1.
Frederic Leighton
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Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton PRA, known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was an English painter and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter, Leighton was bearer of the shortest-lived peerage in history, after only one day his hereditary peerage ended with his death. Leighton was born in Scarborough to a family in the import and export business and he was educated at University College School, London. He then received his training on the European continent, first from Eduard von Steinle. When he was 24 he was in Florence, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, from 1855 to 1859 he lived in Paris, where he met Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Millet. In 1860, he moved to London, where he associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and he designed Elizabeth Barrett Brownings tomb for Robert Browning in the English Cemetery, Florence in 1861. In 1864 he became an associate of the Royal Academy and in 1878 he became its President and his 1877 sculpture, Athlete Wrestling with a Python, was considered at its time to inaugurate a renaissance in contemporary British sculpture, referred to as the New Sculpture. American art critic Earl Shinn claimed at the time that Except Leighton and his paintings represented Britain at the great 1900 Paris Exhibition. Leighton was knighted at Windsor in 1878, and was created a baronet, of Holland Park Road in the Parish of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in the County of Middlesex, eight years later. He was the first painter to be given a peerage, in the New Year Honours List of 1896, the patent creating him Baron Leighton, of Stretton in the County of Shropshire, was issued on 24 January 1896, Leighton died the next day of angina pectoris. Leighton remained a bachelor and rumours of his having a child with one of his models in addition to the supposition that Leighton may have been homosexual continue to be debated today. He certainly enjoyed an intense and romantically tinged relationship with the poet Henry William Greville whom he met in Florence in 1856, the older man showered Leighton in letters, but the romantic affection seems not to have been reciprocated. Enquiry is furthermore hindered by the fact that Leighton left no diaries, after his death his Barony was extinguished after existing for only a day, this is a record in the Peerage. His house in Holland Park, London has been turned into a museum, the house also features many of Leightons inspirations, including his collection of Iznik tiles. Its centrepiece is the magnificent Arab Hall, the Hall is featured in issue ten of Cornucopia. A blue plaque commemorates Leighton at Leighton House Museum, Leighton was an enthusiastic volunteer soldier, enrolling with the first group to join the 38th Middlesex Rifle volunteers on 5 October 1860. His qualities of leadership were identified, and he was promoted to command A Company within a few months. On 6 January 1869 Captain Leighton was elected to command The Artists Rifles by a meeting of the corps
2.
Oil painting
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Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, the choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium, the oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages, Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. In recent years, water miscible oil paint has come to prominence and, to some extent, water-soluble paints contain an emulsifier that allows them to be thinned with water rather than paint thinner, and allows very fast drying times when compared with traditional oils. Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the subject onto the canvas with charcoal or thinned paint, Oil paint is usually mixed with linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits, or other solvents to make the paint thinner, faster or slower-drying. A basic rule of oil paint application is fat over lean and this means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the painting will crack. This rule does not ensure permanence, it is the quality and type of oil leads to a strong. There are many media that can be used with the oil, including cold wax, resins. These aspects of the paint are closely related to the capacity of oil paint. Traditionally, paint was transferred to the surface using paintbrushes. Oil paint remains wet longer than other types of artists materials, enabling the artist to change the color. At times, the painter might even remove a layer of paint. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a time while the paint is wet, Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch within a span of two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year, art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old
3.
