1.
Artists in biographies by Filippo Baldinucci
–
Filippo Baldinuccis Notizie de Professori del Disegno, Da Cimabue in qua, Secolo V. dal 1610. Distinto in Decennali was a major art biography of Baroque painters, dozens of Flemish and Dutch painters, including Rembrandt, were judged to merit inclusion. Baldinucci included both De Bie and Meyssens in his book, Notizie de Professori del Disegno, Da Cimabue in qua, Secolo V. dal 1610. Stamperia S. A. R. per li Tartini, e Franchi
2.
Italy
–
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
3.
Florence
–
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
4.
Baroque
–
The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
5.
House of Medici
–
The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside, gradually rising until they were able to fund the Medici Bank. The bank was the largest in Europe during the 15th century, the Medici produced three Popes of the Catholic Church—Pope Leo X, Pope Clement VII, and Pope Leo XI, two regent queens of France—Catherine de Medici and Marie de Medici. In 1531, the family became hereditary Dukes of Florence, in 1569, the duchy was elevated to a grand duchy after territorial expansion. They ruled the Grand Duchy of Tuscany from its inception until 1737, the grand duchy witnessed degrees of economic growth under the earlier grand dukes, but by the time of Cosimo III de Medici, Tuscany was fiscally bankrupt. Their wealth and influence initially derived from the textile trade guided by the guild of the Arte della Lana. They, along with families of Italy—such as the Visconti and Sforza of Milan, the Este of Ferrara. The Medici Bank was one of the most prosperous and most respected institutions in Europe, there are some estimates that the Medici family were the wealthiest family in Europe for a time. From this base, they acquired political power initially in Florence and later in wider Italy, a notable contribution to the profession of accounting was the improvement of the general ledger system through the development of the double-entry bookkeeping system for tracking credits and debits. The Medici family were among the earliest businesses to use the system, the Medici family came from the agricultural Mugello region, north of Florence, being mentioned for the first time in a document of 1230. The origin of the name is uncertain, Medici is the plural of medico, also written del medico or delmedigo, meaning, medical doctor. It has been suggested that the derived from one Medico di Potrone, a castellan of Potrone in the late 11th century. The dynasty began with the founding of the Medici Bank, until the late 14th century, prior to the Medici, the leading family of Florence was the House of Albizzi. In 1293 the Ordinances of Justice were enacted, which became the constitution of the republic of Florence throughout the Italian Renaissance. The citys numerous luxurious palazzi were becoming surrounded by townhouses, built by the ever prospering merchant class. In 1298, one of the leading banking families of Europe, the main challengers to the Albizzi family were the Medicis, first under Giovanni de Medici, later under his son Cosimo di Giovanni de Medici and great-grandson, Lorenzo de Medici. The Medici controlled the Medici bank—then Europes largest bank—and an array of other enterprises in Florence, in 1433, the Albizzi managed to have Cosimo exiled. The next year, however, a pro-Medici Signoria was elected, the Medici became the citys leading family, a position they would hold for the next three centuries. Cosimo and Lorenzo rarely held official posts but were the unquestioned leaders, some examples of these families include the Bardi, Salviati, Cavalcanti, and the Tornabuoni
6.
Giorgio Vasari
–
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
7.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
–
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was the sculptor of his age. Bernini was also a figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture along with his contemporaries, the architect Francesco Borromini. Early in their careers they had all worked at the time at the Palazzo Barberini, initially under Carlo Maderno and, following his death. Later on, however, they were in competition for commissions, Peters Basilica, completed under Pope Paul V with the addition of Madernos nave and facade and finally re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, after 150 years of planning and building. Berninis design of the Piazza San Pietro in front of the Basilica is one of his most innovative, during his long career, Bernini received numerous important commissions, many of which were associated with the papacy. At an early age, he came to the attention of the nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Although he did not fare so well during the reign of Innocent X, under Alexander VII, he again regained pre-eminent artistic domination. Bernini and other artists fell from favor in later neoclassical criticism of the Baroque, the art historian Howard Hibbard concludes that, during the seventeenth century, there were no sculptors or architects comparable to Bernini. Bernini was born in Naples in 1598 to Angelica Galante and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini and he was the sixth of their thirteen children. Gianlorenzo Bernini was the definition of childhood genius and he was “recognized as a prodigy when he was only eight years old, he was consistently encouraged by his father, Pietro. His precocity earned him the admiration and favor of powerful patrons who hailed him as ‘the Michelangelo of his century’” and his father was so impressed by his son’s obvious talent that he took him to Rome to showcase him to the cardinals and Pope. Bernini was presented before Pope Paul V, for whom he did a sketch of Saint Paul, once he was brought to Rome, he never left. “For Bernini there could be only one Rome, ‘You are made for Rome, ’ said Pope Urban VIII to him, ‘and Rome for you’”. It was in world of 17th century Rome and religious power. Under the patronage of the wealthy and most powerful Cardinal Scipione Borghese. By the time he was twenty-two, he was considered talented enough to have given a commission for a papal portrait. Berninis reputation, however, was established by four masterpieces
8.
