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Ashmolean Manuscripts
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel. The present building was built between 1841 and 1845. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment, and in November 2011, new galleries focusing on Egypt and Nubia were unveiled. In May 2016, the museum also opened redisplayed galleries of 19th-century art. History Broad Street The museum opened on 24 May 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. The building on Broad Street (later known as the Old Ashmolean) is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. Elias Ashmole had acquired the collection from the gardeners, travellers, and collectors Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Façade
A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loan word from the French (), which means ' frontage' or ' face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint, as it sets the tone for the rest of the building. From the engineering perspective, the façade is also of great importance due to its impact on energy efficiency. For historical façades, many local zoning regulations or other laws greatly restrict or even forbid their alteration. Etymology The word is a loanword from the French , which in turn comes from the Italian , from meaning 'face', ultimately from post-classical Latin . The earliest usage recorded by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is 1656. Façades added to earlier buildings It was quite common in the Georgian period for existing houses in English towns to be given a fashionable new façade. For example, in the city of Bath, The Bunch of Grapes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broad Street, Oxford
Broad Street is a wide street in central Oxford, England, just north of the former city wall. The street is known for its bookshops, including the original Blackwell's bookshop at number 50, located here due to the University of Oxford. Among residents, the street is traditionally known as The Broad. Location In Broad Street are Balliol College, Oxford, Balliol College, Trinity College, Oxford, Trinity College, Exeter College, Oxford, Exeter College (front entrance in the adjoining Turl Street). The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, Museum of the History of Science (in the original Ashmolean Museum building), the Clarendon Building, the Sheldonian Theatre and the Weston Library (renamed in 2015, part of the Bodleian Library, the main University library in Oxford) are important historical Oxford University buildings at the eastern end of the street. These buildings form the ''de facto'' centre of the University, since most academic buildings in the centre of Oxford are own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Drury Edward Fortnum
Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820–1899), often known as C. Drury E. Fortnum, was an English art collector and historian, known as a benefactor of the University of Oxford. Life Born on 2 March 1820, Fortnum was the surviving son of Charles Fortnum (1770–1860), by his wife Laetitia (née Stevens), widow of Robert Basden of the Royal Navy. Considered to have delicate health, he was privately educated. In 1840 Fortnum went to South Australia, where he acquired a cattle ranch. He discovered the Montacute copper mine in the Mount Lofty Ranges, ten miles from Adelaide, but made no profit from it. Leaving Australia in 1845, he travelled in Europe, mainly engaged in collecting works of art. On settling in England he became known as an authority. In 1858 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; and in 1889 a trustee of the British Museum. Fortnum was an alderman of Middlesex county council, and a deputy-lieutenant of the county. He was vice-president of the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett (, modern variant ; 15 April 1817 – 1 October 1893) was an English tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian, an Anglican cleric, and a translator of Plato and Thucydides. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford. Early life Jowett was born in Camberwell, London, the third of nine children. His father was a furrier originally from a Yorkshire family that, for three generations, had been supporters of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, and an author of a metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms. His mother, Isabella Langhorne (1790–1869), was related to John Langhorne, the poet and translator of Plutarch. At the age of 12, Jowett was placed on the foundation of St Paul's School (then in St Paul's Churchyard) where he soon gained a reputation as a precocious classical scholar. Aged 18 he was awarded an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his life. He beg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Evans
Sir Arthur John Evans (8 July 1851 – 11 July 1941) was a British archaeologist and pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age. He is most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete. Based on the structures and artifacts found there and throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Evans found that he needed to distinguish the Minoan civilisation from Mycenaean Greece. Evans was also the first to define Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, as well as an earlier pictographic writing. Biographical background Family Arthur Evans was born in Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England, the first child of John Evans (1823–1908) and Harriet Ann Dickinson (born 1824), the daughter of John's employer, John Dickinson (1782–1869), the inventor and founder of Messrs John Dickinson, a paper mill. John Evans came from a family of men who were both educated and intellectually active but undistinguished by either wealth or aristocr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ionic Order
