1.
Naples
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Naples is the capital of the Italian region Campania and the third-largest municipality in Italy, after Rome and Milan. In 2015, around 975,260 people lived within the administrative limits. The Metropolitan City of Naples had a population of 3,115,320, Naples is the 9th-most populous urban area in the European Union with a population of between 3 million and 3.7 million. About 4.4 million people live in the Naples metropolitan area, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Bronze Age Greek settlements were established in the Naples area in the second millennium BC, a larger colony – initially known as Parthenope, Παρθενόπη – developed on the Island of Megaride around the ninth century BC, at the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Naples remained influential after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, thereafter, in union with Sicily, it became the capital of the Two Sicilies until the unification of Italy in 1861. Naples was the most-bombed Italian city during World War II, much of the citys 20th-century periphery was constructed under Benito Mussolinis fascist government, and during reconstruction efforts after World War II. The city has experienced significant economic growth in recent decades, and unemployment levels in the city, however, Naples still suffers from political and economic corruption, and unemployment levels remain high. Naples has the fourth-largest urban economy in Italy, after Milan, Rome and it is the worlds 103rd-richest city by purchasing power, with an estimated 2011 GDP of US$83.6 billion. The port of Naples is one of the most important in Europe, numerous major Italian companies, such as MSC Cruises Italy S. p. A, are headquartered in Naples. The city also hosts NATOs Allied Joint Force Command Naples, the SRM Institution for Economic Research, Naples is a full member of the Eurocities network of European cities. The city was selected to become the headquarters of the European institution ACP/UE and was named a City of Literature by UNESCOs Creative Cities Network, the Villa Rosebery, one of the three official residences of the President of Italy, is located in the citys Posillipo district. Naples historic city centre is the largest in Europe, covering 1,700 hectares and enclosing 27 centuries of history, Naples has long been a major cultural centre with a global sphere of influence, particularly during the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras. In the immediate vicinity of Naples are numerous culturally and historically significant sites, including the Palace of Caserta, culinarily, Naples is synonymous with pizza, which originated in the city. Neapolitan music has furthermore been highly influential, credited with the invention of the romantic guitar, according to CNN, the metro stop Toledo is the most beautiful in Europe and it won also the LEAF Award 2013 as Public building of the year. Naples is the Italian city with the highest number of accredited stars from the Michelin Guide, Naples sports scene is dominated by football and Serie A club S. S. C. Napoli, two-time Italian champions and winner of European trophies, who play at the San Paolo Stadium in the south-west of the city, the Phlegraean Fields around Naples has been inhabited since the Neolithic period. The earliest Greek settlements were established in the Naples area in the second millennium BC, sailors from the Greek island of Rhodes established a small commercial port called Parthenope on the island of Megaride in the ninth century BC
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Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
3.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
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Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
5.
Printmaking
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Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print produced is not considered a copy but rather is considered an original, a print may be known as an impression. Printmaking is not chosen only for its ability to multiple impressions. Prints are created by transferring ink from a matrix or through a screen to a sheet of paper or other material. Screens made of silk or synthetic fabrics are used for the screenprinting process, other types of matrix substrates and related processes are discussed below. Multiple impressions printed from the matrix form an edition. Prints may also be printed in book form, such as illustrated books or artists books, Printmaking techniques are generally divided into the following basic categories, Relief, where ink is applied to the original surface of the matrix. Relief techniques include woodcut or woodblock as the Asian forms are known, wood engraving. Intaglio, where ink is applied beneath the surface of the matrix. Intaglio techniques include engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, planographic, where the matrix retains its original surface, but is specially prepared and/or inked to allow for the transfer of the image. Planographic techniques include lithography, monotyping, and digital techniques, stencil, where ink or paint is pressed through a prepared screen, including screenprinting and pochoir. Other types of printmaking techniques outside these groups include collagraphy and viscosity printing, collagraphy is a printmaking technique in which textured material is adhered to the printing matrix. This texture is transferred to the paper during the printing process, Contemporary printmaking may include digital printing, photographic mediums, or a combination of digital, photographic, and traditional processes. Many of these techniques can also be combined, especially within the same family, for example, Rembrandts prints are usually referred to as etchings for convenience, but very often include work in engraving and drypoint as well, and sometimes have no etching at all. Woodcut, a type of print, is the earliest printmaking technique. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Japan, and slightly later in Europe. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used purely as a process for making images without text, the artist draws a design on a plank of wood, or on paper which is transferred to the wood
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Etching
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Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material, as a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of variants such as microfabrication etching and photochemical milling it is a crucial technique in much modern technology. In traditional pure etching, a plate is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with an etching needle where he or she wants a line to appear in the finished piece. The échoppe, a tool with an oval section, is also used for swelling lines. The plate is dipped in a bath of acid, technically called the mordant or etchant. The acid bites into the metal where it is exposed, leaving behind lines sunk into the plate, the remaining ground is then cleaned off the plate. The plate is inked all over, and then the ink wiped off the surface, the plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper. The paper picks up the ink from the lines, making a print. The process can be repeated many times, typically several hundred impressions could be printed before the shows much sign of wear. The work on the plate can also be added to by repeating the whole process, Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving or aquatint. The process as applied to printmaking is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer of Augsburg, Hopfer was a craftsman who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking, using iron plates. Apart from his prints, there are two examples of his work on armour, a shield from 1536 now in the Real Armeria of Madrid. The switch to copper plates was made in Italy. On the other hand, the handling of the ground and acid need skill and experience, prior to 1100 AD, the New World Hohokam independently utilized the technique of acid etching in marine shell designs. Jacques Callot from Nancy in Lorraine made important technical advances in etching technique and he developed the échoppe, a type of etching-needle with a slanting oval section at the end, which enabled etchers to create a swelling line, as engravers were able to do. Callot also appears to have responsible for an improved, harder, recipe for the etching ground
7.
