The Atlas / Journal

The Journal

Essays on Renaissance art, its painters, and its long afterlife. The Atlas's editorial publication — written as criticism and scholarship, not as content marketing.

May 202610 min read

The Iconography of the Italian Renaissance, Explained

A beginner's reader for the symbols, saints, and mythological figures that populate Italian Renaissance painting.

April 20268 min read

Reading the Mona Lisa After Five Centuries

What twenty generations of viewers have done to a single painting — and what the painting has done to them.

March 20266 min read

Why the Renaissance Was Never Finished

On the long Renaissance and the tradition that did not end in 1600.