Innocenzo di Pietro Francucci da Imola
Innocenzo Francucci known as Innocenzo da Imola, was an Italian painter and draftsman. The son of a goldsmith named Pietro, he was born in Imola sometime around 1490. After studying with his father in Imola, by 1506 he had moved to nearby Bologna to study painting. According to Carlo Cesare Malvasia he entered the studio of Francesco Francia in 1508, he went to Florence where in 1510 he worked under the direction of Mariotto Albertinelli. His earliest known works include The Virgin and Child with Saints Sebastian, Roch and Damian was signed and dated in 1515; the Virgin and Child with Saints John and Catherine and a Bishop and dated in 1516. This second painting is near Bologna. During his life he produced a series of religious frescoes and altarpieces, painted in a Raphaelesque manner, his only secular paintings are five mythological frescoes in the Palazzina della Viola in Bologna. He trained artists such as Francesco Primaticcio, Prospero Fontana, Pietro Lamo; the Church of Santa Maria Dei Servi in Bologna has interior paintings by Francucci.
Francucci died in Bologna around 1550. The Virgin and Child with Saints Sebastian, Roch and Damian - Bagnara di Romagna - Museum The Holy Family - Bagnara di Romagna - private collection The Virgin and Child with Saints John and Catherine and a Bishop Casola Valsenio Study of an Angel and of Drapery - Getty Museum The Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Paul, Joachim and Anne, Faenza Cathedral The Virgin of the Rosary, church of San Domenico fuori le mura, Catania The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine of Siena, Filangieri Museum, Naples Madonna and Child in Glory and the Saints Archangel Michael, Peter Benedict, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna St. John the Evangelist, La Salle University
Helen of Troy
In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy known as Helen of Sparta, was said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta but was abducted by Prince Paris of Troy after the goddess Aphrodite promised her to him in the Judgement of Paris; this resulted in the Trojan War. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda, was the sister of Clytemnestra, Polydeuces, Philonoe and Timandra. Elements of her putative biography come from classical authors such as Aristophanes, Cicero and Homer, her story appears in Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus. A competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage saw. An oath sworn by all the suitors required all of them to provide military assistance to the winning suitor, whomever he might be, if she were stolen from him; when she married Menelaus she was still young. The legends of Helen in Troy are contradictory: Homer depicts her as a wistful sorrowful figure, who came to regret her choice and wished to be reunited with Menelaus.
Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in the carnage she caused. Paris was killed in action, in Homer's account Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of the legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead. A cult associated with her developed both at Sparta and elsewhere, she was worshiped in Attica and on Rhodes. Her beauty inspired artists of all times to represent her as the personification of ideal human beauty. Christopher Marlowe's lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus are cited: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"Images of Helen start appearing in the 7th century BCE. In classical Greece, her abduction by Paris – or escape with him – was a popular motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was depicted as a "rape" by Paris; the etymology of Helen's name continues to be a problem for scholars. Georg Curtius related Helen to the moon.
Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the noun ἑλένη meaning "torch". It has been suggested that the λ of Ἑλένη arose from an original ν, thus the etymology of the name is connected with the root of Venus. Linda Lee Clader, says that none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction. Inversely, others have connected this etymology to a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European sun goddess, noting her name's connection to the word for "sun" in various Indo-European cultures. In particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader indo-European "marriage drama" of the sun goddess, she is related to the divine twins, just as many of these goddesses are. None of the etymological sources appear to support the existence, save as a coincidence only, of a connection between the name of Helen and the name by which the classical Greeks described themselves, namely Hellenes, after Hellen the mythological progenitor of the Greeks; the origins of Helen's myth date back to the Mycenaean age. Her name first appears in the poems of Homer, but scholars assume that such myths derive from earlier Mycenaean Greek sources.
Her mythological birthplace was Sparta of the Age of Heroes, which features prominently in the canon of Greek myth: in ancient Greek memory, the Mycenaean Bronze Age became the age of the Greek heroes. The kings and heroes of the Trojan Cycle are related to the gods, since divine origins gave stature to the Greeks' heroic ancestors; the fall of Troy came to represent a fall from an illustrious heroic age, remembered for centuries in oral tradition before being written down. Recent archaeological excavations in Greece suggest that modern-day Laconia was a distinct territory in the Late Bronze Age, while the poets narrate that it was a rich kingdom. Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for a Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta. From the early 1990s to the present suggest that the area around Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia. In most sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Helen is the daughter of Zeus and of Leda, the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus.
