"How do you measure dedication?" Barbara Boehm on Simon Bening’s _Book of Hours_.

Former Media Technology Developer Jonathan Dahan takes readers through his step-by-step process for making a new version of Cory Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds.

Assistant Conservator Giulia Chiostrini analyzes a collection of embroidered roundels now on view in Scenes from the Life of St. Martin: Franco-Flemish Embroidery from the Met Collection.

Associate Curator Jayson Dobney details C. F. Martin's German heritage and highlights the early work produced at his workshop at 196 Hudson Street in Manhattan.

In the Middle Ages pictorial embroidery was considered one of the fine arts, and those who made pictures with needle and thread were often as highly skilled and highly valued as those who made pictures with brush and pigment. Franco-Flemish and Flemish pictorial embroideries of the first half of the fifteenth century are rare today, and a series as extensive and fascinating as the one analyzed here can hardly be equaled. The thirty-seven individual works have been known to scholars and connoisseurs for eighty years or so, and during this time speculation has accumulated as to their origin, purpose, and iconography. The present study resolves at least part of the mystery. These embroideries celebrate the life and achievements of one of Christendom's most beloved saints. Admired for his heroism in successful confrontations with emperors, devils, brigands, and pagans, St. Martin, bishop of Tours, is remembered also for his power over nature and his restoration of the dead to life. In this most readable treatise each subject is integrated in the storytelling scheme, the styles of the several artists who made the designs are differentiated, the particular embroidery techniques are discussed, the name of the Burgundian nobleman who may have commissioned the set is sifted out of the historical and artistic evidence, and what is known of the embroideries' recent history is reported. The discussion is such that it greatly enlarges one's own knowledge not only of Medieval French, Franco-Flemish, and Flemish embroidery but of painting and manuscript illumination in these regions.

Ceramic artists in Europe at the turn of the century sought to break from the past by developing new, distinctive modes of making. With a renewed interest in the natural world as a source of artistic inspiration, they experimented with decoration, …

Fourteen rare and important manuscript illuminations from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Robert Lehman Collection—ranging in date from the 13th through the 16th century and representing high points of the German, French, and Netherlandish schools of illumination—will be on view beginning March 16.