The Public Domain ReviewNot-for-profit project dedicated to exploring curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas — focusing on works now fallen into the public domain.
Smaller posts surface images, books, audio, and film (sourced from places like Internet Archive, Library of Congress, The Met, Rijksmusuem, Wellcome, etc.) — and we've also 300+ long-form essays (✍
️ submissions welcome!)
Here we'll mostly be tooting about content on our site. 🎺
The Public Domain ReviewThe medieval "Egg Dance", as depicted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ca. 1620.
More on the egg dance here
//publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-egg-dance-from-peasant-village-to-political-caricature
The Public Domain ReviewOne of the many wonderful illustrations to be found in an 1837 "caterpillar calendar", an entomological volume by the aptly named Christian Friedrich Vogel outlining which caterpillars appear each month. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/images-from-german-caterpillar-calendar-1837?utm_content=buffer35096&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer (from @BioDivLibrary & @SILibraries)
The Public Domain ReviewBorn #onthisday in Dublin in 1882, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce. Celebrate with a listen to him reading his very own work (excerpts from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake) in two rare recordings from the 1920s: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/james-joyce-reading-his-work-1924-1929 #otd
The Public Domain ReviewTypical winter's day in this entry for #February in the Labors of the Months section from the Très Riches Heures (15th.c). Some peasants get warm by the fire, another chops wood + another leaves for market. Above, an arguably redundant Phoebus... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-riches-heures
The Public Domain ReviewAlbrecht Dürer’s Pillow Studies (1493) — Completed in his early twenties, the work seems to slip between the waking world and the stuff of dreams... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/durer-pillow-studies
The Public Domain ReviewThe Slant Book (1910) by Peter Newell — shaped like a rhomboid it tells the story of a runaway baby carriage's chaotic downhill ride: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-slant-book
The Public Domain ReviewDorinda Evans on the unique anti-capitalist visions of trompe l’oeil artist Victor Dubreuil: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/illusory-wealth
The Public Domain ReviewIllustrations from the beguiling Clavis Artis, a German alchemical manuscript which claims to hail from the 13th century and have pages made from dragon skin: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/clavis-artis
The Public Domain ReviewWoodcuts from Lorenz Stoer’s Geometria et Perspectiva, 1567.
From Stoer's unique, image-based treatise on linear perspective — in each woodcut a complex polyhedron or combination of solids are embedded in a kind of dreamlike ruinscape. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-geometric-landscapes-of-lorenz-stoer-1567 https://twitter.com/PublicDomainRev/status/1457095506191134725/photo/1
The Public Domain ReviewOne of the many extraordinary illustrations produced in 1745 by Gautier D’Agoty, which together form his Essai d’Anatomie, a remarkably detailed atlas of the head, neck, and shoulder areas of the human body, with explanatory text in French. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/coloured-plates-from-essai-d-anatomie-1745