1.
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
2.
Perspective (graphical)
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Perspective in the graphic arts is an approximate representation, on a flat surface, of an image as it is seen by the eye. If viewed from the spot as the windowpane was painted. Each painted object in the scene is thus a flat, scaled down version of the object on the side of the window. All perspective drawings assume the viewer is a distance away from the drawing. Objects are scaled relative to that viewer, an object is often not scaled evenly, a circle often appears as an ellipse and a square can appear as a trapezoid. This distortion is referred to as foreshortening, Perspective drawings have a horizon line, which is often implied. This line, directly opposite the viewers eye, represents objects infinitely far away and they have shrunk, in the distance, to the infinitesimal thickness of a line. It is analogous to the Earths horizon, any perspective representation of a scene that includes parallel lines has one or more vanishing points in a perspective drawing. A one-point perspective drawing means that the drawing has a vanishing point, usually directly opposite the viewers eye. All lines parallel with the line of sight recede to the horizon towards this vanishing point. This is the standard receding railroad tracks phenomenon, a two-point drawing would have lines parallel to two different angles. Any number of vanishing points are possible in a drawing, one for each set of lines that are at an angle relative to the plane of the drawing. Perspectives consisting of parallel lines are observed most often when drawing architecture. In contrast, natural scenes often do not have any sets of parallel lines, the only method to indicate the relative position of elements in the composition was by overlapping, of which much use is made in works like the Parthenon Marbles. Chinese artists made use of perspective from the first or second century until the 18th century. It is not certain how they came to use the technique, some authorities suggest that the Chinese acquired the technique from India, oblique projection is also seen in Japanese art, such as in the Ukiyo-e paintings of Torii Kiyonaga. This was detailed within Aristotles Poetics as skenographia, using flat panels on a stage to give the illusion of depth, the philosophers Anaxagoras and Democritus worked out geometric theories of perspective for use with skenographia. Alcibiades had paintings in his house designed using skenographia, so this art was not confined merely to the stage, Euclids Optics introduced a mathematical theory of perspective, but there is some debate over the extent to which Euclids perspective coincides with the modern mathematical definition
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Orvieto Cathedral
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Orvieto Cathedral is a large 14th-century Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and situated in the town of Orvieto in Umbria, central Italy. Formerly the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Todi, it has been since 1986 that of the Diocese of Orvieto-Todi, the cloth is now stored in the Chapel of the Corporal inside the cathedral. The cathedral has five bells, dating back to Renaissance, tuned in E flat, the construction of the cathedral lasted almost three centuries with the design and style evolving from Romanesque to Gothic as construction progressed. The flagstone of the cathedral was laid on 13 November 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV, the cathedral was initially designed as a Romanesque basilica with a nave and two side aisles. But when Giovanni di Uguccione succeeded Fra Bevignate, the design was transformed into Italian Gothic forms and he substantially changed the design and construction of the building, increasing the similarity of the building to Siena Cathedral. The architecture of both buildings sometimes is classified as a substyle of Gothic architecture - Siennese Gothic style, Maitani strengthened the external walls with flying buttresses, which proved later to be useless. These buttresses were eventually included in the walls of the newly built transept chapels and he rebuilt the apse into a rectangular shape and added a large stained-glass quadrifore window. Starting in 1310 he created the current façade up to the level of the statues of the symbols of the Evangelists. He also added much of the interior and he died in 1330, shortly before the completion of the duomo, succeeded by his sons. In 1347 Andrea Pisano, the former Master of the Works of the Florence Cathedral, was appointed the new Master of the Works and he was followed in 1359 by Andrea di Cione, better known as Orcagna. The beautiful mosaic decoration and the window are attributed to him. The Sienese architect Antonio Federighi continued the decoration of the façade between 1451 and 1456, adding some Renaissance modules, in 1503 Michele Sanmicheli finished the central gable and added the right spire, which was finished by Antonio da Sangallo junior in 1534. Final touches to the façade were made by Ippolito Scalza by adding the right pinnacle in 1590, All in all, the succeeding architects kept a stylistic unity to the façade. The Gothic façade of the Orvieto Cathedral is one of the masterpieces of the Late Middle Ages. In 1352 Matteo di Ugolino da Bologna added the bronze Lamb of God above the central gable, the bas-reliefs on the piers depict biblical stories from the Old and New Testament. They are considered among the most famous of all 14th-century sculpture, the installation of these marbles on the piers began in 1331. They depict from left to right, stories of the Old Testament and these original pieces have been replaced and redesigned in the centuries since, particularly in 1484,1713 and 1842. Most of these mosaic represent major scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, one of these glassmakers is recorded as Fra Giovanni Leonardelli
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Cortona
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Cortona is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the cultural and artistic center of the Val di Chiana after Arezzo. Originally an Umbrian city, it was conquered and enlarged by the Etruscans, during the 7th century BC, it joined the Etruscan League. Cortona eventually became a Roman colony under the name Corito, the origin-legends and ancient names of Cortona are described by George Dennis. In the final stages of the Gothic War, Cortona was sacked and destroyed by a warrior named Michael Pasquale, whose mother was Macedonian royalty, Cortona became a Ghibellinian city state in the 13th century, with its own currency. From 1325 to 1409, the Ranieri-Casali family successfully ruled the town, after being conquered by Ladislaus of Naples in 1409, Cortona was sold to the Medici in 1411. In 1737, the branch of the Medici line became extinct. Following the Italian Wars of Independence, Tuscany—Cortona included—became part of the Kingdom of Italy, the foundation of Cortona remains mixed in legends dating to classical times. These were later reworked especially in the late Renaissance period under Cosimo I de Medici, the 17th-century Guide of Giacomo Lauro, reworked from writings of Annio da Viterbo, states that 108 years after the Great Flood, Noah entered the Valdichiana via the Tiber and Paglia rivers. He preferred this place better than anywhere else in Italy, because it was so fertile, in 2000 Cortona established Cortona DOC. The goal is controlling and protecting the wines of D. O. C, currently Cortona DOC has 29 members and produce and control 14 different types of wines. The prevailing character of Cortona’s architecture is medieval with steep narrow streets situated on a hillside at an elevation of 600 metres that embraces a view of the whole of the Valdichiana. From the Piazza Garibaldi is a prospect of Lake Trasimeno. Parts of the Etruscan city wall can still be today as the basis of the present wall. The main street, via Nazionale, is the street in the town with no gradient. Inside the Palazzo Casali is the Museo dellAccademia Etrusca, displaying items from Etruscan, Roman, the distinguished Etruscan Academy Museum had its foundation in 1727 with the collections and library of Onofrio Baldelli. Its iconography includes alternating figures of Silenus playing panpipes or double flutes, within zones representing waves, dolphins and fiercer sea-creatures is a gorgon-like face with protruding tongue. Between each burner is a horned head of Achelous
5.
Benedetto Bonfigli
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Benedetto Bonfigli was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Perugia, and a part of the Umbria school of painters including Raphael and Perugino. He is also known as Buonfiglio, influenced by the style of Domenico Veneziano, Pietro della Francesca, and Fra Angelico, Bonfigli primarily painted frescos for the church and was at one point employed in the Vatican. His best preserved work is the Annunication, but his masterpiece is the decoration of the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori, Bonfigli specialized in gonfaloni, a Perugian style using banners painted on canvas or linen. He was the most esteemed painter in Perugia before Perugino, who is said to be his pupil, Bonfigli trained in Perugia from 1430-1440, while the late-Gothic style was still dominant. Other works, such as Fra Angelicos Cortona Polyptych commissioned in 1437, the painters first commissioned work is attributed to the Virgin and Child with Two Angels for a chapel near S. Pietro, Perugia on March 7,1445. Bonfigli reached maturity as an artist between 1450 and 1470, during this period, he painted the Annunciation, a smaller piece but among his most well know and preserved, held in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. According to Giorgio Vasari, the Perugian artist painted the Adoration of the Magi coupled with a predella of Episodes from the Life of Christ, one gonfalone, or banner, was painted in 1465 for the brotherhood of San Bernardino, and representing the deeds of their patron saint. Another gonfalone was painted for the brotherhood of San Fiorenzo in 1476 and he painted the Virgin of Mercy for the church of the Commenda di Santa Croce. All of these comprised a collection of gonfaloni across Perugia. Chaplain Bartolomeo da Siena commissioned Bonfigli in 1454 to decorate half of the Priori Chapel, the commission was altered later, and the fresco of the Crucifixion on the alter wall was not painted. The other four scenes of St Louis of Toulouse were arranged counter-clockwise from the right of the alter wall and this half of the Priori chapel was finished in 1461, and the artist Filippo Lippi adjudicated the work and priced it at 400 Florentine florins. The second half of the chapel was commissioned to Bonfigli to decorate. The frescoes on the second half depict the scenes from the life of St Herculanus, the original commission was for four frescoes, but Bonfigli only painted three. The comission was supposed to be completed in two years, but the work far longer because of a delay of payment by the Commune for the first commission. The contract was renegotiated in 1469 with a debt owed by one Bartolomeo di Gregorio to Bonfigli, the frescoes were not completed by Bonfiglis death in 1496, but the painter dedicated the outstanding debt to complete the rest of the chapel frescoes. Louis of Toulouse and St. Herculanus Bryan, Michael, dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical. York St. #4, Covent Garden, London, Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18,2007, George Bell and Sons
6.
Pinturicchio
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Pintoricchio or Pinturicchio whose formal name was Bernardino di Betto, also known as Benetto di Biagio or Sordicchio, was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. Born in Perugia in 1454 and dying in Siena in 1513, Pintoricchio acquired his nickname, meaning and he also used it to sign some of his 14th and 15th century artworks. Pinturicchio was born the son of Benedetto or Betto di Blagio, in his career, he may have trained under lesser known Perugian painters such as Bonfigli and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. According to Vasari, Pinturicchio was an assistant of Perugino. The works of the Perugian Renaissance school are very similar, and paintings by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Lo Spagna, the Sistine Chapel was also where it is believed that Pinturicchio was collaborating with Perugino to some extent. Would be, if it had left with all its original decorations. A great deal still remains, but much has been swept away, the earliest of his works is an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds, in the Della Rovere Chapel, the first chapel on the south, built by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere. The old fresco of the Virgin and the Child by Pinturicchio was detached from the wall, the fragment was re-used as the altarpiece of the Ducal Chapel of the Cathedral of Massa. The third chapel on the south is that of Girolamo Basso della Rovere, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, and bishop of Recanati. The Basso Della Rovere Chapel contains an altarpiece of the Madonna enthroned between Four Saints, and on the east side a very nobly composed fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin. In the Costa Chapel, Pinturicchio or one of his helpers painted the Four Latin Doctors in the lunettes of the vault, most of these frescoes are considerably injured by moisture and have suffered little from restoration. In the centre is a panel of the Coronation of the Virgin. The spaces between them are filled by reclining figures of the Four Sibyls, on each pendentive is a figure of one of the Four Doctors enthroned under a niched canopy. No finer specimen of the decoration of a quadripartite vault can be seen anywhere. In 1492, Pinturicchio was summoned to Orvieto Cathedral and he was employed by Pope Alexander VI to decorate a recently completed suite of six rooms, the Borgia Apartments in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. These rooms now form part of the Vatican Library, and five still retain a series of Pinturicchio frescoes, the Umbrian painter worked in these rooms till around 1494, assisted by his pupils, and not without interruption. It was not until Pope Alexander VI died that Pinturicchio left Rome for Umbria, leaving much of the work in Rome to be completed by Michelangelo, Raphael, and company. His other chief frescoes in Rome, still existing in good condition, are in the Bufalini Chapel in the southwest sector of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, probably executed around 1484-1486
7.
Giorgio Vasari
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Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
8.
Piero della Francesca
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Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its humanism, its use of geometric forms. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. He was most probably apprenticed to the local painter Antonio di Giovanni dAnghiari, because in documents about payments it is noted that he was working with Antonio in 1432 and May 1438. Besides, he took notice of the work of some of the Sienese artists active in San Sepolcro during his youth. In 1439 Piero received, together with Domenico Veneziano, payments for his work on frescoes for the church of SantEgidio in Florence, in Florence he must have met leading masters like Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello and Brunelleschi. The classicism of Masaccios frescoes and his figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were for him an important source of inspiration. Dating of Pieros undocumented work is difficult because his style does not seem to have developed over the years, in 1442 he was listed as eligible for the City Council of San Sepolcro. Three years later, he received the commission for the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, in 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of SantAndrea of Ferrara, also lost. His influence was strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura. Two years later he was in Rimini, working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, in this sojourn he executed in 1451 the famous fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, as well as Sigismondos portrait. Thereafter Piero was active in Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna, in 1454 he signed a contract for the Polyptych of Saint Augustine in the church of SantAgostino in Sansepolcro. The central panel of this polyptic is lost and the four panels of the wings, a few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome, here he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, for frescoes in Vatican Palace which have also been destroyed, the Baptism of Christ, in The National Gallery in London, was executed around 1460 for the high altar of the church of the Priory of S. Other notable works of Piero della Francescas maturity are the frescoes of the Resurrection of Christ in Sansepolcro, in 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456, the cycle of frescoes, depicting the Legend of the True Cross, is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found
9.
Arezzo
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Arezzo is a city and comune in Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 kilometres southeast of Florence, at an elevation of 296 metres above sea level, in 2013 the population was about 99,000. Described by Livy as one of the Capitae Etruriae, Arezzo is believed to have one of the twelve most important Etruscan cities—the so-called Dodecapolis. Etruscan remains establish that the acropolis of San Cornelio, a hill next to that of San Donatus, was occupied and fortified in the Etruscan period. Increasing trade connections with Greece also brought some elite goods to the Etruscan nobles of Arezzo, conquered by the Romans in 311 BC, Arretium became a military station on the via Cassia, the road to expansion by republican Rome into the basin of the Po. Arretium sided with Marius in the Roman Civil War, and the victorious Sulla planted a colony of his veterans in the half-demolished city, as Arretium Fidens. The old Etruscan aristocracy was not extinguished, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, around 26-261 AD the town council of Arezzo dedicated an inscription to its patron L. Petronius Taurus Volusianus. See that article for discussion of the possible significance of Volusianuss association with the city. The commune of Arezzo threw off the control of its bishop in 1098 and was an independent city-state until 1384, generally Ghibelline in tendency, it opposed Guelph Florence. In 1252 the city founded its university, the Studium, during this period Piero della Francesca worked in the church of San Francesco di Arezzo producing the splendid frescoes, recently restored, which are Arezzos most famous works. Afterwards the city began an economical and cultural decay, which ensured that its medieval centre was preserved. In the 18th century the neighbouring marshes of the Val di Chiana, south of Arezzo, were drained, in 1860 Arezzo became part of the Kingdom of Italy. The Commonwealth War Graves Commissions Arezzo War Cemetery, where 1,266 men are buried, is located to the North West of the city, Pope Benedict XVI visited Arezzo and two other Italian municipalities on Sunday, May 13,2012. Arezzo is set on a hill rising from the floodplain of the River Arno. In the upper part of the town are the cathedral, the town hall, the upper part of the town maintains its medieval appearance despite the addition of later structures. Notable earthquakes are still a rare phenomenon in the province. Under the Köppen climate classification Arezzo is either a humid climate or an oceanic climate. It has uncharacteristically hot summer days for a climate, with the lows moderating the average temps
10.
Lorenzo de' Medici
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Lorenzo de Medici was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, who was one of the most powerful and enthusiastic patrons of the Renaissance. Also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent by contemporary Florentines, he was a magnate, diplomat, politician and patron of scholars and he is well known for his contribution to the art world by sponsoring artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. His life coincided with the phase of Italian Renaissance and his death coincided with the end of the Golden Age of Florence. The fragile peace that he helped maintain among the various Italian states collapsed with his death and he is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence. Lorenzos grandfather, Cosimo de Medici, was the first member of the Medici family to combine running the Medici Bank with leading the Republic of Florence, Cosimo was one of the wealthiest men in Europe and spent a very large portion of his fortune in government and philanthropy. He was a patron of the arts and funded public works, Lorenzos mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, was a writer of sonnets and a friend to poets and philosophers of the Medici Academy. She became her sons advisor after the deaths of his father, with his brother Giuliano, he participated in jousting, hawking, hunting, and horse breeding for the Palio, a horse race in Siena. His own horse was named Morello di Vento, Piero sent Lorenzo on many important diplomatic missions when he was still a youth, which included trips to Rome to meet the pope and other important religious and political figures. Lorenzo was described as plain of appearance and was of average height, having a broad frame and short legs, a swarthy skin, squashed nose, short-sighted eyes. Giuliano, on the hand, was regarded as handsome, he was used as a model by Botticelli in his painting of Mars. Lorenzo, groomed for power, assumed a role in the state upon the death of his father in 1469. Lorenzo, like his grandfather, father, and son, ruled Florence indirectly through surrogates in the city councils, threats, payoffs, although Florence flourished under Lorenzos rule, he effectively reigned as a despot, and people had little political freedom. Rival Florentine families inevitably harboured resentments over the Medicis dominance, the most notable of the rival families was the Pazzi, who nearly brought Lorenzos reign to an end right after it began. Alum had been discovered by local citizens of Volterra, who turned to Florence to get backing to exploit this important natural resource. When they realized the value of the mine, the people of Volterra wanted its revenues for their municipal funds rather than having it enter the pockets of their Florentine backers. Thus began an insurrection and secession from Florence, which involved putting to death several opposing citizens, Lorenzo sent mercenaries to suppress the revolt by force, and the mercenaries ultimately sacked the city. Lorenzo hurried to Volterra to make amends, but the incident would remain a dark stain on his record, Giuliano was killed, brutally stabbed to death, but Lorenzo escaped with only a minor wound to the shoulder, having been defended by the poet Politian. That success enabled Lorenzo to secure constitutional changes within the Florentine Republics government, Lorenzo maintained good relations with Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire, as the Florentine maritime trade with the Ottomans was a major source of wealth for the Medici
11.
Janet Ross
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Janet Ann Ross was an English historian, biographer, and Tuscan cookbook author. Janet Duff Gordon was the daughter of Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon and Lucie and her father held a number of government positions, including Commissioner of Inland Revenue and her mother wrote the classic Letters from Egypt. She had a brother, Maurice and a sister, Urania and she was the granddaughter of Sarah Austin, a famous translator, and the influential legal philosopher John Austin. She grew up in a highly cultured atmosphere among Englands leading intellectual and her parents friends and regular visitors to her home included, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Thomas Macaulay, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Caroline Norton, Tom Taylor, and Thomas Carlyle. Janets first years were spent at her family home located at No.8 Queen Annes Square, Bloomsbury and her parents subsequently moved to Esher. Her memoirs do not reference formal education aside from mentioning some tutors and she did travel to Paris and Germany for extended periods of time to learn French and German. She makes it clear that she preferred the company of adults and her familys connections certainly augmented her education. For example, Dickens encouraged her early on and gave her one of her first books. She remembers her birthday party, sitting on the knee of Thackeray while he drew a sketch on the frontispiece of her copy of his novel Pendennis. Charles Babbage, the inventor of the engine, a precursor to the modern computer. The French philosopher Jules Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire tutored her in French and became a lifetime correspondent and she likewise befriended Sir Austen Henry Layard and began an adolescent correspondence with him that continued through her life. She recalls Tennyson telling her that her mother had inspired him to write The Princess, Alexander Kinglake, author of Eothen, would take her riding, and likewise became a correspondent. At the age of thirteen, her knowledge of German was such that Kinglake asked her to translate a German book for him, in 1860 she married a banker, Henry Ross, who was aged 40 to her 18. In 1861, they moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where Henry was a partner in a British bank, Briggs, while in Egypt, she continued cultivating relationships with learned and influential people. Early on she befriended Said Halim Pasha who gave her a present of a Bay horse. Halim was the son of Muhammed Ali of Egypt, who is regarded as the father of modern Egypt and he had inherited his fathers palace at Choubra where he kept a harem of five hundred women. Halim later became Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Janet also made the acquaintance of Hekekyan Bey, an Armenian civil engineer employed by the Egyptian government to conduct excavations in the Nile valley for archaeological purposes. In 1861 Janet was visited by Sir James Outram and she also befriended Ferdinand de Lesseps who took her on an early tour of the construction of the Suez Canal
12.
Pan (god)
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In Greek religion and mythology, Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs. His name originates within the ancient Greek language, from the word paein, meaning to pasture and he has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is recognized as the god of fields, groves, and wooded glens, because of this, Pan is connected to fertility. The ancient Greeks also considered Pan to be the god of theatrical criticism, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the Romantic movement of western Europe and also in the 20th-century Neopagan movement. Many modern scholars consider Pan to be derived from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European god *Péh2usōn, the Hindu god Pushan is believed to be a cognate of Pan. The connection between Pan and Pushan was first identified in 1924 by the German scholar Hermann Collitz, the name Pan is probably also a cognate with the Greek word πάειν, meaning to pasture, which shares an origin with the modern English word pasture. In his earliest appearance in literature, Pindars Pythian Ode iii,78, Pan is associated with a mother goddess, perhaps Rhea or Cybele, Pindar refers to virgins worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poets house in Boeotia. In some early sources such as Pindar, his father is Apollo via Penelope, Herodotus, Cicero, Apollodorus and Hyginus all make Hermes and Penelope his parents. Pausanias 8.12.5 records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her husband, other sources report that Penelope slept with all 108 suitors in Odysseus absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result. This myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pans name with the Greek word for all, in the mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic era, Pan is made cognate with Phanes/Protogonos, Zeus, Dionysus and Eros. Accounts of Pans genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time, like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Pans or the Paniskoi, Kerenyi notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arcas, and one a son of Cronus. In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of landscapes, there appeared not only a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi. The worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the seat of his worship. Arcadia was a district of people, culturally separated from other Greeks. Greek hunters used to scourge the statue of the god if they had been disappointed in the chase. Being a rustic god, Pan was not worshipped in temples or other built edifices and these are often referred to as the Cave of Pan. In the 4th century BC Pan was depicted on the coinage of Pantikapaion, the goat-god Aegipan was nurtured by Amalthea with the infant Zeus in Athens
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 81–82.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
