Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years in his Vita of Botticelli as a "golden age". Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; as well as the small number of mythological subjects which are his best known works today, he painted a wide range of religious subjects and some portraits. He and his workshop were known for their Madonna and Childs, many in the round tondo shape. Botticelli's best-known works are The Birth of Primavera, both in the Uffizi in Florence, he lived all his life in the same neighbourhood of Florence, with the only significant time he spent elsewhere being the months he spent painting in Pisa in 1474 and the Sistine Chapel in Rome from 1481 to 1482. Only one of his paintings is dated, though others can be dated from other records with varying degrees of certainty, the development of his style traced with confidence.
He was an independent master for all the 1470s, growing in mastery and reputation, the 1480s were his most successful decade, when all his large mythological paintings were done, many of his best Madonnas. By the 1490s his style became more personal and to some extent mannered, he could be seen as moving in a direction opposite to that of Leonardo da Vinci and a new generation of painters creating the High Renaissance style as Botticelli returned in some ways to the Gothic style, he has been described as "an outsider in the mainstream of Italian painting", who had a limited interest in many of the developments most associated with Quattrocento painting, such as the realistic depiction of human anatomy and landscape, the use of direct borrowings from classical art. His training enabled him to represent all these aspects of painting, without adopting or contributing to their development. Botticelli was born in the city of Florence in a house in the street still called Via Borgo Ognissanti, he was to live within a minute or two's walk of this all his life, to be buried in the Ognissanti parish church.
His father was Mariano di Vanni d'Amedeo Filipepi, a tanner, Sandro was the youngest of his four children to survive into adulthood, all boys. The date of his birth is not known, but his father's tax returns give his age as two in 1447 and thirteen in 1458; the Ognissanti neighbourhood was "a modest one, inhabited by weavers and other workmen," but there were some rich families, notably the rich Rucellai and wool-merchants, headed by Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, whose Palazzo Rucellai by Leon Battista Alberti, a landmark in Italian Renaissance architecture, was being built between about 1446 and 1451, Botticelli's earliest years. By 1458, Botticelli's family had moved to the same street as this, were renting their house from another Rucellai, there were other dealings involving the two families; the same year, when Botticelli was 13, his father complained to the Florence Registry that his son was "unhealthy" and "reading". Botticelli's father was a tanner until 1460, before joining his son Antonio in a new business as a beater of gold leaf, which would have brought them into contact with artists.
When he was about 14 years old, Botticelli apprenticed as a goldsmith in Antonio's workshop. In 1464, Botticelli's father bought a house in nearby Via Nuova, which Sandro returned to live in by 1470, where he remained for the rest of his life, he both lived and had his workshop in the house, by now a rather unusual practice, despite his brother Giovanni and his family being in residence. On the same street were the Vespucci family, including Amerigo Vespucci, born in 1454; the Vespucci were close Medici allies, would become regular patrons of Botticelli. The name Botticelli, meaning "little barrel", came from his brother Giovanni's nickname of "Botticello", "apparently from an unfortunate resemblance". By 1470 a document referred to the painter as "Sandro Mariano Botticelli", it became his customary surname. From around 1461 or 1462 Botticelli was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, one of the top Florentine painters of the day, one patronized by the Medicis, he was rather conservative in many respects, but gave Botticelli a solid training in the Florentine style and technique of the day, in panel painting and drawing.
Elements in style and compositions that are reminiscent of Lippi continued to appear throughout his career. For this period Lippi was based in Prato, just outside Florence, painting what is now Prato Cathedral, it is there that Botticelli was trained, he had left Lippi by April 1467, when the master went to work in Spoleto. It is thought that Botticelli worked for the naturalist painters the Pollaiuolo brothers and Verrochio, in part based on their shared use of foreshortening and perspective; as early as 1467, but by 1470, Botticelli had his own workshop, which by 1472 included the son of his master, Filippino Lippi. In June of that year he was commissioned by the judges of commercial cases to paint two panels from a set of the Seven Virtues for their court. Botticelli both matched his style and composition to the other panels by Piero del Pollaiuolo, tried to outshine him "with fanciful enrichments so as to show up Piero's poverty of ornamental invention."There is un
Dante Alighieri
Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri known by his name of art Dante Alighieri or as Dante, was an Italian poet during the Late Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy called Comedìa and christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is considered the most important poem of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. In the late Middle Ages, most poetry was written in Latin, making it accessible only to the most educated readers. In De vulgari eloquentia, Dante defended the use of the vernacular in literature, he would write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life and the Divine Comedy. Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, his depictions of Hell and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art, he is cited as an influence among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him. In Italy, he is referred to as il Sommo Poeta and il Poeta. Dante was born in Republic of Florence, present-day Italy.
The exact date of his birth is unknown, although it is believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in the Divine Comedy, its first section, the Inferno, begins, "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita", implying that Dante was around 35 years old, since the average lifespan according to the Bible is 70 years. Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed, from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious". In 1265, the sun was in Gemini between May 11 and June 11. Giovanni Boccaccio described Dante's appearance and demeanor as follows: "the poet was of middle height, in his years he walked somewhat bent over, with a grave and gentle gait, he was clad always in most seemly attire, such as befitted his ripe years. His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes big rather than small, his jaws were large, his lower lip protruded.
He had a brown complexion, his hair and beard were thick and curly, his countenance was always melancholy and thoughtful." Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans, but the earliest relative he could mention by name was Cacciaguida degli Elisei, born no earlier than about 1100. Dante's father, Alighiero or Alighiero di Bellincione, was a White Guelph who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti in the middle of the 13th century; this suggests that Alighiero or his family may have enjoyed some protective prestige and status, although some suggest that the politically inactive Alighiero was of such low standing that he was not considered worth exiling. Dante's family was loyal to the Guelphs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy and, involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor; the poet's mother was Bella a member of the Abati family. She died when Dante was not yet ten years old, Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi.
It is uncertain whether he married her, since widowers were limited in such matters, but this woman bore him two children, Dante's half-brother Francesco and half-sister Tana. When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family. Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary, but by this time Dante had fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari, whom he first met when he was only nine. Years after his marriage to Gemma he claims to have met Beatrice again; the exact date of his marriage is not known: the only certain information is that, before his exile in 1301, he had three children. Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino; this victory brought about a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take any part in public life, one had to enroll in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the Physicians' and Apothecaries' Guild.
In the following years, his name is recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic. A substantial portion of minutes from such meetings in the years 1298–1300 was lost, however, so the true extent of Dante's participation in the city's councils is uncertain. Gemma bore Dante several children. Although several others subsequently claimed to be his offspring, it is that only Jacopo, Pietro and Antonia were his actual children. Antonia became a nun, taking the name Sister Beatrice. Not much is known about Dante's education, it is known that he stud
President of the European Central Bank
The President of the European Central Bank is the head of the European Central Bank, the institution responsible for the management of the euro and monetary policy in the Eurozone of the European Union. The President heads the executive board, governing council and general council of the ECB, he represents the bank abroad, for example at the G20. The President is appointed by a qualified majority vote of the European Council, de facto by those who have adopted the euro, for an eight-year non-renewable term; however the first President, did not serve his full term Wim Duisenberg was the President of the European Monetary Institute when it became the ECB, just prior to the launch of the euro, on 1 June 1998. Duisenberg became the first President of the ECB; the French interpretation of the agreement made with the installation of Wim Duisenberg as ECB President was that Duisenberg would resign after just four years of his eight-year term, would be replaced by the Frenchman Jean-Claude Trichet. Duisenberg always denied that such an agreement was made and stated in February 2002 that he would stay in office until his 68th birthday on 9 July 2003.
In the meanwhile Jean-Claude Trichet was not cleared of legal accusations before 1 June 2002, so he was not able to begin his term after Duisenberg's first four years. On 9 July 2003 Trichet was not cleared, therefore Duisenberg remained in office until 1 November 2003. Duisenberg died on 31 July 2005. Jean-Claude Trichet served during the European sovereign debt crisis. Trichet's strengths lay in keeping consensus and visible calm in the ECB. During his tenure, Trichet has had to fend off criticism from French President Nicolas Sarkozy who demanded a more growth-orientated policy at the ECB. Germany supported Trichet in demanding the bank's independence be respected. However, he was criticised from straying from his mandate during the crisis by buying the government bonds of eurozone member states. ECB board members Axel A. Weber and Jürgen Stark resigned in protest at this policy if it helped prevent states from defaulting. IMF economist Pau Rabanal argued that Trichet "maintained a expansionary monetary policy," but "sacrificed the ECB's inflation target for the sake of greater economic growth and jobs creation, not the other way round."