Euripides' play Helen, written in the late 5th century BC, is the earliest source to report the most familiar account of Helen's birth: that, although her putative father was Tyndareus, she was Zeus' daughter. In the form of a swan, the king of gods was chased by an eagle, sought refuge with Leda; the swan gained her affection, the two mated. Leda produced an egg, from which Helen emerged; the First Vatican Mythographer introduces the notion that two eggs came from the union: one containing Castor and Pollux. The same author earlier states that Helen and Pollux were produced from a single egg. Pseudo-Apollodorus states that Leda had intercourse with both Zeus and Tyndareus the night she conceived Helen. On the other hand, in the Cypria, part of the Epic Cycle, Helen was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis; the date of the Cypria is uncertain, but it is thought to preserve traditions that date back to at leas
Roman sculpture
The study of Roman sculpture is complicated by its relation to Greek sculpture. Many examples of the most famous Greek sculptures, such as the Apollo Belvedere and Barberini Faun, are known only from Roman Imperial or Hellenistic "copies". At one time, this imitation was taken by art historians as indicating a narrowness of the Roman artistic imagination, but, in the late 20th century, Roman art began to be reevaluated on its own terms: some impressions of the nature of Greek sculpture may in fact be based on Roman artistry; the strengths of Roman sculpture are in portraiture, where they were less concerned with the ideal than the Greeks or Ancient Egyptians, produced characterful works, in narrative relief scenes. Examples of Roman sculpture are abundantly preserved, in total contrast to Roman painting, widely practiced but has all been lost. Latin and some Greek authors Pliny the Elder in Book 34 of his Natural History, describe statues, a few of these descriptions match extant works. While a great deal of Roman sculpture in stone, survives more or less intact, it is damaged or fragmentary.
Most statues were far more lifelike and brightly colored when created. Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring Etruscans, themselves influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in terracotta lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period; as the expanding Roman Republic began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and the entire Hellenistic world except for the Parthian far east and patrician sculpture became an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which Roman elements are hard to disentangle as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period. By the 2nd century BCE, "most of the sculptors working at Rome" were Greek enslaved in conquests such as that of Corinth, sculptors continued to be Greeks slaves, whose names are rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, temples were decorated with re-used Greek works.
A native Italian style can be seen in the tomb monuments of prosperous middle-class Romans, which often featured portrait busts, portraiture is arguably the main strength of Roman sculpture. There are no survivals from the tradition of masks of ancestors that were worn in processions at the funerals of the great families and otherwise displayed in the home, but many of the busts that survive must represent ancestral figures from the large family tombs like the Tomb of the Scipios or the mausolea outside the city; the famous "Capitoline Brutus", a bronze head of Lucius Junius Brutus is variously dated, but taken as a rare survival of Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze. Stern and forceful heads are seen in the coins of the consuls, in the Imperial period coins as well as busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the basilicas of provincial cities were the main visual form of imperial propaganda; the Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker, a successful freedman has a frieze, an unusually large example of the "plebeian" style.
The Romans did not attempt to compete with free-standing Greek works of heroic exploits from history or mythology, but from early on produced historical works in relief, culminating in the great Roman triumphal columns with continuous narrative reliefs winding around them, of which those commemorating Trajan and Marcus Aurelius survive in Rome, where the Ara Pacis represents the official Greco-Roman style at its most classical and refined. Among other major examples are the earlier re-used reliefs on the Arch of Constantine and the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, Campana reliefs were cheaper pottery versions of marble reliefs and the taste for relief was from the imperial period expanded to the sarcophagus. All forms of luxury small sculpture continued to be patronized, quality could be high, as in the silver Warren Cup, glass Lycurgus Cup, large cameos like the Gemma Augustea, Gonzaga Cameo and the "Great Cameo of France". For a much wider section of the population, moulded relief decoration of pottery vessels and small figurines were produced in great quantity and considerable quality.