Kunsthalle Hamburg
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The Hamburg Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest museums in the country, the name Kunsthalle indicates the museums history as an art hall when founded in 1850. Today, the Kunsthalle houses one of the few art collections in Germany that covers seven centuries of European art, the Kunsthalle consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869,1921 and 1997, located in the Altstadt district, between the Hauptbahnhof and the two Alster lakes. The Kunsthalle has its origins in 1849, when established and opened a year later as Städtische Gallerie by the Hamburg Kunstverein, the collection grew quickly, and it soon became necessary to provide a building. The original red brick Kunsthalle was built from 1863 to 1869, designed by architects Georg Theodor Schirrmacher and Hermann von der Hude, the first director became the art historian and educator Alfred Lichtwark. In 1994, one painting of the Kunsthalle was involved in the so-called Frankfurt art theft, while on loan to the Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt, the painting Nebelschwaden by Caspar David Friedrich was stolen. After negotiations with the thieves, a lawyer bought back the painting, the cubic building sits on a monolithic base at a prominent location in close proximity to the Binnenalster. Since 2014, the Kunsthalle is under a euro 22 million renovation, in which the old entrance is being re-activated as sole entrance for the entire complex. The Kunsthalle is divided into four different sections, the Gallery of Old Masters, the Gallery of 19th-century Art, the Gallery of Classical Modernism and the Gallery of Contemporary Art. The Kunsthalle Museum is also known for its contemporary art collections and exhibitions. The Hamburg Kunsthalle continuisly carries out temporary exhibitions on contemporary and historic art, yearly there are on average 20 special exhibitions. The Dawn of Romanticism 2011–2012, Max Liebermann, pioneer of Modern Art 2012–2013, Giacometti
8.
Jusepe de Ribera
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Jusepe de Ribera was a Spanish Tenebrist painter and printmaker, also known as José de Ribera and Josep de Ribera. He also was called Lo Spagnoletto by his contemporaries and early writers, Ribera was a leading painter of the Spanish school, although his mature work was all done in Italy. Ribera was born at Xàtiva, near Valencia, Spain and he was baptized on February 17,1591. His father was a shoemaker, perhaps on a large scale, longing to study art in Italy, he made his way to Rome via Parma, where he is recorded in 1611. According to one source, a cardinal noticed him drawing from the frescoes on a Roman palace facade, Roman artists gave him the nickname Lo Spagnoletto. His early biographers generally rank him among the followers of Caravaggio, very little documentation survives from his early years, with scholars speculating as to the precise time and route by which he came to Italy. Ribera was living in Rome no later than 1612, and is documented as having joined the Academy of Saint Luke by 1613, in 1616, Ribera moved to Naples, in order to avoid his creditors. The Kingdom of Naples was then part of the Spanish Empire, Ribera moved to Naples permanently in the middle of 1616. Ribera began to sign his work as Jusepe de Ribera, español, the period after Osuna was recalled in 1620 seems to have been difficult. Few paintings survive from 1620 to 1626, but this was the period in which most of his best prints were produced and these were at least partly an attempt to attract attention from a wider audience than Naples. His career picked up in the late 1620s, and he was accepted as the painter in Naples thereafter. His influence can be seen in Velázquez, Murillo, and most other Spanish painters of the period, all of them were invited to work in Naples, but found the place inhospitable. The cabal ended at the time of Domenichinos death in 1641, according to the RKD he is listed as a pupil of Ribalta and in turn his own pupils were Enrico Fiammingo, Francesco Fracanzano, Luca Giordano, and Bartolomeo Passante. He was followed by Giuseppe Marullo and he influenced the painters Agostino Beltrano, Hendrick van Someren, Paolo Domenico Finoglio, Giovanni Ricca, about 1644, his daughter married a Spanish nobleman in the administration, who died soon after. From 1644, Ribera seems to have suffered serious ill-health, which reduced his ability to work. In 1647–1648, during the Masaniello rising against Spanish rule, he felt forced for some months to take his family with him into refuge in the palace of the Viceroy. In 1651 he sold the house he had owned for many years. In his earlier style, founded sometimes on Caravaggio and sometimes on the wholly diverse method of Correggio, along with his massive and predominating shadows, he retained from first to last a great strength in local coloring
9.
Paolo Veronese
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Known as a supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerism, Paolo Veronese developed a naturalist style of painting, influenced by Titian. His most famous works are elaborate narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful style, full of architectural settings. Nonetheless, many of the greatest artists, may be counted among his admirers, including Rubens, Watteau, Tiepolo, Delacroix and Renoir. Veronese took his name from his birthplace of Verona, then the largest possession of Venice on the mainland. The census in Verona attests that Veronese was born sometime in 1528 to a stonecutter, or spezapreda, named Gabriele and it was common for surnames to be taken from a fathers profession, and thus Veronese was known as Paolo Spezapreda. He later changed his name to Paolo Caliari, because his mother was the daughter of a nobleman called Antonio Caliari. He was often called Paolo Veronese before the last century to him from another painter from Verona, Alessandro Veronese. By 1541, Veronese was apprenticed with Antonio Badile, who was later to become his father-in-law, although trained in the culture of Mannerism then popular in Parma, he soon developed his own preference for a more radiant palette. In 1552 Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, great-uncle of the ruling Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, commissioned an altarpiece for Mantua Cathedral and his panel of Jupiter Expelling the Vices for the former is now in the Louvre. He then painted a History of Esther in the ceiling for the church of San Sebastiano and it was these ceiling paintings and those of 1557 in the Marciana Library that established him as a master among his Venetian contemporaries. Already these works indicate Veroneses mastery in reflecting both the subtle foreshortening of the figures of Correggio and the heroism of those by Michelangelo. By 1556 Veronese was commissioned to paint the first of his monumental banquet scenes, the Feast in the House of Simon, owing to its scattered composition and lack of focus, however, it was not his most successful refectory mural. In the late 1550s, during a break in his work for San Sebastiano, Veronese decorated the Villa Barbaro in Maser, Veroneses decorations employed complex perspective and trompe loeil, and resulted in a luminescent and inspired visual poetry. The encounter between architect and artist was a triumph, the Wedding at Cana, painted in 1562–1563, was also collaboration with Palladio. It was commissioned by the Benedictine monks for the San Giorgio Maggiore Monastery, on an island across from Saint Marks. The contract insisted on the size, and that the quality of pigment. For example, the contract specified that the blues should contain the precious mineral lapis-lazuli, the contract also specified that the painting should include as many figures as possible. There are a number of portraits staged upon a canvas surface nearly ten meters wide
10.
