One-minute stories for your coffee break
1. Could this be young Cicero?
A young boy, no older than twelve, is engrossed in a book. With one foot propped up on a bench, his demeanor reveals a certain precocity. All he wants to do is read, and read, and read.
Commissioned around 1464, this fresco was painted directly onto the plaster walls of the Medici banking family’s palatial Milan headquarters. For nearly 400 years, it adorned the courtyard prior to being rescued during the building’s demolition.
Most historians identify the child as the great Roman writer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. The most compelling evidence is found on the bench, where the curious inscription “M. T. Ce Ciro” is etched. Even so, a few scholars suspect the figure may actually be a wealthy schoolboy reading Cicero’s work. This would shift the fresco’s meaning from a historical portrait to a celebration of humanism and education.
What do you think? Is Italian artist Vincenzo Foppa imagining what the legendary statesman was like as a child?
2. Far from the urban cacophony
Viewing herself as a loner, American artist Georgia O’Keeffe spent more and more time in New Mexico to escape New York City’s social demands. She later confided to art critic Henry McBride, “I never felt at home on the East Coast the way I do out here.”
In the Southwest, she found her muse in the rugged and desolate Chinle Badlands. This 230-million-year-old formation of clay, sandstone, and siltstone is famous for its vivid bands of red, purple, and blue.
“The red hill doesn’t touch everyone’s heart as it touches mine…and I suppose there’s no reason why it should,” said O’Keeffe, who considered this America’s most beautiful landscape.
In her eyes, the bleached bones in the wilderness pulsed with life: “The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive in this desert.”
(R) Georgia O’Keeffe, “Dead Tree with Pink Hill” (1945)
3. Oops, mistakes happen
Centuries ago, long before the advent of digital copy editing, how did scribes insert a missing sentence into a completed manuscript page?
Medieval historian Mateusz Fafinski shares this charming “quick fix” discovered in a handcrafted devotional book from the 14th century.
In the margin, the illuminator drew a cloaked figure holding a rope. The figure appears to be physically hoisting a missing line of text up the page directly into the spot he’s indicating.
The text refers to Psalm 128: Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. And your children’s children will be your crown.
4. Bringing Vermeer’s art to life
This engaging, one-minute film by Wytse Koetse adds motion to some of Johannes Vermeer’s most admired paintings of Dutch middle-class life during the 17th century.
The Amsterdam-based filmmaker used AI to create this short video and, predictably, the results are far from perfect. For instance, why does a maid pour milk directly onto a table? Does AI think humans do that?
If the technique were perfected, would videos like this one be useful in a museum setting? I believe they would be. Koetse’s film inspires me to view a painting as a window on the world, compelling me to look closer at all the subtle yet revealing details.
Click here and see what you think…
5. “Women will get it”
In 1972, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro debuted Womanhouse, the first major art exhibition devoted to female empowerment.
Schapiro contributed Dollhouse, a mixed-media object whose overall shape resembles an ancient temple. The kitchen, nursery, and boudoir reflect the cultural expectations for women born in the 1950s.
Yet, tucked away on the third floor is an artist’s studio where a male model poses next to a tray of bananas—a feminist spin on the typical gender roles found in academic life drawing classes.
While a few critics dismissed Dollhouse as a trivial work, Schapiro pushed back, explaining that it helped her learn to create art from a purely female perspective. “Women will get it,” she said.
6. If these chairs could talk
To escape the hectic pace of Paris in 1888, Vincent van Gogh moved south to Arles, where he set up a collaborative workspace. Paul Gauguin was the first artist to join him.
To brighten their bare rooms, Van Gogh painted two symbolic portraits: one of his own simple wooden chair, and another of Gauguin’s more ornate armchair. Sadly, the relationship between the two artists soured quickly. Within weeks, Gauguin packed his bags and returned to Paris.
A century later, Nigerian artist John Madu reimagined Gauguin’s chair with a symbolic self-portrait of his own, featuring a red plastic chair, flip flops, and a Coke bottle. Resting on the chair is a book of Japanese ukiyo-e prints—an art form Van Gogh admired and studied in detail.
“I want to pay homage to this artist I love,” said Madu, who reinterpreted Van Gogh’s visuals in a West African context to create a bridge between local narratives and a global audience. You can see the full series on the Van Gogh Museum website.
(R) John Madu, “If Gauguin’s Chair was a Monobloc” (2025)
7. Quiet companions
Artist Édouard Vuillard portrayed age with a singular tenderness. This portrait is one of his finest studies of someone who is no longer young. The sitter is art critic Théodore Duret, a champion of Impressionism and founder, along with Émile Zola, of the radical weekly La Tribune.
During the Paris Commune, Duret narrowly escaped execution.
Vuillard depicts the writer surrounded by the books and papers of a long career. Reflected in the mirror is Whistler’s portrait of Duret as a young man dressed for a night out at the theater. The mirror image marks the passage of time: Duret at 74 is no longer the firebrand whose political views nearly cost him his life.
Now, grave as a Venetian doge, he holds a cat on his lap. Place your thumb over the cat to discover how much of the painting’s soulfulness depends on Lulu…
8. From meh to magnificent
Years ago at MoMA, art critic Henry McBride was scrutinizing a huge mask adorned with a mouse trap, hair brushes, and other miscellany when a couple approached and stood beside him. The man stared at the mask in disbelief, then turned to his wife and said, “Never throw anything away.”
McBride’s anecdote comes to mind whenever I see work by El Anatsui. Originally from Ghana, the artist now lives in Nigeria, where he recycles bits of discarded metal, usually from liquor bottles. First he hammers the metal. Then he artfully wires the flattened pieces together.
Anatsui’s installations evoke Kente cloth, a shimmering fabric worn by Ghanaian royalty. He reimagines this traditional signifier of wealth to critique the values of consumer culture.
The installations take on a different shape each time they are displayed, a fluidity meant to reflect the ever-changing nature of life. Currently, you can see Untitled 2009 at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.
9. Messing around with monsters
Suspended high in the air, Saint Anthony appears unfazed as a horde of demons tests his faith. I admire his stoic chill.
Inspired by a 15th-century engraving by Martin Schongauer, the painting vanished for centuries. It resurfaced in 1905, disappeared again, and finally reemerged in 2009 when a dealer brought it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for authentication. While experts knew it originated in the Renaissance workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, the specific painter’s identity remained a mystery.
Remarkably, infrared scans and X-rays revealed the artist was a mere twelve-year-old boy who grew up to be the renowned sculptor Michelangelo. Art historians spotted his unmistakable cross-hatching in the underdrawing. The boy used his pen like a chisel, mimicking the act of sculpting on a sheet of paper.
To make these monsters truly nightmarish, the young prodigy visited the local fish market in Florence to inspect the textures, colors, and scales of the creepiest sea life he could find.
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