The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite order. Of the three classical canonic orders, the Corinthian order has the narrowest columns, followed by the Ionic order, with the Doric order having the widest columns. The Ionic capital is characterized by the use of volutes. The Ionic columns normally stand on a base which separates the shaft of the column from the stylobate or platform while the cap is usually enriched with egg-and-dart. The ancient architect and architectural historian Vitruvius associates the Ionic with feminine proportions (the Doric representing the masculine). Description Capital The major features of the Ionic order are the volutes of its capital, which have been the subject of much theoretical and practical discourse, based on a brief and obscure pas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taylor Institution
The Taylor Institution (commonly known as the Taylorian) is the Oxford University library dedicated to the study of the languages of Europe. Its building also includes lecture rooms used by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford. Since 1889, an Annual Lecture on a subject of Foreign Literature has been given at the Taylorian Institution. History The Taylor Institution was established in 1845, funded largely by a bequest from the estate of the notable architect Sir Robert Taylor (1714–1788). Modern European languages were not then taught at the University. (Not until 1903 were a Medieval and Modern Languages Faculty and Honours School instituted in Oxford.) Since the Bodleian Library lacked space, the Taylorian was initially used to house things as varied as Stubbs's lectures on English history and the Hope collection of butterflies. Description The institution and its library are found in the east wing of a neo-classical building at the so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthetic attitude dependent on principles based in the culture, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, with the emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, clarity of structure, perfection, restrained emotion, as well as explicit appeal to the intellect. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the ''Discobolus'' Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images." Classicism, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Robert Cockerell
Charles Robert Cockerell (27 April 1788 – 17 September 1863) was an English architect, archaeologist, and writer. He studied architecture under Robert Smirke. He went on an extended Grand Tour lasting seven years, mainly spent in Greece. He was involved in major archaeological discoveries while in Greece. On returning to London, he set up a successful architectural practice. Appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts, he served in that position between 1839 and 1859. He wrote many articles and books on both archaeology and architecture. In 1848, he became the first recipient of the Royal Gold Medal. Background and education Charles Robert Cockerell was born in London on 27 April 1788, the third of eleven children of Samuel Pepys Cockerell, educated at Westminster School from 1802, where he received an education in Latin and the Classics. From the age of sixteen, he trained in the architectural practice of his father, who held the post of surveyor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ashmolean Museum And Taylorian Institute, Oxford; Panoramic Wellcome V0014258
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel. The present building was built between 1841 and 1845. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment, and in November 2011, new galleries focusing on Egypt and Nubia were unveiled. In May 2016, the museum also opened redisplayed galleries of 19th-century art. History Broad Street The museum opened on 24 May 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. The building on Broad Street (later known as the Old Ashmolean) is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. Elias Ashmole had acquired the collection from the gardeners, travellers, and collectors Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dodo
The dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest genetic relative was the also-extinct Rodrigues solitaire. The two formed the subfamily Raphinae, a clade of extinct flightless birds that were a part of the family which includes pigeons and doves. The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but it is now believed that this assumption was merely confusion based on the also-extinct Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos. Subfossil remains show the dodo was about tall and may have weighed in the wild. The dodo's appearance in life is evidenced only by drawings, paintings, and written accounts from the 17th century. Since these portraits vary considerably, and since only some of the illustrations are known to have been drawn from live specim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Tradescant The Younger
John Tradescant the Younger (; 4 August 1608 – 22 April 1662), son of John Tradescant the Elder, was a botanist and gardener. The standard author abbreviation Trad. is applied to species he described. Biography Son of John Tradescant the Elder, he was born in Meopham, Kent, and educated at The King's School, Canterbury. Like his father, who collected specimens and rarities on his many trips abroad, he undertook collecting expeditions to Virginia between 1628 and 1637 (and possibly two more trips by 1662, though Potter and other authors doubt this). Among the seeds he brought back, to introduce to English gardens were great American trees, including magnolias, bald cypress and tulip tree, and garden plants such as phlox and asters. John Tradescant the Younger added his American acquisitions to the family's cabinet of curiosities, known as The Ark. These included the ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan, an important Native American relic. South Lambeth Road in Vauxha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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