1.
Kunsthistorisches Museum
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The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome, the term Kunsthistorisches Museum applies to both the institution and the main building. It is the largest art museum in the country and it was opened around 1891 at the same time as the Naturhistorisches Museum, by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. The two museums have similar exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz, both buildings were built between 1871 and 1891 according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer. The two Ringstraße museums were commissioned by the Emperor in order to find a shelter for the Habsburgs formidable art collection. The façade was built of sandstone, the building is rectangular in shape, and topped with a dome that is 60 meters high. The inside of the building is decorated with marble, stucco ornamentations, gold-leaf. It was featured in an episode of Museum Secrets on the History Channel and it had been the biggest art theft in Austrian history. Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós Media related to Kunsthistorisches Museum at Wikimedia Commons Official website Spherical panorama of entrance Hofburgs Armory - photo gallery in Flickr
2.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
3.
Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx
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Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx is a painting by the Flemish Northern Renaissance artist Joachim Patinir. 1515–1524, it is in the Museo del Prado of Madrid, landscape with Charon Crossing Styx fits into common Northern Renaissance and early Mannerist trends of art. The 16th century witnessed a new era for painting in Germany, many artists, including Patinir, traveled to Italy to study and these travels to the south provided new ideas, particular concerning representations of the natural world. Patinirs religious subjects, therefore, incorporate precise observation and naturalism with fantastic landscapes inspired by the traditions of Bosch. It depicts the subject related by Virgil in his Aeneid and Dante in the Inferno at the centre of the picture within the Christian traditions of the Last Judgment. The larger figure in the boat is Charon, who transports the souls of the dead to the gates of Hades. The passenger in the boat, too minute to distinguish his expressions, is a human soul deciding between Heaven, to his right, or Hell, to his left, the river Styx divides the painting down the centre. It is one of the four rivers of the underworld that passes through the deepest part of hell, on the paintings left side is the fountain of Paradise, the spring from which the river Lethe flows through Heaven. On the right side of the composition is Patinirs vision of Hell, in front of the gates is Cerberus, a three-headed dog, who guards the entrance of the gate and frightens all the potential souls who enter into Hades. The soul in the boat ultimately chooses his destiny by looking toward Hell, Patinir utilised a Weltlandschaft composition with a three-colour scheme typical of his work, moving from brown in the foreground, to bluish-green, to pale blue in the background). This format, which Patiner is widely acknowledged as popularising, provides a view over an expansive landscape. Furthermore, the painting uses colour to visibly depict heaven and hell, good, to the viewers left is a heavenly place with bright blue skies, crystal blue rivers with a luminous fountain and angels accenting the grassy hills. On the far right of the painting is a dark sky engulfing Hell, the foreground of the painting consists of brown rocks in Heaven and brown burnt trees in Hell. In the middle-ground is the river and the grasslands in bright hues of blue, the background, which is cut off by the horizon line of the darker blue river, is a pale blue sky highlighted with white and gray clouds
4.
Museo del Prado
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The Prado Museum is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture in 1819, it contains important collections of other types of works. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered one of the greatest art museums in the world. The collection currently comprises around 8,200 drawings,7,600 paintings,4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures, in addition to a large number of other works of art and historic documents. As of 2012, the museum displayed about 1,300 works in the buildings, while around 3,100 works were on temporary loan to various museums. The museum received 2.8 million visitors in 2012 and it is one of the largest museums in Spain. The best-known work on display at the museum is Las Meninas by Velázquez, Velázquez and his keen eye and sensibility were also responsible for bringing much of the museums fine collection of Italian masters to Spain, now the largest outside of Italy. The museum is planning a 16% extension in the nearby Salón de Reinos and their efforts and determination led to the Royal Collection being enriched by some of the masterpieces now to be seen in the Prado. In addition to works from the Spanish royal collection, other holdings increased and enriched the Museum with further masterpieces, such as the two Majas by Goya. Among the now closed museums whose collections have been added to that of the Prado were the Museo del la Trinidad in 1872, in addition, numerous legacies, donations and purchases have been of crucial importance for the growth of the collection. Upon the deposition of Isabella II in 1868, the museum was nationalized and acquired the new name of Museo del Prado, the building housed the royal collection of arts, and it rapidly proved too small. The first enlargement to the museum took place in 1918, particularly important donations include Barón Emile dErlangers gift of Goyas Black Paintings in 1881. Between 1873 and 1900, the Prado helped decorate city halls, new universities, during the Second Spanish Republic from 1931 to 1936, the focus was on building up provincial museums. The art had to be returned across French territory in night trains to the museum upon the commencement of World War II, during the early years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, many paintings were sent to embassies. The main building was enlarged with short pavilions in the rear between 1900 and 1960, in 1993, an extension proposed by the Prados director at the time, Felipe Garin, was quickly abandoned after a wave of criticism. In the late 1990s, a $14 million roof work forced the Velázquez masterpiece Las Meninas to change galleries twice, in 1998, the Prado annex in the nearby Casón del Buen Retiro closed for a $10 million two-year overhaul that included three new underground levels. In 2007, the finally executed Rafael Moneos project to expand its exposition room to 16,000 square meters. A glass-roofed and wedge-shaped foyer now contains the shops and cafeteria
5.
Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting
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Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. Antwerp was the most important artistic centre in the region, many artists worked for European courts, including Bosch, whose fantastic painted images left a long legacy. Jan Mabuse, Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were all instrumental in adopting Italian models and incorporating them into their own artistic language. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, with Bosch the only artist from the period to remain widely familiar, may seem atypical, dutch and Flemish painters were also instrumental in establishing new subjects such as landscape painting and genre painting. Like the world landscapes, these represented a typically Mannerist inversion of the normal decorum of the hierarchy of genres, Italian Renaissance influences begin to show on Early Netherlandish painting around 1500, but in many ways the older style was remarkably persistent. Antwerp Mannerism is a term for painters showing some Italian influence, hieronymus Bosch is a highly individual artist, whose work is strange and full of seemingly irrational imagery, making it difficult to interpret. The Romanists were the phase of influence, adopting Italian styles in a far more thorough way. The Fall of Icarus, although highly atypical in many ways and it hints at the renewed interest for antiquity, but the hero Icarus is hidden away in the background. The main actors in the painting are nature itself and, most prominently, the peasant, Brueghel shows man as an anti-hero, comical and sometimes grotesque. Northern Renaissance Art,1985, Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 0-13-623596-4 Orenstein, Nadine M. ed. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints
6.
History painting
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History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than artistic style. History paintings usually depict a moment in a story, rather than a specific and static subject. The term is derived from the senses of the word historia in Latin and Italian, meaning story or narrative. Most history paintings are not of scenes from history, especially paintings from before about 1850, History paintings almost always contain a number of figures, often a large number, and normally show some type of action that is a moment in a narrative. The genre includes depictions of moments in religious narratives, above all the Life of Christ, as well as scenes from mythology. These groups were for long the most frequently painted, works such as Michelangelos Sistine Chapel ceiling are therefore history paintings, History painting may be used interchangeably with historical painting, and was especially so used before the 20th century. Where a distinction is made historical painting is the painting of scenes from secular history, in the 19th century historical painting in this sense became a distinct genre. In phrases such as historical painting materials, historical means in use before about 1900 and he placed emphasis on the ability to depict the interactions between the figures by gesture and expression. This view remained general until the 19th century, when artistic movements began to struggle against the establishment institutions of academic art, which continued to adhere to it. Scenes from ancient history had been popular in the early Renaissance, and once again became common in the Baroque and Rococo periods, and still more so with the rise of Neoclassicism. In some 19th or 20th century contexts, the term may refer specifically to paintings of scenes from history, rather than those from religious narratives. Scenes from ancient history and mythology were also popular, artists continued for centuries to strive to make their reputation by producing such works, often neglecting genres to which their talents were better suited. The large works of Raphael were long considered, with those of Michelangelo, un Peintre qui ne fait que des portraits, na pas encore cette haute perfection de lArt, & ne peut prétendre à lhonneur que reçoivent les plus sçavans. He who produces perfect landscapes is above another who only produces fruit, a painter who only does portraits still does not have the highest perfection of his art, and cannot expect the honour due to the most skilled. By the late 18th century, with religious and mytholological painting in decline, there was an increased demand for paintings of scenes from history. Classical history remained popular, but scenes from national histories were often the best-received, the unheroic nature of modern dress was regarded as a serious difficulty. When, in 1770, Benjamin West proposed to paint The Death of General Wolfe in contemporary dress and he ignored these comments and showed the scene in modern dress. Although George III refused to purchase the work, West succeeded both in overcoming his critics objections and inaugurating a more historically accurate style in such paintings. M. W, conveniently their clothes had been worn away to classical-seeming rags by the point the painting depicts
7.
Landscape painting
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In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition, detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects. The two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going well over a thousand years in both cases. Landscape views in art may be imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy. If the primary purpose of a picture is to depict an actual, specific place, especially including buildings prominently, within a few decades it was used to describe vistas in poetry, and eventually as a term for real views. However the cognate term landscaef or landskipe for a patch of land had existed in Old English. The earliest pure landscapes with no figures are frescos from Minoan Greece of around 1500 BCE. The frescos from the Tomb of Nebamun, now in the British Museum, are a famous example. These were frequently used, as in the illustrated, to bridge the gap between a foreground scene with figures and a distant panoramic vista, a persistent problem for landscape artists. The Chinese style generally showed only a distant view, or used dead ground or mist to avoid that difficulty, aesthetic theories in both regions gave the highest status to the works seen to require the most imagination from the artist. They were often also poets whose lines and images illustrated each other, a revival in interest in nature initially mainly manifested itself in depictions of small gardens such as the Hortus Conclusus or those in millefleur tapestries. The frescos of figures at work or play in front of a background of trees in the Palace of the Popes. Several frescos of gardens have survived from Roman houses like the Villa of Livia, a particular advance is shown in the less well-known Turin-Milan Hours, now largely destroyed by fire, whose developments were reflected in Early Netherlandish painting for the rest of the century. Landscape backgrounds for various types of painting became prominent and skilful during the 15th century. The Italian development of a system of graphical perspective was now known all over Europe. Indeed, certain styles were so popular that they became formulas that could be copied again and again, after the publication of the Small Landscapes, landscape artists in the Low Countries either continued with the world landscape or followed the new mode presented by the Small Landscapes. The popularity of landscape scenes can be seen in the success of the painter Frans Post. Salvator Rosa gave picturesque excitement to his landscapes by showing wilder Southern Italian country, there are different styles and periods, and subgenres of marine and animal painting, as well as a distinct style of Italianate landscape
8.
Flanders
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Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium, although there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics and history. It is one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium, the demonym associated with Flanders is Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish. The official capital of Flanders is Brussels, although Brussels itself has an independent regional government, in historical contexts, Flanders originally refers to the County of Flanders, which around AD1000 stretched from the Strait of Dover to the Scheldt estuary. In accordance with late 20th century Belgian state reforms the area was made two political entities, the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region. These entities were merged, although geographically the Flemish Community, which has a cultural mandate, covers Brussels. Flanders has figured prominently in European history, as a consequence, a very sophisticated culture developed, with impressive achievements in the arts and architecture, rivaling those of northern Italy. Belgium was one of the centres of the 19th century industrial revolution, geographically, Flanders is generally flat, and has a small section of coast on the North Sea. Much of Flanders is agriculturally fertile and densely populated, with a density of almost 500 people per square kilometer. It touches France to the west near the coast, and borders the Netherlands to the north and east, the Brussels Capital Region is an enclave within the Flemish Region. Flanders has exclaves of its own, Voeren in the east is between Wallonia and the Netherlands and Baarle-Hertog in the consists of 22 exclaves surrounded by the Netherlands. It comprises 6.5 million Belgians who consider Dutch to be their mother tongue, the political subdivisions of Belgium, the Flemish Region and the Flemish Community. The first does not comprise Brussels, whereas the latter does comprise the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Brussels, the political institutions that govern both subdivisions, the operative body Flemish Government and the legislative organ Flemish Parliament. The two westernmost provinces of the Flemish Region, West Flanders and East Flanders, forming the central portion of the historic County of Flanders, a feudal territory that existed from the 8th century until its absorption by the French First Republic. Until the 1600s, this county also extended over parts of France, one of the regions conquered by the French in Flanders, namely French Flanders in the Nord department. French Flanders can be divided into two regions, Walloon Flanders and Maritime Flanders. The first region was predominantly French-speaking already in the 1600s, the latter became so in the 20th century, the city of Lille identifies itself as Flemish, and this is reflected, for instance, in the name of its local railway station TGV Lille Flandres. The region conquered by the Dutch Republic in Flanders, now part of the Dutch province of Zeeland, the significance of the County of Flanders and its counts eroded through time, but the designation remained in a very broad sense. In the Early modern period, the term Flanders was associated with the part of the Low Countries
9.
Wallonia
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Wallonia is a region of Belgium. Wallonia is primarily French-speaking, and accounts for 55% of the territory of Belgium, unlike Flanders, the Walloon Region was not merged with the French Community of Belgium which is the political entity that is responsible for matters related mainly to culture and education. The German-speaking minority in the east forms the German-speaking Community of Belgium, during the industrial revolution, Wallonia was second only to the United Kingdom in industrialization, capitalizing on its extensive deposits of coal and iron. This brought the wealth, and, from the beginning of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. Since World War II the importance of industry has greatly diminished. Wallonia now suffers high unemployment and has a significantly lower GDP per capita than Flanders. The economic inequalities and linguistic divide between the two are major sources of conflict in Belgium and is a major factor in Flemish separatism. The capital of Wallonia is Namur but the city with the greatest population is Charleroi, most of Wallonias major cities and two-thirds of its population lie along the Sambre and Meuse valley, the former industrial backbone of Belgium. To the north lies the Central Belgian Plateau, which, like Flanders, is relatively flat, in the south-east lie the Ardennes, hilly and sparsely populated. Wallonia borders Flanders and the Netherlands in the north, France to the south and west, Wallonia has been a member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie since 1980. The term Wallonia can mean different things in different contexts. One of the three regions of Belgium is still constitutionally defined as the Walloon Region, but the regions government has renamed it Wallonia. In practice, the difference between the two terms is small and what is meant is usually clear, based on context, the root of the word Wallonia, like the words Wales, Cornwall and Wallachia, is the Germanic word Walha, meaning the strangers. Wallonia is named after the Walloons, the population of the Burgundian Netherlands speaking Romance languages, in Middle Dutch, the term Walloons also included the French-speaking population of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège or the whole population of the Romanic sprachraum within the medieval Low Countries. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in 57 BC, the Low Countries became part of the larger Gallia Belgica province which originally stretched from southwestern Germany to Normandy and the southern part of the Netherlands. The population of territory was Celtic with a Germanic influence which was stronger in the north than in the south of the province. The ancestors of the Walloons became Gallo-Romans and were called the Walha by their Germanic neighbours, the Walha abandoned their Celtic dialects and started to speak Vulgar Latin. The Merovingian Franks gradually gained control of the region during the 5th century, the language border began to crystallize between 700 under the reign of the Merovingians and Carolingians and around 1000 after the Ottonian Renaissance
10.
Antwerp
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Antwerp is a city in Belgium, the capital of Antwerp province in the region of Flanders. With a population of 510,610, it is the most populous city proper in Belgium and its metropolitan area houses around 1,200,000 people, which is second behind Brussels. Antwerp is on the River Scheldt, linked to the North Sea by the Westerschelde estuary, the Port of Antwerp is one of the biggest in the world, ranking second in Europe and within the top 20 globally. Antwerp has long been an important city in the Low Countries, the inhabitants of Antwerp are nicknamed Sinjoren, after the Spanish honorific señor or French seigneur, lord, referring to the Spanish noblemen who ruled the city in the 17th century. The city hosted the 1920 Summer Olympics, according to folklore, notably celebrated by a statue in front of the town hall, the city got its name from a legend about a giant called Antigoon who lived near the Scheldt river. He exacted a toll from passing boatmen, and for those who refused, he severed one of their hands, eventually the giant was killed by a young hero named Silvius Brabo, who cut off the giants own hand and flung it into the river. Hence the name Antwerpen, from Dutch hand werpen, akin to Old English hand and wearpan, a longstanding theory is that the name originated in the Gallo-Roman period and comes from the Latin antverpia. Antverpia would come from Ante Verpia, indicating land that forms by deposition in the curve of a river. Note that the river Scheldt, before a period between 600 and 750, followed a different track. This must have coincided roughly with the current ringway south of the city, however, many historians think it unlikely that there was a large settlement which would be named Antverpia, but more something like an outpost with a river crossing. However, John Lothrop Motley argues, and so do a lot of Dutch etymologists and historians, aan t werp is also possible. This warp is a hill or a river deposit, high enough to remain dry at high tide. Another word for werp is pol hence polders, historical Antwerp allegedly had its origins in a Gallo-Roman vicus. Excavations carried out in the oldest section near the Scheldt, 1952–1961, produced pottery shards, the earliest mention of Antwerp dates from the 4th century. In the 4th century, Antwerp was first named, having been settled by the Germanic Franks, the name was reputed to have been derived from anda and werpum. The Merovingian Antwerp was evangelized by Saint Amand in the 7th century, at the end of the 10th century, the Scheldt became the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire. Antwerp became a margraviate in 980, by the German emperor Otto I, in the 11th century Godfrey of Bouillon was for some years known as the marquis of Antwerp. In the 12th century, Norbert of Xanten established a community of his Premonstratensian canons at St. Michaels Abbey at Caloes
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