Michelangelo Drawings
Studies in World Art, Book 59
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Narrated by:
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Joe Van Riper
About this listen
There is no doubt that the show of Michelangelo drawings at the British Museum in London counted as one of the artistic events of the year, if not of the decade. It is unlikely that the public will have another chance to see such a complete panorama of the artist’s achievement as a draughtsman for many years to come, if indeed ever again. The museum reported, before the exhibition had even opened, that advance bookings had reached a level three times greater than that of any previous show held in its - rather cramped - temporary exhibition space.
The reasons for this rush to get in are not hard to discover. Michelangelo’s reputation is that of the greatest of all artists. Most of his finished, or near-finished, works are in marble or fresco, and can never leave their locations in Florence or Rome. His drawings are the only portable objects we have, and many of the best of these are in British collections - in the British Museum itself, and in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. To these the show adds drawings borrowed from the Teyler Museum in Haarlem. Many of the sheets on view are now so familiar from reproduction - for example, the studies of bathers for the "Battle of Cascina", or the red chalk drawing for the figure of Adam on the Sistine ceiling - that many visitors will feel sure they have encountered them previously. In fact, they probably haven’t. Old Master drawings are too fragile, and too vulnerable to the effects of light, to be put on view very often, or for prolonged periods of time.
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One of the world's leading historians provides a revolutionary tour of the Ancient World, dusting off the classics for the twenty-first century. Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people - the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women.
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Annoying narrator
- By Chris E on 02-27-15
By: Mary Beard
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Orientalism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."
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We're lucky to have this on audio
- By Delano on 02-27-13
By: Edward Said
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Descartes' Bones
- A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?
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Philosophy of Modernity
- By Roger on 06-17-09
By: Russell Shorto
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Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- By: Clive James
- Narrated by: Clive James
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
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Very enjoyable and well narrated
- By Larbi on 05-18-08
By: Clive James
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The Image, 50th Anniversary Edition
- A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin, Douglas Rushkoff - afterword
- Narrated by: Timothy Danko
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of "pseudo-events" - events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported - and the contemporary definition of celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". Since then Daniel J. Boorstin's prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any listeners who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
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Boorstin’s deep Conservative mindset reaches through every example in this book.
- By Christine on 10-12-20
By: Daniel J. Boorstin, and others
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How Do We Look
- The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul, Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the history of art, religion, and humanity. Conceived as an accompaniment to How Do We Look and The Eye of Faith, the famed Civilizations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art.
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Really needs a PDF
- By Britt Elin Gihleengen on 12-06-18
By: Mary Beard
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Leonardo's Brain
- Understanding da Vinci's Creative Genius
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.
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As distracted as Da Vinci
- By D. McCracken on 05-12-15
By: Leonard Shlain
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A Most Elegant Equation
- Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics
- By: David Stipp
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Bertrand Russell wrote that mathematics can exalt "as surely as poetry". This is especially true of one equation: ei(pi) + 1 = 0, the brainchild of Leonhard Euler, the Mozart of mathematics. More than two centuries after Euler's death, it is still regarded as a conceptual diamond of unsurpassed beauty. Called Euler's identity, or God's equation, it includes just five numbers but represents an astonishing revelation of hidden connections.
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Good treatment of the subject
- By Kindle Customer on 04-09-18
By: David Stipp
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ArtCurious
- Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History
- By: Jennifer Dasal
- Narrated by: Jennifer Dasal
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed - or even murdered.
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Couldn’t take it
- By Amira on 03-05-22
By: Jennifer Dasal
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Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox