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The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Basic Books): It doesn’t take a historian to remind us that the late Roman Republic, and perhaps the West as we know it, would have looked quite different without Cleopatra VII of Egypt. But the latest service performed by the historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is of a higher order: to show that, extraordinary as she was, the sometime consort of Caesar and Antony was not a historic aberration but in fact the last in a long line of formidable queens. In The Cleopatras, Llewelyn-Jones traces out the two-century history of female power within the Ptolemaic ruling family of Egypt, describing how each successive Cleopatra (the standard queenly name—and there were more than seven) paved the way for the next, down to the Queen of Kings. —RE
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Glorious Lessons: John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution, by Richard Brookhiser (Yale University Press): Art historians lavish attention on the art of the French Revolution. Far less notice gets paid to the painters of the American founding. In Glorious Lessons, Richard Brookhiser rights this wrong with a new portrait of John Trumbull, an artist at the center of the American Revolution. With an eye to both Trumbull’s art and history, Brookhiser follows our founding painter from Bunker Hill, Quebec, and Newport to his pitched battle, later in life, to paint a series of canvases of the American Revolution for the Capitol Rotunda. Look for a full review by Jonathan Leaf forthcoming in The New Criterion. —JP
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Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” conducted by Jaap van Zweden, at the New York Philharmonic (June 6–8): A cyclical, motivic structure, massive instrumental and vocal forces, late-Romantic melodrama, and a religious-philosophical agenda combine to crown Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” as the apotheosis of the classical-concert experience. Fitting, then, that Jaap van Zweden will mark the effective close of his tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic in performances of the work this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at David Geffen Hall. Follow Mahler’s development of the medieval “Dies Irae” motif—denoting death and fate—through to the end for a testament to his genius as unifier of symphonic form and program. —IS
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“Naval Gazing: Portraiture and the Royal Navy,” at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (June 19): Churchill purportedly thought the navy “rum, sodomy, and the lash,” but no one can doubt the importance of Britain’s naval fleet to its rise as a major world power. British artists were not insensitive to the aquatic imperative, and there exists a long history of naval portraits, which were used to adorn mess rooms and Admiralty offices. On June 19, Katherine Gazzard—the curator of art at the Royal Museums Greenwich—will deliver a talk at the Paul Mellon Centre in London on the uses of naval portraiture throughout British history, “chart[ing] a visual and conceptual journey from the beach to the boardroom.” Those stuck across the water can register to watch a livestream. —BR
Dispatch:
“Elephants in the room,” by Andrew L. Shea. On “Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
From the Archives:
“Piero della Francesca: the world knew him not,” by Marco Grassi (March 2014). On a forgotten hero of the Early Renaissance.
By the Editors:
Trump found guilty in America’s first-ever Stalinist trial”
Roger Kimball, The Spectator World