17th century
Martin's Close, BBC Four review - where did the scary bits go?Wednesday, 25 December 2019
The series of short films, A Ghost Story For Christmas, became a Yuletide staple on BBC One in the 1970s. Most of them were adapted from the works of medieval scholar M R James, and drew their unsettling supernatural aura from the understated and... Read more... |
Charles I: Killing a King, BBC Four review - sad stories of the death of kingsWednesday, 18 December 2019
This three-part series by historian Lisa Hilton is a follow-up to her previous effort from last July, Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four). That examined his disastrous fall from power, and this first new programme opened just before Christmas... Read more... |
Caravaggio & Bernini, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna - high emotion in 17th century RomeSaturday, 14 December 2019
It doesn’t matter where you stand, whether you crouch, or teeter on tiptoe: looking into the eyes of Bernini’s Medusa, 1638-40, is impossible. The attempt is peculiarly exhilarating, a game of dare made simultaneously tantalising and absurd by the... Read more... |
Bartholomew Fair, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Jonson's chaotic slice of 17th-century lifeFriday, 30 August 2019
It was a bold choice by director Blanche McIntyre to stage Ben Jonson's seldom performed, sprawling slice-of-life play in the bijou Sam Wanamaker Playhouse rather than Shakespeare's Globe's main stage – even if she has pared down both the script and... Read more... |
Artists in Amsterdam, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - a slight but evocative sketchWednesday, 28 August 2019
Done well, a one-room exhibition can be the very best sort, a small selection of paintings allowing the focused exploration of a single topic without the diluting effect of multiple rooms and objects. In this respect, Artists in Amsterdam rather... Read more... |
Charles I: Downfall of a King, BBC Four review - beheaded monarch upstaged by exotic presenterWednesday, 10 July 2019
“I want to discover how our government could fall apart and the country become bitterly divided in just a few weeks,” historian Lisa Hilton announced at the start of her BBC Four account of the traumatic demise of Charles I. In a mere 50 days in... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Treviso - cultural patronage, Italian styleFriday, 05 July 2019
Fortunate those Italian towns and cities whose Renaissance rulers looked to the arts to enrich their domain. Now neglect of cultural heritage can be laid at the doors of successive governments, but regional enlightenment can make a difference even... Read more... |
First Person: Liam Byrne on bringing Versailles to the City's 'Culture Mile'Saturday, 18 May 2019
When you dedicate your life to studying and performing on a musical instrument that essentially went extinct at the end of the 18th century, nostalgia plays a certain unavoidable role in your daily routine. I don't mean fetishistic historicism - I'm... Read more... |
Looking for Rembrandt, BBC Four review - painter's biog is a mini-masterpieceWednesday, 24 April 2019
This final episode of BBC Four's Looking for Rembrandt, exploring the life and work of the Netherlands’ greatest painter, was a mini-masterpiece in itself. We rejoined the story in the mid-1650s, when Rembrandt found that his days of popular acclaim... Read more... |
Visions of the Self: Rembrandt and Now, Gagosian Gallery review - old master, new waysTuesday, 16 April 2019
What are we to make of the two circles dustily inscribed in the background of Rembrandt’s c.1665 self-portrait? In a painting that bears the fruits of a life’s experience, drawn freehand, they might be a display of artistic virtuosity, or – more... Read more... |
The Crucible, The Yard Theatre review - wilfully over-stirredWednesday, 03 April 2019
The Crucible is a play that speaks with unrelenting power at times of discord, most of all when the public consciousness looks ripe for manipulation. Never more appropriate than now, you might think – and in a year in which the work of Arthur Miller... Read more... |
All Is True review - all's well doesn't end well in limp Shakespeare biopicSaturday, 09 February 2019
All may be true but not much is of interest in this Kenneth Branagh-directed film that casts an actor long-steeped in the Bard as a gardening-minded Shakespeare glimpsed in (lushly filmed) retirement. Seemingly conceived in order to persuade... Read more... |
