Jonathan Poletti

Podcast equipment needs to be more expensive.

Thomas Eakins (b. 25 July 1844) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. Pioneering a deeply rigorous, unsentimental approach to capturing contemporary life, he is now recognized by art historians as one of America’s most important and profound artists. Living and working almost entirely in Philadelphia, Eakins brought portraiture out of the traditional drawing room, capturing his subjects within the active environments of modern life. The Gross Clinic (1875) is widely considered his masterpiece. This monumental painting depicts the prominent surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross conducting a surgical operation before a gallery of medical students. It initially shocked audiences and was rejected from the 1876 Centennial Exhibition due to its unflinching, bloody realism. The Agnew Clinic (1889), painted fourteen years later, depicts another surgical operation, charting medical progress via its representation of artificial lighting, sterilized white gowns, and professional nursing. Other notable works relying on precise mathematical perspective and measurements to render the anatomy of human exertion include Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871), The Biglin Brothers Racing (1872), Salutat (1898), and Wrestlers (1899). Becoming the director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1882, he implemented a revolutionary curriculum centered around exhaustive anatomical dissection and drawing from live, nude models. However, his uncompromising beliefs frequently collided with Victorian societal norms. In 1886, he sparked a massive public scandal by abruptly stripping the loincloth from a male model during an anatomy lecture attended by both male and female students. The resulting backlash forced his resignation from the Academy. Despite being ostracized by polite society, many of his students deeply respected his devotion to artistic truth and continued to seek his guidance. Later in his career, Eakins transitioned toward bust portraits of friends, family, and intellectuals, including his famous depiction of poet Walt Whitman (1887). Rather than flattering his subjects, he captured their true characters, etching the wear and tear of their lives directly onto their faces. Whether Eakins was gay remains a subject of ongoing historical debate. Analyzed through a gay lens, evidence supporting his homosexuality includes the homoerotic subtext of many of his works, most famously The Swimming Hole (1885) which prominently featured muscular, nude men. Eakins and his male students also frequently took photographs of each other posing nude, which was highly controversial at the time and contributed to his firing from PAFA. Eakins never publicly identified as gay. He was married to Susan MacDowell, a former student of his, for 32 years. They married when he was 39, she was 32, had no children, and their partnership appeared to have been less about romance than mutual respect and artistic collaboration. On the other hand, one of his most enduring and emotionally significant relationships was with Samuel Murray, 25 years his junior and also a former student who became his closest friend, studio assistant, and confidant. Murray often accompanied Eakins on his numerous trips to New Jersey to visit Walt Whitman – widely believed to have been gay – with whom Eakins had a notably close, admiring friendship. Remaining fiercely loyal to Eakins through his years of institutional criticism, Sam was present at his bedside when Eakins died of heart failure on June 25, 1916, at age 71 in Philadelphia. 🏳️‍🌈

Jodie Comer praises director Michael Sarnoski’s work on ‘THE DEATH OF ROBIN HOOD’. “He sent me the script, it was so cinematic but also so emotional and character driven. With a director who prioritizes both of those things in equal measure, it’s so exciting.”

Back in 2022, Sam Allberry claimed he was wearing a wedding ring to remind himself that "God is pursuing him." This was the same year he was in an "inappropriate relationship" with another man.

I reject love languages because it was a theory formulated by a racist, white, cishet, Christian man. Why do yall think yall always wondering why men’s love languages are physical touch or acts of service? Lol walk with me

The lost ancient practice of communal sleep. Until mid-19th Century, it was completely normal to share a bed with friends, colleagues and even total strangers... In 1187, a medieval prince slipped into his grand wooden bed, accompanied by a new companion. With a thick mane of auburn hair and strapping frame, Richard the Lionheart was the ultimate macho warrior, renowned for his formidable leadership on the battlefield and knightly conduct. Now he had formed an unexpected friendship with a former enemy – Philip II, who ruled over France from 1180 to 1223. Initially, the two royals had forged a purely pragmatic alliance. But after spending more time together, eating at the same table and even out of the same dish, they had become close friends. To cement the special relationship between themselves and their two countries, they agreed to a peace treaty and slept alongside each other, in the same bed. Despite the modern connotations of two men sharing a bed, at time this was entirely unremarkable – appearing almost as a casual aside in a contemporary chronicle on the history of England. Long before the expectation of night-time privacy or more recent ideas about manliness, many historians view the two royals' nightly partnership as a sign of trust and brotherhood. This is the forgotten ancient practice of communal sleep. For thousands of years, it was completely normal to flop down in bed each night alongside friends, colleagues, relatives – including the entire extended family – or travelling pedlars. When on the road, people routinely found themselves lying next to total strangers. If they were unlucky, this outsider might come with an overwhelming stench, deafening snoring – or worse, a preference for sleeping naked. Sometimes, "social sleeping" was simply a pragmatic solution to a shortage of beds, which were highly valuable pieces of furniture. But even the nobility actively sought out bedfellows for the unparallelled intimacy of night-time chats in the darkness, as well as warmth and a feeling of security. How did people navigate a night of communal sleeping? And why did this ancient practice stop? In 2011, a team of archaeologists uncovered an unusually well-preserved layer of prehistoric sediment at Sibudu Cave, South Africa. It contained the fossilised remains of leaves from the forest tree Cryptocarya woodie, which formed the "top sheet" of a foliage mattress constructed in the Stone Age, some 77,000 years ago. As project leader Lyn Wadley speculated at the time, the mattress may have been large enough for a whole family group. Direct evidence for communal sleep is hard to come by, but it's thought that this practice is truly ancient – in fact, from a historical perspective, the modern preference for sleeping alone and in private is deeply weird. After a brief lapse in antiquity, during which even married members of the upper classes slept alone, the practice made it through the medieval age more or less intact. However, records of this activity are most abundant in the early modern period – roughly from 1500 to 1800. In this era, bedsharing was extremely common. "For most people, with the exclusion of aristocrats and well-to-do merchants, as well as some members of the landed gentry, it would have been unusual not to have had a bedmate," says Roger Ekirch, a university distinguished professor of history at Virginia Tech, Virginia, and the author of At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime. 📷 : In medieval era, the Biblical Magi – the Three Wise Men from the Christian Bible – were often depicted sleeping in the same bed (British Library) © BBC #archaeohistories

Ciertamente una subasta extraña la de Brescia. El lote 62, bellísimo Ecce Homo catalogado como anónimo de Esc. Holandesa y con una salida de 400 € estaba sin embargo claramente firmado y fechado por Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (CvH), y en la trasera,y se remataba en 13.500 €