Art

A. Lentin introduces Princess Dashkova. During the reigns of Peter III and Catherine II, the Russian Princess was a tireless intellectual and a seasoned western traveller.

For 1,000 years before the invention of printing, writes J.J.N. McGurk, handwriting in its various European scripts was a fine art

H. Ross Williamson profiles the life and career of Cardinal Reginald Pole: cousin to Henry VIII; once Papal candidate; ‘a humanist of European reputation’; Pole spent much of his life abroad, in an artistic and philosophical circle that included Michelangelo.

Stephen Usherwood shows how Rembrandt’s genius gives a vivid impression of 17th-century Holland.

Elizabeth Linscott describes how English churches and cathedrals, from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, abound in memorial effigies to the distinguished dead.

E.A. Smith describes how, immediately after the Seven Years’ War, the young Earl Fitzwilliam became a grand tourist of Europe in the eighteenth-century style.

Some three hundred years ago, when the English Civil War was brewing, a gifted Bohemian artist settled in London; Joseph Bradac writes that we owe much to his talents.

About the beginning of the fourteenth century, writes A.L. Moir, a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral completed his ambitious world map, in which geographical information is mixed with historical details and pictures of fantastic legendary monsters.

J.J.N. McGurk describes how Irish art can claim its own place in the history of European civilization. Undisturbed by the troubles of the Dark Ages, Irish monks long continued to produce their splendid manuscripts.

Ross Watson introduces Prince Eugene of Savoy; Marlborough’s companion in arms was not only a great soldier but also one of the most important patrons and collectors of his day; a modest man with a deep love of painting and architecture inspired by a strongly individual taste.