Year: 2022

Shakespeare’s Snow-Globe.Illustration by John Austen.JJohn Donne, from a sermon preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Christmas Day 1626:The life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr. He found a Golgotha (where he was...

TThis year London’s St. Pancras Station “Christmas Tree” deserves those scare quotes, because it isn’t a tree and isn’t Christmassy. But it’s kinda cool! – a 3D vertical compilation of London’s architectural landmarks. Here is a much larger image.“The stampmaking...

Bethlehem in Germany,Glitter on the sloping roofs,Breadcrumbs on the windowsills,Candles in the Christmas trees,Hearths with pairs of empty shoes:Panels of NativityOpen paper scenes where doorsOpen into other scenes,Some recounted, some foretold.Blizzard-sprinkled...

Harold Burdekin, photograph from London Night (1934)AA very different image from London: Piero della Francesca’s Nativity has been restored and is back on view at the National Gallery:What a family learns from caring for a vineyard and its surrounding land for...

Edna Andrade.MMaybe scholars and collectors of manuscripts are afflicted by an ungentle madness:Frederic Madden had his own neuroses. He maintained a lifelong rivalry of near-deranged intensity with Anthony Panizzi, the British Museum’s keeper of printed books and...