After moving through a late 2nd century "baroque" phase, in the 3rd century, Roman art abandoned, or became unable to produce, sculpture in the classical tradition, a change whose causes remain much discussed. The most important imperial monuments now showed stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace; the contrast is famously illustrated in the Arch of Constantine of 315 in Rome, which combines sections in the new style with roundels in the earlier full Greco-Roman style taken from elsewhere, the Four Tetrarchs from the new capital of Constantinople, now in Venice. Ernst Kitzinger found in both monuments the same "stubby proportions, angular movements, an ordering of parts through symmetry and repetition and a rendering of features and drapery folds through incisions rather than modelling... The hallmark of the style
Penelope
In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, known for her fidelity to Odysseus while he was absent, despite having many suitors. Her name has therefore been traditionally associated with marital fidelity; the origin of her name is believed by Robert S. P. Beekes to be Pre-Greek and related to pēnelops or pēnelōps, glossed by Hesychius as "some kind of bird", where -elōps is a common Pre-Greek suffix for predatory animals. In folk etymology, Pēnelopē is understood to combine the Greek word pēnē, "weft", ōps, "face", considered the most appropriate for a cunning weaver whose motivation is hard to decipher. Penelope is the wife of the main character, the king of Ithaca and daughter of Icarius of Sparta and his wife Periboea, she only has one son by Odysseus, born just before Odysseus was called to fight in the Trojan War. She waits twenty years for the final return of her husband, during which she devises various strategies to delay marrying one of the 108 suitors. On Odysseus's return, disguised as an old beggar, he finds.
She has devised tricks to delay her suitors, one of, to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. Every night for three years, she undoes part of the shroud, until Melantho, one of twelve unfaithful slave women, discovers her chicanery and reveals it to the suitors; because of her efforts to put off remarriage, Penelope is seen as a symbol of connubial fidelity. But because Athena wants her "to show herself to the wooers, that she might set their hearts a-flutter and win greater honor from her husband and her son than heretofore", Penelope does appear before the suitors; as Irene de Jong comments: As so it is Athena who takes the initiative in giving the story a new direction... The motives of mortal and god coincide, here they do not: Athena wants Penelope to fan the Suitors’ desire for her and make her more esteemed by her husband and son, she is ambivalent, variously asking Artemis to kill her and considering marrying one of the suitors.
When the disguised Odysseus returns, she announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus's rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads may have her hand. "For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero". There is debate as to. Penelope and the suitors know that Odysseus would surpass all in any test of masculine skill, so she may have intentionally started the contest as an opportunity for him to reveal his identity. On the other hand, because Odysseus seems to be the only person who can use the bow, she could just be further delaying her marriage to one of the suitors; when the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors are able to string the bow, but Odysseus does, wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors—beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup—with help from Telemachus and two slaves, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd.
Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope accepts that he is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē. Homer implies, that from on, Odysseus would live a long and happy life together with Penelope and Telemachus, wisely ruling his kingdom and enjoying wide respect and much success. In some early sources such as Pindar, Pan's father is Apollo via Penelope. Herodotus, Cicero and Hyginus all make Hermes and Penelope his parents. Pausanias 8.12.5 records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her husband, who banished her to Mantineia upon his return. 5th-century AD source Dionysiaca by Nonnus names Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia Pan's mother. Other sources report that Penelope slept with all 108 suitors in Odysseus' absence, gave birth to Pan as a result; this myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pan's name with the Greek word for "all".
Penelope is recognizable in Greek and Roman works, from Attic vase-paintings—the Penelope Painter is recognized by his representations of her—to Roman sculpture copying or improvising upon classical Greek models, by her seated pose, by her reflective gesture of leaning her cheek on her hand, by her protectively crossed knees, reflecting her long
Leone Leoni
For the early 17th-century composer, see Leone Leoni. Leone Leoni was an Italian sculptor of international outlook who travelled in Italy, Austria, France and the Netherlands. Leoni is regarded as the finest of the Cinquecento medallists, he made his reputation in commissions he received from the Habsburg monarchs Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Philip II of Spain. His usual medium was bronze, although he worked in marble and alabaster, carved gemstones and left some finished work in wax, as well as designing coins, he produced portraits, was used by the Spanish, the Austrian, Habsburgs. His family origins were at Arezzo, though he was born at Menaggio near Lake Como, his early training, to judge from the finish of his medals, was with a medallist or goldsmith, as Vasari says, his earliest documentation finds him at Venice after 1533, with his wife and infant son, living under the protection of his Aretine compatriot, Pietro Aretino, who introduced him to the circle of Titian. Taking advantage of his rival Benvenuto Cellini's being in prison at the time, he secured the role of designer for the Papal mint in Ferrara but was forced to withdraw under accusations of counterfeiting levelled by Pellegrino di Leuti, the jeweller of the Farnese Pope Paul III.
Leoni attacked Pellegrino and was condemned to lose his right hand, a sentence commuted after the intercession of powerful friends to slavery in the galleys, from which the entreaties of Andrea Doria released him after a year: Leoni produced three plaquettes and five medals of Andrea Doria as tokens of his gratitude. Once freed from the galleys, he "continued his alternation of criminal violence and exquisite workmanship" moving to Milan to take up an Imperial appointment as master of the mint there, from 20 February 1542, at 150 ducats a year and the gift of a house in the Moroni district of Milan. Leoni's house in Milan, rebuilt 1565-67, was called the Casa degli Omenoni for its heroically-scaled herm figures and bearded atlantes, a rarity in Milan at the time; the figures were carved by Antonio Abondio. Here he entertained Giorgio Vasari, who noted Leoni's large collection of plaster casts after the Antique, dominated by a stucco of the equestrian Marcus Aurelius from the Campidoglio in his courtyard.
His early protector in Milan, with whom he was on familiar terms, was the Imperial Governor, Ferrante Gonzaga. He lived in Milan thereafter, despite calls from his patrons to base himself, or at least present himself, at court, claiming that only there could he obtain the proper materials for his work - a notable contrast with Giambologna, never allowed to leave Florence by his Grand Duke, as he bitterly complained, for fear the Habsburgs would ensnare him. Among other violent incidents, he was supposed to have attempted to murder Titian's son, staying with him in Milan, he had made an early reputation for portrait medallions, before his major commissions from Charles V, whose image for posterity lies in his portraits by Titian and Leoni. Leoni was the guest of Charles in Brussels in 1549, the first of the portraits from life dates from this time. In Brussels the Emperor installed Leoni in an apartment below his own and delighted in his company, spending hours watching him at work, Vasari recalled.
He knighted Leoni on 2 November 1549. For the cathedral of Milan, Leone executed the five bronze figures for the monument of the condottiero Gian Giacomo Medici, brother of Pope Pius IV, in a marble architectural setting that Vasari attributed to a drawing by Michelangelo. On a commission from Cardinal Granvelle, Bishop of Arras, Archbishop of Malines, Viceroy of Naples, the leading Habsburg minister, Leone cast life-sized half-figures in richly framed ovals, of Charles and the Cardinal, described by Vasari. Granvelle would correspond with Leoni, whom he may have known from his youth in as a student in Padua, about Habsburg commissions. A marble portrait of Giovan Battista Castaldo, at the Church of San Bartolomeo, Nocera Inferiore — a commission mentioned by Vasari who thought it was bronze and did not know to which monastery it had been sent — was included in the exhibition Tiziano e il ritratto di corte, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, 2006. Leoni's commissions for royal portraiture in Spain were an extension of his Habsburg patronage.
On his return from Spain, where he executed the series of royal portraits, he brought a purse of 2000 scudi, according to Vasari. He pioneered, he made life-size full-length portrait bronzes, like that of Charles V, which were not intended as funerary effigies, as nearly all previous examples had been. Leoni was assisted in the monumental bronzes destined for the Escorial by his son Pompeo Leoni, who continued the large bronze-casting foundry after his father's death, in a style, not securely separated from that of his father. Among the assistants to Pompeo was Adriaen de Vries. Pompeo assembled the drawings and notes of Leonardo da Vinci that constitute the Codex Atlanticus in Milan. Leoni's name remained among the few recognizable landmarks in 16th century sculpture and attracted many attributions during the nineteenth century. George Sand's Leone Leoni is not based on the sculptor's caree
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua became Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, Mantua was the European Capital of Gastronomy, included in the Eastern Lombardy District. In 2007, Mantua's centro storico and Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family has made it one of the main artistic and musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera, it is the place where the composer Monteverdi premiered his opera L'Orfeo and where Romeo was banished in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It is the nearest town to the birthplace of the Roman poet Virgil, commemorated by a statue at the lakeside park "Piazza Virgiliana". Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes, created during the 12th century, as the city's defence system; these lakes receive water from the Mincio River, a tributary of the Po River which descends from Lake Garda.
The three lakes are called Lago Superiore, Lago di Mezzo, Lago Inferiore. A fourth lake, Lake Pajolo, which once served as a defensive water ring around the city, dried up at the end of the 18th century; the area and its environs are important not only in naturalistic terms, but anthropologically and historically. These dated, without interruption, from Neolithic times to the Bronze Age and the Gallic phases, ended with Roman residential settlements, which could be traced to the 3rd century AD. In 2017, Legambiente ranked Mantua as the best Italian city for the quality of the life and environment. Mantua was an island settlement, first established about the year 2000 BC on the banks of River Mincio, which flows from Lake Garda to the Adriatic Sea. In the 6th century BC, Mantua was an Etruscan village which, in the Etruscan tradition, was re-founded by Ocnus; the name may derive from the Etruscan god Mantus. After being conquered by the Cenomani, a Gallic tribe, Mantua was subsequently fought between the first and second Punic wars against the Romans, who attributed its name to Manto, a daughter of Tiresias.
This territory was populated by veteran soldiers of Augustus. Mantua's most famous ancient citizen is the poet Virgil, or Publius Vergilius Maro, born in the year 70 BC at a village near the city, now known as Virgilio. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the hands of Odoacer in 476 AD, Mantua was, along with the rest of Italy, conquered by the Ostrogoths, it was retaken by the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle of the 6th century following the Gothic war but was subsequently lost again to the Lombards. They were in turn conquered by Charlemagne in 774, thus incorporating Mantua into the Frankish Empire. Partitions of the empire in the Treaties of Verdun and Prüm led to Mantua passing to Middle Francia in 843 the Kingdom of Italy in 855. In 962 Italy was invaded by King Otto I of Germany, Mantua thus became a vassal of the newly formed Holy Roman Empire. In the 11th century, Mantua became a possession of Boniface of marquis of Tuscany; the last ruler of that family was the countess Matilda of Canossa, according to legend, ordered the construction of the precious Rotonda di San Lorenzo in 1082.
The Rotonda still exists today and was renovated in 2013. After the death of Matilda of Canossa, Mantua became a free commune and strenuously defended itself from the influence of the Holy Roman Empire during the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1198, Alberto Pitentino altered the course of River Mincio, creating what the Mantuans call "the four lakes" to reinforce the city's natural protection. Three of these lakes still remain today and the fourth one, which ran through the centre of town, was reclaimed during the 18th century. Podesteria Rule From 1215, the city was ruled under the podesteria of the Gallic-Guelph Rambertino Buvalelli. During the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Pinamonte Bonacolsi took advantage of the chaotic situation to seize power of the podesteria in 1273, he was declared the Captain General of the People. The Bonacolsi family ruled Mantua for the next two generations and made it more prosperous and artistically beautiful. On August 16, 1328, Luigi Gonzaga, an official in Bonacolsi's podesteria, his family staged a public revolt in Mantua and forced a coup d'état on the last Bonacolsi ruler, Rinaldo.
Ludovico Gonzaga, Podestà of Mantua since 1318, was duly elected Captain General of the People. The Gonzagas renovated the city in the 14th century. During the Italian Renaissance, the Gonzaga family softened their despotic rule and further raised the level of culture and refinement in Mantua. Mantua became a significant center of humanism. Marquis Gianfrancesco Gonzaga had brought Vittorino da Feltre to Mantua in 1423 to open his famous humanist school, the Casa Giocosa. Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, married Fra
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum; the NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two sites: NGV International, located on St Kilda Road in the Melbourne Arts Precinct of Southbank, the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, located nearby at Federation Square. The NGV International building, designed by Sir Roy Grounds, opened in 1968, was redeveloped by Mario Bellini before reopening in 2003, it is on the Victorian Heritage Register. Designed by Lab Architecture Studio, the Ian Potter Centre opened in 2002 and houses the gallery's Australian art collection. Victoria was granted separation from New South Wales in 1850, becoming effective on 1 July 1851. In the wake of the Victorian gold rush that began in August 1851, the new colony became Australia's richest, Melbourne, its capital, the largest and wealthiest city in Australia. With Melbourne's rapid growth came calls for the establishment of a public art gallery, in 1859, the Government of Victoria pledged £2000 for the acquisition of plaster casts of sculpture.