Uffizi
–
The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in central Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. The building of Uffizi complex was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de Medici so as to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi, the construction was later continued by Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti and completed in 1581. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns filled with sculptures of artists in the 19th century. The Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices, the Tribunal and the Archivio di Stato, the state archive. He commissioned from the architect Buontalenti the design of the Tribuna degli Uffizi that collected a series of masterpieces in one room, over the years, more sections of the palace were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, because of its huge collection, some of its works have in the past been transferred to other museums in Florence—for example, some famous statues to the Bargello. A project was finished in 2006 to expand the exhibition space some 6,000 metres² to almost 13,000 metres². On 27 May 1993, a car exploded in Via dei Georgofili and damaged parts of the palace. The most severe damage was to the Niobe room and classical sculptures and neoclassical interior, the identity of the bomber or bombers are unknown, although it was almost certainly attributable to the Sicilian Mafia who were engaged in a period of terrorism at that time. Today, the Uffizi is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Florence, in high season, waiting times can be up to five hours. In early August 2007, Florence experienced a heavy rainstorm, the Gallery was partially flooded, with water leaking through the ceiling, and the visitors had to be evacuated. There was a more significant flood in 1966 which damaged most of the art collections in Florence severely. Here is a selection from the collection, The collection also contains some ancient sculptures, such as the Arrotino. Collections of the Uffizi Official website Uffizi – Google Art Project
9.
Leopoldo de' Medici
–
Leopoldo de Medici was an Italian cardinal, scholar, patron of the arts and Governor of Siena. He was the brother of Ferdinando II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Prince Leopoldo was born at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany then ruled by his father, Grand Duke Cosimo II. His mother Maria Magdalena of Austria was a sister of Queen Margarita of Spain and Ferdinand II, Leopoldo was educated under Jacopo Soldano, Father Flaviano Michelini and Evangelista Torricelli. When his brother was elected Grand Duke, Leopoldo acted as his advisor for manufactures, agriculture and he took a great interest in science and technology. In 1638 he founded the Accademia Platonica, and, together with Ferdinando, in 1641 Leopoldo had been named member of the Accademia della Crusca, for which he edited the entries regarding art for the 3rd edition of the Crusca Dictionary. Leopoldo was also a collector of rare books, paintings, drawings, statues, coins. He left a correspondence with artists and art collectors of his time. Leopoldo spent four hours each day up to his neck in books, on 12 December 1667 Pope Clement IX named him cardinal of Santi Cosma e Damiano. From that point on Leopoldo made frequent trips to Rome, pursuing his artistic interests and his large collections are included in several museums of Florence. Leopoldo had a correspondence with Christiaan Huygens. 6 November 1617 -12 December 1667 His Highness Prince Leopoldo 12 December 1667 -16 November 1675 His Highness Cardinal de Medici
10.
Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
–
Ferdinando II de Medici was grand duke of Tuscany from 1621 to 1670. He was the eldest child of Cosimo II de Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria and his 49-year rule was punctuated by the beginning of Tuscanys long economic decline. He married Vittoria della Rovere, with whom he had two children, Cosimo III de Medici, his successor, and Francesco Maria de Medici, Duke of Rovere and Montefeltro. Ferdinando was the eldest son of Cosimo II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II died when Ferdinando was 10, because he had not yet reached maturity, his mother and paternal grandmother, Christina of Lorraine, acted as joint regents. In his seventeenth year, Ferdinando embarked on a tour of Europe, one year later, his regency ended and his personal rule began. Dowager Grand Duchess Christina was the power behind the throne until her death in 1636, ferdinand, like Christina before him, was a patron, ally, and friend of Galileo. Galileo dedicated his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems to him and this work led to Galileos second set of hearings before the Inquisition. The first calamity of Ferdinando’s reign was in 1630, when a plague swept through Florence, unlike the Tuscan nobility, Ferdinando and his brothers stayed in the city to try to ameliorate the general suffering. His mother and grandmother arranged a marriage with Vittoria della Rovere, together they had two children, Cosimo, in 1642, and Francesco Maria de Medici, in 1660. The latter was the fruit of a reconciliation, as after the birth of Cosimo. Grand Duke Ferdinando was obsessed with new technology, and had several hygrometers, barometers, thermometers, in 1654, influenced by Galileo, he is reported to have invented the sealed-glass thermometer, by sealing the glass tip of a tube filled to a certain height with colored alcohol. Small glass bubbles filled with air at varying pressures hovered trapped within the liquid, changing positions as the temperature rose or fell. Marked off with 360 divisions, like the gradations or degrees of a circle, in 1657, Leopoldo de Medici, the Grand Duke’s youngest brother, established the Accademia del Cimento. It was set up to attract scientists from all over Tuscany to Florence for mutual study, Tuscany participated in the Wars of Castro and inflicted a defeat on the forces of Urban VIII in 1643. The treasury was so empty that when the Castro mercenaries were paid for the state could no longer afford to pay interest on government bonds, the interest rate was lowered by 0. 75%. The economy was so decrepit that barter trade became prevalent in rural market places, Ferdinando died on 23 May 1670 of apoplexy and dropsy. He was interred in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the Medicis necropolis, at the time of his death, the population of the grand duchy was 730,594 souls, the streets were lined with grass and the buildings on the verge of collapse in Pisa. R. Florence and the Medici, Orion books, London,1977, ISBN 1-84212-456-0 Liedtke, new York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
11.
Curator
–
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a heritage institution is a content specialist charged with an institutions collections. A traditional curators concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort—artwork, collectibles, historic items, more recently, new kinds of curators have started to emerge, curators of digital data objects and biocurators. In smaller organizations, a curator may have responsibility for acquisitions. In very small, volunteer-based museums such as historical societies. Such institutions can have multiple curators, each assigned to a collecting area. In the museum setting, a curator in the United Kingdom may also be called a keeper, in Scotland, the term curator is also used to mean the guardian of a child. In the United States, this job is multifaceted and dependent on the particular institution, however, in recent years, the role of a curator has evolved alongside the changing role of museums. As museums in the United States have become increasingly more digitized, curators find themselves constructing narratives in both the material and digital worlds. Historian Elaine Gurian has called for museums in which “visitors could comfortably search for answers to their own regardless of the importance placed on such questions by others. ”This would change the role of curator from teacher to “facilitator and assistor. ”In this sense, the role of curator in the United States is precarious, as digital and interactive exhibits often allow the public to become their own curator. Citizens are then able to educate themselves on the subject they are interested in. More recently, advances in new technologies have led to a widening of the role of curator. This has been a focus in major art institutions internationally and has become an object of academic study, in contemporary art, the title curator is given to a person who selects and often interprets works of art. In addition to selecting works, the curator often is responsible for writing labels, catalog essays, such curators may be permanent staff members, guest curators from an affiliated organization or university, or freelance curators working on a consultant basis. The late twentieth century saw an explosion of artists organizing exhibitions, the artist-curator has a long tradition of influence. Notable among these was Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy of Arts, in some US organizations, the term curator is also used to designate the head of any given division of a cultural organization. This has led to the proliferation of such as Curator of Education. The term literary curator has been used to persons who work in the field of poetry
12.
Art history
–
Art history is the study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i. e. genre, design, format, and style. This includes the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the minor arts of ceramics, furniture. As a term, art history encompasses several methods of studying the arts, in common usage referring to works of art. One branch of this area of study is aesthetics, which includes investigating the enigma of the sublime, technically, art history is not these things, because the art historian uses historical method to answer the questions, How did the artist come to create the work. Who were his or her teachers, who were his or her disciples. What historical forces shaped the artists oeuvre, and How did he or she and the creation, in turn, affect the course of artistic, political, and social events. It is, however, questionable whether many questions of this kind can be answered satisfactorily without also considering basic questions about the nature of art, unfortunately the current disciplinary gap between art history and the philosophy of art often hinders this inquiry. Art history is not only a biographical endeavor, Art historians often root their studies in the scrutiny of individual objects. They thus attempt to answer in historically specific ways, questions such as, what meaning did this object convey. Did the artist meet their goals well, the historical backbone of the discipline is a celebratory chronology of beautiful creations commissioned by public or religious bodies or wealthy individuals in western Europe. Such a canon remains prominent, as indicated by the selection of objects present in art history textbooks, nonetheless, since the 20th century there has been an effort to re-define the discipline to be more inclusive of non-Western art, art made by women, and vernacular creativity. Art history as we know it in the 21st century began in the 19th century but has precedents that date to the ancient world, advances in photographic reproduction and printing techniques after World War II increased the ability of reproductions of artworks. Such technologies have helped to advance the discipline in profound ways, the study of visual art thus described, can be a practice that involves understanding context, form, and social significance. Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the ontology, Art historians often examine work in the context of its time. In short, this approach examines the work of art in the context of the world within which it was created, Art historians also often examine work through an analysis of form, that is, the creators use of line, shape, color, texture, and composition. This approach examines how the artist uses a picture plane or the three dimensions of sculptural or architectural space to create his or her art. The way these individual elements are employed results in representational or non-representational art, is the artist imitating an object or image found in nature. The closer the art hews to perfect imitation, the more the art is realistic, is the artist not imitating, but instead relying on symbolism, or in an important way striving to capture natures essence, rather than copy it directly
13.
