1.
Medina of Tunis
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The medina of Tunis is the medina quarter of Tunis, capital of Tunisia. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, the Medina contains some 700 monuments, including palaces, mosques, mausoleums, madrasas and fountains dating from the Almohad and the Hafsid periods. Founded in 698 around the core of the Zitouna Mosque. Expansions to the north and south divided the main Medina into two north and south. The opening toward the sky as a symbol, climatic effect. With an area of 270 hectares and over 100,000 inhabitants, the Medina has one-tenth of the population of Tunis, the planning of the Medina of Tunis has the distinction of not obeying geometrical layouts nor formal compositions. The complex organization of the urban fabrics has fueled an entire colonial literature where the dangerous Medina, many publications have detailed the development of the Medina model and system of prioritization of public and private spaces, residential and commercial, sacred and profane. We can raise the axes north-south and East-West comparable to a Roman cardo and decumanus that intersect at the court of Zitouna mosque, house of prayer and we distinguish the main streets, the secondary streets and the deadlocks sometimes entire private spots reserved for women. The built environment is characterized by the juxtaposition of large plots. This idea is reinforced by the area of a shop and bedroom, in the case of domestic architecture, the most they set back from the shops, the more they value. The concept of withdrawal and privacy is paramount, the late introduction of the sewer system induces a flow of waste water through the streets of the Medina. Houses and noble places are located before or in the high district. The terraces of the Medina are also an important place of social life, the rituals and dating schedules provide an informal mix. Nowadays, every district retains its culture and rivalries can be strong, thus, the northern suburb supports the football club Espérance Sportive de Tunis while the southern side is the district of the rival Club Africain. Association pour la de la medina de Tunis UNESCO site on the Tunis Medina
2.
Art
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In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art. The oldest documented forms of art are visual arts, which include creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. Art may be characterized in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, during the Romantic period, art came to be seen as a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science. Though the definition of what art is disputed and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of imaginative or technical skill stemming from human agency. The nature of art, and related such as creativity. One early sense of the definition of art is related to the older Latin meaning. English words derived from this meaning include artifact, artificial, artifice, medical arts, however, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology. Several dialogues in Plato tackle questions about art, Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness in the Phaedrus, and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homers great poetic art, in Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he expresses in the Republic. For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, the forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is an imitation of men worse than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation—through narrative or character, through change or no change, Aristotle believed that imitation is natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankinds advantages over animals. The second, and more recent, sense of the art as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art emerged in the early 17th century. The creative arts are a collection of disciplines which produce artworks that are compelled by a drive and convey a message, mood. Art is something that stimulates an individuals thoughts, emotions, beliefs, works of art can be explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted on the basis of images or objects. Often, if the skill is being used in a common or practical way, likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it may be considered commercial art instead of fine art. On the other hand, crafts and design are considered applied art
3.
Mise en abyme
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Mise en abyme is a French term derived from heraldry, and literally means placed into abyss. The term has developed a number of senses in modern criticism since it was picked up from heraldry by the French author André Gide. A common sense of the phrase is the experience of standing between two mirrors, then seeing as a result an infinite reproduction of ones image. Another is the Droste effect, in which a picture appears within itself and that is named after the 1904 Droste cocoa package, which depicts a woman holding a tray bearing a Droste cocoa package, which bears a smaller version of her image. The phrase has other meanings, however, in the realms of the creative arts. In Western art history, mise en abyme is a technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, in a sequence appearing to recur infinitely. In the terminology of heraldry, the abyme is the center of a coat of arms, the term mise en abyme then meant put in the center. It described a coat of arms appears as a smaller shield in the center of a larger one. A complex example of mise en abyme is seen in the coat of arms of the United Kingdom for the period 1816–1837, as used by King George III. The crown of Charlemagne is placed en abyme within the escutcheon of Hanover, which in turn is en abyme within the arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Another example is the eagle in the modern coat of arms of Russia. While art historians working on the period adopted this phrase and interpreted it as showing artistic self awareness. Many examples, however, can be found in the pre-modern era, to the left, Justinian I offers the Virgin Mary the Hagia Sophia, which contains the mosaic itself. To the right, Constantine I offers the city of Constantinople, an example of this self-referential gift-giving appears in the Stefaneschi Triptych in the Vatican Museum, which features Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi as the giver of the altarpiece. The modern meaning of the phrase originates with the author André Gide who used it to describe self-reflexive embeddings in various art-forms and this use of the phrase mise en abyme was picked up by scholars and popularized in the 1977 book Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme by Lucien Dällenbach, mise-en-abîme occurs within a text when there is a reduplication of images or concepts referring to the textual whole. Mise-en-abîme is a play of signifiers within a text, of sub-texts mirroring each other and this mirroring can get to the point where meaning may be rendered unstable and, in this respect, may be seen as part of the process of deconstruction. The film-within-a-film is an example of mise-en-abîme, the film being made within the film refers, through its mise en scène, to the real film being made
4.
