1.
Vyatka Governorate
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Vyatka Governorate was a governorate of the Russian Empire and USSR, with its capital in city Vyatka, from 1796 to 1929. In the governorate’s area were situated most parts of modern Kirov Oblast, Vyatka Governorate was bordered with Vologda Governorate, Perm Governorate, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan governorates, and Kostroma Governorate. Its area was approximately 169,629 km2, Russian people composed 77. 4% of the population, Udmurt people –12. 5%, Mari people –4. 8%, and Tatar people –4. 1%. According to 1958 data, the population was 2,123,904, detailed map of Vyatka Governorate by A. A. Ilin,1876
2.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
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Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
4.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
5.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
6.
Imperial Academy of Arts
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The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, the academy promoted the neoclassical style and technique, and sent its promising students to European capitals for further study. Training at the academy was virtually required for artists to make successful careers, formally abolished in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, the academy was renamed several times. It established free tuition, students from across the country competed fiercely for its few places annually, in 1947 the national institution was moved to Moscow, and much of its art collection was moved to the Hermitage. The building in Leningrad was devoted to the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, since 1991 it has been called the St. Petersburg Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The academy was located in the Shuvalov Palace on Sadovaya Street, in 1764, Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector, Alexander Kokorinov, to design a new building. It took 25 years to complete the Neoclassical edifice, which opened in 1789, konstantin Thon was responsible for the sumptuous decoration of the interiors. He also designed a quayside in front of the building, with stairs down to the Neva River, Ivan Betskoy reorganized the academy into a de facto government department, it supervised matters concerning art throughout the country, distributing orders and awarding ranks to artists. The academy vigorously promoted the principles of Neoclassicism by sending the most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn the ancient and Renaissance styles of Italy and it also had its own sizable collection of choice artworks intended for study and copying. The adherents of this movement became known as peredvizhniki, led by Ivan Kramskoi, they publicly broke with the Academy and organized their own exhibitions, which traveled from town to town across Russia. Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel and some other painters still regarded the academys training as indispensable for the development of professional and technical skills. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Academy passed through a series of transformations, after the Academys move to Moscow that year, the building in what was then called Leningrad was renamed Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The national academy has stayed in Moscow, in 1991 it was renamed the Russian Academy of Arts. The old academys art collection, which included works by Poussin, David. During the Soviet era, academies were free of tuition fees as they were financed by the government, many would-be students would apply to the Academy for as many as six or seven years in a row without success. With just twenty places available and thousands of applicants, the competition was brutal, well-known graduates of Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1930–1950s include, The Russian Academy of Arts has been headquartered in Moscow since 1947. Its current president is Zurab Tsereteli and its vice-president is Tair Salakhov and it is also called the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. - Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition,2007, the Leningrad School Russian Academy of Arts The St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts Sergei V. Ivanov
7.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
8.
Bogatyrs
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A bogatyr or vityaz is a stock character in medieval East Slavic legends, akin to a Western European knight-errant. In modern Russian, the word is used to describe a knight, a warrior or, figuratively, bogatyr is derived from baghatur, a historical Turco-Mongol honorific title. The etymology of word is uncertain, although the first syllable is very likely the Iranian word *baγ god. Many Rus epic poems, called Bylinas, prominently featured stories about heroes, as did several chronicles. Some bogatyrs are presumed to be figures, while others, like the giant Svyatogor, are purely fictional. Many of the stories about bogatyrs revolve around the court of Vladimir I of Kiev, there served the most notable bogatyrs or vityazes, the trio of Alyosha Popovich, Dobrynya Nikitich and Ilya Muromets. Most of those bogatyrs adventures are fictional, and often included fighting dragons, giants, however, the bogatyrs themselves were often based on real people. Historical prototypes of both Dobrynya Nikitich and Ilya Muromets are proven to have existed, the Novgorod Republic produced a specific kind of hero, an adventurer rather than a noble warrior. The most prominent examples were Sadko and Vasili Buslayev, later notable bogatyrs also include those who fought by Alexander Nevskys side and those who fought in the Battle of Kulikovo. Although based on history, the film also shows a strong bylina influence. Knight-errant Slavic mythology Beckwith, Christopher I, empires of the Silk Road, A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Богатыри и витязи Русской земли, По былинам, сказаниям и песням
9.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
10.
History painting
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History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than artistic style. History paintings usually depict a moment in a story, rather than a specific and static subject. The term is derived from the senses of the word historia in Latin and Italian, meaning story or narrative. Most history paintings are not of scenes from history, especially paintings from before about 1850, History paintings almost always contain a number of figures, often a large number, and normally show some type of action that is a moment in a narrative. The genre includes depictions of moments in religious narratives, above all the Life of Christ, as well as scenes from mythology. These groups were for long the most frequently painted, works such as Michelangelos Sistine Chapel ceiling are therefore history paintings, History painting may be used interchangeably with historical painting, and was especially so used before the 20th century. Where a distinction is made historical painting is the painting of scenes from secular history, in the 19th century historical painting in this sense became a distinct genre. In phrases such as historical painting materials, historical means in use before about 1900 and he placed emphasis on the ability to depict the interactions between the figures by gesture and expression. This view remained general until the 19th century, when artistic movements began to struggle against the establishment institutions of academic art, which continued to adhere to it. Scenes from ancient history had been popular in the early Renaissance, and once again became common in the Baroque and Rococo periods, and still more so with the rise of Neoclassicism. In some 19th or 20th century contexts, the term may refer specifically to paintings of scenes from history, rather than those from religious narratives. Scenes from ancient history and mythology were also popular, artists continued for centuries to strive to make their reputation by producing such works, often neglecting genres to which their talents were better suited. The large works of Raphael were long considered, with those of Michelangelo, un Peintre qui ne fait que des portraits, na pas encore cette haute perfection de lArt, & ne peut prétendre à lhonneur que reçoivent les plus sçavans. He who produces perfect landscapes is above another who only produces fruit, a painter who only does portraits still does not have the highest perfection of his art, and cannot expect the honour due to the most skilled. By the late 18th century, with religious and mytholological painting in decline, there was an increased demand for paintings of scenes from history. Classical history remained popular, but scenes from national histories were often the best-received, the unheroic nature of modern dress was regarded as a serious difficulty. When, in 1770, Benjamin West proposed to paint The Death of General Wolfe in contemporary dress and he ignored these comments and showed the scene in modern dress. Although George III refused to purchase the work, West succeeded both in overcoming his critics objections and inaugurating a more historically accurate style in such paintings. M. W, conveniently their clothes had been worn away to classical-seeming rags by the point the painting depicts
11.
Pavel Tretyakov
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Pavel Mikhaylovich Tretyakov was a Russian businessman, patron of art, collector, and philanthropist who gave his name to the Tretyakov Gallery and Tretyakov Drive in Moscow. His brother Sergei Tretyakov was also a patron of art. In the first half of 1850 he inherited his fathers business and built up a trade in flax, linen processing. Together with other Moscow businessmen he acted as the founder of the Moscow merchant bank and he amassed a considerable fortune, consisting of real estate, securities, money and bills. Tretyakov started to collect art in 1854 at the age of 22 and he laid down for himself the aim of creating a Russian National Gallery. In his collection Tretyakov included the most valuable and remarkable products, first of all the contemporaries and he bought paintings at exhibitions and directly from artists studios, sometimes he bought the whole series, in 1874 he acquired V. V. Vereschagins Turkestan series, in 1880 - his Indian series, in his collection there were over 80 studies by Alexander Ivanov. In 1885 Tretyakov bought 102 studies by V. D, polenov painted by the artist during journeys across Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Palestine. He got also acquired Vasnetsov’s collection of the sketches made during work above lists in the Kiev St Volodymyrs Cathedral, Tretyakov had the fullest collection of such artists as, V. G. Kramskoi, Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov, I. I and he also conceived the creation of a Russian pantheon - a portrait gallery of famous Russians. He commissioned especially for it portraits of figures of culture from leading masters of this genre - N. N. Ge, Kramskoi, N. V. Nevrev, Perov, in 1870-80 Tretyakov also began to collect illustrations, since 1890 he formed a collection of icons. During his lifetime they were not included in an exhibition, being kept in the owners study and he also collected sculpture, however this part of his collection was small. At first the gallery was located in Tretyakov’s house in Lavrushenski pereulok, but as his collection expanded he decided to reconstruct his house for his collection. In 1870-1880 the house was reconstructed by the architect Kaminski. Tretyakov wanted to transfer the gallery to the city as discreetly as possible, without any noise, he want to be in the center of general attention. But it was not possible to do it and he was very dissatisfied, from 1881 his gallery became popular. In 1892 Tretyakov inherited a collection of Western European painting from his brother, the collection in Tretyakov’s gallery was equal in importance with the largest museums in Russia at that time, and became one of sights of Moscow
12.
Savva Mamontov
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Savva Ivanovich Mamontov was a famous Russian industrialist, merchant, entrepreneur, and patron of the arts. He was a son of the merchant and industrialist Ivan Feodorovich Mamontov. In 1841 the family moved to Moscow, from 1852 he studied in St. Petersburg, and later in the Moscow University. In 1864 Savva visited Italy, where he began to take lessons in singing, there he was introduced to the daughter of Moscow merchant Grigory Sapozhnikov, 17-year-old Elizabeth, who subsequently became his wife. The wedding took place in 1865 at Kireevo estate, near Khimki, in 1869 he became a director of the Moscow-Yaroslavl railway. It was he who supervised the construction of the Severnaya Railway linking Moscow with the Russian North and he was also involved into the building of Donetsk railway from 1876 to 1882. The colony of artists who hosted there during the 1870s and 1880s sought to recapture the quality, several workshops were set up there to produce handmade furniture, ceramic tiles, and silks imbued with traditional Russian imagery and themes. The Russian Private Opera was Mamontovs main contribution to the arts, Mamontov acted as a stage director, a conductor and a teacher of singing. The success of the Private Opera in the province was followed by a triumph in Moscow, however, everything ended in a collapse. In 1899-1900 Mamontov was unjustly accused of embezzlement with building of the Yaroslavl railway, arrested, ISBN 5-268-01445-5 Bakhrevskii, V. A, Savva Mamontov. Moscow, Molodaia Gvardiia,2000,513 p. ISBN 5-235-02403-6 Haldey, Mamontovs Private Opera, the search for modernism in Russian theater. I was a man, thats true, but I gave up everything since I believed that money is for the people. Who needs money when there is no life, contemporaries called Savva Mamontov Savva the Magnificent likening him to Duke Lorenzo de Medici who was known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. But Savva Mamontov was more than a patron of arts and letters, he was a businessman as well, third Eye Blinds song Monotovs Private Opera from the album Ursa Major is inspired by Mamontovs private opera
13.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
14.
New Style
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Closely related is the custom of dual dating, where writers gave two consecutive years because of differences in the starting date of the year, or included both the Julian and Gregorian dates. Beginning in 1582, the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian in Roman Catholic countries and this change was implemented subsequently in Protestant and Orthodox countries, usually at much later dates. In England and Wales, Ireland, and the British colonies, the change of the start of the year, in Scotland, the legal start of the year had already been moved to 1 January, but Scotland otherwise continued to use the Julian calendar until 1752. When recording British history it is usual to use the dates recorded at the time of the event, but the start of the Julian year was not always 1 January, and was altered at different times in different countries. From 1155 to 1752, the civil or legal year in England began on 25 March so for example the execution of Charles I was recorded at the time in Parliament as happening on 30 January 1648. In modern English language texts this date is shown as 30 January 1649. The corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar is 9 February 1649, designation is particularly relevant for dates which fall between the start of the historical year and the official start date, where different. This was 25 March in England, Wales and the Colonies until 1752, during the years between the first introduction of the Gregorian calendar in continental Europe and its introduction in Britain, contemporary usage in England started to change. In Britain 1 January was celebrated as the New Year festival, some more modern sources, often more academic ones, also use the 1661/62 style for the period between 1 January and 25 March for years before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in England. Through enactment of the Calendar Act 1750, Britain and the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, wednesday,2 September 1752, was followed by Thursday,14 September 1752. Claims that rioters demanded Give us our eleven days out of a misinterpretation of a painting by William Hogarth. The British tax year began on Lady Day on the Julian calendar and thus became 5 April. A 12th skipped Julian leap day in 1800 changed its start to 6 April and it was not changed when a 13th Julian leap day was skipped in 1900, so the tax year in the United Kingdom still begins on 6 April. The European colonies of the Americas adopted the change when their mother countries did, in Alaska, the change took place after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. Friday,6 October 1867 was followed by Friday,18 October, usually, the mapping of new dates onto old dates with a start of year adjustment works well with little confusion for events which happened before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Agincourt is universally known to have fought on 25 October 1415. Events in continental western Europe are usually reported in English language histories as happening under the Gregorian calendar, for example, the Battle of Blenheim is always given as 13 August 1704. However confusion occurs when an event involves both, for example, William III of England arrived at Brixham in England on 5 November, after setting sail from the Netherlands on 11 November, in 1688
15.
Artist
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An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts or demonstrating an art. The common usage in everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only. The term is used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians. Artiste is a variant used in English only in this context, use of the term to describe writers, for example, is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like criticism. Wiktionary defines the noun artist as follows, A person who creates art, a person who makes and creates art as an occupation. A person who is skilled at some activity, a person whose trade or profession requires a knowledge of design, drawing, painting, etc. The adjectival Latin form of the word, technicus, became the source of the English words technique, technology, in ancient Greece sculptors and painters were held in low regard, somewhere between freemen and slaves, their work regarded as mere manual labour. The word art derives from the Latin ars, which, although literally defined, means skill method or technique, and conveys a connotation of beauty. During the Middle Ages the word artist already existed in countries such as Italy. An artist was able to do a work better than others, so the skilled excellency was underlined. In this period some artisanal products were more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures. With the Academies in Europe the gap between fine and applied arts was definitely set, Artist is a descriptive term applied to a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art. An artist also may be defined unofficially as a person who expresses him- or herself through a medium, the word is also used in a qualitative sense of, a person creative in, innovative in, or adept at, an artistic practice. Art historians and critics define artists as those who produce art within a recognized or recognizable discipline, contrasting terms for highly skilled workers in media in the applied arts or decorative arts include artisan, craftsman, and specialized terms such as potter, goldsmith or glassblower. The term may also be used loosely or metaphorically to denote highly skilled people in any activities, as well— law, medicine, mechanics, or mathematics. Often, discussions on the focus on the differences among artist and technician, entertainer and artisan, fine art and applied art, or what constitutes art. The French word artiste has been imported into the English language where it means a performer, use of the word artiste can also be a pejorative term. The English word artiste has thus a range of meaning than the word artiste in French
16.
Mythology
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
17.
History
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History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
18.
Romantic nationalism
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Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive from a god or gods, among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. The ideas of Rousseau and of Johann Gottfried von Herder inspired much early Romantic nationalism in Europe, in 1784 Herder argued that geography formed the natural economy of a people, and that their customs and society would develop along the lines that their basic environment favored. The Brothers Grimm, inspired by Herders writings, put together a collection of tales. Because of the Germans role in the Protestant Reformation, Hegel argued that his historical moment had seen the Zeitgeist settle on the German-speaking peoples. In continental Europe, Romantics had embraced the French Revolution in its beginnings, in Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in the struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, or folkhood, was coined in Germany as part of resistance to French hegemony. In the Balkans, Romantic views of a connection with classical Greece, verdis opera choruses of an oppressed people inspired two generations of patriots in Italy, especially with Va pensiero. In Norway, romanticism was embodied, not in literature, but in the movement toward a national style, following the Congress of Vienna, and subsequent Concert of Europe system, several major empires took control of European politics. Among these were the Russian Empire, the restored French monarchy, the German Confederation, under the dominance of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, the conservative forces held sway until the Revolutions of 1848 swept across Europe and threatened the old order. Numerous movements developed around various cultural groups, who began to develop a sense of national identity, Romantic nationalists expected patriots to then learn that language and raise their children speaking that language – as part of a general program to establish a unique identity. Katharevousa Greek was constructed as a form of Modern Greek drawing on classical Greek morphology, the linguistic processes of romantic nationalism demanded linguistic culture models. Romantic historiography was centered on biographies and produced culture heroes, the modern Italian of Risorgimento patriots like Alessandro Manzoni was based on the Tuscan dialects sanctified by Dante and Petrarch. In English, Shakespeare became an iconic figure, Romantic nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such people as the Brothers Grimm. The Brothers Grimm were criticized because their first edition was insufficiently German and they also altered the language used, changing each Fee to an enchantress or wise woman, every prince to a kings son, every princess to a kings daughter. Discussing these views in their editions, they particularly singled out Giambattista Basiles Pentamerone as the first national collection of fairy tales. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, many artists and writers also drew on their native countries folklore and folktunes for their own work to express their nationalism
19.
Neo-romanticism
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It has been used with reference to late-19th-century composers such as Richard Wagner particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who describes his music as a late flowering of romanticism in a positivist age. He regards it as synonymous with the age of Wagner, from about 1850 until 1890—the start of the era of modernism, whose leading early representatives were Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Neo-romanticism as well as Romanticism is considered in opposition to naturalism—indeed, so far as music is concerned, in the period following German unification in 1871, naturalism rejected Romantic literature as a misleading, idealistic distortion of reality. Naturalism in turn came to be regarded as incapable of filling the void of modern existence, neo-romanticism was proposed as an alternative label for the group of German composers identified with the short-lived Neue Einfachheit movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Along with other such as new tonality, this term has been criticised for lack of precision because of the diversity among these composers. In British art history, the term neo-romanticism is applied to an affiliated school of landscape painting that emerged around 1930. It was first labeled in March 1942 by the critic Raymond Mortimer in the New Statesman and this movement was motivated in part as a response to the threat of invasion during World War II. Artists particularly associated with the initiation of this movement included Paul Nash, John Piper, Henry Moore, Ivon Hitchens, a younger generation included John Minton, Michael Ayrton, John Craxton, Keith Vaughan, Robert Colquhoun, and Robert MacBryde. The aesthetic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche has contributed greatly to neo-romantic thinking, Dictionary of Art,34 volumes, edited by Jane Turner. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Wie neu war die Neue Einfachheit, the Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, in The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism, edited by Nicholas Saul, 257–80. Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, the People’s Library, The Spirit of Prose Literature Versus Fascism. In The Culture of Japanese Fascism, edited by Alan Tansman, the Origins of the English Imagination. The Geographies of Englishness, Landscape and the National Past, 1880-1940, poets in the Landscape, The Romantic Spirit in British Art. Fantastic Illustration and Design in Great Britain, 1850–1930, paradise Lost, The Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain, 1935–1955. Outcasts from Eden, Ideas of Landscape in British Poetry Since 1945, British Romantic Art and The Second World War. Civilisation and its Discontents, English Neo-Romanticism and the Transformation of Anti-Modernism in Twentieth-Century Western Culture and this Enchanted Isle, The Neo-Romantic Vision from William Blake to the New Visionaries
20.
Russian Revival architecture
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Sometimes, Russian Revival style is often erroneously called Russian or Old-Russian architecture, but the majority of Revival architects did not directly reproduce the old architectural tradition. Like the romantic revivals of Western Europe, the Russian revival was informed by a scholarly interest in the monuments of the nation. The historicism resonated with the nationalism and pan-Slavism of the period. The state took an interest in the endeavour by sponsoring a series of folios published as Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudavstva depicting antiquities, by this time the Moscow Archaeological Society undertook research on the subject, formalising it as a field of study. A series of conferences was instituted from 1869 to 1915. Perhaps the Society’s most significant achievement was the publication of the Kommissii po sokhraneniiu drevnikh pamyatnikov in 6 volumes between 1907 and 1915, next year, in 1827, Stasov completed a larger five-domed Church of the Tithes in Kiev. The Russo-Byzantine idea was carried forward by Konstantin Thon with the approval by Nicholas I. Thons style embodied the idea of continuity between Byzantium and Russia, perfectly matching the ideology of Nicholas I, in 1838, Nicholas I pointed out Thons book of model designs to all architects, more enforcement followed in 1841 and 1844. Official enforcement of Byzantine architecture was, in fact, very limited, it applied only to new construction and, to a lesser extent. Private and public construction proceeded independently, Thons own public buildings, like the pseudo-Renaissance Nikolaevsky Terminal, lack any Byzantine features. A closer look at churches constructed in Nicholas reign reveals many first-rate neoclassical buildings, like the Elokhovo Cathedral in Moscow by Yevgraph Tyurin. Official Byzantine art was not absolute in Nicholas reign, it is scarce in our days, as the Byzantine churches, another direction taken by the Russian Revival style was a reaction against official Thon art, influenced by romanticism, Slavophilism and detailed studies of vernacular architecture. The forerunner of this trend in design was Alexey Gornostaev, notable for reinventing Northern Russian tented roof motif augmented with Romanesque. An early extant example in architecture is the wooden Pogodinsky cottage in Devichye Pole, Moscow. The Emancipation reform of 1861 and subsequent reforms of Alexander II pushed the liberal elite into exploring the roots of national culture, the first result of these studies in architecture was a birth of folk or Pseudo-Russian style, exemplified by 1870s works of Ivan Ropet and Viktor Hartmann. These artists, in alliance with Narodnik movement, idealized the peasant life, another factor was the rejection of western eclectics that dominated civil construction of 1850s-1860s, a reaction against decadent West, pioneered by influential critic Vladimir Stasov. Ivan Zabelin, a theorist of the movement, declared that Russian Khoromy, grown naturally from peasants log cabins, beauty of a building is not in its proportions, but on the contrary, in the difference and independence of its parts. Wood was the material, since many fantasies could not be physically built in masonry
21.
Natural science
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Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on observational and empirical evidence. Mechanisms such as review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two branches, life science and physical science. Physical science is subdivided into branches, including physics, space science, chemistry and these branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches. Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy, usually traced to ancient Greece, galileo, Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, natural history suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences, philosophers of science have suggested a number of criteria, including Karl Poppers controversial falsifiability criterion, to help them differentiate scientific endeavors from non-scientific ones. Validity, accuracy, and quality control, such as peer review and this field encompasses a set of disciplines that examines phenomena related to living organisms. The scale of study can range from sub-component biophysics up to complex ecologies, biology is concerned with the characteristics, classification and behaviors of organisms, as well as how species were formed and their interactions with each other and the environment. The biological fields of botany, zoology, and medicine date back to periods of civilization. However, it was not until the 19th century that became a unified science. Once scientists discovered commonalities between all living things, it was decided they were best studied as a whole, modern biology is divided into subdisciplines by the type of organism and by the scale being studied. Molecular biology is the study of the chemistry of life, while cellular biology is the examination of the cell. At a higher level, anatomy and physiology looks at the internal structures, constituting the scientific study of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, chemistry deals primarily with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules, crystals, and metals. The composition, statistical properties, transformations and reactions of these materials are studied, chemistry also involves understanding the properties and interactions of individual atoms and molecules for use in larger-scale applications. Most chemical processes can be studied directly in a laboratory, using a series of techniques for manipulating materials, chemistry is often called the central science because of its role in connecting the other natural sciences. Early experiments in chemistry had their roots in the system of Alchemy, the science of chemistry began to develop with the work of Robert Boyle, the discoverer of gas, and Antoine Lavoisier, who developed the theory of the Conservation of mass. The success of science led to a complementary chemical industry that now plays a significant role in the world economy
22.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
23.
Icon
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An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and certain Eastern Catholic churches. The most common subjects include Christ, Mary, saints and/or angels, icons may also be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. Comparable images from Western Christianity are generally not described as icons, Eastern Orthodox tradition holds that the creation of Christian images dates back to the very early days of Christianity, and there is has been a continuous tradition since then. The icons of later centuries can be linked, often closely, to images from the 5th century onwards, there was enormous destruction of images during the Byzantine Iconoclasm of 726-842, although this did settle for good the question of the appropriateness of images. Since then icons have had a continuity of style and subject. At the same time there has been change and development, Christian tradition dating from the 8th century identifies Luke the Evangelist as the first icon painter. Aside from the legend that Pilate had made an image of Christ and he relates that King Abgar of Edessa sent a letter to Jesus at Jerusalem, asking Jesus to come and heal him of an illness. In this version there is no image, further legends relate that the cloth remained in Edessa until the 10th century, when it was taken to Constantinople. It went missing in 1204 when Crusaders sacked Constantinople, but by then numerous copies had firmly established its iconic type. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the manner of the Gentiles. And he called him and said, Lycomedes, what do you mean by this matter of the portrait, can it be one of thy gods that is painted here. For I see that you are living in heathen fashion. Later in the passage John says, But this that you have now done is childish and imperfect, at least some of the hierarchy of the Christian churches still strictly opposed icons in the early 4th century. At the Spanish non-ecumenical Synod of Elvira bishops concluded, Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration. to our religion. After the emperor Constantine I extended official toleration of Christianity within the Roman Empire in 313 and this period of Christianization probably saw the use of Christian images became very widespread among the faithful, though with great differences from pagan habits. Robin Lane Fox states By the early century, we know of the ownership of private icons of saints. 480-500, we can be sure that the inside of a saints shrine would be adorned with images and votive portraits, when Constantine himself apparently converted to Christianity, the majority of his subjects remained pagans
24.
Apollinary Vasnetsov
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Apollinary Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov was a Russian painter and graphic artist whose elder brother was the more famous Viktor Vasnetsov. He specialized in scenes from the history of Moscow. Vasnetsov was a painter and a graphic artist and he did not receive a formal artistic education. He studied under his older brother Viktor Vasnetsov, the famous Russian painter, from 1883, he and his brother lived and worked in Abramtsevo where he fell under the influence of Vasily Polenov. In 1898–1899, he traveled across Europe, in addition to epic landscapes of Russian nature, Apollinary Vasnetsov created his own genre of historical landscape reconstruction on the basis of historical and archaeological data. His paintings present a picture of medieval Moscow. He was a member of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions from 1899, and he became one of the founders and supervisors of the Union of Russian Artists. The future painter had three elder and two younger brothers, the only sister died in the age of four month. His father played an important role in upbringing and education of his sons and he taught them to love nature, told a lot about birds and animals life. The death of his father in 1870 was for him a terrible blow, in 1890 he made a journey across the North of Russian Empire. He was deeply impressed by the beauty of the hoary Caucasus mountains, whilst there he climbed the glacier Elbrus, visited Tiflis and lived in Darial Gorge. A minor planet 3586 Vasnetsov, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978 is named after Viktor Vasnetsov, list of Russian artists Apollinary Vasnetsov by Vasnetsova, Yekaterina & Schmidt, Igor, Izobrazitelnoye Iskusstvo, Moscow,1980, Book ID V112131. Direct media, Kiev,2011, Short biography 1 Short biography 2
25.
Vladimir Stasov
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Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov, son of Russian architect Vasily Petrovich Stasov, was probably the most respected Russian critic during his lifetime. Stasov became a figure and, some critics argue, a tyrant—in mid-19th-century Russian culture. He discovered a number of its greatest talents, inspired many of their works and fought their battles in numerous articles. As such, he carried on a debate with Russian novelist and playwright Ivan Turgenev. He wanted Russian art to liberate itself from what he saw as Europes hold, by copying the west, he felt, Russian artists could be, at best, second-rate. However, by borrowing from their own traditions, they might create a truly national art that could match Europes with its high artistic standards. By national Stasov meant an art that would not only portray peoples lives but also be meaningful to them, in 1847, Stasov published a monograph on Mikhail Glinkas use of folk motifs in his music, from that time, Stasov advocated Russianness over European influence in music. In the years which followed he served as an adviser to the group of Russian composers known as The Five. He also warmed to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky after hearing the play the finale of his Little Russian Symphony at a Christmas 1872 gathering at Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs home. Shortly after this gathering, Stasov prompted Tchaikovsky to write a piece based on Shakespeares The Tempest and he also drafted a program, initially for Hector Berlioz, that Tchaikovsky eventually used for his Manfred Symphony. In between those two works, Stasov suggested an opera based on Alfred de Vignys historical romance Cinq-Mars, Tchaikovsky was then intent on writing Eugene Onegin, and Charles Gounod had already written an opera based on Cinq-Mars. Beginning in the 1870s, Stasov ardently supported the realistic painters known as Peredvizhniki as well as Ilya Repin, when artists did not follow his precepts, Stasov could become both intolerant and vocal. Stasov called the finale of Tchaikovskys Little Russian symphony one of the most important creations of the whole Russian school. Otherwise, his verdict on Tchaikovskys work was negative, The Conservatoire, academic training, eclecticism and overworking of musical materials laid its dread. Of his total output, a few works are first-rate and highly original, founder Mily Balakirev confided to Stasov that he thought Mussorgsky almost an idiot. Stasov replied, I think he is a total idiot and he was harsher still with the modernist art magazine Mir iskusstva and its founders, Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst and Sergei Diaghilev when the magazine appeared in 1898. He called Diaghilev a decadent cheerleader in print and Mir iskusstva the courtyard of the lepers, stasovs correspondence with leading personalities of Russian art life is invaluable. He is known also for his opposition to music critic and erstwhile friend Alexander Serov concerning the merits of Glinkas two operas
26.
Narodniks
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The Narodniks were a socially conscious movement of the Russian middle class in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against the Tsardom. Their ideology was known as Narodnichestvo, from the Russian народ, narod, people, folk, a common slogan among the Narodniks was хождение в народ, khozhdeniye v narod, going to the people. The Narodnik position was held by intellectuals who read the works of Alexander Herzen and of Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. Critical Narodniks followed Mikhaylovsky, and assumed a flexible stance on capitalism, the more well-known Doctrinaire Narodniks had a firm belief that capitalism had no future in Russia or in any agrarian country. Narodnism arose after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 under Tsar Alexander II, arguing that freed serfs were being sold into wage slavery, in which the bourgeoisie had replaced landowners, Narodnism aimed to become a political force opposed to the phenomenon. Narodniks viewed aspects of the past with nostalgia, although they resented the former land ownership system, Narodniks focused upon the growing conflict between the peasantry and the so-called kulaks. The groups which formed shared the general aims of destroying the Russian monarchy and the kulaks. The Narodniks generally believed that it was possible to forgo the capitalist phase of Russias development, the Narodniks saw the peasantry as the revolutionary class that would overthrow the monarchy, and perceived the village commune as the embryo of socialism. However, some Narodnik intellectuals called for a revolution that went beyond philosophical and political discussion. In the spring of 1874, the Narodnik intelligentsia left the cities for the villages, given the Narodniks generally middle- and upper-middle-class social background, they found difficulty relating to the impoverished peasants and their culture. They spent much of their time learning peasant customs, such as clothing and dancing, Narodniks were viewed with suspicion by many Russian peasants, who were completely removed from the more modernized culture of the urban sphere. The authorities responded to the Narodniks attempt with repression, revolutionaries, one response to this repression was the formation of Russias first organized revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya, in June 1879. The attempt to get the peasantry to overthrow the Tsar proved unsuccessful, narodism therefore developed the practice of terrorism, the peasantry, they believed, had to be shown that the Tsar was not supernatural, and could be killed. On March 1,1881, they succeeded in assassinating Alexander II, however, these events did not mark the end of the movement, and the later Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists, and Trudoviks all pursued similar ideas and tactics to the Narodniks. The philosophy and actions of the Narodniks therefore helped prepare the way for the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Narodnik movement was a populist initiative to engage the rural classes of Russia in a political debate that would overthrow the Tsar’s government in the nineteenth century. Unlike the French Revolution or the European Revolutions of 1848, the “to the people” movement was political activism primarily from wealthier individuals. The concept of the narod, like the volk in Germany, was an attempt to establish a new identity in Russia that was both nationalistic and liberal. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that “none of us like the narod as they actually are, but only as each of us has imagined them
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Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
28.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
29.
Alexander Nevsky
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Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky served as Prince of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Kiev and Grand Prince of Vladimir during some of the most difficult times in Kievan Rus history. He was canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church by Metropolite Macarius in 1547, as it was told by the prophet Isaiah, Thus sayeth the Lord, I appoint the princes because they are sacred and I direct them. He was taller than others and his voice reached the people as a trumpet, and his face was like the face of Joseph and his power was a part of the power of Samson and God gave him the wisdom of Solomon. This Prince Alexander, he used to defeat but was never defeated, born in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Alexander was the second son of Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and Rostislava Mstislavna, daughter of Kievan Rus Prince Mstislav Mstislavich the Bold. Alexander seemed to have no chance of claiming the throne of Vladimir, in 1236, however, he was summoned by the Novgorodians to become knyaz of Novgorod and, as their military leader, to defend their northwest lands from Swedish and German invaders. According to the Novgorod Chronicle written in the 14th cent, the Neva battle of 1240 saved Novgorod from a full-scale invasion from the West. Because of this battle, 19-year-old Alexander was given the sobriquet Nevsky and he would soon have to leave Novgorod because of this conflict. This supposed battle is not mentioned in any Swedish or other source, the supposed Swedish commander was called Spiridon which is an Orthodox, not Scandinavian name. Furthermore, Sweden was on the brink of war with Norway ever since the Norwegians infamous Värmland expedition in 1225, relations improved only after the Treaty of Lödöse in 1249, which was forged by the newly empowered Birger Jarl. Before the treaty, Norway remained an ally of the folkungs, giving them refuge and providing men, in this situation, it seems unlikely that Sweden could have been able to organize a major expedition against Novgorod. After Pskov had been invaded by the Germans and Estonians, the Novgorod authorities sent for Alexander, in spring of 1241 he returned from his exile, gathered an army, and drove out the invaders. Alexander and his men faced the Livonian heavy cavalry led by the bishop of Dorpat Hermann, Nevsky faced the enemy on the ice of the Lake Peipus and defeated the German knights and Estonian infantry during the Battle of the Ice on 5 April 1242. Alexander’s victory was a significant event in the history of the Russia, foot soldiers of Novgorod had surrounded and defeated an army of knights, mounted on horseback and clad in thick armour. Tactical military considerations aside, Alexanders victory was an important milestone in the development of Muscovite Russia, after the Livonian invasion, Nevsky continued to strengthen Russia’s Northwest. He sent his envoys to Norway and, as a result, Alexander led his army to Finland and successfully routed the Swedes, who had made another attempt to block the Baltic Sea from the Russians in 1256. Nevsky proved to be a cautious and far-sighted politician, historians seem to be unsure about Alexander’s behavior when it came to his relations with Mongols. He may have thought that Catholicism presented a more tangible threat to Russian national identity than paying a tribute to the Khan, Alexander tried to strengthen his authority at the expense of the boyars and at the same time suppress any anti-Mongol uprisings in the country. According to one interpretation, Alexander’s intentions were to protect scattered principalities of what would become Muscovy from repeated invasions by the Mongol army
30.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
31.
Peredvizhniki
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In 1863 a group of fourteen students decided to leave The Imperial Academy of Arts. The students found the rules of the Academy constraining, the teachers were conservative, in an effort to bring art to the people, the students formed an independent artistic society, The Petersburg Cooperative of Artists. The society maintained independence from support and brought the art. From 1871 to 1923, the society arranged 48 mobile exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Moscow, after which they were shown in Kiev, Kharkov, Kazan, Oryol, Riga, Odessa and other cities. Peredvizhniki were influenced by the views of the literary critics Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Belinsky thought that literature and art should attribute a social and moral responsibility, like most Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky ardently supported the emancipation of serfs, which was finally realized in the reform of 1861. He viewed press censorship, serfdom, and capital punishment as Western influences, because of his political activism, officials prohibited publication of any of his writing, including his dissertation, but it eventually found its way to the artworld of nineteenth-century Russia. Peredvizhniki portrayed the many-sided aspects of life, often critical of inequities and injustices. But their art showed not only poverty but also the beauty of the way of life, not only suffering but also fortitude. Peredvizhniki condemned the Russian aristocratic orders and autocratic government in their humanistic art and they portrayed the emancipation movement of Russian people with empathy. They portrayed social-urban life, and later used historic art to depict the common people, during their blossoming, the Peredvizhniki society developed an increasingly wider scope, with more natural and free images. In contrast to the dark palette of the time, they chose a lighter palette. They worked for naturalness in their images, and the depiction of peoples relationship with their surroundings, the society united most of the highly talented artists of the country. Among Peredvizhniki there were artists of Ukraine, Latvia, and Armenia, the society also showed the work of Mark Antokolski, Vasili Vereshchagin, and Andrei Ryabushkin. The work of the critic and democrat Vladimir Stasov was important for the development of Peredvizhnikis art, pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov showed the work of these artists in his gallery and gave them important material and moral support. Landscape painting flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, Peredvizhniki painted mainly landscapes, some, like Polenov, used plein air technique. Two painters, Ivan Shishkin and Isaak Levitan, painted landscapes of Russia. Shishkin is still considered to be the Russian Singer of forest, the Russian landscape gained importance as a national icon after Peredvizhniki
32.
Academic art
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Academic art, or Academicism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. In this context it is often called academism, academicism, Lart pompier, and eclecticism, in this medicean institution students learned the arti del disegno and heard lectures on anatomy and geometry. Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca, was founded about a later in Rome. The Accademia di San Luca served a function and was more concerned with art theory than the Florentine one. Accademia di San Luca later served as the model for the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture founded in France in 1648, and which later became the Académie des beaux-arts. The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture was founded in an effort to distinguish artists who were practicing a liberal art from craftsmen. This emphasis on the component of artmaking had a considerable impact on the subjects. This battle of styles was a conflict over whether Peter Paul Rubens or Nicolas Poussin was a model to follow. Debates also occurred over whether it was better to learn art by looking at nature, academies using the French model formed throughout Europe, and imitated the teachings and styles of the French Académie. In England, this was the Royal Academy, one effect of the move to academies was to make training more difficult for women artists, who were excluded from most academies until the last half of the 19th century. This was partly because of concerns over the propriety of life classes with nude models, special arrangements were often made for female students until the 20th century. Since the onset of the debate, many artists worked between the two styles. In the 19th century, in the form of the debate, the attention. One artist after another was claimed by critics to have achieved the synthesis, among them Théodore Chassériau, Ary Scheffer, Francesco Hayez, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Thomas Couture. William-Adolphe Bouguereau, an academic artist, commented that the trick to being a good painter is seeing color. Another development during this period included adopting historical styles in order to show the era in history that the painting depicted, called historicism and this is best seen in the work of Baron Jan August Hendrik Leys, a later influence on James Tissot. Its also seen in the development of the Neo-Grec style, historicism is also meant to refer to the belief and practice associated with academic art that one should incorporate and conciliate the innovations of different traditions of art from the past. The art world also grew to give increasing focus on allegory in art, as artists attempted to synthesize these theories in practice, the attention on the artwork as an allegorical or figurative vehicle was emphasized
33.
Ivan Kramskoi
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Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi was a Russian painter and art critic. He was a leader of the Russian democratic art movement in 1860-1880. Kramskoi came from an impoverished petit-bourgeois family and he became one of the main founders and ideologists of the Company of Itinerant Art Exhibitions. In 1863–1868 he taught at the school of a society for the promotion of applied arts. Kramskois democratic ideals found their brightest expression in his portraits of peasants, in one of Kramskoi’s most well known paintings, Christ in the Desert, he continued Alexander Ivanovs humanistic tradition by treating a religious subject in moral–philosophical terms. He imbued his image of Christ with dramatic experiences in a psychological and vital interpretation. Aspiring to expand the ideological expressiveness of his images, Kramskoi created art that existed on the cusp of portraiture and these paintings disclose their subjects complex and sincere emotions, their personalities and fates. Ivan Kramskois gallery and biography Ivan Kramskoi Gallery at MuseumSyndicate Долгополов, Игорь Викторович Мастера и шедевры, В3 т
34.
Ilya Repin
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Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Russian realist painter. He was the most renowned Russian artist of the 19th century and he played a major role in bringing Russian art into the mainstream of European culture. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga, Religious Procession in Kursk Province, Repin was born in Chuguyev, in Kharkov Governorate, Ukraine into a family of military settlers. His father traded horses and his grandmother ran an inn and he entered military school to study surveying. In 1863 he went to St. Petersburg Art Academy to study painting but had to enter Ivan Kramskoi preparatory school first and he met fellow artist Ivan Kramskoi and the critic Vladimir Stasov during the 1860s, and his wife, Vera Shevtsova in 1872. In 1874–1876 he showed at the Salon in Paris and at the exhibitions of the Itinerants Society in Saint Petersburg and he was awarded the title of academician in 1876. In 1880 Repin travelled to Zaporozhia in Ukraine to gather material for the 1891 Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and his Religious Procession in Kursk Province was exhibited in 1883, and Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan in 1885. In 1892 he published the Letters on Art collection of essays and he taught at the Higher Art School attached to the Academy of Arts from 1894. In 1898 he purchased an estate, the Penates, in Kuokkala, in 1901 he was awarded the Legion of Honour. In 1911 he traveled with his common-law wife Natalia Nordman to the World Exhibition in Italy, in 1916 Repin worked on his book of reminiscences, Far and Near, with the assistance of Korney Chukovsky. He welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917, celebrations were held in 1924 in Kuokkala to mark Repins 80th birthday, followed by an exhibition of his works in Moscow. In 1925 a jubilee exhibition of his works was held in the Russian Museum in Leningrad, Repin died in 1930 and was buried at the Penates. Repin was born in the town of Chuguyev, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire and his father Yefim Vasilyevich Repin was a private in the Uhlan Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. As a boy Ilya was educated at the school where his mother taught. From 1854 he attended a military Cantonist school and he did not have fond recollections of his childhood, mainly due to the military settlements his family lived in. In 1856 he became a student of Ivan Bunakov, an icon painter. In 1859–1863 he painted icons and wall-paintings by commission for the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, in 1864 he began attending the Imperial Academy of Arts, and met the painter Ivan Kramskoi. In 1869 he was awarded a gold medal for his painting Job
35.
Jesus
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In Christology, the Person of Christ refers to the study of the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ as they co-exist within one person. There is no discussion in the New Testament regarding the dual nature of the Person of Christ as both divine and human. Hence, since the days of Christianity theologians have debated various approaches to the understanding of these natures. In the period following the Apostolic Age, specific beliefs such as Arianism and Docetism were criticized. On the other end of the spectrum, Docetism argued that Jesus physical body was an illusion, docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch and were eventually abandoned by proto-orthodox Christians. However, after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 the Logos, historically in the Alexandrian school of christology, Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos paradoxically humanized in history, a divine Person who became enfleshed, uniting himself to the human nature. The views of these schools can be summarized as follows, Alexandria, Antioch, Logos assumes a specific human being The First Council of Ephesus in 431 debated a number of views regarding the Person of Christ. At the same gathering the council debated the doctrines of monophysitism or miaphysitism. The council rejected Nestorianism and adopted the term hypostatic union, referring to divine, the language used in the 431 declaration was further refined at the 451 Council of Chalcedon. However, the Chalcedon creed was not accepted by all Christians, because Saint Augustine died in 430 he did not participate in the Council of Ephesus in 431 or Chalcedon in 451, but his ideas had some impact on both councils. On the other hand, the major theological figure of the Middle Ages. The Third Council of Constantinople in 680 held that both divine and human wills exist in Jesus, with the divine will having precedence, leading and guiding the human will. John Calvin maintained that there was no element in the Person of Christ which could be separated from the person of The Word. Calvin also emphasized the importance of the Work of Christ in any attempt at understanding the Person of Christ, the study of the Person of Christ continued into the 20th century, with modern theologians such as Karl Rahner and Hans von Balthasar. Balthasar argued that the union of the human and divine natures of Christ was achieved not by the absorption of human attributes, thus in his view the divine nature of Christ was not affected by the human attributes and remained forever divine
36.
Pontius Pilate
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Pontius Pilate was the fifth prefect of the Roman province of Judaea from AD 26–36. He served under Emperor Tiberius, and is best known today for the trial, based on these sources, it appears that Pilate was an equestrian of the Pontii family, and succeeded Valerius Gratus as prefect of Judaea in AD26. Once in his post he offended the sensibilities of his subjects, leading to harsh criticism from Philo. AD93, Pilate was deposed and sent to Rome by Lucius Vitellius after harshly suppressing a Samaritan uprising, arriving just after the death of Tiberius which occurred on 16 March in AD37. In all four accounts, Pilate lobbies for Jesus to be spared his eventual fate of execution. He thus seeks to avoid responsibility for the death of Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate washes his hands to show that he is not responsible for the execution of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark, depicting Jesus as innocent of plotting against the Roman Empire, portrays Pilate as reluctant to execute him. In the Gospel of Luke, Pilate not only agrees that Jesus did not conspire against Rome, but Herod Antipas, in the Gospel of John, Pilate states I find no guilt in Him, and he asks the Jews if Jesus should be released from custody. Scholars have long debated how to interpret Pilates portrayal in the sources, the significance of the Pilate Stone, an artifact discovered in 1961 that names Pontius Pilate, is similarly debated by scholars. The only physical, archaeological evidence that confirms the existence of Pilate is the Latin inscription found on a limestone block relating Pilates tribute to Tiberius. The artifact is a fragment of the inscriptions of a building, probably a temple. The dedication states that Pilate was prefect of Judaea, read praefectus Iudaeae, the early governors of Judaea were of prefect rank, the later were of procurator rank, beginning with Cuspius Fadus in 44 AD. The artifact is currently housed in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the remaining text reads, …]S TIBERIÉVM …PON]TIVS PILATVS …PRAEF]ECTVS IVDA Pontius Pilates title was traditionally thought to have been procurator, since Tacitus speaks of him as such. The title used by the governors of the region varied over the period of the New Testament. When Samaria, Judea proper and Idumea were first amalgamated into the Roman Judaea Province, from AD6 to the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt in 66 and they held the Roman title of prefect until Herod Agrippa I was named King of the Jews in 41 by Claudius. After Herod Agrippas death in 44, when Judaea reverted to direct Roman rule, when applied to governors, this term procurator, otherwise used for financial officers, connotes no difference in rank or function from the title known as prefect. Contemporary archaeological finds and documents such as the Pilate Inscription from Caesarea attest to the more accurate official title only for the years 6 through 41. The logical conclusion is that texts that identify Pilate as procurator are more likely following Tacitus or are unaware of the pre-44 practice
37.
Engraving
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Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it. Wood engraving is a form of printing and is not covered in this article. Engraving was an important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking. Other terms often used for printed engravings are copper engraving, copper-plate engraving or line engraving, hand engraving is a term sometimes used for engraving objects other than printing plates, to inscribe or decorate jewellery, firearms, trophies, knives and other fine metal goods. Traditional engravings in printmaking are also engraved, using just the same techniques to make the lines in the plate. Each graver is different and has its own use, engravers use a hardened steel tool called a burin, or graver, to cut the design into the surface, most traditionally a copper plate. Modern professional engravers can engrave with a resolution of up to 40 lines per mm in high grade work creating game scenes, dies used in mass production of molded parts are sometimes hand engraved to add special touches or certain information such as part numbers. In addition to engraving, there are engraving machines that require less human finesse and are not directly controlled by hand. They are usually used for lettering, using a pantographic system, there are versions for the insides of rings and also the outsides of larger pieces. Such machines are used for inscriptions on rings, lockets. Gravers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that yield different line types, the burin produces a unique and recognizable quality of line that is characterized by its steady, deliberate appearance and clean edges. The angle tint tool has a curved tip that is commonly used in printmaking. Florentine liners are flat-bottomed tools with multiple lines incised into them, ring gravers are made with particular shapes that are used by jewelry engravers in order to cut inscriptions inside rings. Flat gravers are used for work on letters, as well as wriggle cuts on most musical instrument engraving work, remove background. Knife gravers are for line engraving and very deep cuts, round gravers, and flat gravers with a radius, are commonly used on silver to create bright cuts, as well as other hard-to-cut metals such as nickel and steel. Square or V-point gravers are typically square or elongated diamond-shaped and used for cutting straight lines, V-point can be anywhere from 60 to 130 degrees, depending on purpose and effect. These gravers have very small cutting points, other tools such as mezzotint rockers, roulets and burnishers are used for texturing effects. Burnishing tools can also be used for stone setting techniques
38.
World's fair
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A worlds fair, world fair, world exposition, or universal exposition is a large international exhibition designed to showcase achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in varying parts of the world, the next world Expo is Expo 2020 and is to be held in Dubai, UAE. Since the 1928 Convention Relating to International Exhibitions came into force, bIE-approved fairs are of three types, universal, specialized and horticultural. They usually last from three weeks to six months, Worlds fairs originated in the French tradition of national exhibitions, a tradition that culminated with the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 held in Paris. This fair was followed by other exhibitions in continental Europe. The best-known first World Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. The Great Exhibition, as it is called, was an idea of Prince Albert, Queen Victorias husband. It influenced the development of aspects of society, including art-and-design education, international trade and relations. This expo was the most obvious precedent for the international exhibitions, later called worlds fairs. Since their inception in 1851, the character of world expositions has evolved, three eras can be distinguished, the era of industrialization, the era of cultural exchange, and the era of nation branding. The first era could be called the era of industrialization and covered, roughly, in these days, world expositions were especially focused on trade, and were famous for the display of technological inventions and advancements. World expositions were the platforms where the state-of-the-art in science and technology from around the world were brought together, inventions such as the telephone were first presented during this era. An important part of the image of worlds fairs stems from this first era, the 1939–40 New York Worlds Fair diverged from the original focus of the worlds fair expositions. From then on, worlds fairs adopted specific cultural themes, they forecasted a future for society. Technological innovations were no longer the primary exhibits at fairs, the fairs encouraged effective intercultural communication for the exchange of innovation. The 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal was promoted under the name Expo 67, event organizers retired the term worlds fair in favor of expo. From Expo 88 in Brisbane onwards, countries started to use world expositions more widely, finland, Japan, Canada, France and Spain are cases in point. A large study by Tjaco Walvis called Expo 2000 Hanover in Numbers showed that improving national image was the primary goal for 73% of the countries at Expo 2000
39.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
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Genre art
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Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on. Rather confusingly, the meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious. But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works, the following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards. Single figures or small groups decorated a huge variety of such as porcelain, furniture, wallpaper. Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known member of his family. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Genre themes appear in all art traditions. These were part of a pattern of Mannerist inversion in Antwerp painting, giving low elements previously in the background of images prominent emphasis. The generally small scale of these paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book. The merry company showed a group of figures at a party, other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities, or soldiers in camp. In Italy, a school of painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname Il Bamboccio and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, jean-Baptiste Greuze and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. Spain had a tradition predating The Book of Good Love of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and illuminators
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Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
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Impressionism
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Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the art community in France. The development of Impressionism in the arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting and they constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, the Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, the Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued, landscape, the Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artists hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish, the Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were led by Édouard Manet. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manets The Luncheon on the Grass primarily because it depicted a woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, the jurys severely worded rejection of Manets painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists
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Salon (Paris)
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The Salon, or rarely Paris Salon, beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world, at the 1761 Salon, thirty-three painters, nine sculptors, and eleven engravers contributed. From 1881 onward, it has been managed by the Société des Artistes Français, in 1667, the royally sanctioned French institution of art patronage, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, held its first semi-public art exhibit at the Salon Carré. The Salons original focus was the display of the work of recent graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts, exhibition at the Salon de Paris was essential for any artist to achieve success in France for at least the next 200 years. Exhibition in the Salon marked a sign of royal favor, in 1725, the Salon was held in the Palace of the Louvre, when it became known as Salon or Salon de Paris. In 1737, the exhibitions, held from 18 August 1737 to 5 September 1737 at the Grand Salon of the Louvre and they were held, at first, annually, and then biennially, in odd-numbered years. They would start on the feast day of St. Louis, once made regular and public, the Salons status was never seriously in doubt. In 1748 a jury of awarded artists was introduced, from this time forward, the influence of the Salon was undisputed. The Salon exhibited paintings floor-to-ceiling and on every inch of space. The jostling of artwork became the subject of other paintings. Printed catalogues of the Salons are primary documents for art historians, critical descriptions of the exhibitions published in the gazettes mark the beginning of the modern occupation of art critic. The French revolution opened the exhibition to foreign artists, the vernissage of opening night was a grand social occasion, and a crush that gave subject matter to newspaper caricaturists like Honoré Daumier. Charles Baudelaire, Denis Diderot and others wrote reviews of the Salons, the 1848 revolution liberalized the Salon. The amount of refused works was greatly reduced, the increasingly conservative and academic juries were not receptive to the Impressionist painters, whose works were usually rejected, or poorly placed if accepted. The Salon opposed the Impressionists shift away from traditional painting styles, in 1863 the Salon jury turned away an unusually high number of the submitted paintings. An uproar resulted, particularly from regular exhibitors who had been rejected, in order to prove that the Salons were democratic, Napoleon III instituted the Salon des Refusés, containing a selection of the works that the Salon had rejected that year. It opened on 17 May 1863, marking the birth of the avant-garde, the Impressionists held their own independent exhibitions in 1874,1876,1877,1879,1880,1881,1882 and 1886. In 1881, the government withdrew official sponsorship from the annual Salon, in December 1890, the leader of the Société des Artistes Français, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, propagated the idea that Salon should be an exhibition of young, not-yet awarded, artists
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Ivan Tsarevich
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Ivan Tsarevich is one of the main heroes of Russian folklore, usually a protagonist, often engaged in a struggle with Koschei. Along with Ivan the Fool, Ivan Tsarevich is a name rather than a certain character. He is often, but not always, the youngest son of three, in the tale The Three Tsardoms, he is a son of Nastasya the Golden Braid. Different legends describe Ivan as having wives, including Yelena the Beautiful, Vasilisa the Wise. Ivan is sometimes depicted with magic abilities and has the Sword Kladenets, Ivan is the main hero of Russian folktales. He is almost always portrayed as either the son of a peasant family or the third son of a king. In the latter stories, he is called Ivan Tsarevich, which means tsars son, Ivan is one of the most common Russian names. The friends and foes of Ivan Tsarevich are often mythic figures, the most famous folktale featuring Ivan as the protagonist is Prince ivan, the firebird and the gray wolf. In this story, Ivan was aided by a wolf as he captured the firebird. The firebird inspired Igor Stravinskys ballet of the same name, in this tale, the animal helpers were a lion, a bird and a magical horse that belonged to baba Yaga. It was on this horse that Ivan defeated Koschei, Ivan the peasants son has as many tales as Ivan Tsarevich. One of the best known is the story the Little Humbacked Horse, in which a magical, talking horse helped Ivan to become a hero and marry the princess he loved
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Sadko
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Sadko is the principal character in a Russian medieval epic Bylina. He was an adventurer, merchant, and gusli musician from Novgorod, Sadko played the gusli on the shores of a lake. The Sea Tsar enjoyed his music, and offered to help him, Sadko was instructed to make a bet with the local merchants about catching a certain fish in the lake, when he caught it, the merchants had to pay the wager, making Sadko a rich merchant. Sadko traded on the seas with his new wealth, but did not pay respects to the Tsar as per their agreement. The Tsar stopped Sadkos ships in the sea and he and his sailors tried to appease the Sea Tsar with gold, to no avail. Sadkos crew forced him to jump into the sea, there, he played the gusli for the Sea Tsar, who offered him a new bride. On advice, he took the last maiden in a long line and he woke up on the shore and rejoined his wife. In some variants, Sadko is chosen to jump overboard by throwing lots between the men and this motif, derived from the Biblical story of Jonah, is a widespread device, appearing, for instance, in Child ballad 57 Brown Robyns Confession. In 1953, Aleksandr Ptushko directed a film based on the opera entitled Sadko, a shortened and heavily modified American version of this film entitled The Magic Voyage of Sinbad was spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sadko can be viewed as a metaphor for Yaroslav the Wise, the liberation of the Novgorodian people by Sadko can also be linked to the establishment of the Novgorod Republic by Yaroslav. Sadko may also be based on a certain Sedko Sitinits, who is mentioned in the Novgorodian First Chronicle as the patron of the stone Church of Boris, Sadko Sadko Jūratė and Kastytis - a similar Lithuanian legend. Sadko the bylina Prose version Sadko as collected by Arthur Ransome in Old Peters Russian Tales Sadko as collected by Arthur Ransome in Old Peters Russian Tales as a librivox. org audiobook
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Bylina
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Bylina or Starina is a traditional East Slavic oral epic narrative poem. Byliny songs are based on historical fact, greatly embellished with fantasy or hyperbole to create their songs. The word Bylina is derived from the past tense of the verb “to be”, later scholars believe that Sakharov misunderstood the word bylina in the opening of Igor’ Tale as “an ancient poem. ”The folk singers of byliny called these songs stariny or starinki meaning “stories of old”. Byliny incorporate elements of history from several epochs into their stories, for example, byliny singers refer to many of the enemies of the Kievan people as Tartars though the stories originally referred to other steppe peoples in conflict with Kievan Rus’. The character of Prince Vladimir refers to a generalized “epic Vladimir” rather than an allusion to a specific historical Vladimir, byliny have been collected in Russia since the seventeenth century, initially they were published for entertainment in prose paraphrases. The Cossack Kirsha Danilov compiled the most notable of the collections in the Ural region for the mill owner Prokofi Demidov in the middle of the eighteenth century. A storm stranded Rybnikov on an island in Lake Onega where he heard the sound of a bylina being sung, he persuaded the singer to repeat the song and wrote down his words. He proceeded to collect several hundred bylina, all of which he recorded from spoken paraphrase, another influential collector, Alexander Gilferding, published one collection entitled Onega Bylinas Recorded by A. F. Gilferding in the Summer of 1871. He improved upon Rybnikov’s work by transcribing the byliny directly from the performance rather than the spoken retellings. There are several ways to categorize bylina, and scholars disagree on which classification to use, scholars from the mythological school differentiate between byliny about ‘older’ and ‘younger’ heroes. The ‘older’ heroes resembled mythological figures, while the ‘younger’ heroes resembled ordinary human beings, the historical school classifies byliny based on the principality in which the story took place, as in Kivan, Novgorodian, and Galician-Volhynian cycles. The mythological byliny of giants and the like probably originated long before the Kievan state was founded, scholars of the historical school often consider mythological byliny separately. Other scholars group byliny based on content, including heroic, fairy tale type, novella type, most scholars prefer classification based on principalities. Because of their nature as performed pieces, byliny singers employ basically linear, byliny structure typically includes three basic parts, introduction, narrative portion and epilogue. The introduction sometimes includes a verse to entice the audience to listen, introductions often describe heroes at a feast being given a task or setting out on a mission. The narrative portion relates the adventure with exaggerated details and hyperbole to make the more exciting. The epilogue refers to the reward for the mission, a moral or a reference to the sea, to help listeners grasp the story, singers used ‘tag lines’ to preface speeches or dialogues, setting up for the audience who is talking to whom. Singers may use their telling of these scenes in many of their songs, christian beliefs mixed with pre-Christian ideas of magic and paganism in byliny, for instance, saints would appear to defend mortals against darkness
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Prince Igor
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Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue, written and composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the Ancient Russian epic The Lay of Igors Host and he also incorporated material drawn from two medieval Kievan chronicles. The opera was unfinished upon the composers death in 1887 and was edited and completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It was first performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1890, original Composition, 1869–1887 After briefly considering Lev Meis The Tsars Bride as a subject, Borodin began looking for a new project for his first opera. Vladimir Stasov, critic and advisor to The Mighty Handful, suggested The Lay of Igors Host, a 12th-century epic prose poem, initially, Borodin found the proposition intriguing, but daunting, Your outline is so complete that everything seems clear to me and suits me perfectly. But will I manage to carry out my own task to the end, as they say here, He who is afraid of the wolf doesnt go into the woods. So I shall give it a try and he soon began to have doubts and ceased composing. He expressed his misgivings in a letter to his wife, There is too little drama here, to me, opera without drama, in the strict sense, is unnatural. Of the eight numbers he had composed for Act 4 of Mlada, Borodin returned to Prince Igor in 1874, inspired by the success of his colleagues Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky in the staging of their historical operas, The Maid of Pskov and Boris Godunov. This period also marks the creation of two new characters, the deserters Skula and Yeroshka, who have much in common with the rogue monks Varlaam and Misail in Boris Godunov. Which, in the epilogue of the opera extolled Igors exploits, was shifted by the author himself to the prologue of the opera, at present this chorus extolls Igor as he starts on his expedition against the Polovtsy. The episodes of the eclipse, of the parting from Yaroslavna. In those days this whole part was non-existent, and the chorus formed one unbroken number of rather considerable dimensions. The idea of an epilogue in the original scenario was no doubt inspired by the example of A Life for the Tsar by Mikhail Glinka. Borodins primary occupation was chemistry, including research and teaching, however, he also spent much time in support of womens causes, much to the consternation of his fellow composers, who felt he should devote his time and talent to music. In 1876, a frustrated Stasov gave up hope that Borodin would ever finish Prince Igor and it was high time to copy out the parts. In despair I heaped reproaches on Borodin and he, too, was none too happy. At last, giving up all hope, I offered to him with the orchestration
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Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov
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Pavel Mikhaylovich Tretyakov was a Russian businessman, patron of art, collector, and philanthropist who gave his name to the Tretyakov Gallery and Tretyakov Drive in Moscow. His brother Sergei Tretyakov was also a patron of art. In the first half of 1850 he inherited his fathers business and built up a trade in flax, linen processing. Together with other Moscow businessmen he acted as the founder of the Moscow merchant bank and he amassed a considerable fortune, consisting of real estate, securities, money and bills. Tretyakov started to collect art in 1854 at the age of 22 and he laid down for himself the aim of creating a Russian National Gallery. In his collection Tretyakov included the most valuable and remarkable products, first of all the contemporaries and he bought paintings at exhibitions and directly from artists studios, sometimes he bought the whole series, in 1874 he acquired V. V. Vereschagins Turkestan series, in 1880 - his Indian series, in his collection there were over 80 studies by Alexander Ivanov. In 1885 Tretyakov bought 102 studies by V. D, polenov painted by the artist during journeys across Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Palestine. He got also acquired Vasnetsov’s collection of the sketches made during work above lists in the Kiev St Volodymyrs Cathedral, Tretyakov had the fullest collection of such artists as, V. G. Kramskoi, Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov, I. I and he also conceived the creation of a Russian pantheon - a portrait gallery of famous Russians. He commissioned especially for it portraits of figures of culture from leading masters of this genre - N. N. Ge, Kramskoi, N. V. Nevrev, Perov, in 1870-80 Tretyakov also began to collect illustrations, since 1890 he formed a collection of icons. During his lifetime they were not included in an exhibition, being kept in the owners study and he also collected sculpture, however this part of his collection was small. At first the gallery was located in Tretyakov’s house in Lavrushenski pereulok, but as his collection expanded he decided to reconstruct his house for his collection. In 1870-1880 the house was reconstructed by the architect Kaminski. Tretyakov wanted to transfer the gallery to the city as discreetly as possible, without any noise, he want to be in the center of general attention. But it was not possible to do it and he was very dissatisfied, from 1881 his gallery became popular. In 1892 Tretyakov inherited a collection of Western European painting from his brother, the collection in Tretyakov’s gallery was equal in importance with the largest museums in Russia at that time, and became one of sights of Moscow
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Abramtsevo Colony
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Abramtsevo is an estate located north of Moscow, in the proximity of Khotkovo, that became a center for the Slavophile movement and artistic activity in the 19th century. The estate is located in the village of the same name, originally owned by author Sergei Aksakov, other writers and artists — such as Nikolai Gogol — at first came there as his guests. Under Aksakov, visitors to the estate discussed ways of ridding Russian art of Western influences to revive a national style. In 1870, eleven years after Aksakovs death, it was purchased by Savva Mamontov, under Mamontov, Russian themes and folk art flourished there. Several workshops were set up there to produce furniture, ceramic tiles. One building, the manor, is said to have been the model for the estate in which Anton Chekhov set The Cherry Orchard. The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture ISBN 0-520-06929-3 Abramstevo National Park Abramtsevo Museum The Moscow Times on Abramtsevo
Media related to Viktor Vasnetsov at Wikimedia Commons