Pietro da Cortona
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Pietro da Cortona was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini and he was also an important designer of interior decorations. He was born Pietro Berrettini, but is known by the name of his native town of Cortona in Tuscany. He worked mainly in Rome and Florence, only a limited number of his architectural projects were built but nonetheless they are as distinctive and as inventive as those of his rivals. Berrettini was born into a family of artisans and masons, in Cortona and he trained in painting in Florence under Andrea Commodi, but soon he departed for Rome at around 1612/3, where he joined the studio of Baccio Ciarpi. In Rome, he had encouragement from many prominent patrons, according to Cortonas biographers his gifted copy of Raphaels Galatea fresco brought him to the attention of Marcello Sacchetti, papal treasurer during the Barberini papacy. Such contacts helped him gain a major commission in Rome. In 1633, Pope Urban VIII commissioned from Cortona a large painting for the main salon ceiling of the Barberini family palace. It was completed six years later, following Cortonas influential visit to northern Italy where he would have seen at first hand perspectival works by Paolo Veronese, Cortonas huge Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power marks a watershed in Baroque painting. The ornamented architectural framework essentially forms five compartments, the central and most significant part celebrates the glorification of the reign of Urban VIII in a light filled scene populated with allegorical figures and Barberini family emblems. The illusion of spatial extension through paint, the grandiose theme, the first two represented the ages of silver and gold. In 1641, he was recalled to paint the Bronze Age and he began work on the decoration of the grand-ducal reception rooms on the first floor of the Palazzo Pitti, now part of the Palatine Gallery. These highly ornate ceilings with frescoes and elaborate stucco work essentially celebrate the Medici lineage, Pietro left Florence in 1647, and his pupil and collaborator, Ciro Ferri, completed the cycle by the 1660s. For a number of years, Cortona was involved for decades in the decoration of the frescoes in the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova in Rome. Other frescoes are in Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona, in 1660, he executed The Stoning of Saint Stephen for the church of San Ambrogio della Massima in Rome. The work currently hangs in the Hermitage, towards the end of his life he devoted much of his time to architecture, but he published a treatise on painting in 1652 under a pseudonym and in collaboration. He refused invitations to both France and Spain and he was elected as director of the Academy of St Luke the painters guild in Rome, in 1634. It was at the Academy in 1636 that Cortona and Andrea Sacchi were involved in controversies regarding the number of figures that were appropriate in a painted work
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Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
12.
Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
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Santa Maria del Carmine is a church of the Carmelite Order, in the Oltrarno district of Florence, in Tuscany, Italy. It is famous as the location of the Brancacci Chapel housing outstanding Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, the church, dedicated to the Beatæ Virginis Mariæ de monte Carmelo, was built from 1268 as part of Carmelite convent, which is still existing today. Of the original edifice only some Romanesque-Gothic remains can be seen on the sides, the complex was enlarged a first time in 1328 and again in 1464, when the capitular hall and the refectory added, though the church maintained the Latin Cross, one nave plan. Renovated in the Baroque style in the 16th–17th centuries, it was damaged by a fire in 1771, the façade, like in many Florentine churches, remained unfinished. The fire did not touch the sacristy, therefore have survived the Stories of St. Cecilia attributed to Lippo dAndrea, the vault of the nave has a trompe-loeil, quadratura fresco by Domenico Stagi. Also the Brancacci Chapel survived the fire, and was saved by the subsequent restoration by the intervention of a Florentine noblewoman who was opposed to the covering of the frescoes. The Chapel is home to the frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino. Masaccios master Masolino, commissioned by a merchant, Felice Brancacci, began work on the chapel in 1425 and was soon joined in the project by his pupil. The scenes by Masolino are St Peter Healing a Lame Man and Raising Tabitha from the Dead, St Peter Preaching, and Adam and Eve. Those by mostly Masaccio are The Tribute Money, St Peter Healing with his Shadow, The Crucifixion of St Peter, The Baptism of the Neophytes and their treatment of figures in believable space made the frescoes among the most important to have come out of the Early Renaissance. The cycle was finished by Filippino Lippi, the elaborated Italian Rococo ceiling is from one of the most important 18th century artists in the city, Giovanni Domenico Ferretti. The architect Pier Francesco Silvani choose for it the Baroque style then popular in Rome, the altar has a marble bas-relief depicting the Glory of St Andrea Corsini, sculpted by Foggini, and above a God the Father sculpted by Carlo Marcellini. The small dome was frescoed by Giordano in 1682, the frescoes suffered in the great church fire, and were restored by Stefano Fabbrini. The convent suffered in its history from numerous disasters, from the 1771 fire to the 1966 River Arno flood, the second refectory is decorated with the Supper in Simon the Pharisees house by Giovanni Battista Vanni, it also houses fragments of frescoes by Lippo dAndrea. Neri Corsini Holy Places in Tuscany Media related to Santa Maria del Carmine at Wikimedia Commons
13.
