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Aristotle Contemplating A Bust Of Homer
''Aristotle with a Bust of Homer'' ( nl, Aristoteles bij de buste van Homerus), also known as ''Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer'', is an oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt that depicts Aristotle wearing a gold chain and contemplating a sculpted bust of Homer. It was created as a commission for Don Antonio Ruffo's collection. It was bought and sold by several collectors until it was eventually purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The mysterious tone in the painting has led several scholars to different interpretations of Rembrandt's theme. Background Origins ''Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer'' was painted in 1653, as a commission from a Sicilian nobleman named Don Antonio Ruffo, who did not request any particular subject. Despite not knowing what Rembrandt would create, he was already eager to hang it in his Hall of Fame. Don Antonio planned to commission companion pieces for Rembrandt's painting from the Italian painter Guercino. Guercino decided th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history.Gombrich, p. 420. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt's works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), whilst antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was prolific and innovative. This era gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso ( , also , ; 11 March 154425 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' (Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the Siege of Jerusalem (1099), Siege of Jerusalem of 1099. Tasso had mental illness and died a few days before he was to be Poet laureate, crowned on the Capitoline Hill as the king of poets by Clement VIII, Pope Clement VIII. His work was widely translated and adapted, and until the beginning of the 20th century, he remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe. Biography Early life Born in Sorrento, Torquato was the son of Bernardo Tasso, a nobleman of Bergamo and an epic and lyric poet of considerable fame in his day, and his wife Porzia de Rossi, a noblewoman born in Naples of Tuscany, Tuscan origins. His father had for many years been secretary in the service of F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paintings By Rembrandt
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. In art, the term ''painting ''describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called "a painting"). The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate multiple other materials, including sand, clay, paper, plaster, gold leaf, and even whole objects. Painting is an important form in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture (as in gestural painting), narration (as in narrative art), and abstraction (as in abstract art). Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in still life and landscape painting), photographic, abstract, nar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rembrandt Research Project
The Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) was an initiative of the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), which is the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Its purpose was to organize and categorize research on Rembrandt van Rijn, with the aim of discovering new facts about this Dutch Golden Age painter and his studio. The project started in 1968 and was sponsored by NWO until 1998. Research continued until 2014. It was the authority on Rembrandt and had the final say in whether a painting is ''genuine''. The documentation generated by the project was transferred to the Netherlands Institute for Art History and renamed the Rembrandt Database. Results As a result of the project, which analyzed documentation, techniques, and forensic research on Rembrandt paintings from his early years in Leiden until his death, the number of signed Rembrandt ''self-portraits'' around the world has been reduced by half. Also, more paintings have been attributed to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Picture This (novel)
''Picture This'' is a 1988 novel from Joseph Heller, the satiric author of the acclaimed ''Catch-22''. Plot The novel is an eclectic historical journey across multiple periods of history, all connected by a single painting: Rembrandt van Rijn's ''Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer''. The work jumps from the golden age of Athens, to 17th Century Holland, to the rise of the American Empire; hopscotching from Aristotle, to Rembrandt, to Socrates, and back to Heller and even Jimmy Carter. It examines fundamental dichotomies in human existence under the guise of satire. Major themes Heller concludes that we do not learn from history (and in fact so much of history may be nonfactual that learning may be impossible). Being a pessimist chronicler of the American Century, his main unspoken theme is of course parallels between the onetime Hellenic overlord respective the onetime ruler of the seas, and his home country. This is most apparent in his treatment of the peak and downfall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel ''Catch-22'', a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. Early years Heller was born on May 1, 1923 in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York,. the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller, from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; as a teenager, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to the New York '' Daily News'', which rejected it. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. His unit was the 488th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bomb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.Galilei, Galileo (1974) ''Two New Sciences'', trans. Stillman Drake, (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 217, 225, 296–67.Clagett, Marshall (1961) ''The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages''. Madison, Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 218–19, 252–55, 346, 409–16, 547, 576–78, 673–82 Hannam, p. 342 The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe starting towards the second half of the Renaissance period, with the 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publication '' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') often cited as its beginning. The era of the Scientific Renaissance focused to some degree on recovering the knowledge of the ancients, and is considered to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be Boundaries between the continents of Earth#Asia and Europe, separated from Asia by the drainage divide, watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural (river), Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julius S
The gens Julia (''gēns Iūlia'', ) was one of the most prominent patrician families in ancient Rome. Members of the gens attained the highest dignities of the state in the earliest times of the Republic. The first of the family to obtain the consulship was Gaius Julius Iulus in 489 BC. The gens is perhaps best known, however, for Gaius Julius Caesar, the dictator and grand uncle of the emperor Augustus, through whom the name was passed to the so-called Julio-Claudian dynasty of the first century AD. The Julius became very common in imperial times, as the descendants of persons enrolled as citizens under the early emperors began to make their mark in history.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vol. II, pp. 642, 643. Origin The Julii were of Alban origin, mentioned as one of the leading Alban houses, which Tullus Hostilius removed to Rome upon the destruction of Alba Longa. The Julii also existed at an early period at Bovillae, evidenced by a very a ... [...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] |
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the Geography of Greece, mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, featuring List of islands of Greece, thousands of islands. The country consists of nine Geographic regions of Greece, traditional geographic regions, and has a population of approximately 10.4 million. Athens is the nation's capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras. Greece is considered the cradle of Western culture, Western civilization, being the birthplace of Athenian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Schama
Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled ''Citizens'', published in 1989. In the United Kingdom, he is perhaps best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series '' A History of Britain'' broadcast between 2000 and 2002. Schama was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List. Early life and education Schama was born in Marylebone, London. His mother, Gertie (née Steinberg), was from an Ashkenazi Lithuanian Jewish family (from Kaunas, present-day Lithuania), and his father, Arthur Schama, was of Sephardi Jewish background (from Smyrna, present-day İzmir in Turkey), later moving through Moldova and Romania. In the mid-1940s, the family moved to Southend-on-Sea in E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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