Philosophy and theology
What is the Meaning of Life?
Four answers to the most serious question of all, from the Stoic portico to Frankl's logotherapy, and why only one of them doesn't depend solely on your willpower.
Philosophy
Where does “those who have a reason to live” come from?
The phrase was born with Nietzsche and became Viktor Frankl's motto in the concentration camps. How a 19th century aphorism became a clinical discovery in the 20th century.
Art and Renaissance
The Pietà, by Michelangelo
The only work Michelangelo signed, sculpted at age 23, and the reason why Mary's face is that of a young girl, not that of a grieving mother.
Art and Renaissance
Bernini and inspiration from Michelangelo
Bernini was obsessed with Michelangelo. He inherited the idea of freeing the figure trapped in marble and took it further, to pure movement.
Art and Renaissance
Sistine Chapel, what to see
A quick guide to the ceiling and altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, and what changes when recognizing the Divine Comedy behind the Last Judgment.
Art and Renaissance
Caravaggio and inspiration from Michelangelo
Michelangelo said that beauty can disturb. Caravaggio radicalized the lesson and said that ugliness can be sacred.
Art and Renaissance
Michelangelo and Dante's Divine Comedy
Why the Last Judgment was not created from scratch, it was read first, in the Divine Comedy that Michelangelo knew by heart.
Art and Renaissance
The Last Judgment, by Michelangelo
The painting that brought Pope Paul III to his knees, and Michelangelo's elegant revenge on the critic who complained about the nudes.
Art and Renaissance
Moses, by Michelangelo
Why Michelangelo's most intimidating sculpture has horns on its forehead, and what it says about the weight of knowing what others don't.
Art and Renaissance
Who was Michelangelo?
The sculptor and painter who lived 88 years at war with the Pope, with death and with himself, and proved that greatness is born from conflict that cannot be abandoned.
Art and Renaissance
Caravaggio and his works of David
Caravaggio returned to the theme of David and Goliath three times throughout his career. The differences between the versions tell the story of a painter who changed.
Art and Renaissance
Capitoline and Caravaggio Museums
Saint John the Baptist and The Gypsy Soothsayer, by Caravaggio, at the Pinacoteca Capitolina, inside the Capitoline Museums in Rome.
Art and Renaissance
Caravaggio and the Bible
Why Caravaggio, almost always painting biblical themes, treated them as reports of common people, not as a repository of idealized truths.
Art and Renaissance
Caravaggio and the Vocation of Saint Matthew
The painting in which Christ points to a tax collector, and grace falls on the last man anyone would expect God to choose.
Art and Renaissance
Caravaggio and Bernini, the birth of Baroque
How Caravaggio's pictorial drama became, in Bernini's hands, a drama carved in marble and projected into space.
Art and Renaissance
Galleria Borghese and Caravaggio
Caravaggio's six paintings gathered in the Galleria Borghese, the largest concentration of his work in a single museum in the world.
Art and Renaissance
Galleria Doria Pamphilj and Caravaggio
Two paintings by Caravaggio, made with the same model, brought together in the Sixteenth century room of the Galleria Doria Pamphilj.
Art and Renaissance
Vatican and Caravaggio Museums
The Deposition of Christ, Caravaggio's only work in the Vatican Pinacoteca, and the reason it was chosen for this rare company.
Art and Renaissance
Palazzo Barberini and Caravaggio
Where to see Judith and Holofernes and Narcissus, by Caravaggio, two works that have never left this collection since the 17th century.
Art and Renaissance
David with the Head of Goliath, by Caravaggio
Goliath's bloodied face is Caravaggio's self-portrait, a fugitive, sent to the cardinal who had the power to grant his pardon.
Art and Renaissance
Judith and Holofernes, by Caravaggio
The biblical scene that Caravaggio refused to paint as a clean triumph, showing heroism and horror in the same face, at the same time.
Art and Renaissance
Little Sick Bacchus, by Caravaggio
A self-portrait painted in a hospital, refusing the idealization of a god and transforming fragility into an argument about the sacred.
Art and Renaissance
What is chiaroscuro?
The technique of light and shadow that, in Caravaggio's hands, stopped being a visual resource and became a statement about where grace chooses to fall.
Art and Renaissance
Who was Caravaggio?
The painter on the run for murder who continued to be commissioned by popes and cardinals, and discovered that the sacred lives in the wound, not in perfection.
Art and Renaissance
Exploring the Galleria Borghese
A guided tour through the rooms of the Galleria Borghese, from the garden of the Villa Borghese to the face-to-face meeting with Bernini.
Art and Renaissance
Galleria Borghese and Bernini
Why the Galleria Borghese is, in practice, the most complete portrait of the young Bernini, before he became the architect of the Roman Baroque.
Art and Renaissance
Galleria Borghese, what to see
A quick guide to the works that combine, in a single museum in Rome, the three sculptural groups by Bernini and canvases by Caravaggio.
Art and Renaissance
Is it worth going to the Galleria Borghese?
Why a small museum, with a timed visit, contains more decisive works per square meter than almost any other in Rome.
Art and Renaissance
Apollo and Daphne, by Bernini, and Ovid
How Bernini sculpted the impossible instant, the exact second in which a nymph stops being human, based on Ovid's myth in the Metamorphoses.
Art and Renaissance
Bernini and the Aeneid, by Virgil
Why the Aeneid was, for Bernini, more than a source of sculpture, the epic grammar of a civilization, present even in St. Peter's Square.