Fine art
–
Historically, the five main fine arts were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, with performing arts including theatre and dance. Today, the fine arts commonly include additional forms, such as film, photography, video production/editing, design, sequential art, conceptual art, and printmaking. However, in some institutes of learning or in museums, fine art, in that sense, there are conceptual differences between the fine arts and the applied arts. The word fine does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question and this definition originally excluded the applied or decorative arts, and the products of what were regarded as crafts. According to some writers the concept of a category of fine art is an invention of the early modern period in the West. Larry Shiner in his The Invention of Art, A Cultural History locates the invention in the 18th century, There was a traditional “system of the arts” in the West before the eighteenth century. ”Similar ideas have been expressed by Paul Oskar Kristeller, Pierre Bourdieu, and Terry Eagleton, though the point of invention is often placed earlier, in the Italian Renaissance. The separation of arts and crafts that often exists in Europe, in Japanese aesthetics the activities of everyday life are depicted by integrating not only art with craft but man-made with nature. Traditional Chinese art distinguished within Chinese painting between the mostly landscape painting of scholar gentlemen and the artisans of the schools of court painting. A high status was given to many things that would be seen as craft objects in the West, in particular ceramics, jade carving, weaving. Drawing is a form of expression and is one of the major forms of the visual arts. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, There are a number of subcategories of drawing, including cartooning. Mosaics are images formed with pieces of stone or glass. They can be decorative or functional, an artist who designs and makes mosaics is called a mosaic artist or a mosaicist. Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print is considered an original, as opposed to a copy, the reasoning behind this is that the print is not a reproduction of another work of art in a different medium — for instance, a painting — but rather an image designed from inception as a print. An individual print is also referred to as an impression, prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. But there are other kinds, discussed below. Multiple nearly identical prints can be called an edition, in modern times each print is often signed and numbered forming a limited edition
14.
Pietra dura
–
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
15.
Counter-Reformation
–
It also involved political activities that included the Roman Inquisition. The 14th, 15th and 16th centuries saw a revival in Europe. This became known as the Catholic Reformation, several theologians harked back to the early days of Christianity and questioned their spirituality. Their debates expanded across the whole of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, whilst secular critics also examined religious practice, clerical behavior, several varied currents of thought were active, but the ideas of reform and renewal were led by the clergy. The reforms decreed at Lateran V had only a small effect, some positions got further and further from the churchs official positions, leading to the break with Rome and the formation of Protestant churches. Even so, conservative and reforming parties still survived within the Catholic Church even as the Protestant Reformation spread, the Protestant Church decisively broke from the Catholic Church in the 1520s. The two distinct positions within the Catholic Church solidified in the 1560s. The Catholic Reformation became known as the Counter-Reformation, defined as a reaction to Protestantism rather than as a reform movement, the regular orders made their first attempts at reform in the 14th century. The Benedictine Bull of 1336 reformed the Benedictines and Cistercians, in 1523, the Camaldolese Hermits of Monte Corona were recognized as a separate congregation of monks. In 1435, Saint Francis of Paola founded the Poor Hermits of Saint Francis of Assisi, in 1526, Matteo de Bascio suggested reforming the Franciscan rule of life to its original purity, giving birth to the Capuchins, recognized by the pope in 1619. This order was well-known to the laity and play an important role in public preaching, to respond to the new needs of evangelism, clergy formed into religious congregations, taking special vows but with no obligation to assist in a monasterys religious offices. These regular clergy taught, preached and took confession but were under a bishops direct authority, in Italy, the first congregation of regular clergy was the Theatines founded in 1524 by Gaetano and Cardinal Caraffa. In 1524, a number of priests in Rome began to live in a community centred on Philip Neri, the Oratorians were given their institutions in 1564 and recognized as an order by the pope in 1575. They used music and singing to attract the faithful, the Council upheld the basic structure of the Medieval Church, its sacramental system, religious orders, and doctrine. It rejected all compromise with the Protestants, restating basic tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, the Council upheld salvation appropriated by grace through faith and works of that faith because faith without works is dead, as the Epistle of St. James states. This reaffirmed the previous Council of Rome and Synods of Carthage, the Council also commissioned the Roman Catechism, which still serves as authoritative Church teaching. While the traditional fundamentals of the Church were reaffirmed, there were changes to answer complaints that the Counter-Reformers were, tacitly. Often, these rural priests did not know Latin and lacked opportunities for theological training
16.
Society of Jesus
–
The Society of Jesus Latin, Societas Iesu, S. J. SJ or SI) is a religious congregation of the Catholic Church which originated in Spain. The society is engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations on six continents, Jesuits work in education, intellectual research, and cultural pursuits. Jesuits also give retreats, minister in hospitals and parishes, and promote social justice, Ignatius of Loyola founded the society after being wounded in battle and experiencing a religious conversion. He composed the Spiritual Exercises to help others follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, ignatiuss plan of the orders organization was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540 by a bull containing the Formula of the Institute. Ignatius was a nobleman who had a background, and the members of the society were supposed to accept orders anywhere in the world. The Society participated in the Counter-Reformation and, later, in the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, the Society of Jesus is consecrated under the patronage of Madonna Della Strada, a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it is led by a Superior General. The Society of Jesus on October 3,2016 announced that Superior General Adolfo Nicolás resignation was officially accepted, on October 14, the 36th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus elected Father Arturo Sosa as its thirty-first Superior General. The headquarters of the society, its General Curia, is in Rome, the historic curia of St. Ignatius is now part of the Collegio del Gesù attached to the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit Mother Church. In 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Jesuit Pope, the Jesuits today form the largest single religious order of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church. As of 1 January 2015, Jesuits numbered 16,740,11,986 clerics regular,2,733 scholastics,1,268 brothers and 753 novices. In 2012, Mark Raper S. J. wrote, Our numbers have been in decline for the last 40 years—from over 30,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 18,000 today. The steep declines in Europe and North America and consistent decline in Latin America have not been offset by the significant increase in South Asia, the Society is divided into 83 Provinces with six Independent Regions and ten Dependent Regions. On 1 January 2007, members served in 112 nations on six continents with the largest number in India and their average age was 57.3 years,63.4 years for priests,29.9 years for scholastics, and 65.5 years for brothers. The current Superior General of the Jesuits is Arturo Sosa, the Society is characterized by its ministries in the fields of missionary work, human rights, social justice and, most notably, higher education. It operates colleges and universities in countries around the world and is particularly active in the Philippines. In the United States it maintains 28 colleges and universities and 58 high schools and he ensured that his formula was contained in two papal bulls signed by Pope Paul III in 1540 and by Pope Julius III in 1550. The formula expressed the nature, spirituality, community life and apostolate of the new religious order, the meeting is now commemorated in the Martyrium of Saint Denis, Montmartre
17.
Ignatius of Loyola
–
Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish priest and theologian, who founded the religious order called the Society of Jesus and became its first Superior General. The Jesuit order served the Pope as missionaries, and they were bound by a vow of obedience to the sovereign pontiff in regard to the missions. They therefore emerged as an important political force during the time of the Counter-Reformation, Ignatius is remembered as a talented spiritual director. He recorded his method in a treatise called the Spiritual Exercises, a simple set of meditations, prayers. Ignatius was beatified in 1609, and then canonized, receiving the title of Saint on March 12,1622 and his feast day is celebrated on July 31. He is the saint of the provinces of Gipuzkoa and Biscay as well as the Society of Jesus. Ignatius is also a foremost patron saint of soldiers, Íñigo López de Loyola was born in the municipality of Azpeitia at the castle of Loyola in todays Gipuzkoa, Basque Country, Spain. He was baptized Íñigo, after St. Enecus Abbot of Oña and it is not clear when he began using the Latin name Ignatius instead of his baptismal name Íñigo. It seems he did not intend to change his name, but rather adopted a name which he believed was a variant of his own, for use in France. Íñigo was the youngest of thirteen children and his mother died soon after his birth, and he was then brought up by María de Garín, the local blacksmiths wife. Íñigo adopted the surname de Loyola in reference to the Basque village of Loyola where he was born, as a boy Íñigo became a page in the service of a relative, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, treasurer of the kingdom of Castile. As a young man Íñigo had a love for military exercises as well as a tremendous desire for fame. He framed his life around the stories of El Cid, the knights of Camelot, and the Song of Roland. He joined the army at seventeen, and according to one biographer, he strutted about with his cape slinging open to reveal his tight-fitting hose and boots, a sword and dagger at his waist. Upon encountering a Moor who denied the divinity of Jesus, he challenged him to a duel to the death and he dueled many other men as well. In 1509, at the age of 18, Íñigo took up arms for Antonio Manrique de Lara and his diplomacy and leadership qualities earned him the title servant of the court, which made him very useful to the Duke. Under the Dukes leadership, Íñigo participated in many battles without injury, but at the Battle of Pamplona in 1521 he was gravely injured when a French-Navarrese expedition force stormed the fortress of Pamplona on May 20,1521. A cannonball hit him in the legs, wounding his right leg, in the end these operations left one leg shorter than the other, Íñigo would limp for the rest of his life, and his military career was ended
18.
Anthony Baldinucci
–
Anthony Baldinucci, S. J. was an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary, best known for his unusual methods of conducting missions. Baldinucci was born in Florence, the son of the art historian and he attended the Jesuit school of Florence and was drawn to the priesthood. Initially he considered following his brother into the Dominican Order, but he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus on April 21,1681. He was then sent to study theology at the Roman College and he carried out his regency teaching at the Jesuit schools in Terni and Rome. He was admitted to the vow of the Society on 15 August 1698. Baldinucci had wanted to become a missionary in Asia, but his health kept him from that path. Instead, he worked in central Italy, specifically in the cities of Frascati and he would continue to work in this area for the rest of his life. For four months of year he would conduct missions. Between 1697 and 1717 he visited 30 dioceses and gave an average of 22 missions per year, the missions were generally centered on meditations from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Baldinucci’s preaching was simple, vivid and dramatic and he organized processions which would start from various areas of the country to the place where he was holding the mission. Many of the people in these processions would wear crowns of thorns, given the size of these processions, Baldinucci often employed a number of laymen to help manage the crowd. Many of these deputati were drawn from the people he thought might otherwise be tempted to disrupt the processions, Baldinucci himself walked barefoot to each mission assignment, often carried a cross during his preaching, and often wore heavy chains. He would also walk through the assembled people scourging himself to the point of drawing blood and he would often finish these missions with the burning of various possible instruments of vice, including cards, dice, musical instruments, and the like, in the public square. People were reported to lay their daggers and pistols at his feet at this time. His appearances were so popular and well attended that he found crowds covering the walls of city when he arrived to deliver a mission. He also worked diligently to spread Marian devotions in his travels, in addition to his preaching, Baldinucci also wrote two courses of sermons for Lent, gathered material for many more, composed a number of discourses, and maintained a long correspondence list. The process leading to Baldinuccis beatification began in 1753 and he was declared Venerable in 1873, and was beatified on April 23,1893. He is still under consideration for canonization, the Jesuit Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Florence still preserves the crucifix he wore during his missions
19.
Periphrasis
–
In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which grammatical meaning is expressed by one or more free morphemes, instead of by inflectional affixes or derivation. Periphrastic forms are analytic, whereas the absence of periphrasis is a characteristic of synthesis, while periphrasis concerns all categories of syntax, it is most visible with verb catenae. The verb catenae of English are highly periphrastic, the distinction between inflected and periphrastic forms is usually illustrated across distinct languages. However, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives in English provide an illustration of the phenomenon. The words more and most contribute functional meaning only, just like the inflectional affixes -er, the distinction is also evident across full verbs and the corresponding light verb constructions, The light verb constructions are periphrastic because the light verbs have little semantic content. The main semantic content of light verb constructions lies with the noun phrase. Distinctions of this sort abound across languages, the following table provides some examples across Latin and English, Periphrasis is a characteristic of analytic languages, which tend to avoid inflection. Even strongly inflected synthetic languages sometimes make use of periphrasis to fill out a paradigm that is missing certain forms. A comparison of some Latin forms of the verb dūcere lead with their English translations illustrates further that English uses periphrasis in many instances where Latin uses inflection, English often needs two or three verbs to express the same meaning that Latin expresses with a single verb. The correspondence in meaning across inflected forms and their periphrastic equivalents within the language or across different languages leads to a basic question. Individual words are always constituents, but their periphrastic equivalents are often NOT constituents, given this mismatch in syntactic form, one can pose the following questions, how should the form-meaning correspondence across periphrastic and non-periphrastic forms be understood. How does it come to pass that a specific meaning bearing unit can be a constituent in one case but in another case, an answer to this question that has recently come to light is expressed in terms of the catena unit, as implied above. The periphrastic word combinations are catenae even when they are not constituents, the form-meaning correspondence is therefore consistent. A given inflected one-word catena corresponds to a periphrastic multiple-word catena, the role of catenae for the theory of periphrasis is illustrated with the trees that follow. The first example is across French and English, future tense/time in French is often constructed with an inflected form, whereas English typically employs a periphrastic form, e. g. The next example is across German and English, German often expresses a benefitor with a dative case pronoun. For English to express the meaning, it usually employs the periphrastic two-word prepositional phrase with for. The following trees illustrate the periphrasis of light verb constructions, Each time, Each of these predicates is a periphrastic form insofar at least one function word is present
20.
Rhetoric
–
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, wherein a writer or speaker strives to inform, persuade or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of study and a productive civic practice. Its best known definition comes from Aristotle, who considers it a counterpart of both logic and politics, and calls it the faculty of observing in any case the available means of persuasion. The five canons of rhetoric, which trace the traditional tasks in designing a persuasive speech, were first codified in classical Rome, invention, arrangement, style, memory, along with grammar and logic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, it was a part of Western education. Scholars have debated the scope of rhetoric since ancient times, although some have limited rhetoric to the specific realm of political discourse, many modern scholars liberate it to encompass every aspect of culture. Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a diverse range of domains than was the case in ancient times. Many contemporary approaches treat rhetoric as human communication that includes purposeful, Public relations, lobbying, law, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising are modern professions that employ rhetorical practitioners. Because the ancient Greeks highly valued public political participation, rhetoric emerged as a tool to influence politics. Consequently, rhetoric remains associated with its political origins, however, even the original instructors of Western speech—the Sophists—disputed this limited view of rhetoric. According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias, a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic and this method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics. In his Encomium to Helen, Gorgias even applied rhetoric to fiction by seeking for his own pleasure to prove the blamelessness of the mythical Helen of Troy in starting the Trojan War. Looking to another key rhetorical theorist, Plato defined the scope of rhetoric according to his opinions of the art. He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit instead of discovering truth, in Gorgias, one of his Socratic Dialogues, Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies. Rhetoric, in Platos opinion, is merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, thus, Plato considered any speech of lengthy prose aimed at flattery as within the scope of rhetoric. Aristotle both redeemed rhetoric from his teacher and narrowed its focus by defining three genres of rhetoric—deliberative, forensic or judicial, and epideictic, when one considers that rhetoric included torture, it is clear that rhetoric cannot be viewed only in academic terms. However, the enthymeme based upon logic was viewed as the basis of rhetoric, however, since the time of Aristotle, logic has changed. For example, Modal logic has undergone a major development that also modifies rhetoric, yet, Aristotle also outlined generic constraints that focused the rhetorical art squarely within the domain of public political practice
21.
Rembrandt
–
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
22.
Robert Browning
–
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, Brownings early career began promisingly, but was not a success. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period, in 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, who at the time was considerably better known than himself. So started one of historys most famous literary marriages and they went to live in Italy, a country he called my university, and which features frequently in his work. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women, the collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive, such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century. Brownings admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly The Ring and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, among living writers, Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series and A. S. Byatts Possession refer directly to Brownings work, today Brownings critically most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey and he was baptized on 14 June 1812, at Locks Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna and Robert Browning. His father was a clerk for the Bank of England. Brownings paternal grandfather was an owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies. Brownings father had sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Brownings mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee in Scotland, the evidence, however, is inconclusive either way. Roberts father, a collector, amassed a library of around 6,000 books. As such, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources and his mother, to whom he was very close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brothers companion in his later years and his father encouraged his childrens interest in literature and the arts
23.
Cimabue
–
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
24.
Ernst Gombrich
–
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich OM CBE FBA was an Austrian-born art historian who became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom. His father was a lawyer and former classmate of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, at the Conservatoire she was a pupil of, amongst others, Anton Bruckner. However, rather than follow a career as a concert pianist she became an assistant of Theodor Leschetizky and she also knew Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf and Johannes Brahms. Rudolf Serkin was a family friend. Adolf Busch and members of the Busch Quartet regularly met and played in the family home, throughout his life Gombrich maintained a deep love and knowledge of classical music. In 1936 he married Ilse Heller, a pupil of his mother and their only child, Richard Gombrich, went on to become a noted Indologist and scholar of Buddhism, acting as the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University in 1976–2004. During World War II, Gombrich worked for the BBC World Service, when in 1945 an upcoming announcement was prefaced by a Bruckner symphony written for Wagners death, Gombrich guessed correctly that Hitler was dead and promptly broke the news to Churchill. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960, made CBE in 1966, knighted in 1972 and he was the recipient of numerous additional honours, including Goethe Prize 1994 and Balzan Prize in 1985 for History of Western Art. Gombrich was close to a number of Austrian émigrés who fled to the West prior to the Anschluss, among them Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek and he was instrumental in bringing to publication Poppers magnum opus The Open Society and Its Enemies. Each had known the other only fleetingly in Vienna, as Gombrichs father served his law apprenticeship with Poppers father and they became lifelong friends in exile. Gombrichs first book, and the one he did not write in English, was Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser. It was very popular and translated into several languages, but was not available in English until 2005 and he did most of this translation and revision himself, and it was completed by his long-time assistant and secretary Caroline Mustill and his granddaughter Leonie Gombrich after his death. The Story of Art, first published in 1950 and currently in its 16th edition, is regarded as one of the most accessible introductions to the history of visual arts. Originally intended for adolescent readers, it has millions of copies. Other important books are Aby Warburg, An Intellectual Biography, The Sense of Order, the complete list of his publications, E. H. Gombrich, A Bibliography, was published by Joseph Burney Trapp in 2000, when Gombrich arrived in England in 1936, Art History was largely concerned with connoisseurship. Gombrich, however, had brought up in the Viennese culture of Bildung and was concerned with wider issues of cultural tradition. It was in Art and Illusion that he introduced the ideas of schemata, making and matching, correction and trial and error influenced by conjecture and refutation, the process does not start from scratch, however
25.
J. Paul Getty Museum
–
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in California housed on two campuses, the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and is the location of the museum. The collection features Western art from the Middle Ages to the present and its estimated 1.3 million visitors annually make it one of the most visited museums in the United States. The museums second location, the Getty Villa, is in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and displays art from ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. In 1974, J. Paul Getty opened a museum in a re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum on his property in Pacific Palisades, in 1982, the museum became the richest in the world when it inherited US$1.2 billion. In 1997, the moved to its current location in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Detailed information about the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collections is provided on GettyGuide, at the GettyGuide stations in the Museum, visitors can get information about exhibitions, interact with a timeline, watch videos on art-making techniques, and more. Also available at the Museum, the GettyGuide multimedia player features commentary from curators and conservators on many works of art, with GettyGuide on the Web, one may browse the Museum’s collection and bookmark works of art to create a customized tour and printable map. In 1984, Frel was demoted, and in 1986, he resigned, the Getty is involved in a controversy regarding proper title to some of the artwork in its collection. The museums previous curator of antiquities, Marion True, was indicted in Italy in 2005 on criminal charges relating to trafficking in stolen antiquities, similar charges have been addressed by the Greek authorities. The primary evidence in the case came from the 1995 raid of a Geneva, Switzerland, in 2005 True was forced to tender her resignation by the Board of Trustees, which announced her early retirement. Italy allowed the statute of limitations of the charges filed against her to expire in October 2010, True is currently under investigation by Greek authorities over the acquisition of a 2, 500-year-old funerary wreath. The wreath, along with a 6th-century BC statue of a woman, have returned to Greece and are exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. The Getty Museum resisted the requests of the Italian government for two decades, only to admit later that there might be problems attached to the acquisition. In 2006, Italian senior cultural official Giuseppe Proietti said, The negotiations havent made a step forward. Only after he suggested the Italian government to take cultural sanctions against the Getty, suspending all cultural cooperation, in another unrelated case in 1999, the Getty Museum had to hand over three antiquities to Italy after determining they were stolen. A Summary Catalogue of European Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum was published in 2001, indeed, some discrete works are provided with annotations, e. g. In 2016, the head of the Greek god Hades was returned to Sicily
26.
Accademia della Crusca
–
The Accademia della Crusca, generally abbreviated as La Crusca, is an Italian society for scholars and Italian linguists and philologists established in Florence. It is the most important research institution on Italian language as well as the oldest linguistic academy in the world, the Accademia was founded in Florence in 1583 and it has been characterized by its efforts to maintain the purity of the Italian language. The academy motto is Il più bel fior ne coglie, a verse of the Italians poet Francesco Petrarca. The academy is a member of the European Federation of National Linguistic Institutes, the Federation has two Italian members, the Accademia della Crusca and the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano del CNR. The founders were called the brigata dei Crusconi and constituted a kind of circle, where the members included poets, men of letters. The Crusconi battled against the classical pedantry of the Accademia through the use of humour, satire, however, it was important that this battle was fought without compromising the primary intention of the group, which was typically literary, and expounded in high quality literary disputes. One of the earliest scholars to influence the work of the Crusca was Agnolo Monosini, the Accademia thus abandoned the jocular character of its earlier meetings in order to take up the normative role it would assume from then on. The very title of the Accademia came to be interpreted in a new way, from this is derived the symbolism of the Crusca, its logo shows a frullone or sifter with the Petrarchan motto Il più bel fior ne coglie. The members of the Accademia were given nicknames associated with corn and flour, the Accademias activities carried on with both high- and low- points until 1783, when Pietro Leopoldo quit and, with several other academicians, created the second Accademia Fiorentina. In the 20th century, the decree of 11 March 1923 changed its composition, in 1955, however, Bruno Migliorini and others began discussion of the return of the work of preparing the Vocabolario to the Crusca. The Italian Academies, in, Collected Essays, vol, II, Renaissance and Reform, the Italian Contribution, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul,1983 ISBN 0-7100-9530-9 Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E
27.
Integrated Authority File
–
The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
28.
Netherlands Institute for Art History
–
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in documentation, archives, and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until modern times, all of this is open to the public, and much of it has been digitized and is available on their website. The main goal of the bureau is to collect, categorize, via the available databases, the visitor can gain insight into archival evidence on the lives of many artists of past centuries. The library owns approximately 450,000 titles, of which ca.150,000 are auction catalogs, there are ca.3,000 magazines, of which 600 are currently running subscriptions. Though most of the text is in Dutch, the record format includes a link to library entries and images of known works. The RKD also manages the Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, the original version is an initiative of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Their bequest formed the basis for both the art collection and the library, which is now housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Though not all of the holdings have been digitised, much of its metadata is accessible online. The website itself is available in both a Dutch and an English user interface, in the artist database RKDartists, each artist is assigned a record number. To reference an artist page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record, usually of the form, https, for example, the artist record number for Salvador Dalí is 19752, so his RKD artist page can be referenced. In the images database RKDimages, each artwork is assigned a record number, to reference an artwork page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record, usually of the form, https, //rkd. nl/en/explore/images/ followed by the artworks record number. For example, the record number for The Night Watch is 3063. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus also assigns a record for each term, rather, they are used in the databases and the databases can be searched for terms. For example, the painting called The Night Watch is a militia painting, the thesaurus is a set of general terms, but the RKD also contains a database for an alternate form of describing artworks, that today is mostly filled with biblical references. To see all images that depict Miriams dance, the associated iconclass code 71E1232 can be used as a search term. Official website Direct link to the databases The Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus
29.
Virtual International Authority File
–
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Baldinucci, Filippo". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "