archaeologicals:

miscellaneous links no. 3

• here’s a short history of cursed paintings and a longer investigation of haunted antiques.

• michelangelo and raphael; constable and turner; leibniz and newton. does every creative genius need a bitter rival?

• what the sleeping hermaphrodite motif in greco-roman art tells us about art, sex, and good taste.
• 2,500-year-old homoerotic graffiti was found on a wild, windswept, rocky, and remote aegean island.
• this isn’t quite as secret, but deserves to be better known: the paintings of poet e.e. cummings.
• how to respond to people who say “i could do that” when they look at modern art.

• the newly uncovered colours of two van gogh paintings show how the artist’s darkening life cast a shadow over his work, and change the way art experts see the late period of his life. 

• two historians discuss cosmetics in the renaissance.