1.
Achilles
–
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and the central character and greatest warrior of Homers Iliad. His mother was the immortal nymph Thetis, and his father, Achilles’ most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan hero Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, later legends state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel. Alluding to these legends, the term Achilles heel has come to mean a point of weakness, Achilles name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος grief and λαός a people, tribe, nation. In other words, Achilles is an embodiment of the grief of the people, Achilles role as the hero of grief forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of Achilles as the hero of κλέος kleos. Laos has been construed by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, to mean a corps of soldiers, a muster. With this derivation, the name would have a meaning in the poem, when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring grief to the enemy. The poem is in part about the misdirection of anger on the part of leadership, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name. The name Achilleus was a common and attested name among the Greeks soon after the 7th century BC. It was also turned into the female form Ἀχιλλεία attested in Attica in the 4th century BC and, in the form Achillia, Achilles was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus, for this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed Peleus. Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was brought up by Hera. According to the Achilleid, written by Statius in the 1st century AD, and to no surviving previous sources, however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him, his heel. It is not clear if this version of events was known earlier, in another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire, to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage, however, none of the sources before Statius makes any reference to this general invulnerability. To the contrary, in the Iliad Homer mentions Achilles being wounded, in Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon and he cast two spears at once, one grazed Achilles elbow, drawing a spurt of blood. Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron the Centaur, on Mt. Pelion, Achilles consuming rage is at times wavering, but at other times he cannot be cooled. Thetis foretold that her sons fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long, Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan war
Achilles
–
Achilles and the
Nereid Cymothoe: Attic red-figure
kantharos from
Volci (
Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris)
Achilles
–
Head of Achilles depicted on a 4th-century BC coin from
Kremaste,
Phthia. Reverse:
Thetis, wearing
chiton and holding shield of Achilles with his AX monogram.
Achilles
–
Greek Mythology
Achilles
–
Thetis Dipping the Infant Achilles into the River Styx (ca. 1625),
Peter Paul Rubens
2.
Trojan War
–
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homers Iliad. The Iliad relates four days in the year of the decade-long siege of Troy. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid. Zeus sent the goddesses to Paris, who judged that Aphrodite, as the fairest, in exchange, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris, who took her to Troy. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helens husband Menelaus, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris insult. After the deaths of heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris. The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods wrath, few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, one of the Trojans, in 1868, however, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert, who convinced Schliemann that Troy was a real city at what is now Hissarlik in Turkey. On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim is now accepted by most scholars, whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open question. The events of the Trojan War are found in works of Greek literature. There is no single, authoritative text which tells the events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, the most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Each poem narrates only a part of the war, the Iliad covers a short period in the last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseuss return to his home island of Ithaca, following the sack of Troy. Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle, also known as the Cyclic Epics, the Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony. Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content is known from an included in Proclus Chrestomathy. The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain, both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from oral tradition. Even after the composition of the Iliad, Odyssey, and the Cyclic Epics, events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems
Trojan War
–
Achilles tending the wounded
Patroclus (
Attic red-figure kylix, c. 500 BC)
Trojan War
–
The Burning of Troy (1759/62),
oil painting by Johann Georg Trautmann
Trojan War
–
The Judgment of Paris (1904) by
Enrique Simonet
Trojan War
–
Thetis gives her son Achilles weapons forged by Hephaestus (detail of Attic
black-figure hydria, 575–550 BC)
3.
Homer
–
Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Odyssey focuses on the home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Many accounts of Homers life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a bard from Ionia. The modern scholarly consensus is that these traditions do not have any historical value, the Homeric question - by whom, when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey composed - continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps, one group holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the work of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the crystallization of a process of working and re-working by many contributors and it is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century B. C. Most researchers believe that the poems were transmitted orally. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education, to Plato, the chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word Homer. Was Homer a single person, an imaginary person representing a group of poets and this information is often called the world of Homer. The Homeric period would in that cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age. Considered word-for-word, the texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments. The term accuracy reveals a belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed and these numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated. The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he named, the Sinopic, the one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his selection of material
Homer
–
Idealized portrayal of Homer dating to the
Hellenistic period.
British Museum.
Homer
–
Part of an 11th-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writing on the top and right side are
scholia.
Homer
–
Homer and His Guide, by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905), portraying Homer on
Mount Ida, beset by dogs and guided by the goatherder Glaucus (as told in
Pseudo-Herodotus)
Homer
–
Raphael 's inspired Homer on
Mount Parnassus.
4.
Epic poem
–
An epic poem, epic, epos, or epopee is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics and these works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all Western epic self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems, classical epic employs dactylic hexameter and recounts a journey, either physical or mental or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, another type of epic poetry is epyllion, which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means little epic, came into use in the nineteenth century, the most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64. The first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral history poetic traditions, in these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means. Early twentieth-century study of living oral traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry. What they demonstrated was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and this facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it. Parry and Lord also contend that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance, poets in literate societies have sometimes copied the epic format. The earliest surviving European examples are the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes and Virgils Aeneid, other obvious examples are Nonnus Dionysiaca, Tulsidas Sri Ramacharit Manas. In his work Poetics, Aristotle defines an epic as one of the forms of poetry, contrasted with lyric poetry, an attempt to delineate ten main characteristics of an epic, Begins in medias res. The setting is vast, covering many nations, the world or the universe, Begins with an invocation to a muse. Begins with a statement of the theme, contains long lists, called an epic catalogue. Shows divine intervention on human affairs, features heroes that embody the values of the civilization. Often features the tragic heros descent into the Underworld or hell, the hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society the epic originates from, many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native culture. Conventions of epics, Preposition, Opens by stating the theme or cause of the epic and this may take the form of a purpose, of a question, or of a situation. Invocation, Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus, the poet prays to the Muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero
Epic poem
–
Tablet containing a fragment of the
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic poem
–
The first page of the
Beowulf manuscript, 8th to 10th century.
Epic poem
–
Statue of Iranian poet
Ferdowsi in Rome, Italy. Ferdowsi's national epic
Shahnameh played an important role in revival of Iranian
patriotism and the
Persian language after both were systematically suppressed by the Arab occupation of Iran
Epic poem
–
The Knight in the Panther's Skin by
Shota Rustaveli, one of the greatest Georgian poets.
5.
Iliad
–
The iLiad was an electronic handheld device, or e-Reader, which could be used for document reading and editing. Like the Barnes and Noble nook, Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, in 2010, sales of the iLiad ended when its parent company, iRex, filed for bankruptcy. The display used is an active matrix display, which uses E Ink Vizplex Imaging Film manufactured by E Ink Corporation. Underneath the E Ink screen is a tablet by WACOM which requires a stylus for input. When it was introduced, the Iliad had largest screen size of existing e-paper products, the iLiad can display document files in several formats, including PDF, Mobipocket, XHTML and plain text. It can also display JPEG, BMP and PNG images, as of May 3,2007 Mobipocket is supported, making the mobipocket digital rights management content available on this platform. IRexs product page for the states that Support for additional E-book formats will become available over the coming months. Through its wireless service, iDS, the iLiad can also download content. Les Echos, a French financial newspaper, is distributed this way, users can connect to their computer over a wireless network to sync new data onto the iLiads internal memory or an inserted MMC, SD, or CF card. The distributor of the iLiad is iRex Technologies, a Philips spin-off company and it was initially advertised in December 2005, to be launched in April 2006, but was delayed until July, when it started to be sold as a beta product. It was released to the public near the end of July. Its list price in Europe is €649, and in US $699, one of the advanced features of the iLiad is the ability to add notes to existing documents. With the integrated Wacom tablet and stylus, it is possible to directly on almost any document. Using the desktop software, those notes can be merged into the original document and this provides malleability, an important feature of physical books that is missing from most ebook products, allowing users to annotate, highlight, and personalize the text. Because of its open Linux operating system, the iLiad is able to run third party applications created for it, developers and users wishing to create or run third party applications can request shell access from the manufacturer. Developers have been able to improve on the devices functionality by porting viewers such as FBReader, full screen PDF reading is made available by community-supported iPDF releases. Programs for recreation, including audio playback, sudoku, and calendars, are rapidly growing community content available for use on the iLiad, independent users have also reported successful porting of mobile web browsers to iLiads Linux platform, although with limited functionality and many bugs. IRex as a company has had a relationship with its Open Source developers
Iliad
–
iRex iLiad
Iliad
Iliad
–
iLiad in sunlight
Iliad
–
iLiad e-book reader equipped with e-paper display
6.