Canvas
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Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also used by artists as a painting surface. It is also used in such objects as handbags, electronic device cases. The word canvas is derived from the 13th century Anglo-French canevaz, both may be derivatives of the Vulgar Latin cannapaceus for made of hemp, originating from the Greek κάνναβις. Modern canvas is made of cotton or linen, although. It differs from other cotton fabrics, such as denim. Canvas comes in two types, plain and duck. The threads in duck canvas are more tightly woven, the term duck comes from the Dutch word for cloth, doek. In the United States, canvas is classified in two ways, by weight and by a number system. The numbers run in reverse of the weight so a number 10 canvas is lighter than number 4, canvas has become the most common support medium for oil painting, replacing wooden panels. One of the earliest surviving oils on canvas is a French Madonna with angels from around 1410 in the Gemäldegalerie, however, panel painting remained more common until the 16th century in Italy and the 17th century in Northern Europe. Mantegna and Venetian artists were among those leading the change, Venetian sail canvas was readily available, as lead-based paint is poisonous, care has to be taken in using it. Early canvas was made of linen, a sturdy brownish fabric of considerable strength, linen is particularly suitable for the use of oil paint. In the early 20th century, cotton canvas, often referred to as cotton duck, linen is composed of higher quality material, and remains popular with many professional artists, especially those who work with oil paint. Cotton duck, which stretches more fully and has an even, mechanical weave, the advent of acrylic paint has greatly increased the popularity and use of cotton duck canvas. Linen and cotton derive from two different plants, the flax plant and the cotton plant, respectively. Gessoed canvases on stretchers are also available and they are available in a variety of weights, light-weight is about 4 oz or 5 oz, medium-weight is about 7 oz or 8 oz, heavy-weight is about 10 oz or 12 oz. They are prepared with two or three coats of gesso and are ready for use straight away, artists desiring greater control of their painting surface may add a coat or two of their preferred gesso
4.
Royal Collection
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The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family and the largest private art collection in the world. The Queen owns some objects in the collection in right of the Crown, the Queens Gallery at Buckingham Palace in London was built specially to exhibit pieces from the collection on a rotating basis. There is an art gallery next to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The Crown Jewels are on display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. About 3,000 objects are on loan to museums throughout the world, few items from before King Henry VIII survive. The most important additions to the collection were made by Charles I, a collector of Italian paintings. Many works have been given from the collection to museums, especially by George III and Victoria, in particular, most of the then royal library was given by George III to the British Museum, now the British Library, where many books are still catalogued as Royal. The core of this collection was the purchase by James I of the collections of Humphrey Llwyd, Lord Lumley. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth II, there have been significant additions to the collection through purchases, bequests and through gifts from nation states. Numbering over 7,000 works, spread across the Royal Residences, numbering over 300 items, the Royal Collection holds one of the greatest and most important collections of French furniture ever assembled. The collection is noted for its range as well as counting the greatest cabinet-makers of the Ancien Régime. The Royal Collection is privately owned, although some of the works are displayed in areas of palaces, some of the collection is owned by the monarch personally, and everything else is described as being held in trust by the monarch in right of the Crown. All works of art acquired by monarchs up to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 are heirlooms which fall into the latter category. Items the British royal family acquired later, including official gifts, ambiguity surrounds the status of objects that have come into Queen Elizabeth IIs possession during her reign. The Royal Collection Trust has confirmed that all pieces left to the Queen by the Queen Mother belong to her personally, non-personal items are said to be inalienable as they can only be willed to the monarchs successor. The legal accuracy of this claim has never been substantiated in court, in a 2000 television interview, the Duke of Edinburgh said that the Queen was technically, perfectly at liberty to sell them. In 1995, Iain Sproat, then Secretary of State for National Heritage, a registered charity, the Royal Collection Trust was set up in 1993 after the Windsor Castle fire with a mandate to conserve the works and enhance the publics appreciation and understanding of art. It employs around 500 staff and is one of the five departments of the Royal Household, buildings do not come under its remit
5.
Oil sketch
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An Oil sketch or oil study is an artwork made primarily in oil paint in preparation for a larger, finished work. Originally these were created as preparatory studies or modelli, especially so as to gain approval for the design of a commissioned painting. They were also used as designs for specialists in other media, such as printmaking or tapestry, later they were produced as independent works, often with no thought of being expanded into a full-size painting. The usual medium for modelli was the drawing, but an oil sketch, even if done in a range of colours. It is also possible to fully convey the flow and energy of a composition in paint. For a painter with exceptional technique, the production of an oil sketch may be as rapid as that of a drawing, sometimes a number of sketches for the same composition have survived. In the early 17th century the oil sketch became widely used, Rubens made great use of them, as working studies, and as modelli for clients, his own assistants, engravers and tapestry-makers. Their degree of finish varies accordingly, the Magistrate of Brussels, recognised in England in 2013, may be a Van Dyck portrait oil sketch. Perhaps the first to produce oil sketches as independent works was Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and he grew up and trained in Genoa, and apparently had contact with both Rubens and Van Dyck during their stays there. He produced a number of small works, mostly on paper, in a mixture of mediums - drawings or gouaches finished in oil, oils with pen details - in fact. Detail is typically restricted to a few key points, with much of the subject conveyed in impressionistic fashion, by this time a collectors market for studies in drawing was well developed, and there was appreciation of their energy and freedom. Castigliones sketches to some extent seem to trade off this appreciation, at roughly the same time Jean Fragonard was producing a series of virtuosic Figures de fantaisie, half-length portraits of imaginary subjects, purporting to have been painted in an hour. By the 19th century oil sketches, often referred to as oil studies if from this period, had become very common, the popularity of the oil sketch engendered the need to formulate distinctions. The esquisse, or oil sketch, tended to be inspirational or imaginative, often originating in literature or art, delacroix, Géricault, Manet and Degas are other artists who often used them. For some oil sketches Degas painted in essence, a technique by which the oil had been all but removed from the pigment, seurat made many careful small oil sketches for his larger works. However, with the advent of Impressionism, and then Modernism, the abandonment by many artists of a high level of detail and finish in favor of a more painterly and spontaneous approach, reduced the distinction between a detailed sketch and a finished painting. Sketches by Rubens or Tiepolo, for example, are at least as highly finished as many 20th century oil paintings, many artists, especially those working in more traditional styles, still use oil sketches today.7 million
6.
History of art
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The history of art is the history of any activity or product made by humans in a visual form for aesthetical or communicative purposes, expressing ideas, emotions or, in general, a worldview. The subsequent expansion of the list of arts in the 20th century reached to nine, architecture, dance, sculpture, music, painting, poetry, film, photography. The study of the history of art was developed during the Renaissance. Today, art enjoys a network of study, dissemination and preservation of all the artistic legacy of mankind throughout history. The rise of media has been crucial in improving the study, international events and exhibitions like the Whitney Biennial and biennales of Venice and São Paulo or the Documenta of Kassel have helped the development of new styles and trends. Institutions like UNESCO, with the establishment of the World Heritage Site lists, the field of art history was developed in the West, and originally dealt exclusively with European art history, with the High Renaissance as the defining standard. Gradually, over the course of the 20th century, a vision of art history has developed. This expanded version includes societies from across the globe, and it attempts to analyze artifacts in terms of the cultural values in which they were created. Thus, art history is now seen to all visual art. The history of art is often told as a chronology of masterpieces created in each civilization and it can thus be framed as a story of high culture, epitomized by the Wonders of the World. On the other hand, vernacular art expressions can also be integrated into art historical narratives, in the latter cases art objects may be referred to as archeological artifacts. One way to examine how art history is organized is by examining the major survey textbooks, information on canonical art history is also found in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, which is sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The first tangible artifacts of human art that have found are from the Stone Age. During the Paleolithic, humans practiced hunting and gathering and lived in caves, in the Bronze Age, the first protohistoric civilizations arose. The Paleolithic had its first artistic manifestation in 25,000 BCE, the first traces of human-made objects appeared in southern Africa, the Western Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, Siberia, India and Australia. These first traces are generally worked stone, wood or bone tools, to paint in red, iron oxide was used, in black, manganese oxide and in ochre, clay. Surviving art from this period includes small carvings in stone or bone, cave paintings have been found in the Franco-Cantabrian region. There are pictures with magical-religious character and also pictures with a naturalistic sense, sculpture is represented by the so-called Venus figurines, feminine figures which were probably used in fertility cults, such as the Venus of Willendorf
7.
Giorgio Vasari
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Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
8.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
9.
