Friday Links: from lap dog to unicorn

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some excellent stories we’ve been reading this week:

• “Really excellent pointing in Western art history.” Indeed.
• Raphael replaced a lap dog with a unicorn to make his Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn. A century later the unicorn was replaced with St. Catherine of Alexandria’s broken spiked wheel. Believe it or not, there are more excellent stories behind the work.
• Excellent news: The Book of Kells is online! True, it went live in 2013, but the manuscript is more than 1,200 years old, so why quibble.
• Excellent job: traffic-box artist.
• This artist recreates details from Hieronymus Bosch as excellent photographs.

• Old scripts can be very beautiful, but sometimes difficult to read. Here’s an excellent site with more than 100 French manuscripts and the tools for deciphering them and learning about their social, cultural, and institutional settings.
• Excellent overview of the use of virtual reality (VR) in heritage institutions and museums.
• It took four years to make an excellent replica of Ghiberti’s North Doors of the Baptistery. You can watch the whole process in nine minutes.
• The College Board has reviewed the AP course to reverse the cultural and racial bias found in the art world. (We are of course following this excellent topic closely in our AP Art History resources.)
• The Art Institute of Chicago gave its retiring president an excellent Ferris Bueller-esque “Day Off.”