While straying from his mandate, he has however still kept interest rates under control and maintained greater price stability than the Deutsche Bundesbank did before the euro. As well as defending the ECB's independence and balancing its commitment to interest rates and economic stability, Trichet fought Sarkozy for automatic sanctions in the EU fiscal reforms and against Angela Merkel against private sector involvement in bail outs so as not to scare the markets, he had however made some mistakes during the crisis, for example by: raising interest rates just after inflation topped out and just prior to the recession triggered by the Lehman Brothers collapse. In his final appearance before the European Parliament, Trichet called for more political unity, including, he asserted that the ECB's role in maintaining price stability throughout the financial crisis and the oil price rises should not be overlooked. He stated, in response to a question from a German newspaper attacking the ECB's credibility following its bond-buying.
Mario Draghi was chosen to become the next President of the ECB on 24 June 2011. He is President since 1 November 2011. Pascal Canfin, Member of the European Parliament, asserted that Draghi had been involved in swaps for European governments, namely Greece, trying to disguise their countries' economic status. Draghi responded that the deals were "undertaken before my joining Goldman Sachs I had nothing to do with" them, in the 2011 European Parliament nomination hearings. List of presidents since the establishment of the bank on 1 June 1998. Vice President Christian Noyer was only appointed for four years so that his resignation would coincide with the expected resignation of Duisenberg, his successors, starting with Lucas Papademos, are granted eight-year terms. Organisation of the ECB President's CV EU Treaties.
Euro
The euro is the official currency of 19 of the 28 member states of the European Union. This group of states is known as the eurozone or euro area, counts about 343 million citizens as of 2019; the euro is the second largest and second most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar. The euro is subdivided into 100 cents; the currency is used by the institutions of the European Union, by four European microstates that are not EU members, as well as unilaterally by Montenegro and Kosovo. Outside Europe, a number of special territories of EU members use the euro as their currency. Additionally, 240 million people worldwide as of 2018 use currencies pegged to the euro; the euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar. As of August 2018, with more than €1.2 trillion in circulation, the euro has one of the highest combined values of banknotes and coins in circulation in the world, having surpassed the U.
S. dollar. The name euro was adopted on 16 December 1995 in Madrid; the euro was introduced to world financial markets as an accounting currency on 1 January 1999, replacing the former European Currency Unit at a ratio of 1:1. Physical euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation on 1 January 2002, making it the day-to-day operating currency of its original members, by March 2002 it had replaced the former currencies. While the euro dropped subsequently to US$0.83 within two years, it has traded above the U. S. dollar since the end of 2002, peaking at US$1.60 on 18 July 2008. In late 2009, the euro became immersed in the European sovereign-debt crisis, which led to the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility as well as other reforms aimed at stabilising and strengthening the currency; the euro is managed and administered by the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank and the Eurosystem. As an independent central bank, the ECB has sole authority to set monetary policy; the Eurosystem participates in the printing and distribution of notes and coins in all member states, the operation of the eurozone payment systems.
The 1992 Maastricht Treaty obliges most EU member states to adopt the euro upon meeting certain monetary and budgetary convergence criteria, although not all states have done so. The United Kingdom and Denmark negotiated exemptions, while Sweden turned down the euro in a 2003 referendum, has circumvented the obligation to adopt the euro by not meeting the monetary and budgetary requirements. All nations that have joined the EU since 1993 have pledged to adopt the euro in due course. Since 1 January 2002, the national central banks and the ECB have issued euro banknotes on a joint basis. Euro banknotes do not show. Eurosystem NCBs are required to accept euro banknotes put into circulation by other Eurosystem members and these banknotes are not repatriated; the ECB issues 8% of the total value of banknotes issued by the Eurosystem. In practice, the ECB's banknotes are put into circulation by the NCBs, thereby incurring matching liabilities vis-à-vis the ECB; these liabilities carry interest at the main refinancing rate of the ECB.
The other 92% of euro banknotes are issued by the NCBs in proportion to their respective shares of the ECB capital key, calculated using national share of European Union population and national share of EU GDP weighted. The euro is divided into 100 cents. In Community legislative acts the plural forms of euro and cent are spelled without the s, notwithstanding normal English usage. Otherwise, normal English plurals are sometimes used, with many local variations such as centime in France. All circulating coins have a common side showing the denomination or value, a map in the background. Due to the linguistic plurality in the European Union, the Latin alphabet version of euro is used and Arabic numerals. For the denominations except the 1-, 2- and 5-cent coins, the map only showed the 15 member states which were members when the euro was introduced. Beginning in 2007 or 2008 the old map is being replaced by a map of Europe showing countries outside the Union like Norway, Belarus, Russia or Turkey.
