Indian art
Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and eastern Afghanistan. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms; the origin of Indian art can be traced to pre-historic settlements in the 3rd millennium BC. On its way to modern times, Indian art has had cultural influences, as well as religious influences such as Hinduism, Jainism and Islam. In spite of this complex mixture of religious traditions the prevailing artistic style at any time and place has been shared by the major religious groups. In historic art, sculpture in stone and metal religious, has survived the Indian climate better than other media and provides most of the best remains. Many of the most important ancient finds that are not in carved stone come from the surrounding, drier regions rather than India itself.
Indian funeral and philosophic traditions exclude grave goods, the main source of ancient art in other cultures. Indian artist styles followed Indian religions out of the subcontinent, having an large influence in Tibet, South East Asia and China. Indian art has itself received influences at times from Central Asia and Iran, Europe. Rock art of India includes rock relief carvings and paintings, some from the South Asian Stone Age, it is estimated there are about 1300 rock art sites with over a quarter of a million figures and figurines. The earliest rock carvings in India were discovered by Archibald Carlleyle, twelve years before the Cave of Altamira in Spain, although his work only came to light much via J Cockburn. Dr. V. S. Wakankar discovered several painted rock shelters in Central India, situated around the Vindhya mountain range. Of these, the c. 750 sites making up the Bhimbetka rock shelters have been enrolled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The paintings in these sites depicted scenes of human life alongside animals, hunts with stone implements.
Their style varied with region and age, but the most common characteristic was a red wash made using a powdered mineral called geru, a form of Iron Oxide. Despite its widespread and sophistication, the Indus Valley civilization seems to have taken no interest in public large-scale art, unlike many other early civilizations. A number of gold and stone figurines of girls in dancing poses reveal the presence of some forms of dance. Additionally, the terracotta figurines included cows, bears and dogs. Much the most common form of figurative art found. Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered, their physical character is consistent. In size they range from 3⁄4 inch to 11⁄2 inches square. In most cases they have a pierced boss at the back to accommodate a cord for handling or for use as personal adornment. Seals have been found at Mohenjo-Daro depicting a figure standing on its head, another, on the Pashupati Seal, sitting cross-legged in a yoga-like pose; this figure has been variously identified.
Sir John Marshall identified a resemblance to Shiva. The animal depicted on a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been identified. Part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, it has been a source of speculation; as yet, there is insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultist significance, but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols. The most famous piece is the bronze Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro, which shows remarkably advanced modelling of the human figure for this early date. After the end of the Indus Valley Civilization, there is a surprising absence of art of any great degree of sophistication until the Buddhist era, it is thought that this reflects the use of perishable organic materials such as wood. The north Indian Maurya Empire flourished from 322 BCE to 185 BCE, at its maximum extent controlled all of the sub-continent except the extreme south as well as influences from Indian ancient traditions, Ancient Persia, as shown by the Pataliputra capital.
The emperor Ashoka, who died in 232 BCE, adopted Buddhism about half-way through his 40-year reign, patronized several large stupas at key sites from the life of the Buddha, although little decoration from the Mauryan period survives, there may not have been much in the first place. There is more from various early sites of Indian rock-cut architecture; the most famous survivals are the large animals surmounting several of the Pillars of Ashoka, which showed a confident and boldly mature style and craft and first of its kind iron casting without rust until date, in use by vedic people in rural areas of the country, though we have few remains showing its development. The famous detached Lion Capital of Ashoka, with four animals, was adopted as the official Emblem of India after Indian independence. Mauryan sculpture and architecture is characterized by a fine Mauryan polish given to the stone, found in periods. Many small popular terracotta figurines are recovered in archaeology, in a range of vigorous if somewhat crude styles.
Both animals and human figures females presumed to be deities, are found. The major survivals of Buddhist art begin in the period after the Mauryans, from which good quantities of sculpture survives after many Hindu and jain temples destroyed by mughal rulers time to time. Some
Constitution of India
The Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. The document lays down the framework demarcating fundamental political code, procedures and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental rights, directive principles, the duties of citizens, it is the longest written constitution of any country on earth. B. R. Ambedkar, chairman of the drafting committee, is considered to be its chief architect, it imparts constitutional supremacy and was adopted by its people with a declaration in its preamble. Parliament cannot override the constitution, it was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India on 26 November 1949 and became effective on 26 January 1950. The constitution replaced the Government of India Act, 1935 as the country's fundamental governing document, the Dominion of India became the Republic of India. To ensure constitutional autochthony, its framers repealed prior acts of the British parliament in Article 395. India celebrates its constitution on 26 January as Republic Day.
The constitution declares India a sovereign, secular, democratic republic, assuring its citizens justice and liberty, endeavours to promote fraternity. The original 1950 constitution is preserved in a helium-filled case at the Parliament House in New Delhi; the words "secular" and "socialist" were added to the preamble in 1976 during the emergency. Most of the Indian subcontinent was under British rule from 1857 to 1947. From 1947 to 1950, the same legislation continued to be implemented as India was a dominion of Britain for these three years, as each princely state was convinced by Sardar Patel and V. P. Menon to sign the articles of integration with India, the British government continued to be responsible for the external security of the country. Thus, the constitution of India repealed the Indian Independence Act 1947 and Government of India Act, 1935 when it became effective on 26 January 1950. India ceased to be a dominion of the British Crown and became a sovereign democratic republic with the constitution.
Articles 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 60, 324, 366, 367, 379, 380, 388, 391, 392, 393, 394 of the constitution came into force on 26 November 1949, the remaining articles became effective on 26 January 1950. The constitution was drawn from a number of sources. Mindful of India's needs and conditions, its framers borrowed features of previous legislation such as the Government of India Act 1858, the Indian Councils Acts of 1861, 1892 and 1909, the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935, the Indian Independence Act 1947; the latter, which led to the creation of India and Pakistan, divided the former Constituent Assembly in two. Each new assembly had sovereign power to enact a new constitution for the separate states; the constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly, elected by elected members of the provincial assemblies. The 389-member assembly took three years to draft the constitution holding eleven sessions over a 165-day period. B. R. Ambedkar was a wise constitutional expert, he had studied the constitutions of about 60 countries.
Ambedkar is recognised as the "Father of the Constitution of India". In the constitution assembly, a member of the drafting committee, T. T. Krishnamachari said: "Mr. President, Sir, I am one of those in the House who have listened to Dr. Ambedkar carefully. I am aware of the amount of work and enthusiasm that he has brought to bear on the work of drafting this Constitution. At the same time, I do realise that that amount of attention, necessary for the purpose of drafting a constitution so important to us at this moment has not been given to it by the Drafting Committee; the House is aware that of the seven members nominated by you, one had resigned from the House and was replaced. One was not replaced. One was away in America and his place was not filled up and another person was engaged in State affairs, there was a void to that extent. One or two people were far away from Delhi and reasons of health did not permit them to attend. So it happened that the burden of drafting this constitution fell on Dr. Ambedkar and I have no doubt that we are grateful to him for having achieved this task in a manner, undoubtedly commendable."
B. R. Ambedkar, Sanjay Phakey, Jawaharlal Nehru, C. Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel, Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar, Sandipkumar Patel, Abul Kalam Azad, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Nalini Ranjan Ghosh, Balwantrai Mehta were key figures in the assembly, which had over 30 representatives of the scheduled classes. Frank Anthony represented the Anglo-Indian community, the Parsis were represented by H. P. Modi. Harendra Coomar Mookerjee, a Christian assembly vice-president, chaired the minorities committee and represented non-Anglo-Indian Christians. Ari Bahadur Gurung represented the Gorkha community. Judges, such as Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer, Benegal Narsing Rau, K. M. Munshi and Ganesh Mavlankar were members of the assembly. Female members included Sarojini Naidu, Hansa Mehta, Durgabai Deshmukh, Amrit Kaur and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit; the first, two-day president of the assembly was Sachchidananda Sinha. It met for the first time on 9 December 1946. Benegal Narsing Rau, a civil servant who became the first Indian judge in the International Court of Justice and was president of the United Nations Security Council, was appointed as the assembly's constitutional adviser in 1946.
Responsible for the constitution's general structure, Rau prepared its initial draft in February 1948. At 14 August 1947 meeting of the assemb
Shantiniketan
Shantiniketan or Santiniketan is a small town near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West Bengal, India 165 km north of Kolkata. It was established by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, expanded by his son Rabindranath Tagore whose vision became what is now a university town, Visva-Bharati University. Santiniketan was earlier called Bhubandanga, was owned by the Sinha family. In 1862, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, while on a visit to Raipur, showed interest in land near Birbhum. There was only one building there namely'Santiniketan'. Maharshi liked the place and registered it in the name of Maharshi Devendranath against Rupee One as a token value, he called his home Santiniketan. Santiniketan became a spiritual centre where people from all religions were invited to join for meditation and prayers, he became the initiator of the Brahmo Samaj. Here Rabindranath Tagore started Patha Bhavana, the school of his ideals, whose central premise was that learning in a natural environment would be more enjoyable and fruitful.
After he received a Nobel Prize in 1913, the school was expanded into a university,known as Vishva Bharti University, in 1921. In the year 1924 based on the same ideology and with the intention of educating and training the people belonging to deprived part of the society he founded Siksha Satra with only 7 students; the journey initiated by Kabiguru to kickstart the education system transformation turned into a reality when the institution was recognised as the first university to be recognised in the year 1951 by central government. Santiniketan is at 23.68°N 87.68°E / 23.68. It has an average elevation of 56 metres. Temperature: Summer — max. 42.4, min. 34.3. 15.7, min. 6.8. Rainfall: 125 cm. Heavy in July and August; the climate of Santiniketan is moderately warm, with summer temperatures at around 35-45 °C and winter at 6-15 °C. July and August see heavy rainfall. Social and cultural events include Basanta Utsav, Barsha Mangal, Nandan Mela, Poush Mela, Magh Mela, Rabindra Jayanti. Of these, the Poush Mela is a major tourist attraction.
It is a three-day fair, starting on the seventh day of the Bengali month Poush. It attracts tourists, folk singers and the traditional Baul from the neighbourhood. There is a deer park 3 km from Santiniketan; the area was a fast eroding'Khowai'. It makes a natural bird sanctuary; the Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre is one of the most visited places in Santiniketan. Trains direct to Bolpur from Howrah and Sealdah station. Bus from Durgapur City Centre Bus Stop and Dharmatala Bus Stop in Kolkata is available for Bolpur/Santiniketan. Barun De, a member of both the court and the executive council of Visva Bharati. Rajat Kanta Ray, a vice chancellor of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. Amartya Sen, who studied at Patha Bhavana, Santiniketan. Surajit Sinha, the vice chancellor of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. Ramkinkar Baij and painter, one of the pioneers of modern Indian sculpture and a key figure of Contextual Modernism. Supriyo Tagore, the longest serving principal of Patha Bhavana, Shantiniketan. Kala Bhavana Tinpahar UNESCO: Santiniketan Places to visit in Santiniketan 2019  Shantiniketan travel guide from Wikivoyage
Ananda Coomaraswamy
Ananda Kentish Muthu Coomaraswamy was a Ceylonese Tamil philosopher and metaphysician, as well as a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art art history and symbolism, an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West. In particular, he is described as "the groundbreaking theorist, responsible for introducing ancient Indian art to the West." Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was born in Colombo, now Sri Lanka, to the Ceylonese Tamil legislator and philosopher Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy of the Ponnambalam–Coomaraswamy family and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. His father died when Ananda was two years old, Ananda spent much of his childhood and education abroad. Coomaraswamy moved to England in 1879 and attended Wycliffe College, a preparatory school in Stroud, Gloucestershire, at the age of twelve. In 1900, he graduated from University College, with a degree in geology and botany. On 19 June 1902, Coomaraswamy married Ethel Mary Partridge, an English photographer, who traveled with him to Ceylon.
Their marriage lasted until 1913. Coomaraswamy's field work between 1902 and 1906 earned him a doctor of science for his study of Ceylonese mineralogy, prompted the formation of the Geological Survey of Ceylon which he directed. While in Ceylon, the couple collaborated on Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, his work in Ceylon fueled Coomaraswamy's anti-Westernization sentiments. After their divorce, Partridge returned to England, where she became a famous weaver and married the writer Philip Mairet. By 1906, Coomaraswamy had made it his mission to educate the West about Indian art, was back in London with a large collection of photographs seeking out artists to try to influence, he knew he could not rely on museum curators or other members of the cultural establishment – in 1908 he wrote "The main difficulty so far seems to have been that Indian art has been studied so far only by archaeologists. It is not archaeologists, but artists … who are the best qualified to judge of the significance of works of art considered as art."
By 1909, he was acquainted with Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill, the city's two most important early Modernists, soon both of them had begun to incorporate Indian aesthetics into their work. The curiously hybrid sculptures that were produced as a result can be seen to form the roots of what is now considered British Modernism.. Coomaraswamy met and married a British woman Alice Ethel Richardson and together they went to India and stayed on a houseboat in Srinagar in Kashmir. Commaraswamy studied Rajput painting while his wife studied Indian music with Abdul Rahim of Kapurthala; when they returned to England, Alice performed Indian song under the stage name Ratan Devi. Alice was successful and both went to America when Ratan Devi did a concert tour. While they were there, Coomaraswamy was invited to serve as the first Keeper of Indian art in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1917; the couple had two children, a son and daughter, Rohini. Coomaraswamy divorced his second wife, he married the American artist Stella Bloch, 29 years his junior, in November 1922.
Through the 1920s, Coomaraswamy and his wife were part of the bohemian art circles in New York City, Coomaraswamy befriended Alfred Stieglitz and the artists who exhibited at Stieglitz's gallery. At the same time, he studied Sanskrit and Pali religious literature as well as Western religious works, he wrote catalogues for the Museum of Fine Arts and published his History of Indian and Indonesian Art in 1927. After the couple divorced in 1930, they remained friends. Shortly thereafter, on 18 November 1930, Coomaraswamy married Argentine Luisa Runstein, 28 years younger, working as a society photographer under the professional name Xlata Llamas, they had a son, Coomaraswamy's third child, Rama Ponnambalam, who became a physician and convert at age 22 to the Roman Catholic Church. Following Vatican II, Rama became a critic of the reforms and author of Catholic Traditionalist works, he was ordained a Traditionalist Roman Catholic priest, despite the fact that he was married and had a living wife.
Professor Rama studied in England and in India, learning Hindi and Sanskrit. Became a psychiatrist in the United States, he was an opponent of Pope John Paul II and remain a wider correspondent of mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose first healing attribution was recognized by Wojtyła in 2002. In 1933 Coomaraswamy's title at the Museum of Fine Arts changed from curator to Fellow for Research in Indian and Mohammedan Art, he served as curator in the Museum of Fine Arts until his death in Needham, Massachusetts, in 1947. During his long career, he was instrumental in bringing Eastern art to the West. In fact, while at the Museum of Fine Arts, he built the first substantial collection of Indian art in the United States, he helped with the collections of Persian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. and the Museum of Fine Arts. After Coomaraswamy's death, his widow, Doña Luisa Runstein, acted as a guide and resource for students of his work. Coomaraswamy made important contributions to the philosophy of art and religion.
In Ceylon, he applied the lessons of William Morris to Ceylonese culture and, with his wife Ethel, produced a groundbreaking study of Ceylonese crafts and culture. While in India, he was part of the literary circle around Rabindranath Tagore, he contributed to the "Swadeshi" movement, an early phase of the struggle for Indian independence. In the 1920s, he made pioneering discoveries in the history of Indian art some distinctions between Ra
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the largest, work of his career; the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality, he was influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models.
His career falls into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria a period of about four years absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke; the reputation of the court had been established by Federico da Montefeltro, a successful condottiere, created Duke of Urbino by Pope Sixtus IV – Urbino formed part of the Papal States – and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments, his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, Early Netherlandish artists as well.
In the small court of Urbino he was more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but visited, they became good friends, he became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both cardinals, were becoming well known as writers, would be in Rome during Raphael's period there.
Raphael mixed in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however, his mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, he continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity, his father's workshop continued and together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello the court painter, Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother".
The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, has been disputed—eight was early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters; the Perugino workshop w
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian activist, the leader of the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world; the honorific Mahātmā was applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa – is now used worldwide. In India, he was called Bapu, a term that he preferred and Gandhi ji, is known as the Father of the Nation. Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat and trained in law at the Inner Temple, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for various social causes and for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km Dandi Salt March in 1930, in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India, he lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand-spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and political protest. Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism, demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan; as many displaced Hindus and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace.
In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 when he was 78 had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan; some Indians thought. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest. Captured along with many of his co-conspirators and collaborators and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were tried and executed while many of their other accomplices were given prison sentences. Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Baniya family in Porbandar, a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the Indian Empire, his father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi, served as the diwan of Porbandar state.
Although he only had an elementary education and had been a clerk in the state administration, Karamchand proved a capable chief minister. During his tenure, Karamchand married four times, his first two wives died young, after each had given birth to a daughter, his third marriage was childless. In 1857, Karamchand sought his third wife's permission to remarry. Karamchand and Putlibai had three children over the ensuing decade: Laxmidas. On 2 October 1869, Putlibai gave birth to her last child, Mohandas, in a dark, windowless ground-floor room of the Gandhi family residence in Porbandar city; as a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as "restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about. One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs' ears." The Indian classics the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits, he writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number."
Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters. The family's religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father Karamchand was Hindu and his mother Putlibai was from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family. Gandhi's father was of Modh Baniya caste in the varna of Vaishya, his mother came from the medieval Krishna bhakti-based Pranami tradition, whose religious texts include the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, a collection of 14 texts with teachings that the tradition believes to include the essence of the Vedas, the Quran and the Bible. Gandhi was influenced by his mother, an pious lady who "would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers...she would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her."In 1874, Gandhi's father Karamchand left Porbandar for the smaller state of Rajkot, where he became a counsellor to its ruler, the Thakur Sahib.
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer sometimes spelt in English as Durer or Duerer, without umlaut, was a painter and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints, he was in communication with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, from 1512 he was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I. Dürer is commemorated by both the Episcopal Churches. Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his prints, altarpieces and self-portraits and books; the woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series, are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the Knight and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study and Melencolia I, the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation, his watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics and ideal proportions. Dürer was born on 21 May 1471, third child and second son of his parents, who had at least fourteen and as many as eighteen children, his father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder, was a successful goldsmith who in 1455 had moved to Nuremberg from Ajtós, near Gyula in Hungary. One of Albrecht's brothers, Hans Dürer, was a painter and trained under him. Another of Albrecht's brothers, Endres Dürer, took over their father's business and was a master goldsmith; the German name "Dürer" is a translation from the Hungarian, "Ajtósi". It was "Türer", meaning doormaker, "ajtós" in Hungarian. A door is featured in the coat-of-arms. Albrecht Dürer the Younger changed "Türer", his father's diction of the family's surname, to "Dürer", to adapt to the local Nuremberg dialect.
Dürer the Elder married Barbara Holper, daughter of his master when he himself qualified as a master in 1467. Dürer's godfather was Anton Koberger, who left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year of Dürer's birth, became the most successful publisher in Germany owning twenty-four printing-presses and built a number of offices in Germany and abroad. Koberger's most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 in German and Latin editions, it contained an unprecedented 1,809 woodcut illustrations by the Wolgemut workshop. Dürer may have worked on some of these; because Dürer left autobiographical writings and became famous by his mid-twenties, his life is well documented by several sources. After a few years of school, Dürer started to learn the basics of goldsmithing and drawing from his father. Though his father wanted him to continue his training as a goldsmith, he showed such a precocious talent in drawing that he started as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen in 1486.
A self-portrait, a drawing in silverpoint, is dated 1484 "when I was a child", as his inscription says. Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, with a large workshop producing a variety of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was an important and prosperous city, a centre for publishing and many luxury trades, it had strong links with Italy Venice, a short distance across the Alps. After completing his apprenticeship, Dürer followed the common German custom of taking Wanderjahre—in effect gap years—in which the apprentice learned skills from artists in other areas, he left in 1490 to work under Martin Schongauer, the leading engraver of Northern Europe, but who died shortly before Dürer's arrival at Colmar in 1492. It is unclear where Dürer travelled in the intervening period, though it is that he went to Frankfurt and the Netherlands. In Colmar, Dürer was welcomed by Schongauer's brothers, the goldsmiths Caspar and Paul and the painter Ludwig. In 1493 Dürer went to Strasbourg, where he would have experienced the sculpture of Nikolaus Gerhaert.
Dürer's first painted self-portrait was painted at this time to be sent back to his fiancée in Nuremberg. In early 1492 Dürer travelled to Basel to stay with another brother of Martin Schongauer, the goldsmith Georg. Soon after his return to Nuremberg, on 7 July 1494, at the age of 23, Dürer was married to Agnes Frey following an arrangement made during his absence. Agnes was the daughter of a prominent brass worker in the city. However, no children resulted from the marriage, with Albrecht the Dürer name died out; the marriage between Agnes and Albrecht was not a happy one, as indicated by the letters of Dürer in which he quipped to Willibald Pirckheimer in an rough tone about his wife. He made other vulgar remarks. Pirckheimer made no secret of his antipathy towards Agnes, describing her as a miserly shrew with a bitter tongue, who helped cause Dürer's death at a young age, it is speculated by many scholars Albrecht was bisexual, if not homosexual, due to several of his works containing themes of homosexual desire, as well as the in
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