Recursion
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Recursion occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic, the most common application of recursion is in mathematics and computer science, where a function being defined is applied within its own definition. While this apparently defines a number of instances, it is often done in such a way that no loop or infinite chain of references can occur. The ancestors of ones ancestors are also ones ancestors, the Fibonacci sequence is a classic example of recursion, Fib =0 as base case 1, Fib =1 as base case 2, For all integers n >1, Fib, = Fib + Fib. Many mathematical axioms are based upon recursive rules, for example, the formal definition of the natural numbers by the Peano axioms can be described as,0 is a natural number, and each natural number has a successor, which is also a natural number. By this base case and recursive rule, one can generate the set of all natural numbers, recursively defined mathematical objects include functions, sets, and especially fractals. There are various more tongue-in-cheek definitions of recursion, see recursive humor, Recursion is the process a procedure goes through when one of the steps of the procedure involves invoking the procedure itself. A procedure that goes through recursion is said to be recursive, to understand recursion, one must recognize the distinction between a procedure and the running of a procedure. A procedure is a set of steps based on a set of rules, the running of a procedure involves actually following the rules and performing the steps. An analogy, a procedure is like a recipe, running a procedure is like actually preparing the meal. Recursion is related to, but not the same as, a reference within the specification of a procedure to the execution of some other procedure. For instance, a recipe might refer to cooking vegetables, which is another procedure that in turn requires heating water, for this reason recursive definitions are very rare in everyday situations. An example could be the procedure to find a way through a maze. Proceed forward until reaching either an exit or a branching point, If the point reached is an exit, terminate. Otherwise try each branch in turn, using the procedure recursively, if every trial fails by reaching only dead ends, return on the path led to this branching point. Whether this actually defines a terminating procedure depends on the nature of the maze, in any case, executing the procedure requires carefully recording all currently explored branching points, and which of their branches have already been exhaustively tried. This can be understood in terms of a definition of a syntactic category. A sentence can have a structure in which what follows the verb is another sentence, Dorothy thinks witches are dangerous, so a sentence can be defined recursively as something with a structure that includes a noun phrase, a verb, and optionally another sentence
5.
Droste
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Droste B. V. is a Dutch chocolate manufacturer. Its headquarters and factory are located in the village of Vaassen, Droste operates as an independent business unit within Hosta, a German confectionery company. Droste was founded by Gerardus Johannes Droste in 1863 in the city of Haarlem, the company started as a confectionery business selling various types of candy, including the Droste chocolate pastilles that are still being sold today. Because of the reputation, the firm G. J. Droste opened its first factory in 1890, the entire chocolate making process took place in the same building as where the retail store was located. In 1891, the factory was relocated to the Spaarne river due to lack of room in the old building and this new location was favourable because the raw materials could now be delivered by boat. Likewise, the shipping of finished products was done on water, in 1897, the leadership of the Droste factory was handed over to the sons of Gerardus J. Droste. In the meantime, Drostes assortment had grown to numerous cocoa and chocolate products, the company had also been winning a significant market share in both the Netherlands and foreign countries, in spite of the competition from larger chocolate manufacturers. In 1898 Droste officially acquired the right to bear the coat of arms of queen dowager Emma, after the turn of the century the company had been exporting its products to Belgium, Germany and France, and in 1905 it entered the American market. The famous illustration of the woman in nurse clothes, holding a plate with a cup of milk and it is believed that this illustration was created by Jan Musset, being inspired by a pastel known as La Belle Chocolatière. The image would proclaim the wholesome effect of chocolate milk and became inseparable from the Droste brand, the illustration reappears on the cocoa package held by the nurse, inducing a recursive visual effect known today as the Droste effect. The effect was named after Droste for this illustration, during the First World War raw materials were hard to come by leading to serious production difficulties. When the war was over, the leadership of Gerardus Johannes Droste junior slowly saw the companys production and turnover improve. In 1920 the firm was turned into a limited company called Drostes Cacao- en Chocoladefabrieken N. V. At that time, a group of 25 salesmen was travelling through the Netherlands to promote Droste products to confectionery shops, from 1920 until 1940, Droste products were distributed across the world by ships and trains. In 1932, Droste was hit again by a setback, this due to a stock market crash. As a result, the company was forced to reduce the working week from 48 hours to 42.5 hours and it became worse during the Second World War, when Allied aircraft bombardment caused considerable damage to the companys cardboard department. This led to the decline of production and sales, which eventually stopped altogether
6.
