1.
National Art Museum of Catalonia
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The Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya, abbreviated as MNAC, is the national museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The Museum is housed in the Palau Nacional, a huge, the Palau Nacional, which has housed the Museu dArt de Catalunya since 1934, was declared a national museum in 1990 under the Museums Law passed by the Catalan Government. The Oval Hall was reopened in 1992 on the occasion of the Olympic Games, the Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya was officially inaugurated on 16 December 2004. It is one of the largest museums in Spain, the Palau Nacional, which has housed the Museu dArt de Catalunya since 1934, was declared a national museum in 1990 under the Museums Law passed by the Catalan Government. The Oval Hall was reopened in 1992 on the occasion of the Olympic Games, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya was officially inaugurated on 16 December 2004. Since 2004, the Palau Nacional has once more housed several magnificent art collections, mostly by Catalan art and this heritage is completed by the Gabinet Numismàtic de Catalunya, the Gabinet de Dibuixos i Gravats and the Library. It is one of the most important and outstanding collections in the Museum, indeed, the Museu Nacional Romanesque Collection is unmatched by that of any other museum in the world. Years later, the news emerged that a group of foreign financiers and this style is illustrated in such excellent works as the mural paintings from Sant Quirze de Pedret, Santa Maria dÀneu and Sant Pere del Burgal. The Romanesque section ends with the paintings from San Pedro de Arlanza, the latter features one of the most magnificent pictorial series in this new style, called 1200 art, which swept across Europe in the 13th century. The piece has been conserved in the museum since it was damaged by fire in 1936. Finally, the Romanesque section also features an important collection of enamels, mostly produced in Limoges and these include the renowned Mural paintings of the Conquest of Majorca, which preside over the first Gothic room. This same room also contains works on profane themes or from secular sites. Sculpture during this period from the century, was also influenced by Italian models. The collection includes works that may be attributed to some of the most outstanding sculptors of the time, such as Jaume Cascalls, Catalan sculpture in the late-14th century and the first half of the 15th is represented by two misericords from Barcelona Cathedral carved stalls by Pere Sanglada. Valencia is represented in the Museu Nacional by such outstanding artists as Gonçal Peris, the Gothic collection also features examples of painting from Aragon, another region that enjoyed considerable influence at this time. In this age, the Ecce Homo, Luis de Morales, returning to Catalonia, in his image of St Cajetan, the sculptor Andreu Sala reveals himself to be a worthy follower of the Italian genius Bernini. Two later donations made important contributions to more general vision, the Cambó Bequest. The Cambó Bequest forms a collection of paintings embraces European painting history from the 14th to the early 20th century
2.
National Library of Catalonia
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The National Library of Catalonia is a Catalan national library located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It occupies 8,820 m² and has three million items. The library was founded in 1907 as the library of the Institut dEstudis Catalans and it was opened to the public in 1914, in the time of the Commonwealth of Catalonia, and was housed in the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya. In 1914 the Commonwealth of Catalonia converted the library of the IEC into a public cultural service, in its early days, the library was situated in an area of the Palau de la Generalitat in Barcelona. In 1929, the library was acquired by the city government of Barcelona, in 1936 the first reading room, the Sala Cervantina was opened, but the project was halted because of the Civil War and not all of the necessary adaptations were completed. After the fall of Barcelona in early 1939, the library was closed until 1940, after the Spanish Civil War, in 1940, the library was renamed the Central Library by the Franco regime and moved to its new site, where it remains to this day. During the rule of Franco, the institution was turned into a general use library, during the 1990s, a major renovation project further transformed the library, including the construction of four underground levels of storage and the annex building. In 1998, the library renovated the Gothic elements of its buildings and extended its space, in 2007, the Biblioteca de Catalunya and four more Catalan libraries agreed to join the digitization project. These libraries have begun digitizing books of theirs that are in the public domain, the digitization partnership project is intended to make these books available on the Internet. The Catalan libraries group became the second non-Anglo-Saxon collaborator to join the Google Books Library Project, in 1977, the National Library of Catalonia joined another Spanish participant in the project, the Complutense University of Madrid. France Detects a Cultural Threat in Google, New York Times, fontbona, Francesc, Présentation dés tresors de la Unitat Gràfica de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona,2005. The Biblioteca de Catalunya, National Library of Catalonia, Barcelona, cincuenta años de la antigua Biblioteca de Catalunya, Biblioteca Central de la Diputación de Barcelona, Barcelona 1968. Reis Fontanals, Marga Losantos, Biblioteca de Catalunya,100 anys, 1907-2007, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona 2007 Rodón, Joan, rodríguez Parada, Concepción, Los fondos patrimoniales de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, Firenze,2010. Biblioteca de Catalunya The European Library
3.
Polytechnic University of Catalonia
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Polytechnic University of Catalonia, currently referred to as BarcelonaTech and commonly named just as UPC, is the largest engineering university in Catalonia, Spain. It also offers programs in disciplines such as mathematics and architecture. UPC is a university aiming at achieving the highest degree of excellence and has bilateral agreements with several top-ranked European universities. UPC is a member of the Top Industrial Managers for Europe network and it is also a member of several university federations, including the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research and UNITECH. The university was founded in March 1971 as the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona through the merger of engineering and architecture schools founded during the 19th century. As of 2007 it has 25 schools in Catalonia located in the cities of Barcelona, Castelldefels, Manresa, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Terrassa, Igualada, Vilanova i la Geltrú, UPC has about 30,000 students and 2,500 professors and researchers. Recerca i Desenv. per a la Millora i Innov. de les Empreses CETpD-UPC -Tech, currently the award is presented bi-annually
4.
Library
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A library is a collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a building or room, or a virtual space. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books to several million items, in Latin and Greek, the idea of a bookcase is represented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē, derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages, e. g. French bibliothèque. The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in Sumer. Private or personal libraries made up of books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC. In the 6th century, at the close of the Classical period. A library is organized for use and maintained by a body, an institution. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are experts at finding and organizing information, Libraries often provide quiet areas for studying, and they also often offer common areas to facilitate group study and collaboration. Libraries often provide facilities for access to their electronic resources. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to information in many formats, the first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing—the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in temple rooms in Sumer, some dating back to 2600 BC. These archives, which consisted of the records of commercial transactions or inventories, mark the end of prehistory. Things were much the same in the government and temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt, the earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit, besides correspondence and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching new scribes. There is also evidence of libraries at Nippur about 1900 BC, philosopher Laozi was keeper of books in the earliest library in China, which belonged to the Imperial Zhou dynasty. Also, evidence of catalogues found in some destroyed ancient libraries illustrates the presence of librarians, the Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a center of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II, an early organization system was in effect at Alexandria. The Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Selçuk, Turkey was built in honor of the Roman Senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus by Celsus’ son, the library was built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. Private or personal libraries made up of books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC
5.
Museum
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Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public, the goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, the city with the largest number of museums is Mexico City with over 128 museums. According to The World Museum Community, there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries, the English museum comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as museums. The first museum/library is considered to be the one of Plato in Athens, however, Pausanias gives another place called Museum, namely a small hill in Classical Athens opposite to the Akropolis. The hill was called Mouseion after Mousaious, a man who used to sing on the hill, the purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display items of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the education of the public. The purpose can also depend on ones point of view, to a family looking for entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, a trip to a local history museum or large city art museum could be a fun, and enlightening way to spend the day. To city leaders, a healthy museum community can be seen as a gauge of the health of a city. To a museum professional, a museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museums mission, Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge. In 1829, James Smithsons bequest, that would fund the Smithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to establish an institution for the increase, Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the Victorian desire for consumption and for order. Gathering all examples of classification of a field of knowledge for research. As American colleges grew in the 19th century, they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students, while many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While there is a debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museums collection, there has been a consistent mission to protect. Much care, expertise, and expense is invested in efforts to retard decomposition in aging documents, artifacts, artworks. All museums display objects that are important to a culture, as historian Steven Conn writes, To see the thing itself, with ones own eyes and in a public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience can be enchanting. Museum purposes vary from institution to institution, some favor education over conservation, or vice versa. For example, in the 1970s, the Canada Science and Technology Museum favored education over preservation of their objects and they displayed objects as well as their functions. One exhibit featured a printing press that a staff member used for visitors to create museum memorabilia
6.
Temple
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A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. It is typically used for such buildings belonging to all faiths where a specific term such as church. These include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism among religions with many modern followers, the form and function of temples is thus very variable, though they are often considered by believers to be in some sense the house of one or more deities. Typically offerings of some sort are made to the deity, and other rituals enacted, the degree to which the whole population of believers can access the building varies significantly, often parts or even the whole main building can only be accessed by the clergy. Temples typically have a building and a larger precinct, which may contain many other buildings. The word comes from Ancient Rome, where a templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest and it has the same root as the word template, a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out on the ground by the augur. Templa also became associated with the places of a god or gods. Hindu temples are large and magnificent with a rich history, there is evidence of use of sacred ground as far back as the Bronze Age and later the Indus Valley Civilization. Hindu temples have been built in countries around the world, including Cambodia, Nepal, Mauritius, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Great Britain. They include the structures called stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions, Temples in Buddhism represent the pure land or pure environment of a Buddha. Traditional Buddhist temples are designed to inspire inner and outer peace, a Jain temple is the place of worship for Jains, the followers of Jainism. Some famous Jain temples are Shikharji, Palitana Jain Temples, Ranakpur Jain Temple, Shravan Belgola, Dilwara Temples, Jain temples are built with various architectural designs. Jain temples in North India are completely different from the Jain temples in South India, additionally, a Manastambha is a pillar that is often constructed in front of Jain temples. The temple of Mesopotamia derived from the cult of gods and deities in the Mesopotamian religion and it spanned several civilizations, from Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian. Ancient Egyptian temples were meant as places for the deities to reside on earth, indeed, the term the Egyptians most commonly used to describe the temple building, ḥwt-nṯr, means mansion of a god. A gods presence in the temple linked the human and divine realms and these rituals, it was believed, sustained the god and allowed it to continue to play its proper role in nature. They were therefore a key part of the maintenance of maat, maintaining maat was the entire purpose of Egyptian religion, and thus it was the purpose of a temple as well. Ancient Egyptian temples were also of significance to Egyptian society
7.
Modernisme
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Modernisme, also known as Catalan modernism, is the historiographic denomination given to an art and literature movement. Modernisme was also a literary movement, although it was part of a general trend that emerged in Europe around the turn of the 20th century, in Catalonia the style acquired its own unique personality. Notable painters include Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, Isidre Nonell, Hermen Anglada Camarasa, Joaquim Mir, Eliseu Meifrèn, Lluïsa Vidal, notable sculptors are Josep Llimona, Eusebi Arnau and Miquel Blai. Such ideas can be seen in some of Rusiñols plays against the Spanish army, Modernistes largely rejected bourgeois values, which they thought to be the opposite of art. It is a search for a style for Catalonia drawing on Medieval. The textile factory which is now home to the Catalan national technical museum MNACTEC is an outstanding example, early 20th century architecture in Valencia was strongly influenced by Modernisme. The Central Market in Valencia, one of the largest in Europe, covers more than 8,000 square metres, over two floors, with a predominantly eclectic pre-Modernist style. Its unusual roof comprises original domes and sloping sections at different heights, while the interior seems to be lined in a range of such as iron, wood, ceramics. The beauty of the building stands out especially on account of the light enters through the roof at various points. The North Station is the railway station in Valencia, Spain located in the city centre next to the Plaza de Toros de Valencia. It was declared Good of Cultural Heritage in 1987, the Mercado de Colón is an old market located in the center of the city of Valencia, Spain. Its building was designed by architect Francisco Mora Berenguer between 1914 and 1916 and this is a clear example of Modernist architecture of the early century. It was declared a national monument and it impresses with its extraordinary facade and lavish decor. Antoni Gaudí is the architect of this movement. Other influential architects were Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, in literature, Modernisme stood out the most in narrative. Those writers often, though not always, show influences from Russian literature of the 19th Century, in poetry, Modernisme closely follows Symbolist and Parnassian poetry, with poets frequently crossing the line between both tendencies or alternating between them. Another important strain of Modernista poetry is Joan Maragalls Paraula viva school, although poetry was very popular with the Modernistes and there were lots of poets involved in the movement, Maragall is the only Modernista poet who is still widely read today. Modernista theatre was important, as it smashed the insubstantial regional plays that were popular in 19th century Catalonia
8.
