Orpheus
Orpheus is a legendary musician and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. Some ancient Greek sources note Orpheus' Thracian origins. According to Tzeztes, his home was the Odrysian city of Bisaltia; the major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and stones with his music, his attempt to retrieve his wife, from the underworld, his death at the hands of those who could not hear his divine music. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, opera and painting. For the Greeks, Orpheus was a prophet of the so-called "Orphic" mysteries, he was credited with the composition of the Orphic Argonautica. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles. Several etymologies for the name Orpheus have been proposed. A probable suggestion is that it is derived from a hypothetical PIE root *h₃órbʰos "orphan, slave" and the verb root *h₃erbʰ- "to change allegiance, ownership".
Cognates could include Greek ὄρφνη "darkness", Greek ὀρφανός "fatherless, orphan", from which comes English "orphan" by way of Latin. Fulgentius, a mythographer of the late 5th to early 6th century AD, gave the unlikely etymology meaning "best voice," "Oraia-phonos"; the earliest literary reference to Orpheus is a two-word fragment of the sixth-century BC lyric poet Ibycus: onomaklyton Orphēn. He is not mentioned in Hesiod. Most ancient sources accept his historical existence. Pindar calls Orpheus "the father of songs" and identifies him as a son of the Thracian king Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope. Greeks of the Classical age venerated Orpheus as the greatest of all musicians. Poets such as Simonides of Ceos said that Orpheus' music and singing could charm the birds and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance, divert the course of rivers. Orpheus was one of the handful of Greek heroes to visit the return; some sources credit Orpheus with further gifts to mankind: medicine, more under the auspices of Aesculapius or Apollo.
Orpheus was an seer. Pindar and Apollonius of Rhodes place Orpheus as the harpist and companion of Jason and the Argonauts. Orpheus had a brother named Linus, who became a Theban, he is claimed by Aristophanes and Horace to have taught cannibals to subsist on fruit, to have made lions and tigers obedient to him. Horace believed, that Orpheus had only introduced order and civilization to savages. Strabo presents Orpheus as a mortal, who died in a village close to Olympus. "Some, of course, received him willingly, but others, since they suspected a plot and violence, combined against him and killed him." He made money as a musician and "wizard" – Strabo uses agurteúonta used by Sophocles in Oedipus Tyrannus to characterize Teiresias as a trickster with an excessive desire for possessions. Agúrtēs most meant charlatan and always had a negative connotation. Pausanias writes of an unnamed Egyptian who considered Orpheus a mágeuse, i. e. magician. According to Apollodorus and a fragment of Pindar, Orpheus' father was Oeagrus, a Thracian king, or, according to another version of the story, the god Apollo.
His mother was the muse Calliope, her sister Polymnia, a daughter of Pierus, son of Makednos or lastly of Menippe, daughter of Thamyris. His birthplace and place of residence was in Pimpleia close to the Olympus. Strabo mentions. According to the epic poem Argonautica, Pimpleia was the location of Oeagrus' and Calliope's wedding. While living with his mother and her eight beautiful sisters in Parnassus, he met Apollo, courting the laughing muse Thalia. Apollo, as the god of music, taught him to play it. Orpheus' mother taught him to make verses for singing, he is said to have studied in Egypt. Orpheus is said to have established the worship of Hecate in Aegina. In Laconia Orpheus is said to have brought the worship of Demeter Chthonia and that of the Kóres Sōteíras. In Taygetus a wooden image of Orpheus was said to have been kept by Pelasgians in the sanctuary of the Eleusinian Demeter. According to Diodorus Siculus, Musaeus of Athens was the son of Orpheus; the Argonautica is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC.
Orpheus used his skills to aid his companions. Chiron told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens—the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey; the Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands called Sirenum scopuli and sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which resulted in the crashing of their ships into the islands. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music, louder and more beautiful, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs. According to 3rd century BC Hellenistic
Versailles, Yvelines
Versailles is a city in the Yvelines département in the Île-de-France region, renowned worldwide for the Château de Versailles and the gardens of Versailles, designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Located in the western suburbs of the French capital, 17.1 km from the centre of Paris, Versailles is in the 21st century a wealthy suburb of Paris with a service-based economy and a major tourist destination as well. According to the 2008 census, the population of the city is 88,641 inhabitants, down from a peak of 94,145 in 1975. A new town founded at the will of King Louis XIV, Versailles was the de facto capital of the Kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789, before becoming the cradle of the French Revolution. After having lost its status of royal city, it became the préfecture of the Seine-et-Oise département in 1790 of Yvelines in 1968, it is a Roman Catholic diocese. Versailles is known for numerous treaties such as the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, after World War I.
Today, the Congress of France – the name given to the body created when both houses of the French Parliament, the National Assembly and the Senate, meet – gathers in the Château de Versailles to vote on revisions to the Constitution. The argument over the etymology of Versailles tends to privilege the Latin word versare, meaning "to keep turning, turn over and over", an expression used in medieval times for plowed lands, cleared lands; this word formation is similar to Latin seminare. During the Revolution of 1789, city officials had proposed to the Convention to rename Versailles Berceau-de-la-Liberté, but they had to retract their proposal when confronted with the objections of the majority of the population. From May 1682, when Louis XIV moved the court and government permanently to Versailles, until his death in September 1715, Versailles was the unofficial capital of the kingdom of France. For the next seven years, during the Régence of Philippe d'Orléans, the royal court of the young King Louis XV was the first in Paris, while the Regent governed from his Parisian residence, the Palais-Royal.
Versailles was again the unofficial capital of France from June 1722, when Louis XV returned to Versailles, until October 1789, when a Parisian mob forced Louis XVI and the royal family to move to Paris. Versailles again became the unofficial capital of France from March 1871, when Adolphe Thiers' government took refuge in Versailles, fleeing the insurrection of the Paris Commune, until November 1879, when the newly elected government and parliament returned to Paris. During the various periods when government affairs were conducted from Versailles, Paris remained the official capital of France. Versailles was made the préfecture of the Seine-et-Oise département at its inception in March 1790. By the 1960s, with the growth of the Paris suburbs, the Seine-et-Oise had reached more than 2 million inhabitants, was deemed too large and ungovernable, thus it was split into three départements in January 1968. Versailles was made the préfecture of the Yvelines département, the largest chunk of the former Seine-et-Oise.
At the 2006 census the Yvelines had 1,395,804 inhabitants. Versailles is the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese, created in 1790; the diocese of Versailles is subordinate to the archdiocese of Paris. In 1975, Versailles was made the seat of a Court of Appeal whose jurisdiction covers the western suburbs of Paris. Since 1972, Versailles has been the seat of one of France's 30 nationwide académies of the Ministry of National Education; the académie de Versailles, the largest of France's thirty académies by its number of pupils and students, is in charge of supervising all the elementary schools and high schools of the western suburbs of Paris. Versailles is an important node for the French army, a tradition going back to the monarchy with, for instance, the military camp of Satory and other institutions. Versailles is located 17.1 km west-southwest from the centre of Paris. The city sits on an elevated plateau, 130 to 140 metres above sea-level, surrounded by wooded hills: in the north the forests of Marly and Fausses-Reposes, in the south the forests of Satory and Meudon.
The city of Versailles has an area of 26.18 km2, a quarter of the area of the city of Paris. In 1989, Versailles had a population density of 3,344/km2, whereas Paris had a density of 20,696/km2. Born out of the will of a king, the city has a symmetrical grid of streets. By the standards of the 18th century, Versailles was a modern European city. Versailles was used as a model for the building of Washington, D. C. by Pierre Charles L'Enfant. The name of Versailles appears for the first time in a medieval document dated 1038. In the feudal system of medieval France, the lords of Versailles came directly under the king of France, with no intermediary overlords between them and the king. In the end of the 11th century, the village curled around a medieval castle and the Saint Julien church, its farming activity and its location on the road from Paris to Dreux and Normandy brought prosperity to the village, culminating in the end of the 13th century, the so-called "century of Saint Louis", famous for the prosperity of northern France and the building of Gothic cathedrals.