Accademia della Crusca
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The Accademia della Crusca, generally abbreviated as La Crusca, is an Italian society for scholars and Italian linguists and philologists established in Florence. It is the most important research institution on Italian language as well as the oldest linguistic academy in the world, the Accademia was founded in Florence in 1583 and it has been characterized by its efforts to maintain the purity of the Italian language. The academy motto is Il più bel fior ne coglie, a verse of the Italians poet Francesco Petrarca. The academy is a member of the European Federation of National Linguistic Institutes, the Federation has two Italian members, the Accademia della Crusca and the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano del CNR. The founders were called the brigata dei Crusconi and constituted a kind of circle, where the members included poets, men of letters. The Crusconi battled against the classical pedantry of the Accademia through the use of humour, satire, however, it was important that this battle was fought without compromising the primary intention of the group, which was typically literary, and expounded in high quality literary disputes. One of the earliest scholars to influence the work of the Crusca was Agnolo Monosini, the Accademia thus abandoned the jocular character of its earlier meetings in order to take up the normative role it would assume from then on. The very title of the Accademia came to be interpreted in a new way, from this is derived the symbolism of the Crusca, its logo shows a frullone or sifter with the Petrarchan motto Il più bel fior ne coglie. The members of the Accademia were given nicknames associated with corn and flour, the Accademias activities carried on with both high- and low- points until 1783, when Pietro Leopoldo quit and, with several other academicians, created the second Accademia Fiorentina. In the 20th century, the decree of 11 March 1923 changed its composition, in 1955, however, Bruno Migliorini and others began discussion of the return of the work of preparing the Vocabolario to the Crusca. The Italian Academies, in, Collected Essays, vol, II, Renaissance and Reform, the Italian Contribution, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul,1983 ISBN 0-7100-9530-9 Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E
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Palazzo Medici Riccardi
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The Palazzo Medici, also called the Palazzo Medici Riccardi after the later family that acquired and expanded it, is a Renaissance palace located in Florence, Italy. It is the seat of the Metropolitan City of Florence, the palace was designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo de Medici, head of the Medici banking family, and was built between 1444 and 1484. It was well known for its masonry, which includes architectural elements of rustication. The tripartite elevation used here expresses the Renaissance spirit of rationality, order and this tripartite division is emphasized by horizontal stringcourses that divide the building into stories of decreasing height. Michelozzo di Bartolomeo was influenced in his building of this palace by both classical Roman and Brunelleschian principles, during the Renaissance revival of classical culture, ancient Roman elements were often replicated in architecture, both built and imagined in paintings. In the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the masonry and the cornice had precedents in Roman practice, yet in totality it looks distinctly Florentine. Similarly, the early Renaissance architect Brunelleschi used Roman techniques and influenced Michelozzo, the open colonnaded court that is the center of the palazzo plan has roots in the cloisters that developed from Roman peristyles. The once open corner loggia and shop facing the street were walled in during the 16th century. The new windows are set into what appears to be an infill of the original arched opening. The building reflects the wealth of the Medici family. Then a garden done in the finest of polished marbles, with diverse plants, Cosimo received the young Sforza in the chapel not less ornate and handsome than the rest of the house. Other decorations included two lunettes by Filippo Lippi, depicting Seven Saints and the Annunciation, now at the National Gallery, when the Medici family returned to Florence after their short exile in the early 16th century, they kept a low profile and exercised their power behind the scenes. This is reflected in the exterior of this building, and is said to be the reason why Cosimo de Medici rejected Brunelleschis earlier proposal. The palace was the site of the wedding reception between Ferdinando de Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany and Violante Beatrice of Bavaria in 1689
15.
Charles II of Spain
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Charles II of Spain was the last Habsburg ruler of Spain. His realm included Southern Netherlands, Italian territories, several cities in north Africa and Spains overseas empire, known as the Bewitched, he is noted for his extensive physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities and his consequent ineffectual rule. He died in 1700, childless and heirless, with all potential Habsburg successors having predeceased him, in his will, Charles named as his successor the almost 17-year-old Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of Charles half-sister Maria Theresa of Spain, the first wife of Louis XIV. Charles was born in the Spanish capital, Madrid, the son of Philip IV of Spain and his second wife, Mariana of Austria. As the only surviving heir of his fathers two marriages, Charles was named Prince of Asturias, the title given to the person first in line to the Spanish throne. The Spanish branch of the Habsburg royal family was noted for extreme consanguinity, well aware that they owed their power to fortunate marriages, they married between themselves to protect their gains. Philip and Mariana were actually uncle and niece, therefore, Charles was not only their son, Charles was physically and mentally disabled and infertile, possibly due to this massive inbreeding. Due to the deaths of his brothers, he was the last member of the male Spanish Habsburg line. Charles did not learn to speak until the age of four nor to walk until eight and his jaw was so badly deformed that he could barely speak or chew. Fearing the frail child would be overtaxed, his caretakers did not force Charles to attend school, the indolence of the young Charles was indulged to such an extent that at times he was not expected to be clean. The only vigorous activity in which Charles is known to have participated was shooting and he occasionally indulged in the sport in the preserves of El Escorial. The years of Charless reign were difficult for Spain, the economy was stagnant, there was hunger in the land, and the power of the monarchy over the various Spanish provinces was extremely weak. Spain’s finances were perpetually in crisis, Charles unfitness for rule meant he was often ignored, and power during his reign became the subject of court intrigues and foreign influence, particularly French and Austrian. Charles was three years old when his father, Philip IV, died on 17 September 1665, the Council of Castile appointed Philips second wife and Charles mother, Mariana of Austria, regent for the minor king. Charles inherited the Portuguese Restoration War and soon after his accession Spain was plunged into the War of Devolution with France in Spanish Netherlands, as regent, Mariana managed the countrys affairs through a series of favourites, whose merits usually amounted to no more than meeting her fancy. From then on he was the de facto prime minister or valido of Spain, the sheer size of the kingdom at that time made this kind of government increasingly damaging to the realms affairs. The treaty ceded the North African enclave of Ceuta to Spain, but marked the loss of Portugal, to end the War of Devolution, Nithard signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. However, the members of the Councils and in particular Charles illegitimate half-brother, in February 1669, a military revolt in Aragon and Catalonia led by Juan José, who then proceeded to march toward Madrid, brought about Nithards dismissal