Achilleid
–
The Achilleid is an unfinished epic poem by Publius Papinius Statius that was intended to present the life of Achilles from his youth through his death at Troy. Only about one and a half books were completed before the poets death, based upon three references to the poem in the Silvae, the Achilleid seems to have been composed between 94 and 96 CE. At Silvae 4.7. 21–24, Statius complains that he lacks the motivation to make progress upon his Achilles without the company of his friend C, vibius Maximus who was travelling in Dalmatia. This reference is believed to date from the summer of 95, Statius primary models are Homer and the poems of the epic cycle which touch on the life of Achilles. His style in the Achilleid has been seen as far more reminiscent of Ovid than Virgil, Statius tried to revise the image of the Homeric Achilles with the Achilleid, just as Ovid did for the Virgilian Aeneas. While doing this, they exploited the tension between the accepted epic narrative and competing traditions pertaining to the heroes lives. On account of its state, the Achilleid, it is often referred to as a fragment. Fragments are typically pieces of writing that have become seriously destroyed in the process of being transmitted to its audience, statius’ Achilleid is a work that is partially completed that had already been polished and presented to the world in his lifetime. The structure of the narrative is deliberate and balanced, the first words of the poem are the pseudo-Homeric patronymic that introduces Achilles through his fathers father, while the last word of the poem is mother. Achilles childhood experiences are then told in the space left vacant by his two absentee parents, the introduction states the goals and scope of the epic, including the intention to cover the entire life of Achilles, not simply up to Hectors death as was done in the Iliad. The Achilleid opens with an epic invocation of the Muses and Apollo, requesting inspiration for the poets work. While the structure of the first line puts the Achilleid within the Vergilian tradition of martial epic, Statius praises Domitian and dedicates the epic to this emperor. Neptune denies this request, stating that the war is fated, Thetis goes to Thessaly, where the centaur Chiron has been raising and tutoring Achilles. She tells Chiron that she wants to take her son back and then enjoys a night of eating, singing, Thetis decides that she must hide Achilles on Lycomedes island of Scyros and takes him there while he sleeps. Once he wakes, she tries to him to hide himself there disguised as a girl. He refuses to accept this plan despite her promises that no one else will find out. Achilles is finally convinced to follow his mothers advice when he witnesses the daughters of King Lycomedes performing a dance at a festival of Pallas. Achilles is immediately struck by the beauty of one of these women, Deidamia
Achilleid
–
An ancient fresco of Chiron and Achilles.
7.
Statius
–
Publius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century AD. His surviving Latin poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the Thebaid, a collection of poetry, the Silvae, and an unfinished epic. He is also known for his appearance as a guide in the Purgatory section of Dantes epic poem The Divine Comedy, information about Statius life is almost entirely drawn from his Silvae and a mention by the satirist Juvenal. The poets father was a native of Velia but later moved to Naples, Statius declares in his lament for his father that his father was in his time equal to any literary task, whether in prose or verse. He mentioned Mevania, and may have spent time there, or been impressed by the confrontation of Vitellius, Statius father was a Roman eques, but may have lost his status because of money troubles. At Naples, he was a teacher of Greek and Roman literature who attracted many pupils who were destined for religious offices in Rome, from Pliny the Youngers Letters, it has recently been deduced that Statius also wrote under the pseudonym of Propertius. Less is known of the events of Statius life, for the Alban Festival, Statius composed a poem on the German and Dacian campaigns of Domitian which Juvenal lampoons in his seventh satire. Statius is thought to have moved to Rome c.90 after his fathers death where he published his epic poem the Thebaid c. In the capital, Statius seems to have many connections among the Roman aristocracy and court. He competed in the great Capitoline competition, although it is not known in what year, Statius failed to win the coveted prize, a loss he took very hard. The disappointment may have prompted his return to Naples around 94, in existence is a poem he addressed to his wife, Claudia, the widow of a famous singer who had a musically talented daughter by her first husband, on this occasion. Statius first three books of the Silvae seem to have received criticism, and in response he composed a fourth book at Naples. During this period at Naples, Statius maintained his relations with the court and his patrons, earning himself another invitation to a palace banquet. He seems to have taken an interest in the marriage and career of his stepdaughter and he took a young slave boy under his wing, as he was childless. In that same year Statius embarked on a new epic, the Achilleid, giving recitations of his work only to complete a book. His fifth book of Silvae were published after his death c, as a poet, Statius was versatile in his abilities and contrived to represent his work as otium.94. Based on Statius own testimony, the Thebaid was written c.80 – c.92 AD, beginning when the poet was around 35, the poem is divided into twelve books in imitation of Virgils Aeneid and is composed in dactylic hexameter. In the Silvae, Statius speaks of his work in polishing and revising the Thebaid
Statius
–
The Thebaid describes the siege of Thebes by the seven Argive champions.
Statius
–
Villas not unlike the
Getty Villa are described by Statius in his Silvae.
8.
Classical antiquity
–
It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, and continues through the emergence of Christianity and it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures, Classical antiquity may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poes words, the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome. The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society. The earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse, the 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, in the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean, carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. The Etruscans had established control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21,753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth and it was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretias kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus, after Superbus expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word Rex meaning King became a dirty and hated throughout the Republic. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras. Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony, but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes and Corinth, the two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC
Classical antiquity
–
The
Parthenon is one of the most iconic symbols of the classical era, exemplifying ancient Greek culture
9.
Odysseus
–
Odysseus, also known by the Latin name Ulysses, was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homers epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homers Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle. Husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus, and son of Laërtes and Anticlea, Odysseus is renowned for his brilliance, guile, and versatility and he is most famous for the Odyssey, ten eventful years he took to return home after the decade-long Trojan War. The name has several variants, in Greek the character was called Olysseus, Oulixeus, Oulixes, hence, there may originally have been two separate figures, one called something like Odysseus, the other something like Ulixes, who were combined into one complex personality. The etymology of the name is unknown, ancient authors linked the name to the Greek verbs odussomai to be wroth against, to hate, or to oduromai to lament, bewail. Homer in references and puns, relates it to various forms of this verb and it has also been suggested that the name is of non-Greek origin, probably not even Indo-European, with an unknown etymology, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. In Book 19 of the Odyssey, where Odysseuss early childhood is recounted, Euryclea tries to guide him to naming the boy Polyaretos, for he has much been prayed for. Autolycus apparently in a sardonic mood, decided to give the child a name that would commemorate his own experience in life. Because I got odium upon myself before coming here, let the childs name be Odysseus to signify this. The pun was prophetic as well as commemorative, Odysseus often receives the patronymic epithet Laertiades, son of Laërtes. In the Iliad and Odyssey there are several epithets used to describe Odysseus and his name and stories were adopted into Etruscan religion under the name Uthuze. Hence, Odysseus was the great-grandson of the Olympian god Hermes, according to the Iliad and Odyssey, his father is Laertes and his mother Anticlea, although there was a non-Homeric tradition that Sisyphus was his true father. The rumor went that Laertes bought Odysseus from the conniving king, Odysseus is said to have a younger sister, Ctimene, who went to Same to be married and is mentioned by the swineherd Eumaeus, whom she grew up alongside, in Book 15 of the Odyssey. Homers Iliad and Odyssey portray Odysseus as a hero, but the Romans. In Virgils Aeneid, written between 29 and 19 BC, he is referred to as cruel Odysseus or deceitful Odysseus. Turnus, in Aeneid ix, reproaches the Trojan Ascanius with images of rugged, forthright Latin virtues, declaring, You shall not find the sons of Atreus here, nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear. While the Greeks admired his cunning and deceit, these qualities did not recommend themselves to the Romans, who possessed a rigid sense of honour. His attempts to avoid his sacred oath to defend Menelaus and Helen offended Roman notions of duty, the majority of sources for Odysseus pre-war exploits—principally the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus—postdate Homer by many centuries
Odysseus
–
Head of Odysseus from a
Roman period Hellenistic marble group representing Odysseus blinding
Polyphemus, found at the villa of
Tiberius at
Sperlonga
Odysseus
–
Head of Odysseus wearing
pileus depicted on a 3rd-century BC coin from
Ithaca
Odysseus
–
Greek Mythology
Odysseus
–
This is a painting of Odysseus's boat passing between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Scylla has plucked six of Odysseus's men from the boat. The painting is an Italian fresco dating to 1560 C.E.
