My Mum lent me this book. It has a big font and lots of pictures, so we were both reading it as a break from more ‘serious’ books. It is plenty serious, however. Academic in the lightly worn way Mary Beard’s popular work is. The story she traces is not one I’ve encountered before, and it contains lots of interesting anecdotes and examples. I’m not sure what the overall argument was, really. Mostly just a non-Western/Italy focused history of Civilisation through Art.
My favourite details:
- I didn’t know we have mythology about who did the first portrait
- I didn’t know “the first female nude” was such a well-preserved event in the historical record
- That Sancaklar mosque in Türkiye is really cool!
- That Hebrew bible from when medieaval Spain was cool is REALLY cool, and I love the scribe signing their name in GIANT letters in the back, making the shapes of the letters out of all manner of fantastic/real (nekkid) humans and animals and plants and hybrids thereof.
- The Roman sarcophagus portraits being so realistic. I’ve seen them in person, in Manchester museum, and they’re really striking. An arresting encounter with a person over 1800 years of distance.
- The narration of the historical experience of reading and puzzling through the paintings on the wall of a dimly lit cave as an allegory and re-enactment of the experience of religous discovery is really interesting. (Anjarat caves)
I knew most of the religous history presented, to be honest (I can’t remember how, I think I just have absorbed this kind of thing after 21 years reading books) but it was nice to read a short version of it.
Good book! Worth borrowing from the library, or your Mum.