Arting About

One of the occupants of Treasure Hunt Towers was recently let out on parole and took the opportunity to pay a visit to the Eternal City (that’s Rome to the less educated among us) and realised there was a huge knowledge gap in the field of Art and Architecture. So on the treasure hunter’s return it was off to the Westminster Libraries Gateway to do some research.

First stop, obviously, was the Art & Design section and Oxford Art Online. This gives access to, among other things, The Grove Dictionary of Art (all 34 volumes of it!). A search for Rome gives an article with sections on history, art and buildings, each section being print-friendly. Searches for Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo and their chums lead to excellent biographies complete with detailed bibliographies and plenty of pictures. Exploring further, click on Tools and Resources for thematic collections of essays on subjects such as Medieval Art and Architecture (who knew there were so many different Viking schools of art?) and Australian Modern Art (who there were so many different etc etc?). Good stuff and coming from Oxford University Press, you know it can be trusted.

Back to the Gateway, our friends at OUP have also provided us with Oxford Reference Online – handy online versions of their one volume dictionaries and encyclopaedias so you can browse The Oxford Companion to the Photograph and the Oxford Companion to the Garden without the inconvenience of walking across to the shelves.

Also linked from the Gateway art section are some excellent guides to photography. A History of Photography from its beginning till the 1920s does exactly what it says on the tin with articles on pioneers and early processes – check out the article on Eadweard Muybridge for a link to how to make your own zoetrope. And check out the Architecture links too – Open-City will tell you all about the annual Open House event while Images of England has over 300,000 images of listed buildings (or lamp-posts or milestones or pillar boxes). See if your library is there.

Going back to Rome, what is the Treasure Hunt Towers top tip for the one place of interest you must not miss? Well, just check out these pictures of the Capuchin Chapel – IF YOU DARE!!!!