The painted and relief-cut walls of ancient Egyptian tombs and temples record an amazing continuity of customs and beliefs over nearly 3,000 years. Even the artistic style of the scenes seems unchanging from century to century, but this appearance is deceptive. In this pioneering work, Gay Robins offers convincing evidence, based on a study of Egyptian usage of grid systems and proportions, that innovation and stylistic variation played a significant...

Si usted odia los albures, adquiera este libro para ver si mejora. Si le gustan, cómprelo igualmente. Si supone que es un libro pelado, déjelo. En todo caso, forme usted parte de las mayorías que se divierten jugando con las palabras sin hacerse daño, y trate de sumarse a las legiones que luchan por borrarle seriedad a la vida. El buen juego alburero puede ser pícaro y altisonante, pero no lépero. Sergio Corona sostiene con razón que la vulgaridad...

Excerpt: "The greatest artists have expressed themselves so completely in their works, that the story of their lives adds little or nothing to our knowledge of their personality. We know very little about the life of Turner-almost as little, indeed, as we know of Shakespeare's-but in neither case do we seem to have missed anything that would add to our comprehension or enjoyment of their work. With Turner, as with Shakespeare, his art was the perfect...

Con Breve historia del arte paleocristiano y bizantino descubrirá las creaciones artísticas de los primitivos cristianos, surgidas en un mundo plagado de simbología pagana, que el artista paleocristiano reinterpretará para adaptarla a la nueva religión. Desde los sarcófagos de las catacumbas donde se llevaban a cabo los ritos religiosos, hasta su salida al exterior tras la promulgación de los edictos de tolerancia religiosa y su posterior proclamación...

Excerpt: "The object of the following pages is to re-study the character of Turner's art in the light of his sketch-books and drawings from nature. During Turner's lifetime his rooted objection to part with any of his sketches, studies, or notes often formed the subject of ill-natured comment. Yet we owe it to this peculiarity that the drawings and sketches included in the Turner Bequest at the National Gallery comprise practically the whole of the...

Excerpt: "A drawing is a thing to be looked at and not written about. Pages and pages written about it will not make a good drawing bad nor a bad drawing good, nor will they, unfortunately, really equip and instruct anyone, to know the one from the other, should he happen to lack that subtle sense whereby, such things are known, for the reason why one drawing is, justly ranked as a masterpiece while another is, thrown away lies hidden on the plane...

Sometime in the early fourth century BC, an unknown Egyptian master carved an exquisite portrait in dark-green stone. The statue that included this head of a priest, likely a citizen of ancient Memphis, may have been damaged when the Persians conquered Egypt in 343 BC, before it was buried in a temple complex. Its adventures were not over: after almost two millennia, the head was excavated by Auguste Mariette, a founding figure in French archaeology....

This volume presents the proceedings of a conference hosted by the American School of Classical Studies, Athens and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens in 2004. There are additional contributions from Patricia Butz, Robin Osborne, Katherine Schwab, Justin St. P. Walsh, Hilda Westervelt and Lorenz Winkler-Horacek. The contents are divided into four sections I. Structure and Ornament; II. Technique and Agency; III. Myth and Narrative and...

"Aristotle's Poetics is one of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history." "A penetrating, near-contemporary account of Greek tragedy, it demonstrates how the elements of plot, character and spectacle combine to produce 'pity and fear' - and why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. It introduces the crucial concepts of mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis, which...

In the past, textile production was a key part of all ancient societies. The Ancient Near East stands out in this respect with the overwhelming amount of documentation both in terms of raw materials, line of production, and the distribution of finished products. The thirteen intriguing chapters in Textile Production and Consumption in the Ancient Near East describe the developments and changes from household to standardised, industrialised and centralised...