10.
Mural
–
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other permanent surface. A distinguishing characteristic of painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture. Some wall paintings are painted on canvases, which are then attached to the wall. Whether these works can be accurately called murals is a subject of controversy in the art world. Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France, many ancient murals have been found within ancient Egyptian tombs, the Minoan palaces and in Pompeii. During the Middle Ages murals were executed on dry plaster. The huge collection of Kerala mural painting dating from the 14th century are examples of fresco secco, in Italy, circa 1300, the technique of painting of frescos on wet plaster was reintroduced and led to a significant increase in the quality of mural painting. In modern times, the became more well-known with the Mexican muralism art movement. There are many different styles and techniques, the best-known is probably fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts. The colors lighten as they dry, the marouflage method has also been used for millennia. Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water-based media, the styles can vary from abstract to trompe-lœil. Initiated by the works of artists like Graham Rust or Rainer Maria Latzke in the 1980s, trompe-loeil painting has experienced a renaissance in private. The buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a layer of wet, fresh. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours. After this the painting stays for a time up to centuries in fresh. Fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster, the pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg, glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall. By the end of the century this had largely displaced the buon fresco method. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work, in Greco-Roman times, mostly encaustic colors applied in a cold state were used
Mural
–
Ceiling painting, by
Jean-André Rixens. Salle des Illustres, Le Capitole,
Toulouse, France.
Mural
–
Jataka tales from the
Ajanta caves, 7th century
Mural
–
The 18th-century BC fresco of the
Investiture of Zimrilim discovered at the
Royal Palace of ancient
Mari in
Syria
Mural
–
CAM designed
Frescography by Rainer Maria Latzke, digitally printed on canvas
11.
James Thornhill
–
Sir James Thornhill was an English painter of historical subjects working in the Italian baroque tradition. Thornhill was born in Melcombe Regis, Dorset, the son of Walter Thornhill of Wareham and Mary, eldest daughter of Colonel William Sydenham, in 1689 he was apprenticed to Thomas Highmore, a specialist in non-figurative decorative painting. He also learned a great deal from Antonio Verrio and Louis Laguerre and he completed his apprenticeship in 1696 and, on 1 March 1704, became a Freeman of the Painter-Stainers Company of London. Thornhill decorated palace interiors with large-scale compositions, with figures shown in idealized. In 1707 he was given the commission to decorate the Hall now known as the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital, the scheme of allegorical wall and ceiling decorations of the hall depicts the Protestant succession of English monarchs from William and Mary to George I. On 28 June 1715 Thornhill was awarded the commission to decorate the dome of St Pauls Cathedral by a whig, the Weekly Packet said that the decision to award Thornhill the commission would put to silence all the loud applauses hitherto given to foreign artists. The eight scenes in the dome, executed in grisaille, show episodes from the Life of St. Paul, Thornhills vast murals in great houses often related to topical events, as seen through the eyes of his mainly Whig patrons. Here he painted The Rape of the Sabine Women, a vast panorama of mounted warriors carrying off the Sabine women to Rome, the subject is, inevitably, the Dukes 1704 victory at the Battle of Blenheim, during the War of the Spanish Succession. His last major commission was to paint the chapel at Wimpole Hall, he started work on the sketches in 1713. The north wall has fictive architecture and four Trompe-lœil statues of the four Doctors of the Church, the east wall above the altar is painted with the Adoration of the Magi. In 1725 he offered to paint decorations for the ceiling of the New Council Chamber at the Guildhall in the City of London and he gave his services free, although he was rewarded with a valuable gold cup. The chamber was demolished, though some of the paintings – an Allegory of London. In his native Dorset Thornhill decorated the reredos at St. Marys Church, in 1711, Thornhill was one of the twelve original directors of Sir Godfrey Knellers academy at Great Queen Street, London. In 1716, he succeeded Kneller as Governor there and held the post until 1720 and he then established his own private drawing school at Covent Garden, but this soon closed. In November 1724, Thornhill made a second, more successful, William Hogarth seems to have been a member of Thornhills second academy from the beginning. On 23 March 1729 he married Thornhills daughter Jane, Thornhill was with Hogarth when he went to see Sarah Malcolm in Newgate prison just days before her execution. This was in order that Hogarth might record her portrait, in June 1718 George I made Thornhill court painter, and in March 1720 Serjeant Painter. On 2 May 1720, the king knighted him, the first native artist to be knighted, in the same year, he was master of the Painters Company and in 1723 fellow of the Royal Society
James Thornhill
–
Self portrait, detail of a painting in the
Painted Hall of the Greenwich Hospital, Greenwich, London
James Thornhill
–
Sketch for the Painted Ceiling of the Great Hall, Greenwich Hospital: William and Mary Presenting the Cap of Liberty to Europe, about 1710, Sir James Thornhill V&A Museum no. 812-1877
James Thornhill
–
West wall,
Painted Hall, Greenwich
James Thornhill
–
Dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, London
12.
Thetis
–
Thetis, is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the 50 Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus. When described as a Nereid in Classical myths, Thetis was the daughter of Nereus and Doris, often she seems to lead the Nereids as they attend to her tasks. Sometimes she also is identified with Metis, some sources argue that she was one of the earliest of deities worshipped in Archaic Greece, the oral traditions and records of which are lost. Only one written record, a fragment, exists attesting to her worship, worship of Thetis as the goddess is documented to have persisted in some regions by historical writers such as Pausanias. In the Trojan War cycle of myth, the wedding of Thetis, the pre-modern etymology of her name, from tithemi, to set up, establish, suggests a perception among Classical Greeks of an early political role. Walter Burkert considers her name a transformed doublet of Tethys and you, goddess, went and saved him from that indignity. You quickly summoned to high Olympus the monster of the hundred arms whom the gods call Briareus, but mankind Aegaeon and he squatted by the Son of Cronos with such a show of force that the blessed gods slunk off in terror, leaving Zeus free —E. V. M. Willcock, have understood the episode as an ad hoc invention of Homers to support Achilles request that his mother intervene with Zeus, thus, she is revealed as a figure of cosmic capacity, quite capable of unsettling the divine order. These accounts associate Thetis with a divine past—uninvolved with human events—with a level of divine invulnerability extraordinary by Olympian standards. In order to ensure a mortal father for her offspring, Zeus and his brother Poseidon made arrangements for her to marry a human, Peleus, son of Aeacus. Proteus, an early sea-god, advised Peleus to find the sea nymph when she was asleep and she did shift shapes, becoming flame, water, a raging lioness, and a serpent. Subdued, she consented to marry him. Thetis is the mother of Achilles by Peleus, who became king of the Myrmidons, apollo played the lyre and the Muses sang, Pindar claimed. At the wedding Chiron gave Peleus an ashen spear that had been polished by Athene and had a blade forged by Hephaestus, Poseidon gave him the immortal horses, Balius and Xanthus. Eris, the goddess of discord, had not been invited and she threw, in spite, a golden apple into the midst of the goddesses that was to be awarded only to the fairest. In most interpretations, the award was made during the Judgement of Paris, in the later classical myths Thetis worked her magic on the baby Achilles by night, burning away his mortality in the hall fire and anointing the child with ambrosia during the day, Apollonius tells. When Peleus caught her searing the baby, he let out a cry, in a variant of the myth, Thetis tried to make Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the waters of the Styx. However, the heel by which she held him was not touched by the Styxs waters, in the story of Achilles in the Trojan War in the Iliad, Homer does not mention this weakness of Achilles heel
Thetis
–
Head of Thetis from an Attic red-figure pelike, c. 510–500 BC,
Louvre.
Thetis
–
Immortal Thetis with the mortal
Peleus in the foreground,
Boeotian black-figure dish, c. 500–475 BC -
Louvre.
Thetis
–
Thetis changing into a lioness as she is attacked by Peleus, Attic red-figured kylix by
Douris, c. 490 BC from Vulci, Etruria -
Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
Thetis
–
Thetis and attendants bring armor she had prepared for him to
Achilles, an Attic black-figure hydria, c. 575–550 BC,
Louvre.
13.
Lycomedes
–
The name Lycomedes /ˌlaɪkəˈmiːdiːz/ may refer to several characters in Greek mythology, of whom the most prominent was the king of Scyros during the Trojan War. Lycomedes was a king of the Dolopians in the island of Scyros near Euboea, father of a number of daughters including Deidameia, at the request of Thetis, Lycomedes concealed Achilles in female disguise among his own daughters. At Lycomedes court Achilles had an affair with Deidamia, which resulted in the birth of Neoptolemus, as Odysseus drew Achilles out of his disguise and took him to Troy, Neoptolemus stayed with his grandfather until he too was summoned during the later stages of the war. Some related that the cause of violence was that Lycomedes would not give up the estates which Theseus had in Scyros. The asteroid 9694 Lycomedes is named for him - being a Jupiter Trojan, a group of asteroids which are by convention named for characters associated with the Trojan War. Lycomedes, a son of Creon, one of the Greek warriors at Troy, he was represented by Polygnotus in the Lesche at Delphi as wounded in the wrist, in the arm, Lycomedes, son of Apollo and Parthenope. Lycomedes, a Cretan suitor of Helen
Lycomedes
–
Achilles at the court of King Lycomedes, panel of an Attic sarcophagus, ca. 240 AD,
Louvre
Lycomedes
–
"Achilles at the Court of Lycomedes" by
Pompeo Batoni, 1745, oil on canvas, Uffizi, Florence
14.
Skyros
–
Skyros is an island in Greece, the southernmost of the Sporades, an archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the island was known as The Island of the Magnetes where the Magnetes used to live and later Pelasgia and Dolopia and later Skyros. At 209 square kilometres it is the largest island of the Sporades and it is part of the regional unit of Euboea. The Hellenic Air Force has a base in Skyros, because of the islands strategic location in the middle of the Aegean. The municipality Skyros is part of the unit of Euboea. Apart from the island Skyros it consists of the inhabited island of Skyropoula. The total area of the municipality is 223.10 square kilometres, the north of the island is covered by a forest, while the south, dominated by the highest mountain, called Kochila, is bare and rocky. The islands capital is also called Skyros, the main port, on the west coast, is Linaria. The island has a castle that dates from the Venetian occupation, a Byzantine monastery, there are many beaches on the coast. The island has its own breed of Skyrian ponies, according to Greek mythology, Theseus died on Skyros when he was thrown from a cliff. Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, was from Skyros, as told in the play by Sophocles, Philoctetes, in c.475 BC, according to Thucydides, Cimon defeated the Dolopians and conquered the entire island. From that date, it was colonized by Athenian settlers and became a part of the Athenian Empire and it was on the strategic trade route from Athens to the Black Sea. Cimon claimed to have found the remains of Theseus, and returned them to Athens, in 340 BC the Macedonians took over the island and dominated it until 192 BC, when the king Philip and the Roman Republican forces restored it to Athens. After the Fourth Crusade, the became part of the domain of Geremia Ghisi. Skyros Shipping Company operates the service to Skyros. During holiday season the ferry runs daily from Kymi to Linaria on Skyros. During the winter months the service operates daily, the Official website of the Greek National Tourism Organisation
Skyros
–
Chora
Skyros
–
Aerial view
Skyros
–
Street of Skyros
Skyros
–
Small street of Skyros
15.
Deidamia (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, Deidamia is the daughter of King Lycomedes of Scyros. Deidamia was one of King Lycomedess seven daughters with whom Achilles was concealed, some versions of this story state that Achilles was hidden in Lycomedess court as one of the kings daughters, some say as a lady-in-waiting under the name Pyrrha. Despite the fact that Achilles and Deidamea could have been as young as eight years old, after Odysseus arrived at Lycomedess palace and exposed Achilles as a young man, Achilles decided to join the Trojan War, leaving behind a pregnant, heart-broken Deidamia. Their son, Neoptolemus, later joined his father in the Trojan War but was killed by Orestes. It is also mentioned that Neoptolemus gave Deidamia in marriage to his ally Helenus, ptolemy Hephaestion mentions that Achilles and Deidamia had another son, Oneiros, who was unwittingly killed by Orestes. Media related to Deidamia at Wikimedia Commons
Deidamia (mythology)
–
Schale Deidamia KGM 17-39
16.
Neoptolemus
–
Achilles mother Thetis foretold many years before Achilles birth that there would be a great war. She saw that her son was to die if he fought in the war. She sought a place for him to avoid fighting in the Trojan War, disguising him as a woman in the court of Lycomedes, during that time, he had an affair with the princess, Deidamea, who then gave birth to Neoptolemos. Neoptolemos was originally called Pyrrhos, because his father had taken Pyrrha, the Greeks captured the Trojan seer, Helenos, and forced him to tell them under what conditions could they take Troy. Helenos revealed to them that they could defeat Troy if they could acquire the poisonous arrows of Heracles, steal the Palladium, in response to the prophecy, the Greeks took steps to retrieve the arrows of Heracles and bring Neoptolemos to Troy. Odysseus was sent to retrieve Neoptolemos, then a mere teenager, the two then went to Lemnos to retrieve Philoctetes. Years earlier, on the way to Troy, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake on Chryse Island, agamemnon had advised that he be left behind because the wound was festering and smelled bad. This retrieval is the plot of Philoctetes, a play by Sophocles, euripides, in his play Hekabe, has a moving scene which shows Neoptolemos as a compassionate young man who kills Polyxena, Hekabes daughter with ambivalent feelings and in the least painful way. Neoptolemos was held by some to be brutal and he killed six men on the field of battle. During and after the war, he killed Priam, Eurypylos, Polyxena, Polites and Astyanax among others, captured Helenos, the ghost of Achilles appeared to the survivors of the war, demanding Polyxena, the Trojan princess, be sacrificed before anybody could leave. With Andromache, Helenos and Phoenix, Neoptolemos sailed to the Epirot Islands, with the enslaved Andromache, Neoptolemos was the father of Molossos and through him, according to the myth, an ancestor of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great. According to Hyginus, his son with Andromache was Amphialos, CXXIII, NEOPTOLEMUS Neoptolemus, son of Achilles and Deidamia, begat Amphialus by captive Andromache, daughter of Ēëtion. But after he heard that Hermione his betrothed had been given to Orestes in marriage, he went to Lacedaemon, Menelaus did not wish to go back on his word, and took Hermione from Orestes and gave her to Neoptolemus. Orestes, thus insulted, slew Neoptolemus as he was sacrificing to Delphi, the bones of Neoptolemus were scattered through the land of Ambracia, which is in the district of Epirus. Although Neoptolemus is often depicted thus, the play Philoctetes by Sophocles shows him being a kinder man. Two accounts deal with Neoptolemos death and he was either killed after he attempted to take Hermione from Orestes as her father Menelaus promised, or after he denounced Apollo, the murderer of his father. In the first case, he was killed by Orestes, in the second, revenge was taken by the Delphic priests of Apollo. After his death his kingdom was portioned out and Helenos took part of it, helenus, a son of Priam, was king over these Greek cities of Epirus, having succeeded to the throne and bed of Pyrrhus
Neoptolemus
–
Neoptolemus killing Priam.
Neoptolemus
–
Neoptolemus and Andromache, by
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.
17.
Achaeans (Homer)
–
The Achaeans constitute one of the collective names for the Greeks in Homers Iliad and Odyssey. In the historical period, the Achaeans were the inhabitants of the region of Achaea, the city-states of this region later formed a confederation known as the Achaean League, which was influential during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. The Homeric long-haired Achaeans would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from circa 1600 BC until 1100 BC, later, by the Archaic and Classical periods, the term Achaeans referred to inhabitants of the much smaller region of Achaea. Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of the earlier, according to Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century CE, the term Achaean was originally given to those Greeks inhabiting the Argolis and Laconia. Pausanias and Herodotus both recount the legend that the Achaeans were forced from their homelands by the Dorians, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese and they then moved into the region later called Achaea. A scholarly consensus has not yet been reached on the origin of the historic Achaeans relative to the Homeric Achaeans and is hotly debated. Karl Beloch suggested there was no Dorian invasion, but rather that the Peloponnesian Dorians were the Achaeans, eduard Meyer, disagreeing with Beloch, instead put forth the suggestion that the real-life Achaeans were mainland pre-Dorian Greeks. His conclusion is based on his research on the similarity between the languages of the Achaeans and pre-historic Arcadians and his conclusions at the time were challenged by other Hittitologists, as well as by Ferdinand Sommer, who published his Die Ahhijava-Urkunden in 1932. Some Hittite texts mention a nation lying to the west called Ahhiyawa, in the earliest reference to this land, a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta, it is called Ahhiya. It also refers to an earlier Wilusa episode involving hostility on the part of Ahhiyawa, Ahhiya has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy. It has been proposed that Ekwesh of the Egyptian records may relate to Achaea, whereas Denyen, Tanaju is also listed in an inscription at the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III. The latter ruled Egypt in circa 1382–1344 BC, moreover, a list of the cities and regions of the Tanaju is also mentioned in this inscription, among the cities listed are Mycenae, Nauplion, Kythera, Messenia and the Thebaid. During the 5th year of Pharaoh Merneptah, a confederation of Libyan, included amongst the ethnic names of the repulsed invaders is the Ekwesh or Eqwesh, whom some have seen as Achaeans, although Egyptian texts specifically mention these Ekwesh to be circumcised. Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in Book IV of the Odyssey to Telemachus when he recounts his own home from the Trojan War. Later Greek myths also say Helen had spent the time of the Trojan War in Egypt, and not at Troy, cadmus from Phoenicia, Danaus from Egypt, and Pelops from Anatolia each gained a foothold in mainland Greece and were assimilated and Hellenized. Sons of Hellen and the nymph Orseis were Dorus, Xuthos, sons of Xuthos and Kreousa, daughter of Erechthea, were Ion and Achaeus. According to Hyginus,22 Achaeans killed 362 Trojans during their ten years at Troy, according to Margalit Finkelberg, the name Ἀχαιοί/Ἀχαιϝοί is derived from Hittite Aḫḫiyawā. However, Robert S. P. Beekes doubted the validity of this derivation, the etymology of Danaoi is uncertain, according to Beekes the name is certainly Pre-Greek
Achaeans (Homer)
–
Achilles tending the wounded
Patroclus (
Attic red-figure kylix, c. 500 BC)
18.
Amazons
–
In Greek mythology, the Amazons were a tribe of women warriors. The Scythian women may have inspired the myth, apollonius Rhodius, at Argonautica, mention that Amazons were the daughters of Ares and Harmonia. They were brutal and aggressive, and their concern in life was war. Later, he says, they established Mitylene a little way beyond the Caïcus, Aeschylus, at Prometheus Bound, places the original home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis and they later moved to Themiscyra on the Thermodon. Homer tells that the Amazons were sought and found somewhere near Lycia, Diodorus mention that the Amazons traveled from the Libya under Queen Myrina. Amazon warriors were often depicted in battle with Greek warriors in amazonomachies in classical art, the Amazons have become associated with many historical people throughout the Roman Empire period and Late Antiquity. In Roman historiography, there are accounts of Amazon raids in Anatolia. From the early period, their name has become a term for female warriors in general. Greeks also used epithets for them. Herodotus used the Androktones and Androleteirai, in Iliad they also called Antianeirai and Aeschylus in his work, Prometheus Bound, the origin of the word is uncertain. Πέρσαι», where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root *kar- make, alternatively, a Greek derivation from *ṇ-mṇ-gw-jon-es manless, without husbands has been proposed, an explanation deemed unlikely by Hjalmar Frisk. 19th century scholarship also connected the term to the ethnonym Amazigh, a further explanation proposes Iranian *ama-janah virility-killing as source. The Hittite researcher Friedrich Cornelius assumes that there had been the land Azzi with the capital Chajasa in the area of the Thermodon-Iris Delta on the coast of the Black Sea and he brings its residents in direct relation to the Amazons, namely based on its name and its customs. The location of land as well as his conclusions are controversial. There is no indication of such a practice in ancient works of art, adrienne Mayor suggests the origin of this myth was due to the words etymology. Herodotus and Strabo placed them on the banks of the Thermodon, later, he says, they established Mitylene a little way beyond the Caïcus. Aeschylus, at Prometheus Bound, places the home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis. According to Pseudo-Plutarch, the Amazons lived in and about the Tanais river, formerly called the Amazonian or Amazon river, the Amazons later moved to Themiscyra on the River Thermodon
Amazons
–
Wounded Amazon of the Capitol, Rome.
Amazons
–
Amazon preparing for a battle (Queen Antiop or Armed Venus), by
Pierre-Eugène-Emile Hébert 1860 (
National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.).
Amazons
–
Amazon wearing trousers and carrying a shield with an attached patterned cloth and a quiver.
Ancient Greek Attic white-ground
alabastron, c. 470 BCE,
British Museum, London.
Amazons
–
Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, visits
Alexander (1696)
19.
Dionysus
–
Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c, 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks, traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms, some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, in some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner, in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, the god that comes and his festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a male, bearded and robed. He holds a staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth, in its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of female followers and bearded satyrs with erect penises, some are armed with the thyrsus. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers and this procession is presumed to be the cult model for the followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. He is also known as Bacchus, the adopted by the Romans. His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Eleutherios, his wine, music and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care and those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. The cult of Dionysus is also a cult of the souls, his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings and he is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god. Some scholars believe that Dionysus is a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity, Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a woman, Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father was Zeus. Zeus wife, Hera, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant, appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semeles mind, curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood
Dionysus
–
2nd-century Roman statue of Dionysus, after a
Hellenistic model (ex-coll.
Cardinal Richelieu,
Louvre)
Dionysus
–
Marble sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysos and the Seasons. Roman ca. AD 260–270
Dionysus
–
Birth of Dionysus, on a small sarcophagus that may have been made for a child (
Walters Art Museum)
Dionysus
–
Hermes and the Infant Dionysus by
Praxiteles, (
Archaeological Museum of Olympia).
20.
Nicolas Poussin
–
Nicolas Poussin was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. His work is characterized by clarity, logic, and order, until the 20th century he remained a major inspiration for such classically oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne. He worked in Rome for a circle of leading collectors from there and elsewhere, most of his works are history paintings of religious or mythological subjects that very often have a large landscape element. Early sketches attracted the notice of Quentin Varin, a painter, whose pupil Poussin became. There he entered the studios of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle and then of Georges Lallemand and he found French art in a stage of transition, the old apprenticeship system was disturbed, and the academic training destined to supplant it was not yet established by Simon Vouet. In Paris, Poussin was impressed by Italian art he viewed in the royal collection and he attempted to travel to Rome, but after reaching Florence he was forced, perhaps by ill health, to return to Paris. In 1622 he met Giambattista Marino, the poet to Marie de Medici. Marino employed him on illustrations for an edition of Ovids Metamorphoses. These Marino drawings preserved at Windsor Castle are among the few identifiable works of Poussin executed before his arrival in Rome. Marino took him into his household, and in 1624 enabled Poussin to rejoin him at Rome, Poussin was thirty when he arrived in Rome in 1624. At first he lodged with Simon Vouet, through Marino, he had been introduced to Marcello Sacchetti who in turn introduced him to another of his early patrons, Cardinal Francesco Barberini. However, their return from Spain in 1626 stabilized Poussin’s position, with renewed patronage by the Barberini and their circle. He fell ill at this time and was taken into the house of his compatriot Jacques Dughet, where he was nursed by Dughet’s daughter, Anna Maria and his two brothers-in-law were artists and Gaspard Dughet later took Poussin’s surname. During the late 1620s and 1630s, he experimented and formulated his own style and he studied the Antique as well as works such as Titian’s Bacchanals at the Casino Ludovisi and the paintings of Domenichino and Guido Reni. Peter’s, and an ingenious architectural imagination was emerging in works by Borromini, at the time the papacy was Rome’s foremost patron of the arts. Poussin’s Martyrdom of St. Erasmus for St and his subsequent career depended on private patronage. Louis XIII conferred on him the title of First Painter in Ordinary, in 1642, disgusted by the intrigues of Simon Vouet, Fouquières and the architect Jacques Lemercier, Poussin withdrew to Rome. There, in 1648, he finished for de Chantelou the second series of the Seven Sacraments and this painting shows the philosopher discarding his last worldly possession, his cup, after watching a man drink water by cupping his hands
Nicolas Poussin
–
Self portrait by Nicolas Poussin, 1650
Nicolas Poussin
–
Pastorale landscape, 1650
Nicolas Poussin
–
Poussin's Death of Germanicus, 1628
Nicolas Poussin
–
Poussin's
Tancred and
Erminia (early 1630s, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 146.5 cm,
Hermitage Museum) shows an evolution from Poussin's early emulation of
Caravaggio to a return to classicism.
21.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
–
For the VMFA designation for a Marine Fighter Attack Squadron, see List of active USMC aircraft squadrons. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, in the United States and it is one of the first museums in the American South to be operated by state funds. It is also one of the largest art museums in North America, VMFA ranks as one of the top ten comprehensive art museums in the United States. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, together with the adjacent Virginia Historical Society, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has its origins in a 1919 donation of 50 paintings to the Commonwealth of Virginia by Judge and prominent Virginian John Barton Payne. Payne, in collaboration with Virginia Governor John Garland Pollard and the Federal Works Projects Administration, eventually, a site was chosen on Richmonds Boulevard. The site was toward the corner of a contiguous six-block tract of land which was then being used as an American Civil War veterans home, with services for their wives. Two wings were originally planned, yet only the portion was actually built. The museum opened on January 16,1936, the Museum also received in 1947 the T. Catesby Jones Collection of Modern Art. Further donations in the 1950s came from Adolph D. Williams and Wilkins C. Williams and from Arthur and Margaret Glasgow, in particular, Leslie Cheek Jr. whose father built Cheekwood, became director of the museum in 1948. It was also during his time as director that the museums first addition was built in 1954 by Merrill C, the wing, funded in part by Paul Mellon, included a theater, with the intent of combining the performing arts and visual arts in a single facility. The Leslie Cheek Theater, the 500-seat proscenium theater constructed in 1955 within VMFA, Cheek envisioned a central role for a theater arts division in the museum. The theater brought the arts of drama, acting, design, music, from its beginnings through the 1960s, the Virginia Museum Theater was the home for a VMFA sponsored volunteer or community theater company, under the direction of Robert Telford. VMT also served annual programs for patrons of the Virginia Music Society, Virginia Dance Society, marshall, Ken Letner, James Kirkland, Rachael Lindhart, and dramaturg M. Elizabeth Osborn. Fowler retained a focus on classics and musicals, but added an emphasis on new plays and his debut production, Marat/Sade, brought controversy into the heart of the museum. VMT, known now as VMT Rep, drew national focus when in 1973 Fowlers staging of Macbeth, marshall, led Clive Barnes of The New York Times to hail it as the Fowler Macbeth. Probably the goriest Shakespearean production I have seen since Peter Brooks Titus Andronicus, over eight years, VMTs subscription audience grew from 4,300 to 10,000 patrons. Fowler resigned in 1977 in a dispute with VMFA administration over the content in VMTs premiere of Romulus Linneys Childe Byron, successive artistic directors Tom Markus and Terry Burglar renamed the company and its playhouse TheatreVirginia. As with all American professional not-for-profit performing arts organizations, TheatreVirginia ran mounting deficits for years, in 2002, the burden of operating in a state-supported museum forced TheatreVirginia to close its doors
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
–
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
–
The
Peter the Great Egg by the firm of
Fabergé, donated to the museum in 1947.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
–
Leslie Cheek, Jr. Director of VMFA 1948–1968
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
–
Marat/Sade 1969, on the Leslie Cheek stage, directed by Keith Fowler and designed by Sandro LaFerla
22.
Euripides
–
Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. He is one of the few plays have survived, with the others being Aeschylus, Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but according to the Suda it was 92 at most, of these,18 or 19 have survived more or less complete and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, yet he also became the most tragic of poets, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was also unique among the writers of ancient Athens for the sympathy he demonstrated towards all victims of society and his contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism, both of them being frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Whereas Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as an influence, Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age. Recent scholarship casts doubt on ancient biographies of Euripides, for example, it is possible that he never visited Macedonia at all, or, if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists. Upon the receipt of a saying that his son was fated to win crowns of victory. In fact the boy was destined for a career on the stage and he served for a short time as both dancer and torch-bearer at the rites of Apollo Zosterius. His education was not confined to athletics, he studied painting and philosophy under the masters Prodicus. He had two marriages and both his wives—Melite and Choerine —were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis, there he built an impressive library and pursued daily communion with the sea and sky. Eventually he retired to the court of King Archelaus in Macedonia. However, as mentioned in the introduction, biographical details such as these should be regarded with scepticism and this biography is divided into three sections corresponding to the three kinds of sources. The apocryphal account that he composed his works in a cave on Salamis island was a late tradition, much of his life and his whole career coincided with the struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece but he didnt live to see the final defeat of his city. In an account by Plutarch, the failure of the Sicilian expedition led Athenians to trade renditions of Euripides lyrics to their enemies in return for food. Tragic poets were often mocked by comic poets during the dramatic festivals Dionysia and Lenaia, Aristophanes scripted him as a character in at least three plays, The Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae and The Frogs. Yet Aristophanes borrowed rather than just satirized some of the methods, he was once ridiculed by a colleague, Cratinus, as a hair-splitting master of niceties
Euripides
–
Bust of Euripides: Roman marble copy of a 4th-century BC Greek original (
Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome)
Euripides
–
A statue of Euripides,
Louvre,
Paris.
23.
Renaissance
–
The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
Renaissance
–
David, by
Michelangelo (
Accademia di Belle Arti,
Florence) is a masterpiece of Renaissance and world art.
Renaissance
–
Renaissance
Renaissance
–
Leonardo da Vinci 's
Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) shows clearly the effect writers of Antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers. Based on the specifications in
Vitruvius '
De architectura (1st century BC), Leonardo tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man.
Renaissance
–
Portrait of a young woman (c. 1480-85) (
Simonetta Vespucci) by
Sandro Botticelli
24.
Tirso de Molina
–
Tirso de Molina was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and Roman Catholic monk. He is primarily known for writing The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest and his work is also of particular significance due to the abundance of female protagonists, as well as the exploration of sexual issues. He was born Gabriel Téllez in Madrid and he studied at Alcalá de Henares, joined the mendicant Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy on 4 November 1600, and entered the Monastery of San Antolín at Guadalajara, Spain on 21 January 1601. He was ordained a priest by 1610 and his first publication, the incomplete Cigarrales de Toledo, is a miscellany, containing short tales, novellas, verses and three plays. One of the novellas, Los tres maridos burlados, probably derived from Francesco Cieco da Ferraras Mambriano, and the play entitled El vergonzoso en palacio reveal his wit and ingenuity. The preface to the Cigarrales de Toledo states that Tirso de Molina had already written three hundred plays, and at this period of his career he was only to Lope de Vega in popularity. He showed hostility to culteranismo in the Cigarrales de Toledo, and made enemies by his attacks on the new school in such pieces as Amar por arte mayor. In 1626 it was advisable to transfer him to Salamanca. Though one of his plays, La huerta de San Juan, is dated 1626, there is no proof that it was begun after his departure from Madrid, and he seems to have written nothing for eight years. He had not lost his interest in the theatre, and published twelve representative pieces as the first part of his dramatic works and this was a formal protest against the weakness of those who had been persuaded to drive him out. Twelve plays constitute the part of his dramatic works which was published in 1634, supposedly edited by the writers nephew, Francisco Lucas de Ávila. A sixth volume of dramatic pieces, consisting of light comedies, was announced and he was absorbed by other duties. As official chronicler of his order, he compiled the elaborate Historia de la Merced, on 29 September 1645 Tirso de Molina became superior of the monastery at Soria, and died there. Though manifestly attracted by exceptional cases, by kind of moral aberration, by the infamous. The renaissance of his fame, however, dates from 1839–1842 and he is now accepted as among the greatest dramatists of Spain
Tirso de Molina
–
Tirso de Molina.
Tirso de Molina
–
Portrait of Tirso de Molina.
Tirso de Molina
–
Monument to Tirso de Molina in
Madrid (R. Vela, 1943).
25.
Jan de Bray
–
Jan de Bray, was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Jan de Bray was born in Haarlem, according to Houbraken he was the most famous pupil of his father, the architect and poet Salomon de Bray. Houbraken called Jan the pearl in Haarlems crown, Houbraken also mentioned some black and red chalk drawings by him that he saw at the Amsterdam home of Isaak del Court. He spent most of his working in Haarlem, where he was for many years dean of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. His brother Dirck de Bray was a painter who later became a monk in the monastery at Gaesdonck near Goch. His brother Joseph was also a painter and his mother was Anna Westerbaen, the sister of the painter Jan Westerbaen and the poet Jacob Westerbaen. De Bray survived most of his family during an outbreak of the plague in Haarlem in 1664 and he lost his father and two siblings within a month of each other. In 1689 he was declared bankrupt as a Haarlem citizen and moved to Amsterdam, Jan de Bray was influenced by his father, Bartholomeus van der Helst, and Frans Hals. De Brays works are portraits, often of groups. Among his finest works are two versions of the Banquet of Cleopatra, using his own family, including himself, as models, the second version has great pathos, as most of those depicted had died in the plague of 1663-4. Jan de Bray on Artnet Works and literature on PubHist Murray, Jan De Bray and the Classical Tradition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington - 16pp pdf exhibition brochure Entry for Jan de Bray in the RKD, the Netherlands Institute for Art History
Jan de Bray
–
De Bray and his wife as Ulysses and Penelope, 1668
Jan de Bray
–
The Painter's Guild in 1675. Jan de Bray's self-portrait is the second from the left, and his brother
Dirck de Bray is standing upper right.
Jan de Bray
–
"David and the Ark of the Covenant"
Jan de Bray
–
In his family portrait depicting the banquet of Antony and
Cleopatra at the moment when Cleopatra puts her earring in the wine, Jan is depicted standing on the left. In the earlier version, the sons look up to the father, and in this version, the brothers (all since deceased except for Dirck) look at Jan.
26.
National Museum, Warsaw
–
The National Museum in Warsaw, popularly abbreviated as MNW, is a national museum in Warsaw, one of the largest museums in Poland and the largest in the capital. The museum is home to numismatic collections, a gallery of applied arts. The National Museum in Warsaw was established on 20 May 1862, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Warsaw, the collection, on Jerusalem Avenue, is housed in a building designed by Tadeusz Tolwiński, developed between 1927 and 1938. In 1932 an exhibition of decorative art opened in the two earlier erected wings of the building, the new building was inaugurated on 18 June 1938. The purpose-built modernistic edifice, was situated on the edge of Na Książęcem Park established between 1776–79 for Prince Kazimierz Poniatowski, from 1935 the museum director was Stanisław Lorentz, who directed an effort to save the most valuable works of art during World War II. The Gestapo headquarters presented Rembrandts portrait of Maerten Soolmans as a gift to Hans Frank in occupied Kraków, after the war the Polish Government, under the supervision of Professor Lorentz, retrieved many of the works seized by the Germans. More than 5,000 artifacts are still missing, in 2008 the Polish Archaeological Mission Tyritake of National Museum in Warsaw commenced works at Tyritake, Crimea. It is headed by Alfred Twardecki curator of the Ancient Art Gallery, in 2010 the National Museum, as one of the first state institutions in the world, held an exhibition entirely consecrated to homoerotic art - Ars Homo Erotica. Since the 2011–12 renovation, the museum is considered as one of the most modern in Europe with a computer-led LED lighting allowing to enhance unique qualities of every painting. In 2012 the permanent galleries underwent revolutionary changes, the curators of the museum re-arranged it and supplemented it with new works from the museums warehouses. Paintings were not hung chronologically, but thematically, genre painting, still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, biblical, mythological, works by Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German and Polish artists were hung together, making it easy to observe and compare similarities and differences. The Gallery of Medieval Art mainly presents objects from the late Middle Ages, originating from different regions of todays Poland and these works were originally designed almost exclusively for churches. The exhibition was designed to allow the audience to understand the role of art in the life of the Middle Ages. The new techniques implemented in the gallery allow the presentation of large polyptychs, such as the famous Grudziądz Polyptych. The new arrangement of the exhibition was designed by WWAA, the Gallery of Old Masters on the second floor was conceived from the former Gallery of Decorative Art, Gallery of Old European Painting and the Gallery of Old Polish and European Portrait in 2016. It combines species of pictorial art - painting, sculpture, drawings and these social spaces have provided the key to the division of the gallery,1. Church, chapel and domestic altar,3, in the redesigned gallery, the works are presented not according to national schools, but as a confrontation of artistic circles of the South and North. The new system reflects the hierarchy of the created by Renaissance art theory
National Museum, Warsaw
–
National Museum, Warsaw
National Museum, Warsaw
National Museum, Warsaw
–
Main facade of the National Museum, 1938
National Museum, Warsaw
–
The Raising of Lazarus by
Carel Fabritius is displayed in the Gallery of Old European Painting
27.
Metastasio
–
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti. Metastasio was born in Rome, where his father, Felice Trapassi, Felice married a Bolognese woman, Francesca Galasti, and became a grocer in the Via dei Cappellari. The couple had two sons and two daughters, Pietro was the younger son, Pietro, while still a child, is said to have attracted crowds by reciting impromptu verses on a given subject. Gravina was attracted by the poetic talent and personal charm. Felice Trapassi was glad to give his son the chance of an education and introduction into society. Gravina hellenized the boys name Trapassi into Metastasio, and intended his son to be a jurist like himself. He therefore made the boy learn Latin and law, at the same time he cultivated his literary gifts, and displayed the youthful prodigy both at his own house and in the Roman coteries. Metastasio soon found himself competing with the most celebrated improvvisatori of his time in Italy, however, his days full of study and evenings devoted to improvising poetry took a toll on Pietros health. Gravina, making a trip to Calabria, exhibited Metastasio in the literary circles of Naples. In country air and the quiet of the southern seashore Metastasios health revived, Gravina decided that he should never improvise again, but should be reserved for nobler efforts, when, having completed his education, he might enter into competition with the greatest poets. Metastasio responded to his patrons wishes, at the age of twelve he translated the Iliad into octave stanzas, and two years later he composed a Senecan tragedy on a subject from Gian Giorgio Trissinos Italia liberata – Gravinas favourite epic. It was called Giustino, and was printed in 1713, forty-two years later, Caroprese died in 1714, leaving Gravina his heir, and in 1718 Gravina also died. Metastasio inherited a fortune of 15,000 scudi, at a meeting of the Arcadian Academy, he recited an elegy to his patron, and then settled down to enjoy his wealth. During the last four years he had worn the costume of abbé and his romantic history, personal beauty, charming manners and distinguished talents made him fashionable. Within two years he had spent his money and increased his reputation and he decided to apply himself seriously to the work of his profession. In Naples, he entered the office of an eminent lawyer named Castagnola, in 1722, the birthday of the empress had to be celebrated with more than ordinary honours, and the viceroy asked Metastasio to compose a serenata for the occasion. Metastasio accepted, but kept his authorship secret and he wrote Gli orti esperidi, which was set to music by Nicola Porpora, and sung by Porporas pupil, the castrato Farinelli, making a spectacular début, it won the most enthusiastic applause. The Roman prima donna, Marianna Bulgarelli, who played Venus in this opera, Bulgarelli persuaded the poet to give up the law, and promised to secure for him fame and independence if he would devote his talents to the musical drama
Metastasio
–
Pietro Metastasio
Metastasio
–
Statue of Metastasio in Rome, Piazza della
Chiesa Nuova
28.
Giulio Strozzi
–
Giulio Strozzi was a Venitian poet and libretto writer. His libretti were put to music by composers like Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Francesco Manelli and he sometimes used the pseudonym Luigi Zorzisto. Giuliio Strozzi was a bastard, and later legitimized, son of Roberto Strozzi, born in Venice in 1583, he first studied there before going to the University of Pisa to study law. He lived and worked in Rome, Padua and Urbino before returning to Venice in the 1620s and he was the adoptive father of composer Barbara Strozzi. He remained there until his death on 31 March 1652 and he wrote poetry and plays, but is best remembered as one of the first writers of libretti, the texts used for all kinds of musical plays but most specifically opera. His earliest known work was in 1609, an oration for the burial of Ferdinando I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1621, he wrote his only epic poem, Venetia edificata. It was expanded and reprinted in 1624, celebrating the glory of the Republic of Venice, it was at the same time written in support of Galileo Galilei and his controversial scientific theories. He also wrote a translation of the Spanish Lazarillo de Tormes which remained unpublished, from 1627 on, he mostly dedicated himself to writing opera libretti, and he was probably the most important opera writer in Venice in the 1630s and 1640s. He wrote La finta pazza Licori for Claudio Monteverdi in 1627, the two had first met in 1621. The opera was never performed and it is unknown how much of the music for it had written before the project was abandoned. Both the music and the libretto are lost, in the 1630s and 1640s, Strozzi was one of the driving forces behind the successful growth of opera in Venice. He wrote the libretto for the opening of the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in 1639, in 1630 Strozzi wrote Proserpina Rapita. His last libretto, Veremonda, was written for Francesco Cavalli in 1652 and he was a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti in Venice. He was the founder of some cultural academies, gatherings of like-minded intellectuals, these included the Ordinati during his stay in Rome, in 1637 he founded the Accademia degli Unisoni, a gathering of musicians where his adopted daughter Barbara sang
Giulio Strozzi
–
Coat of arms of the Strozzi family.
Giulio Strozzi
–
Niccolò Strozzi (portrait bust by
Mino da Fiesole, 1454)
Giulio Strozzi
–
Count Peter Strozzi (1626-1664), Austrian general, killed by the
Otomans during the
Siege of Novi Zrin (1664)
29.
Venice
–
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is situated across a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and these are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, the lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a World Heritage Site. In 2014,264,579 people resided in Comune di Venezia, together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, with a total population of 2.6 million. PATREVE is a metropolitan area without any degree of autonomy. The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC, the city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice. Venice has been known as the La Dominante, Serenissima, Queen of the Adriatic, City of Water, City of Masks, City of Bridges, The Floating City, and City of Canals. The City State of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center which gradually emerged from the 9th century to its peak in the 14th century and this made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. It is also known for its several important artistic movements, especially the Renaissance period, Venice has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and it is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi. Venice has been ranked the most beautiful city in the world as of 2016, the name Venetia, however, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti, and called by the Greeks Eneti. The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti, Baltic Veneti, and the Slavic Wends. Linguists suggest that the name is based on an Indo-European root *wen, so that *wenetoi would mean beloved, lovable, a connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning the color sea-blue, is also possible. The alternative obsolete form is Vinegia, some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen on the islands in the original marshy lagoons. They were referred to as incolae lacunae, the traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo on the islet of Rialto — said to have taken place at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421. Beginning as early as AD166 to 168, the Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the center in the area. The Roman defences were again overthrown in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and, some 50 years later, New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. The tribuni maiores, the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the Lagoon, the traditional first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio Anafesto, was actually Exarch Paul, and his successor, Marcello Tegalliano, was Pauls magister militum. In 726 the soldiers and citizens of the Exarchate rose in a rebellion over the controversy at the urging of Pope Gregory II
Venice
–
A collage of Venice: at the top left is the
Piazza San Marco, followed by a view of the city, then the
Grand Canal, and (smaller) the interior of
La Fenice and, finally, the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
Venice
–
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Venice
–
Photography of Venice at dusk
Venice
–
The Grand Canal seen from the bridge at
Ponte di Rialto
30.
Anna Renzi
–
Anna Renzi was an Italian soprano renowned for her acting ability as well as her voice, who has been described as the first diva in the history of opera. In 1644 she returned to the Novissimo, creating the role of La Deidamia by Scipione Herrico. In 1645 she sang in Ercole in Lidia by Maiolino Bisaccioni and Giovanni Rovetta at the theatre, probably the roles of Giunone. In the same year a contract between Renzi and the Roman violinist Roberto Sabbatini was drawn up, but there is no evidence that the nuptials ever took place. After the closing of the Novissimo, Renzi, who was by now the most celebrated and highest-paid singer of the age, turned to the Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In 1650 she sang in La Deidamia in Florence, and in 1652 she may have created the role of Cleopatra in Il Cesare amante by Dario Varotari the Younger and Antonio Cesti at the Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In 1653 she seems to have sung in La Torilda and Il Cesare amante in Genoa, in 1655 she returned to Venice, apparently creating the title role in LEupatra by Giovanni Faustini and Pietro Andrea Ziani at the Teatro Sant Apollinare. In 1657 Renzi bade farewell to the stage as Damira in Le fortune di Rodope e Damira by Aurelio Aureli, the last known reference to her stems from 1660. Our Signora Anna is endowed with such lifelike expression that her responses and speeches seem not memorized, in sum, she transforms herself completely into the person she represents, and seems now a Thalia full of comic gaiety, now a Melpomene rich in tragic majesty. Belgrano, Elisabeth, ″Lasciatemi Morire″ o farò ″La Finta Pazza″, embodying vocal NOTHINGNESS on stage in Italian and French 17th century operatic LAMENTS and MAD SCENES, ArtMonitor, diss. Private Lives of Public Women, Prima Donnas in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Venice, music & Letters, Vol.76, No. Glixon, Beth L. & Glixon, Jonathan E. Inventing the Business of Opera, The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice, Oxford University Press, murata, Margaret, Why the First Opera Given in Paris Wasnt Roman. Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol.7, No, osthoff, Wolfgang, Neue Beobachtungen zu Quellen und Geschichte von Monteverdis Incoronazione di Poppea. Rosand, Ellen, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, The Creation of a Genre, University of California Press, Berkeley 1991. La prima diva della lirica italiana, Anna Renzi, Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, ii, 430–52 Schneider, Magnus Tessing, Seeing the Empress Again, cambridge Opera Journal, Vol.24, No. Whenham, John, Perspectives on the Chronology of the First Decade of Public Opera at Venice
Anna Renzi
–
Anna Renzi
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_-_MR_2113_-_Philibert_Vigier_-_(1636-1719)_-_All%C3%A9e_Royale_-_Versailles_-_P1620078.jpg)
Media related to Achilles at Skyros at Wikimedia Commons
