Found in Amber
Welcome! Found in Amber is about looking closely at what the past left behind.
Through research-driven documentaries, I use artworks, texts, objects, and monuments as evidence to understand the people, ideas, and societies that made them.
I make these films because the past becomes far more interesting when you look closely enough to see where the easy answers stop.
Found in Amber
Before the Trojan War, Greek epic told of another great war. The poems are lost. All that remains are fragments.
This is the story of the Theban Cycle: https://youtu.be/tamhgl_M0eY
1 week ago | [YT] | 62
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Found in Amber
The Medici built a giant with rooms inside.
Giambologna’s Appennino was the centrepiece of a Medici garden just outside Florence, filled with grottoes, hidden waterworks, automata and theatrical illusions.
In my latest video, I explore the history behind the Renaissance's strangest masterpiece: https://youtu.be/4QX9u7IrCjg
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 79
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Found in Amber
Odysseus promises his father the complete truth. Then he lies.
At that exact moment, Homer calls him polymētis. Four translators turn the same Greek into four different Odysseuses: crafty, resourceful, a man with a fable ready... or simply a liar.
Same Greek. Four verdicts. I explore what makes Odysseus literature's greatest liar in this video: https://youtu.be/m1hrEBR6rig
1 month ago | [YT] | 36
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Found in Amber
These images are meant to depict the Trojan War.
Steel armour. Halberds. Chainmail. Knights on horseback charging at one another. Why did medieval artists imagine Homeric Troy through the world of their own time?
And why does art keep getting history wrong? I explore that question here: https://youtu.be/pmjExdG46QU
1 month ago | [YT] | 67
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Found in Amber
Hieronymus Bosch painted writhing nudes, giant strawberries and sheet music on a butt in the early 1500s. But what was any of it supposed to mean?
More than five hundred years later, no one fully agrees. In my newest documentary, I trace five centuries of attempts to explain one of the strangest paintings ever made: https://youtu.be/j_T8PBkXDSI
1 month ago | [YT] | 71
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Found in Amber
What do pianos, French onion soup, and Michelangelo’s David have in common?
The Medici, somehow.
Once you start looking, they appear everywhere: in music, food, politics, architecture, and some of the greatest art ever made.
I explore why in my Medici documentary: https://youtu.be/uB7qhXocO0o
2 months ago | [YT] | 30
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