The 14th century brought the Black Death and t
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was a French sculptor of the 18th century who worked in both the rococo and neoclassical style. He made monumental statuary for the Gardens of Versailles but was best known for his expressive portrait busts. Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was born in Paris in 1704, his father Jean-Louis Lemoyne, was a sculptor, was first teacher. He became a student of another prominent sculptor, Robert Le Lorrain, he is sometimes referred to as Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne or "the younger" to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name, another sculptor, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Elder. He received the prix de Rome awarded by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, but remained in Paris to aid his blind father, he became a member of the Academy in 1838, became its director. Like the other royal sculptors, made statuary for the Gardens of Versailles, he was a particular favorite of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of the King and an important patron of the arts. He made a graceful rococo sculpture of Vertumnus and Pomone, two characters from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, a favorite theme of Madame Pompadour.
The sculpture is now in the Louvre. He made a state of Madame Pompadour in the costume of a nymph, he made several busts of Louis XV, an equestrian statue of the King for the courtyard of the new Ecole Militaire, but this was destroyed during the French Revolution. He was known for the quality of his portrait busts, which captured the passing nuances of expression and gave a sense of movement, his important portrait busts included those of the naturalist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur. He is considered the most skilled of the French rococo sculptors. Lemoyne's students included Étienne Maurice Falconet Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, Augustin Pajou. Brocvielle, Vincent. La Petit Larousse de l'Histoire de l'Art. Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-5936-39-4. Jeancolas, Claude. Sculpture Française. Paris: CELIV. ISBN 2-86535-162-9. Geese, Section on Baroque sculpture in L'Art Baroque – Architecture – Sculpture – Peinture, H. F. Ulmann, Cologne, 2015. Duby and Daval, Jean-Luc, La Sculpture de l'Antiquité au XXe Siècle, Rococo French sculpture Media related to Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger at Wikimedia Commons Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
Moses
Moses was a prophet according to the teachings of the Abrahamic religions. Scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure. According to the Hebrew Bible, he was adopted by an Egyptian princess, in life became the leader of the Israelites and lawgiver, to whom the authorship of the Torah, or acquisition of the Torah from Heaven is traditionally attributed. Called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew, he is the most important prophet in Judaism, he is an important prophet in Christianity, the Bahá'í Faith, a number of other Abrahamic religions. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in numbers and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies. Moses' Hebrew mother, secretly hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through the Pharaoh's daughter, the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile river and grew up with the Egyptian royal family.
After killing an Egyptian slavemaster, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered The Angel of the Lord, speaking to him from within a burning bush on Mount Horeb. God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak eloquently, so God allowed Aaron, his brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died within sight of the Promised Land on Mount Nebo. Jerome gives 1592 BCE, James Ussher 1571 BCE as Moses' birth year. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses was called "the man of God". Several etymologies have been proposed. An Egyptian root msy, "child of", has been considered as a possible etymology, arguably an abbreviation of a theophoric name, as for example in Egyptian names like Thutmoses and Ramesses, with the god's name omitted.
Abraham Yahuda, based on the spelling given in the Tanakh, argues that it combines "water" or "seed" and "pond, expanse of water", thus yielding the sense of "child of the Nile". The Biblical account of Moses' birth provides him with a folk etymology to explain the ostensible meaning of his name, he is said to have received it from the Pharaoh's daughter: "he became her son. She named him Moses, saying,'I drew him out of the water.'" This explanation links it to a verb mashah, meaning "to draw out", which makes the Pharaoh's daughter's declaration a play on words. The princess made a grammatical mistake, prophetic of his future role in legend, as someone who will "draw the people of Israel out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea."The Hebrew etymology in the Biblical story may reflect an attempt to cancel out traces of Moses' Egyptian origins. The Egyptian character of his name was recognized as such by ancient Jewish writers like Philo of Alexandria and Josephus. Philo linked Mōēsēs to the Egyptian word for water, while Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, claimed that the second element, -esês, meant'those who are saved'.