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Buen Retiro Palace
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Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid was a large palace complex designed by the architect Alonso Carbonell and built on the orders of Philip IV of Spain as a secondary residence and place of recreation. It was built in what was then the limits of the city of Madrid. Today what little remains of its buildings and gardens forms the Retiro Park, Philip IV used to stay occasionally in some rooms annexed to the monastery of San Jerónimo el Real (close to the current location of the Prado Museum, which received the name of the Royal Quarters. The building of the palace was not something planned from the start, once finished, the palace consisted of more than 20 buildings and two large open squares used for court entertainments and various other acts. The palace complex was surrounded by an expanse of gardens and ponds. The lack of paintings in the market led to the commission of a series of paintings from Rome and Naples. For the Salón de Reinos a commemorative series of Spanish military triumphs was commissioned, other paintings of the series are due to Francisco Zurbarán, Antonio de Pereda, Juan Bautista Maíno and Vicente Carducho. The palace remained a residence until the late 18th century. Due to its hasty design and construction, the building of the palace was low-quality, including the materials used, during the Peninsular War, in 1808 French troops stationed in Madrid used the palace and its annexes as barracks. Powder kegs were stored in the gardens and a bunker was built for them, furthermore, the buildings were seriously damaged, so much so that when Isabella II tried to begin its restoration, it was decided that nothing could be done but to demolish it almost totally. The main remaining trace of the Palace complex is the gardens of Retiro Park, although these have no resemblance to the design of the gardens. The Salón de Baile, now known as the Casón del Buen Retiro, once housing the 19th century Prado collections, list of missing landmarks in Spain El Real Sitio del Buen Retiro El Palacio del Buen Retiro
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El Escorial
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It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, basilica, royal palace, pantheon, library, museum, university and hospital. It is situated 2.06 km up the valley from the town of El Escorial, El Escorial was, at once, a monastery and a Spanish royal palace. Originally a property of the Hieronymite monks, it is now a monastery of the Order of Saint Augustine and it is also a boarding school. Philip engaged the Spanish architect, Juan Bautista de Toledo, to be his collaborator in the design of El Escorial, Philip appointed him architect-royal in 1559, and together they designed El Escorial as a monument to Spains role as a center of the Christian world. On 2 November 1984, UNESCO declared The Royal Seat of San Lorenzo of El Escorial a World Heritage Site and it is a popular tourist attraction, often visited by day-trippers from Madrid – more than 500,000 visitors come to El Escorial every year. El Escorial is situated at the foot of Mt. Abantos in the Sierra de Guadarrama, Quentin in Picardy against Henry II, king of France. He also intended the complex to serve as a necropolis for the interment of the remains of his parents, Charles I and Isabella of Portugal, himself, in addition, Philip envisioned El Escorial as a center for studies in aid of the Counter-Reformation cause. The buildings cornerstone was laid on 23 April 1563, the design and construction were overseen by Juan Bautista de Toledo, who did not live to see the completion of the project. With Toledos death in 1567, direction passed to his apprentice, Juan de Herrera, under whom the building was completed in 1584, to this day, la obra de El Escorial is a proverbial expression for a thing that takes a long time to finish. Since then, El Escorial has been the site for most of the Spanish kings of the last five centuries. Two Bourbon kings, Philip V and Ferdinand VI, as well as King Amadeus, are not buried in the monastery, the floor plan of the building is in the form of a gridiron. The traditional belief is that design was chosen in honor of St. Lawrence. St. Lawrence’s feast day is 10 August, the date as the 1557 Battle of St. Quentin. In fact, however, the origin of the layout is quite controversial. The grill-like shape, which did not fully emerge until Herrera eliminated from the conception the six interior towers of the facade, was, by no means. In fact, palaces of this design were commonplace in the Byzantine. Statues of David and Solomon on either side of the entrance to the basilica of El Escorial lend further weight to the theory that this is the origin of the design. A more personal connection can be drawn between the David-warrior figure, representing Charles V, and his son, the stolid and solomonically prudent Philip II
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Toledo Cathedral
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The Primate Cathedral of Saint Mary of Toledo is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Toledo, Spain. It is the seat of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Toledo, the cathedral of Toledo is one of the three 13th-century High Gothic cathedrals in Spain and is considered, in the opinion of some authorities, to be the magnum opus of the Gothic style in Spain. It also combines some characteristics of the Mudéjar style, mainly in the cloister, the spectacular incorporation of light and the structural achievements of the ambulatory vaults are some of its more remarkable aspects. It is built with limestone from the quarries of Olihuelas. It is popularly known as Dives Toletana, for many years, an unwritten popular tradition has held that there was originally a church from the era of the first Archbishop Eugene located in the same place as the present cathedral. The city had been the seat of Visigothic Spain. The numerous Councils of Toledo attest to its important ecclesiastical past, also, the abjuration of Arianism on the part of Reccared occurred there. The Muslim invasion did not immediately eliminate the Christian presence and the bishopric remained established in the church of Saint Mary of Alfizén, the Visigothic church was torn down and the main mosque of the city of Toledo was erected in its place. The city of Toledo was reconquered by Alfonso VI, King of León and Castile, naturally, the preservation of the main mosque was integral to this compromise. On 25 October 1087, the archbishop in cooperation with Queen Constance sent a contingent to seize the mosque by force. They proceeded to install an altar and hung a bell in the minaret. In gratitude for this gesture, the Cathedral Chapter dedicated a homage to Walid and ordered his effigy to be placed on one of the pillars in the main chapel, thus the conversion of the Toledan mosque was upheld and it remained consecrated as a Christian cathedral. It is possible that it appeared much like the Church of the Savior of Toledo. King Alfonso VI made important donations to the new church, on 18 December 1086, the cathedral was placed under the advocacy of María and it was granted villas, hamlets, mills and one third of the revenues of all the rest of the churches of the city. Pope Urban II recognised this church in 1088 as the cathedral over the rest of the kingdom. The mosque-cathedral remained intact until the 13th century, when in the year 1222 a Papal bull issued by the Pope authorised the construction of a new cathedral which was begun in 1224. The official ceremony of the laying of the foundation took place in 1226. Throughout the 13th century the cathedrals income tax was raised through the incorporation of Alcalá de Henares into its archiepiscopal territories in 1129
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Certosa di San Martino
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The Certosa di San Martino is a former monastery complex, now a museum, in Naples, southern Italy. Along with Castel SantElmo that stands beside it, this is the most visible landmark of the city, a Carthusian monastery, it was finished and inaugurated under the rule of Queen Joan I in 1368. It was dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, during the first half of the 16th century it was expanded. Later, in 1623, it was expanded and became, under the direction of architect Cosimo Fanzago. In the early 19th century, under French rule the monastery was closed and was abandoned by the religious order. Today, the house a museum with a display of Spanish and Bourbon era artifacts
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Cupola
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In architecture, a cupola /ˈkjuːpələ/ is a small, most often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to light and air. The word derives, via Italian, from the lower Latin cupula small cup indicating a vault resembling an upside down cup. The cupola is a development during the Renaissance of the oculus, an ancient device found in Roman architecture, the chhatri, seen in Indian architecture, fits the definition of a cupola when it is used atop a larger structure. Cupolas often appear as small buildings in their own right and they often serve as a belfry, belvedere, or roof lantern above a main roof. In other cases they may crown a spire, tower, or turret, barns often have cupolas for ventilation. The square, dome-like segment of a North American railroad train caboose that contains the second-level or angel seats is called a cupola. Some armored fighting vehicles have cupolas, called commanders cupola, which is a dome or cylinder with armored glass to provide 360-degree vision around the vehicle
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Santa Brigida, Naples
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Santa Brigida is a church located on Via Santa Brigida in central Naples, Italy. The church is a few doors down from one of the entrances to the Galleria Umberto I, the origins of the church date to 1609, when a local merchant Giovanni Antonio Bianco dedicated a chapel to Santa Brigida. He also built a conservatory for widows, because of its location near the Castel Nuovo, the Spanish authorities demanded that the church only have a low dome, which would not have blocked the view from gunners in the Castle. The Lucchese fathers remained until their order was suppressed under the French occupation, ultimately they were again expelled after unification of Italy under the House of Savoy in 1862. The interior, in Latin cross with chapels, displays gran Baroque pictorial cycles, Glory of Santa Brigida, St Nicola, The Last Judgment and The Passion, the painter himself is buried in the church. Some of the Giordano paintings were completed by his pupil, Giuseppe Simonelli, other painters active in the church include Massimo Stanzione and Paolo De Matteis. The dome has a vanishing point painted by Giordano, which makes it look more slender. The chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows has a revered statue. The Church is the seat of the Military Order of the Most Holy Saviour and St. Bridget of Sweden Renato Ruotolo. Gennaro Aspreno Galante, Le Chiese di Napoli, guida Sacra della Città di Napoli, Napoli, XIX secolo. Dario Nicolella, Le cupole di Napoli, Napoli,1997 Mascioni Organ
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Palazzo Corsini, Rome
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It is located in the Trastevere section of the city, and stands beside the Villa Farnesina. During 1659–1689, the former Riario palace had hosted the eccentric Christina, Queen of Sweden, who abdicated, converted, under her patronage, this was the site for the first meetings of the Roman Accademia dellArcadia. In 1736, the Florentine Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, nephew of Pope Clement XII, acquired the villa and land, during the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, the palace hosted Joseph Bonaparte. Today, the palace hosts some offices of the National Academy of Science, the gardens, which rise up the Janiculum hill, are part of the Orto Botanico dellUniversità di Roma La Sapienza, a botanical garden. Another Corsini palace of note include the Palazzo Corsini al Parione, the Galleria Nazionale dArte Antica di Palazzo Corsini or National Gallery of Antique Art in the Corsini Palace is a prominent art museum comprising the first floor of the palace. The national Arte Antica collections in Rome consist of a number of sites, including Palazzo Barberini, Galleria Borghese, in 1883, this palace and its contents were sold to the state, and the collection is displayed in its original location. The collection encompasses the breadth of mainly Italian art from early-Renaissance to late-18th century and it has both religious and historical works, as well as landscapes and genre paintings. Palazzo Corsini Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, hosted in the Palazzo Corsini and neighboring Villa Farnesina
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Paolo de Matteis
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Paolo de Matteis was an Italian painter. He was born in Piano Vetrale, a hamlet of Orria, in the current Province of Salerno and he trained with Francesco di Maria in Naples, then with Luca Giordano. He served in the employ of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, from 1702 to 1705, de Matteis worked in Paris, Calabria, and Genoa. In Genoa, he painted an Immaculate Conception with St. Jerome Appearing to St. Sevrio, returning to Naples, he painted decorative schemes for Neapolitan churches, including the vault of the chapel of San Ignatius in the church of Gesù Nuovo in Naples. He also painted an Assumption of the Virgin for the Abbey at Monte Cassino, between 1723–1725, de Matteis lived in Rome, where he received a commission from Pope Innocent XIII. He had as pupils Ignacio de Oliveira, Bernardes Peresi, and members of the Sarnelli family including Francesco, Gennaro, Giovanni, others who were his pupils were Giuseppe Mastroleo, Giovanni Pandozzi, and Nicolas de Filippis. Santa Maria di Montesanto, Naples, for one of his works Artnet biography from Grove encyclopedia of Art, hobbes, James R. Picture collectors manual, Dictionary of Painters. T. & W. Boone,29 Bond Street, London, media related to Paolo de Matteis at Wikimedia Commons
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Giovan Battista Langetti
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Giovanni Battista Langetti, also known as Giambattista Langetti, was an Italian late-Baroque painter. He was active in his native Genoa, then Rome, and he first trained with Assereto, then Pietro da Cortona, but afterwards studied under Giovanni Francesco Cassana, appeared in Venice by the 1650s where he worked in a striking Caravaggesque style. He is thought to have influenced Johann Karl Loth and Antonio Zanchi and he painted many historical busts for private patrons in the Venetian territory and in Lombardy. He died at Venice in 1676, art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750. Walter Armstrong and Robert Edmund Graves, ed, dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical
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Giovanni Battista Lama
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Giovanni Battista Lama was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Naples. Along with Paolo de Matteis, he was pupil to the painters Luca Giordano, note, He should not be confused with a fellow Neapolitan painter of the previous generation, Giovanni Bernardo Lama. Ralph Nicholson Wornum, ed. Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters, woodfall & Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London, Digitized by Googlebooks from Oxford University copy on Jun 27,2006
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Giuseppe Simonelli
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Giuseppe Simonelli was an Italian painter, active in a late-Baroque style. Born in Naples around 1650, Simonelli was one of the most important painters of the school of Luca Giordano and his early works were often retouched by Giordano to such a degree that some of them were confused with those of the master. He learned Giordano’s art so well that when the master left Naples for the Spanish court in 1692, reliable details of his own production are available as from 1686, when he received the final payment for a painting of Holy Martyrs for the Jesuit college in Trapani. His most celebrated works are the series of 28 paintings for the Church of the Annunziata in Aversa and he worked continuously right up to his death in 1710. Santa Maria di Montesanto, Naples, for one of his works Domenico Sedini, Giuseppe Simonelli, online catalogue Artgate by Fondazione Cariplo,2010, media related to Giuseppe Simonelli at Wikimedia Commons
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Nicola Maria Rossi
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Nicola Maria Rossi, also known as Nicolò Maria was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque. At the age of 15 years, he had begun studying a classic education, nicola later likely tutored Corrado Giaquinto while in that studio. Rossi painted an altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception with Saints and Bishops for the church of the Cappuccinelle sopra Ponte Corbo, Rossi was called to Vienna, to paint a Hall for the Marquis of Refrano, a counselor for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. He depicted Heroic virtue crowned by Glory, Fame, and other Virtues, in Vienna, he also painted portraits of the chancellor, the Count of Zinzendorff, and others in the court. Her returned to Naples, where he worked for the Viceroy Aloys Thomas Raimund Graf Harrach and he painted allegoric and mythologic panels, as well as large canvases depicting the viceroys functions in various public ceremonies, to be sent to his palace in Vienna. Many of these works are now housed in the Schloss Harrach in Rohrau, one of the panels depicted the Viceroy visiting on September 8 the church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta, Naples. Rossi also painted some of the rooms of the Queen in the Royal Palace of Naples with frescoes of Minerva and Aurora. He painted for the church of San Lorenzo, two canvases, one of the Virgin with Angels and the instruments of Passion and the other Two Saints of the Order of Servites
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Rococo
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Rococo artists and architects used a more jocular, florid, and graceful approach to the Baroque. Their style was ornate and used light colours, asymmetrical designs, curves, unlike the political Baroque, the Rococo had playful and witty themes. By the end of the 18th century, Rococo was largely replaced by the Neoclassic style. In 1835 the Dictionary of the French Academy stated that the word Rococo usually covers the kind of ornament, style and design associated with Louis XVs reign and it includes therefore, all types of art from around the middle of the 18th century in France. The word is seen as a combination of the French rocaille and coquilles, the term may also be a combination of the Italian word barocco and the French rocaille and may describe the refined and fanciful style that became fashionable in parts of Europe in the 18th century. The Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts led some critics to say that the style was frivolous or merely modish, when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning old-fashioned. While there is some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general. Italian architects of the late Baroque/early Rococo were wooed to Catholic Germany, Bohemia and Austria by local princes, an exotic but in some ways more formal type of Rococo appeared in France where Louis XIVs succession brought a change in the court artists and general artistic fashion. By the end of the long reign, rich Baroque designs were giving way to lighter elements with more curves. These elements are obvious in the designs of Nicolas Pineau. During the Régence, court life moved away from Versailles and this change became well established, first in the royal palace. The delicacy and playfulness of Rococo designs is seen as perfectly in tune with the excesses of Louis XVs reign. The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France, the style had spread beyond architecture and furniture to painting and sculpture, exemplified by the works of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. The Rococo style was spread by French artists and engraved publications, william Hogarth helped develop a theoretical foundation for Rococo beauty. Though not intentionally referencing the movement, he argued in his Analysis of Beauty that the lines and S-curves prominent in Rococo were the basis for grace. The development of Rococo in Great Britain is considered to have connected with the revival of interest in Gothic architecture early in the 18th century. The beginning of the end for Rococo came in the early 1760s as figures like Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel began to voice their criticism of the superficiality, Blondel decried the ridiculous jumble of shells, dragons, reeds, palm-trees and plants in contemporary interiors. By 1785, Rococo had passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order, in Germany, late 18th century Rococo was ridiculed as Zopf und Perücke, and this phase is sometimes referred to as Zopfstil
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Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
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Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice. He was prolific, and worked not only in Italy, but also in Germany, Giovan Battista Tiepolo, together with Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Francesco Guardi forms the traditional great Old Masters of that period. Successful from the beginning of his career, he has described by Michael Levey as the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe. Born in Venice, he was the youngest of six children of Domenico and his father was a small shipping merchant who belonged to a family that bore the prestigious patrician name of Tiepolo without claiming any noble descent. Some of the children acquired noble godparents, and Giambattista was originally named after his godfather and he was baptised on 16 April 1696 in the local church, San Pietro di Castello. His father died about a later, leaving his mother to bring up a family of young children. In 1710 he became a pupil of Gregorio Lazzarini, a painter with an eclectic style. A biography of his teacher, published in 1732, says that Tiepolo departed from studied manner of painting and his earliest known works are depictions of the apostles, painted in spandrels as part of the decoration of the church of the Ospedoletto in Venice in 1715–6. He painted his first fresco in 1716, on the ceiling of a church at Biadene and he probably left Lazzarinis studio in 1717, the year he was received into the Fraglia or guild