Cocoa solids
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Cocoa solids are a mixture of many substances remaining after cocoa butter is extracted from cacao beans. When sold as an end product, it may also be called cocoa powder or cocoa, in contrast, the fatty component of chocolate is cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is 50% to 57% of the weight of cocoa beans, Cocoa liquor or cocoa mass is a paste of roasted cocoa beans with cocoa butter and solids in their natural proportions. Chocolate requires the addition of cocoa butter to cocoa liquor, leading to an excess of cocoa solids. Cocoa solids are one of the richest sources of flavanol antioxidants and they are a key ingredient of chocolate, chocolate syrup, and chocolate confections. Natural cocoa powder has a brown color and an extractable pH of 5.3 to 5.8. The processed cocoa powder is darker in color, ranging from red to nearly black. The alkalization process reduces bitterness and improves solubility, which is important for beverage product applications, all of these pH values are considered safe for food use. Cocoa powder contains several minerals including calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, all of these minerals are found in greater quantities in cocoa powder than either cocoa butter or cocoa liquor. Cocoa solids also contain 230 mg of caffeine and 2057 mg of theobromine per 100g, Cocoa powder is rich in flavonoids, a type of phenolic acid. The amount of flavonoids depends on the amount of processing and manufacturing the cocoa powder undergoes, however, its alkalization, also known as Dutch processing, causes its content of flavonoids to be substantially reduced. Cocoa and cacao powders may contain cadmium, a heavy metal. From January 12019, the European Union will impose a limit for cadmium in cocoa powders of 0.6 µg per gram of cocoa powder, and 0.8 µg per gram for chocolate with >= 50% total dry cocoa solids. In Canada, a serving of a natural health product must contain no more than 6 µg of cadmium for an individual weighing 150 pounds and 3 µg for a 75 lb individual. Baking chocolate Chocolate Cocoa butter Hamel, PJ
7.
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
8.
Stefaneschi Triptych
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It is now at the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome. The altar was freestanding, and the altarpiece is painted on both sides so it could be seen by the congregation from the front and the canons of the church from the back. The central front panel represents St. Peter enthroned, flanked by saints, james and Paul are in the left panel and John the Evangelist and Andrew are in the right. 2 of the 3 predella panels are lost, but they all represented half-length figures of saints. The back main panel represents Christ enthroned flanked by angels with a kneeling Cardinal Stefaneschi at his right foot, in the left panel we see the crucifixion of Peter, and on the right is the beheading of St. Paul. The predella depicts the Virgin and Child flanked by angels in the center, the altarpiece stood before the apse of Old St. Peters, which in the 14th century contained a mosaic of Christ enthroned between Saints. Thus the iconography of the front of the painting paralleled the apse mosaic in form, the central panel of the back of the altarpiece duplicated the apse mosaic for those who could not see it, while the side panels introduced narratives. It was normal for double-sided altarpieces in this period to have an image on the front. Peter echoes Christs pose to emphasize the role of the pope as Christs representative on earth, Giotto represents the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul as taking place in recognizable locales, frequently visited by pilgrims to Rome. Peters crucifixion is placed between the Meta romuli and the obelisk that came from Neros Circus, while Pauls beheading is outside the city and these scenes could also be found in the medieval frescoes on the walls of the nave of Old St. Peters. ). Stefaneschi is dressed in ceremonial costume as a cardinal on the front. On the back, he is more modestly dressed as a canon, vasari cited portraiture as one of the greatest strengths of Giottos art. The characteristic of containing a version of itself provides one of the earliest known examples of the so-called Droste effect. Boskovits, Miklos, Giotto a Roma, Arte Cristiana,88 171-180, gardner, Julian, The Stefaneschi Altarpiece, A Reconsideration, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol.37, pp. 57-103. Gosebruch, M. Giottos Stefaneschi-Altarwerk aus Alt-St, Peter in Rom, Miscellanea Bibliotecae Hertzianae, Munich,1961, 101-130. Von den Haegen, Anne Mueller, Giotto di Bondone, trans, zum Program von Stefaneschi-Altar und Navicella, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte,30 309-320. Kempers, Bram & Sible de Blauuw, kessler, Herbert L. Giotto e Roma, in Giotto e il Trecento, Il più Sovrano Maestro stato in dipintura, exh. cat. Ed. Alessandro Tomei, Milan,2009, 85-99, maginnis, Hayden B. J. Giottos World through Vasaris Eyes, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte,56 Bd. H.3, pp. 385-408
9.
Mathematics and art
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Mathematics and art are related in a variety of ways. Mathematics has itself been described as an art motivated by beauty, Mathematics can be discerned in arts such as music, dance, painting, architecture, sculpture, and textiles. This article focuses, however, on mathematics in the visual arts, Mathematics and art have a long historical relationship. Artists have used mathematics since the 5th century BC when the Greek sculptor Polykleitos wrote his Canon, prescribing proportions based on the ratio 1, persistent popular claims have been made for the use of the golden ratio in ancient art and architecture, without reliable evidence. In the Italian Renaissance, Luca Pacioli wrote the influential treatise De Divina Proportione, illustrated with woodcuts by Leonardo da Vinci, another Italian painter, Piero della Francesca, developed Euclids ideas on perspective in treatises such as De Prospectiva Pingendi, and in his paintings. The engraver Albrecht Dürer made many references to mathematics in his work Melencolia I, in modern times, the graphic artist M. C. Mathematics has inspired textile arts such as quilting, knitting, cross-stitch, crochet, embroidery, weaving, Turkish and other carpet-making, as well as kilim. In Islamic art, symmetries are evident in forms as varied as Persian girih and Moroccan zellige tilework, Mughal jaali pierced stone screens, and widespread muqarnas vaulting. Mathematics has directly influenced art with conceptual tools such as perspective, the analysis of symmetry, and mathematical objects such as polyhedra. Magnus Wenninger creates colourful stellated polyhedra, originally as models for teaching, mathematical concepts such as recursion and logical paradox can be seen in paintings by Rene Magritte and in engravings by M. C. Computer art often makes use of including the Mandelbrot set. Polykleitos the elder was a Greek sculptor from the school of Argos, and his works and statues consisted mainly of bronze and were of athletes. While his sculptures may not be as famous as those of Phidias, Polykleitos uses the distal phalanx of the little finger as the basic module for determining the proportions of the human body. Next, he takes the length and multiplies that by √2 to get the length of the palm from the base of the finger to the ulna. This geometric series of measurements progresses until Polykleitos has formed the arm, chest, body, the influence of the Canon of Polykleitos is immense in Classical Greek, Roman, and Renaissance sculpture, many sculptors following Polykleitoss prescription. While none of Polykleitoss original works survive, Roman copies demonstrate his ideal of physical perfection, some scholars argue that Pythagorean thought influenced the Canon of Polykleitos. In classical times, rather than making distant figures smaller with linear perspective, painters sized objects, in the Middle Ages, some artists used reverse perspective for special emphasis. The Muslim mathematician Alhazen described a theory of optics in his Book of Optics in 1021, the Renaissance saw a rebirth of Classical Greek and Roman culture and ideas, among them the study of mathematics to understand nature and the arts
10.
Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi
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Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi was an Italian cardinal deacon. Born in Rome, he was the son of the senator Pietro Stefaneschi and his wife and he received his early education at Rome, and was sent to the University of Paris to pursue higher studies. He was highly esteemed by Pope Celestine V, who made him canon of St. Peters, Pope John XXII appointed him protector of the Minorites,23 July 1334. Stefaneschi is best known as the author of Opus Metricum, a life of Celestine V composed in dactylic hexameter, abstracting from a short autobiography left in his cell by Celestine when he became pope, the Opus Metricum is the earliest biography of the hermit-pontiff. It is composed of three parts, each complete in itself and written at a different time. In 1319 the author united these three separate poems into one work and sent it with an epistle to the prior and the monks of San Spirito at Sulmona. The first part contains in three books an account of the election, reign, and abdication of Celestine and it was written before Stefaneschi became cardinal. The second part describes in two books the election and coronation of Boniface VIII, and was five years later. The third part is composed of three books and describes the life of Celestine after he had abdicated, his canonization, the poem is preceded by an introduction in prose, which contains valuable data of the authors life and a synopsis of the whole work. Though of great value, the poem is devoid of all literary excellence. It was first edited by Papebroch, Acta Sanctorum, IV, May, georgii Martyris, a eulogy on St. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Herbermann, Charles
