Introduction

“Explain all that,” said the Mock Turtle. “No, no! The adventures first,” said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: “explanations take such a dreadful time.”
—(Alice in Wonderland, ch. 10)

Adventures in Wonderland

The illustrated lectures in these four series offer a fresh introduction to some of the greatest works by the greatest Italian artists: Michelangelo in Rome, Titian in Venice; and, before their time, Duccio in Siena and Giotto in Florence.

Everything is based on the telling of a story. Your interest will be sustained and your emotions engaged as you follow a sacred or secular drama, unfolding scene by scene on the walls of a single chapel or state-room which you will be able to visit in person.

You will be able to combine the experience of going to Italy for a cultural holiday, reading a novel, shopping online at Harrod’s, watching a documentary on TV, joining the Vice-Chancellor at a public lecture in Cambridge, and revising for a degree in History of Art.

You are being offered a series of free ‘safaris in Wonderland’. The next section gives you some simple tips on preparing your ‘vehicle’, and ends by ‘teleporting’ you straight into your first adventure.

First steps

This site has been designed to be enjoyed in many ways, but on your first trip please do yourself the favour of engaging with your chosen unit as a whole. Skim, where you feel inclined, but don’t skip. Each lecture takes the form of a structured commentary on a carefully chosen sequence of images. There will always be an argument to follow as well as the plot of a story. You won’t be acquiring snippets of information to use in a pub quiz. But you will be learning—painlessly and by example—how to look at any painting or sculpture from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. (To misquote a favourite aphorism, you will not be ‘much better informed’, but you will be somewhat ‘the wiser’.)

The site should be legible on almost any device, but it is designed for at least a large tablet or small laptop, a screen size of 13 inches or so. If you can use a bigger screen (such as a desktop monitor or television), the images will, of course, have more impact and the details be easier to see.

Each lecture should appear as a sequence of whole pages, much like the slides in a PowerPoint presentation. In most cases, you will see two columns, with a commentary on the left facing the all-important image on the right.

If this is not what you see, please:

• Maximise your browser window, or even better, make it full-screen; and
• Ensure that the zoom level is set to 100%.

To turn the pages, we recommend using the up and down arrows on your keyboard, if you have one.

On a second viewing, you will probably want to pause from time to enlarge the images, and by then you should have absorbed enough information to be able to proceed with no more than a glance at the words. But during the first trip, you’ll need help with acclimatisation, map-reading skills and local knowledge—and for that to be effective, you’ll need to stay with the guide and keep up your momentum.

Choosing your First Lecture

Rome in the High Renaissance (its art being concentrated in just one building) could hardly be more different from Siena in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Hence the two series currently available are remarkably diverse in character. You will enjoy both, but, for the present, follow your own instincts as to where to make a start.

Within each series, you could do a lot worse than begin with the first lecture and immerse yourself in the narratives in the order they were painted. But each lecture is self-contained and can be read or re-read in any order you choose.

So please choose your first destination now, adjust your screen (as explained), and sit back:

• Rome
• Siena

Once you’ve completed your first ‘safari’, you might like to learn a little more about how the site was conceived and designed. If so, come back and read on…

Two Explanations

Site design

Every ‘page’ in each lecture is designed to resemble the double spread of a generously-proportioned coffee-table book. The all-important image will normally be on the right and the commentary on the left.

The text may fill its column or be very short indeed, but it will always be related to the picture or diagram you’re looking at alongside.

The layout of each slide is determined by the need for the words to be comfortably legible at arm’s length when the lecture is being enjoyed on a typical laptop screen, just as if you were reading a novel. (Actually, you couldn’t do better than sit in an armchair with your head comfortably supported and the screen literally in your lap.)

The impact of the images will be greater on a desktop computer (21 inches or more) or a television. Conversely, a tablet will disappoint you and the screen of a smartphone will be simply too small. (You won’t shudder at the terribilità of the Sistine Chapel if you’re squinting at a playing card.)

Why are they called “lectures”?

We decided to keep referring to each of the units as a lecture (rather than a chapter, or an article, or a tour), for several reasons.

They did in fact all begin life as Open Lectures in the biggest auditorium of the University of Cambridge. Those who attended were of all disciplines and ages. None of them were specialists but they were eager to learn. They wanted to be enlightened as well as entertained. They expected something solid to chew on and digest at leisure.

Everything that was vital to the success of the public lectures has been preserved in the present transformation of the original handwritten notes, which were subordinated to the projection of 35mm slides in a darkened theatre, where the audience’s eyes could be steered across two colossal screens by the voice of an energetic speaker and the red spot of a laser pointer.

Hence, by retaining the word ‘lecture’, we are preparing you for the content and style of a website that meets the same standards you would expect of four short but scholarly books published by a university press.

Each lecture is a substantial piece of around 8,000 words, written in simple colloquial English, immediately intelligible, but not afraid of big concepts or foreign words. There was and is no dumbing-down; but there is a lot of energetic limbering-up.

Let John Keats have the last word:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Patrick Boyde, Cambridge, December 2025