1.
Grand Canal (Venice)
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The Grand Canal is a canal in Venice, Italy. It forms one of the major corridors in the city. Public transport is provided by buses and private water taxis. It is 3.8 km long, and 30 to 90 m wide, with an average depth of five meters. The banks of the Grand Canal are lined with more than 170 buildings, most of which date from the 13th to the 18th century, and demonstrate the welfare and art created by the Republic of Venice. The noble Venetian families faced huge expenses to show off their richness in suitable palazzos, this contest reveals the citizens’ pride and the deep bond with the lagoon. Amongst the many are the Palazzi Barbaro, Ca Rezzonico, Ca dOro, Palazzo Dario, Ca Foscari, Palazzo Barbarigo and to Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the churches along the canal include the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute. Centuries-old traditions, such as the Historical Regatta, are perpetuated every year along the Canal, because most of the citys traffic goes along the Canal rather than across it, only one bridge crossed the canal until the 19th century, the Rialto Bridge. Most of the palaces emerge from water without pavement, consequently, one can only tour past the fronts of the buildings on the grand canal by boat. The Grand Canal probably follows the course of an ancient river flowing into the lagoon, adriatic Veneti groups already lived beside the formerly-named Rio Businiacus before the Roman age. They lived in houses and on fishing and commerce. Increasing trade followed the doge and found in the deep Grand Canal a safe, drainage reveals that the city became more compact over time, at that time the Canal was wider and flowed between small, tide-subjected islands connected by wooden bridges. Along the Canal, the number of houses increased, buildings combining the warehouse. A portico covers the bank and facilitates the ships unloading, from the portico a corridor flanked by storerooms reaches a posterior courtyard. Similarly, on the first floor a loggia as large as the portico illuminates the hall into which open the merchants rooms, the façade is thereby divided into an airy central part and two more solid sides. A low mezzanine with offices divides the two floors, the fondaco house often had lateral defensive towers, as in the Fondaco dei Turchi. More public buildings were built along the Canal at Rialto, palaces for commercial and financial Benches, in 1181 Nicolò Barattieri constructed a pontoon bridge connecting Rialto to Mercerie area, which was later replaced by a wooden bridge with shops on it. Warehouses for flour and salt were more peripheral, from the Byzantine empire, goods arrived together with sculptures, friezes, columns and capitals to decorate the fondaco houses of patrician families
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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.
Arch bridge
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An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either side, a viaduct may be made from a series of arches, although other more economical structures are typically used today. Possibly the oldest existing bridge is the Mycenaean Arkadiko bridge in Greece from about 1300 BC. The stone corbel arch bridge is used by the local populace. The well-preserved Hellenistic Eleutherna Bridge has a corbel arch. The 4th century BC Rhodes Footbridge rests on an early voussoir arch, a more complete survey by the Italian scholar Vittorio Galliazzo found 931 Roman bridges, mostly of stone, in as many as 26 different countries. Roman arch bridges were usually semicircular, although a number were segmental arch bridges, generally, Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones of the same in size and shape. The Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard and Segovia Aqueduct. Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, e. g. in the Pons Fabricius in Rome, Roman engineers were the first and until the industrial revolution the only ones to construct bridges with concrete, which they called Opus caementicium. The outside was covered with brick or ashlar, as in the Alcántara bridge. The Romans also introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction, trajans bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood. This was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length, while the longest extant Roman bridge is the 790 m long Puente Romano at Mérida. The late Roman Karamagara Bridge in Cappadocia may represent the earliest surviving bridge featuring a pointed arch, in medieval Europe, bridge builders improved on the Roman structures by using narrower piers, thinner arch barrels and lower span-rise ratios on bridges. Gothic pointed arches were introduced, reducing lateral thrust. The 14th century in particular saw bridge building reaching new heights, the bridge at Trezzo sullAdda, destroyed in the 15th century, even featured a span length of 72 m, not matched until 1796. Constructions such as the acclaimed Florentine segmental arch bridge Ponte Vecchio combined sound engineering with aesthetical appeal, the three elegant arches of the Renaissance Ponte Santa Trinita constitute the oldest elliptic arch bridge worldwide. In China, the oldest existing bridge is the Zhaozhou Bridge of 605 AD. The Zhaozhou Bridge, with a length of 167 feet and span of 123 feet, is the worlds first wholly stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge, Bridges with perforated spandrels can be found worldwide, such as in China
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Bridge
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A bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles without closing the way underneath such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle. There are many different designs that each serve a particular purpose, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the origin of the word bridge to an Old English word brycg, of the same meaning. The word can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰrēw-. The word for the game of the same name has a different origin. The first bridges made by humans were probably spans of cut wooden logs or planks and eventually stones, using a simple support, some early Americans used trees or bamboo poles to cross small caverns or wells to get from one place to another. Dating to the Greek Bronze Age, it is one of the oldest arch bridges still in existence, several intact arched stone bridges from the Hellenistic era can be found in the Peloponnese. The greatest bridge builders of antiquity were the ancient Romans, the Romans built arch bridges and aqueducts that could stand in conditions that would damage or destroy earlier designs. An example is the Alcántara Bridge, built over the river Tagus, the Romans also used cement, which reduced the variation of strength found in natural stone. One type of cement, called pozzolana, consisted of water, lime, sand, brick and mortar bridges were built after the Roman era, as the technology for cement was lost. In India, the Arthashastra treatise by Kautilya mentions the construction of dams, a Mauryan bridge near Girnar was surveyed by James Princep. The bridge was swept away during a flood, and later repaired by Puspagupta, the use of stronger bridges using plaited bamboo and iron chain was visible in India by about the 4th century. A number of bridges, both for military and commercial purposes, were constructed by the Mughal administration in India and this bridge is also historically significant as it is the worlds oldest open-spandrel stone segmental arch bridge. European segmental arch bridges date back to at least the Alconétar Bridge, rope bridges, a simple type of suspension bridge, were used by the Inca civilization in the Andes mountains of South America, just prior to European colonization in the 16th century. During the 18th century there were innovations in the design of timber bridges by Hans Ulrich Grubenmann, Johannes Grubenmann. The first book on bridge engineering was written by Hubert Gautier in 1716, a major breakthrough in bridge technology came with the erection of the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, England in 1779. It used cast iron for the first time as arches to cross the river Severn, with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, truss systems of wrought iron were developed for larger bridges, but iron does not have the tensile strength to support large loads. With the advent of steel, which has a tensile strength, much larger bridges were built. In 1927 welding pioneer Stefan Bryła designed the first welded bridge in the world
5.
Pontoon bridge
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A pontoon bridge, also known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the limits the maximum load they can carry. Most pontoon bridges are temporary, used in wartime and civil emergencies, permanent floating bridges are useful for sheltered water-crossings where it is not considered economically feasible to suspend a bridge from anchored piers. Such bridges can require a section that is elevated, or can be raised or removed, a pontoon bridge is a collection of specialized, shallow draft boats or floats, connected together to cross a river or canal, with a track or deck attached on top. The water buoyancy supports the boats, limiting the load to the total. The supporting boats or floats can be open or closed, temporary or permanent in installation, the decking may be temporary or permanent, and constructed out of wood, modular metal, or asphalt or concrete over a metal frame. The spelling ponton in English dates from at least 1870, the use continued in references found in U. S. patents during the 1890s. It continued to be spelled in that fashion through World War II, U. S. combat engineers commonly pronounced the word ponton rather than pontoon and U. S. military manuals spelled it using a single o. The original word was derived from Old French ponton, from Latin ponto, when designing a pontoon bridge, the civil engineer must take into consideration the Archimedes principle looking at the maximum amount of load that it is intended to support. Each pontoon can support an equal to the mass of the water that it displaces. If the maximum load of a section is exceeded, one or more pontoons become submerged. The roadway across the pontoons must also be able to support the load, survey to determine the best location. The connection to shore often causes problems, requiring the design of approaches that are not too steep, keep the bank from crumbling, Floating bridges were typically constructed using wood. Such a wooden floating bridge could be built in a series of sections, Pontoons were formed using boats, several barrels lashed together, rafts of timbers, or some combination of these. Each bridge section consisted of one or more pontoons, which were maneuvered into position and then anchored, using underwater and these pontoons were then linked together using wooden stringers called balks. The balks were then covered by a series of cross planks called chesses to form a surface. Some bridges have been designed and survived much longer, in Hobart a long pontoon bridge built in 1943 was only replaced after 21 years. The fourth Galata Bridge that spans the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Turkey was built in 1912, precautions are needed to protect a pontoon bridge from becoming damaged
6.
Lumber
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Lumber, or timber is wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber may also refer to currently un-needed furniture, as in Lumber room, or an awkward gait, ultimately derived from the look of unfashionable, Lumber may be supplied either rough-sawn, or surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and it is available in many species, usually hardwoods, but it is also readily available in softwoods, such as white pine and red pine, because of their low cost. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has other uses as well. It is classified more commonly as a softwood than as a hardwood, in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Britain, the term timber describes sawn wood products, such as floor boards. In the United States and Canada, generally timber describes standing or felled trees, before they are milled into boards, Timber there also describes sawn lumber not less than 5 inches in its smallest dimension. The latter includes the often partly finished lumber used in timber-frame construction, remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of previously milled lumber. Specifically, it is cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not usually processed by a primary sawmill, resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing, structural lumber may also be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock. Its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength, durability, logs are converted into timber by being sawn, hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with grain and large knots. There are various types of sawing, Plain sawn —A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log, quarter sawn and rift sawn—These terms have been confused in history but generally mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart—The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure, heart center—the center core of a log. Free of heart center —A side-cut timber without any pith, free of knots —No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber that is cut to standardized width and depth, carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, and 4×4, the length of a board is usually specified separately from the width and depth
7.
Jacopo Sansovino
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Jacopo dAntonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovinos Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity, giorgio Vasari uniquely printed his Vita of Sansovino separately. He was born in Florence and apprenticed with Andrea Sansovino whose name he subsequently adopted, in Rome he attracted the notice of Bramante and Raphael and made a wax model of the Deposition of Christ for Perugino to use. He returned to Florence in 1511 where he received commissions for sculptures of St. James for the Duomo. In the period of 1510-17 he shared a studio with the painter Andrea del Sarto, like all sixteenth-century Italian architects, Sansovino devoted considerable energy to elaborate but temporary structures related to courtly ritual. The triumphant entry of Pope Leo X into Florence in 1515 was a highpoint of this genre and he subsequently returned to Rome where he stayed for nine years, leaving for Venice in the year of the Sack of Rome. In 1529, Sansovino became chief architect and superintendent of properties to the Procurators of San Marco, the appointment came with a salary of 80 ducats and an apartment near the clocktower in San Marco. Within a year his salary was raised to 180 ducats per year, among palaces and buildings are the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Ca de Dio, Palazzo Dolfin Manin, Palazzo Corner, Palazzo Moro, and the Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto. His masterpiece is the Library of Saint Marks, the Biblioteca Marciana, one of Venices most richly decorated Renaissance structures, construction spanned fifty years and cost over 30,000 ducats. In it he made the architectural language of classicism, traditionally associated with severity and restraint. This paved the way for the architecture of Andrea Palladio. He died in Venice and his sepulchre is in the Baptistery of St and his most important follower in the medium of sculpture was Alessandro Vittoria, another disciple was the architect and sculptor Danese Cataneo. Jacopo Sansovinos works Renaissance Classicism Boucher, Bruce, monograph and catalogue raisonné of the sculpture. Jacopo Sansovino Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice
8.
Andrea Palladio
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Andrea Palladio was an Italian architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is considered to be the most influential individual in the history of architecture. All of his buildings are located in what was the Venetian Republic, the city of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Palladio was born on 30 November 1508 in Padua and was given the name and his father, Pietro, called Della Gondola, was a miller. From early on, Andrea Palladio was introduced into the work of building, in Padua he gained his first experiences as a stonecutter in the sculpture workshop of Bartolomeo Cavazza da Sossano, who is said to have imposed particularly hard working conditions. At the age of sixteen he moved to Vicenza where he would reside for most of his life, here he became an assistant in the Pedemuro studio, a leading workshop of stonecutters and masons. He joined a guild of stonemasons and bricklayers and he was employed as a stonemason to make monuments and decorative sculptures. These sculptures reflected the Mannerist style of the architect Michele Sanmicheli, perhaps the key moment that sparked Palladios career was being employed by the Humanist poet and scholar, Gian Giorgio Trissino, from 1538 to 1539. While Trissino was reconstructing the Villa Cricoli, he took interest in Palladios work, Trissino was heavily influenced by the studies of Vitruvius, who later influenced Palladios own ideals and attitudes toward classical architecture. It was also Trissino who gave him the name by which he became known, Palladio, indeed, the word Palladio means Wise one. The powerful Barbaros introduced Palladio to Venice, where he finally became Proto della Serenissima after Jacopo Sansovino, in addition to the Barbaros, the Corner, Foscari, and Pisani families supported Palladios career. Andrea Palladio began to develop his own architectural style around 1541, the Palladian style, named after him, adhered to classical Roman principles he rediscovered, applied, and explained in his works. Andrea Palladio is known to be one of the most influential architects in Western architecture and his architectural works have been valued for centuries as the quintessence of High Renaissance calm and harmony. He designed many palaces, villas, and churches, but Palladios reputation, initially, the palladian villas are located mainly in the province of Vicenza, while the palazzi are concentrated in the city of Vicenza and the churches in Venice. A number of his works are now protected as part of the World Heritage Site City of Vicenza, other buildings by Palladio are to be found within the Venice and its Lagoon World Heritage Site. Palladios first major public project began when his designs for building the loggias for the town hall and he proposed an addition of two-storey stone buttresses reflecting the Gothic style of the existing hall while using classical proportions. The construction was completed in 1617 after Palladios death, aside from Palladios designs, his publications contributed to Palladianism. During the second half of his life, Palladio published many books, above all, Palladio is most known for his designs of villas and palaces as well as his books
9.
Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola
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Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola was one of the great Italian architects of 16th century Mannerism. His two great masterpieces are the Villa Farnese at Caprarola and the Jesuits Church of the Gesù in Rome, the three architects who spread the Italian Renaissance style throughout Western Europe are Vignola, Serlio and Palladio. Giacomo Barozzi was born at Vignola, near Modena and he began his career as architect in Bologna, supporting himself by painting and making perspective templates for inlay craftsmen. He made a first trip to Rome in 1536 to make measured drawings of Roman temples, then François I called him to Fontainebleau, where he spent the years 1541–1543. Here he probably met his fellow Bolognese, the architect Sebastiano Serlio, after his return to Italy, he designed the Palazzo Bocchi in Bologna. Here he worked for Pope Julius III and, after the death, he was taken up by the papal family of the Farnese and worked with Michelangelo. In 1558, he was in Piacenza to revise the designs of Palazzo Farnese, commissioned by Margaret of Austria, wife of the Duke Ottavio Farnese, from 1564 Vignola carried on Michelangelos work at St Peters Basilica, and constructed the two subordinate domes according to Michelangelos plans. Giacomo Barozzi died in Rome in 1573, in 1973 his remains were reburied in the Pantheon, Rome. Vignolas main works include, Villa Giulia for Pope Julius III, here Vignola was working with Ammanati, who designed the nymphaeum and other garden features under the general direction of Vasari, with guidance from the knowledgeable pope and Michelangelo. A medal of 1553 shows Vignolas main villa substantially as it was completed, Palazzo dei Banchi, Bologna Palazzo Farnese, Piacenza. This was a project of a vast palace on a scale paralleled only by the Vatican Palace in Italy. Ten arches on the sides and seven on the short are sustained by pilasters with Tuscan style ornamentation that rise from high plinths. A simple frieze with triglyphs and metopes separates the lower from the upper levels. Like many other architects, Vignola submitted his plans for completing the facade of San Petronio, the clarity and ease of use of Vignolas treatise caused it to become in succeeding centuries the most published book in architectural history. Vignolas second treatise, the posthumously-published Due regole della prospettiva pratica, Vignola presented— without theoretical obscurities— practical applications which could be understood by a prospective patron. Egnatio Danti, Les deux règles de la pratique de Vignole,1583, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, Paris,2003. Website Architectura, Centre détudes supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours Brief biographical sketch Paolo Zauli on Vignola from a Bolognese perspective Vignolas effect on garden design
10.
Michelangelo
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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since described as one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of Michelangelos works of painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence and he sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library, at the age of 74, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peters Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification. Michelangelo was unique as the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive, in his lifetime he was often called Il Divino. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, the attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelos impassioned and highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance. Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, at the time of Michelangelos birth, his father was the Judicial administrator of the small town of Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelos mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena, the Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa, this claim remains unproven, but Michelangelo himself believed it. Several months after Michelangelos birth, the returned to Florence. There Michelangelo gained his love for marble, as Giorgio Vasari quotes him, If there is good in me. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, as a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches, the city of Florence was at that time the greatest centre of the arts and learning in Italy. Art was sponsored by the Signoria, by the merchant guilds and by patrons such as the Medici. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as The Gates of Paradise. The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence – Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the churches were covered with frescos, begun by Giotto. During Michelangelos childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican, among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing, and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence at that period
11.
Rock (geology)
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Rock or stone is a natural substance, a solid aggregate of one or more minerals or mineraloids. For example, granite, a rock, is a combination of the minerals quartz, feldspar. The Earths outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock, rock has been used by mankind throughout history. The minerals and metals found in rocks have been essential to human civilization, three major groups of rocks are defined, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The scientific study of rocks is called petrology, which is a component of geology. At a granular level, rocks are composed of grains of minerals, the aggregate minerals forming the rock are held together by chemical bonds. The types and abundance of minerals in a rock are determined by the manner in which the rock was formed, many rocks contain silica, a compound of silicon and oxygen that forms 74. 3% of the Earths crust. This material forms crystals with other compounds in the rock, the proportion of silica in rocks and minerals is a major factor in determining their name and properties. Rocks are geologically classified according to such as mineral and chemical composition, permeability, the texture of the constituent particles. These physical properties are the end result of the processes that formed the rocks, over the course of time, rocks can transform from one type into another, as described by the geological model called the rock cycle. These events produce three general classes of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, the three classes of rocks are subdivided into many groups. However, there are no hard and fast boundaries between allied rocks, hence the definitions adopted in establishing rock nomenclature merely correspond to more or less arbitrary selected points in a continuously graduated series. Igneous rock forms through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava and this magma can be derived from partial melts of pre-existing rocks in either a planets mantle or crust. Typically, the melting of rocks is caused by one or more of three processes, an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition, igneous rocks are divided into two main categories, plutonic rock and volcanic. Plutonic or intrusive rocks result when magma cools and crystallizes slowly within the Earths crust, a common example of this type is granite. Volcanic or extrusive rocks result from magma reaching the surface either as lava or fragmental ejecta, the chemical abundance and the rate of cooling of magma typically forms a sequence known as Bowens reaction series. Most major igneous rocks are found along this scale, about 64. 7% of the Earths crust by volume consists of igneous rocks, making it the most plentiful category. Of these, 66% are basalts and gabbros, 16% are granite, only 0. 6% are syenites and 0. 3% peridotites and dunites
12.
Portico
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A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was used in Ancient Greece and has influenced many cultures. Some noteworthy examples of porticos are the East Portico of the United States Capitol, the portico adorning the Pantheon in Rome, porticos are sometimes topped with pediments. Bologna, Italy, is famous for its porticos, in total, there are over 45 km of arcades, some 38 in the city center. The longest portico in the world, about 3.5 km, in Bologna, Italy, porticos stretch for 18 km. Palladio was a pioneer of using temple-fronts for secular buildings, in the UK, the temple-front applied to The Vyne, Hampshire was the first portico applied to an English country house. A pronaos is the area of the portico of a Greek or Roman temple. Roman temples commonly had an open pronaos, usually with only columns and no walls, the word pronaos is Greek for before a temple. In Latin, a pronaos is also referred to as an anticum or prodomus, the different variants of porticos are named by the number of columns they have. The style suffix comes from the Greek στῦλος, column, the tetrastyle has four columns, it was commonly employed by the Greeks and the Etruscans for small structures such as public buildings and amphiprostyles. Roman provincial capitals also manifested tetrastyle construction, such as the Capitoline Temple in Volubilis, the North Portico of the White House is perhaps the most notable four-columned portico in the United States. Hexastyle buildings had six columns and were the standard façade in canonical Greek Doric architecture between the archaic period 600–550 BC up to the Age of Pericles 450–430 BC. With the colonization by the Greeks of Southern Italy, hexastyle was adopted by the Etruscans, Roman taste favoured narrow pseudoperipteral and amphiprostyle buildings with tall columns, raised on podiums for the added pomp and grandeur conferred by considerable height. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes, France, is the best-preserved Roman hexastyle temple surviving from antiquity, octastyle buildings had eight columns, they were considerably rarer than the hexastyle ones in the classical Greek architectural canon. The best-known octastyle buildings surviving from antiquity are the Parthenon in Athens, built during the Age of Pericles, and the Pantheon in Rome. The destroyed Temple of Divus Augustus in Rome, the centre of the Augustan cult, is shown on Roman coins of the 2nd century AD as having built in octastyle. The decastyle has ten columns, as in the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus, the temple of Venus and Rome, built by Hadrian in Rome about 130 A. D. was decastyle, the only known example in Roman architecture. Classical architecture List of classical architecture terms Hypostyle Loggia Stoa Greek architecture, Encyclopædia Britannica,1968 Stierlin, Greece, From Mycenae to the Parthenon, TASCHEN,2004, Editor-in-chief Angelika Taschen, Cologne, ISBN 3-8228-1225-0 Stierlin, Henri
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