A bian-wen text copied in China in 921 describes highly industrialized punishments in hell. Punishment in Dante’s Inferno is less technological. … Read the post bian-wen text shows economic development in hell
Pictorial storytelling has long provided popular entertainment and moral instruction. Dunhuang bian-wen and the Hebrew Bible indicate this practice. … Read the post behold, using pictures in popular storytelling
In Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Iran, magnificent Falnamas suggest that images dominated words for providing commoners with an impressive, royal augury. … Read the post Falnama: fortune showing tops fortune telling
Garden & Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, a recent, magnificent exhibition at the Sackler Gallery, included paintings memorializing the life of Maharaja Bakhat Singh. He was an eighteenth-century Rathore-Rajput ruler of the Jodhpur-Marwar kingdom, now in the Indian state of Rajasthan. A number of paintings depict the royal, cultured Bakhat Singh at his Nagaur … Continue reading responding to the maharaja and the ogre
The Heaven on Earth exhibit includes large, beautifully illuminated choir books from medieval Europe from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. … Read the post Heaven on Earth: media in the Middle Ages