The 1-, 2- and 5-cent coins, keep their old design, showing a geographical map of Europe with the 15 member states of 2002 raised somewhat above the rest of the map. All common sides were designed by Luc Luycx; the coins have a national side showing an image chosen by the country that issued the coin. Euro coins from any member state may be used in any nation that has adopted the euro; the coins are issued in denominations of €2, €1, 50c, 20c, 10c, 5c, 2c, 1c. To avoid the use of the two smallest coins, some cash transactions are rounded to the nearest five cents in the Netherlands and Ireland and in Finland; this practice is discouraged by the Commission, as is the practice of certain shops of refusing to accept high-value euro notes. Commemorative coins with €2 face value have been issued with changes to the design of the national side of the coin; these include both issued coins, such as the €2 commemorative coin for the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, nationally i
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the largest, work of his career; the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality, he was influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models.
His career falls into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria a period of about four years absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke; the reputation of the court had been established by Federico da Montefeltro, a successful condottiere, created Duke of Urbino by Pope Sixtus IV – Urbino formed part of the Papal States – and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments, his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, Early Netherlandish artists as well.
In the small court of Urbino he was more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but visited, they became good friends, he became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both cardinals, were becoming well known as writers, would be in Rome during Raphael's period there.
Raphael mixed in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however, his mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, he continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity, his father's workshop continued and together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello the court painter, Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother".
The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, has been disputed—eight was early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters; the Perugino workshop w
History of the euro
The euro came into existence on 1 January 1999, although it had been a goal of the European Union and its predecessors since the 1960s. After tough negotiations due to opposition from the United Kingdom, the Maastricht Treaty entered into force in 1993 with the goal of creating an economic and monetary union by 1999 for all EU states except the UK and Denmark; the currency was formed in 1999. It took over from the former national currencies and expanded behind the rest of the EU. In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty finalised its political authority, the Eurogroup, alongside the European Central Bank. First ideas of an economic and monetary union in Europe were raised well before establishing the European Communities. For example in the League of Nations, Gustav Stresemann asked in 1929 for a European currency against the background of an increased economic division due to a number of new nation states in Europe after World War I. At this time memories of the Latin Monetary Union involving principally France, Italy and Switzerland and which, for practical purposes, had disintegrated following the First World War, figured prominently in the minds of policy makers.
A first attempt to create an economic and monetary union between the members of the European Economic Community arrived with an initiative by the European Commission in 1969, which set out the need for "greater co-ordination of economic policies and monetary cooperation." This was followed up at a meeting of the European Council at The Hague in December 1969. The European Council tasked Pierre Werner, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, with finding a way to reduce currency exchange rate volatility, his report was published in October 1970 and recommended centralisation of the national macroeconomic policies entailing "the total and irreversible fixing of parity rates and the complete liberation of movements of capital." But he did not propose central bank. An attempt to limit the fluctuations of European currencies, using a snake in the tunnel, failed. In 1971, US President Richard Nixon removed the gold backing from the US dollar, causing a collapse in the Bretton Woods system that managed to affect all of the world's major currencies.
The widespread currency floats and devaluations set back aspirations for European monetary union. However, in March 1979 the European Monetary System was created, fixing exchange rates onto the European Currency Unit, an accounting currency, to stabilise exchange rates and counter inflation, it created the European Monetary Cooperation Fund. In February 1986, the Single European Act formalised political co-operation within the EEC, including competency in monetary policy; the European Council summit in Hannover on 14 June 1988 began to outline monetary co-operation. France and European Commission backed a monetary union with a central bank, which British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed; the Hannover European Council asked Commission President Jacques Delors to chair an ad hoc committee of central bank governors to propose a new timetable with clear and realistic steps for creating an economic and monetary union. This way of working was derived from the Spaak method. France and the UK were opposed to German reunification, attempted to influence the Soviet Union to stop it.
