Earlier this week I mentioned a paper by Ross S. Kilpatrick that claims the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, the Mona Lisa , incorporates images inspired by the Roman poet Horace and Florentine poet Petrarch. Dr. Kilpatrick was kind enough to send me a link to the paper, Horace, Petrach and Leonardo da Vinci. Literary Invention and Self-Presentation in the Mona Lisa . [PDF]
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…