1. This week I learned about “mummy portraits” and they’re fascinating–understudied and a mix of styles: “As far as scholars can tell, the mummy portraits are the first paintings that depict lifelike, highly individualized subjects and demonstrate a fusion of funerary and artistic traditions between the Greco-Roman and Classical worlds.”
2. On the other end of the cultural spectrum, Bon Appetit has a history of Buca di Beppo, or “How a Lutheran from central Illinois created a genre-defining Italian-American restaurant.”