1.
Hadrian's Villa
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The Hadrians Villa is a large Roman archaeological complex at Tivoli, Italy. It is a property of the Republic of Italy, and directed, the villa was constructed at Tibur as a retreat from Rome for Roman Emperor Hadrian during the second and third decades of the 2nd century AD. Hadrian was said to dislike the palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome, the picturesque landscape around Tibur had made the area a popular choice for villas and rural retreats. It was reputedly popular with people from the Spanish peninsula resident in the city of Rome and this may have contributed to Hadrians choice of the property - although born in Rome his parents came from Spain and he may have been familiar with the area during his early life. There may also have been a connection through his wife Vibia Sabina who was the niece of the Emperor Trajan, sabinas family held large landholdings and it is speculated the Tibur property may have been one of them. A villa from the Republican era formed the basis for Hadrians establishment, during the later years of his reign, Hadrian actually governed the empire from the villa. Hadrian started using the Villa as his official residence around AD128, a large court therefore lived there permanently and large numbers of visitors and bureaucrats would have to have been entertained and temporarily housed on site. The postal service kept it in contact with Rome 29 km away, Hadrians parents had died when he was young and he and his sister were adopted by Trajan. It is possible that Hadrians court at the villa was predominately male but its likely that his childhood nurse Germana, after Hadrian, the villa was occasionally used by his various successors. Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, possibly lived here in the 270s. During the decline of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the facility was used as a warehouse by both sides during the destructive Gothic War between the Ostrogoths and Byzantines. Remains of lime kilns have been found, where marble from the complex was burned to extract lime for building material, in the 16th century, Cardinal Ippolito II dEste had much of the remaining marble and statues in Hadrians Villa removed to decorate his own Villa dEste located nearby. Since that period excavations have turned up more fragments and sculptures some of which have been kept in situ or housed on site in the display buildings. The buildings are constructed in travertine, brick, lime, pozzolana, the complex contains over 30 buildings, covering an area of at least 1 square kilometre of which much is still unexcavated. The site was due to its abundant waters and readily available aqueducts that passed through Rome, including Anio Vetus, Anio Nobus, Aqua Marcia. The area was known as the location of villas before Hadrian obtained the property - it was, and still is, the villa was the greatest Roman example of an Alexandrian garden, recreating a sacred landscape. The villa shows echoes of many different architectural styles, mostly Greek, Hadrian, a very well-traveled emperor, borrowed these designs, such as the caryatids by the Canopus, along with the statues beside them depicting the Egyptian dwarf and fertility god, Bes. Hadrians biography states that areas in the villa were named after places Hadrian saw during his travels, only a few places mentioned in the biography can be accurately correlated with the present-day ruins
2.
Museo del Prado
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The Prado Museum is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture in 1819, it contains important collections of other types of works. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered one of the greatest art museums in the world. The collection currently comprises around 8,200 drawings,7,600 paintings,4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures, in addition to a large number of other works of art and historic documents. As of 2012, the museum displayed about 1,300 works in the buildings, while around 3,100 works were on temporary loan to various museums. The museum received 2.8 million visitors in 2012 and it is one of the largest museums in Spain. The best-known work on display at the museum is Las Meninas by Velázquez, Velázquez and his keen eye and sensibility were also responsible for bringing much of the museums fine collection of Italian masters to Spain, now the largest outside of Italy. The museum is planning a 16% extension in the nearby Salón de Reinos and their efforts and determination led to the Royal Collection being enriched by some of the masterpieces now to be seen in the Prado. In addition to works from the Spanish royal collection, other holdings increased and enriched the Museum with further masterpieces, such as the two Majas by Goya. Among the now closed museums whose collections have been added to that of the Prado were the Museo del la Trinidad in 1872, in addition, numerous legacies, donations and purchases have been of crucial importance for the growth of the collection. Upon the deposition of Isabella II in 1868, the museum was nationalized and acquired the new name of Museo del Prado, the building housed the royal collection of arts, and it rapidly proved too small. The first enlargement to the museum took place in 1918, particularly important donations include Barón Emile dErlangers gift of Goyas Black Paintings in 1881. Between 1873 and 1900, the Prado helped decorate city halls, new universities, during the Second Spanish Republic from 1931 to 1936, the focus was on building up provincial museums. The art had to be returned across French territory in night trains to the museum upon the commencement of World War II, during the early years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, many paintings were sent to embassies. The main building was enlarged with short pavilions in the rear between 1900 and 1960, in 1993, an extension proposed by the Prados director at the time, Felipe Garin, was quickly abandoned after a wave of criticism. In the late 1990s, a $14 million roof work forced the Velázquez masterpiece Las Meninas to change galleries twice, in 1998, the Prado annex in the nearby Casón del Buen Retiro closed for a $10 million two-year overhaul that included three new underground levels. In 2007, the finally executed Rafael Moneos project to expand its exposition room to 16,000 square meters. A glass-roofed and wedge-shaped foyer now contains the shops and cafeteria
3.
Madrid
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Madrid is the capital city of the Kingdom of Spain and the largest municipality in both the Community of Madrid and Spain as a whole. The city has a population of almost 3.2 million with an area population of approximately 6.5 million. It is the third-largest city in the European Union after London and Berlin, the municipality itself covers an area of 604.3 km2. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the centre of both the country and the Community of Madrid, this community is bordered by the communities of Castile and León. As the capital city of Spain, seat of government, and residence of the Spanish monarch, Madrid is also the political, economic, the current mayor is Manuela Carmena from Ahora Madrid. Madrid is home to two football clubs, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid. Madrid is the 17th most liveable city in the according to Monocle magazine. Madrid organises fairs such as FITUR, ARCO, SIMO TCI, while Madrid possesses modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighbourhoods and streets. Cibeles Palace and Fountain have become one of the monument symbols of the city, the first documented reference of the city originates in Andalusan times as the Arabic مجريط Majrīṭ, which was retained in Medieval Spanish as Magerit. A wider number of theories have been formulated on possible earlier origins, according to legend, Madrid was founded by Ocno Bianor and was named Metragirta or Mantua Carpetana. The most ancient recorded name of the city Magerit comes from the name of a built on the Manzanares River in the 9th century AD. Nevertheless, it is speculated that the origin of the current name of the city comes from the 2nd century BC. The Roman Empire established a settlement on the banks of the Manzanares river, the name of this first village was Matrice. In the 8th century, the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula saw the changed to Mayrit, from the Arabic term ميرا Mayra. The modern Madrid evolved from the Mozarabic Matrit, which is still in the Madrilenian gentilic, after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Córdoba, Madrid was integrated in the Taifa of Toledo. With the surrender of Toledo to Alfonso VI of León and Castile, the city was conquered by Christians in 1085, Christians replaced Muslims in the occupation of the centre of the city, while Muslims and Jews settled in the suburbs. The city was thriving and was given the title of Villa, since 1188, Madrid won the right to be a city with representation in the courts of Castile. In 1202, King Alfonso VIII of Castile gave Madrid its first charter to regulate the municipal council, which was expanded in 1222 by Ferdinand III of Castile
4.
Muses
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The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs and they were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, the earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin, there, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. They were again called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory, three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarchs Quaestiones Convivales. According to Pausanias in the second century AD, there were three original Muses, worshiped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Aoidḗ, Melétē, and Mnḗmē. Together, these three form the picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names, Nḗtē, Mésē, and Hýpatē, alternatively they later were called Kēphisṓ, Apollōnís, and Borysthenís, which names characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized, Thelxinóē, Aoidḗ Archē, one of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓnē, Asōpṓ, Heptápora, Achelōís, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodía. According to Hesiods Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, the second king of the gods. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the deities, Uranus. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and it was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses, classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas and they also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest and they won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses, the first are the daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia, some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope
5.
Ancient Greek comedy
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Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy, New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that comedy is a representation of laughable people, C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. These divisions appear to be arbitrary, and ancient comedy almost certainly developed constantly over the years. The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes, born in 446 B. C. his works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. He was one of a number of comic poets working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most important contemporary rivals being Hermippus. The Old Comedy subsequently influenced later European writers such as Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, in particular, they copied the technique of disguising a political attack as buffoonery. For ancient scholars, the term may have meant little more than later than Aristophanes and his contemporaries, for at least a time, mythological burlesque was popular among the Middle Comic poets. Stock characters of all sorts also emerge, courtesans, parasites, revellers, philosophers, boastful soldiers, because no complete Middle Comic plays have been preserved, it is impossible to offer any real assessment of their literary value or genius. But many Middle Comic plays appear to have revived in Sicily and Magna Graecia in this period, suggesting that they had considerable widespread literary. New Comedy followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers and it is comparable to situation comedy and comedy of manners. The three best-known playwrights belonging to this genre are Menander, Philemon and Diphilus, Menander was the most successful of these three comedians. His comedies not only provided their audience with a respite from reality. This led an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa and this seems to be what made him more successful than the other Greek comedians who wrote in the same genre. These plays were much less satirical than preceding comedies, the other two comedians are Philemon and Diphilus. Philemon was a comedian whose comedies dwelt on philosophical issues and Diphilus was a comedian whose comedies were noted for their broad comedy, philemons comedies survive only in fragments, but Diphilus comedies were translated and adapted by Plautus. Examples of these comedies are Plautus Asinaria and Rudens, based on the translation and adaptation of Diphilus comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots. Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays, the most substantially preserved text is the Dyskolos by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958
6.
Idyll
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An idyll or idyl is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus short pastoral poems, the Idylls. Unlike Homer, Theocritus did not engage in heroes and warfare and his idylls are limited to a small intimate world, and describe scenes from everyday life. Later imitators include the Roman poets Virgil and Catullus, Italian poets Torquato Tasso, Sannazaro and Leopardi, the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, goethe called his poem Hermann and Dorothea—which Schiller considered the very climax in Goethes production—an idyll. Examples of the latter are Lullys LIdylle sur la Paix set to a text by Racine, in the visual arts, an idyll is a painting depicting the same sort of subject matter to be found in idyllic poetry, often with rural or peasant life as its central theme. One of the earliest examples is the early 15th century Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, the genre was particularly popular in English paintings of the Victorian era
7.
Jean-Marc Nattier
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Jean-Marc Nattier, French painter, was born in Paris, the second son of Marc Nattier, a portrait painter, and of Marie Courtois, a miniaturist. He is noted for his portraits of the ladies of King Louis XVs court in classical mythological attire and he received his first instruction from his father, and from his uncle, the history painter Jean Jouvenet. In 1715 he went to Amsterdam, where Peter the Great was then staying, and painted portraits of the tsar and the empress Catherine, Nattier aspired to be a history painter. The financial collapse of 1720 caused by the schemes of Law all but ruined Nattier, who found himself forced to devote his energy to portraiture. He became the painter of the ladies of Louis XVs court. He subsequently revived the genre of the portrait, in which a living person is depicted as a Greco-Roman goddess or other mythological figure. Nattiers graceful and charming portraits of ladies in this mode were very fashionable. He died in Paris in 1766, many of his pictures are in the public collections of France. Thus at the Louvre is his Magdalen, at Nantes the portrait of La Camargo and A Lady of the Court of Louis XV. At Orléans a Head of a Young Girl, at Marseilles a portrait of Mme de Pompadour, at Perpignan a portrait of Louis XV, the Versailles Museum owns an important group of two ladies, and the Dresden Gallery a portrait of the Maréchal de Saxe. At the Wallace collection Nattier is represented by The comtesse de Tillières, Mademoiselle de Clermont en sultane, and The marquise de Belestat. In the early part of the 20th century in the collection of Mr Lionel Phillips were the duchess of Flavacourt as Le Silence, and the duchess of Châteauroux as Le Point du jour. A portrait of the Comtesse de Neubourg and her Daughter formed part of the Vaile Collection, nattiers works have been engraved by Alphonse Leroy, Tardieu, Jean Audran, Dupin and many other noted craftsmen. The Getty Museum has Madame Bonier de la Mosson as Diana,1742, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has Madame de Maison-Rouge as Diana,1756
8.
Louis-Michel van Loo
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Louis-Michel van Loo was a French painter. He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, at Turin and Rome and he returned to Paris in 1753, and painted many portraits of Louis XV of France. In 1765 he succeeded Charles-André as director of the school of the French academy known as the École Royale des Élèves Protégés. In 1766 he made the portrait of the Portuguese statesman Sebastião de Melo, among his brothers were the painters François van Loo and Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo
9.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
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