1.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
2.
Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
3.
Venice
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Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is situated across a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and these are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, the lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a World Heritage Site. In 2014,264,579 people resided in Comune di Venezia, together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, with a total population of 2.6 million. PATREVE is a metropolitan area without any degree of autonomy. The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC, the city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice. Venice has been known as the La Dominante, Serenissima, Queen of the Adriatic, City of Water, City of Masks, City of Bridges, The Floating City, and City of Canals. The City State of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center which gradually emerged from the 9th century to its peak in the 14th century and this made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. It is also known for its several important artistic movements, especially the Renaissance period, Venice has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and it is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi. Venice has been ranked the most beautiful city in the world as of 2016, the name Venetia, however, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti, and called by the Greeks Eneti. The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti, Baltic Veneti, and the Slavic Wends. Linguists suggest that the name is based on an Indo-European root *wen, so that *wenetoi would mean beloved, lovable, a connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning the color sea-blue, is also possible. The alternative obsolete form is Vinegia, some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen on the islands in the original marshy lagoons. They were referred to as incolae lacunae, the traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo on the islet of Rialto — said to have taken place at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421. Beginning as early as AD166 to 168, the Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the center in the area. The Roman defences were again overthrown in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and, some 50 years later, New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. The tribuni maiores, the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the Lagoon, the traditional first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio Anafesto, was actually Exarch Paul, and his successor, Marcello Tegalliano, was Pauls magister militum. In 726 the soldiers and citizens of the Exarchate rose in a rebellion over the controversy at the urging of Pope Gregory II
4.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery 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 age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
5.
Accademia di San Luca
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Other founders included Girolamo Muziano and Pietro Olivieri. The Academy was named after Saint Luke the evangelist who, legend has it, made a portrait of the Virgin Mary, designed by the Baroque architect, Pietro da Cortona, its main facade overlooks the Forum. Included among its members, was the famous painter Melozzo da Forlì. In 1605, Pope Paul V granted the Academy the right to pardon a condemned man on the feast of St. Luke. In the 1620s, Urban VIII extended its rights to decide who was considered an artist in Rome and it came under the patronage of his nephew, in 1633, Urban VIII gave it the right to tax all artists as well as art-dealers, and monopolize all public commissions. These latter measures raised strong opposition and apparently were poorly enforced, over the early years, the papal authorities exerted a large degree of control over the leadership of the institution. Some modern critics have stated with the purpose of giving artists a higher education. The prìncipi of the institution have included some of the pre-eminent painters of the 17th century, including Domenichino, Bernini, Cortona, however, many prominent artists never joined or were admitted to the academy. Artistic issues debated within the Academy included the Cortona-Sacchi controversy about the number of figures in a painting, disdain was espressed by many academicians for the Bamboccianti. Giovanni Bellori gave famous lectures on painting in the Academy, in the early 18th century, the painter Marco Benefial was inducted, and then expelled for criticizing the academy as an insider. The Academy is still active, the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca is its modern descendant, from the very beginning, the statutes of the Academy directed that each candidate-academician was to donate a work of his art in perpetual memory and, later, a portrait. Prominent artists to become Principi of the academy over the first 200 years include, Claude Lorrain was a member, the Academy can also boast modern members, including sculptors Ernesto Biondi and Piccirilli Brothers. Accademia Nazionale di San Luca Official site Galleria Nazionale di San Luca Accademia San Luca The History of the Accademia di San Luca, 1590–1635, Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma
6.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
7.
Adam Elsheimer
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Adam Elsheimer was a German artist working in Rome who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century in the field of Baroque paintings. His relatively few paintings were small scale, nearly all painted on copper plates and they include a variety of light effects, and an innovative treatment of landscape. He was an influence on other artists, including Rembrandt. Elsheimer was born in Frankfurt am Main, one of ten children and his fathers house was a few metres from the church where Albrecht Dürers Heller Altarpiece was then displayed. He was apprenticed to the artist Philipp Uffenbach and he probably visited Strasbourg in 1596. At the age of twenty, he travelled to Italy via Munich and his stay in Venice is undocumented, but the influence on his style is clear. He probably worked as an assistant to Johann Rottenhammer, some of whose drawings he owned, Rottenhammer was a German who had been living in Italy for some years, and was the first German painter to specialize in cabinet paintings. In early 1600, Elsheimer arrived in Rome and quickly made friends with contacts of Rottenhammer, notably Giovanni Faber, a Papal doctor, botanist and collector originally from Bamberg. He was Curator of the Vatican Botanical Garden, and a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, a small intellectual coterie founded in 1603, like Faber, Bril was a long-term resident in Rome who had converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism, as Elsheimer did later. Both Faber and Bril knew Rubens, who was in Rome in 1601, and he knew David Teniers the Elder, recently Rubens pupil, and there is evidence that they lodged together. In 1604 Karel van Mander, a Dutchman recently returned from Rome, published his Schilder-Boeck which praised Elsheimers work and he also spent much time in churches, studying the works of the masters. Other writers mention his exceptional memory, his melancholy and his kind-heartedness. In 1606, Elsheimer married Carola Antonia Stuarda da Francoforte, the son was not mentioned in a census a year later, possibly because he had been put out to a wet-nurse. She was the recent widow of the artist Nicolas de Breul and after Elsheimers death remarried an Italian artist, Ascanio Quercia, Elsheimer converted to Catholicism by 1608. He was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca, the Roman painters Guild, in 1606, in spite of his fame and talents, he appears to have both lived and died in difficult financial circumstances. Elsheimers painting of Tobias and the Angel was especially well received because of its new conception of landscape and this picture was engraved by Count Hendrick Goudt and as a result was published across Europe. However, his association with Goudt, who lodged and trained him for several years, was difficult. Elsheimer seems to have borrowed money from Goudt, which according to one account resulted in his incarceration in Debtors prison
8.
Cabinet painting
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A cabinet painting is a small painting, typically no larger than about two feet in either dimension, but often much smaller. This room might be used as a study or office, or just a sitting room, heating the main rooms in large palaces or mansions in the winter was difficult, and small rooms were more comfortable. They also offered more privacy from servants or other members or visitors. Typically, such a room would be for the use of a single individual, names varied, cabinet, closet, study, office and others. Later such paintings might be housed in a case, which might also be called a cabinet. Other small precious objects, including paintings, curiosities of all sorts, old master prints, books, small sculptures and so on. There is a rare surviving cabinet with its contents probably little changed since the eighteenth century at Ham House in Richmond. It is less than ten feet square, and leads off from the Long Gallery, as is often the case, it has an excellent view of the front entrance to the house, so that comings and going can be observed. Most surviving large houses or palaces, especially from before 1700, have such rooms, the magnificent Mannerist Studiolo of Francesco I Medici in Florence is rather larger than most examples, and rather atypical in that most of the paintings were commissioned for the room. These were designed to be picked up and handled, even fondled, small antiquities were also very commonly displayed in such rooms, including coins. Small paintings have been produced at all periods of Western art, raphael produced many cabinet paintings, and all the paintings of the important German artist Adam Elsheimer could be so described. The works of two were much copied. The Dutch artists of the century had an enormous output of small paintings. The painters of the Leiden School were especially noted Fijnschilders – fine painters producing highly finished small works, watteau, Fragonard and other French 18th-century artists produced many small works, generally emphasizing spirit and atmosphere rather than a detailed finish. The term is not as common as it was in the 19th century, a cabinet miniature is a larger portrait miniature, usually full-length and typically up to about ten inches high. These were first painted in England, from the end of the 1580s, initially by Nicholas Hilliard, in 1991, an exhibition entitled Cabinet Painting toured London, Hove Museum and Art Gallery and Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum, Swansea. It included more than sixty cabinet paintings by contemporary artists
9.
Icarus
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In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth. Often depicted in art, Icarus and his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers. Icarus father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, Icarus ignored his fathers instructions not to fly too close to the sun, when the wax in his wings melted and he fell into the sea. This tragic theme of failure at the hands of hubris contains similarities to that of Phaëthon. Minos imprisoned Daedalus himself in the labyrinth because he gave Minoss daughter, Ariadne, a clew in order to help Theseus, Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Daedalus tried his wings first, but before trying to escape the island, he warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared into the sky, but in the process he came too close to the sun, heracles erected a tomb for him. Icarus flight was often alluded to by Greek poets in passing, in the literature of ancient Rome, the myth was of interest to Augustan writers. Hyginus narrates it in Fabula 40, beginning with the love affair of Pasiphaë, daughter of the Sun. Ovid narrates the story of Icarus at some length in the Metamorphoses, auden and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams. Literary interpretation has found in the myth the structure and consequence of personal over-ambition, an Icarus-related study of the Daedalus myth was published by the French hellenist Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux. In psychology there have been studies of the Icarus complex with respect to the alleged relationship between fascination for fire, enuresis, high ambition, and ascensionism. In the psychiatric mind features of disease were perceived in the shape of the pendulous emotional ecstatic-high, the Greek Myths, section 92 passim Smith, William, ed. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology Pinsent, J. Greek Mythology
10.
Santa Maria della Scala
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Santa Maria della Scala is a titular church in Rome, Italy, located in the Trastevere rione. Cardinal Ernest Simoni will take possession of the church on February 11,2017. The church was built between 1593 and 1610 to honor a miraculous icon of the Madonna, tradition holds that the icon, when placed on the landing of a staircase of a neighboring house of a mother who prayed before it, had cured her deformed child. Consecrated to Mary, mother of Jesus, it enshrines that icon in the north transept and it was sited adjacent to a monastery famous for containing the Papal courts 17th century pharmacy. In 1650, nearly fifty years after the completion, Carlo Rainaldi designed for the church a tempietto-shaped baldachino with 16 slender jasper Corinthian columns. The church also contains The Beheading of St. John the Baptist by the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst, the latter replaces Caravaggios earlier, and more controversial version. Rumors held Caravaggio had used a prostitute as a model for the dead virgin, san Giuseppe Hall houses a collection by Tito Sarrocchi. Biblioteca Communale Media related to Santa Maria della Scala at Wikimedia Commons
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