These works were displayed in the Museum of Art, opened by Governor Sir Henry Barkly in May 1861 on the lower floor of the south wing of the Public Library on Swanston Street. Further money was set aside in the early 1860s for the purchase of original paintings by British and Victorian artists; these works were first displayed in December 1864 in the newly opened Picture Gallery, which remained under the curatorial administration of the Public Library until 1882. Grand designs for a building fronting Lonsdale and Swanston streets were drawn by Nicholas Chevalier in 1860 and Frederick Grosse in 1865, featuring an enormous and elaborate library and gallery, but the visions were never realised. On 24 May 1874, the first purpose built gallery, known as the McArthur Gallery, opened in the McArthur room of the State Library, the following year, the Museum of Art was renamed the National Gallery of Victoria; the McArthur Gallery was only intended as a temporary home until the much grander vision was to be realised.
However such an edifice did not eventuate and the complex was instead developed incrementally over several decades. The National Gallery of Victoria Art School, associated with the gallery, was founded in 1867 and remained the leading centre for academic art training in Australia until about 1910; the School's graduates went on to become some of Australia's most significant artists. In 1887, the Buvelot Gallery was opened, along with the Painting School studios. In 1892, two more galleries were added: Stawell and La Trobe; the gallery's collection was built from both gifts of works of art and monetary donations. The most significant, the Felton Bequest, was established by the will of Alfred Felton and from 1904, has been used to purchase over 15,000 works of art. Since the Felton Bequest, the gallery had long held plans to build a permanent facility, however it was not until 1943 that the State Government chose a site, Wirth's Park, just south of the Yarra River. £3 million was put forward in February 1960 and Roy Grounds was announced as the architect.
In 1959, the commission to design a new gallery was awarded to the architectural firm Grounds Romberg Boyd. In 1962, Roy Grounds split from his partners Frederick Romberg and Robin Boyd, retained the commission, designed the gallery at 180 St Kilda Road; the new bluestone clad building was completed in December 1967 and Victorian premier Henry Bolte opened it on 20 August 1968. One of the features of the building is the Leonard French stained glass ceiling, one of the world's largest pieces of suspended stained glass, which casts colourful light on the floor below; the water-wall entrance is another well-known feature of the building. In 1999, redevelopment of the building was proposed, with Mario Bellini chosen as architect and an estimated project cost of $161.9 million. The proposal was to leave the original architectural fabric intact including the exterior facade and Leonard French stained glass ceiling, but to modernise the interior. During the redevelopment, many works were moved to a temporary external annex known as NGV on Russell, at the State Library with its entrance on Russell Street.
A major fundraising drive was launched on 10 October 2000 to redevelop the ageing facility and although the state government committed the majority of the funds, private donations were sought in addition to federal funding. The drive achieved its aim and secured $15 million from the Ian Potter Foundation on 11 July 2000, $3 million from Lotti Smorgon, $2 million from the Clemenger Foundation, $1 million each from James Fairfax and the Pratt Foundation. NGV on Russell closed on 30 June 2002 to make way for the staged opening of the new St Kilda Road gallery, it was opened by premier Steve Bracks on 4 December 2003. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in Federation Square was designed by Lab Architecture Studio to house the NGV's Australian art collection, it opened in 2002. As such, the NGV's collection is now housed in two separate buildings, with Grounds' building renamed NGV International; the NGV's Asian art collection began in 1862, one year after the gallery's founding, when Frederick Dalgety donated two Chinese plates.
The Asian collection has since grown to include significant works from across the continent. The NGV's Australian art collection encompasses Indigenous art and artefacts, Australian colonial art, Australian Impressionist art, 20th century and contemporary art; the 1880s saw the birth and development of
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