Plate from M. E. Descourtilz’s Atlas des Champignons (1827), a delightful series of colour lithographs of mushrooms, divided into those that are edible, poisonous and “suspect” — https://publicdomainreview.org/coll.../atlas-des-champignons

Triptych by Kawanabe Kyōsai depicting a battle of frogs, 1864. ⠀ Kyōsai is considered both Japan’s first political caricaturist and one of the first authors of a manga magazine (Eshunbun Nipponchi). ⠀ Prints to buy here: https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-prints/artist/kawanabe-kyosai

One of the first books to be banned and burnt in the New World was by an ancestor of the author Thomas Pynchon. More in our essay by Daniel Crown “The Price of Suffering”:

The Public Domain Review

The Price of Suffering: William Pynchon and The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption

William Pynchon, earliest colonial ancestor of the novelist Thomas Pynchon, was a key figure in the early settlement of New England. He also wrote ...

Illustration by Ivan Bilibin for an 1899 edition of the Russian fairytale Vasilisa the Beautiful. One of two Bilibin illustrations from the tale available to buy as prints from our online shop — https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-prints/artist/ivan-bilibin

Throughout his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, Marcel #Proust (who died #onthisday in 1922) would time and again turn to the visual arts. Explore here the artworks he mentions including paintings by Giotto, Botticelli and Poussin:

The Public Domain Review

Paintings in Proust (Vol. 1, Swann’s Way)

As a celebration of the centennial of the publication of Swann's Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, we have pu...

#OTD

Centuries ahead of its time, Giovanni Battista Bracelli's "Bizzarie di Varie Figure" (1624) depicts figures made from a range of objects, mostly abstract — cubes, rings, squares — but also such things as rackets, screws, and braided hair. More here:

The Public Domain Review

Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s *Bizzarie di Varie Figure* (1624)

Giovanni Battista Bracelli's extraordinary book of prescient prints that predate the Cubist movement by a good three centuries.

Cards from Etteilla’s “Livre de Thot” Tarot, published around the time of the French Revolution. More on this beautiful and beguiling creation in our latest post:

The Public Domain Review

Etteilla’s *Livre de Thot* Tarot (ca. 1789)

French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette refashioned the tarot deck as a tool for spiritual and mundane divination.

Landscapes of the Western Front, 1914–1918 — A century after their strategic function has passed, these official British army intelligence photographs offer an unusual and haunting portrait of the front:

The Public Domain Review

Landscapes of the Western Front, 1914–1918

Photographs for official army panoramas that offer, a century after their strategic function has passed, an unusual and haunting portrait of WW1.

#RemembranceDay #RemembranceDay2022 #ArmisticeDay

#Onthisday in 1918, just days before end of #WW1, French poet Apollinaire (weakened by a shrapnel wound) died in the Spanish flu epidemic. Later that year Calligrammes: Poems of Peace & War was published, a collection of his concrete/visual poems

The Public Domain Review

Apollinaire’s Calligrammes (1918)

A book of poetry by French writer Guillaume Apollinaire, noted for its use of "caligrams" in which typeface and arrangement of words on the page ad...

#OTD

The Cyclops, by François Desprez, 1562. ⠀⠀ Available as a print from our shop here: https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-prints/artist/francois-desprez/