However, in late 1989 France extracted German commitment to the Monetary Union in return for support for German reunification. The Delors report of 1989 set out a plan to introduce the EMU in three stages and it included the creation of institutions such as the European System of Central Banks, which would become responsible for formulating and implementing monetary policy, it laid out monetary union being accomplished in three steps. Beginning the first of these steps, on 1 July 1990, exchange controls were abolished, thus capital movements were liberalised in the European Economic Community. Leaders reached agreement on currency union with the Maastricht Treaty, signed on 7 February 1992, it agreed to create a single currency, although without the participation of the United Kingdom, by January 1999. Gaining approval for the treaty was a challenge. Germany was cautious about giving up its stable currency, i.e. the German Mark, France approved the treaty by a narrow margin and Denmark refused to ratify until they got such an opt-out from monetary union as the United Kingdom, an opt-out that they maintain as of 2019.
On 16 September 1992, known in the UK as Black Wednesday, the British pound sterling was forced to withdraw from the fixed exchange rate system due to a rapid fall in the value of the pound. Delors' second stage began in 1994 with creation of the European Monetary Institute, succeeding the EMCF, under Maastricht, it was created as the forerunner to the European Central Bank. It met for the first time on 12 January under Alexandre Lamfalussy. After much disagreement, in December 1995 the name euro was adopted for the new currency, on the suggestion of then-German finance minister Theo Waigel, they agreed on the date 1 January 1999 for its launch. On 17 June 1997 the European Council decided in Amsterdam to adopt the Stability and Growth Pact, designed to ensure budgetary discipline after creation of the euro, a new exchange rate mechanism was set up to provide stability above the euro and the national currencies of countries that hadn't yet entered the eurozone. On 3 May 1998, at the European Council in Brussels, the 11 initial countries that would participate in the third stage from 1 January 1999 were selected.
To participate in the new currency
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space is a 1913 bronze Futurist sculpture by Umberto Boccioni. It is seen as an expression of fluidity; the sculpture is depicted on the obverse of the Italian-issue 20 cent euro coin. The Futurist movement was striving to portray forceful dynamism in their art. Boccioni, though trained as a painter, began sculpting in 1912, he exclaimed that "these days I am obsessed by sculpture! I believe I have glimpsed a complete renovation of that mummified art." The following year Boccioni completed the sculpture. His goal for the work was to depict a "synthetic continuity" of motion instead of an "analytical discontinuity" that he saw in artists like František Kupka and Marcel Duchamp. In 1912–13 Boccioni created several other sculptures including his 1913 Development of a Bottle in Space. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space depicts a human-like figure in motion; the sculpture has an fluid form. As a pedestal, two blocks at the feet connect the figure to the ground; the figure is armless and without a discernibly real face.
The form was inspired by the sight of a football player moving on to a weighted pass. Though Boccioni reviled traditional sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space does resemble more realist works, it is reminiscent of the classical Winged Victory of Samothrace, which Filippo Marinetti, founder of Futurism, declared was inferior in beauty to a roaring car. The lack of arms pays homage to Auguste Rodin's Walking Man. Boccioni's work was in plaster, was never cast into bronze in his lifetime, his plaster cast is displayed at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea in São Paulo. Two casts were made in 1931, one of, displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Two were made in 1949, one of, displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other one at the Museum of Twentieth Century in Milan. Two more were made in 1972, one of, displayed at the Tate Modern in London. Another eight, in 1972, were made not from one of the 1949 bronzes. One bronze cast is in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Netherlands.
In 2014, a bronze was donated to the National Gallery of Cosenza. In 2009 Italian composer Carlo Forlivesi in collaboration with Stefano Fossati, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Melbourne, created an international composition competition and workshop titled Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Italian Futurism. With a name which brings to mind Boccioni's piece, the initiative, organised on an annual basis, celebrates the power of musical composition mingled with the strength of the Italian language; the international composition competition and workshop Unique Forms of Continuity in Space aims to contribute to the creation of a large and eclectic body of art works, with particular significance for the relationship between music and poetry. In 2018, the sculpture was used as the basis of the trophy presented to the winner of the virtual FIA GT Online Championships sim racing competition held through Gran Turismo Sport; the sculpture was chosen because it represents the surprise and fascination of machines discovered in the beginning of the 20th century, shares values with Gran Turismo.
Polyphony Digital, the creators of the Gran Turismo series, used laser scanning methods to create an accurate replication of the sculpture. Antigrazioso Umberto Boccioni, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on this work
for a total of 12 stars