Cimabue
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Cimabue, also known as Cenni di Pepo or Cenni di Pepi, was a Florentine painter and designer of mosaics. Although heavily influenced by Byzantine models, Cimabue is generally regarded as one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style, according to Italian painter and historian Giorgio Vasari, Cimabue was the teacher of Giotto, the first great artist of the Italian Proto-Renaissance. However, many scholars today tend to discount Vasaris claim, citing earlier sources which suggest this was not the case, little is known about Cimabues early life. One source that recounts his career is Giorgio Vasaris Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and he was born in Florence and died in Pisa. Hayden Maginnis speculates he could have trained in Florence under masters culturally connected to Byzantine art, many scholars today discount Vasaris claim that he later had Giotto as his pupil, citing earlier sources which suggest this was not the case. Cimabues Christ is bent and the clothes have the golden striations introduced by Coppo di Marcovaldo, around 1272 Cimabue is documented as being present in Rome, and a little later he made another Crucifix for the Florentine church of Santa Croce. In the same period, Cimabue painted the Maestà, originally displayed in the church of San Francesco at Pisa and this work established a style which was followed subsequently by numerous artists, including Duccio di Buoninsegna in his Rucellai Madonna, as well as Giotto. A workshop painting, perhaps assignable to a later period, is the Maestà with Saints Francis. During the pontificate of Pope Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pope, at Assisi, in the transept of the Lower Basilica of San Francesco, he created a fresco named Madonna with Child Enthroned, Four Angels and St Francis. The left portion of this fresco is lost, but it may have shown St Anthony of Padua, Cimabue was subsequently commissioned to decorate the apse and the transept of the Upper Basilica of Assisi, in the same period of time that Roman artists were decorating the nave. The cycle he created there comprises scenes from the Gospels, the lives of the Virgin Mary, St Peter and these paintings are now in poor condition due to the oxidation of the brighter colors which the artist used. The Maestà of Santa Trinità, dated to c, 1290–1300, which was originally painted for the church of Santa Trinità in Florence, is now in the Uffizi Gallery. The softer expression of the characters suggests that it was influenced by Giotto, Cimabue spent the last period of his life,1301 to 1302, in Pisa. There he was commissioned to finish a mosaic of Christ Enthroned, originally begun by Maestro Francesco, Cimabue was to create the part of the mosaic depicting St John the Evangelist, which remains the sole surviving work documented as being by the artist. Cimabue died around the year 1302. he would destroy the work. His nickname, Cenni di Pepo, translates as ‘bull-head’, but also possibly as ‘one who crushes the views of others’, from the Latin word cimare, meaning top, shear, and blunt. The conclusion for the meaning is drawn from similar commentaries on Dante. History has long regarded Cimabue as the last of an era that was overshadowed by the Italian Renaissance, in painting Cimabue thought he held the field but now its Giotto has the cry, so that the others fame is dimmed
10.
Santa Maria Novella
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Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated just across from the main railway station named after it. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the citys principal Dominican church, the church, the adjoining cloister, and chapter house contain a multiplicity of art treasures and funerary monuments. Especially famous are frescoes by masters of Gothic and early Renaissance and they were financed by the most important Florentine families, who ensured themselves funerary chapels on consecrated ground. This church was called Novella because it was built on the site of the 9th-century oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne, when the site was assigned to Dominican Order in 1221, they decided to build a new church and adjoining cloister. The church was designed by two Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi, building began in the mid-13th century, and was finished about 1360 under the supervision of Friar Iacopo Talenti with the completion of the Romanesque-Gothic bell tower and sacristy. At that time, only the part of the Tuscan gothic façade was finished. This same design continues in the wall around the old churchyard. The church was consecrated in 1420, alberti had also designed the façade for the Rucellai Palace in Florence. The four columns with Corinthian capitals on the part of the façade were also added. The pediment and the frieze are clearly inspired by antiquity, but the S-curved scrolls in the part are new. The scrolls, found in all over Italy, all draw their origins from the design of this church. The frieze below the pediment carries the name of the patron, the vast interior is based on a basilica plan, designed as a Latin cross, and is divided into a nave, two aisles with stained-glass windows and a short transept. The large nave is 100 metres long and gives an impression of austerity, there is a trompe loeil effect by which towards the apse the nave seems longer than its actual length. The slender compound piers between the nave and the aisles are progressively closer the deeper the observer moves into the nave, the ceiling in the vault consists of pointed arches with the four diagonal buttresses in black and white. The interior also contains Corinthian columns that were inspired by Greek, the stained-glass windows date from the 14th and 15th century, such as 15th century Madonna and Child and St. John and St. Philip, both in the Filippo Strozzi Chapel. Some stained glass windows have been damaged in the course of centuries and have been replaced, the one on the façade, a depiction of the Coronation of Mary, dates from the 14th century, and is based on a design of Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze. The pulpit, commissioned by the Rucellai family in 1443, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and this pulpit has a particular historical significance, since it was from this pulpit that the first verbal attack was made on Galileo Galilei, leading eventually to his indictment. The Holy Trinity, situated almost halfway along the aisle, is a pioneering early Renaissance work of Masaccio, showing his new ideas about perspective
11.
Laurel wreath
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A laurel wreath is a circular wreath made of interlocking branches and leaves of the bay laurel, an aromatic broadleaf evergreen, or later from spineless butchers broom or cherry laurel. In Greek mythology, Apollo is represented wearing a wreath on his head. Whereas ancient laurel wreaths are most often depicted as a horseshoe shape, in common modern idiomatic usage it refers to a victory. In some countries the laurel wreath is used as a symbol of the masters degree, the wreath is given to young masters at the university graduation ceremony. The word laureate in poet laureate refers to the laurel wreath, the medieval Florentine poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri, a graduate of the Sicilian School, is often represented in paintings and sculpture wearing a laurel wreath. In Italy, the term laureato is used in to refer to any student who has graduated, right after the graduation ceremony, or laurea in Italian, the student receives a laurel wreath to wear for the rest of the day. This tradition originated at the University of Padua and has spread in the last two centuries to all Italian universities, at Connecticut College in the United States, members of the junior class carry a laurel chain, which the seniors pass through during commencement. It represents nature and the continuation of life from year to year, at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA, laurel has been a fixture of commencement traditions since 1900, when graduating students carried or wore laurel wreaths. In 1902, the chain of laurel was introduced, since then, tradition has been for seniors to parade around the campus, carrying. The mountain laurel represents the bay used by the Romans in wreaths. At Reed College in Portland, Oregon, United States, members of the senior class receive laurel wreaths upon submitting their senior thesis in May, the tradition stems from the use of laurel wreaths in athletic competitions, the seniors have crossed the finish line, so to speak. In Sweden, those receiving a doctorate or a doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy. In Finland, in University of Helsinki a laurel wreath is given during the ceremony of conferral for masterss degree, doctors wear special kind of Doctoral hat. The laurel wreath is a motif in architecture, furniture. The laurel wreath is seen carved in the stone and decorative works of Robert Adam, and in Federal, Regency, Directoire. In decorative arts, especially during the Empire period, the wreath is seen woven in textiles, inlaid in marquetry. Alfa Romeo added a wreath to their logo after they won the inaugural Automobile World Championship in 1925 with the P2 racing car. Laurel wreaths are used in heraldry
12.
Giotto
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Giotto di Bondone, known mononymously as Giotto and Latinized as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of artists who contributed to the Renaissance. Giottos masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel and this fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile of Florences Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Tradition holds that Giotto was born in a farmhouse, perhaps at Colle di Romagnano or Romignano, since 1850, a tower house in nearby Colle Vespignano has borne a plaque claiming the honor of his birthplace, an assertion commercially publicized. However, recent research has suggested that he was born in Florence. His fathers name was Bondone, and he is described in surviving records as a person of good standing. Most authors accept that Giotto was his name, but it is likely to have been an abbreviation of Ambrogio or Angelo. The year of his birth is calculated from the fact that Antonio Pucci, however, the word seventy fits into the rhyme of the poem better than would have a longer and more complex age, so it is possible that Pucci used artistic license. In his Lives, Giorgio Vasari states that Giotto was a shepherd boy, the great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Giotto and asked if he could take him on as an apprentice, Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of stories about Giottos skill as a young artist. He tells of one occasion when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, later when Cimabue returned, he tried in vain several times to brush the fly off. The messenger departed ill pleased, not doubting that he had made a fool of. The messenger brought other artists drawings back to the Pope in addition to Giottos, many scholars today are uncertain about Giottos training, and consider Vasaris account that he was Cimabues pupil as legend, citing earlier sources which suggest that Giotto was not Cimabues pupil. About 1290, Giotto married Ciuta, the daughter of Lapo del Pela of Florence, the marriage produced four daughters and four sons, one of whom became a painter. By 1301, Giotto owned a house in Florence, and when he was not traveling he would return there and live in comfort with his family