The problem of how an Egyptian princess, known to Josephus as Thermutis and in Jewish tradition as Bithiah, could have known Hebrew puzzled medieval Jewish commentators like Abraham ibn Ezra and Hezekiah ben Manoah. Hezekiah suggested she either took a tip from Jochebed; the Israelites had settled in the Land of Goshen in the time of Joseph and Jacob, but a new pharaoh arose who oppressed the children of Israel. At this time Moses was born to his father Amram, son of Kehath the Levite, who entered Egypt with Jacob's household. Moses had one older sister and one older brother, Aaron; the Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born would be drowned in the river Nile, but Moses' mother placed him in an ark and concealed the ark in the bulrushes by the riverbank, where the baby was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, raised as an Egyptian. One day after Moses had reached adulthood he killed an Egyptian, beating a Hebrew. Moses, in order to escape the Pharaoh's death penalty, fled to Midian.
There, on Mount Horeb, God appeared to Moses as a burning bush, revealed to Moses his name YHWH and commanded him to return to Egypt and bring his chosen people out of bondage and into the Promised Land. During the journey, God tried to kill Moses because he had not circumcised his son, but Zipporah saved his life. Moses returned to carry out God's command, but God caused the Pharaoh to refuse, only after God had subjected Egypt to ten plagues did the Pharaoh relent. Moses led the Israelites to the border of Egypt, but there God hardened the Pharaoh's heart once more, so that he could destroy the Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea Crossing as a sign of his power to Israel and the nations. After defeating the Amalekites in Rephidim, Moses led the Israelites to biblical Mount Sinai, where he was given the Ten Commandments from God, written on stone tablets. However, since Moses remained a long time on the mountain, some of the people feared that he might be dead, so they made a statue of a golden calf and worshiped it, thus disobeying and angering God and Moses.
Moses, out of anger, bro
Pierre-Etienne Moitte
Pierre-Etienne Moitte was a French painter-engraver. Moitte was born in Paris, he became a painter, better known today for his engravings after old masters. His son Alexandre Moitte became a painter. Moitte died in Paris. Pierre Moitte in the Web Gallery of Art
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students for painters and sculptors, established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them to stay in Rome for three to five years at the expense of the state; the prize was extended to architecture in 1720, music in 1803, engraving in 1804. The prestigious award was abolished in 1968 by the Minister of Culture; the Prix de Rome was created for painters and sculptors in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by completing a difficult elimination contest; the prize, organised by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, was open to their students. From 1666, the award winner could win a stay of three to five years at the Palazzo Mancini in Rome at the expense of the King of France. In 1720, the Académie Royale d’Architecture began a prize in architecture. Six painters, four sculptors, two architects would be sent to the French Academy in Rome founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert from 1666.
Expanded after 140 years into five categories, the contest started in 1663 as two categories: painting and sculpture. Architecture was added in 1720. In 1803, music was added, after 1804 there was a prix for engraving as well; the primary winner took the "First Grand Prize" and the "Second Prizes" were awarded to the runners-up. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte moved the French Academy in Rome to the Villa Medici with the intention of preserving an institution once threatened by the French Revolution. At first, the villa and its gardens were in a sad state, they had to be renovated in order to house the winners of the Prix de Rome. In this way, he hoped to retain for young French artists the opportunity to see and copy the masterpieces of antiquity and the Renaissance. Jacques-Louis David, having failed to win the prize three years in a row, considered suicide. Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Ernest Chausson and Maurice Ravel attempted the Prix de Rome, but did not gain recognition. Ravel tried a total of five times to win the prize, the last failed attempt in 1905 was so controversial that it led to a complete reorganization of the administration at the Paris Conservatory.
