Recent links of note:
“San Francisco curator details three previously unattributed Botticelli drawings”
Torey Akers, The Art Newspaper
In research for the upcoming “Botticelli Drawings” exhibition at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco, the curator Furio Rinaldi has newly attributed three sketches to the hand of Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510), reports Torey Akers for The Art Newspaper. The findings, the result of years of research, assert three previously anonymous drawings to be preparatory sketches for some of Botticelli’s most celebrated paintings. One such painting, The Virgin and Child with Young St. John the Baptist (1468–70), will be displayed in the new exhibition, opening this November, alongside the sketch in question. The discoveries are quite significant, as fewer than thirty-six sketches by Botticelli have survived to the present.
“Harvard Has a Free Speech Moment”
The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal
“Well, maybe there’s hope” for free speech to return to college campuses, writes The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board upon the news of Harvard’s faculty alliance for academic freedom. Earlier this week, Harvard University announced the formation of a “Council on Academic Freedom”—a body meant to protect speech and preserve rational discourse—in what appears to be a surprising turn in the dire battle to preserve the First Amendment on college campuses, a struggle frequently discussed in these pages. This council was much needed: the editorial board points out that Harvard ranks 170 out of 203 colleges and universities in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s free-speech list. Though many remain skeptical, the editorial board sees this move as progress and notes that, with luck, other leading institutions may follow suit.
“Catholicism, rivalry and ancient rituals: the history of the Coronation”
Harry Mount, The Telegraph
Seventy years after the coronation of his mother, Charles will be crowned King of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth in a ceremony on Saturday, May 6. The thousand-year-old rite will be held at Westminster Abbey, the official location of the crowning of England’s (and later Britain’s) monarchs since that of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day, 1066. In celebration, reports Harry Mount for The Telegraph, Lambeth Palace—the traditional home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who crowns the monarch—has put on a “charming” and “gripping” exhibition hosting documents and artifacts from coronation history, reaching as far back as Henry I’s original coronation charter from the year 1100. Among the objects on display is the Bible on which Elizabeth II swore her oath of allegiance.