of painters. In around 1719–20 he painted a scheme of frescoes for the wealthy, Tiepolo depicted the Triumph of Aurora on the ceiling, and the Myth of Phaethon on the walls, creating the kind of fluid spatial illusion which was to become a recurring theme in his work. In 1722 he was one of twelve artists commissioned to contribute a painting on canvas of one of the apostles as part of a scheme for the nave of San Stae in Venice. The other artists involved included Ricci, Piazetta, and Pellegrini, in 1719, Tiepolo married noblewoman Maria Cecilia Guardi, sister of two contemporary Venetian painters Francesco and Giovanni Antonio Guardi. Together, Tiepolo and his wife had nine children, four daughters and three sons survived childhood. Two of his sons, Domenico and Lorenzo, painted with him as his assistants and his children painted figures with a design similar to that of their father, but with distinctive, including genre, styles. His third son became a priest, fabio Canal, Francesco Lorenzi, Domenico Pasquini were among his pupils. Some major commissions came from the patrician Dolfin family, Tiepolo used a much cooler palette than previous Venetian painters, in order to create a convincing effect of daylight. These early masterpieces, innovative amongst Venetian frescoes for their luminosity, dominic Instituting the Rosary, Palazzo Clerici, Milan, decorations for Villa Cordellini at Montecchio Maggiore and for the ballroom of the Palazzo Labia in Venice, showing the Story of Cleopatra. Tiepolo produced two sets of etchings, the Capricci and the Scherzi di fantasia, the ten capricci were first published by Anton Maria Zanetti, incorporated into the third edition of a compilation of woodcuts after Parmigiano
30.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
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Mount Olympus
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Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece. It is located in the Olympus Range on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, between the units of Pieria and Larissa, about 80 km southwest from Thessaloniki. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks, deep gorges, and exceptional biodiversity, the highest peak Mytikas, meaning nose, rises to 2,918 metres. It is one of the highest peaks in Europe in terms of topographic prominence, Olympus was notable in Greek mythology as the home of the Greek gods, on the Mytikas peak. Mount Olympus is also noted for its rich flora with several species. It has been a National Park, the first in Greece, since 1938 and it is also a Worlds Biosphere Reserve. Every year thousands of people visit Olympus to admire its fauna and flora, to tour its slopes, organized mountain refuges and various mountaineering and climbing routes are available to visitors who want to explore it. The usual starting point is the town of Litochoro, on the foothills of the mountain,100 km from Thessaloniki, where, in the beginning of every summer. The shape of Olympus was formed by rain and wind, which produced an isolated tower almost 3,000 metres above the sea, Olympus has many peaks and an almost circular shape. The mountain has a circumference of 150 kilometres, a diameter of 26 kilometres. To the northwest lies the Vlach village of Kokkinoplou, the Makryrema stream separates Olympus from the massif of Voulgara. The villages Petra, Vrontou and Dion lie to the northwest, while on the side there is the town of Litochoro. On its southeastern side, the Ziliana gorge divides Mount Olympus from Kato Olympos, while on its foothills, there are the villages Sykaminea. The Aghias Triadas Sparmou Monastery and the village Pythion lie to the west, Olympus dry foothills are known as the Xirokampi, containing chaparral and small animals. Further east, the plain of Dion is fertile and watered by the streams originate on Olympus. Mount Olympus is formed of rock laid down 200 million years ago in a shallow sea. Various geological events that caused the emergence of the whole region. Around one million years ago glaciers covered Olympus and created its plateaus, the complicated geological past of the region is obvious on the morphology of Olympus and its National Park
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Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
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National Library of Australia
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In 2012–2013, the National Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, and an additional 15,506 metres of manuscript material. In 1901, a Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was established to serve the newly formed Federal Parliament of Australia, from its inception the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was driven to development of a truly national collection. The present library building was opened in 1968, the building was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden. The foyer is decorated in marble, with windows by Leonard French. In 2012–2013 the Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, the Librarys collections of Australiana have developed into the nations single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers, editors and illustrators are actively sought and well represented—whether published in Australia or overseas, approximately 92. 1% of the Librarys collection has been catalogued and is discoverable through the online catalogue. The Library has digitized over 174,000 items from its collection and, the Library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques, and maintains an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive. A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson, the Library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, including dance. The Librarys considerable collections of general overseas and rare materials, as well as world-class Asian. The print collections are further supported by extensive microform holdings, the Library also maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection. The Library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers, williams Collection The Asian Collections are searchable via the National Librarys catalogue. The National Library holds a collection of pictures and manuscripts. The manuscript collection contains about 26 million separate items, covering in excess of 10,492 meters of shelf space, the collection relates predominantly to Australia, but there are also important holdings relating to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the Pacific. The collection also holds a number of European and Asian manuscript collections or single items have received as part of formed book collections. Examples are the papers of Alfred Deakin, Sir John Latham, Sir Keith Murdoch, Sir Hans Heysen, Sir John Monash, Vance Palmer and Nettie Palmer, A. D. Hope, Manning Clark, David Williamson, W. M. The Library has also acquired the records of many national non-governmental organisations and they include the records of the Federal Secretariats of the Liberal party, the A. L. P, the Democrats, the R. S. L. Finally, the Library holds about 37,000 reels of microfilm of manuscripts and archival records, mostly acquired overseas and predominantly of Australian, the National Librarys Pictures collection focuses on Australian people, places and events, from European exploration of the South Pacific to contemporary events. Art works and photographs are acquired primarily for their informational value, media represented in the collection include photographs, drawings, watercolours, oils, lithographs, engravings, etchings and sculpture/busts
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Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Giordano, Luca". Encyclopædia Britannica. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 31.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "