Read time: 5 minutes

For a brief period of time, there was a consensus view on the history of human civilization: humans were first hunter gatherers, then developed agriculture, and finally developed religion, art, technology, and other aspects of culture.

But then, a 20th century architectural discovery threw all of this into question. Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe challenges the former understanding of the development of culture — in fact, it might even flip the previous consensus on its head..

Although Göbekli Tepe is over 12,000 years old, it still has much to teach us moderns: specifically, it helps you better understand the building blocks of culture, and how you can use that knowledge to live more fully…

Older Than Time

Aerial view prior to excavation work starting (1995)

In the 1960s, a group of American researchers discovered an oddly-shaped hill in the southern region of Turkey. Noticing jagged chunks of limestone protruding from the hill, they dismissed it as a medieval cemetery, unworthy of serious archeological attention. 

Thirty years later, however, archeologist Klaus Schmidt visited the site and slowly came to understand the true nature of it. Over decades, Schmidt’s team revealed a bizarre find: six circular structures with concentric walls and no roofs, intricately decorated with a menagerie of carvings and statues.

This site is 6,000 years older than Stonehenge…

Each structure held two T-shaped stone pillars, some as large as 18 feet tall. Filled with symbolic images and mysterious stones, it’s clear these buildings were part of a religious site. 

Constructed over 12,000 years ago by Neolithic peoples, these stone structures are more than twice as old as Stonehenge. In fact, they’re the oldest known works of human architecture in the world.

Buried beneath ground there are in fact 20 of these ancient rings in total — 95% of the site is yet to be excavated…

The largest pillars are 18 feet tall

The Bedrock of Culture

Göbekli Tepe yields an incredible array of insights about prehistoric society. And when you consider that its structures are the oldest buildings known to history, the main take-away is impossible to miss: the first structures ever created by human architects were temples.

This discovery turns the traditional assumptions about human history upside-down. Historians previously assumed that prehistoric people discovered agriculture by accident. Then, once they learned to cultivate crops, they gradually shifted from a hunter-gatherer way of life to an agrarian one. 

Vultures and scorpions on the famed pillar 43: possibly symbols of the afterlife…

The agricultural revolution was thought to have provided early people with an abundance of food, allowing them enough leisure time to concoct myths, create art, and build temples. In other words, we used to think that practical necessities were the basis of culture.

But Göbekli Tepe tells a different story. As the oldest structure known to history, it predates evidence of the agricultural revolution. Evidence in nearby regions shows that people settled and grew crops after the temples were constructed. This testifies to the concept that religion came before agriculture.

With today’s knowledge, historians now posit that ancient people built the temple, then developed agricultural practices so that they could permanently live near it instead of migrating to follow their prey. 

This begs the question: why did hunter-gatherers abandon their nomadic life to build the world’s first temple? 

Some researchers speculate it was built in response to the birth of the star Sirius, as the standing stones may be oriented towards the star’s path. Whether it was this or some other manifestation of the divine, the Neolithic people must have experienced an event of religious significance — so significant that they felt inspired to start work on something that would take several generations and hundreds of years to complete.

Prehistoric Lessons for Modern Day

The decorative animal reliefs found so far include foxes, wildcats, bulls, boars, snakes and more

The discovery changes our paradigm of culture. 

Modern culture is built on materialist assumptions about mankind: the belief that practical needs are more pressing than spiritual ones, and that physical reality is more “real” than metaphysical. 

As a result, we find ourselves in a culture that builds useful things instead of beautiful ones. If you’re in doubt, look around: do monolithic Walmarts, sprawling highways, and monumental gas stations meet the needs of our bodies, or our souls? 

Göbekli Tepe reminds us that we are a fundamentally religious species: meaning comes before civilization and drives practical developments — not the other way around.

True culture rises out of profound spiritual experiences and, in turn, reflects the depth of that spirituality. It’s no surprise that many of the most enduring and inspiring buildings in history are temples, chapels, and churches.

Modern culture’s obsession with practicality cuts against 12,000 years of human history.

World-spanning infrastructure allows us to communicate ideas, distribute food, and save lives in ways the ancient world never could have imagined. No matter what we’ve gained from industrialization, though, it’s not hard to perceive that, when our “standing stones” are highway overpasses and corporate skyscrapers, we’ve lost something along the way. 

First discovered almost 30 years ago, the revelation of Göbekli Tepe is only beginning to sink into our cultural consciousness. We can’t afford to ignore its insight into both our culture and ourselves. 

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You know Dante’s 9 Circles of Hell, but what does his Heaven look like?

This Saturday I’m exploring Paradiso. But it’s far more than a trip to the heavenly realm — it’s about what happens to your soul along the way…

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Art of the Week

Lascaux Cave Paintings (17,000-15,000 BC)

Over 600 paintings haunt the walls of the caves in Lascaux, France. Five thousand years older than the structures at Göbekli Tepe, these paintings are a sophisticated art in their own right: the artists used the curvature of the cave walls to give the paintings dimensionality, and the graceful shapes of the depicted animals seem to set the stone in motion. 

Not only that, but the pigments used to create the paintings come from over 150 miles away from the cave site, implying that the Paleolithic artists either traveled or traded to obtain them — which is a level of complexity rarely associated with prehistoric art.

The mystery of the Lascaux images, as well as other cave paintings of the era, is their purpose. Unlike the clearly religious purpose of the Göbekli Tepe structures, it’s unclear whether the Lascaux paintings were religious, commemorative, or created for some other reason.

The ambiguity of the paintings adds to their beauty because it prevents the modern viewer from approaching them too analytically. By not knowing exactly why the ancient painters left these images, we have to focus on the images themselves — beautifully infused with the fluid grace of wild animals and the weight of millennia.

Read time: 5 minutes

The Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Can stones and mosaics communicate divine wisdom? Can a single building showcase thousands of years of spiritual teaching? 

In the case of the Hagia Sophia, the answer is yes — and that’s exactly what makes it one of the greatest churches of Eastern Christendom.

From the images portrayed in its mosaics to the very structure of the building itself, the Hagia Sophia incorporates layers of meaning through every level of design.

But first, let’s start with the basics of Byzantine architecture…

First, you know I'm passionate about architecture — my friend's company is bringing back proper craftsmanship to modern construction: sustainable materials, brick facades by local masons…

Their free newsletter (and podcast) is eye-opening — give it a read. You can even invest directly into reviving America's built environment via their work.

Neutral is pioneering a new standard in sustainable living: integrating innovation, sustainability, community, and design into every aspect.

Rome Reborn

Interior of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Carlo Bossoli (1839)

When Constantine the Great relocated the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium (renaming it Constantinople) in 330 AD, he brought Roman architecture with him. In the 6th Century, Emperor Justinian I would draw on those elements to design the greatest Christian church the world had ever seen.

In an example of what would become the Byzantine style of architecture, the Hagia Sophia retained key Roman elements like arches and columns. In contrast to the stripped-down austerity of Roman architecture, though, the Byzantine style grew colorful, complex, and opulent.

The Hagia Sophia exemplified this style: although its bones retain the simplicity of Classical design, its decorations feature intricate carvings, mosaics, high vaulted ceilings, and central domes.

Byzantine “basket” columns were developed from Corinthian columns of classical architecture

This style of architecture would spread as far east as Moscow and beyond. In the West, it developed into the Romanesque, which itself would later transform into the Gothic style that dominates Europe’s great churches.

The Image of the Invisible

The Hagia Sophia was built to be more than a beautiful church. It was meant to accomplish the impossible: to make Heaven visible on Earth through architecture.

This feat would display all of Byzantium’s skill and wealth, and establish Constantinople as the greatest Christian city in the world. To accomplish this, the architects of the Hagia Sophia drew on the symbolism and visual storytelling of Christian tradition.

For example, the Hagia Sophia makes heavy use of domes and arches. To understand why these features are fundamental to Byzantine church architecture, imagine lying down in the middle of a field and gazing upwards at the sky: the sky always appears to be a dome overhead. 

The dome is a powerful reminder of the infinite distance of the sky, which in turn reminds a viewer of Heaven. To bring Heaven to Earth, therefore, Byzantine architects made sure to crown their churches with immense domes. Whenever the faithful gazed up at the lofty ceilings, they were drawn into contemplation of Heaven’s grandeur. 

Did it work?

A delegation visiting from Kiev in the 10th century certainly thought so. On entering the church, they “knew not whether they were in Heaven or on Earth”.

Heaven Meets Earth

As a variation on a dome, arches are another key design aspect of Byzantine churches. Not only do they pay homage to the city’s Roman heritage, but their curved top is another abstract symbol of Heaven.

At the same time, the arch’s square bottom indicates the traditional four corners of the Earth, which makes it the perfect architectural feature to describe the union of Earth and Heaven. The perfect place for this type of arch is in the cathedral, where, in Christian theology, Heaven does in fact meet Earth. 

The Missing Keystone

Christian architects pondered the scripture that called Christ the “cornerstone” of the church. One way in which they interpreted this passage was to think of him as the keystone of an arch as well. 

It’s common in Christian architecture to find Jesus as the literal keystone of vaults and arches

In architecture, extending an arch gives you a vault, while rotating a two-dimensional arch in three-dimensional space gives you a dome. Domes, in turn, are essentially an infinitude of arches coming together, united at the top by a capstone.

Christian architects continued the tradition of connecting Christ with the arch keystone, and by extension, the capstone, by adding an image of Christ at the summit of the churches’ domes to reinforce the connection. In some cases, the image is as subtle as a relief carving in the capstone.

In the case of the Hagia Sophia, however, the inside of its dome was (probably) decorated with a giant mosaic of Christ Pantocrator — that is, until the image was covered by Muslim conquerors…

How the Pantocrator mosaic in the dome might have looked

Church to Mosque

Islamic invaders captured the city of Constantinople in 1453, looting the city and taking control of the Hagia Sophia. Since then it has been under Muslim control, functioning as a mosque up through modern times. 

The Hagia Sophia’s new Islamic rulers added layers of Muslim design over the original Christian art, including immense round panels displaying the calligraphic names of Allah, Muhammad, and more. Minarets — towers from which the call to prayer goes out to Muslim faithful — were also added in the 15th century, definitively marking the Hagia Sophia as a mosque:

An early image taken around 1897 — the minarets being already 400 years old at this point

In 1935, the mosque was decommissioned to make the Hagia Sophia a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site to allow access for Christian, Muslim, and secular visitors.

But in a move that rattled the fragile inter-religious peace of the area, it was rededicated as a functioning mosque in 2020 — further proving that the Hagia Sophia is, as it has been since its creation, a nexus of political as well as religious tension.

Living Stone

The central mosaic may be missing, but this apse mosaic of the Virgin and Child still survives — from 867 AD

Ancient buildings often seem like inert relics of a distant past. But that’s where the Hagia Sophia is different, and what makes it so gripping: it’s as active in modern politics as it was in ancient times.

Not only that, but the architecture, the decoration, and the layers of history on its walls give it a vivid human warmth that is rare among works of ancient architecture. 

For those who want to connect with the traditions of the past, the Hagia Sophia is a masterclass in living history. From ancient symbolism to modern politics, this building leaves us wondering:

What can we build today that will become more beautiful, meaningful, and precious over the millennia?

Art of the Week

The Theotokos of Vladimir, Unknown Artist (c.12th century)

Measuring just under four feet by two feet, this icon is a small but immensely powerful remnant of the Byzantine Empire. An unknown iconographer created it in Constantinople during the city’s Golden Age, and it was given as a gift to the Grand Prince of Kiev in the 12th century. From there, it went on to accrue a history of miracles that quickly made it a beloved touchstone of Russian Christianity.

The icon is a Theotokos Eleusa, a type of icon that shows the Virgin Mary (known in Greek as the Theotokos, meaning “Bearer of God") tenderly holding the Christ Child. Critics praise the Theotokos of Vladimir for the delicate tenderness of Mary’s expression, revealing motherly compassion, sorrow for her son’s suffering, and quiet joy.

The interplay of simplicity and complexity in this icon make it one of the most arresting religious paintings in history — after a thousand years, it still draws viewers in with a magnetic, silent power.

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Read time: 5 minutes

There’s an old proverb about the pyramids from the 12th century:

Man fears time; time fears the pyramids. 

It’s sobering to be reminded just how old they are: Cleopatra lived closer in time to today than she did to the construction of the Great Pyramid.

Mysterious, silent, and thoroughly iconic — over 4,000 years after their construction, the pyramids of Egypt never cease to enchant and inspire.

Man’s effort to reach towards the heavens is what creates culture itself, and no achievement shows this like the Great Pyramid: the last-standing of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World.

How did they achieve it? By incrementing and improving over centuries…

From Mud to Mastaba

The Narmer Palette contains some of the oldest known hieroglyphs (31st Century BC)

Around 3150 BC, a ruler known to history as Narmer unified the scattered African groups congregating around the Nile River’s life-giving waters. 

Once united, these tribal groups grew in power and organization. Motivated by a vivid afterlife mythology, early Egyptian rulers constructed tombs in the form of “mastabas,” low, rectangular mud-brick buildings that covered the burial chamber tunneled below.

It wasn’t until 2630 that one visionary changed history. Imhotep, a polyglot priest in the court of King Djoser and overseeing construction of the King’s tomb, had an idea: he ordered a second rectangular platform to be built on top of the first.

He added a third, then a fourth. By King Djoser’s death, the tomb consisted of six layers of descending size, creating the first rough pyramid.

The Step Pyramid of Djoser (c.2630 BC)

The blocky shape of this “Stepped Pyramid'' is more familiar in the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and temples of Mesoamerica. However, Djoser’s pyramid is about 500 years older and 100 feet taller than the great Ziggurat of Ur…

Practice Makes History

The “False Pyramid” at Meidum (c.2600 BC)

Generations of pharaohs after Djoser followed his example and attempted to construct stepped pyramids of their own, but due to their short reigns, none of them completed their tombs.

During the reign of King Sneferu (2613-2589 BC), though, the world saw the wonder of the first smooth-sided pyramid — but it didn’t come easily. 

Sneferu was seized by the idea of adding smooth sides to a stepped pyramid. His first attempt to do so was flawed by trying to build the smooth-sided outer layer on sand, which gave way during construction and caused a partial collapse. This “False Pyramid” is still visible at Meidum today. 

Next, Sneferu tried building a smooth-sided pyramid from the ground up. He founded this one on rock, but designed it with such steep sides that the limestone blocks began to slide out from under the structure’s weight. Hastily altering the design to incorporate a shallower angle, Sneferu completed the so-called “Bent Pyramid,” but he remained unsatisfied. 

The Red Pyramid, Dahshur necropolis, Cairo (c.2575 BC)

Sneferu’s final attempt at construction created the “Red Pyramid.” Though its angle is shallower than the iconic Giza pyramids, giving it a squat appearance, it made history as Egypt’s first true pyramid — a landmark moment which successive pharaohs were eager to build on. 

Wonders of the World

The Great Pyramid of Khufu, Giza (c.2550 BC)

Sneferu’s son and successor, Khufu, elevated his father’s legacy by creating the true icon of Egypt: the Great Pyramid of Giza. 

Standing over 480 feet high, it remains the largest pyramid in the world. It’s surrounded by the pyramids of his son and grandson (in successively diminishing height) and three small pyramids for Khufu’s queens. The Giza necropolis also includes a small suburb of mastabas in which Khufu’s court officials are buried, as well as the 66-foot tall Great Sphynx.

The pyramids were the emblem of Egypt’s prosperity, confidence, and cultural progress. They served not just as funeral monuments, but as symbols of Egypt’s evolving power and identity.

A Veil of Simplicity

The pyramids are stark but not at all simplistic. While the slopes of each pyramid lie at differing angles (between 50 and 56 degrees), the Great Pyramid is especially unique in that its proportions are based on the Golden Ratio. 

These proportions endow the Great Pyramid with its mysterious magnetism. More than a monolith, its stripped-down structure comprises myriad mathematical harmonies that, while a viewer may not be able to identify or explain, he cannot help but feel.

Some analysts even claim that the comparison between the angle of the Great Pyramid and the angle of the typical sand dune also echoes the Golden Ratio, creating a mystical harmony between the architecture and its surroundings… 

Reaching for the Sun

Mountains are universal places of worship for virtually all world religions. From the Temple of the Sun in Mesoamerica to the Ziggurats of the Middle East, most all great temples imitate this shape.

These mountain-shaped structures all tell the universal story of civilization: each generation must build on what came before, taking previous achievements to new heights. Standing on the shoulders of its forebears, a culture can build a legacy that dazzles the world — and at the same time, reaches toward heaven. That’s why the pyramid is the ultimate symbol of culture rising out of chaos.

This story of culture-building plays out in the story of the pyramids: no single generation alone achieved the glory that has lasted 4,000 years. Sons built on their fathers’ work, learned from their mistakes, and trusted their accomplishments. In time, this chain of tradition built a civilization like no other, leaving a legacy that has outlasted millennia. 

In the face of such a staggering accomplishment, we have to ask ourselves: how can each of us build on the personal and cultural legacy that we’ve inherited? 

Art of the Week

The Battle of the Pyramids, Louis-François Lejeune (1806)

Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (1798-1801) incited Europe’s nineteenth-century love of Egypt’s mysterious and mystical past. 

As Napoleon led his troops up to the pyramids, he reminded his army, “From the heights of the Pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.” 

Louis-François Lejeune captured the hectic triumph of Napoleon’s Battle of the Pyramids, but the pyramids in the background exert a haunting presence.

They hint that while Napoleon may have triumphed today, the pyramids have seen many great rulers come and go — and watched the sands of time swallow them all.

Read time: 5 minutes

Think of any city you visit as a tourist or any neighborhood preserved for its historic value. Chances are, you’ll find yourself surrounded by grand period buildings, a Main street of old masonry dwellings with shops on the ground floor, or tree-lined streets of row houses and brownstones.

These places simply feel more vibrant. People make pilgrimages to see them in Europe each year by the millions — and yet, in American society, we’ve stopped building these places to enjoy in our daily lives.

Why did we end up with vast, sprawling suburbs and copy-paste downtown glass towers?

Well, American cities used to be much more like European ones. It has to do with something called “the missing middle”…

Some people are actively trying to transform America’s urban fabric by building back the “missing middle” — my friend runs a company building new communities of multi-family housing to fill this gap.

They’re bringing back manual craftsmanship to modern construction: sustainable materials, mass timber, brick facades by local masons…

Their free blog (and podcast) is eye-opening — please go and read it. You can even invest directly into reviving American communities via their work…

America Once Looked Very Different… 

Washington, D.C. in 1924 — most workers commuted by foot or on public streetcars

At the end of the 19th century, American cities were similar to European ones. They had much smaller physical footprints than today (total area compared to population size).

Most buildings were between 4-10 stories tall, surrounded by access to public transportation and local amenities: grocery stores, theaters, museums, restaurants, bars, and cafés.

Most city dwellers in the lower to middle-income brackets lived in dense urban environments within a practical distance of their workplace. The wealthier classes were slightly further out, but near enough to commute via elegant streetcars.

This is no longer the case due to the near-extinction of the “missing middle”…

Missing Middle Housing

Amsterdam: a model for medium-density…

“Missing middle housing” simply means medium-density housing options that bridge the gap between single-family homes and high-rise apartments.

Today, in America, there is almost nothing in between. You have endless sprawls of suburban homes where people live, completely separate from where they work or socialize. Or, right in the center of town, people live in high-rise tower blocks.

Middle housing typology is what makes cities feel dense and vibrant. Walkable neighborhoods of Europe, especially the old towns, have plenty of it — and it’s a simple yet powerful way to revitalize our urban landscape.

Chicago’s iconic brick “two-flats”

Before the late 1940s, cities across the United States were adorned with beautiful “missing middle” homes, like two-flats in Chicago, brownstone rowhouses in Brooklyn, triple-deckers in Boston, and bungalow courts in California.

Where did America’s Missing Middle go?

Well, we stopped building it — or in some cases, demolished it.

It went extinct over the last 70 years. After WWII, most US cities prioritized suburban sprawl over increasing population density in urban cores. This shift was tied to notions of the “American dream” promoted in popular culture: a big suburban house, a car, a job in the city.

At the time, the urban living conditions without modern conveniences like universal plumbing, heating and air conditioning were not nearly as comfortable as the promise of a stand alone house with a green lawn or a large shopping mall with infinite free parking.

Mass swathes of cities, like Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, were gradually demolished to accommodate more lanes of traffic, more parking, and commercial high-rises. This process was initially driven by a utopian vision of the freedom that the car-oriented society promised. Over time, the streetscape became unrecognisable, the memories of the cities of the past faded, and new generations accepted the bland streetscape as a given.

Cities like Kansas City were stripped of their “missing middle” to make way for the super highways…

Together with the rise of automobile-oriented infrastructure, urban planning in America started to prioritize single-use zoning. Planners and municipalities believed that people would prefer the convenience of modern dedicated places for work, education, shopping, rest, entertainment, and worship. 

In turn, the demand for middle density dwellings in urban cores, and especially mixed-use buildings declined. 521,000 people used to live in Minneapolis in 1950. The highways made it easy for people to flood the suburbs, cratering the city population to 368,000 by the 1990s.

The population still hasn’t recovered — it’s around 425,000 today.

Minneapolis in 1908

With fewer people living in urban cores, demand for beautiful things dwindled: a great show at an elegant theater, a dinner at a neighborhood restaurant, a night walk in a lively city, a morning coffee at your local cafe. Over the past decades, we’ve started to realize just how much car-oriented infrastructure and single-use zoning reshaped American cities — and at what cost.

So, How Do We Fix It?

Saratoga Springs, New York (1915)

The only way to revive walkable cities and revitalized downtowns is to build more mixed-use neighborhoods and middle housing typology for people to live in. It sounds simplistic and obvious, but it’s a change that would breathe life, vibrancy, and beauty back into the heart of American cities.

To start, cities like Minneapolis have started to embrace zoning reforms that pave a way to middle  housing and mixed-use communities. For instance, they’re phasing in zoning laws to allow multi-family homes to be built in areas marked exclusively for single-family homes or commercial zones. 

But zoning by itself doesn’t create new housing, developers do. Historically, development capital was highly concentrated on building suburban communities or massive urban apartment complexes and commercial buildings. With the new generation of urban dwellers seeking more walkable and vibrant neighborhoods, there’s finally a real opportunity to create new middle housing and mixed-use neighorhoods.

So what can we do?

We can support those trying to make a difference on the ground. I have a friend who is actively building these missing middle neighborhoods in America — it’s a step towards a future where cities aren’t just functional but “alive.”

Please read their eye-opening blog and help support the mission. Learn about their methodology and its potential for our urban future (just click the image below)…

The Neutral Project

Read time: 6 minutes

Few works of Western literature can compete with Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s a fascinatingly engaging read, despite being written over 700 years ago and containing many complex references to history and myth. For those who want to master the cultural heritage of the West, it’s required reading. 

Dante grabs the reader’s attention in Inferno, the first part of his Comedy. In it, he travels through Hell, recounting the people and punishments he observes.

However, Inferno is constructed to be read metaphorically as well, and in this sense Dante offers an understanding of the darkness through which the human soul must wade in order to eventually reach the light.

While Dante had Virgil to guide him through the nine circles of Hell, your guide is right here. I will take you on a tour right to the bottom…

The Map of Hell

Sandro Botticelli, The Map of Hell (1485)

Dante’s Hell is full of complex geography that draws both from classical mythology and Renaissance science. Though complex, every detail of Dante’s world-building has meaning that adds to his story.

In the Comedy, Hell is a funnel-shaped pit comprising descending concentric circles, similar in a sense to stadium seating. Specific sins are punished at each level, with both the trespasses and corresponding punishments growing increasingly severe as the levels descend.

Dante’s journey takes him from the uppermost, least severe circles of Hell, all the way to the lair of Satan himself at its core.

Inscribed on the gate as he enters: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"

First Circle: Limbo

The Castle of 7 Gates, Stradanus (1587)

When Dante first enters Hell, the scene is hardly hellish: he sees green fields capped by a castle. Virgil explains that this is Limbo, the eternal resting place of people who lived virtuous lives but, lacking the opportunity to become Christians, could not enter Heaven.

They live eternally in a beautiful place devoid of pain, but also bereft of the full presence, joy, and spirit of God. Individuals found here include Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Aeneas, and Julius Caesar.

Second Circle: Lust

Paolo and Francesca, Anselm Feuerbach (1864)

The second circle of Hell is the first circle of punishment, and it is the circle of the lustful. Here reside the souls who, in their earthly lives, gave themselves up to the whims of their sinful passions. Correspondingly, they are punished by being swept through the air by hot winds. This is the first example of Dante’s contrapasso, a device by which he matches Hell’s punishments to the sins of the damned. 

Here, Dante meets Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, a real-life pair of lovers whose adulterous affair ended in their death. Despite their illicit romance (or perhaps, because of it), their story has inspired artists for centuries. 

Third Circle: Gluttony

Cerberus, William Blake (1827)

Here the three-headed hound of Hades, Cerberus, barks at and harrasses gluttonous souls who are mired down in a pool of foul-smelling sludge. Having devoted themselves to comfort and good food throughout their lives, they neglected the truly worthwhile aspects of life. Now, they are drenched by freezing rain and are only able to eat the putrid slime they wallow in.

Fourth Circle: Greed

The Hoarders and Wasters, Gustave Doré (1857)

In the next circle on the descent Dante encounters the souls of both the avaricious and the prodigal — or in other words, those who hoarded wealth, and those who squandered it.

These two groups are condemned to push massive boulders against each other in a never-ending struggle. This endless, futile effort of pushing weights mirrors the endless and pointless pursuit of wealth they engaged in during their lives, causing the souls to reflect on the vanity of their earthly pursuits.

Fifth Circle: Wrath

The Barque of Dante, Eugène Delacroix (1822)

Journeying deeper into Hell, Dante and Virgil cross the river Styx. Here, the souls of the wrathful (those who were consumed by anger and acted on it) fight each other in the chaotic, putrid waters, while the sullen (those who harbored resentment in silence) are buried at the bottom of the river and choke on mud.

The travelers cross the river and approach the dark city of Dis, the gateway to the next section of the underworld where the graver sins are punished. After demons deny them entry, an angel appears to force open the gates and allow Dante and Virgil to proceed.

Sixth Circle: Heresy

The Burning Tombs of Arch Heretics, Gustave Doré (1866)

The sixth circle of Hell is an eerie graveyard housing the souls of heretics. Having denied the immortality of the soul and the afterlife, the heretics are ironically confined in tombs, symbolizing death and the grave. The eternal flames engulfing the tombs represent the eternal consequences of their heresy: just as the heretics spread their dangerous beliefs like fire, they now face an unending torment that mirrors the spiritual destruction they caused.

Seventh Circle: Violence

Harpies in the Forest of Suicides, Gustave Doré (1861)

The circle of violence is sub-divided into three rings: the first contains the souls of those who were violent against others, the second those who were violent against themselves (suicide), and the third those who were violent against God and nature.

The punishments of this circle are as varied as the types of violence that they have committed. Some swim in a lake of fire and blood, while others are trapped on a plain of scorching sand upon which burning rain falls. In one of the most compelling images of the Inferno, the souls of those who died by suicide are trapped within trees and gnawed on by Harpies - it’s a scene that gives your typical “haunted forest” a run for its money.

Eighth Circle: Fraud

Dante and Virgil, William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1850)

The next circle of Hell plunges down so steeply that Dante and Virgil have to descend to it by riding on the back of the monster Geryon. With the kind face of an honest man yet the body of a serpent and the tail of a scorpion, Geryon is the perfect creature to represent the fraudulent.

As Dante and Virgil reach the eighth circle, they come across the malebolge: ten levels of ditches where subcategories of fraudsters are punished, including seducers, flatterers, sorcerers, hypocrites, and more. 

The French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau masterfully captures the moment in which Dante and Virgil come across two fraudsters fighting each other in his 1850 classic Dante et Virgile:

Ninth Circle: Treachery

Lucifer, King of Hell, Gustave Doré (1868)

The giant Antaeus lowers Dante and Virgil down from the malebolge to the very bottom of Hell. This final circle contains an icy lake in which the souls of traitors are frozen. Since this is the point in the universe which is farthest from the fire and light of God’s presence, it is unbearably cold.

While treachery might seem the same as fraud at first glance, Dante highlights the differentiating factor: while the fraudulent deceive and manipulate on an impersonal level, the treacherous betray those who have placed their trust in them, making this sin far more personal, intimate, and grave.

Dante reserves the worst punishment in Hell for the men he deems history’s most despicable traitors: Cassius and Brutus, who betrayed Julius Caesar, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Christ. These three suffer no less a fate than being eternally clawed at and chewed on by Satan himself.

From Hell to Heaven

Virgil and Dante riding the monster Geryon, Joseph Anton Koch (1828)

Dante’s Inferno is simultaneously complex, engaging, and overwhelming. But it's also immediately applicable. 

In the opening lines of Inferno, Dante tells his own story of drifting away from the path of life he knows he ought to be on. The only way for him to return to it is by endeavoring to travel through Hell. 

Thus the Commedia teaches a universal spiritual law: if you want to journey upward, you must first descend into the depths of your own soul…

…and face the darkness you find there.

Art of the Week

Portrait of Dante Alighieri, Sandro Botticelli (1495)

This simple portrait seems disconnected from Botticelli’s fantastical works such as The Birth of Venus. However, there is a key element of connection between the pieces:

The rebirth of the classical world. 

Botticelli’s Venus exemplifies the Renaissance project of drawing on Greek thought to present Christian ideas. In his writing, Dante was one of the first to do the same thing.

From the very structure of Hell, which he borrows from Aristotle, to the people he meets there, Dante brings the Classical world to new life in an unprecedented way. 

In this portrait, less than two hundred years after his death, Dante has already earned the crown of laurel leaves which will become his identifier in later works of art. It’s a Greek mark of victory conferred on distinguished poets, and well-suited to the heroic accomplishment of the Western canon’s premier poet.

Read time: 5 minutes

Iraq’s answer to the pyramids: the Great Ziggurat of Ur (before and after restoration)

From the ruined walls of the earliest Mesopotamian cities to the skyscrapers of the 20th century, the story of civilization can be told through five main building materials.

Without brick, concrete, stone, wood, and steel, the world would look totally different. But culture itself would also be unrecognizable — because at the same time civilization was shaping these materials, they too shaped civilization. 

Today, we explore a new side of the human story by looking at the five elements that helped (literally) to construct it…

Brick: Humility and Humanity

The ziggurat’s ancient brickwork — several million mud bricks make up its core

The earliest building block of civilization is also its most enduring. That’s because all it requires are the basic elements of life: water, earth, and sun.

Mud bricks were easy to mix and bake under the harsh sun of the Mesopotamian desert. More available than stone, easier to make than concrete, and more lasting than wood, the humble mud brick rose from the desert floor to create the first works of human architecture.

The clay-based unit of construction is still used worldwide, both in its original mud-based form and in more refined formulations, but the most astounding testament to its power is the Great Ziggurat of Ur. Enduring over 4,000 years, the ziggurat is a silent monument to human creativity, manipulating even the most uninspiring material to create a structure of titanic power.

Concrete: Civilization Refined

The Pantheon’s great dome (c.126 AD) — making concrete weightless

As civilization tamed the wildness of the elements, builders experimented with more sophisticated mixtures, methods, and materials. 

Concrete, a mixture of sand or other aggregate held together by cement, emerged under the skillful hands of Greek and Roman designers. Once they discovered that the chemical properties of limestone would cause it to harden into a rock-like state, they used it to cast exciting, imaginative shapes. 

The Romans, for example, believed in wide open spaces — uninterrupted by columns and interior walls. Concrete allowed for building expansive domes like that of the Pantheon. It remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, having never been outdone even by modern industrial methods. 

Though concrete’s popularity in the 20th century was linked to ahistorical design movements like Modernism, the material boasts a far deeper historical significance. Specifically, it was concrete that first allowed architects to move beyond brick’s limited shapes and embrace new imaginative forms of architecture. 

Stone: Works of the Gods

Amiens Cathedral (c.1270): one of the first Gothic wonders — built from local limestone

Harnessed by the Greeks in elegant temples, mastered by the Romans in their expansive infrastructure, and taken to inspired heights by Middle Ages cathedrals, stone is the universal material of nobility. 

Temples and palaces around the world demanded granite, limestone, and sandstone for their construction. Quarrying, transporting, and cutting it was so labor-intensive that it recruited much of a civilization’s peasant class, often boosting the economy by providing so much work. 

But unsatisfied by sheer scale, the most inspired builders hew entire symphonies out of it. The West facade of Amiens Cathedral was a continuous work of art on immense scale, hand-carved over two decades by people of immeasurable devotion.

But even those stone masters were in awe of something else. A saying from the 12th century warns: “Man fears time; time fears the Pyramids.”

Stone’s longevity keeps us connected to the glory of the past. When we walk under the arches of a Medieval cathedral or climb the Pyramid of the Sun, the civilizations of the past become present to us once more.

Timber: Decaying Memory

Borgund Stave Church, Norway (c.1200) — built without a single nail

If stone is the material of the enduring past, timber tells a sadder truth. Namely, that the greater part of the past has been lost to memory.

Timber is cheaper and less demanding than stone, making it the material of choice for lesser churches, mansions, and temples. However, most ancient timber has rotted or burned away. 

The stave churches of Norway and Sweden are a distinct exception. The 16th-century Norse builders used shipbuilding techniques to craft these churches, and thanks to a generations-long method of preparing the timber, several stave churches have lasted hundreds of years.

Sadly though, only a few remain. Their unique architecture begs the question: what other timber buildings have been lost to history?

Steel: Man Scrapes the Sky

The Flatiron Building, New York: one of the first steel framed skyscrapers

In 1856, Henry Bessemer refined iron to produce steel. This strong, light material was the stuff of architects’ dreams, and within years, it dominated the newly industrialized world. 

Previously, architects were limited in how tall they could build by the weight of the materials. Stone is so heavy that it demands a wide base of support to hold up tall towers, while concrete is too fragile to stand tall unsupported.

Bessemer’s invention solved these problems: as steel-boned concrete became the recipe for immense, inexpensive buildings, skyscrapers leaped up all over the industrialized world.

For some time they clung to the architecture of the past. New York’s Flatiron Building was like a Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts details — only extended elegantly skyward.

Steel didn’t just revolutionize architecture: it changed the world. As the material of progress and mass production, steel produced planes, highways, railroads, cars, and transport trucks to move people and goods at breathtaking speeds. Under the influence of steel, the tempo of human life moved faster than ever before. 

Building Blocks of the Future

Architecture, technology, and culture are inseparable. Hand tools quarried the building blocks of ancient temples. Pulleys and wheels constructed cathedrals. The advanced process of iron decarbonization created steel, which built the world we know today.

The story of technology is still unfolding, and so is the story of how we build. 

How will the light-speed advance of 21st-century technology shape our buildings in centuries to come?

But most importantly, will that architecture stand the test of time?

Art of the Week

Night Landscape with Gothic Ruins, Lluís Rigalt (c.1850)

In the 19th century, an upswell of Romanticism pushed back against the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Feeling as though they had been ripped apart from nature by these advancements, the Romantics searched again for mystery, wonder, and the natural world.

A native of Catalonia, Lluís Rigalt lived through the Spanish political instability of the 1830s and 1840s, as well as a massive urban renewal plan to destroy many ancient buildings in 1859.

These events left him with a nostalgia for the enduring beauty of the past, which manifested in his Romantic paintings of landscapes illuminated by the remains of ancient architecture.

In this painting, night falls on the crumbling arches of a Medieval cathedral, while two travelers cling to the light of a bonfire in the old building’s heart. It’s an image of darkness encroaching on a once-great culture, leaving only traces of its former glory — but there is one note of hope:

As long as a few people stoke the fire at the heart, the light of civilization never completely dies.

Read time: 5 minutes

The Art Nouveau glasswork of the Gran Hotel Ciudad de México

In the early 1800s, a German explorer nominated an unlikely contender for the most beautiful city in the world — one he christened “the City of Palaces.”

The explorer was Alexander von Humboldt, and the city was Mexico City.

Despite its distance from the center of the Western world and its relatively modest wealth, Humboldt claimed its beauty put it on the world stage — rivaling the very best of Europe. 

So what made it outshine Florence, Paris, and Prague?

And what can it teach us about the development of true culture?

Quick reminder: I just launched new Saturday content.

You’ll get behind-the-scenes, deep-dives and interviews with some truly great minds — in the world of art, architecture, academia and much more.

This Saturday: How did the Renaissance produce so much epic art? With huge egos and intense rivalry…

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The City of Gold

The Pyramid of the Sun

Mexico’s palatial architecture long predates its contact with Europe. Some 1,300 years before the Spanish reached American shores, the Toltec Empire constructed the Pyramid of the Sun: a massive ziggurat-like structure whose size overshadows even some of Egypt’s pyramids.

The Aztec empire reached its zenith in the 15th century. At the same time, across the Atlantic, a royal marriage took place that would lead to the end of the great Mesoamerican civilization.

The wedding of Ferdinand and Isabella began Spain’s golden era, which entailed 200 years of exploration, conquest, and strategic alliances that firmly put Spain on the map as a world power. 

When Spanish explorers first set out for America, all of the gold in the entire continent of Europe could have fit into a box of only 6 square feet. In the Americas, however, rich mines of it awaited. When Spanish conquistadors reached the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan, the sheer amount of the precious substance dazzled them.

The 1521 Fall of Tenochtitlan

Spanish conquests in the Americas (specifically those of the Aztec and Incan empires) flooded Spain with gold, making it the richest country in the world. But a good portion of this gold eventually made its way back to Mexico — if not in the form of gold bars, in the form of construction and investment.

In particular, 18th-century nobles and settlers furthered development of Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, constructing palatial new buildings that subsequent generations and art movements would continue to adorn. While they differ in style and era, they’re united by dramatic designs, extravagance, and fusion of styles spanning centuries.

Here’s why Mexico City is aptly named the “City of Palaces”…

The Metropolitan Cathedral

Just as the foundations of Tenochtitlan would be repurposed to build Mexico City, Spanish architects built their new Cathedral on the foundations of an Aztec temple — even sourcing its stone from extant Aztec buildings.

Work on the Cathedral began in 1573, but the it would not be completed until 1813. The 250-year construction imparted a unique character to the building because it incorporates all the architectural styles that emerged during its construction, from Gothic to Baroque to Neoclassical. 

The extra-long building time also made the Cathedral an anchor for the developing nation of Mexico. Everyone, from nobles to laborers, contributed to it. Generation after generation helped it rise, and its construction and religious significance brought together artisans, government officials, religious leaders, and common people.

The Altar of the Kings: a Mexican Baroque portal to heaven

The Cathedral’s most distinctive feature is its Altar of the Kings. Exemplifying the Churrigueresque (also known as Spanish Baroque or “Ultra-Baroque”) style, the arched altar is so expansive that it’s almost its own separate room.

Intricate scrollwork spirals up to the vaulted ceiling, embedded with realistic statues of saints and cherub heads. Florid and massive, the altar captures the cathedral’s cultural uniqueness and intensity. 

Palace of Fine Arts

Beaux-Arts, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco — rolled into one.

This building is a fusion of styles that might not exist anywhere else on Earth. It encapsulates the mix of the modern and the classic that makes Mexico City feel so timeless.

Known as the “cathedral of the arts,” the Palace of Fine Arts (Palacio de Bellas Artes) also underwent a long construction: work started in 1904, but architectural and political problems (including a full-blown revolution) delayed completion until 1934. 

In keeping with its delayed completion, the exterior draws on turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau, adding generous curves and organic elements to a neoclassical framework.

But the interior is a different story entirely. It’s like gazing up in something of an Art Deco cathedral: geometric patterns and sharp lines that point to the future…

Gran Hotel Ciudad de México

With work beginning in 1899, the Gran Hotel bridges the divide between Mexico’s colonial and modern eras. In keeping with the Porfiriato-era government’s attempt to stamp out the floridly religious Baroque style, the building shows a neoclassical facade on the side that faces the main city square. 

Beyond its neoclassical exterior though, other aspects of The Gran Hotel are a riot of modernity. Its glass ceiling blazes with Art Nouveau designs, comprising 20,000 separate pieces of Tiffany glass.

Steel forms soaring arches, intricate banisters, and cage elevators — all meant to evoke the railway, with all the excitement, development, and possibility that it implied. 

The City of Palaces, Past and Future

One more: the Postal Palace of Mexico City (1907)

Mexico City’s palaces are astounding for their size, intricacy, and variety. The most incredible aspect of the city’s construction, though, is its history.

Whether by clever construction or accidents of history, these great buildings bring together old styles and new innovations. As a result, Mexico City stays anchored in its storied past while blooming with ambition for the future. 

If the Porfiriato government of Mexico had been successful in mandating universal neoclassical architecture, the city would have missed out on the breathtaking designs that are now an integral part of Mexico’s heritage.

In other words, culture isn’t about trying to freeze the past. 

Mexico City is an incredible example of true culture: staying rooted in the traditions of the past — even as far back as the Toltec pyramids and exuberant designs of its pre-colonial empires — to inspire the breathtaking palaces of the modern age…

Art of the Week

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, El Greco (1586)

The height of Spain’s golden age brought intense religiosity combined with the florid Ultra-Baroque or Churrigueresque style. El Greco captured these cultural elements in what might be his finest work, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.

It depicts a religious legend from the Spanish town of Orgaz. When the pious mayor died, townspeople reported that saints appeared to bury the Count and escort his soul to Heaven. 

El Greco renders the painting in his signature blocks and wisps of color against a chalky black background. The color palette feels almost crude, but that was the artist’s intent: El Greco prided himself on manipulating simple colors to create a delicate image. 

Like the architecture of Spanish Mexico, El Greco is a link between classical and modern. Despite the traditionally religious subject matter of his paintings, he avoided classical elements like mathematical proportion.

Instead, he focused on conveying intense emotion through subjectivity, giving his paintings — including Count of Orgaz — a dreamlike fluidity that connects them to modern art.

Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

I spent this past week in Florence, immersed in the great art and history of one of the world’s most influential cities. The birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence was home to some of the greatest authors, artists, philosophers and poets of the past — everyone from Dante to da Vinci, Michelangelo to Machiavelli, and Giotto to Galileo once called the city their home.

Another name inseparable from the history of Florence is that of the Medici. It is a name many people know, but few know in-depth. For example, most are aware that the Medici were essentially the godfathers of the Renaissance — but how many could name a specific member of the Medici family?

While not as famous as the artists they employed, the Medici were no less impressive. Their rise to power, multiple exiles, and returns to power make their lives read like Hollywood blockbusters. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the Pazzi conspiracy.

Instead of simply recounting what happened, however, we’ll tell the story firsthand. So step back into your time machine with me, and let’s begin…

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Michelangelo Presents Lorenzo de’ Medici his Faun Bust, Ottavio Vannini (1635)

The date is Sunday, August 26th, 1478. Church bells ring out across the city of Florence as crowds make their way to their respective local parishes. Those fortunate enough to reside in the center of the city get to attend mass in Santa Maria del Fiore, the city’s grand duomo.

Among the individuals making their way to the great cathedral for mass is Lorenzo de’ Medici, known to his contemporaries as il magnifico, “the magnificent.” And magnificent he is. The 29 year old Lorenzo is a poet, philosopher, musician, athlete, and swordsman. He’s also godfather to a countless number of Florentine children, as families throughout the city ask him to be godfather to their firstborn male child, and often bestow his name upon them as well. 

But most importantly, Lorenzo is head of the Medici bank, the most respected financial institution in all of Europe. The banking success of the Medici family allows them to sponsor artists like Donatello, da Vinci, and Botticelli, as well as finance the construction of Florence’s most awe-inspiring architecture. The Medici control the city of Florence, not with direct power, but through indirect influence. Lorenzo is not the head of the Florentine state, nor is he even on its ruling council — but he is without a doubt its de facto prince.

Giuliano (left) and Lorenzo the Magnificent (right)

Lorenzo comes to the end of his short walk from Palazzo Medici to Santa Maria del Fiore, where he briefly glances up to marvel at Brunelleschi’s dome before slipping into the cathedral with his entourage. As he does so, his brother Giuliano finally departs from Palazzo Medici, having been held up that morning by a bout of sciatica. 

Giuliano is accompanied down Via Larga by Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de’ Pazzi, a member of the Pazzi family. The Pazzi have just become bankers to the Pope, taking over the lucrative business from the Medici. While it was a massive loss of business for the latter, the family is still wealthy enough to not be impacted by it. The Medici Bank will do just fine, with or without the Pope. 

As Giuliano, Bernardo, and Francesco make their way towards the duomo, Giuliano suffers another brief flare up of sciatica. Francesco puts his arm around him in fraternal support, telling Giuliano to take his time. He teases him briefly with a quick pinch to the side, and while doing so notes to himself that Giuliano isn’t wearing any chainmail under his doublet. That knowledge will soon come in handy…

The stragglers make their way into the cathedral, where mass is just about to begin. Giuliano sees his brother up towards the front of the church, surrounded by his entourage. Interestingly enough, he’s also standing with two priests, one of whom is a private tutor to the Pazzi family. Giuliano decides there isn’t enough time to join Lorenzo before the service begins, but it’s no matter. He’ll remain in the back and then rendezvous with his brother afterwards.

The geometric marble floor of Florence Cathedral

Mass proceeds as normal up until its most sacred moment: the consecration of the host. This is the moment where Christ becomes physically present in the Eucharist, allowing the faithful to enter into union with Him through the taking of communion. The priest mutters a blessing in Latin and then raises up the host in consecration — and at this very moment, all hell breaks loose.

Bernardo Bandini furnishes a dagger, turns on Giuliano, and plunges it into the young Medici’s head, instantly splitting his skull. As Giuliano falls to the ground, Francesco de’ Pazzi takes out his own dagger and begins mercilessly hacking away at the young man: Francesco is so blinded by both rage and blood that at one point he misses his mark and plunges his dagger into his own thigh.

The Pazzi Conspiracy, Stefano Ussi (19th century)

At the front of the church, the two priests sitting behind Lorenzo also pull out their blades. One of them places a hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder to hold him in place while they stab, but the unwelcome touch causes Lorenzo to turn. As he does so, the fatal blow intended for his back ends up cutting across his neck, and Lorenzo jumps up in pain, shock, and confusion. Chaos erupts as the young man stumbles back and draws his sword, his entourage leaping from their seats to rush to the aid of their capofamiglia.

Lorenzo quickly makes for the sacristy, leaping over the altar and rushing to safety. Bandini, who has left Giuliano for dead, spots il magnifico on the move and sprints to cut him off. Francesco Nori, a friend of Lorenzo, advances to confront Bandini, but is swifty mowed down as Bandini runs him through with his sword. His sacrifice, however, buys Lorenzo just enough time: he and his entourage rush into the sacristy and slam the heavy bronze doors shut behind them: for the moment, they’re safe.

As the Medici clan catch their breath and clutch their weapons, their ears pick up on the chaos that erupts inside the cathedral. Momentarily delayed by shock, the congregation now reacts to the scene: screams, terror, and stampedes ensue as parishioners rush for the nearest exit, not knowing what’s happening. Their intuition, however, is correct: something quite diabolical has just transpired right before their eyes.

Back inside the sacristy, Medici loyalist Antonio Ridolfi comes up to Lorenzo and appears to kiss his wound: in reality, he begins to suck out the blood and spit it to the floor. In an era of poisoned daggers, one can never be too cautious. Lorenzo, slowly coming to himself after the rush of adrenaline, looks around at his companions: “Where’s Giuliano?” No one answers. 

Little do they know, this is only part one of the plot against them — just a half mile away, an archbishop is preparing to play his part at the head of an assembly of mercenaries.

Within twenty-four hours, more than thirty people will be dead. Who will count among the slain, and who will come out alive is still far from certain…

Read time: 5 minutes

Ancient Greece never dies.

Every few hundred years, Western culture remembers its roots, and artists and architects find themselves harkening back to the civilization that started it all.

In many ways, there’s a continuous thread running back in time from the United States Capitol Building to Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Roman Pantheon.

Today, we take a look at three major periods in this cycle of history, showing how classical culture waxes and wanes over the centuries, and exploring the elements that make it so enduring — let’s dive in.

A quick reminder: I just launched my new Saturday content.

You’ll get behind-the-scenes, deep-dives and interviews with some truly great minds — in the world of art, architecture, academia and much more. This week dives into Florence, the Medici, and the craziest murder plot of the Millennium…

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The Renaissance: Rediscovery and Renewal

The inner courtyard of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence

The classical world vanished with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Monasteries kept the embers of classical learning alive, and as Europe emerged from a tumultuous jumble of events (including the Black Death and the invention of the printing press), those embers burst into flame once more.

The Italian Renaissance seized on the Greek passion for human potential and intellectualism. Inspired by this new humanism, artists undertook breathtakingly ambitious projects that celebrated human potential (such as the Sistine Chapel) and drew on classical tropes like gods, nymphs, and heroes.

At the same time, the printing press put texts about classical architecture into the hands of every builder in Europe. This allowed architects to incorporate Greek sacred geometry and mathematics into their designs, and inspired them to add columns, domes, and facades as adornments to Renaissance buildings.

Baroque: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Tomb of Pope Alexander VII (1678) — blurring the line between high art and architecture

The printing press fuelled the Protestant Reformation. In response, the Catholic church sought to re-establish itself as a cultural power, leading to the Counter-Reformation of the 17th century — a cultural renewal that blossomed across Europe, eventually known as the Baroque period. 

Baroque art takes the classical elements of the Renaissance and sharpens them into theatrical statues. It depicts exaggerated emotions with vivid colors and intense chiaroscuro, as in Caravaggio’s disturbing works. 

Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi define Baroque music, but when it comes to Baroque architecture, no one can compete with Gian Lorenzo Bernini. His designs include St. Peter’s Square, The Ecstacy of St. Teresa, and the tomb of Pope Alexander VII.

Bernini’s designs elevate the clean lines of classical architecture with dramatic human figures. The drama and tension of the 17th century built on the Renaissance, standing on the shoulders of classical giants to create a powerful art movement that defined the Catholic Church’s place in cultural history.

Rococo: Straying into Silliness

Rottenbuch Abbey, Germany (18th century)

The 18th century wandered away from the religious rigor of earlier decades. The upper classes of France enjoyed unprecedented wealth and, with the death of imperious King Louis XIV, new moral license to pursue frivolous and indecent pleasures.

Rococo architecture retains its neoclassical bones, but smothers the classical lines in fluttering curlicues, intricate ornaments, and gilded pastels. It’s almost impossible to look at a Rococo room and not think of an elaborately iced cake. Even Rococo churches, like the interior of Germany’s Rottenbuch Abbey, are so dripping with frothy decoration that some find them hard to take seriously.

Most Rococo artwork, though, strays away from serious subjects. Many key Rococo pieces depict illicit love affairs taking place in luscious gardens. The classical influence is still present, but it’s often reduced to marble statues gazing down on a pair of lovers with either shock or indulgence.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting The Swing captures the Rococo ethos. Depicted in the painting is a wealthy woman gliding through the air on her garden swing, and kicking up the hem of her candy-colored skirts to give her lover below a better view. Meanwhile, her husband, ignorant of her flirtation, hangs back among the garden’s shadows. The painting uses frilly Rococo decoration to wink at the improper behavior common among the upper class. 

The Swing, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (c.1768)

Elsewhere in Europe, frustration was brewing at the superficiality of Europe’s courts. Soon, the people would demand more serious leadership, and Napoleon would answer the call…

Neoclassicism: Back to Our Roots

The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, Paris (1836)

Under the noses of Europe’s out-of-touch royalty, Puritanism, Calvinism, and other stern religious movements gained ground. The 18th and 19th centuries grew disgusted with the playful culture of former decades. Thinkers turned back to the seriousness of the classical world, and it was only a matter of time before artists followed. 

Art from the Neoclassical period is clean, stern, and authoritative. As in Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps, it celebrates heroic figures as if they were modern-day Greek heroes, portraying them as noble, handsome, and furled in swathes of fabric that recall classical dress.

Napoleon turned to the imperial triumphalism of the Neoclassical style to build a monument to fallen French soldiers: the Arc de Triomphe.

Neoclassical architecture spread from Russia in the East to England in the West, notably inspiring Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate — which, when it became part of the Berlin Wall centuries later, became a link between ancient and modern times.

Keeping the Spark Alive

The greatness of the classical age doesn’t lie only in its beautiful architecture, much of which still stands today. Instead, it lies in an idea: the conviction that human potential, reason, and virtue can stave off darkness and give light to civilization.

That conviction was a spark that re-ignited the world during the Renaissance. Whenever the fire of great culture starts to fade, that spark seems to endure, ready to leap into life again in a future generation.

As you look at history through this lens, ask yourself:

Has modern culture once again lost touch with the classical truths that define us? Has the flame of Western culture died down once more?

And if so, what are you doing to keep the spark alive?

Art of the Week

The Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David (1787)

In this iconic Neoclassical piece, David shows Socrates as he puts his philosophy to the ultimate test: accepting death courageously, and even using it as a lesson for his disciples.

The image is full of muscled forms and dramatic poses that recall Greek statuary. Likewise, the subject matter circles back to the same ideas championed by the Renaissance: the triumph of human reason over fear, superstition, and psychic enslavement.

Socrates has just been sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth of Athens” by teaching them to think for themselves. But he’s concerned more with delivering his final message than his fate:

"The unexamined life is not worth living", he reminds the court.

He knew that the greatest thing humans have is the mind, and pursuing knowledge, virtue and human reason was the ultimate good.

David adds a meaningful detail by including his signature under the figure of Crito, the faithful disciple who gazes into Socrates’ face. It hints that David identifies with Crito, desperately grasping on to the great philosopher as he dies.

Perhaps the artist is asking: can we ever fully recapture the classical world? How does one respond when persecuted for telling the truth? And what can we learn from those who sacrifice all to preserve it?

Read time: 5 minutes

This building is no less than 1,896 years old…

Rome’s Pantheon has been used continuously since it was built around 128 AD. The Aqueduct of Segovia carried water from antiquity until the 1970s. 

What do these structures have in common? They’re Roman, they’re stunning examples of ancient craftsmanship, and they’ve lasted far longer than anything else.

But how do Roman buildings remain standing for millennia? Why aren’t there more of them left?

And what can they teach us about construction — and culture — today?

Update!

I just launched my new Saturday content.

You’ll get behind-the-scenes, deep-dives and interviews with some truly great minds — in the world of art, architecture, academia and much more.

Last week, I spoke to the personal architect of King Charles. This week: Florence, the Medici, and the craziest murder plot of the Millennium…

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Self-Healing Buildings

The Pantheon’s majestic dome and oculus

We don’t often associate Roman architecture with concrete. The cheap, industrially-available form of concrete is completely modern, but the Romans used their own version of it to build durable yet intricate structures.

While modern-day concrete crumbles in a few decades — and looks uglier with each passing year — Roman concrete structures have remained intact and beautiful for thousands of years.

How did they manage that? Incredibly, it wasn't until some research by MIT in 2022 that we came to truly understand how…

Ancient builders cleverly chose the most reactive form of limestone to cement their concrete mixture. When added to concrete, the limestone triggers chemical reactions that form deposits of calcium carbonate within the material. When water reacts with these “lime clasts,” it causes the materials to recrystallize and strengthen. In other words, as soon as a crack develops in the concrete, all it takes is a good rain shower — and the concrete chemically repairs itself. 

Calcium carbonate “lime clasts” in the concrete

After the Roman Empire fell, the recipe was lost. Only in the 15th century, when an ancient manuscript resurfaced with notes on the recipe, was the race to "re-invent" concrete reignited.

Even today, our concrete still hasn't really caught up. It might be stronger, especially when reinforced by steel bars, but it's not as evergreen — those bars tend to corrode over time.

This concrete formula is the secret behind one of the ancient world’s greatest mysteries: the great dome of the Pantheon. The temple’s iconic dome has a 42-foot diameter, making it the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built. Not even modern construction methods have been able to mimic it, much less its 2,000-year lifespan.

The discovery is changing the way that modern builders use concrete, but it’s also a mesmerizing reflection on culture. It turns out that the relics of ancient times aren’t just crumbling away in the sands of time, but actively healing themselves — they’re more like living bones than inanimate objects.

Culture, too, acts similarly — when properly preserved, it doesn’t simply wear away over time. Rather, its bones keep repairing themselves, making it stronger than ever.

Aqueducts and Arches

There is no cement holding these stones together, only gravity

Rome’s greatest infrastructural achievement may well have been its aqueducts. With over 200 of them built across the empire, including over 500 miles of aqueducts within the city of Rome itself, it’s hard to say what’s more impressive: the first mass-scale system of running water, or the fact that many of these architectural marvels are still standing today.

The great aqueduct of Segovia, Spain, is one of the most impressive remnants of the ancient world. It transported water over 10 miles, and was still carrying water up until 1973, shortly before it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What’s most impressive, though, is that this aqueduct doesn’t use cement and mortar. Instead, each stone is perfectly placed among the others, held together by nothing more than gravity.

The secret that makes this aqueduct possible — along with most of Rome’s legendary infrastructure — is the Roman arch. The arch’s simple design distributes pressure outwards, supporting far more weight than a column or beam could. This gave architects the ability to create buildings that bore immense loads, sending Roman construction soaring skyward.

That humble arch is one of the Roman Empire’s greatest gifts to civilization. Many of history’s most inspiring buildings — from the cathedrals of the Medieval and Gothic eras to the mosques of the Middle Ages and Renaissance — could never have been built without them. Wherever they appear, arches carry the weight of Rome’s powerful legacy.

Strength in Simplicity

One of the empire’s best-kept structures is in fact in France: Maison carrée, Nîmes

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” — Leonardo Da Vinci

From her legislative workings to her battle formations, Rome stuck to the same formula. She discovered straightforward strategies that worked, and she mastered them. 

This, in essence, was the secret of Rome's success: perfect the essentials and eliminate everything else. 

That inspired simplicity gave her buildings the strength to last millennia. After all, what better way to maintain buildings than by creating ones that repair themselves, use gravity to move water hundreds of miles, and implement beautiful and functional structural designs to support their own weight?

These principles of simplicity gave Rome the ability to extend the bounds of civilization farther than anyone could have imagined. The empire’s great libraries, public sanitation, and flourishing education all depended on architecture: aqueducts, roads, and more.

Overcomplexity was Rome’s downfall. When the empire grew so vast that it was impossible to legislate effectively, enemies began to eat away at the edges. The weakening empire was pierced by invasions that demolished and pillaged the empire’s buildings — their natural longevity would have kept many more standing if not for this. 

In today’s era of cutting-edge building techniques that nonetheless struggle to produce anything as beautiful and lasting as Rome did, these architectural wonders prompt us to ask: is overcomplexity undermining our culture?

And could simplicity perhaps be our secret to success?

Art of the Week

School of Athens, Raphael (1511)

As part of a series of frescoes that decorated the pope’s study, Raphael’s School of Athens demonstrates the harmony between pre-Christian philosophy and the Christian faith.

The painting depicts the intellectual greats of history assembled in one courtyard. Plato and Aristotle, the greatest thinkers of Western civilization, take center stage. They’re surrounded by geniuses of other disciplines, like mathematicians Pythagoras and Archimedes, and contemporary artists like Da Vinci and Michelangelo. 

The setting is just as important as the figures. Raphael consulted architects to help him sketch the Greek courtyard that forms the backdrop of his fresco. The courtyard’s floor plan forms a cross, hinting that the philosophers’ search for truth is ultimately framed within Christianity. 

The architecture’s clean lines capture the classical beauty of the Greco-Roman world. Though seeming stark, the lines of the fresco are structured around the Golden Ratio, creating a mysterious harmony that needs little decoration.

It’s this beauty — stark, mathematical, and mesmerizing — which defines Greek and Roman architecture, and which, after thousands of years, still manages to capture our awe and attention.

Read time: 5 minutes

What was the worst year in human history? 

To answer that, we first have to ask how you even define what constitutes the “worst.” Is it the loss of life, or the scale of suffering?

Or is it a different kind of damage altogether? The destruction of hope and meaning that make life worth living, washed away in a larger destruction of culture? Sometimes, all this occurs simultaneously.

Here are my top three contenders — and why beauty still matters at the very brink of disaster…

Huge Update!

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This week we’re talking to the personal architect of King Charles — the man leading the revival of classical architecture in Europe! He tells the incredible story of how one trip to the bathroom changed 20 years of architecture…

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The Volcanic Winter, 536 AD

In 536 AD, the sun went dark.

A volcanic eruption (or perhaps several) in North America threw clouds of ash and sulfur into the sky, blocking out the light of the sun. The resulting darkness settled over almost the entire world, with surviving written accounts of the disaster from China, the Middle East, Europe, and even Peru. 

The darkness lasted 18 months. Byzantine historian Procopius characterized it as an unending eclipse, during which “the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.”

While many contenders for the worst events in human history comprise famine, war, and disease, this disaster involved all three.

With crops unable to grow in the dimmed light of the sun, whole continents went hungry. Towns and nations invaded each other in desperate attempts to find food. The year of darkness is even suspected to be connected to the Plague of Justinian, an outbreak of deadly contagion that occurred five years later.

As Procopius wrote, “Men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.”

Peak of the Black Death in Europe, 1348

The sheer loss of life (half of Europe’s population) was only the beginning of the devastation wreaked by the Black Plague. 

The constant threat of death led many survivors to abandon the balanced Christian worldview that formed the foundation of the Middle Ages, turning either to frenetic hedonism or obsessive religious fanaticism. 

Desperate to stem the tide of lives lost, Europeans blamed Jews, foreigners, beggars, and lepers as scapegoats for the plague, sometimes leading to persecution and massacres of whole communities. The intricate balance of faith, community, and work that gave Medieval culture its unique character dissolved completely.  

Unlike other entries on this list though, the Black Death wasn’t without its benefits. The population collapse shook loose the remnants of the rigid feudal system, allowing peasants more freedom to move, seek new opportunities, and improve their state in life.

The reduced population left the survivors more farmland, which they worked with new labor-saving machines, leading to a wealthier peasantry. Some even argue that the Renaissance wouldn’t have flourished as it did without the newfound wealth and freedom that blossomed in the aftermath of the Plague. 

Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945

By 1945, President Truman faced a terrible choice. 

Germany had already surrendered. Her ally, Japan, knew she couldn’t win the war, but refused all terms of peace. The ongoing fight had no clear objective and was projected to cost millions of lives. 

In the midst of this, Truman had his finger on the trigger of a weapon unlike anything the world had seen before — a weapon whose terror would almost certainly end the war. It would cost fewer lives than a military invasion of Japan, but those lives would belong to innocent civilians.

Eventually, the decision was made to employ this weapon. The first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th, decimating the city of Hiroshima. When this failed to elicit a surrender, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. Japan’s surrender followed swiftly. 

The total death toll from the bombs was 225,000 — a high number indeed, yet one which pales in comparison to the death toll exacted by other modern disasters like the Holocaust, the Holodomor, and Soviet extermination policies.

So what makes the atomic attack a contender for one of history’s darkest events?

The bombs may have ended the war, but they inspired a new horror: the awareness that the world’s most powerful nations can wipe out entire cities full of innocents.

While the reality of war means that policies designed to protect civilians and noncombatants often get pushed to the side in the heat of combat, politicians still generally try to justify those losses as collateral damage from attacks on primarily military targets.

But in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these justifications were thrown out the window, entirely. Yes, there were also military targets in each city, but the bombs were intended primarily to cause sheer terror.

With this in mind, the world’s last remaining faith in the ideal of doing battle with honor (an ideal already much weakened by two consecutive world wars) was lost. It was a cultural wound that struck directly at the heart of Western civilization, and it remains with us to this day.

Keeping the Fire Alive

In considering the tragedies of history, we might be led to ask certain questions:

• Why create beautiful sculptures that would be lost beneath the next Vesuvius?

• Why compose music when the paper it’s written on is so fragile it can be destroyed in a moment of violence?

• Why work to create or safeguard culture at all?

The fragility of culture is part of its nature. One year, or even one day, can wipe it all away. But that means preserving the fire of culture is an even more noble and crucial task. After all, culture’s purpose isn’t to help avoid tragedy — it’s to prepare you to face the worst with courage and integrity. 

C.S. Lewis offers some insight on this point:

“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself.

“If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.”

Culture is there so that when the world seems to be ending — whether the sky has gone dark or you’re facing an insurmountable personal tragedy — you can draw on the consolation of beauty, hope, and moral courage. 

In the trenches of WW1, Lewis noticed this:

“The nearer you got to the front line the less everyone spoke and thought of the allied cause and the progress of the campaign…

“If you suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic activity, you would only succeed in substituting a worse cultural life for a better.”

In other words, beauty consoles us right at the brink of disaster, and keeps us from going down a path of irrationality. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions, you’ll simply fall into sensual ones.

Lewis knew that human beings are made for more than survival:

“The war will fail to absorb our whole attention because it is a finite object, and therefore intrinsically unfitted to support the whole attention of a human soul.”

Art of the Week

Guernica, Picasso (1937)

Perhaps more than any other work of the 20th century, Picasso’s Guernica captures the experience of the tragedy of war. After the titular Spanish town was bombed during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso painted his masterpiece — an intimidating 25 feet long — for the Spanish display at the 1937 World Fair in Paris. The work successfully drew international attention to the suffering of the Spanish people. 

While the horse and the bull are essential elements of Spanish literature and folklore, Picasso denied any symbolic meaning behind them. The chaotically presented elements resist intellectual interpretation, keeping the focus on the visceral reaction that the painting elicits. 

The painting’s blocky elements are supercharged with frantic energy that strains against the limits of the canvas, giving the sense of an enclosed, suffocating nightmare. The animals and people have no escape from the violence that rips them apart. 

The focus of the painting is not merely destruction, but chaos — a chaos that is unleashed not only during war, but in the midst of all great tragedies.

And what if the chaos itself is indeed the greater tragedy?

Read time: 6 minutes

Modern American culture might be defined by a word: functionality.

But there was a time when it took pride in things that were not simply practical — but beautiful as well.

That period produced some of the most visually astounding architecture, art, cars, and trains the world has ever seen.

Here’s why Art Deco has the power to renew American optimism…

Read time: 6 minutes

The gap between medieval and modern art might seem unbridgeable. But there is one painting that connects the two — and it’s as strange as you might expect.

Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is more than a visual masterpiece. It holds the keys to some big questions:

• How did art go from the Pietà to The Persistence of Memory?

• How can there be beauty in horror?

• What is hell like?

Above all, it’s a 500-year-old warning about sin…

First, I have a pretty amazing gift for you: a completely free call with the master of online writing: Dickie Bush! 

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A Mystery From a Mystery

The pristine surface is a shocking contrast to what’s beneath…

Hieronymus Bosch is a historical enigma. This early Dutch Renaissance master left few details about his life, no personal writings, and no hints about what motivated his darkly fantastical paintings. 

The Garden of Earthly Delights is unquestionably his most famous work, but it’s even more enigmatic than its artist.

As a triptych altarpiece — i.e., a three-panel painting that folds like a book — Bosch meant it to be a vision of the whole world. He drives this home by adorning the outside with a globe that shows the third day of creation.

Once opened, it reads like a book from left to right. On the left panel, Adam and Eve meet for the first time in the Garden of Eden. In the center, innumerable human figures cavort in the Garden of Earthly Delights. And on the right, the story ends with tortured souls enduring agony in Hell. 

If this sounds like a straightforwardly moralistic painting, think again. Each panel looks like something from a nightmare-inducing hallucination.

Let’s break down each of them in turn.

The Garden of Eden

You might guess that a painting of humanity’s descent into hedonism would begin with Eve taking her fateful bite of the forbidden fruit, but Bosch takes a deceptively peaceful direction.

The first panel depicts Adam in the Garden of Eden as God presents him with the first woman, Eve. The scenery seems peaceful; in the background, animals (especially ones associated with fertility) roam an idyllic landscape. The theme is romantic love, blessed by God.

However, some disturbing hints foreshadow what’s to come. A three-headed lizard crawls out of the main pond, hinting at the presence of the Serpent. A pink statue appears to take the form of a sinister face — perhaps a surrealist depiction of Satan. 

Even Adam’s rosy cheeks are a sign of trouble ahead, as blushing was considered a sign of arousal and lust. Man’s lustful response to woman will come to fruition in the next panel. 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

The central panel explodes with nude figures. It’s a chaotic realm of animals, people, and plants, all intertwining in bizarre, disturbing ways. God, you’ll notice, is no longer present.

Since this panel is also set in a garden, it’s easy to mistake it for a continuation of Eden, but Bosch is manipulating the viewer’s confusion to make a point.

Even though Eden was a pristine paradise in the Biblical realm, in medieval art, gardens came to represent lovers and illicit sexuality. Bosch makes a point to reveal how easy it is to mistake earthly pleasures for heavenly joy.

A multitude of sexual symbols — from fruit to flowers to animals — abound, and take on bizarre manifestations. Some figures are trapped inside water bubbles caressing delicious fruits. One figure places a bouquet between another’s buttocks. Others chase each other while riding on the backs of various animals. And that just scratches the surface of their imaginative antics.

This panel has the feeling of walking into a crowded arcade: with so many enticements vying for your attention, you’re easily bewildered and don’t know where to look. 

The imagery is almost all sexual, but it’s shorthand for all the types of gratification that human beings chase. Bosch’s vision leaves you sickened at the obscene indulgence of lust, gluttony, and every other human appetite, yet it’s hard to look away… 

Hell

The right panel shows Bosch’s vision of where unbridled self-indulgence leads: a hell unlike any you’ve seen before.

Instead of devils with pitchforks, everyday items like musical instruments become instruments of torture. Disgusting monsters operate nameless, mechanical torture devices, and some of the damned are crushed under a gigantic pair of ears.

It’s a scene of horror that defies description, and its horror rests largely on the fact that normal objects have been nightmarishly perverted to become the focal points of hell. 

There is one element of logic in this surrealist world of torture: some of the damned suffer torments that fit their earthly sins. For example, a glutton is forced to vomit into a pit, and a vain woman stares at her reflection while devilish hands grab at her. 

It’s precisely because Bosch leaves out the standard symbols of hellish punishment that his realm of the damned is so horrifying — it’s as if damnation means that logic itself begins to dissolve into insanity. 

And there’s one big message woven in: all the horror is man-made.

That is evident in a strikingly literal sense: the organic-looking structures of previous panels are gone, and everything is now decidedly man-made. All the creations of man, even the musical instruments, have turned on him.

Humanity’s man-made hell

What Does It All Mean?

The strangest thing about this painting is when it was made.

It wasn’t created in the 20th century, nor during an era of absurdism or nihilism. It was painted within years of Da Vinci’s Last Supper — ie., during the height of the Renaissance. 

The Garden of Earthly Delights clearly trespasses the Renaissance’s core theme of humanism. Instead of celebrating man’s potential, Bosch displays the downward spiral that humanity’s undisciplined passions create.

That’s not to say that Bosch was a rule-bound moralist. Yes, religious paintings were the accepted genre of his time, but Garden is unlike any moral artwork yet seen. Its sheer weirdness and horror set it apart.

The key to the painting, though, is that it’s actually not as much a departure from traditional Christian art as it seems.

Garden’s grotesque nature takes its inspiration from medieval gargoyles. These monstrous figures traditionally perched on the outer walls of churches, adding a counterpoint of ugliness and disorder to an otherwise immaculately designed cathedral. They were often lewd, confusing, and downright disturbing — exactly like Garden.

Scholarly opinion has never fully settled whether Bosch was a fervent Christian believer or an intentional critic of organized religion.

Perhaps he was something else entirely — a thinker whom the artistic norms of his day couldn’t contain, who presented the nightmares of his imagination with an ironic relationship to his faith.

The Gargoyles that Guard

Bosch’s unsettling triptych makes the connection between medieval and modern art.

Medieval art used gargoyles to make a statement: if you don’t live your life in harmony with the beauty and order that built the great cathedrals, you’ll fall into a life of ugliness and chaos. The gargoyles gave us a taste of that ugliness.

As repulsive as The Garden of Earthly Delights is, its horrors serve a similarly indispensable purpose: they clear our vision so we can see the ugliness of self-gratification.

The end of Bosch’s story is rendered in such horrifying detail that only a true visionary could imagine — so that we might choose another ending before it’s too late.

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Art of the Week

As a reprieve from Bosch’s challenging semi-religious art, let’s take a look at arguably the greatest religious painting of them all: the Sinai Pantocrator. You’ve probably seen this before…

Christ Pantocrator (Sinai), Artist unknown, 6th century

The word “Pantocrator” translates to “ruler of all” or “all-powerful.” This genre of religious icons depicts the victorious Christ seated in Heaven, having ascended to rule at the Father’s right hand.

The Pantocrator image is so central to Byzantine theology that almost every church has one dominating the central dome. All Pantocrator icons look similar, but the Sinai Pantocrator is the most enduring.

Created by an unknown monk in a monastery on Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, the Sinai Pantocrator icon immediately arrests you with the power of Christ’s gaze.

Soon, though, you begin to notice curious details beneath the harmony…

The figure’s face appears to be divided into two distinct sides. The right side of Christ, (the left from the viewer’s perspective) is lighter and more open, and Christ’s right hand is raised to bless the viewer. This side evokes the loving gentleness of Jesus, associated in the Bible with the title of Good Shepherd. 

The left side is darker and more stern. Christ’s left hand holds a book, which simultaneously represents the books of the Gospels, the book in which all the deeds of men are written, and the Book of Life, which records the names of the saved. This side manifests Christ as Judge, the intimidating figure who will evaluate every person’s life at the end of time.

The two sides are so different that, when each one is extended into a full painting, they look completely different. Yet the icon brings them together in a harmonious whole:

It captures a core struggle of Christianity: how can you understand Christ as both God and man?

How can one relate to him both as a gentle Shepherd and an uncompromising Judge?

By bringing the duality together in one harmonious painting, the anonymous artist gave a wordless answer to the mystery. As is typical of icons, there’s no lesson here that can be captured in words — just an eternally compelling image that invites our contemplation.

Read time: 6 minutes

Can paintings be the tools of psychological operations, or is that just wild conspiracy theory?

Some claim the CIA practically invented the genre of modern art. Others scoff at the idea as pseudo-historical speculation.

Whether or not you believe that the CIA used abstract art as an anti-Soviet weapon, what’s certain is that art has the power to influence minds and shape nations.

So, did the CIA fund modern art? How could this have shaped the culture we live in?

This publication is completely FREE. But those who want to help keep it free for everyone can pledge a small amount right here 🙏

So Crazy, It Just Might Work

For many, the idea of the CIA manipulating the currents of twentieth-century art sounds like an episode of The X-Files.

When you put the idea in context with the CIA’s other operations, though, it becomes more plausible: from buying elections to igniting revolutions.

Consider that the CIA’s 77-year history includes:

• Buying an entire Asian airline company

• Using inflatable adult dolls to help agents escape the eye of the KGB

• Creating a film studio to extract Americans trapped in terrorist-controlled Iran

But the CIA’s more creative solutions to the world’s political crises are less well known. With an open mind and a sense of humor, let’s break open the story…

The Art of War

The 1954 adaptation of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” — funded by the CIA

America’s first coordinated intelligence organization rose out of the challenges of WWII. Once the threat of the Axis had dissolved, so did the intelligence Office of Strategic Services, leaving America disarmed in the world of covert operations.

As the chill of the Cold War spread across the world, America’s leaders realized this struggle would be one of spies, information, and secret missions. In 1947, President Truman organized the permanent Central Intelligence Agency. 

The nascent organization launched operations to peer behind the Iron Curtain, but also attacked the Soviet Union on another front: propaganda.

The USSR bolstered its own image by portraying itself as intellectually and culturally superior to the West — that they were the true inheritors of the European Enlightenment. It derided America as a cultural wasteland whose democratic principles led to artistic degeneracy.

The CIA knew that to win the Cold War, it would need more than spies and codebreakers. It would need the staunch support of the American people, with patriotism and morale at an all-time high. The USSR’s propaganda was a threat to American national pride, and it couldn’t go unanswered. 

America struck back, hard. First, the CIA funded an animated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, flattening complex themes into an easily digestible anti-communist narrative. But America needed a deeper, more organic cultural renewal. 

That’s when the CIA turned to the up-and-coming movement of abstract art.

Socialist Realism was the rigid, official art form designed to glorify Soviet life

Modern American art was the perfect foil for Soviet propaganda: whereas Soviet art was harsh, rigid, and full of blocky figures and hard angles, abstract art was flowing, creative, and mysterious. Soviet art bludgeoned the viewer with an ideological message, while American art evaded easy interpretation.

The CIA saw this anti-representational art movement as the ideal expression of American values: individual expressiveness, democratic access, and freedom from restraint. It was the path forward for American culture. 

Through the CIA, the American government supported abstract art by funding art shows and offering platforms to sympathetic art critics. This theory is supported by the fact that abstract art gained popularity with radical speed, and soon New York, not Paris, became the site of exciting new artistic developments.

In 1957, The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a Jackson Pollock for a shocking $30,000, far beyond the conventional price for contemporary works:

Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), Jackson Pollock (1950)

As ex-agents have testified, it all had to be done at a distance. The CIA couldn’t be known to be promoting modern art: not only would this undermine the operation, but the abstractionist movement itself was antithetical to establishment and authority. Artists and viewers alike would recoil from the CIA’s ironic involvement. So, the CIA used the “long-leash” principle to pass money through several layers of intermediaries.

The work of promoting modern American culture didn’t stop there. The CIA organized international exhibitions, sent symphonies on world tours, and started publications to celebrate America’s cultural achievements — anything to showcase America as the land of free expression. 

The covert op paid off. Artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko became household names, and abstract art even took hold behind the Iron Curtain.

But America paid a heavy price: the public absorbed the message that art is merely self-expression; a claim which would have untold downstream consequences for American culture.

Abstraction Takes Shape

The roots of abstract art well preceded the 1950s… (e.g. Caspar David Friedrich)

While the story of the CIA’s heavy-handed manipulation of the art world is ratified by testimonies of former agents, it’s also the target of much criticism. One issue with this theory is that modern art didn’t begin with the CIA; in fact, it has been around much, much longer — a fact that raises its own questions about the meaning and purpose of art.

Every art movement flows from its predecessors. While American modern art may have descended from continental Cubism, that in turn owes its origins to 19th-century impressionism. So if Pollock’s Number 1 Lavender Mist is a great-great-grandchild of Monet’s The Water Lily Pond, why do traditionally-minded art critics frown on the former and not the latter?

What changed between the 1890s and the 1950s? Or, in other words, what’s the problem with modern art?

There’s no issue with non-representational art in itself. Art from the Middle Ages drew almost exclusively from ancient Christian iconography, which didn’t concern itself with visual accuracy. Instead, it used a language of symbols to convey meaning, creating images almost as mysterious as Pollock’s work.

Closer to our day, the 19th-century German Romantic master Caspar David Friedrich painted landscapes so minimalist that they foreshadow Mark Rothko’s blocks of color, earning him the title of the first abstractionist. 

Non-representational art has a proud history. The problem isn’t the style or techniques of modern art — it’s the modern philosophy of “art for art’s sake.” Art that exists only to indulge the artist’s ego can’t help but be a shallow expression of the human experience.

While the CIA may have been right to oppose the USSR’s propagandic rigidity, the modern art movement went too far in the opposite direction. Mired in the weeds of “self-expression,” modern art lacks depth, meaning, and discipline — all elements that form the core of any stable culture.

Operation Restoration

Works by Willem de Kooning were among those used by the CIA

It wouldn’t be the first time that rulers weaponized art, nor the most unorthodox war strategy ever executed. But this isn’t just a story about the CIA’s efforts to manipulate world events.

The escalating dangers and fracturing belief systems of the twentieth century left the American people increasingly distant from their government. No longer confident that their rulers shared their values, Americans grew suspicious and distrustful.

Whether American art was manipulated by its government or developed organically, the outcome was the same: a culture reduced to fragments, in large part thanks to shallow, meaningless art.

Some members of the inner ring of this art-spiracy defended their work, pointing out that artists have relied on wealthy patrons for millennia. Without the financial support — and accompanying political agendas — of kings, popes, and noblemen, we would never have created the Sistine Chapel, the Bayeux Tapestry, and countless other works of incalculable cultural significance.

At the same time, the idea that it’s up to a few arbiters to decide what art should be popular is troubling. 

So where does that leave us? Scared to invest ourselves in art movements lest they turn out to be the pawns of some higher power?

There’s no need to fear culture, but this story is a good reminder to refresh our awareness of how we interpret it.

Bankrolling of the arts almost never comes without strings attached. Despite that, the art of yesteryear still managed to ennoble and inspire generations. Political forces don’t have to be the death of great art.

If the art we see today lacks the power to inspire, it’s time to recognize that self-expression isn’t enough. What you express — the meaning, the values, and the struggles — matters.

When you keep your eye trained on the transcendence that great art leads us toward, you have a strong chance of creating something worth seeing — whether you use Michelangelo-esque marble or Pollock-style paint splatters.

Art of the Week

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt (1907-1908)

Klimt’s masterpiece, published long before the CIA snuck its fingers into modern art, is an exemplar of the best elements of abstractionism. 

The painting takes no pains to represent its figures with visual accuracy: the couple are bent around each other in a way that expresses the experience of a passionate embrace, not the way it objectively appears. Surrounded by a golden radiance, the couple transcends the everyday world in a moment of extraordinary bliss.

Klimt’s characteristic golden luminosity was influenced not only by his father, a gold engraver, but also by his experience of Byzantine churches. The golden background that surrounds saints in Byzantine icons flows into his own paintings, linking his figures to a heavenly realm.

Despite the celestial atmosphere, the woman’s toes are clinging to the edge of a cliff: the couple’s passion threatens to topple them into an abyss of disaster. Martin Scorcese picked up on this hint of danger when he used The Kiss as inspiration for a beautiful shot in his dark mind-bender Shutter Island.

In a word, this is modern art done right. Klimt blends insightful connections to art history together with unexpected visual texture, creating a startling masterpiece that conveys something beyond words.

One person is responsible for all of this.

Perhaps one artist in a generation creates a work that takes its place on the list of true classics. But there’s one man who almost single-handedly created that list.

From the Pietá to the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgment and David, the beauty of Michelangelo’s work never fails to awe and amaze.

But why, 500 years later, haven’t we seen another like him?

Here are 3 reasons why we haven’t — and how we can return to a culture that fosters the growth of epic artists…

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Throwaway Culture

Michelangelo didn’t even consider himself a painter…

The Renaissance reawakened the classical roots of art. Inspired by sculptures that had already lasted for millennia, Renaissance patrons commissioned buildings to last the ages, and paintings to pass down their story to future generations.

In other words, these commissions were intended to document the patron’s mark on history. They were made to last. 

Not only that, but many pieces of art were connected to rich traditions that already stood upon centuries. For example, when Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel, he wasn’t just adorning a sitting room. The Sistine Chapel is where the Roman Catholic Church elects its popes. 

In other words, Michelangelo was being asked to contribute to the most important function of one of the world’s most influential and long-standing institutions. So when he picked up his paintbrush, Michelangelo knew he was making a piece of history. 

Contemporary art, on the other hand, lacks this long-term vision. Today’s art is typically divorced from the context of tradition, and rarely seeks to outlast its creator. 

As a counterpoint to the Sistine Chapel, consider a room of comparable importance to the modern world: the United Nations General Assembly Hall. This is where world leaders meet to make decisions that touch the lives of almost everyone on earth. Yet a glance will reveal that it lacks the permanence and dignity of the Sistine Chapel.

Instead of marble, the General Assembly Hall boasts thin wood paneling and carpeted floors. And the art, which consists of two house-sized abstract murals, comprises squiggly shapes and cartoonish colors. The murals are respectively dubbed “Bugs Bunny” and “Scrambled Eggs.”

President Truman dubbed it “Scrambled Eggs” in 1952, and the name stuck…

If today’s most prominent international organization doesn’t value timeless art, it’s not surprising that it’s nowhere to be found in modern culture.

Nor is it a surprise that these conditions suffocate the vision of future Michelangelos who might otherwise have emerged.

Consumerism

The Renaissance wasn’t just the rebirth of high art. It was the birth of the discipline of analyzing, evaluating, and interpreting that art.

It seems strange to us today, but before the Renaissance, painting was considered an applied art, something decorative yet primarily functional. Luminary critics such as Lorenzo Ghiberti changed this when they approached painting with the same critical perspective that they brought to sculpture. In his Commentaries, Ghiberti situated artists’ work in the context of their lives, mapped the trajectory of their careers, and traced artists’ influence on one another. In other words, he made art criticism an art in itself. 

This growing discipline of art interpretation pushed painters to a new level of self-awareness. With a crowd of eager critics looking over their shoulders, painters pushed themselves to new heights of drama and insight. Patrons commissioned increasingly ambitious works that allowed masters like Michelangelo and Raphael to find the extremities of their talent. And while this highly cultured form of art wasn’t integrated into the lives of common people, it was often available to them in churches and other pilgrimage sites — so still accessible and inspirational.

Fast forward 500 years and you’ll find a different artistic landscape. Art is no longer considered something precious to lift your soul and inspire your mind. Even great art is commercialized: you can now buy the David on a t-shirt for pennies on Amazon, download the Sistine Chapel as an iPhone background, or add the Mona Lisa to your cart with a click. 

The democratization of art has its cultural benefits. However, there’s no doubt that reducing art to a consumable good denigrates our ability to see beauty as a transformative force. It certainly undermines our appreciation of art as a channel of that force.

While the Renaissance pushed artists to create works that would move millions to tears, today’s consumer culture demands art that thousands will purchase. 

If Michelangelo had been born today, would he have had the opportunity to develop history-changing projects like the Pieta? Would anyone be interested in funding works that demand days, weeks, or even years to create? 

Or would the would-be Michelangelo have to focus on t-shirt art with enough mass appeal to sell online and pay the bills?

The Decline of Humanism

Within the fertile ground of the Renaissance, one of the factors that nourished great art was the emergent philosophy of humanism. Its explosive confidence in human nature fuelled artists’ passion. Art was created to draw the human spirit upward to ever-greater spiritual heights, moral awareness, and earthly achievement.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment at which Renaissance humanism shifted towards postmodern cynicism. By the postwar period, though, art was telling a very different story. 

Two world wars forced humanity to confront its dark side, causing many to mistrust human nature. New schools of art responded to this experience: brutalism, which steamrolled over the uniqueness of human nature, and cubism, which expressed the trauma and fracturedness of modern life. 

If Michelangelo was born in the last hundred years, would he have had the optimistic faith in humanity required to unfold its story across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Would he have seen the glory of man that he sought to unveil in the David, or perceived the human capacity for compassionate suffering that inspired the Pietá?

Before we can recover the ability to create epic art, we must first rediscover a reason to make it.

From Renaissance Man to Modern Man

The Pietá (1499), cut from a single marble block by a 24-year-old

The Renaissance was more than an awakening of creativity, rationality, and cultural self-awareness that illuminated the Western world. It was the ideal context for dozens of artists, Michelangelo included, to extend their talent to the utmost degree. 

In contrast, a culture starved of deep convictions will be shallow soil for great artists to grow. 

It’s a cyclical problem: without a culture that values art, beautiful art won’t appear. And without beautiful art, we won’t know how to value it. 

Before you despair, though, consider this: Michelangelo’s David gets more visitors than the United Nations every year. Vatican City, while theoretically less relevant than the UN to today’s secular society, gets five times as many visitors. As the world’s most visited painting, the Mona Lisa sees 10 million beauty-seeking pilgrims every year.

Though this is only one metric, it nonetheless tells a story: modern man isn’t so different from Renaissance man after all. The human heart still seeks beauty, mystery, and insight. Even if we can’t find it in contemporary culture, we’ll keep reaching back into the riches of the past to nourish our spirits.

While it may take a while to recover, the spirit of beauty is too integral to human life to ever die completely.

Art of the Week

While we often admire Michelangelo for his uplifting marble work, much of his opus revolves around a lesser-known theme: death. 

Michelangelo first poured out his struggles with mortality into a collection of sonnets. Then, at age 67, he painted The Last Judgment, the Sistine Chapel altarpiece that meditates on judgment after death. While it would be over twenty more years before the artist himself died, he was already considered old — and the loss of many of his friends only brought the reality of death closer.

The Dying Slave, Michelangelo (c.1516)

Michelangelo’s Dying Slave is one example of a piece he produced that meditates on death. Originally composed to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II, it captures the moment death finally grips a young man. 

The figure’s posture is relaxed, as in the moment of surrendering to sleep. While it seems that the hand on his chest was struggling against his bonds, the fight has gone out of it. The slave is relaxing into his constraints.

Michelangelo’s characteristic genius makes marble flow like water, and this statue is no exception. In Dying Slave, the sinuous shape makes the solid stone look like it’s about to dissolve, creating a tense dynamic between stillness and movement.

Though the statue wasn’t included in the final design of Pope Julius II’s tomb, it still prompts unsettling questions about death and our life in the present:

Is the comfort of life pulling me into a living death?

Have I surrendered to the bonds of spiritual slavery?

Could the things that seem rock-solid to me dissolve in a moment?

The lost communities of Kansas City

America didn’t always build ugly cities. As you tour Philadelphia’s historic landmarks or gaze up at New York’s early skyscrapers, you can’t help but wonder…

Why don’t all American cities boast beauty like this?

When did ugliness take over, and more importantly, why did it happen?

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Artists Gone Mad

The since-demolished Erie County Savings Bank building, Buffalo, NY (1908)

Sir Christopher Wren, a leading British architect of the 17th century, said that public buildings are “the ornament of a country”. Architecture “establishes a Nation, draws people and commerce, makes the people love their native country.”

The consensus of history is clear. Public buildings — including buildings that dominate a city, even if not owned by the government — have the power to:

• Grow a city’s economy

• Foster pride in one’s community

• Inspire a loving relationship between residents and their city

With these truths in mind, American architects created breathtaking buildings that became pillars of American identity. Think of the Capitol Building, Philadelphia’s Second Bank of the United States, or the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland — to name just a few. 

Then, something happened. 

The 1950s saw a rise in a new kind of design. The brutalist style that emerged as a postwar solution to the puzzle of cheap, easily-erected housing (as well as being the architectural cousin to the blooming philosophy of socialism), began to take hold. 

Architectural elitists scoffed at traditional designs and began to replace them with new constructions that were decidedly avant-garde.

The public pushed back. In fact, the new buildings were so unpopular that by 1994, the General Services Administration, which was responsible for these new works of architecture, could no longer ignore the public outcry. It responded by launching a “Design Excellence Program” to ensure a higher quality of buildings for the American public. 

Unfortunately, the results of this program didn’t fare much better. The San Francisco Federal Building, for instance, is so bizarre that it almost defies analysis. It’s no surprise that San Franciscans deride it as the ugliest building to deface their Golden City…

The San Francisco Federal Building (2007)

So why did America rush to create such unattractive buildings? In the words of the San Francisco Federal Building’s architect: he set out to create “art for art’s sake.”

America’s first great buildings were built for the very purpose of inspiring a citizen to love, respect, and be inspired by his city. That motivation gave way in the 20th century to the myopic desire to create “artistic” architecture — regardless of how it affected those who used it.

Cultures are often wiser than people. When America exchanged its traditional architecture for the inspirations of selfish artists, all that resulted was the creation of monuments to individual egos.

Cult of Efficiency

The misguided artistry of modernism isn’t the only thing eroding American cities. There’s a far more deeply ingrained factor of American identity that is destroying beauty: efficiency. 

Efficiency itself is no bad thing. America’s industrial prowess propelled her to the status of world superpower less than two hundred years after becoming a country.

However, while military and industrial efficiency may have made America a power on the world stage, applying efficiency to architecture became her Achilles’ heel.

Architecture throughout human history shows that what you build is who you are. Just like other art forms, from sculpture to storytelling, architecture is a tangible manifestation of what a culture honors. And when a material concern like efficiency begins to reign as the supreme value, a culture has likely abandoned transcendent values and enslaved itself to lesser things.

In American architecture, the cult of efficiency looks like:

• Freeways instead of streets

• Strip malls instead of historic shops

• Mass-housing apartment buildings instead of homes

Quintessentially American urban features testify to the nation’s love of getting places fast and getting things done. Other countries chose walking-friendly towns and small shops; America chose hyper-efficient drive-thrus, mega-highways, and big box stores.

But it wasn’t all built on empty space.

One infamous example of “efficiency” took place in Kansas City. Amidst a frenzy of industrialization in the 1940s, the city launched a decades-long project of freeway construction, demolishing huge swathes of the existing city in the process. In some areas, the destruction earned the nickname “the Kansas City blitz,” equating it to what World War II visited upon London. 

Kansas City: entire communities cleared for the interstate

Historic downtown areas and green spaces alike were chewed up as the ravenous highway snaked through the city.

Ironically, in its breakneck pursuit of efficiency, Kansas City actually sacrificed what would today be some of its most profitable real estate. The downtown buildings, had they not been demolished, would be worth around $655 million today.

Even while brutalism’s artistic influence (and that of its ugly cousins, modernism and postmodernism) slowly fades, efficiency continues to reign. Fast food drive-thrus show no signs of slowing down. And with housing and property prices leaping upwards, there is little expendable room in budgets for buildings that are anything more than functional.

Make America Beautiful Again

It can be hard to imagine what an architecturally beautiful America would look like. Fortunately, the U.S. does have a history of design excellence to call its own: Art Deco.

In America’s earliest years, it relied heavily on classical architecture. Greek columns adorned many public buildings, while others used impressive stone and arches.

As America matured, though, it caught hold of a new design emerging in Paris. This lavish style added bold geometric decoration to everything from skyscrapers to jewelry, earning it the name arts décoratifs. The style caught on across the Atlantic, and Art Deco went on to define a good part of America’s 20th century.

Art Deco drew inspiration from the world of the classics: powerful vertical lines recall columns, and Greek figures frequently appear, like Prometheus dominating the Rockefeller Center. Yet it also incorporated elements of Modernism and historical French interior design, as well as influences from far-flung ancient Egypt, Persia, Mesoamerica and China.

The “Neo-Mayan” lobby of 450 Sutter Street, San Francisco (1929)

In essence, it was Greek dominance remixed to the beats of the Jazz Age — the perfect expression of an ascendant American culture. Architecture for an age of optimism.

More than anything, Art Deco proved that America could take its core qualities — mass culture, technological progress, aggressive boldness, and luxury — and channel them into a genuinely beautiful style. 

That’s what makes Art Deco a touchstone for those who want to see America made beautiful again. European cities may be awe-inspiring, but it’s difficult to copy-and-paste the architecture of one place to another that doesn’t share the same culture and history. Instead, designers can find ways to transform America’s unique qualities into architecture that stays true to its roots. 

Demand Beauty

I'On, South Carolina

In his insightful book The Story of Architecture, Jonathan Glancey summarizes America’s aesthetic history: 

“New technologies have allowed architects to practice their art with ever greater dexterity,” he writes, “but also to make more mistakes than were possible in the time of the pyramids or Stonehenge.”

We’re left with the question: can America recover from modern architecture’s mistakes?

In some ways, it’s already doing so. Intentional communities like I’On, South Carolina, are pushing back on the pressure to design cities with maximum efficiency. Instead, they’re creating streets, homes, and public spaces on a human scale, and making beauty a priority.

One of the advantages of America is that there’s not just one single mode of architecture to be reclaimed. The country’s “melting pot” of cultures is perfect for creating a naturally organic variety of vernacular architecture. 

What will it take for America to become “the beautiful” again? One major element will be architects that prioritize the human need for beauty over the desire to shock, awe, and impress — as well as companies willing to back design projects that go above and beyond glass and concrete blocks. 

But there’s only one way for this to happen: public demand. 

That’s where you come in. You can be part of the tipping point that makes America re-prioritize public beauty. It all starts by cultivating beauty in your own life — and then demanding it on the stage of our shared culture. 

Thank you for reading.

A quick reminder to those of you who’ve been enjoying the Write of Passage workshops (and anyone else interested) — you only have a few more days to enroll in the April cohort.

Writing online is my deepest passion, and I want to encourage as many people as I can to take it seriously. My friend David Perell is one of the world’s best writing educators…

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Art of the Week

Snap the Whip, Winslow Homer (1872)

At first glance, Snap the Whip isn’t as visually stunning as some other works of art. It even pales in comparison to the drama of Homer’s other paintings, most of which are energetic seascapes.

However, it does capture something unique. It’s an exemplar of 19th-century American realism, a style that encompassed both art and literature to portray American life in its unadorned simplicity. Literary classics like Tom Sawyer and The Red Badge of Courage also fall into this category.

Homer’s painting reflects the straightforwardness of rural American culture: raw, yet deeply poignant. Fresh colors leap off the page so energetically that you can almost smell the summer flowers. The boys’ forward momentum echoes the progress that America felt in its bones: confident and unstoppable.

Yet there’s more to the story than celebrating progress. Even as Homer painted the scene, one-room schoolhouses like the one in the background were beginning to fade into history. The stumbling boy at the end of the line warns that the country’s hectic energy might lead to unexpected difficulty. 

The picture is a memory of simple times gone by, but with no guarantee that they’ll be repeated. Progress may be good, but it’s never worth rushing past the joy of the present: that’s one American artist’s insight to his fellow compatriots, and one that remains relevant a century and a half later.

One More Thing

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Drinking.

You do it every day: water, tea, coffee, beer, wine, etc. Not a day passes when you don’t consume one liquid or another.

It’s so fundamental to the human experience that we take it for granted. But when you actually dig into the history of drinking (and of beverages), a remarkable story emerges.

Today is a dive into Tom Standage’s book A History of the World in 6 Glasses — how drinks shape your day-to-day experience, and history at large.

Here’s what your favorite beverage says about you, and your connection to the great adventure that we call history…

Beer: The Great Humanizer

Two figures drinking beer through straws, Khafajeh, Iraq (2600–2350 BC)

In the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization, hunter-gatherers turned to agriculture around 10,000 BC. Grain, the most basic crop, led to two creations that would define human civilization: bread and beer.

Though it’s not certain when beer was invented, it’s clear that for early civilizations, it was synonymous with human life. 

While water is the most basic necessity of human life, beer is water that’s been shaped by the most basic level of processing. Its ingredients — water, grains, and wild yeast — were available anywhere that human settlements took hold, and because it had to be boiled, it was safer than plain water. 

The same ingredients used to make bread — the staple food of civilization — could also be used to produce beer. On top of that, beer’s fermentation process yielded protein and micronutrients that made it filling and nourishing.

While water was considered nature itself, beer was a few steps removed. As such, it became symbolic of humanity’s distinction from nature.

This idea comes out clearly in the ancient Mesopotamian work The Epic of Gilgamesh: when Gilgamesh gives beer to the wild creature Enkidu, he becomes tame and humanized.

As the first and most universal processed drink, beer remains a symbol of humble enjoyment. Consumed by both rich and poor from the very beginning, it is to this day considered the great equalizer. Perhaps there’s a reason both construction workers and bankers can head to the same pub for a pint after work. 

Wine: The Growth of Culture

Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and pleasure

From its origins, wine has been synonymous with expense, culture, and sophistication.

It has been around since at least 6,000 BC, but it wasn’t until 870 BC that Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II popularized wine by serving it at an extravagant feast. From then on, it was a noble drink: rare, hard to transport, and royal.

The demands required to produce it limited its production to warmer, fertile climates. This why it remained rare in Mesopotamia but caught on quickly in the Mediterranean, especially in Greece.

Still to this day, it’s hard to call ancient Greece to mind without picturing curling grapevines, white togas, and philosophers with a wine goblet in hand. Wine and Greece were the perfect pairing: Greek ideals of sophistication allowed drinkers to analyze the more nuanced profile of the drink, and its costliness reinforced the society’s conviction of its own superiority.

Greek intellectuals gathered in private homes for “symposiums,” essentially philosophical drinking parties attended by the likes of Socrates and Plato. This might seem counter-intuitive: why were philosophers consuming alcohol, a substance which dulls the mind rather than sharpening it? 

Greek philosophers weren’t blind to this fact, and it’s actually for this reason that they drank: since wine opened the door to man’s animal passions, it was a mark of strength to be able to drink without losing control. Socrates argued that drunkenness offered the benefit of allowing you to encounter your dark side and gain mastery over it.

Rome later inherited Greece’s love of wine but rejected the associated hedonism. Instead of a Dionesian indulgence, Romans viewed wine as a status symbol and mark of disciplined work done well. 

The classical world’s legacy of wine lives on today, even if subconsciously. While beer is a perfect drink for a backyard barbecue, it might seem out of place at formal events. Weddings, graduations, anniversaries, and dinner dates wouldn’t feel quite right in the absence of a proper bottle of wine.

Spirits: Race to the New World

The process of distillation (heating and cooling wine to extract its alcoholic component) emerged at the end of the first millennium. This “burnt wine,” or “brandy” in English, gained popularity initially as medicine.

Distillation carries us into the 16th and 17th centuries, when the age of exploration revealed the existence of cane sugar in the new world. This lucrative crop required intensive labor to cultivate and process, so traders turned to slave labor. 

Hard spirits played a surprisingly front and center role during this time, when the Trans-Atlantic slave trade saw European, African, and the emerging Carribean cultures collide. Brandy was used as currency by traders, and sugar gave rise to new spirits that would soon leave their own mark on history — rum being one of them.

Popularized in the 17th century, rum emerged just in time for the age of sail. Since it was a more stable and concentrated drink than wine or beer, it became the travel-friendly drink of choice for sailors of all varieties, from pirates and privateers to commanding officers in His Majesty’s Royal Navy.

For similar reasons, rum became the first drink of the nascent American colonies. Britain levied taxes on it due to its popularity, inciting a cat-and-mouse game of smuggling and taxation that exploded into the War of Independence in 1775. To underline their distinction from the British crown, American generals like Washington made sure to keep their troops well supplied with rum rations. 

America’s history would continue to be shaped by alcohol thanks to both its trading power with Native Americans and the drama of the Temperance movement. To this day, spirits retain a double-edged character: they can be enjoyed amongst both distinguished and everyday company; they can be taste-tested in high society or thrown down carelessly in collegiate raves.

Coffee: Cognition in a Cup

Inside a London coffeehouse (c.1690)

The 1600s saw the first gleams of the Enlightenment. It was a time when Galileo, Francis Bacon, and other luminaries advocated for empiricism, scientific observation, and rationality.

The intense intellectual energy of this time was fuelled by a new drink on the European breakfast table: coffee.

Though discovered sometime in the first millennium AD, coffee remained primarily an Arabian drink until Pope Clement VIII’s affinity for it opened the door to the West. This occurred just as England was taking a turn for Puritanism, so as alcohol consumption was cracked down on, coffee was introduced — and it spread like wildfire.

From the beginning, coffee has been linked with intellectual creativity. The first coffeehouse sprang up in Oxford, where Christopher Wren (the designer of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral) went to exchange ideas with Isaac Newton. 

Within decades, thousands of coffee shops dotted the country, with middle-class intellectuals meeting regularly to discuss politics, philosophy, and world events — coffee’s psychotropic elements increase mental stimulation, creativity, and a sense of clarity.

Arabia was the only producer of coffee beans for two centuries. But by the 18th century, Holland led the way to establish plantations in Java, Indonesia. France and England then started planting their own beans in locations still associated with coffee production today: Guatemala, Brazil, and more. 

With its power to elevate cognition, coffee is still the drink of intellectual discourse and creativity. Students study in coffee shops and flock to campus cafes, and coffee remains the preferred drink of artists, creatives, and intellectual powerhouses. 

Tea: Sophistication and Power

The East India Company sets sail

Tea was invented in China, likely popularized by 6th century BC Buddhist monks. When Europeans encountered China in the 16th century, they established a regular trade of silks, spices, and tea.

At first, tea was too expensive to be popular. It wasn’t until 1660, when it was served at the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Portugal, that England warmed to it — and by the 1700s it had become England’s drink, enjoyed by commoners and nobility alike almost daily.

The true character of tea, though, emerged as the drink of the industrial revolution in England; a revolution that might never have happened without it. The caffeinated drink freed workers’ bodies from their natural circadian rhythms, so their energy for work no longer depended on the rhythms of the day — Britons could now run on manmade schedules.

Tea also shaped the political landscape of later centuries. In the 19th century, the British East India Company relied on trading opium for China’s main product, tea.

There was just one problem: opium eventually got banned in China due to its addictive and dangerous narcotic effects. Initially, this didn’t stop the British from trading under the table, covering its tracks with generous bribes to Chinese officials.

But when China cracked down on the flood of opium (depriving the British of their beloved tea), the resulting tensions exploded into the Opium Wars of 1839-42. Britain’s decisive victory over China, which up to that point was an undisputed world power, cemented the former’s place as the new ruler of the world.

Until, that is, a new power (and a new drink) would steal her crown…

Soda: The Pause that Imperializes

Britain’s daughter colony of America once revolted due to harsh taxes on tea. Now, just as America would step forward to take Britain’s place as the new global leader, a new beverage would supplant tea as the drink of the everyman. 

The 19th century put America on the map as an industrial power. Since then, America’s global dominance has been mirrored by the worldwide popularity of its signature drink, Coca-Cola. To America’s supporters, Coca-Cola symbolizes mass culture, equality, and the rise of the working class. To its opponents, it represents greed, capitalism, and the destruction of culture.

The first carbonated water was invented in the 18th century as a medicinal cure against nausea and other minor complaints. Entrepreneurs later took sodium bicarbonate-infused water — or “soda” — and added extra ingredients to gain a competitive advantage. In the 1800s John Pemberton added in coca leaves and kola plant seeds, thus creating Coca-Cola.  

Coke struck gold by providing a caffeinated drink to fill the gap left by the Temperance movement. From there, it’s a story of marketing success, and a case study of the rags-to-riches mythos that fuelled the American dream.

Coke accompanied America’s presence on the world stage when U.S. soldiers carried it in their rations in the 20th century. As the world entered the era of postwar peace and rebuilding, Coke extended its production around the world.

With it came a sense of American identity and philosophy — namely, that people have the right to pursue happiness within the context of a liberal democracy. It’s also worth noting that next to “OK,” “Coke” is the most-known English word in the world.

With coca leaves crossed off the ingredient list, Coke is no longer psychotropic. Perhaps, though, it’s something even more powerful: the icon of a new hedonism, the determination to enjoy life just because you can. 

A Sip of History

Food and drink tell the story of a culture. The problem is that sometimes we don’t know what story we’re in until it’s too late to rewrite it. 

For instance, Coke consumption continues to be a reliable predictor of a country’s acceptance of liberal democracy (and even literacy level)! Yet it can also predict newly epidemic health problems like diabetes and heart disease — malaties that, while virtually unheard-of before the 20th century, now ravage the developed world.

We often fail to recognize the icons of our own culture until we see them in hindsight. It’s almost impossible to predict the consequences of cultural movements until they happen.

That’s why the history of drinks is so fascinating. With America’s global presence beginning to diminish, what new drink will take Coca-Cola’s place as the world’s beverage?

And what will what we drink today reveal to future historians about our culture?

Thanks for reading! This is a free publication — but, if you want to support the efforts, you can pledge a small amount right here 🙏

Art of the Week

Boy Brings His Father a Cup of Coffee - Roelof Koets (1654)

Just as Holland was coming into its own as a coffee producer trading out of Java, its painters were thriving during the golden age of Dutch painting.

Dutch artists slowly drifted away from previously popular genres of historical and religious images. They instead began turning their brushes to simple, everyday subjects: landscapes, families, and lifelike portraits so dramatic that they bordered on caricatures. 

Here Roelof Koets captures a moment of intimate family life. The eager son, still bleary-eyed from sleep, proudly shows his father that he has learned how to pour his morning drink. The father has the unmistakable half-hidden smile of a proud dad. He reaches out to take the cup, but the gesture also seems to be pointing to the son, as if to say, “Look at what my boy can do!” 

The coffee trade shaped the intellectual and political landscape of Europe. Against the backdrop of global political forces though, Koets’s portrait is a poignant counterpoint.

By capturing such a simple moment charged with tender love (and one that could be easily overlooked amid the busyness of the day’s work), he reminds us that history isn’t lived by abstract movements. Rather, it’s lived by individual human lives full of relationships, struggles, and love.

One More Thing…

My friend Evan just started a specialty coffee company based on the great men of history — if that's up your alley you should check out his project below. I can personally vouch for it (just click the image):

Vessels of light from the Dark Ages

Between the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD and the Renaissance nearly a thousand years later, there lies an interesting in-between period.

You might call it a “middle age” between the classical world and modernity…

Known to many scholars as the “Dark Ages,” the medieval period is often maligned as a cultural desert: barbarism, ignorance, suffering and violence. Its cultural achievements get less attention than the splendor of classical Greco-Roman civilization on one side, and the beginnings of modernity on the other.