Catalonia
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Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, located on the northeastern extremity of the Iberian Peninsula. It is designated as a nationality by its Statute of Autonomy, Catalonia consists of four provinces, Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. The capital and largest city is Barcelona, the second-most populated municipality in Spain, Catalonia comprises most of the territory of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is bordered by France and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, the official languages are Catalan, Spanish, and the Aranese dialect of Occitan. The eastern counties of these marches were united under the rule of the Frankish vassal the Count of Barcelona, in the later Middle Ages Catalan literature flourished. Between 1469 and 1516, the King of Aragon and the Queen of Castile married and ruled their kingdoms together, retaining all their distinct institutions, Courts, and constitutions. During the Franco-Spanish War, Catalonia revolted against a large and burdensome presence of the Royal army in its territory, within a brief period France took full control of Catalonia, at a high economic cost for Catalonia, until it was largely reconquered by the Spanish army. In the nineteenth century, Catalonia was severely affected by the Napoleonic, in the second half of the century Catalonia experienced industrialisation. As wealth from the industrial expansion grew, Catalonia saw a cultural renaissance coupled with incipient nationalism while several workers movements appeared. In 1914, the four Catalan provinces formed a Commonwealth, and with the return of democracy during the Second Spanish Republic, after the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship enacted repressive measures, abolishing Catalan institutions and banning the official use of the Catalan language again. Since the Spanish transition to democracy, Catalonia has regained some political and cultural autonomy and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain, the origin of the name Catalunya is subject to diverse interpretations because of a lack of evidence. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine chroniclers claimed that Catalania derives from the medley of Goths with Alans. Other less plausible theories suggest, Catalunya derives from the land of castles, having evolved from the term castlà or castlan. This theory therefore suggests that the names Catalunya and Castile have a common root, the source is of Celtic origin, meaning chiefs of battle. Although the area is not known to have been occupied by Celts, the Lacetani, an Iberian tribe that lived in the area and whose name, due to the Roman influence, could have evolved by metathesis to Katelans and then Catalans. In English, Catalonia is pronounced /kætəˈloʊniə/, the native name, Catalunya, is pronounced in Central Catalan, the most widely spoken variety whose pronunciation is considered standard. The Spanish name is Cataluña, and the Aranese name is Catalonha, the first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were at the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic. From the next era, the Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic, important remains survive
9.
Museo del Prado
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The Prado Museum is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture in 1819, it contains important collections of other types of works. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered one of the greatest art museums in the world. The collection currently comprises around 8,200 drawings,7,600 paintings,4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures, in addition to a large number of other works of art and historic documents. As of 2012, the museum displayed about 1,300 works in the buildings, while around 3,100 works were on temporary loan to various museums. The museum received 2.8 million visitors in 2012 and it is one of the largest museums in Spain. The best-known work on display at the museum is Las Meninas by Velázquez, Velázquez and his keen eye and sensibility were also responsible for bringing much of the museums fine collection of Italian masters to Spain, now the largest outside of Italy. The museum is planning a 16% extension in the nearby Salón de Reinos and their efforts and determination led to the Royal Collection being enriched by some of the masterpieces now to be seen in the Prado. In addition to works from the Spanish royal collection, other holdings increased and enriched the Museum with further masterpieces, such as the two Majas by Goya. Among the now closed museums whose collections have been added to that of the Prado were the Museo del la Trinidad in 1872, in addition, numerous legacies, donations and purchases have been of crucial importance for the growth of the collection. Upon the deposition of Isabella II in 1868, the museum was nationalized and acquired the new name of Museo del Prado, the building housed the royal collection of arts, and it rapidly proved too small. The first enlargement to the museum took place in 1918, particularly important donations include Barón Emile dErlangers gift of Goyas Black Paintings in 1881. Between 1873 and 1900, the Prado helped decorate city halls, new universities, during the Second Spanish Republic from 1931 to 1936, the focus was on building up provincial museums. The art had to be returned across French territory in night trains to the museum upon the commencement of World War II, during the early years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, many paintings were sent to embassies. The main building was enlarged with short pavilions in the rear between 1900 and 1960, in 1993, an extension proposed by the Prados director at the time, Felipe Garin, was quickly abandoned after a wave of criticism. In the late 1990s, a $14 million roof work forced the Velázquez masterpiece Las Meninas to change galleries twice, in 1998, the Prado annex in the nearby Casón del Buen Retiro closed for a $10 million two-year overhaul that included three new underground levels. In 2007, the finally executed Rafael Moneos project to expand its exposition room to 16,000 square meters. A glass-roofed and wedge-shaped foyer now contains the shops and cafeteria
10.
El Greco
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Doménikos Theotokópoulos, most widely known as El Greco, was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, in 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style elements of Mannerism. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death, in Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings. El Grecos dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries, El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, El Grecos father, Geórgios Theotokópoulos, was a merchant and tax collector. Nothing is known about his mother or his first wife, also Greek, El Grecos older brother, Manoússos Theotokópoulos, was a wealthy merchant and spent the last years of his life in El Grecos Toledo home. El Greco received his training as an icon painter of the Cretan school. In 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was described in a document as a master, meaning he was already a master of the guild and presumably operating his own workshop. Three years later, in June 1566, as a witness to a contract, most scholars believe that the Theotokópoulos family was almost certainly Greek Orthodox, although some Catholic sources still claim him from birth. One of his uncles was an Orthodox priest, and his name is not mentioned in the Catholic archival baptismal records on Crete, prevelakis goes even further, expressing his doubt that El Greco was ever a practicing Roman Catholic. Important for his biography, El Greco, still in Crete, painted his Dormition of the Virgin near the end of his Cretan period. Three other signed works of Doménicos are attributed to El Greco, in 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was already an enrolled master of the local guild, presumably in charge of his own workshop. He left for Venice a few later, and never returned to Crete. His Dormition of the Virgin, of before 1567 in tempera, the painting combines post-Byzantine and Italian Mannerist stylistic and iconographic elements, and incorporates stylistic elements of the Cretan School. It was natural for the young El Greco to pursue his career in Venice, though the exact year is not clear, most scholars agree that El Greco went to Venice around 1567. Knowledge of El Grecos years in Italy is limited and this may mean he worked in Titians large studio, or not
11.
Francisco Goya
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Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his career was a commentator. Immensely successful in his lifetime, Goya is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns and he was also one of the great portraitists of modern times. He was born to a modest family in 1746 in the village of Fuendetodos in Aragon and he studied painting from age 14 under José Luzán y Martinez and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs. He married Josefa Bayeu in 1773, the couples life together was characterised by an almost constant series of pregnancies and miscarriages, Goya was a guarded man and although letters and writings survive, little is known about his thoughts. He suffered a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 which left him completely deaf, after 1793 his work became progressively darker and more pessimistic. His later easel and mural paintings, prints and drawings appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social and political levels and he was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France. In 1799 Goya became Primer Pintor de Cámara, the then-highest rank for a Spanish court painter, in the late 1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1801 he painted Charles IV of Spain and His Family, in 1807 Napoleon led the French army into Spain. Goya remained in Madrid during the Peninsular War, which seems to have affected him deeply. Although he did not vocalise his thoughts in public, they can be inferred from his Disasters of War series of prints and his 1814 paintings The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808. Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, there he completed his La Tauromaquia series and a number of other, major, canvases. Following a stroke left him paralyzed on his right side. His body was later re-interred in Spain, Francisco Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Aragón, Spain, on 30 March 1746 to José Benito de Goya y Franque and Gracia de Lucientes y Salvador. The family had moved that year from the city of Zaragoza, José was the son of a notary and of Basque origin, his ancestors being from Zerain, earning his living as a gilder, specialising in religious and decorative craftwork. He oversaw the gilding and most of the ornamentation during the rebuilding of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, Francisco was their fourth child, following his sister Rita, brother Tomás and second sister Jacinta. There were two sons, Mariano and Camilo. His mothers family had pretensions of nobility and the house, a modest brick cottage, was owned by her family and, perhaps fancifully, about 1749 José and Gracia bought a home in Zaragoza and were able to return to live in the city
12.
Jusepe de Ribera
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Jusepe de Ribera was a Spanish Tenebrist painter and printmaker, also known as José de Ribera and Josep de Ribera. He also was called Lo Spagnoletto by his contemporaries and early writers, Ribera was a leading painter of the Spanish school, although his mature work was all done in Italy. Ribera was born at Xàtiva, near Valencia, Spain and he was baptized on February 17,1591. His father was a shoemaker, perhaps on a large scale, longing to study art in Italy, he made his way to Rome via Parma, where he is recorded in 1611. According to one source, a cardinal noticed him drawing from the frescoes on a Roman palace facade, Roman artists gave him the nickname Lo Spagnoletto. His early biographers generally rank him among the followers of Caravaggio, very little documentation survives from his early years, with scholars speculating as to the precise time and route by which he came to Italy. Ribera was living in Rome no later than 1612, and is documented as having joined the Academy of Saint Luke by 1613, in 1616, Ribera moved to Naples, in order to avoid his creditors. The Kingdom of Naples was then part of the Spanish Empire, Ribera moved to Naples permanently in the middle of 1616. Ribera began to sign his work as Jusepe de Ribera, español, the period after Osuna was recalled in 1620 seems to have been difficult. Few paintings survive from 1620 to 1626, but this was the period in which most of his best prints were produced and these were at least partly an attempt to attract attention from a wider audience than Naples. His career picked up in the late 1620s, and he was accepted as the painter in Naples thereafter. His influence can be seen in Velázquez, Murillo, and most other Spanish painters of the period, all of them were invited to work in Naples, but found the place inhospitable. The cabal ended at the time of Domenichinos death in 1641, according to the RKD he is listed as a pupil of Ribalta and in turn his own pupils were Enrico Fiammingo, Francesco Fracanzano, Luca Giordano, and Bartolomeo Passante. He was followed by Giuseppe Marullo and he influenced the painters Agostino Beltrano, Hendrick van Someren, Paolo Domenico Finoglio, Giovanni Ricca, about 1644, his daughter married a Spanish nobleman in the administration, who died soon after. From 1644, Ribera seems to have suffered serious ill-health, which reduced his ability to work. In 1647–1648, during the Masaniello rising against Spanish rule, he felt forced for some months to take his family with him into refuge in the palace of the Viceroy. In 1651 he sold the house he had owned for many years. In his earlier style, founded sometimes on Caravaggio and sometimes on the wholly diverse method of Correggio, along with his massive and predominating shadows, he retained from first to last a great strength in local coloring
13.
Pinacotheca
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A pinacotheca was a picture gallery in either ancient Greece or ancient Rome. The name is used for the building containing pictures which formed the left wing of the Propylaea on the Acropolis at Athens. The Pinacotheca was located right by the Nike Athena temple, the Romans adopted the term for the room in a private house containing pictures, statues, and other works of art. In Brazil, there is the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in Paris, the Pinacothèque de Paris. In Munich the three galleries are called the Alte Pinakothek, Neue Pinakothek and Pinakothek der Moderne. At Hallbergmoos, near Munich Airport, there was the Pinakothek Hallbergmoos between 2010 and 2014 and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. article name needed
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Ramon Casas
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Ramon Casas i Carbó was a Catalan Spanish artist. Also a graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme and his father had made a fortune in Matanzas, Cuba, his mother was from a well-off Catalan family. In 1877 he abandoned the course of schooling to study art in the studio of Joan Vicens. In 1881, still in his teens, he was a co-founder of the magazine LAvenç and that year he survived tuberculosis, and convalesced for the winter in Barcelona. Among the artists he met in this period of his life, and who influenced him, were Laureà Barrau, Santiago Rusiñol, Eugène Carrière, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and Ignacio Zuloaga. Casas and Rusiñol traveled through Catalonia in 1889, and collaborated on a short book Por Cataluña, with text by Rusiñol and illustrations by Casas. Returning together to Paris, they lived together at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, along with painter and art critic Miquel Utrillo, Rusiñol chronicled these times in as series of articles Desde el Molino for La Vanguardia, again Casas illustrated. Casas became an associate of the Societé dartistes françaises, allowing him to two works annually at their salon without having to pass through jury competition. With this increasing activity in Catalonia, he settled more in Barcelona, the emerging modernista art world gained a center with the opening of Els Quatre Gats, a bar modeled on Le Chat Noir in Paris. His partners in the enterprise were Pere Romeu, who played host to the bar, as well as Rusiñol. Like Le Chat Noir, Els Quatre Gats attempted its own literary and artistic magazine and that was short-lived, but was soon followed by Pèl & Ploma, which would slightly outlast the bar itself, and Forma, to which Casas also contributed. He designed posters for the café, many of which depicted Romeus gaunt visage and he also executed a series of advertisements for Codorniu, a brand of cava and anisette. Over the next decade, he would design poster ads for everything from cigarette papers to the Enciclopèdia Espasa. For the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the Spanish committee chose two of Casas full-length oil portraits, an 1891 portrait of Erik Satie and an 1895 portrait of Casas sister Elisa. His 1894 Garrote Vil —a portrayal of an execution— won a prize in Munich in 1901, his work was shown not only in the major capitals of Europe. In 1902, twelve of his canvasses were installed permanently in the rotunda of the Cercle de Liceu, the exclusive private club associated with Barcelonas famous opera house. In 1903 he became a full Societaire of the Salon du Champ de Mars in Paris, which would have allowed him to exhibit there annually, in 1904, the same piece won first prize at the General Exposition in Madrid. Increasingly in demand as a portraitist, he settled again for a while in Barcelona, shortly thereafter he made the acquaintance of a young artists model named Júlia Peraire,22 years his junior
15.
Joaquim Vayreda
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Joaquim Vayreda i Vila was a Spanish landscape painter. He was originally influenced by the Barbizon school, but later one of the founders of the Olot school. His family was originally from Olot, but had to move to Girona when their home was destroyed during the First Carlist War, a year after his birth, his parents returned to Olot and attempted to reestablish themselves. His father was fond of drawing and when he saw that his son had artistic talent and his first art lessons came when he was only nine, at the drawing school in Olot, operated by Narcís Pascual i Sala. In 1860, he went to Barcelona to study philosophy, but spent his time learning to paint with Ramon Martí Alsina. He had his first showing in 1865, the following year, he started to exhibit regularly at the Sala Parés and began to attract customers from the bourgeoisie. He had to live in France briefly, following the Revolution of 1868, there, he became acquainted with the Barbizon school of landscape painttng and met Josep Berga i Boix, who would later be his partner in several enterprises. Upon his return, he and his brother Marian would begin to establish what became known as the Olot school, in 1872, he was appointed Deputy-Mayor of Olot, but resigned after only three months due to the outbreak of the Third Carlist War. He went into self-exile in France and remained there until 1877, three years later, he joined with Josep Berga i Boix and others to create a special workshop for religious images called Els Sants dOlot. He also regained his position with the city, serving from 1881 to 1883, from 1891 until his death he was a Provincial Deputy to the assembly in Manresa and participated in writing the Catalan Regional Constitution. He also contributed opinion pieces to local periodicals. Vayredas early work consists primarily of scenes and costumbrismo. Only later did he dedicate himself to landscape painting and his work is considered a precursor to the avant-garde in Spain. His Olot Landscapes resemble a Catalan version of Camille Corot, particularly after his encounter with the Barbizon school and his works are dominated by browns, ochers, greens, and earth tones. His works include Procesión de colegialas, La siega, La primavera, Los primeros pantalones, El bautizo y el verano, apart from oil paintings, Vayreda also made ink drawings, watercolors, and etchings. Some of his works are painted jointly with his brother, Marian
16.
Luca Giordano
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Luca Giordano was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence and Venice, born in Naples, Giordano was the son of the painter Antonio Giordano. In around 1650 he was apprenticed to Ribera on the recommendation of the viceroy of Naples, like Ribera, he painted many half-length figures of philosophers, either imaginary portraits of specific figures, or generic types. He acquired the nickname Luca fa presto, which translates into Luca paints quickly, following a period studying in Rome, Parma and Venice, Giordano developed an elaborate Baroque style fusing Venetian and Roman Influences. His mature work combines the ornamental pomp of Paul Veronese with the complex schemes. He is also noted for his lively and showy use of colour, in 1682–1683 Giordano painted various fresco series in Florence, including one in the dome of Corsini Chapel of the Chiesa del Carmine. In the large block occupied by the former Medici palace, he painted the ceiling of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, the vast frescoes of the latter are contained in the 1670s gallery addition, overlooking the gardens. The planning was overseen by Alessandro Segni and commissioned by Francesco Riccardi and they include the prototypic hagiographic celebration of the Medici family in the center, surrounded by a series of interlocking narratives, allegorical figures and mythological episodes. In 1692 Giordano went to Spain at the invitation of Charles II and he stayed there for ten years, returning to Naples in 1702, following Charles death. While in Spain, he painted decorative schemes at the Buen Retiro Palace, El Escorial, the sacristry of Toledo Cathedral. He also painted pictures for the court, private patrons. His pupils, Aniello Rossi and Matteo Pacelli, assisted him in Spain, Giordano was popular at the Spanish court, and the king granted him the title of a caballero. After his return to Naples early in 1702, Giordano continued to paint prolifically, executed in a lighter, less rhetorical style, these late works, prefiguring Rococo, proved influential throughout the eighteenth century, and were admired by Fragonard. He spent large sums in acts of munificence, and was particularly liberal to poorer artists, one of his maxims was that the good painter is the one whom the public like, and that the public are attracted more by colour than by design. Giordano had a facility, which often lead to an impression of superficiality of his works. He left many works in Rome, and far more in Naples and this church contains the artists own tomb. Other notable examples are the Judgment of Paris in the Berlin Museum, in later years, he painted influential frescoes for the Cappella Corsini, the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi and other works. Giordano died in Naples in 1705 and his best pupil in painting was Paolo de Matteis
17.
Peter Paul Rubens
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter. He is widely considered as the most notable artist of Flemish Baroque art school, the catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop. His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects and he painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house and he also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not overly detailed and he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. For altarpieces he painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Jan Rubens and he was named in honour of Saint-Peter and Paul, because he was born on their solemnety. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange. Following Jan Rubens imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, the family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his fathers death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin, by fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy and he stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an effect on Rubenss painting. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601, there, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters
18.
Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa
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Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa, known in Catalan as Hermenegild Anglada Caramasa, was a Catalan and Balearic Spanish painter. Born in Barcelona, he studied there at the Llotja School and his early work had the clear academic imprint of his teacher, Modest Urgell. In 1894 he moved to Paris, and studied at the Académie Julian and he adopted a more personal style, after that of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, with their depictions of nocturnal and interior subjects. But his work was marked by the intense colors which presaged the arrival of Fauvism. Lively brushwork reveals strong Oriental and Arab influences, allied with the Vienna Secession movement, his decorative style draws comparison to Gustav Klimt. One of his most important works is a portrait of Sonia Klamery and he died in Pollença, on the island of Majorca, and is commemorated by a bronze bust on the Pine Walk at Port de Pollença. The art of Anglada-Camarasa, London 1929, Modest Urgell Ignacio Zuloaga Artehistoria. com biography Hermen Anglada Camarasa Paintings
19.
Joaquin Mir Trinxet
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Joaquin Mir Trinxet was a Catalan Spanish artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona and they helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme. Mir Trinxet was born in Barcelona to a well-off Catalan family and his father was representative of foreign firms, some of them from Nuremberg Mir studied at the Llotja before joining the Colla del Safrà group with Canals, Nonell, and Pichot. Working in isolated circumstances in Mallorca, Mir painted odd landscapes in which forms, in his first exhibition in Barcelona in 1901, the critical reviews were positive but the public found his paintings difficult to comprehend. He started in Mallorca a solitary artistic process, full of colors without forms, in 1913 he returned to more realistic positions, receiving recognision for his work. From this period, his paintings tended to become more mystic, more abstract, among the artists he met in this period of his life, and who influenced him, were Laureà Barrau, Santiago Rusiñol, Eugène Carrière, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and Ignacio Zuloaga. He was one of the rare Spanish painters of the period who did not continue his education in Paris. But he visited regularly Casas and Rusiñol, which lived together at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, along with painter and art critic Miquel Utrillo, Rusiñol chronicled these times in as series of articles Desde el Molino for La Vanguardia. He had not the influence from the French impressionists as Casas. Meanwhile, the circle that included Casas and Rusiñol began with greater frequency to organize exhibitions of their own in Barcelona. With this increasing activity in Catalonia, he settled more in or around Barcelona and this was how Mir Trinxet summed up his private art manifesto in 1928. Mir Trinxet painted landscapes in Tarragona and Majorca, in his late works created in Vilanova i la Geltrú, Mir Trinxet intensified the realist side of his work. He also produced works during his campaigns in places like Andorra, Montserrat, Miravet, special consideration has the major works for the Casa Trinxet in Barcelona, in which Mir Trinxet captured his total conception of the landscape. The building was commissioned by Avelino Trinxet Casas, Mir Trinxet’s Uncle, Avelino Trinxet was also the owner of the Trinxet fabric, build in 1907 by Joan Alsina i Arús en Can Trinxet, in Hospitalet, near Barcelona, in a modernist fashion. Mir Trinxet’s style is curious in this house, paint impressionistically scattered and it is a blur of colored vision, a haze of dots that travel across the eye. In the house, Mir Trinxet use a technique that gives the painting a mysticism, here we have all the warmth and freshness of a garden, intensity provided in colored blooms, and dew that clings to leaves and grass seeped into a crisp pale green. The vidres were made in picture-style appearance, like the commissioned by Trinxet to the Rigalt, Granell y Cía. firm in 1910-1912, lastly movements were late to save Casa Trinxet. But Mir used these resources to create a world of his own
20.
Isidre Nonell
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Isidre Nonell i Monturiol a Catalonian painter and drawer belonging to post-impressionism known for his expressive portrayal of the socially marginalized of Barcelona society. Isidre Nonell was born in 1872 and his parents, Isidre Nonell i Torras de Arenys de Mar and Àngela Monturiol i Francàs of Barcelona, owned a small but prosperous factory of soup noodles. His early teachers included Josep Mirabent, Gabriel Martínez Altés and Lluís Graner, from 1893 to 1895 he studied at the Escola de Belles Arts de Barcelona. He met Ricard Canals, Ramón Pichot, Juli Vallmitjana, Adrià Gual, the study of sunlight and its effects on color were a main part of Impressionism, which was then active. They were called the Saffron Group for the warm tones they used, in 1894, he began producing illustrations for La Vanguardia. He later drew for other periodicals, including LEsquella de la Torratxa, Barcelona Cómica, Pèl & Ploma, and Forma. In 1896, Nonell went with Ricard Canals and Juli Vallmitjana to the spa town of Caldes de Boí in the Catalonian Pyrenees to work at the spa run by Vallmitjanas family. There, he saw a number of people suffering from the illness of cretinism. In February 1897, he went to Paris with Ricard Canals, there he exhibited and shared a studio with Picasso. He returned to Barcelona in 1900, at the beginning of 1901, he made paintings of women, such as gypsy and working-class women, and still lifes. He exhibited in the Sala París in Barcelona twice, in 1902 and 1903, the reaction to his works of poor gypsy women was very hostile. The oil paintings show the influence of impressionism and pointillism expressed in a new way, thick strokes layered one after another do not quite mix colors in the eye, leaving a directness of emotion. His subjects, most often women, are the poor and marginalized people of society, poor women, gypsies, wounded soldiers repatriated from the Cuban war, though, his magazine drawings were critical of society, his other works show a deep feeling for those who suffered. His frank portrayal of poverty earned him criticism and rejection. Isidre Nonell, Editorial MNAC, Barcelona i Fundación Cultural Mapfre, Madrid 2000, Isidre Nonell, Editorial Polígrafa, Barcelona 1996, ISBN 84-343-0817-7 Fontbona, Francesc, Nonell, Gent Nostra, Thor, Barcelona 1987
21.
Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art
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The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art is situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The museum opened to the public on November 28,1995, previous directors were Daniel Giralt-Miracle, Miguel Molins, Manuel J. Borja-Villel, and Bartomeu Marí, while the current director, since 2015 is Ferran Barenblit. It was not until 1986 that the Barcelona City Council recommended the American architect Richard Meier & Partners to design the museum, Art critics Francesc Miralles and Rosa Queralt were hired to write the museum’s mission statement. In 1987, the MACBA Foundation was created, in the following year the MACBA Foundation, in conjunction with the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Barcelona City Council, founded the MACBA Consortium in order further the process of the museum. The Consortium commissioned Meier later that year to build the museum and this was a controversial issue considering that the museum had no collection at the time of construction. The museum opened to the public in 1995, well after the 1992 Summer Olympics for which it was planned, while MACBA has long used the chapel for performances and site-specific installations, this time the city lent the entire historic cluster to the institution for an unspecified term. Meier embraced the difficult task of creating a building that would display a variety of contemporary artworks that were unknown to him at the time of design. The building’s architectural style has strong references to Modernism, the museum has three main galleries, which can be subdivided, as well as five smaller galleries, one of which is in a tower. The permanent collection of around 5,000 works dates from the mid-20th century onward, there are three periods of modern art represented, the first one covers the forties to the sixties, the second spans the sixties and seventies, the third period is contemporary. The collections focus on post-1945 Catalan and Spanish art, although some International artists are also represented, the exhibition is then an experience on a par with that of workshops, conferences, audiovisual activities, publications, etc. All of these experiences are defined by a series of lines which lend thematic coherence” MACBA Website. In march 2011, the art collector Philippe Méaille grants a loan of 800 artworks of Art&Language group, in December 2007, the museum opened its Study Center, enhancing the educational aspect which is integral to the museum’s mission. The Library Reading Room and Special Collections Room grant the public access to the museum’s books, publications collection. MACBA publishes mainly exhibition catalogues from the museum, although has published some monographic books, additionally, MACBA has three digital publications, Quaderns portàtils, Quaderns dÀudio, and Sèrie Capella MACBA. MACBA offers a variety of events including lectures, seminars, guided tours, video screenings, the Museum address is Plaça dels Angels,1, Barcelona. The closest metro stations are Catalunya and Universitat, entrance to this part of the museum is free. Another contemporary art museum, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, is adjacent to MACBA, the surrounding square and architecture outside of the museum is among the most well-known and respected places for modern skateboarding. Together with surrounding places in Barcelona, it is a ground in youth culture due to its reputation in the world of skateboarding photography
22.
Ancient Egypt
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
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Mummy
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Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least 1615 CE. Mummies of humans and other animals have found on every continent. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats, in addition to the well-known mummies of ancient Egypt, deliberate mummification was a feature of several ancient cultures in areas of America and Asia with very dry climates. The Spirit Cave mummies of Fallon, Nevada in North America were accurately dated at more than 9,400 years old. Before this discovery, the oldest known deliberate mummy was a child, one of the Chinchorro mummies found in the Camarones Valley, Chile, which dates around 5050 BCE. The oldest known naturally mummified corpse is a severed head dated as 6,000 years old. These substances were defined as mummia, the OED defines a mummy as the body of a human being or animal embalmed as a preparation for burial, citing sources from 1615 CE onward. However, Chambers Cyclopædia and the Victorian zoologist Francis Trevelyan Buckland define a mummy as follows, also applied to the frozen carcase of an animal imbedded in prehistoric snow. Wasps of the genus Aleiodes are known as mummy wasps because they wrap their prey as mummies. While interest in the study of mummies dates as far back as Ptolemaic Greece, prior to this, many rediscovered mummies were sold as curiosities or for use in pseudoscientific novelties such as mummia. The first modern scientific examinations of mummies began in 1901, conducted by professors at the English-language Government School of Medicine in Cairo, Egypt. The first X-ray of a mummy came in 1903, when professors Grafton Elliot Smith, British chemist Alfred Lucas applied chemical analyses to Egyptian mummies during this same period, which returned many results about the types of substances used in embalming. Lucas also made significant contributions to the analysis of Tutankhamun in 1922, pathological study of mummies saw varying levels of popularity throughout the 20th century. In 1992, the First World Congress on Mummy Studies was held in Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, more than 300 scientists attended the Congress to share nearly 100 years of collected data on mummies. This was not possible prior to the Congress due to the unique, in more recent years, CT scanning has become an invaluable tool in the study of mummification by allowing researchers to digitally unwrap mummies without risking damage to the body. The level of detail in such scans is so intricate that small linens used in areas such as the nostrils can be digitally reconstructed in 3-D. Such modelling has been utilized to perform autopsies on mummies to determine cause of death and lifestyle. Mummies are typically divided into one of two categories, anthropogenic or spontaneous
24.
Deir el-Medina
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During the Christian era, the temple of Hathor was converted into a church from which the Arabic name Deir el-Medina is derived. At the time when the press was concentrating on Howard Carters discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. This work has resulted in one of the most thoroughly documented accounts of community life in the ancient world that spans almost four hundred years. There is no site in which the organisation, social interactions. The site is located on the west bank of the Nile, the village may have been built apart from the wider population in order to preserve secrecy in view of sensitive nature of the work carried out in the tombs. A significant find of papyri was made in the 1840s in the vicinity of the village, the archaeological site was first seriously excavated by Ernesto Schiaparelli between 1905–1909 which uncovered large amounts of ostraca. A French team directed by Bernard Bruyère excavated the site, including village, dump and cemetery. Unfortunately through lack of control it is now thought that half of the papyri recovered was removed without the knowledge or authorization of the team director. Around five thousand ostraca of assorted works of commerce and literature were found in a close to the village. Jaroslav Černý, who was part of Bruyères team, went on to study the village for almost fifty years until his death in 1970 and was able to name, the peak overlooking the village was renamed Mont Cernabru in recognition of Černý and Bruyères work on the village. The main road through the village may have been covered to shelter the villagers from the intense glare, the size of the habitations varied, with an average floor space of 70 m2, but the same construction methods were used throughout the village. Walls were made of mudbrick, built on top of stone foundations, mud was applied to the walls which were then painted white on the external surfaces with some of the inner surfaces whitewashed up to a height of around one metre. A wooden front door might have carried the occupants name, houses consisted of four to five rooms comprising an entrance, main room, two smaller rooms, kitchen with cellar and staircase leading to the roof. The full glare of the sun was avoided by situating the windows high up on the walls, the main room contained a mudbrick platform with steps which may have been used as a shrine or a birthing bed. Nearly all houses contained niches for statues and small altars, the tombs built by the community for their own use include small rock-cut chapels and substructures adorned with small pyramids. 1110–1080 BCE during the reign of Ramesses XI due to increasing threats of Libyan raids, the Ptolemies later built a temple to Hathor on the site of an ancient shrine dedicated to her. The surviving texts record the events of life rather than major historical incidents. Personal letters reveal much about the relations and family life of the villagers
25.
Mesoamerica
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It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas along with Norte Chico in present-day northern coastal Peru. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures, while Mesoamerican civilization did know of the wheel and basic metallurgy, neither of these technologies became culturally important. Among the earliest complex civilizations was the Olmec culture, which inhabited the Gulf coast of Mexico and extended inland, frequent contact and cultural interchange between the early Olmec and other cultures in Chiapas, Guatemala and Oaxaca laid the basis for the Mesoamerican cultural area. All this was facilitated by considerable regional communications in ancient Mesoamerica and this Formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes. In the subsequent Preclassic period, complex urban polities began to develop among the Maya, with the rise of such as El Mirador, Calakmul and Tikal. Mesoamerica is one of three regions of the world where writing is known to have independently developed. Upon the collapse of Teotihuacán around AD600, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico, such as Xochicalco and Cholula, ensued. During the early period, Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec. Towards the end of the period, the Aztecs of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mesoamerica. The distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition ended with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, over the next centuries, Mesoamerican indigenous cultures were gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule. The exact geographic extent of Mesoamerica has varied through time, as the civilization extended North and South from its heartland in southern Mexico, Mesoamerica is recognized as a near-prototypical cultural area, and the term is now fully integrated in the standard terminology of pre-Columbian anthropological studies. Conversely, the sister terms Aridoamerica and Oasisamerica, which refer to northern Mexico, 10° and 22° northern latitude, Mesoamerica possesses a complex combination of ecological systems, topographic zones, and environmental contexts. A main distinction groups these different niches into two categories, the lowlands and the altiplanos, or highlands. In the low-lying regions, sub-tropical and tropical climates are most common, as is true for most of the coastline along the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The highlands show much more diversity, ranging from dry tropical to cold mountainous climates. The rainfall varies from the dry Oaxaca and north Yucatan to the humid southern Pacific, several distinct sub-regions within Mesoamerica are defined by a convergence of geographic and cultural attributes. These sub-regions are more conceptual than culturally meaningful, and the demarcation of their limits is not rigid, the Maya area, for example, can be divided into two general groups, the lowlands and highlands. The lowlands are further divided into the southern and northern Maya lowlands, the southern Maya lowlands are generally regarded as encompassing northern Guatemala, southern Campeche and Quintana Roo in Mexico, and Belize
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Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
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Central America
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Central America is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. Central America is bordered by Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the east, Central America consists of seven countries, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. The combined population of Central America is between 41,739,000 and 42,688,190, Central America is a part of the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, which extends from northern Guatemala through to central Panama. Due to the presence of several active faults and the Central America Volcanic Arc. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur frequently, these disasters have resulted in the loss of many lives. In the Pre-Columbian era, Central America was inhabited by the peoples of Mesoamerica to the north and west. Soon after Christopher Columbuss voyages to the Americas, the Spanish began to colonize the Americas, the seven states finally became independent autonomous states, beginning with Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, followed by El Salvador, then Panama, and finally Belize. Middle America is usually thought to comprise Mexico to the north of the 7 states of Central America as well as Colombia, usually the whole of the Caribbean to the north-east and sometimes the Guyanas are also included. According to one source, the term Central America was used as a synonym for Middle America as recently as 1962, in Brazil, Central America comprises all countries between Mexico and Colombia, including those in the Caribbean. Mexico, in whole or in part, is included by British people. For the people living in the 5 countries formerly part of the Federal Republic of Central America there is a distinction between the Spanish language terms América Central and Centroamérica, in the Pre-Columbian era, the northern areas of Central America were inhabited by the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. Most notable among these were the Mayans, who had built numerous cities throughout the region, and the Aztecs, following Christopher Columbuss voyages to the Americas, the Spanish sent many expeditions to the region, and they began their conquest of Maya territory in 1523. Soon after the conquest of the Aztec Empire, Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado commenced the conquest of northern Central America for the Spanish Empire. Beginning with his arrival in Soconusco in 1523, Alvarados forces systematically conquered and subjugated most of the major Maya kingdoms, including the Kiche, Tzutujil, Pipil, and the Kaqchikel. By 1528, the conquest of Guatemala was nearly complete, with only the Petén Basin remaining outside the Spanish sphere of influence, the last independent Maya kingdoms – the Kowoj and the Itza people – were finally defeated in 1697, as part of the Spanish conquest of Petén. In 1538, Spain established the Real Audiencia of Panama, which had jurisdiction over all land from the Strait of Magellan to the Gulf of Fonseca. This entity was dissolved in 1543, and most of the territory within Central America then fell under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia Real de Guatemala. This area included the current territories of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Mexican state of Chiapas, the president of the Audiencia, which had its seat in Antigua Guatemala, was the governor of the entire area
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South America
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South America is a continent located in the western hemisphere, mostly in the southern hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the northern hemisphere. It may also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas, which is the used in nations that speak Romance languages. The reference to South America instead of other regions has increased in the last decades due to changing geopolitical dynamics. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean, North America and it includes twelve sovereign states, a part of France, and a non-sovereign area. In addition to this, the ABC islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, South America has an area of 17,840,000 square kilometers. Its population as of 2005 has been estimated at more than 371,090,000, South America ranks fourth in area and fifth in population. Brazil is by far the most populous South American country, with more than half of the population, followed by Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela. In recent decades Brazil has also concentrated half of the regions GDP and has become a first regional power, most of the population lives near the continents western or eastern coasts while the interior and the far south are sparsely populated. Most of the continent lies in the tropics, the continents cultural and ethnic outlook has its origin with the interaction of indigenous peoples with European conquerors and immigrants and, more locally, with African slaves. Given a long history of colonialism, the majority of South Americans speak Portuguese or Spanish. South America occupies the portion of the Americas. The continent is delimited on the northwest by the Darién watershed along the Colombia–Panama border. Almost all of mainland South America sits on the South American Plate, South Americas major mineral resources are gold, silver, copper, iron ore, tin, and petroleum. These resources found in South America have brought high income to its countries especially in times of war or of rapid growth by industrialized countries elsewhere. However, the concentration in producing one major export commodity often has hindered the development of diversified economies and this is leading to efforts to diversify production to drive away from staying as economies dedicated to one major export. South America is one of the most biodiverse continents on earth, South America is home to many interesting and unique species of animals including the llama, anaconda, piranha, jaguar, vicuña, and tapir. The Amazon rainforests possess high biodiversity, containing a proportion of the Earths species. Brazil is the largest country in South America, encompassing around half of the land area
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Americas
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The Americas, also collectively called America, encompass the totality of the continents of North America and South America. Together they make up most of the land in Earths western hemisphere, along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earths total surface area and 28. 4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River / Great Lakes basin, Mississippi. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago, a second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic around 3500 BCE completed what is regarded as the settlement by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Ericson, however, the colonization never became permanent and was later abandoned. The voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in permanent contact with European powers, diseases introduced from Europe and Africa devastated the indigenous peoples, and the European powers colonized the Americas. Mass emigration from Europe, including numbers of indentured servants. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in 1776, the population is over 1 billion, with over 65% of them living in one of the three most populous countries. As of the beginning of the 2010s, the most populous urban agglomerations are Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, all of them megacities. The name America was first recorded in 1507 in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann and it first applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. Amerigen means land of Amerigo and derives from Amerigo and gen, America accorded with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa. When conceived as a continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America. In some countries of the world, America is considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, the first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and the Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred during the glacial maximum
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Can Papiol Romanticism Museum
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The Can Papiol Romanticism Museum is a museum located in the historic centre of Vilanova i la Geltrú. It is a house dating from the end of the 18th century and is characteristic both for the furniture and decorative elements preserved from the time. Its aim is to evoke 19th-century society by analysing the life of a well-to-do family of the time. The museum is part of the Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network, in 1959, a descendant of the Papiol family sold the house and all its furniture to Barcelona Provincial Council, to turn it into a museum. After some restoration work, the museum was opened in 1961, can Papiol is the manor house of the Papiol family. The building, comprising a ground floor, first floor, two floors and an attic, was built between 1790 and 1801 by politician and scholar Francesc de Papiol. It is Neoclassical in style with decorative elements painted on the walls, inside, the space also has a garden from the Romantic period. Through the analysis of life for a well-to-do family of the time. Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer Can Llopis Romanticism Museum Assumpta, Gou i Vernet, Museum site Local Museum Network site
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
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Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
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Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
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