Highlights from the CMA’s release of more than 34,000 digital images of public domain works — all high resolution and free from restrictions on reuse….more
Robert Fludd’s alphabet of correspondences, where each letter and number is paired with an object which echoes its shape….more
Confronted with a bad frontispiece portrait of himself Milton enacted a very literary revenge on the engraver….more
Harmonia Macrocosmica (1660), an atlas of the stars from the Dutch Golden Age of cartography, maps the structure of the heavens in twenty-nine extraordinary double-…more
Collection of allegorical maps (17th–19th century) charting that heady territory of love, courtship, and marriage….more
Wonderful examples of “fore-edge painting”, where an illustration or design appears on the “fore-edge” of a book….more
California used to be thought of as an island. This stunning collection of 17th- and 18th-century maps illustrates how….more
The egg dance was a traditional Easter game involving the laying down of eggs on the ground or floor and dancing among them whilst trying to break as few as possibl…more
Highlights from a book of 120 woodcuts depicting a series of fantastically bizarre and grotesque figures, reminiscent of some of the more inventive and twisted crea…more
John Florio’s translation of Michel de Montaigne’s genre-forming Essays, including thoughts on grief, friendship, drunkenness, impotence, smells, death, and thumbs….more
From whole multi-paragraph excerpts to single lines, this wonderful little book dedicates itself, as the title declares, to presenting the wit and wisdom to be foun…more
17th-century Dutch engraving showing a team of pigs spinning cotton, while in the corner a woman — who’d normally be associated with the work — sleeps….more