Thinking small and dreaming big in Isabel Nolan’s imaginary world

Dublin-born artist Isabel Nolan discusses her Ireland pavilion exhibition "Dreamshook" at the Venice Biennale, developed with curator Georgina Jackson. The show explores the liminal state between dreaming and waking, weaving a fictional narrative around Renaissance humanist Aldo Manuzio, who popularized portable books. Nolan draws on late Medieval and early Renaissance visual language, using intimate forms like textiles to tackle big ideas about cosmology, religion, and humanism. She describes her ambivalent relationship with European cultural inheritance and the need to recover occluded voices.

Special Interest: Marble

Spezialinteresse: Marmor

Karl Kolbitz has published a new book focusing on the depiction of marble in Early Renaissance paintings. He explores how artists used the fictional representation of marble to visualize the divine, drawing inspiration from art historian Georges Didi-Huberman and employing modern imaging techniques to reveal previously hidden details.

In Turin, a Confrontation Between Masters: The Exhibition of Beato Angelico and Bartholomeus Spranger

A Torino c’è un confronto tra maestri: la mostra di Beato Angelico e Bartholomeus Spranger

The Musei Reali in Turin has unveiled a specialized study exhibition titled "Beato Angelico negli occhi di Bartholomeus Spranger," which brings together two versions of the Last Judgment. The show features the return of Beato Angelico’s "Madonna of Humility" to Turin, accompanied by his "Last Judgment" on loan from the Museo di San Marco in Florence. This masterpiece is displayed alongside a later interpretation of the same subject by the Flemish Mannerist Bartholomeus Spranger, painted over a century later.