1.
Chariot clock
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Normally of classical mythology subject matter, it has been made in different periods and styles such as Renaissance, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Empire, Napoleon III, Art Deco, etc. They were selfmoving wheeled tabletop clocks that included automata figurines and some a musical movement too, the German examples have not the dial inserted in the wheel, but in the seat or some other place. Most of them were fabricated in Augsburg, although several existing clocks cannot be located due to the lack of inscriptions or hallmarks and are therefore ascribed only to South German workshops and these rare and at those days very costly pieces were only afforded by the nobility and royal courts. Its revival was inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquers and victories in battles, though it continued to be in vogue after his definitive fall in 1815. Its popularity in much of Europe gave rise to a diversity of models, allowing the fullest opportunity for the sculptor and bronzier to express their creativity. The freedom of trade initiated by the French Revolution allowed many casters and they took advantage of this opportunity to execute all stages of bronze making within one factory and drew, cast, gilded, assembled and sold objects of their own workshops. Artisans still benefited from training and worked according to the standards of a luxury art from the ancien régime. Once freed from the constraints, the artists were able to give free rein to their imagination. They also have a power with evocative themes and narrative scenes in relief at the base. Apart from France, in the first quarter of the 19th century, although to a lesser extent, Empire style chariot clocks were also fabricated in Austria, England. In the United States, the New Haven clock company produced a model in the early 20th century, among the range of models of the French company Berlot-Mussier there were one in the Art Deco style with the case made out of faience they sold in the 1930s. Replicas of Empire style chariot clocks, automaton chariot clock with Minerva, fitted with a musical movement. Appraisal of an Empire style chariot clock, c
2.
National Statuary Hall
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National Statuary Hall is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. The hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, is a large, two-story and it is located immediately south of the Rotunda. The meeting place of the U. S. House of Representatives for nearly 50 years, the Hall is built in the shape of an ancient amphitheater and is one of the earliest examples of Neoclassical architecture in America. While most wall surfaces are painted plaster, the low gallery walls, around the rooms perimeter stand colossal columns of variegated breccia marble quarried along the Potomac River. The Corinthian capitals of white marble were carved in Carrara, Italy, a lantern in the fireproof cast-steel ceiling admits natural light into the Hall. The chamber floor is laid with black and white marble tiles, only two of the many statues presently in the room were commissioned for display in the original Hall of the House. Enrico Causicis neoclassical plaster Liberty and the Eagle looks out over the Hall from a niche above the colonnade behind what was once the Speakers rostrum, the sandstone relief eagle in the frieze of the entablature below was carved by Giuseppe Valaperta. Above the door leading into the Rotunda is the Car of History by Carlo Franzoni and this neoclassical marble sculpture depicts Clio, the Muse of History, riding in the chariot of Time and recording events in the chamber below. The wheel of the chariot contains the clock, the works are by Simon Willard. It has been said that John Quincy Adams took advantage of the Halls acoustics to eavesdrop on other members conversing on the side of the room. To test the acoustics today, one party should stand near the floor plaque marking Adams desk on the West side of the Hall while the party stands at the corresponding spot on the East side. However, this is only a myth, as the current half dome, the Adams story began long after Adams death as a tourist gimmick, according to Capitol historian William C. Though echoes were a significant problem, there is no documentation of a whisper spot prior to the twentieth century. This chamber is the hall and third meeting place built for the House of Representatives in this location. Prior to this, the House members met in a squat, oval, temporary building known as the Oven, which had been hastily erected in 1801. The first permanent Hall, designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, was completed in 1807, however, the Hall was rebuilt in its present form by Latrobe and his successor, Charles Bulfinch, between 1815 and 1819. Unfortunately, the smooth, curved ceiling promoted annoying echoes, making it difficult to conduct business, various attempts to improve the acoustics, including hanging draperies and reversing the seating arrangement, proved unsuccessful. The only solution to this problem was to build an entirely new Hall, in 1850, a new Hall was authorized, and the House moved into its present chamber in the new House wing in 1857
3.
Artemisia Gentileschi
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Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the community or patrons. She painted many pictures of strong and suffering women from myth and her best-known work is Judith Slaying Holofernes, which shows the decapitation of Holofernes, a scene of horrific struggle and blood-letting. That she was a painting in the seventeenth century and that she was raped and participated in the prosecution of the rapist long overshadowed her achievements as an artist. For many years she was regarded as a curiosity, today she is regarded as one of the most progressive and expressive painters of her generation. Artemisia was introduced to painting in her fathers workshop, showing much more talent than her brothers and she learned drawing, how to mix color, and how to paint. Since her fathers style took inspiration from Caravaggio during that period and her approach to subject matter was different from her fathers, however, as her paintings are highly naturalistic, where Orazios are idealized. At the same time, Artemisia had to resist the traditional attitude and psychological submission to this brainwashing, by doing so, she gained great respect and recognition for her work. The first work of the young seventeen-year-old Artemisia was the Susanna e i Vecchioni, at the time some, influenced by the prevailing misconceptions, suspected that she was helped by her father. The painting shows how Artemisia assimilated the realism of Caravaggio without being indifferent to the language of the Bologna school and it is one of the few paintings on the theme of Susanna showing the sexual accosting by the two Elders as a traumatic event. During this tutelage, Tassi raped Artemisia, another man, Cosimo Quorlis, was also involved. After the rape, Artemisia continued to have relations with Tassi, with the expectation that they were going to be married and with the hope to restore her dignity. Tassi reneged on his promise to marry Artemisia, nine months after the rape, when he learnt that Artemisia and Tassi were not going to be married, Orazio pressed charges against Tassi. Orazio also claimed that Tassi stole a painting of Judith from the Gentileschi household, the major issue of this trial was the fact that Tassi had taken Artemisias virginity. If Artemisia had not been a virgin before Tassi raped her, during the ensuing seven-month trial, it was discovered that Tassi had planned to murder his wife, had engaged in adultery with his sister-in-law, and planned to steal some of Orazio’s paintings. During the trial, Artemisia was subjected to a gynecological examination, at the end of the trial Tassi was sentenced to imprisonment for one year, although he never served the time. The trial influenced the feminist view of Artemisia Gentileschi during the twentieth century. Artemisia was surrounded mainly by the presence of males since the loss of her mother at age 12, when Artemisia was 17, Orazio rented the upstairs apartment of their home to a female tenant, Tuzia
4.
Pierre Mignard
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Pierre Mignard, called Le Romain to distinguish him from his brother Nicolas Mignard, was a French painter. He was born at Troyes, and came of a family of artists, he needs to be distinguished from his nephew Pierre. In 1630 he left the studio of Simon Vouet for Italy, where he spent twenty-two years, having found favor with the king, Louis XIV, Mignard pitted himself against Charles Le Brun and declined to enter the Academy of which Le Brun was the head. Mignard also opposed the authority of the Academy, Mignard spent most of his time painting portraits. Among his models were Turenne, Molière, Bossuet, Maintenon, La Vallière, Sévigné, Montespan, with the death of Le Brun in 1690, the situation changed. Mignard succeeded to all the posts held by his opponent and he died in 1695 at Paris as he was about to begin work on the cupola of the Invalides. His best compositions have been engraved by Audran, Edelinck, Masson, Poilly, there is a good selection of works by Pierre, Nicolas, and Pierre II in Avignon at the Musée Calvet. French Baroque and Classicism List of paintings by Pierre Mignard This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh. Media related to Pierre Mignard at Wikimedia Commons
5.
Greek mythology
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It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
6.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
7.
Muses
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The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs and they were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, the earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin, there, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. They were again called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory, three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarchs Quaestiones Convivales. According to Pausanias in the second century AD, there were three original Muses, worshiped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Aoidḗ, Melétē, and Mnḗmē. Together, these three form the picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names, Nḗtē, Mésē, and Hýpatē, alternatively they later were called Kēphisṓ, Apollōnís, and Borysthenís, which names characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized, Thelxinóē, Aoidḗ Archē, one of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓnē, Asōpṓ, Heptápora, Achelōís, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodía. According to Hesiods Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, the second king of the gods. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the deities, Uranus. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and it was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses, classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas and they also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest and they won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses, the first are the daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia, some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope
8.
Zeus
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Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
Media related to Clio at Wikimedia Commons
