Charles Christian Reisen
Charles Christian Reisen (1680 – 15 December 1725) was an English gem-engraver. Life He was born in the parish of St. Clement Danes, London, the eldest son of Christian Reisen, a goldsmith, of Trondheim in Norway. The elder Reisen, leaving Norway, visited Scotland about 1664, and worked for two years at Aberdeen for a goldsmith named Melvin. In September 1666 he came to London, and began to work as an engraver of seals. He was afterwards confined to the Tower for four years on suspicion of engraving dies for coining, but was discharged without a trial, and died in England about 1700, leaving a widow and several children. Charles Christian Reisen, who had been instructed as a gem and seal engraver under his father's instruction, became the support of the family, being mainly employed in cutting crests and arms. He gained little from an introduction to Prince George of Denmark, but attracted the attention of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, who permitted him to study in his library ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Engraved Gem
An engraved gem, frequently referred to as an intaglio, is a small and usually semi-precious gemstone that has been carved, in the Western tradition normally with images or inscriptions only on one face. The engraving of gemstones was a major luxury art form in the Ancient world, and an important one in some later periods. Strictly speaking, ''engraving'' means carving ''in intaglio'' (with the design cut ''into'' the flat background of the stone), but relief carvings (with the design projecting ''out of'' the background as in nearly all cameos) are also covered by the term. This article uses ''cameo'' in its strict sense, to denote a carving exploiting layers of differently coloured stone. The activity is also called ''gem carving'' and the artists ''gem-cutters''. References to antique gems and intaglios in a jewellery context will almost always mean carved gems; when referring to monumental sculpture, counter-relief, meaning the same as ''intaglio'', is more likely to be use ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its Metropolitan France, metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin (island), ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
John Vanderbank
John Vanderbank (9 September 1694 – 23 December 1739)Waterhouse, Ellis. ''Painting in Britain 1530–1790'' (Penguin Books, 1957). was a leading English portrait painter who enjoyed a high reputation during the last decade of George I of Great Britain, King George I's reign and remained in high fashion in the first decade of George II of Great Britain, King George II's reign. George Vertue's opinion was that only intemperance and extravagance prevented Vanderbank from being the greatest portraitist of his generation, his lifestyle bringing him into repeated financial difficulties and leading to an early death at the age of only 45. Early life Vanderbank was born in London on 9 September 1694 into an artistic family, the eldest son of Sarah and John Vanderbank Snr, a naturalised Huguenot immigrant from Paris and, since 1679, well-to-do proprietor of the Soho Tapestry Manufactory and Yeoman Arras-maker to the Great Wardrobe, supplying the royal family with tapest ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Distich
A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (or open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second. Background The word "couplet" comes from the French word meaning "two pieces of iron riveted or hinged together". The term "couplet" was first used to describe successive lines of verse in Sir P. Sidney's '' Arcadia '' in 1590: "In singing some short coplets, whereto the one halfe beginning, the other halfe should answere." While couplets traditionally rhyme, not all do. Poems may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets in iambic pentameter are called ''heroic couplets''. John Dryden in the 17th century and Alexander Pope in th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior (21 July 1664 – 18 September 1721) was an English poet and diplomat. He is also known as a contributor to '' The Examiner''. Early life Prior was probably born in Middlesex. He was the son of a Nonconformist joiner at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr Richard Busby. On his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel Row. Here, Lord Dorset found him reading Horace, and set him to translate an ode. He did so well that the Earl offered to contribute to the continuation of his education at Westminster. One of his schoolfellows and friends was Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax. It was to avoid being separated from Montagu and his brother James that Prior accepted, against his patron's wish, a scholarship recently founded at St John's College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. degree in 1686, and two years later became a fellow. In collaboration with Montagu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
James Thornhill
Sir James Thornhill (25 July 1675 or 1676 – 4 May 1734) was an English painter of historical subjects working in the Italian baroque tradition. He was responsible for some large-scale schemes of murals, including the "Painted Hall" at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, the paintings on the inside of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and works at Chatsworth House and Wimpole Hall. Life Thornhill was born in Melcombe Regis, Dorset, the son of Walter Thornhill of Wareham and Mary, eldest daughter of Colonel William Sydenham, governor of Weymouth. In 1689 he was apprenticed to Thomas Highmore (1660–1720), a specialist in non-figurative decorative painting. He also learned a great deal from Antonio Verrio and Louis Laguerre, two prominent foreign decorative painters then working in England. He completed his apprenticeship in 1696 and, on 1 March 1704, became a Freeman of the Painter-Stainers' Company of London. Decorative schemes Thornhill decorated palace interiors w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
