1.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections
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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
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Veduta
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A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often print, of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of vedute are referred to as vedutisti and this genre of landscape originated in Flanders, where artists such as Paul Bril painted vedute as early as the 16th century. In the 17th century Dutch painters made a specialty of detailed and accurate recognizable city, an archetypal example is Johannes Vermeers View of Delft. The Ghent architect, draughtsman and engraver Lieven Cruyl contributed to the development of the vedute during his residence in Rome in the late 17th century, cruyl’s drawings reproduce the topographical aspects of the urban landscape. By the mid-18th century, Venice became renowned as the centre of the vedutisti, the genres greatest practitioners belonged to the Canal and Guardi families of Venice. Some of them went to work as painters in major capitals of Europe, e. g. Canaletto in London and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto in Dresden, in other parts of 18th-century Italy, idiosyncratic varieties of the genre evolved. Giovanni Paolo Pannini was the first veduta artist to concentrate on painting ruins and his collaborators included Hendrik Frans van Lint, who would become one of the leading vedute painters in the first half of the 18th century. In later developments of the vedute, Panninis veduta morphed into the scenes partly or completely imaginary elements, known as capricci, giambattista Piranesi was the foremost master of vedute ideate etchings. His topographical series, Vedute di Roma, went through many printings, in the later 19th century, more personal impressions of cityscapes replaced the desire for topographical accuracy, which was satisfied instead by painted, and later photographed, panoramas. These artists responded to the international market for their city views of Venice and they made such big names for themselves through this genre that they painted nothing. Demand for Federico del Campos views, particularly from English tourists, was so strong, I pittori di vedute in Italia, 1580-1830. Canaletto, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has material on Canalettos contributions to the genre
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Pietra dura
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Pietra dura or pietre dure, called parchin kari or parchinkari in South Asia, is a term for the inlay technique of using cut and fitted, highly polished colored stones to create images. It is considered a decorative art, stability was achieved by grooving the undersides of the stones so that they interlocked, rather like a jigsaw puzzle, with everything held tautly in place by an encircling frame. Many different colored stones, particularly marbles, were used, along with semiprecious and it first appeared in Rome in the 16th century, reaching its full maturity in Florence. Pietra dura items are generally crafted on green, white or black marble base stones, pietre dure is an Italian plural meaning hard rocks or hardstones, the singular pietra dura is also encountered in Italian. The traditional convention in English has been to use the singular pietra dura just to denote multi-colored inlay work. However, in recent years there has been a trend to use pietre dure as a term for the same thing, the English term Florentine mosaic is sometimes also encountered, probably developed by the tourist industry. Giovanni Montelatici was an Italian Florentine artist whose brilliant work has been distributed across the world by tourists and collectors. It is distinct from mosaic in that the component stones are much larger and cut to a shape suiting their place in the image, not all of roughly equal size. In pietra dura, the stones are not cemented together with grout, for fixed inlay work on walls, ceilings, and pavements that do not meet the definition for mosaic, the terms intarsia or cosmati work/cosmatesque are better used. Similarly, for works that use pieces of stone, opus sectile may be used. Pietre dure is essentially stone marquetry, as a high expression of lapidary art, it is closely related to the jewelers art. It can also be seen as a branch of sculpture as three-dimensionality can be achieved, technically both Parchin Kari and Pietra Dure are same but in terms of designs they are different. Pietra dura developed from the Ancient Roman opus sectile, which at least in terms of surviving examples, was architectural, used on floors and walls, with both geometric and figurative designs. In the Middle Ages cosmatesque floors and small columns etc. on tombs, Byzantine art continued with inlaid floors, but also produced some small religious figures in hardstone inlays, for example in the Pala dOro in San Marco, Venice. In the Italian Renaissance this technique again was used for images, the Florentines, who most fully developed the form, however, regarded it as painting in stone. As it developed in Florence, the technique was initially called opere di commessi, medici Grand Duke Ferdinando I of Tuscany founded the Galleria diLavori in 1588, now the Opificio delle pietre dure, for the purpose of developing this and other decorative forms. A multitude of varied objects were created, table tops were particularly prized, and these tend to be the largest specimens. Smaller items in the form of medallions, cameos, wall plaques, panels inserted into doors or onto cabinets, bowls, jardinieres, garden ornaments, fountains, benches, etc. are all found
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