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Antikensammlung Berlin
The Antikensammlung Berlin (Berlin antiquities collection) is one of the most important collections of classical art in the world, now held in the Altes Museum and Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany. It contains thousands of ancient archaeological artefacts from the ancient Greek, Roman, Etruscan and Cypriot civilizations. Its main attraction is the Pergamon Altar and Greek and Roman architectural elements from Priene, Magnesia, Baalbek and Falerii. In addition, the collection includes a large number of ancient sculptures, vases, terracottas, bronzes, sarcophagi, engraved gems and metalwork. History of the collection Foundation The collection's foundations were laid in the time of the Brandenburg Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I by ancient sculptures looted in 1656 from the ''Villa Regia'' Palace in Warsaw. The obtained sculptures were purchased in Italy by Polish kings Sigismund III Vasa and Władysław IV Vasa. This core of the collection, originally housed at the Berlin City ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antiquities
Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Mesolithic, and other civilizations from Asia and elsewhere may also be covered by the term. The phenomenon of giving a high value to ancient artifacts is found in other cultures, notably China, where Chinese ritual bronzes, three to two thousand years old, have been avidly collected and imitated for centuries, and the Pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, where in particular the artifacts of the earliest Olmec civilization are found reburied in significant sites of later cultures up to the Spanish Conquest. A person who studies antiquities, as opposed to just collecting them, is often called an antiquarian. Definition The definition of the term is not always precise, and institutional definitions such as museum "Departments of Antiquities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officially estimated at 1.86 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.1 million residents, which makes Warsaw the 7th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers . Warsaw is an Alpha global city, a major cultural, political and economic hub, and the country's seat of government. Warsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Kraków. Warsaw served as the de facto capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nile Mosaic Of Palestrina
300px, The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina. The Palestrina Mosaic or Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a late Hellenistic floor mosaic depicting the Nile in its passage from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean. The mosaic was part of a Classical sanctuary-grotto in Palestrina, a town east of Ancient Rome, in central Italy. It has a width of 5.85 metres and a height of 4.31 metres and provides a glimpse into the Roman fascination with ancient Egyptian exoticism in the 1st century BC, both as an early manifestation of the role of Egypt in the Roman imagination and an example of the genre of "Nilotic landscape", with a long iconographic history in Egypt and the Aegean. Description The mosaic, with an arch-headed framing that identifies its original location as flooring an apse in a grotto, features detailed depictions of Ptolemaic Greeks, Aethiopians in hunting scenes, and various animals of the Nile river. It is the earliest Roman depiction of Nilotic scenes, of which several more were uncov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schloss Sanssouci
Sanssouci () is a historical building in Potsdam, near Berlin. Built by Prussian King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, it is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it, too, is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the surrounding park. The palace was designed and built by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff between 1745 and 1747 to meet Frederick's need for a private residence where he could escape the pomp and ceremony of the royal court. The palace's name is a French phrase (''sans souci'') that translates as "without concerns", meaning "without worries" or "carefree", emphasising that the palace was meant as a place of relaxation, rather than a seat of power. Sanssouci is little more than a large, single-story villa—more like the Château de Marly than Versailles. Containing just ten principal rooms, it was built on the brow of a ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melchior De Polignac
Melchior Cardinal de Polignac (11 October 1661 – 20 November 1742) was a French diplomat, Cardinal and neo-Latin poet. Second son of Armand XVI, marquis de Polignac and Marquis Chalancon, Governor of Puy; and Jacqueline de Beauvoir -Grimoard-de Roure (his third wife), Melchior de Polignac was born at Chateau de la Ronte, near Puy en Vélay, Lavoûte-sur-Loire, Haute-Loire, Auvergne. Education and early career A precocious child, he was taken by his uncle to Paris, and installed in the Jesuit Collège de Clermont (later named the Collège de Louis le Grand). At the appropriate time, he passed to the Collège de Harcourt, where thanks to the misdirected efforts of a teacher who was an enthusiast for Aristotle, Polignac adopted the opposite view and became a Cartesian. His thesis in Theology at the Sorbonne (1683) discussed the Kings of Judah who had destroyed the "high places". He was either prescient, or aware of discussion around Louis XIV which led in two years to the revoca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick II Of Prussia
Frederick II (german: Friedrich II.; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his re-organisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Polish Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (german: links=no, Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed "Old Fritz" (german: links=no, "Der Alte Fritz"). In his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than in the art of war, which led to clashes with his authoritarian father, Frederick William I of Prussi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustus II The Strong
Augustus II; german: August der Starke; lt, Augustas II; in Saxony also known as Frederick Augustus I – Friedrich August I (12 May 16701 February 1733), most commonly known as Augustus the Strong, was Elector of Saxony from 1694 as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in the years 1697–1706 and from 1709 until his death in 1733. He belonged to the Albertine line of the House of Wettin. Augustus' great physical strength earned him the nicknames "the Strong", "the Saxon Hercules" and "Iron-Hand". He liked to show that he lived up to his name by breaking horseshoes with his bare hands and engaging in fox tossing by holding the end of his sling with just one finger while two of the strongest men in his court held the other end.Sacheverell Sitwell. ''The Hunters and the Hunted'', p. 60. Macmillan, 1947. He is also notable for fathering a very large number of children. In order to be elected King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Augustus converted to Roman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick William I Of Prussia
Frederick William I (german: Friedrich Wilhelm I.; 14 August 1688 – 31 May 1740), known as the "Soldier King" (german: Soldatenkönig), was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until his death in 1740, as well as Prince of Neuchâtel. He was succeeded by his son, Frederick the Great. Early years He was born in Berlin to King Frederick I of Prussia and Princess Sophia Charlotte of Hanover. During his first years, he was raised by the Huguenot governess Marthe de Roucoulle. When Great Northern War plague outbreak devastated Prussia, the inefficiency and corruption of the king's favorite ministers and senior officials were highlighted. Frederick William with a party that formed at the court brought down the leading minister Johann Kasimir Kolbe von Wartenberg and his cronies following an official investigation that exposed Wartenberg's huge-scale misappropriation and embezzlement. His close associate August David zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein was imprisoned at Sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Pietro Bellori
Giovanni Pietro Bellori (15 January 1613 – 19 February 1696), also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian painter and antiquarian, but, more famously, a prominent biographer of artists of the 17th century, equivalent to Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century. His ''Lives of the Artists'' (''Vite de' Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Moderni''), published in 1672, was influential in consolidating and promoting the theoretical case for classical idealism in art. «Bellori is the "predecessor of Winckelmann" not only as an antiquarian but also as an art theorist. Winckelmann's theory of the "ideally beautiful" as he expounds it in ''Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums'', IV.2.33 ff., thoroughly agrees—except for the somewhat stronger Neoplatonic impact, which is to be explained perhaps more as an influence of Raphael Mengs than as an influence of Shaftesbury—with the content of Bellori's ''Idea'' (to which Winckelmann also owes his acquaintance with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick I Of Prussia
Frederick I (german: Friedrich I.; 11 July 1657 – 25 February 1713), of the Hohenzollern dynasty, was (as Frederick III) Elector of Brandenburg (1688–1713) and Duke of Prussia in personal union ( Brandenburg-Prussia). The latter function he upgraded to royalty, becoming the first King in Prussia (1701–1713). From 1707 he was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel (german: Fürstentum Neuenburg). Biography Family Born in Königsberg, Frederick was the third son of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg by his father's first marriage to Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau, eldest daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and Amalia of Solms-Braunfels. His maternal cousin was King William III of England. Upon the death of his father on 29 April 1688, Frederick became Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia. Right after ascending the throne Frederick founded a new city southerly adjacent to Dorotheenstadt and named it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerrit Reynst
Gerrit Reynst (1599 – 29 June 1658) (also known as Gerard Reynst) was, like his younger brother Jan (1601–1646), a Dutch merchant and art collector from Amsterdam, with his brother owner of the Reynst Collection. He was an alderman and member of the town council, entering it in 1646. Life Reynst was born in Amsterdam, the son of the merchant Gerard Reynst from the Reynst family, who in the year 1614 became the second Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, and Margrieta Nicquet, whose merchant brother Jacques Nicquet was a fervent art collector. Gerard Jr. lived in a house called De Hoop at Keizersgracht 209 that he later made into an art museum. His brother Jan was a collector of antique statuary and Italian paintings who was able to purchase the collection of the estate Andrea Vendramin in 1629, 230 sculptures and 140 paintings. After Jan's death in 1646 almost all of these were sent to Gerard, who published a selection of 112 items in the collection with the he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stadtschloss, Berlin
The Berlin Palace (german: Berliner Schloss), formally the Royal Palace (german: Königliches Schloss), on the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of King Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture. The former royal palace was one of Berlin’s largest buildings and shaped the cityscape with its dome. Used for various government functions after the fall of the monarchy in 1918, it was damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, and was demolished by the East German authorities in 1950. In the 1970s, it became the location of the modernist East German Palace of the Republic (the central government building of East Germany). After German reunification and several years of debate and discussion, particularly regarding the fraught historical legacy of both building ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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