The truth is that the Middle Ages were alive with their own vivid culture, history, and artistry — but modern perceptions are often blind to it.

Here are 3 facets of culture that showcase the captivating light of the so-called age of darkness…

1. An Enchanted Worldview

Edoras in The Lord of the Rings

Have you ever wondered why so many fantasy novels are set against a backdrop of a medieval-inspired era?

The epic, enchanted world of fantasy is virtually inseparable from the Middle Ages. The time period was charged with a pervasive wonder.

Medieval Europe had what’s called an “enchanted worldview.” Essentially, it saw the natural world as intermingling with supernatural forces. Interacting with those forces became part of a larger story of the battle between good and evil. It imbued normal people’s everyday actions with a sense of meaning, adventure, and heroism.

These elements, all features of a medieval worldview, are inseparable from the fantasy genre. It’s no wonder the Middle Ages gave rise to works like Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and the Arthurian legends that still linger in our cultural consciousness today.

A world full of elves, prophecies, demons, wizards, dragons, castles, and knights might sound like a Tolkien fan’s dream come true, but of course there’s danger in romanticizing the Middle Ages. There’s no denying that life during these centuries was rugged and brutal. 

But at the same time, Medieval life was more than a struggle for survival: it was a world charged with meaning and mystery. Framed by the Christian story, its worldview was saturated in the drama of good and evil, with every person understanding their life as a piece of this great narrative.

It’s no wonder epic stories like Tolkien’s find their expression in the worldview of the Middle Ages — and no wonder that, in our disenchanted world, readers find themselves drawn again and again to the light emanating from this so-called “dark” age.

2. Iconography

The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Saint Catherine's Monastery (12th century)

If you’ve encountered religious icons before, there’s a good chance your initial reaction was one of feeling underwhelmed — maybe even confused. Unlike later, more familiar art forms, iconography isn’t concerned with realistic details. To a modern, post-Renaissance viewer, that can be confusing.

Unlike the art of the Renaissance and later, iconography isn’t trying to show you an artist’s subjective vision. Instead, it’s showing you reality through the eyes of the faith — like “windows to Heaven.” 

Icons typically depict a person or event from the Bible or the history of the Church. The visual language is complex:

• “Flat” landscapes: no vanishing point or perspective, keeping the focus on the figures, not the background

• Multiple parts of a story in the same frame (even if they happened sequentially) — to demonstrate they are part of the same spiritual event

• Perfectly proportioned saints, regardless of their real appearance — to demonstrate that holy people are in harmony with themselves

It’s the very strangeness of the iconographic language that allows it to take on a sacred perspective. Its surreal depiction keeps it untethered to a particular time or place — so that its story remains accessible in all times and places.

Iconography was common to most religions of ancient times, but its Christian form gained ground when, in 330 AD, the Roman emperor Constantine moved the empire’s capital city from Rome to Byzantium.

He sought to shed the failing cultural and political milieu of the old capital and establish a “new Rome”, to integrate the power of the ancient empire with the glory of the new Christian religion.

This fusion of old and new is what made iconography so powerful. Christian iconography took cues from Greek and Roman art, while absorbing the symbolic riches of its Judaic roots. It used these ancient modes to depict new saints and doctrines, creating a system of communication that made the faith accessible to everyone, regardless of literacy.

Because iconography looks strange — perhaps even stuffy and stilted — to the modern eye, it’s easy to mistake it as a mere precursor to later forms of art. But it has its own discipline and power. Medieval people took seriously the idea that icons were windows to the divine, and filled their homes and churches with icons intended to let in the divine light.

But, their visual impact is hard to gauge when seeing them on a page or in a museum. If you want to come face-to-face with this light from the dark ages, it’s best to find them in their natural habitat: under candlelight in beautiful, centuries-old churches.

3. Gregorian Chant

Before the brilliance of Beethoven or the magic of Mozart, another kind of music spread across Europe. This music — as haunting as it is ancient — used no instruments and wasn’t performed in concert halls. Nonetheless, it quickly became the musical lifeblood of the Middle Ages.

Gregorian chant grew out of the Judaic practice of chanting Psalms. In monasteries, where monks were required to recite Psalms seven times a day, chant was necessary: it allowed them to standardize their liturgies so that they could sing together.

Still, the early centuries of the church saw a proliferating patchwork of singing styles: communities developed their own variations, and certain figures like St. Ambrose left behind their own personal influence.

It wasn’t until Pope St. Gregory ascended the papal throne that chant gained the recognizable form we know today. Under Gregory, Christian chant became relatively standardized in a form that still bears his name today.

Chant was such a cornerstone of medieval life that it (quite literally) shaped cathedrals — architects designed churches for auditory aesthetics, just as much as visual ones. The acoustics amplified singers’ voices so that a single chanter could be heard throughout the entire building. Some cathedrals were so exquisitely designed that seconds-long reverbs came from a single note.

Without Gregorian chant, the great classical music of later centuries wouldn’t exist. It pioneered musical notation (using four lines and large blocks to mark notes), and this method of sketching down and reading music would later develop into the modern 5-line staff that’s still used today.

But Gregorian chant is more than a precursor to classical music. It’s a stunning art form of its own. When you listen to it, you won’t hear the dramatic highs and lows of later classical music, and it doesn’t explore an individual artist’s vision or emotion.

Instead, it’s like the voice of the ancient past — solemn and remote, yet profoundly peaceful. You can feel the weight of millennia of history, and it still haunts us.

If you’re skeptical, try listening to a recording, or better, find an in-person performance. You’ll find that “dark age” art is truly illuminating — it shares the voice of the faith from centuries past, and the beauty that sustained generations through unimaginably precarious times.

Drama in the Darkness

Toward the end of the Medieval period, Renaissance art exploded onto the cultural landscape and drastically altered our attitudes and assumptions about what art is. That makes it relatively easy for a modern person to relate to the cultural output of the 15th, 16th, and subsequent centuries.

But peering further back in cultural history reveals a stranger and more challenging time. The creations of earlier centuries are less intuitive to us. But that doesn’t mean the Medieval era was the cultural nadir that the term “Dark Ages” implies.

The Medieval era engaged with a mythologically rich universe, not focusing on individual artists but on the adventure of living. Its art reflects the glory of that enchanted worldview…

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Art of the Week

The Bayeux Tapestry, Normandy, France (11th century)

If there’s one work that speaks with the voice of the Middle Ages, it’s the Bayeux Tapestry. 

It is an embroidered wall hanging that stretches 230 feet (about 14 car lengths) and is almost 2 feet tall. In a series of 58 scenes, similar to a cartoon strip or graphic novel, it depicts the drama leading up to Norman King William’s conquest of Anglo-Saxon Britain and his final victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

This drama is central to British medieval history. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England from modern-day Scandinavia and Germany.

England grew strong under Anglo-Saxon rule and developed the cultural identity that gave birth to epics like Beowulf. But 500 years later, a new power overshadowed them: the Norman (hailing from modern-day France) king known to history as William the Conqueror. 

William’s victory brought new cultural life to England. The French influence on British artistry gave rise to many of the courtly customs valued by the English aristocracy, and led to a great flourishing of poetry and prose. Still, British peasants chafed under the rule of a foreign power. 

Likely commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux to celebrate his half-brother William’s historic victory, the Bayeux Tapestry is nonetheless a touchstone of Anglo-Saxon memory.

The tapestry tells the political story of William’s conquest with incredible detail, featuring:

• Halley’s comet

• A coronation ceremony

• An oath taken on sacred relics

• A mortally ill King Edward of England

• A detailed, graphic depiction of the Battle of Hastings

• A mother begging enemy troops for mercy on her family

The Battle of Hastings, 1066

Historians celebrate the tapestry for its workmanship, including the exquisite detail of each scene and the harmony of its colors. But it’s the political commentary and insight into the turbulence of this world-altering event that makes the tapestry so special. 

Created shortly after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Bayeux Tapestry is quickly coming up on 1,000 years old. Despite this, it remains vivid, insightful, and profoundly human.

It’s an eloquent voice from the Dark Ages, commenting on the universal experiences of war, failed diplomacy, humble people caught between clashing world powers, and ultimately, the destruction of a culture’s way of life.

Thomas Aquinas defined beauty as “that which, upon being seen, pleases.” 

800 years later, neuroscience agreed:

Studies reveal that the brain processes beauty in the same region that processes both pleasure and disgust — so you experience the Sistine Chapel with the same part of your brain that activates with a bite of a delicious meal.

Beauty, however, is far more than a delicious meal. It’s the essential element that keeps culture alive.

But what actually is beauty, and why does it matter?

What Is Beauty?

Let’s begin by looking back to the 5th century B.C.

Plato and Aristotle identified three properties — truth, goodness, and beauty — which have the unique ability to take you to the brink of the human experience. 

They are the points at which our experience, which is limited by time, space, and our fallible minds, touches the eternal — something that exceeds our ability to understand.

In other words, these qualities are what endow our lives with spiritual significance. They took on the name “transcendentals,” from Latin transcendere, “to exceed,” or literally “to rise beyond.”

This link between beauty and spirituality is summed up in the words of Catholic priest Thomas Dubay: “The acute experience of great beauty readily evokes a nameless yearning for something more than earth can offer.”

In Plato’s understanding, beauty is more than an intellectual recognition. It’s a holistic experience of wonder, awe, and even humility.

What sets beauty apart from the other transcendentals is its ability to slip under your intellectual radar. You don’t have to analyze the meter of Beethoven’s Cavatina before it brings tears to your eyes. A sunset’s glow or a lovely face makes you catch your breath instantly, not after a long examination.

Beauty is hard to define precisely because it bypasses your analytical shields and grasps directly at your heart.

Isn’t Beauty Subjective?

Take a look at this picture:

Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco Goya (c.1823)

Now compare it to this one:

Flaming June, Frederic Leighton (1895)

Would you say one is beautiful and one is not? If so, can you define the difference?

Beauty is notoriously difficult to pin down empirically. Not only that, but its manifestations vary across cultures, so it looks different depending on time and place.

This leads to the relativist assumption that the experience of beauty is completely subjective. In other words, you’re led to believe something is beautiful only because you’ve been taught or conditioned to deem it so. 

However popular that proposition is, it doesn’t explain the fact that people respond to beauty with predictable neurological changes. When exposed to beautiful images and architecture, your body releases oxytocin and endorphins. Your heart rate lowers, as does your blood pressure. 

In other words, the physiological response is anything but subjective. There’s something about actual beauty that impacts people regardless of what they’ve been conditioned to like.

Treasured works of architecture around the world all rely on mathematical patterns to create visual harmony. That harmony makes us feel safe, calms our nervous system, registers as aesthetic beauty, and even reminds us of the longing for spiritual peace. 

But that doesn’t mean beauty is restricted to one style of architecture. Cultures of the past brought forth a dizzying array of breathtaking buildings, incorporating mathematical concepts from geometry to fractals:

• Islamic design, both in mosques and palaces, incorporates complex geometric patterns

  

• Egyptian pyramids use precise angles and proportions including the golden ratio

  

• Hindu temples (like the great Virupaksha Temple) use fractals as the basis for its high spires

  

Each of these epic designs tells a unique story. The fractals of Virupaksha Temple, for instance, convey eternally-rising spiritual consciousness. You might assume that the design of the pyramids is simplistic, but their eternal magnetism comes from the complex angles that make their simple shapes so harmonious — making you feel the weight of eons as you gaze at them.

So, what’s the lesson in all this architecture?

Beauty differs in its manifestations, but it follows predictable patterns.

What Is the Role of Beauty in Culture?

We already touched on the way beauty functions as the meeting place between the limitations of our lives and the invitation to the infinite.

In fact, you could say this is the primary role beauty serves in every culture. 

In this sense, beauty is the link between culture and spirituality. It lifts our eyes above our immediate concerns, putting us in touch with the greater purpose of our lives.

How can culture survive without a sense of transcendence? It’s no accident that the great cultures that shaped history — Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and more — left behind vivid mythologies as well as great art. Their spiritual reality was immediate to their daily life.

What’s more, beauty is an essential mode of passing on culture.

What inspires you more, a list of rules, or a beautiful ritual? It's probably the latter, which is why cultures enshrine their most sacred truths in beautiful stories, songs, objects, buildings, and even garments. One of beauty’s crucial roles is to keep its people united in their collective identity and safeguard truth for future generations.

That’s why beauty is such an effective way to measure the health of a culture. 

And it also begs the important question:

What Happens When We Lose Touch With It?

The Renaissance saw an outpouring of beauty that flowed from princely palaces down to homely churches. Ornamentation bloomed on vases, swords, doorknobs, and picture frames. It was a culture in touch with its spiritual life.

We can’t quite say the same for today’s world. Modern production is optimized for efficiency, not illumination. Cobblestone streets give way to interstates. Once-enchanting cities fill with strip malls, and items are produced to meet the demands of fast-shifting fashions. Without the unifying force of beauty, culture begins to unravel.

Is beauty all that’s required to repair the cracks, though? Perhaps not, but it feels certain that cultural revival will never occur without it.

Beauty Is the Bridge

Yes, beauty is “subjective” — in the sense that it speaks to us as subjects. It resonates with us in an individual, personal way.

But the power of beauty is that it’s rooted in an objective ideal, and is therefore a bridge between individual experience and objective reality. That’s what gives it the power to connect our lives with the eternal and imbue culture with meaning.

Orienting our cultural efforts toward something beyond ourselves keeps us striving, healthy, and united. It’s when our confidence in our culture’s deeper meaning falls apart that ugliness creeps back into our public — and private — spaces.

So, how can you make the world more beautiful?

It all begins at home, with how you live: the way you dress, the books you read, the music you listen to. The way you decorate your home, and whether you prefer to spend your spare time looking down at a screen or up into the outdoor sky.

All of these are opportunities to add order, harmony, and beauty to your life.

More than that, they’re opportunities to tap into a deeper, more spiritual existence — one that restores both your life and the culture around you to harmony and meaning. 

Thanks for reading! This is a free publication — but, if you want to support the efforts, you can pledge a small amount right here 🙏

Art of the Week

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer (1665)

No email about beauty is complete without Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Sometimes called “the Mona Lisa of the North,” Vermeer’s masterpiece is endowed with an arresting beauty. And, like the Mona Lisa, it seems to offer more questions than answers.

For instance, we don’t know the identity of the model — a startling irony, since her direct gaze makes you feel like you and she have just recognized one another. Her expression is half-dreamy and half-curious, as if she’s about to ask a question, or maybe give you the answer to one. No matter how long you gaze, though, the answer never comes, and the aura of silent mystery keeps you pondering.

What we do know is that Girl with a Pearl Earring isn’t a portrait in the conventional sense. It’s a tronie, which is a work meant to study the facial expression and aura of a person rather than simply convey their features. In this sense, the oriental headdress and iconic pearl could have been purposefully donned to communicate the subject’s exotic sense of mystery, rather than to provide an accurate depiction of the woman’s wardrobe.

Of course, it’s the pearl that has come to define this painting. Some argue that the earring is actually made of tin. But regardless of historical detail, it’s the way that the earring’s curve echoes the pale curve of the girl’s face, and how its brightness illuminates the brightness of her eyes, that showcases Vermeer’s genius. He seems to want to compare his model to a pearl: lovely, yet somehow waterbound and far away.

Is Vermeer simply portraying a breathtaking moment of beauty? Or is he also capturing the experience of encountering a person whose gaze catches you off guard and suddenly disarms you?

What do you think this figure’s liquid gaze is meant to convey?

One More Thing

Here's a good find for you this week. You probably already know Rewire the West on X (a must-follow). He just posted an interview with Eduard Habsburg — descendent of the Holy Roman Empire — and it’s a fantastic watch:

How to start your own dynasty and live life like a royal… (just click the image):