"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
She Knew Better than Any Man: Female Lovers in Brantôme’s Courtly Chronicles “This reminds me of certain women who love their companions so dearly that they would not share them for all the wealth in the world—jealous as a beggar with his drinking barrel.”-- Pierre de...
The Buzzword Syndrome Some words age like wine. Others, like milk. And then there are those that never had a fair shot to begin with, poured over cereal before anyone checked the expiration date. “Parametric” might just be one of them. It started in all its...
Yesterday, on the eve of his 99th birthday, Arnaldo Pomodoro passed away in Milan, the city he elected as his own to live and work in. I decided to honour his memory and his legacy with one of my urban itineraries. A Life Dedicated to Sculpture Born...
The Noble Knight: Gender Ambiguity and Queer Aesthetics in the Portrait of Doña Catalina de Erauso Known as “La Monja Alférez” (The Lieutenant Nun), Catalina de Erauso defied every expectation of early modern gender and class. Fleeing a convent in his teens, assumed male identity, joined...
Veiled in Wit: Queer Subtext and Gender Play in The Heptameron Often dubbed “the French Decameron,” The Heptameron is a collection of 72 stories told by a group of noble travellers, written by Marguerite Queen of Navarre, sister to King Francis I, and one of the...
Not by Nature, but by Habit: Christine de Pizan and the Complexity of Gender Roles “If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as boys are taught, they would learn just as well… Not because they are female,...
The Sword and the Stage: La Maupin, the Scandalous Virtuosa of Baroque France Julie d’Aubigny, better known as La Maupin, was a French opera singer, expert swordswoman, and outlaw who lived as boldly as the heroines she portrayed. Born into a noble family and trained at...
From April 12 to September 15, 2025, Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection hosts the richly evocative solo exhibition Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space (Anatomia di uno spazio in Italian), curated by Flavia Frigeri, an art historian from London’s National Portrait Gallery. Featuring around...
As Blossoms Fall: The Poetry of Ephemeral Love in Nanshoku Ōkagami “Their sleeves were soaked with tears, not from shame, but from knowing they had only this one night. In the garden, plum blossoms were falling—each petal a sigh, each gust a farewell.”-- Ihara Saikaku, The...
In the Courtyard at Dusk: Female Intimacy in Mughal Miniature Painting In the world of the Mughal court, the zenana was a secluded space that offered elite women both constraint and community. Mughal miniature paintings often depicted moments of leisure among women: dressing, reading poetry, making...