During World War II the prize winners were accommodated in the Villa Paradiso in Nice. The Prix de Rome was abolished in 1968 by André Malraux, Minister of Culture at the time. Since a number of contests have been created, the academies, together with the Institut de France, were merged by the State and the Minister of Culture. Selected residents now have an opportunity for study during an 18-month stay at The Academy of France in Rome, accommodated in the Villa Medici; the heyday of the Prix de Rome was during early nineteenth centuries. It was imitated by the Prix Abd-el-Tif and the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers, 1907–1961, Prix d'Indochine including a bursary to visit the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi, 1920–1939, bursary for residence at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, 1929–present; the Prix de Rome for Architecture was created in 1720. The engraving prize was created in 1804. List of all the winners of the Prix de Rome for musical composiiton A Prix de Rome was established in the Kingdom of Holland by Lodewijk Napoleon to award young artists and architects.
During the years 1807 -- 1810 prize winners were sent to onwards to Rome for study. In 1817, after the Netherlands had gained its independence, King Willem I restarted the prize. Suspended in 1851 it was reinstated in 1870 by William III of the Netherlands. Since the winners have been selected by the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam under the main headings of architecture and the visual arts; the Belgian Prix de Rome is an award for young artists, created in 1832, following the example of the original French Prix de Rome. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp organised the prize until 1920, when the national government took over; the first prize is sometimes called the Grand Prix de Rome. There were distinct categories for architecture, painting and music. Académie de France Rome American Academy in Rome American School of Classical Studies at Athens American Schools of Oriental Research British School at Rome Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Rom Rome Prize The Prix de Rome Contests in Painting The Prix de Rome winners in Sculpture — Complete Prix de Rome winners
Netherlands Institute for Art History
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in documentation and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until modern times. All of this is open to the public, much of it has been digitized and is available on their website; the main goal of the bureau is to collect and make art research available, most notably in the field of Dutch Masters. Via the available databases, the visitor can gain insight into archival evidence on the lives of many artists of past centuries; the library owns 450,000 titles, of which ca. 150,000 are auction catalogs. There are ca. 3,000 magazines, of which 600 are running subscriptions. Though most of the text is in Dutch, the standard record format includes a link to library entries and images of known works, which include English as well as Dutch titles; the RKD manages the Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, a thesaurus of terms for management of information on art and architecture.
The original version is an initiative of the Getty Research Institute in California. The collection was started through bequests by Frits Lugt, art historian and owner of a massive collection of drawings and prints, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, a collector, art historian and museum curator, their bequest formed the basis for both the art collection and the library, now housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Though not all of the library's holdings have been digitised, much of its metadata is accessible online; the website itself is available in both an English user interface. In the artist database RKDartists, each artist is assigned a record number. To reference an artist page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record of the form: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/ followed by the artist's record number. For example, the artist record number for Salvador Dalí is 19752, so his RKD artist page can be referenced. In the images database RKDimages, each artwork is assigned a record number.
To reference an artwork page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record of the form: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/ followed by the artwork's record number. For example, the artwork record number for The Night Watch is 3063, so its RKD artwork page can be referenced; the Art and Architecture Thesaurus assigns a record for each term, but these can not be referenced online by record number. Rather, they are used in the databases and the databases can be searched for terms. For example, the painting called "The Night Watch" is a militia painting, all records fitting this keyword can be seen by selecting this from the image screen; the thesaurus is a set of general terms, but the RKD contains a database for an alternate form of describing artworks, that today is filled with biblical references. This is the iconclass database. To see all images that depict Miriam's dance, the associated iconclass code 71E1232 can be used as a special search term. Official website Direct link to the databases The Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus
