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Tag: iconography

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  • A shield for espionage: Thomas de Leu’s portrait of Sir Francis Drake

    21/11/2016

    The iconography of Sir Francis Drake is rich and complex (Sugden and Turner). His many portraits arise from his fame as a circumnavigator, as admiral in Queen Elizabeth I’s navy, as English hero in the battle against the Spanish Armada,… Continue reading

  • Polymorphous polypharmacy

    27/09/2016

    People taking medicines often take more than one medicine simultaneously. Polypharmacy and combination therapy can have many advantages, as well as a number of difficulties, such as non-compliance, unwanted side effects, drug-resistant infections, medical disasters, and waste of money. It… Continue reading

  • Hieroglyphicks of the City Fathers

    25/07/2016

    The Corporation of London is the local government which controls the square mile known as the City of London. It includes the financial industries based in that small area in the eastern half of the London metropolis. The Corporation has… Continue reading

  • Apollo and the Aztecs

    27/06/2016

    Microcephaly is a word that has come from nowhere to the newspapers’ front pages in a surprisingly short time, owing to the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil coinciding with the preparations for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Congenital… Continue reading

  • Witness to Palmyra: Louis François Cassas

    18/04/2016

    The exhibition of a scale model of a destroyed arch from Palmyra in Trafalgar Square, London, from tomorrow (19 April 2016) is the latest episode in a long tradition. That tradition consists of attempts, through the prevailing media of the… Continue reading

  • Christ carries death, sin and the devil up a ladder onto the cross

    Easter 1547: a warlord repents

    24/03/2016

    Easter provides a time for considering the significance of the gospels’ accounts of the last days of Jesus Christ: the sequence of crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. The woodcut above shows Martin Luther on the right and his protector Frederick the… Continue reading

  • A gift from the dead of 1945

    27/01/2016

    January brings to the UK not only storms and floods but also a benefit to users of historical collections: copyright expiry. At midnight on 31 December 2015, the copyrights of people who had died in 1945 expired, and it became… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: a portrait of Sir Francis Burnand

    13/10/2014

    Francis Cowley Burnand (1836-1917) was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge, and while at Cambridge founded the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club in 1855. (The club still flourishes today, now as then called the ADC.) Burnand subsequently became well known… Continue reading

  • Acts of Mercy: Cayley Robinson and Stanley Spencer

    01/10/2014

    Facing the entrance to the Wellcome Library are two large paintings by Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927), from his series Acts of Mercy. This pair, painted in 1916 and 1920, both under the influence of World War I, were formerly facing… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: the tragic life of Fanny Grimaldi

    05/08/2014

    Marie-Françoise (called Fanny) Dupré de Birkenwald was born in 1780 into an old Alsace family. Her father was a scholar and man of letters, despite having lost the sight of both eyes (one in warfare, the other through natural decay).… Continue reading