The blog

Writing & notes

Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.

  • Lutenist

    Orazio Gentileschi, oil on canvas, circa 1626 Read more →

  • The Waterseller of Seville

    Diego Velázquez, oil on canvas (106 x 81cm), 1623 Read more →

  • Los Borrachos

    Diego Velázquez, oil on canvas (1.65 x 2.25m), 1629 The Feast of Bacchus, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Read more →

  • The Count-Duke of Olivares on Horseback

    Diego Velázquez, oil on canvas (3.13 x 2.39m), 1634 Read more →

  • Velazquez (Rizzoli Art Classics)

    The Rizzoli Art Classics series brings you Piero della Francesca, Titian, Caravaggio, and Velázquez, all in beautifully illustrated monographs, offering high-quality reproductions in compact, accessible volumes. These books feature a literary introduction by a renowned art historian, a thoroughly researched essay, and captions describing the artist’s most famous canvases. A useful appendix section includes an… Read more →

  • The Surrender of Breda

    Diego Velázquez, oil on canvas (3.07 x 3.67m), circa 1635 Read more →

  • Hieronymus Bosch

    Four hundred little people frolic au naturel with overgrown songbirds and raspberries; a pudgy blue demon serenades a fashionable young couple with a tune piped through his own elongated nose; a knife-wielding set of disembodied ears stalks the damned through hell. The phantasmagoric imagery of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) has been the source of widespread… Read more →

  • The Garden of Earthly Delights

    Hieronymus Bosch, triptych with shutters; oil on panel, 1504 The Garden of Earthly Delights is a large triptych named for the garden depicted in its central panel. According to one commentator, the triptych represents the history of the world and the development of Christian notions of sin. This history begins on the outside shutters with… Read more →

  • De Staalmeesters

    Rembrandt van Rijn, oil on canvas, 1662 The Syndics of the Clothmaker’s Guild, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Read more →

  • The Anatomy Lecture of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

    Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, oil on canvas, 1632 Read more →