George Vertue
George Vertue (1684 – 24 July 1756) was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period. Life Vertue was born in 1684 in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, his father, perhaps a tailor, and mother are noted as 'Roman Catholic'. At the age of 13, he was apprenticed to a prominent heraldic engraver of French origin who became bankrupt and returned to France. Vertue worked seven years under Michael Vandergucht, before operating independently. He was amongst the first members of Godfrey Kneller's London Academy of Painting, who had employed him to engrave portraits. citing: Walpole's ''Anecdotes of Painting''; Nichols's ''Literary Anecdotes'', ii. 246; Chester's ''Westminster Abbey Reg.''; Dodd's manuscript ''Hist. of English Engravers'' in Brit. Mus. (Addit. MS. 33406). It was there that he became a pupil of Thomas Gibson, a leading portrait painter. Vertue had a deep interest in antiqu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charles XII Of Sweden
Charles XII, sometimes Carl XII ( sv, Karl XII) or Carolus Rex (17 June 1682 – 30 November 1718 O.S.), was King of Sweden (including current Finland) from 1697 to 1718. He belonged to the House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, a branch line of the House of Wittelsbach. Charles was the only surviving son of Charles XI and Ulrika Eleonora the Elder. He assumed power, after a seven-month caretaker government, at the age of fifteen. In 1700, a triple alliance of Denmark–Norway, Saxony– Poland–Lithuania and Russia launched a threefold attack on the Swedish protectorate of Holstein-Gottorp and provinces of Livonia and Ingria, aiming to draw advantage as the Swedish Empire was unaligned and ruled by a young and inexperienced king, thus initiating the Great Northern War. Leading the Swedish army against the alliance, Charles won multiple victories despite being usually significantly outnumbered. A major victory over a Russian army some three times the size in 1700, at the Ba ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charles I Of England
Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until Execution of Charles I, his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna of Spain, Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiation. Two years later, he married the House of Bourbon, Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France. After his 1625 succession, Charles quarrelled with the Parliament of England, English Parliament, which sought to curb his royal prerogati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Lucilla
Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla or Lucilla (7 March 148 or 150 – 182) was the second daughter of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Roman Empress Faustina the Younger. She was the wife of her father's co-ruler and adoptive brother Lucius Verus and an elder sister to later Emperor Commodus. Commodus ordered Lucilla's execution after a failed assassination and coup attempt when she was about 33 years old. Early life Born and raised in Rome into an influential political family, Lucilla was a younger twin with her elder brother Gemellus Lucillae, who died around 150. Lucilla's maternal grandparents were Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and Roman Empress Faustina the Elder and her paternal grandparents were Domitia Lucilla and praetor Marcus Annius Verus. Marriages and ascension to Empress In 161, when she was between 11 and 13 years old, Lucilla's father arranged a marriage for her with his co-ruler Lucius Verus.Cassius DioRoman History 71.1, 3; 73.4.4–5. Verus, 18 years her sen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Faustina The Younger
Annia Galeria Faustina the Younger (born probably 21 September AD, – 175/176 AD) was Roman empress from 161 to her death as the wife of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, her maternal cousin. Faustina was the youngest child of Emperor Antoninus Pius and Empress Faustina the Elder. She was held in high esteem by soldiers and her husband as Augusta and ''Mater Castrorum'' ('Mother of the Camp') and was given divine honours after her death. Life Early life Faustina, named after her mother, was her parents' fourth and youngest child and second daughter; she was also their only child to survive to adulthood. She was born and raised in Rome. Her second cousin three times removed, emperor Hadrian, had arranged with her father for Faustina to marry Lucius Verus. On 25 February 138, she and Verus were betrothed. Verus' father was Hadrian's first adopted son and his intended heir; however, when Verus' father died, Hadrian chose Faustina's father to be his second adopted son, and eventua ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Faustina The Elder
Annia Galeria Faustina the Elder, sometimes referred to as Faustina I or Faustina Major (born on February 16 around 100; died in October or November of 140), was a Roman empress and wife of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius. The emperor Marcus Aurelius was her nephew and later became her adopted son, along with Emperor Lucius Verus. She died early in the principate of Antoninus Pius, but continued to be prominently commemorated as a ''diva'', posthumously playing a prominent symbolic role during his reign. Early life Faustina was the only known daughter of consul and prefect Marcus Annius Verus and Rupilia Faustina. Her brothers were consul Marcus Annius Libo and praetor Marcus Annius Verus. Her maternal aunts were Roman Empress Vibia Sabina and Matidia Minor. Her paternal grandfather was named Marcus Annius Verus, like her father, while her maternal grandparents were suffect consul Lucius Scribonius Libo Rupilius Frugi Bonus and possibly Vitellia. Faustina was born and rais ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |