you to stone. So Cellini is implying that it was his work of bronze that turned David into stone.

No other art historian does bawdy with academic detachment quite like Januszczak.

13 posted on 09/11/2024 5:47:27 PM PDT by Paal Gulli
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