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Agostino Vespucci
Agostino Vespucci was a Florentine chancellery official, clerk, and assistant to Niccolò Machiavelli, among others. He is most well known for helping to confirm the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's ''Mona Lisa'' as Lisa del Giocondo, but is also the author of a number of surviving letters and manuscripts. ''Mona Lisa'' The identity of the young woman in Leonardo's ''Mona Lisa'' had been difficult to ascertain due to a lack of decisive contemporary sources of information about the painting. This changed upon the discovery of a comment written by Vespucci in the margin of a 1477 edition of Cicero's ', now held by the Heidelberg University Library. The discovery was made by Dr. Armin Schlechter in 2005 while he was cataloguing the book for an incunabula exhibit at the library. The unabbreviated Latin text of the note is as follows: ' (English: "Apelles the painter. That is the way Leonardo da Vinci does it with all of his pictures, like, for example, with the countenance of Lisa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian People
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Epistulae Ad Familiares
''Epistulae ad Familiares'' (''Letters to Friends'') is a collection of letters between Roman politician and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and various public and private figures. The letters in this collection, together with Cicero's other letters, are considered the most reliable sources of information for the period leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic. Traditionally spanning 16 books, and featuring letters from 62 to 43 BCE, the collection was likely first published by Cicero's freedman and personal secretary Marcus Tullius Tiro sometime after Cicero's death in 43 BCE. A number of manuscript copies of this collection have reached modern times. The earliest witness to the text is a palimpsest on a single leaf, written in uncials of the fifth or sixth century ( CLA IV.443; it contains portions of letters 6.9 and 6.10. Two more fragments from 12th-century manuscripts – the outer bifolium of an eight-sheet gathering containing 2.1.1–2.17.4, and a single leaf co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
15th-century Births
The 15th century was the century which spans the Julian dates from 1 January 1401 ( MCDI) to 31 December 1500 ( MD). In Europe, the 15th century includes parts of the Late Middle Ages, the Early Renaissance, and the early modern period. Many technological, social and cultural developments of the 15th century can in retrospect be seen as heralding the "European miracle" of the following centuries. The architectural perspective, and the modern fields which are known today as banking and accounting were founded in Italy. The Hundred Years' War ended with a decisive French victory over the English in the Battle of Castillon. Financial troubles in England following the conflict resulted in the Wars of the Roses, a series of dynastic wars for the throne of England. The conflicts ended with the defeat of Richard III by Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field, establishing the Tudor dynasty in the later part of the century. Constantinople, known as the capital of the wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madonna
Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, and visual presentation. She has pushed the boundaries of artistic expression in mainstream music, while continuing to maintain control over every aspect of her career. Her works, which incorporate social, political, sexual, and religious themes, have generated both controversy and critical acclaim. A prominent cultural figure crossing both the 20th and 21st centuries, Madonna remains one of the most "well-documented figures of the modern age", with a broad amount of scholarly reviews and literature works on her, as well as an academic mini subdiscipline devoted to her named Madonna studies. At 20 years old, Madonna moved to New York City in 1978 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing as a drummer, guitarist, and vocalist in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (, also , ; 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance Master, who worked as a painter, architect, engineer, writer, and historian, who is best known for his work ''The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideological foundation of all art-historical writing, and the basis for biographies of several Renaissance artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Vasari designed the ''Tomb of Michelangelo'' in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence that was completed in 1578. Based on Vasari's text in print about Giotto's new manner of painting as a ''rinascita'' (rebirth), author Jules Michelet in his ''Histoire de France'' (1835) suggested adoption of Vasari's concept, using the term ''Renaissance'' (rebirth, in French) to distinguish the cultural change. The term was adopted thereafter in historiography and still is in use today. Life Vasari was born prematurely on 30 July 1511 in Arezzo, Tuscany. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apelles
Apelles of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἀπελλῆς; fl. 4th century BC) was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom much of modern scholars' knowledge of this artist is owed (''Naturalis Historia'' 35.36.79–97 and ''passim''), rated him superior to preceding and subsequent artists. He dated Apelles to the 112th Olympiad (332–329 BC), possibly because he had produced a portrait of Alexander the Great. Biography Probably born at Colophon in Ionia, he first studied under Ephorus of Ephesus, but after he had attained some celebrity he became a student to Pamphilus at Sicyon He thus combined the Dorian thoroughness with the Ionic grace. Attracted to the court of Philip II, he painted him and the young Alexander with such success that he became the recognized court painter of Macedon, and his picture of Alexander holding a thunderbolt ranked in the minds of many with the Alexander with the spear of the sculptor Lysippus. Hundreds of years later, Plutar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gonfaloniere
The Gonfalonier (in Italian: ''Gonfaloniere'') was the holder of a highly prestigious communal office in medieval and Renaissance Italy, notably in Florence and the Papal States. The name derives from ''gonfalone'' (in English, gonfalon), the term used for the banners of such communes. In Florence, the office was known as Gonfalonier of Justice (''Gonfaloniere di Giustizia'') and was held by one of the nine citizens selected by the drawing lots every two months, who formed the city's government, or Signoria. In the papal states, it was known as Gonfalonier of the Church or Papal Gonfalonier. Other central and northern Italian communes, from Spoleto to the County of Savoy, elected or appointed ''gonfalonieri.'' The Bentivoglio family of Bologna aspired to this office during the sixteenth century. However, by the year 1622, when Artemisia Gentileschi painted a portrait of Pietro Gentile as a gonfaloniere of Bologna, with the ''gonfalone'' in the background, the office had merely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Virgin And Child With Saint Anne And Saint John The Baptist
''The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist'', sometimes called ''The Burlington House Cartoon'', is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing is in charcoal and black and white chalk, on eight sheets of paper that are glued together. Because of its large size and format the drawing is presumed to be a modello, cartoon for a painting. No painting by Leonardo exists that is based directly on this cartoon, although the drawing may have been in preparation for a now lost or unexecuted painting commissioned by Louis XII. The drawing is the only extant larger-scale drawing by the artist. The drawing depicts the Mary (mother of Jesus), Virgin Mary seated on the thigh of her mother, Saint Anne, while holding the Christ Child as Christ's young cousin, John the Baptist, stands to the right. It currently hangs in the National Gallery, London, National Gallery in London. It was executed either around 1499–1500, at the end of the artist's first Milanese period, or a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Virgin And Child With Saint Anne (Leonardo)
''The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne'' is an unfinished oil painting by High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to . It depicts Saint Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo. History It is likely that the painting was commissioned by King Louis XII of France following the birth of his daughter Claude in 1499, but it was never delivered to him. Leonardo probed into incorporating these figures together by drawing the '' Burlington House Cartoon'' (National Gallery). In 2008, a curator at the Louvre discovered several faint sketches believed to have been made by Leonardo on the back of the painting. Infrared reflectography was used to reveal a "7-by-4 inch drawing of a horse's head", which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incunable
In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were produced before the printing press became widespread on the continent and are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand. Some authorities include block books from the same time period as incunabula, whereas others limit the term to works printed using movable type. there are about 30,000 distinct incunable editions known. The probable number of surviving individual copies is much higher, estimated at around 125,000 in Germany alone. Through statistical analysis, it is estimated that the number of lost editions is at least 20,000. Around 550,000 copies of around 27,500 different works have been preserved worldwide. Terminology Incunable is the anglicised form of ''incunabulum'', reconstructed singular of Latin ''i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime, and it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century. Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
