1.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
2.
Villa Borghese gardens
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Villa Borghese is a landscape garden in the naturalistic English manner in Rome, containing a number of buildings, museums and attractions. It is the third largest public park in Rome after the ones of the Villa Doria Pamphili, the gardens as they are now were remade in the early nineteenth century. In 1605, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of Bernini, the vineyards site is identified with the gardens of Lucullus, the most famous in the late Roman republic. In the 19th century much of the gardens former formality was remade as a garden in the English taste. The Villa Borghese gardens were long informally open, but were bought by the commune of Rome, the large landscape park in the English taste contains several villas. The Spanish Steps lead up to this park, and there is another entrance at the Porte del Popolo by Piazza del Popolo, the Pincio, in the south part of the park, offers one of the greatest views over Rome. A balustrade from the gardens, was taken to England in the late 19th century, and installed in the grounds of Cliveden House, a mansion in Buckinghamshire, in 1896. The Piazza di Siena, located in the villa, hosted the dressage, individual jumping. In 2004, a species of Italian snail was discovered, still living on the balustrade after more than 100 years in England, today the Galleria Borghese is housed in the Villa Borghese itself. The Villa Giulia adjoining the Villa Borghese gardens was built in 1551 -1555 as a residence for Pope Julius III. The Villa Medici houses the French Academy in Rome, and the Fortezzuola a Gothic garden structure that houses a collection memorializing the academic modern sculptor Pietro Canonica, in the 1650s, Diego Velázquez painted several depictions of this Villas garden casino festively illuminated at night. Before electricity, such torchlit illuminations carried an excitement hard to conceive today, other villas scattered through the Villa Borghese gardens are remains of a world exposition in Rome in 1911. The Galleria Nazionale dArte Moderna located in its grounds has a collection of 19th-, architecturally the most notable of the 1911 exposition pavilions is the English pavilion designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, now housing the British School at Rome. The villas gardens feature in one of Respighis Pini di Roma, the garden contains a replica of the Shakespeares Globe Theatre built in 2003. Beside the 1911 Expositions villas, there is the Expositions Zoo, recently redesigned, with minimal caging, as the Bioparco, another version stands in the gardens of the Pincian Hill. Embriaco had presented two prototypes of his invention at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1867 where it won prizes, list of parks and gardens in Rome 1960 Summer Olympics official report
3.
Borghese Collection
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The Borghese Collection is a collection of Roman sculptures, old masters and modern art collected by the Roman Borghese family, especially Cardinal Scipione Borghese, from the 17th century on. It includes major collections of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, the Borghese also bought widely from leading painters and sculptors of his day, and Scipione Borgheses commissions include two portrait busts by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Most of the collection intact and on display at the Galleria Borghese. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, an important art collector, was the collections instigator and his collection was poetically described as early as 1613 by Scipione Francucci. In 1607, the Pope gave the Cardinal 107 paintings which had confiscated from the studio of the painter Cavalier DArpino. In 1682, part of Olimpia Aldobrandinis inheritance entered the Borghese collection, it included works from the collections of Cardinal Salviati and Lucretia dEste. Scipione developed an estate and vineyard on the Pincian hill in Rome into a vast garden and complex of palaces. He also used the Villa Mondragone for this purpose, integrating the sculptures of the Borghese collection and existing vast Baroque ceiling decors, they created a spectacular monument to the Borghese family. The Villa still houses a part of the collection, as the Galleria Borghese. Many of the sculptures there are displayed in the spaces they were intended for, boy with a Basket of Fruit St. In addition, the gallery contains three busts, two of Pope Paul V and one marvelously conversive and stunningly innovative portrait of his patron, camillo even bought Correggios celebrated Danäe in Paris in 1827
4.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
5.
Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
6.
Pope Paul V
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Pope Paul V, born Camillo Borghese, was Pope from 16 May 1605 to his death in 1621. He is best remembered today as the Pope who persecuted Galileo Galilei, Camillo Borghese was born on 17 September 1550 into the noble Borghese family of Siena which had recently fled to Rome, thus the reason as to why ROMANUS appears in most of his inscriptions. He began his career as an educated at Perugia and then in Padua. In June 1596 he was made the Cardinal-Priest of SantEusebio and the Cardinal Vicar of Rome by Pope Clement VIII, during this time, he opted for other titular churches like San Crisogono and Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Clement VIII also bestowed upon him episcopal consecration in 1597 after his appointment as Bishop of Jesi, in character he was very stern and unyielding, a lawyer rather than diplomat, who defended the privileges of the Church to his utmost. His first act was to send home to their sees the bishops who were sojourning in Rome, Paul met with Galileo Galilei in 1616 after Cardinal Bellarmine had, on his orders, warned Galileo not to hold or defend the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus. Whether there was also an not to teach those ideas in any way has been a matter for controversy. Paul V canonised Charles Borromeo on 1 November 1610 and Frances of Rome on 29 May 1608 and he also canonized Pompejanus in 1615 and canonized Cardinal Albert de Louvain on 9 August 1621. He also beatified a number of individuals which included Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, Theresa of Avila, and Francis Xavier. Venice passed two laws obnoxious to Paul, one forbidding the alienation of real estate in favour of the clergy, two priests charged by the Venetian state with cruelty, wholesale poisoning, murder and licentiousness, were arrested by the Senate and put in dungeons for trial. Having been found guilty, they were committed to prison, Paul V insisted that they be released to the Church. He demanded the release of the priests as not being amenable to the secular law, when this was refused, the Pope threatened an interdict on account of the property laws and the imprisonment of ecclesiastics, which threat was presented to the Senate on Christmas 1605. The Venetian position was defended by a canon lawyer, Paolo Sarpi. In April 1606 the Pope excommunicated the entire government of Venice, Father Sarpi strongly advised the Venetian government to refuse to receive the Popes interdict, and to reason with him while opposing force by force. The rest of the Catholic clergy sided with the city, with the exception of the Jesuits, the Theatines, the dissenting clergy were forthwith expelled from Venetian territories. Masses continued to be said in Venice, and the feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated with displays of pomp and magnificence. Within a year the disagreement was mediated by France and Spain, the Most Serene Republic refused to retract the laws, but asserted that Venice would conduct herself with her accustomed piety. The Jesuits, which Venice considered subversive Papal agents, remained banned, in September 1607, after unsuccessfully attempting to lure Father Sarpi to Rome, the Pope responded by putting out a contract on his life
7.
Villa
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A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably, after the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity, sometimes transferred to the Church for reuse as a monastery. Then they gradually re-evolved through the Middle Ages into elegant upper-class country homes, in modern parlance, villa can refer to various types and sizes of residences, ranging from the suburban semi-detached double villa to residences in the wildland–urban interface. In ancient Roman architecture a villa was originally a house built for the élite. The Roman villae rusticae at the heart of latifundia were the earliest versions of what later, not included as villae were the domus, a city house for the élite and privileged classes, and insulae, blocks of apartment buildings for the rest of the population. In Satyricon, Petronius described the range of Roman dwellings. Another type of villae is the villa marittima, a seaside villa, a concentration of Imperial villas existed on the Gulf of Naples, on the Isle of Capri, at Monte Circeo and at Antium. Examples include the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, and the Villa of the Mysteries, wealthy Romans also escaped the summer heat in the hills round Rome, especially around Tibur (Tivoand Frascati, such as at Hadrians Villa. Cicero allegedly possessed no fewer than seven villas, the oldest of which was near Arpinum, pliny the Younger had three or four, of which the example near Laurentium is the best known from his descriptions. Roman writers refer with satisfaction to the self-sufficiency of their latifundium villas, archeologists have meticulously examined numerous Roman villas in England. The grand villa at Woodchester preserved its mosaic floors when the Anglo-Saxon parish church was built upon its site, grave-diggers preparing for burials in the churchyard as late as the 18th century had to punch through the intact mosaic floors. The even more palatial villa rustica at Fishbourne near Winchester was built as an open rectangle. Villae rusticae are essential in the Empires economy, two kinds of villa-plan in Roman Britain may be characteristic of Roman villas in general. The more usual plan extended wings of all opening onto a linking portico. The other kind featured a central hall like a basilica. The villa buildings were often independent structures linked by their enclosed courtyards, timber-framed construction, carefully fitted with mortises and tenons and dowelled together, set on stone footings, were the rule, replaced by stone buildings for the important ceremonial rooms. Traces of window glass have been found, as well as ironwork window grilles, with the decline and collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, the villas were more and more isolated and came to be protected by walls. In England the villas were abandoned, looted, and burned by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, in regions on the Continent, aristocrats and territorial magnates donated large working villas and overgrown abandoned ones to individual monks, these might become the nuclei of monasteries
8.
Caravaggio
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, in scarcely a year or so’s sojourn in Naples, he rapidly established himself once more as the most prominent painter, exploiting high-ranking connections. It was not long before these connections gave him an opening to travel on in 1607 to Malta, governed by the Order of Knights Hospitallers, Caravaggio probably hoped that the Knights would provide a channel whereby he could obtain a pardon from the Papacy. Once more his talents made an instant impression, along with the support of noble patrons and his hopes dashed, he contrived to escape and flee once, which before the end of 1608 led to his cancellation from the rolls of the Order. He made for Syracuse in Sicily, where he was received as a guest by a friend from his Roman days, the painter’s face was disfigured and rumours started to circulate of his death. Various commentators have formulated opinions about his state from works supposedly executed at this period. In fact, Caravaggio’s end is shrouded in mystery, mystery that is rendered only denser by conflicting hypotheses, some speak of a natural death from a persistent fever, others of an assassination by emissaries of the Knights of Malta. The loss of the paintings put the deal and his future in doubt, there is evidence that dogged by a serious fever, he was tended by a local religious confraternity near Porto Ercole, then in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but succumbed. His death was certified by them as taking place on 18 July 1610, if the story to this point is exact, it is likely he was buried in a paupers’ common grave. As to the place, though this continues to be contested. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, despite this, his influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism was profound. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy claimed, What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting. Caravaggio was born in Milan where his father, Fermo, was an administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. His mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a family of the same district. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague which ravaged Milan, Caravaggios mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592 Caravaggio left Milan for Rome, in flight after certain quarrels, in Rome, where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for an alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of Protestantism. Caravaggios innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close observation with a dramatic, even theatrical
9.
Titian
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Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, known in English as Titian /ˈtɪʃən/, was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno, during his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, during the course of his long life, Titians artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his pieces, their loose brushwork. The exact date of Titians birth is uncertain, when he was an old man he claimed in a letter to Philip II, King of Spain, to have been born in 1474, but this seems most unlikely. Other writers contemporary to his old age give figures that would equate to birthdates between 1473 and after 1482 and he was the son of Gregorio Vecelli and his wife Lucia. His father was superintendent of the castle of Pieve di Cadore, Gregorio was also a distinguished councilor and soldier. Many relatives, including Titians grandfather, were notaries, and the family of four were well-established in the area, at the age of about ten to twelve he and his brother Francesco were sent to an uncle in Venice to find an apprenticeship with a painter. At that time the Bellinis, especially Giovanni, were the artists in the city. There Titian found a group of men about his own age, among them Giovanni Palma da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano Luciani. Francesco Vecellio, his brother, later became a painter of some note in Venice. A fresco of Hercules on the Morosini Palace is said to have one of Titians earliest works. Others were the Bellini-esque so-called Gypsy Madonna in Vienna, and the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth, now in the Accademia, a Man with a Quilted Sleeve is an early portrait, painted around 1509 and described by Giorgio Vasari in 1568. Scholars long believed it depicted Ludovico Ariosto, but now think it is of Gerolamo Barbarigo, Rembrandt borrowed the composition for his self-portraits. Titian joined Giorgione as an assistant, but many contemporary critics found his work more impressive—for example in exterior frescoes that they did for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Their relationship evidently contained a significant element of rivalry, distinguishing between their work at this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy. A substantial number of attributions have moved from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, one of the earliest known Titian works, Christ Carrying the Cross in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, depicting the Ecce Homo scene, was long regarded as by Giorgione. In 1507–1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to create frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of paintings remain, probably by Giorgione
10.
The Deposition (Raphael)
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The Entombment, also known as the Pala Baglione, Borghese Entombment or The Entombment, is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. Signed and dated Raphael Urbinas MDVII, the painting is in the Galleria Borghese in Rome and it is the central panel of a larger altarpiece commissioned by Atalanta Baglioni of Perugia in honor of her slain son, Grifonetto Baglioni. Like many works, it shares elements of the subjects of the Deposition of Christ, the Lamentation of Christ. The painting is on panel and measures 184 x 176 cm. In the early part of the 16th Century, violence among factions, mostly in the form of combat, was relatively common in Perugia and other parts of Italy. The Baglioni family were the lords of Perugia and surrounding areas, Atalanta changed her mind and rushed after her son, but arrived only in time to see her son being killed by Gian Paolo and his men. A few years later, Atalanta commissioned the young Raphael to paint an altarpiece to commemorate Grifonetto in the chapel in San Francesco al Prato. Raphael took the commission very seriously, over the course of two working on and developing his design through two phases and numerous preparatory drawings. This was the last of major commissions by the young Raphael for Perugia. He had already painted for the church the Oddi Altarpiece for the Baglionis great rival family. The new commission marked an important stage in his development as an artist, the painting remained in its location until in 1608, it was forcibly removed by a gang working for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. In order to pacify the city of Perugia, the Pope commissioned two copies of the painting from Giovanni Lanfranco and the Cavaliere d’Arpino, and that by Arpino is still in Perugia, Raphael made numerous preparatory sketches or drafts as his idea for the composition evolved. He started with the subject of a Lamentation over the dead Christ, the two design phases may broadly be labeled ‘Perugian’ and ‘Florentine’. Giorgio Vasari, the biographer of Italian artists, also understood Raphael’s piece as a narrative painting. Vasari takes a reverential tone in describing The Entombment, taking care to discuss not only the important figures in the painting. Looking at it formally, the scene depicted is neither the Deposition nor the Entombment. We can determine this through the background, on the right is Mount Calvary, the location of the Crucifixion and Deposition, and on the left is the cave where the Entombment will take place. And so two men, lacking halos, use a piece of linen to carry the dead Christ, the two men and Christ form very strong diagonals in the shape of a V
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