Capitoline Wolf
The Capitoline Wolf is a bronze sculpture depicting a scene from the legend of the founding of Rome. The sculpture shows a she-wolf suckling the mythical twin founders of Rome and Remus. According to the legend, when Numitor, grandfather of the twins, was overthrown by his brother Amulius, the usurper ordered them to be cast into the Tiber River, they were rescued by a she-wolf who cared for them until a herdsman, Faustulus and raised them. The age and origin of the Capitoline Wolf is controversial; the statue was long thought to be an Etruscan work of the 5th century BC, with the twins added in the late 15th century AD by the sculptor Antonio Pollaiolo. However and thermoluminescence dating has found that the wolf portion of the statue is to have been cast between 1021 and 1153; the image of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus is a symbol of Rome since ancient times and one of the most recognizable icons of ancient mythology. The sculpture has been housed since 1471 in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio, Rome and there are many replicas in various places around the world.
The sculpture is somewhat larger than life-size, standing 75 centimetres high and 114 centimetres long. The wolf is depicted in a tense, watchful pose, with alert ears and glaring eyes which are watching for danger. By contrast, the human twins – executed in a different style – are oblivious to their surroundings, absorbed by their suckling; the she-wolf from the legend of Romulus and Remus was regarded as a symbol of Rome from ancient times. Several ancient sources refer to statues depicting the wolf suckling the twins. Livy reports in his Roman history that a statue was erected at the foot of the Palatine Hill in 295 B. C. Pliny the Elder mentions the presence in the Roman Forum of a statue of a she-wolf, "a miracle proclaimed in bronze nearby, as though she had crossed the Comitium while Attus Navius was taking the omens". Cicero mentions a statue of the she-wolf as one of a number of sacred objects on the Capitoline, inauspiciously struck by lightning in the year 65 BC: "it was a gilt statue on the Capitol of a baby being given suck from the udders of a wolf."
Cicero mentions the wolf in De Divinatione 1.20 and 2.47. It was assumed that the Capitoline Wolf was the sculpture described by Cicero, due to the presence of damage to the sculpture's paw, believed to correspond to the lightning strike of 65 BC; the 18th-century German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann attributed the statue to an Etruscan maker in the 5th century BC, based on how the wolf's fur was depicted. It was first attributed to the Veiian artist Vulca, who decorated the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, re-attributed to an unknown Etruscan artist of 480–470 BC. Winckelmann identified a Renaissance origin for the twins. During the 19th century, a number of researchers questioned. August Emil Braun, the secretary of the Archaeological Institute of Rome, proposed in 1854 that the damage to the wolf's paw had been caused by an error during casting. Wilhelm Fröhner, the Conservator of the Louvre, stated in 1878 that style of the statue was attributable to the Carolingian art period rather than the Etruscan, in 1885 Wilhelm von Bode stated that he was of the view that the statue was most a mediaeval work.
However, these views were disregarded and had been forgotten by the 20th century. In 2006, the Italian art historian Anna Maria Carruba and the Etruscologist Adriano La Regina contested the traditional dating of the wolf on the basis of an analysis of the casting technique. Carruba had been given the task of restoring the sculpture in 1997, enabling her to examine how it had been made, she observed that the statue had been cast in a single piece, using a variation of the lost-wax casting technique. This technique was not used in Classical antiquity. Single-piece casting was, however used in the Middle Ages to mould bronze items that needed a high level of rigidity, such as bells and cannons. Carruba argues, like Braun, that the damage to the wolf's paw had resulted from an error in the moulding process. In addition, La Regina, the state superintendent of Rome's cultural heritage, argues that the sculpture's artistic style is more akin to Carolingian and Romanesque art than that of the ancient world.
Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating was carried out at the University of Salento in February 2007 to resolve the question. The results revealed with an accuracy of 95.4 percent that the sculpture was crafted between the 11th and 12th century AD. It is unclear when the sculpture was first erected, but there are a number of mediaeval references to a "wolf" standing in the Pope's Lateran Palace. In the 10th century Chronicon of Benedict of Soracte, the monk chronicler writes of the institution of a supreme court of justice "in the Lateran Palace, in the place called the Wolf, the mother of the Romans." Trials and executions "at the Wolf" are recorded from time to time until 1438. The 12th-century English cleric Magister Gregorius wrote a descriptive essay De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae and recorded in an appendix three pieces of sculpture he had neglected: one was the Wolf in the portico, at the principal entrance to the Lateran Palace, he mentions no twins, for he noted that she was set up as if stalking a bronze ram, nearby, which served as a fountain.
The wolf had served as a fountain
Medieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, at times the Middle East and North Africa. It includes major art movements and periods and regional art, revivals, the artists' crafts, the artists themselves. Art historians attempt to classify medieval art into major periods and styles with some difficulty. A accepted scheme includes the phases of Early Christian art, Migration Period art, Byzantine art, Insular art, Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque art, Gothic art, as well as many other periods within these central styles. In addition each region during the period in the process of becoming nations or cultures, had its own distinct artistic style, such as Anglo-Saxon art or Viking art. Medieval art was produced in many media, works survive in large numbers in sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass and mosaics, all of which have had a higher survival rate than other media such as fresco wall-paintings, work in precious metals or textiles, including tapestry.
In the early part of the period, works in the so-called "minor arts" or decorative arts, such as metalwork, ivory carving and embroidery using precious metals, were more valued than paintings or monumental sculpture. Medieval art in Europe grew out of the artistic heritage of the Roman Empire and the iconographic traditions of the early Christian church; these sources were mixed with the vigorous "barbarian" artistic culture of Northern Europe to produce a remarkable artistic legacy. Indeed, the history of medieval art can be seen as the history of the interplay between the elements of classical, early Christian and "barbarian" art. Apart from the formal aspects of classicism, there was a continuous tradition of realistic depiction of objects that survived in Byzantine art throughout the period, while in the West it appears intermittently and sometimes competing with new expressionist possibilities developed in Western Europe and the Northern legacy of energetic decorative elements; the period ended with the self-perceived Renaissance recovery of the skills and values of classical art, the artistic legacy of the Middle Ages was disparaged for some centuries.
Since a revival of interest and understanding in the 19th century it has been seen as a period of enormous achievement that underlies the development of Western art. The Middle Ages in Europe saw a decrease in prosperity and population in the first centuries of the period—to about 800 AD, a steady and general increase until the massive setback of the Black Death around 1350, estimated to have killed at least a third of the overall population in Europe, with higher rates in the south and lower in the north. Many regions did not regain their former population levels until the 17th century; the population of Europe is estimated to have reached a low point of about 18 million in 650, to have doubled around the year 1000, to have reached over 70 million by 1340, just before the Black Death. In 1450 it was still only 50 million. To these figures, Northern Europe Britain, contributed a lower proportion than today, Southern Europe, including France, a higher one; the increase in prosperity, for those who survived, was much less affected by the Black Death.
Until about the 11th century most of Europe was short of agricultural labour, with large amounts of unused land, the Medieval Warm Period benefited agriculture until about 1315. The medieval period saw the falling away of the invasions and incursions from outside the area that characterized the first millennium; the Islamic conquests of the 6th and 7th century and permanently removed all of North Africa from the Western world, over the rest of the period Islamic peoples took over the Byzantine Empire, until the end of the Middle Ages when Catholic Europe, having regained the Iberian peninsula in the southwest, was once again under Muslim threat from the southeast. At the start of the medieval period most significant works of art were rare and costly objects associated with secular elites, monasteries or major churches and, if religious produced by monks. By the end of the Middle Ages works of considerable artistic interest could be found in small villages and significant numbers of bourgeois homes in towns, their production was in many places an important local industry, with artists from the clergy now the exception.
However the Rule of St Benedict permitted the sale of works of art by monasteries, it is clear that throughout the period monks might produce art, including secular works, commercially for a lay market, monasteries would hire lay specialists where necessary. The impression may be left by the surviving works that all medieval art was religious; this is far from the case. The Middle Ages lacked the concept of preserving older works for their artistic merit, as opposed to their association with a saint or founder figure, the following periods of the Renaissance and Baroque tended to disparage medieval art. Most luxury illuminated manuscripts of the Early Middle Ages had lavish treasure binding book-covers in precious metal and jewels. Most churches have been rebuilt several times, but medieval palaces and large
Town square
A town square is an open public space found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, piazza and town green. Most town squares are hardscapes suitable for open markets, political rallies, other events that require firm ground. Being centrally located, town squares are surrounded by small shops such as bakeries, meat markets, cheese stores, clothing stores. At their center is a fountain, monument, or statue. Many of those with fountains are called fountain square. In urban planning, a city square or urban square is a planned open area in a city. In Mainland China, People's Square is a common designation for the central town square of modern Chinese cities, established as part of urban modernization within the last few decades; these squares are the site of government buildings and other public buildings. The best-known and largest such square in China is Tienanmen Square.
The German word for square is Platz, which means "Place", is a common term for central squares in German-speaking countries. These have been focal points of public life in cities from the Middle Ages to today. Squares located opposite a Palace or Castle are named Schlossplatz. Prominent Plätze include the Alexanderplatz, Pariser Platz and Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Heldenplatz in Vienna, the Königsplatz in Munich. A piazza is a city square in Italy, along the Dalmatian coast and in surrounding regions. San Marco in Venice may be the worlds best known; the term is equivalent to the Spanish plaza. In Ethiopia, it is used to refer to a part of a city; when the Earl of Bedford developed Covent Garden – the first private-venture public square built in London – his architect Inigo Jones surrounded it with arcades, in the Italian fashion. Talk about the piazza was connected in Londoners' minds not with the square as a whole, but with the arcades. A piazza is found at the meeting of two or more streets.
Most Italian cities have several piazzas with streets radiating from the center. Shops and other small businesses are found on piazzas. Many metro stations and bus stops are found on piazzas. In Britain, piazza now refers to a paved open pedestrian space, without grass or planting in front of a significant building or shops. King's Cross station in London is to have a piazza as part of its redevelopment; the piazza will replace the existing 1970s concourse and allow the original 1850s façade to be seen again. There is a good example of a piazza in Scotswood at Newcastle College. In the United States, in the early 19th century, a piazza by further extension became a fanciful name for a colonnaded porch. Piazza was used by some in the Boston area, to refer to a verandah or front porch of a house or apartment. A central square just off Gibraltar's Main Street, between the Parliament Building and the City Hall named John Mackintosh Square is colloquially referred to as The Piazza. A large open square common in villages and cities of Indonesia is known as alun-alun.
It is a Javanese term which in modern-day Indonesia refers to the two large open squares of kraton compounds. It is located adjacent a mosque or a palace, it is a place for court celebrations and general non-court entertainments. In traditional Persian architecture, town squares are known as meydan. A maydan is considered as one of the essential features in urban planning and they are adjacent to bazaars, large mosques and other public buildings. Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan and Azadi Square in Tehran are examples of classic and modern squares. Squares are called "markt" because of the usage of the square as a market place; every town in Belgium and the southern part of the Netherlands has a "Grote Markt" or "Grand Place" in French. The "Grote Markt" is the place where the town hall is situated and therefore the centre of the town; the same naming can be found in surrounding regions as for example Cologne has several central squares named "-markt" or "Markt". In Russia, central square is a common term for an open area in the heart of the town.
In a number of cities this square does not have an individual name, i.e. named so: Tsentráĺnaya Plóshchad́, e.g. Central Square. Throughout Spain, Spanish America, the Spanish East Indies, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be incorporated in a wing of a governor's palace, the audiencia or law court; the plaza remains a center of community life, only equaled by the market-place. This open space at the center of the cities is from the Mediterranean where public spaces always had important role for public life; the origin of the word Plaza is, via Latin platea, from Greek πλατεῖα plateia, meaning "broad". The Plaza is the heir to the Roman "Forum", this is the heir of the Greek. Most viceregal cities in Spanish America and the Philippines were planned around a square "plaza de armas", where troops could be mustered, as the name implies, surrounded by the governor's palace and the main church.
In the United Kingdom, in London and Edinburgh, a "square" has a wider meaning. There are public squares of the type desc
Rome
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2, it is the country's most populated comune, it is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber; the Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been defined as capital of two states. Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe; the city's early population originated from a mix of Latins and Sabines.
The city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, is regarded by some as the first metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, the expression was taken up by Ovid and Livy. Rome is called the "Caput Mundi". After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome fell under the political control of the Papacy, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance all the popes since Nicholas V pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city.
In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, the most popular tourist attraction in Italy, its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The famous Vatican Museums are among the world's most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; the city hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p. A. and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL.
Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, financial services. Rome is an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies. According to the founding myth of the city by the Ancient Romans themselves, the long-held tradition of the origin of the name Roma is believed to have come from the city's founder and first king, Romulus. However, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was derived from Rome itself; as early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: from Rumon or Rumen, archaic name of the Tiber, which in turn has the same root as the Greek verb ῥέω and the Latin verb ruo, which both mean "flow". There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from 14,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age, each hill between the sea and the Capitol was topped by a village. However, none of them had yet an urban quality. Nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city developed through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine; this aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level, which allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities. These in turn boosted the development of trade with the Greek colonies of southern Italy; these developments, which according to archaeological ev
Praxiteles
Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubitably attributable sculpture by Praxiteles is extant, numerous copies of his works have survived. A supposed relationship between Praxiteles and his beautiful model, the Thespian courtesan Phryne, has inspired speculation and interpretation in works of art ranging from painting to comic opera to shadow play; some writers have maintained. One was a contemporary of Pheidias, the other his more celebrated grandson. Though the repetition of the same name in every other generation is common in Greece, there is no certain evidence for either position. Accurate dates for Praxiteles are elusive, but it is that he was no longer working in the time of Alexander the Great, in the absence of evidence that Alexander employed Praxiteles, as he would have done. Pliny's date, 364 BC, is that of one of his most noted works.
The subjects chosen by Praxiteles were either human beings or the dignified and less elderly deities such as Apollo and Aphrodite rather than Zeus, Poseidon or Themis. Praxiteles and his school worked entirely in marble. At the time the marble quarries of Paros were at their best; some of the statues of Praxiteles were coloured by the painter Nicias, in the opinion of the sculptor they gained by this treatment. In 1911, the Encyclopædia Britannica noted that "Our knowledge of Praxiteles has received a great addition, has been placed on a satisfactory basis, by the discovery at Olympia in 1877 of his statue of Hermes with the Infant Dionysus, a statue which has become famous throughout the world." Opinions have varied, reaching a low with the sculptor Aristide Maillol, who railed, "It's kitsch, it's frightful, it's sculpted in soap from Marseille". In 1948, Carl Blümel published it in a monograph as The Hermes of a Praxiteles, reversing his earlier opinion that it was a Roman copy, finding it not 4th century either but referring it instead to a Hellenistic sculptor, a younger Praxiteles of Pergamon.
The sculpture was located where Pausanias had seen it in the late 2nd century AD. Hermes is represented in the act of carrying the child Dionysus to the nymphs who were charged with his rearing; the uplifted right arm is missing, but the possibility that the god holds out to the child a bunch of grapes to excite his desire would reduce the subject to a genre figure, C. Waldstein noted in 1882, remarking that Hermes looks past the child, "the clearest and most manifest outward sign of inward dreaming"; the statue is today exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Olympia. Opposing arguments have been made that the statue is a copy by a Roman copyist of a work by Praxiteles that the Romans had purloined. Mary Wallace suggested a Pergamene origin on the basis of the sandal type. Other assertions have been attempted by scholars to prove the origins of the statue on the basis of the unfinished back, the appearance of the drapery, the technique used with the drilling of the hair. Other works that appear to be copies of Praxiteles' sculpture express the same gracefulness in repose and indefinable charm as the'Hermes and Infant Dionysus'.
Among the most notable of these are the Apollo Sauroktonos, or the lizard-slayer, which portrays a youth leaning against a tree and idly striking with an arrow at a lizard. Several Roman copies from the 1st century are known including those at the Louvre Museum, the Vatican Museums, the National Museums Liverpool; the Aphrodite of Cnidus at the Vatican Museums is a copy of the statue made by Praxiteles for the people of Cnidus, by them valued so that they refused to sell it to King Nicomedes in exchange for discharging the city's enormous debt. On June 22, 2004, the Cleveland Museum of Art, announced the acquisition of an ancient bronze sculpture of Apollo Sauroktonos; the work is alleged to be the only near-complete original work by Praxiteles, though the dating and attribution of the sculpture will continue to be studied. The work was to be included in the 2007 Praxiteles exhibition organized by the Louvre Museum in Paris, but pressure from Greece, which disputes the work's provenance and legal ownership, caused the French to exclude it from the show.
The Apollo Lykeios or Lycian Apollo, another Apollo-type reclining on a tree, is attributed to Praxiteles. It shows the god resting on a support, his right arm touching the top of his head, his hair fixed in braids on the top of a head in a haircut typical of childhood, it is called "Lycian" not after Lycia itself, but after its identification with a lost work described by Lucian as being on show in the Lykeion, one of the gymnasia of Athens. The Resting Satyr of the Capitol at Rome has been regarded as a copy of one of the Satyrs of Praxiteles, but it cannot be identified in the list of his works. Moreover, the style is poor; the attitude and character of the work are of Praxitelean school. Excavations at Mantineia in Arcadia have brought to light the base of a group of Leto and Artemis by Prax
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