1.
Pastel
–
A pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process, Pastels have been used by artists since the Renaissance, and gained considerable popularity in the 18th century, when a number of notable artists made pastel their primary medium. An artwork made using pastels is called a pastel, Pastel used as a verb means to produce an artwork with pastels, as an adjective it means pale in color. Pastel sticks or crayons consist of powdered pigment combined with a binder. The exact composition and characteristics of an individual pastel stick depends on the type of pastel and it also varies by individual manufacturer. Dry pastels have historically used binders such as gum arabic and gum tragacanth, methyl cellulose was introduced as a binder in the twentieth century. Often a chalk or gypsum component is present and they are available in varying degrees of hardness, the softer varieties being wrapped in paper. Some pastel brands use pumice in the binder to abrade the paper, dry pastel media can be subdivided as follows, Soft pastels, This is the most widely used form of pastel. The sticks have a portion of pigment and less binder. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but it results in a proportion of dust. White chalk may be used as a filler in producing pale, Pan Pastels, These are formulated with a minimum of binder in flat compacts and applied with special Soft micropore sponge tools. A 21st-century invention, Pan Pastels can be used for the painting or in combination with soft. Hard pastels, These have a portion of binder and less pigment. These can be used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents, hard pastels are traditionally used to create the preliminary sketching out of a composition. However, the colors are brilliant and are available in a restricted range in contrast to soft pastels. Pastel pencils, These are pencils with a pastel lead and they are useful for adding fine details. In addition, pastels using a different approach to manufacture have been developed, Oil pastels, These have a soft, buttery consistency and they are dense and fill the grain of paper and are slightly more difficult to blend than soft pastels, but do not require a fixative
2.
Louvre
–
The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is the worlds largest museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the citys 1st arrondissement, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres. The Louvre is the second most visited museum after the Palace Museum in China. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II, remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to the expansion of the city, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace, in 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nations masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum renamed Musée Napoléon, the collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic, whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique, the name derives from an association with wolf hunting den, in the 7th century, St. Fare, an abbess in Meaux, left part of her Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris to a monastery. This territory probably did not correspond exactly to the modern site, the Louvre Palace was altered frequently throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building into a residence and in 1546, Francis acquired what would become the nucleus of the Louvres holdings, his acquisitions including Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, constructions slowed, however, on 14 October 1750, Louis XV agreed and sanctioned a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. Under Louis XVI, the museum idea became policy. The comte dAngiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed conversion of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which contained maps – into the French Museum, many proposals were offered for the Louvres renovation into a museum, however, none was agreed on. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution, during the French Revolution the Louvre was transformed into a public museum. In May 1791, the Assembly declared that the Louvre would be a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences, on 10 August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property
3.
France
–
France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
4.
Still life
–
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made. Still life gives the artist more freedom in the arrangement of elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of such as landscape or portraiture. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious, some modern still life breaks the two-dimensional barrier and employs three-dimensional mixed media, and uses found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound. Still life emerged from the painting of details in larger compositions with subjects, the term includes the painting of dead animals, especially game. Live ones are considered art, although in practice they were often painted from dead models. The still-life category also shares commonalities with zoological and especially botanical illustration, generally a still life includes a fully depicted background, and puts aesthetic rather than illustrative concerns as primary. Still life occupied the lowest rung of the hierarchy of genres, the trompe-lœil painting, which intends to deceive the viewer into thinking the scene is real, is a specialized type of still life, usually showing inanimate and relatively flat objects. Still-life paintings often adorn the interior of ancient Egyptian tombs and it was believed that food objects and other items depicted there would, in the afterlife, become real and available for use by the deceased. Ancient Greek vase paintings also demonstrate great skill in depicting everyday objects, by the 16th century, food and flowers would again appear as symbols of the seasons and of the five senses. Also starting in Roman times is the tradition of the use of the skull in paintings as a symbol of mortality and earthly remains and these vanitas images have been re-interpreted through the last 400 years of art history, starting with Dutch painters around 1600. As Pliny the Elder recorded in ancient Roman times, Greek artists centuries earlier were already advanced in the arts of painting, genre painting. He singled out Peiraikos, whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few, by 1300, starting with Giotto and his pupils, still-life painting was revived in the form of fictional niches on religious wall paintings which depicted everyday objects. Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, still life in Western art remained primarily an adjunct to Christian religious subjects, painters like Jan van Eyck often used still-life elements as part of an iconographic program. Petrus Christus’ portrait of a bride and groom visiting a goldsmith is an example of a transitional still life depicting both religious and secular content. Another similar type of painting is the family portrait combining figures with a table of food. Around this time, simple still-life depictions divorced of figures were beginning to be painted on the outside of shutters of private devotional paintings, another step toward the autonomous still life was the painting of symbolic flowers in vases on the back of secular portraits around 1475. This was a development by Pieter Aertsen, whose A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms introduced the type with a painting that still startles. A small religious scene can often be out in the distance
5.
Genre art
–
Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on. Rather confusingly, the meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious. But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works, the following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards. Single figures or small groups decorated a huge variety of such as porcelain, furniture, wallpaper. Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known member of his family. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Genre themes appear in all art traditions. These were part of a pattern of Mannerist inversion in Antwerp painting, giving low elements previously in the background of images prominent emphasis. The generally small scale of these paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book. The merry company showed a group of figures at a party, other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities, or soldiers in camp. In Italy, a school of painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname Il Bamboccio and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, jean-Baptiste Greuze and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. Spain had a tradition predating The Book of Good Love of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and illuminators
6.
Paris
–
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
7.
Church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris
–
Saint-Sulpice is a Roman Catholic church in Paris, France, on the east side of the Place Saint-Sulpice within the rue Bonaparte, in the Luxembourg Quarter of the 6th arrondissement. At 113 metres long,58 metres in width and 34 metres tall, it is slightly smaller than Notre-Dame. It is dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious, construction of the present building, the second church on the site, began in 1646. During the 18th century, a gnomon, the Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice, was constructed in the church. The present church is the building on the site, erected over a Romanesque church originally constructed during the 13th century. Additions were made over the centuries, up to 1631, the new building was founded in 1646 by parish priest Jean-Jacques Olier who had established the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a clerical congregation, and a seminary attached to the church. Anne of Austria laid the first stone, gittard completed the sanctuary, ambulatory, apsidal chapels, transept, and north portal, after which construction was halted for lack of funds. Gilles-Marie Oppenord and Giovanni Servandoni, adhering closely to Gittards designs, the decoration was executed by the brothers Sébastien-Antoine Slodtz and Paul-Ambroise Slodtz. He also built a bell-tower on top of the transept crossing and this miscalculation may account for the fact that Oppenord was then relieved of his duties as an architect and restricted to designing decoration. In 1732 a competition was held for the design of the west facade, won by Servandoni, the 1739 Turgot map of Paris shows the church without Oppenords crossing bell-tower, but with Servandonis pedimented facade mostly complete, still lacking however its two towers. Unfinished at the time of his death in 1766, the work was continued by others, primarily the obscure Oudot de Maclaurin, Chalgrin also designed the decoration of the chapels under the towers. The principal facade now exists in altered form. Large arched windows fill the vast interior with natural light, the result is a simple two-storey west front with three tiers of elegant columns. The overall harmony of the building is, some say, only marred by the two mismatched towers, one can still barely make out the printed words ‘’Le Peuple Francais Reconnoit L’Etre Suprême Et L’Immortalité de L’Âme’’. Further questions of interest are the fate of the frieze that this must have replaced, the responsible for placing this manifesto. Inside the church to either side of the entrance are the two halves of a shell given to King Francis I by the Venetian Republic. They function as holy water fonts and rest on rock-like bases sculpted by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, Pigalle also designed the large white marble statue of Mary in the Lady Chapel at the far end of the church. The stucco decoration surrounding it is by Louis-Philippe Mouchy, pigalles work replaced a solid-silver statue by Edmé Bouchardon, which vanished at the time of the Revolution
8.
Louis XV of France
–
Louis XV, known as Louis the Beloved, was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five, Cardinal Fleury was his chief minister from 1726 until the Cardinals death in 1743, at which time the young king took sole control of the kingdom. During his reign, Louis returned the Austrian Netherlands, territory won at the Battle of Fontenoy of 1745, Louis also ceded New France in North America to Spain and Great Britain at the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763. He incorporated the territories of Lorraine and Corsica into the kingdom of France and he was succeeded by his grandson Louis XVI in 1774. French culture and influence were at their height in the first half of the eighteenth century, however, many scholars believe that Louis XVs decisions damaged the power of France, weakened the treasury, discredited the absolute monarchy, and made it more vulnerable to distrust and destruction. Evidence for this view is provided by the French Revolution, which broke out 15 years after his death, norman Davies characterized Louis XVs reign as one of debilitating stagnation, characterized by lost wars, endless clashes between the Court and Parliament, and religious feuds. A few scholars defend Louis, arguing that his negative reputation was based on propaganda meant to justify the French Revolution. Jerome Blum described him as a perpetual adolescent called to do a mans job, Louis XV was born in the Palace of Versailles on 15 February 1710 during the reign of Louis XIV. His grandfather, Louis Le Grand Dauphin, had three sons with his wife Marie Anne Victoire of Bavaria, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, Philippe, Duke of Anjou, and Charles, Duke of Berry. Louis XV was the son of the Duke of Burgundy and his wife Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, the eldest daughter of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy. At birth, Louis XV received a title for younger sons of the French royal family. In April 1711, Louis Le Grand Dauphin suddenly died, making Louis XVs father, the Duke of Burgundy, at that time, Burgundy had two living sons, Louis, Duke of Brittany and his youngest son, the future Louis XV. A year later, Marie Adélaïde, Duchess of Burgundy, contracted smallpox and her husband, said to be heartbroken by her death, died the same week, also having contracted smallpox. Within a week of his death, it was clear that the two children had also been infected. The elder son was treated by bloodletting in an unsuccessful effort to save him. Fearing that the Dauphin would die, the Court had both the Dauphin and the Duke of Anjou baptised, the Dauphin died the same day,8 March 1712. His younger brother, the Duke of Anjou, was treated by his governess, Madame de Ventadour. The two year old Dauphin survived the smallpox, on 1 September 1715, Louis XIV died of gangrene, having reigned for 72 years
9.
Place Dauphine
–
The Place Dauphine is a public square located near the western end of the Île de la Cité in the first arrondissement of Paris. It was initiated by Henry IV in 1607, the second of his projects for public squares in Paris and he named it for his son, the Dauphin of France and future Louis XIII, who had been born in 1601. From the square, actually triangular in shape, one can access the middle of the Pont Neuf, a street called, since 1948, Rue Henri-Robert, forty metres long, connects the Place Dauphine and the bridge. Where they meet, there are two named places, the Place du Pont Neuf and the Square du Vert Galent. The Place Dauphine was laid out in 1607–10, when the Place Royale was still under construction. It was among the earliest city-planning projects of Henri IV, and was on a site created from part of the garden of the walled enclave known as the Palais de la Cité. There had been a pavilion, the Maison des Etuves, located in the western wall which overlooked two riverine islets, scarcely more than mudbanks at the time. The Place Dauphine was to occupy the part of the garden. There were two entrances to the square, one in the middle of the range and the second at the western point. The western gateway was formed by paired pavilions facing the bridge, the last of the houses to be constructed was finished in 1616. Originally all were built more or less the specified facades. These were faced with brick and limestone quoins, chaînes, in fact, behind the facades, the houses themselves, built by separate buyers, varied with regard to plan and area. Since its construction, almost all of the surrounding the square have been raised in height, given new facades, rebuilt. Only two retain their appearance, those flanking the entrance facing the Pont Neuf. In 1792 during the Revolution the Place Dauphine was renamed Place Thionville, the former eastern range, heavily damaged by fire during the fighting of the Paris Commune of 1871, was swept aside to open the view toward the Palais de Justice. The Place Dauphine is, It is served by lines 4 and 7, the Paris of Henri IV, Architecture and Urbanism. Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, fifth edition revised by Richard Beresford, la Place Dauphine Media related to Place Dauphine at Wikimedia Commons
10.
Pont Neuf
–
The Pont Neuf is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. Its name, which was given to distinguish it from older bridges that were lined on both sides with houses, has remained after all of those were replaced. The bridge is composed of two spans, one of five arches joining the left bank to the Île de la Cité. Today the tip of the island is the location of the Square du Vert-Galant, as early as 1550, Henry II was asked to build a bridge here because the existing Pont Notre-Dame was overloaded, but the expense was too much at the time. In February 1578, the decision to build the bridge was made by Henry III who laid its first stone in 1578, further design changes were made during the summer of 1579. First, the number of arches was changed from eight and four to seven, second, it was decided to allow houses to be built on the bridge. This required the widening of the bridge, the remaining piers were built over the next nine years. After a long delay beginning in 1588, due to political unrest, the bridge was opened to traffic in 1604 and completed in July 1606. It was inaugurated by Henri IV in 1607, like most bridges of its time, The Pont Neuf is constructed as a series of many short arch bridges, following Roman precedents. The bridge had heavy traffic from the beginning, it was for a time the widest bridge in Paris. In 1885, one of the piers of the arm was undermined. A major restoration of the Pont Neuf was begun in 1994 and was completed in 2007, the mascarons are the stone masks,381 in number, each being different and which decorate the sides of the bridge. They represent the heads of forest and field divinities from ancient mythology, as well as satyrs, the mascarons remained in place until 1851-1854, when the bridge was completely rebuilt. At that time six of the original mascarons from the 16th century were placed in the Musée Carnavalet, eight other originals were first placed in the Musée national du Moyen Âge, and are now in the French National Museum of the Renaissance in the Château dÉcouen. Fontenelle made sixty-one masks which are found on the side of the bridge between the right bank and the Île de la Cité. After his death, Giambolognas assistant Pietro Tacca completed the statue and it was destroyed in 1792 during the French Revolution, but was rebuilt in 1818, following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Bronze for the new statue was obtained with the bronze from a statue of Louis Charles Antoine Desaix, as well as from the statue of Napoleon in Place Vendôme, the new statue was cast from a mold made using a surviving cast of the original. The last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake on March 18,1314, on the Île aux Juifs, the execution was ordered by Philippe le Bel after Jacques retracted all of his previous confessions, which outraged Philip
