Sendak died almost 12 years ago, but his studio is exactly as he left it. There are his pencil cups and watercolor sets; there’s his final manuscript, for a book called “No Noses.” And there, glowing like a ripe tomato, is his red cardigan, draped over the back of an empty chair.
Standing among Sendak’s books, art and ephemera, it was easy to imagine that he’d stepped out for his daily 3-mile jaunt down Chestnut Hill Road. Surely he’d come back, pop in a Mozart CD and get cracking on a new project. There were his walking sticks by the front door; there were his poster paints, wearing price tags from an art store that closed in 2016. There was his stereo, labeled with homemade stickers marked “power” and “volume.”
For a brief moment in the Renaissance, in between the invention of the microscope, printing press, and pencils – along with other technologies that uphold modern society – upper class men were rather preoccupied with erecting another innovation: the codpiece.
Group ordering is the perfect solution to every dining complication: Can’t decide between savory or sweet for brunch? Share a stack of pancakes and a frittata! Don’t want too much food but want to try multiple things? Go halfsies on a bunch of small plates. It’s even an economical hack, as splitting things cuts down on the bill.
Through the principal magi of the high Renaissance, Grafton examines the often uneasy, sometimes beneficial, three-way relationship that existed between religion, magic and science. From outre self-publicists like Faustus to respected scholars such as the Florentine friends Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, who attempted to synthesise occult knowledge (including Jewish and Islamic learning) with Christian doctrine, he traces the expression of a desire for a comprehensive understanding of the cosmos and man’s place within it, as well as the drive to control the natural world, that paved the way for the evolution of scientific method. “The magus,” he writes, “is a less respectable figure than the artist or the scientist… but he belongs in a dark corner of the same rich tapestry.”