Charles Townley
Charles Townley FRS (1 October 1737 – 3 January 1805) was a wealthy English country gentleman, antiquary and collector, a member of the Towneley family. He travelled on three Grand Tours to Italy, buying antique sculpture, vases, coins, manuscripts and Old Master drawings and paintings. Many of the most important pieces from his collection, especially the Townley Marbles (or Towneley Marbles) are now in the British Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. The marbles were overshadowed at the time, and still today, by the Elgin Marbles. Biography Charles Townley was born in England at Towneley Hall, the family seat, near Burnley in Lancashire, on 1 October 1737. (He regularly spelt his name Townley, so this is the spelling usually used in modern literature for him, but still usually not for his marbles.Although the British Museum now uses "Townley" for all, as in the book by B. F. Cook – see below.) From a Catholic family and thus excluded both from public office ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles Townley, Miniature By Josiah Wedgewood
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch and German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (< Old English ''ċeorl''), which developed its depr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. The museum was established in 1753, largely b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pan (god)
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Pan (; grc, wikt:Πάν, Πάν, Pán) is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, Pastoral#Pastoral music, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia (ancient region), Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring. In Religion in ancient Rome, Roman religion and myth, Pan's counterpart was Faunus, a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea, sometimes identified as Fauna (goddess), Fauna; he was also closely associated with Silvanus (mythology), Sylvanus, due to their similar relationships with woodlands. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Pan became a significant figure in Romanticism, the Romantic movement of western Europe and also in the 20th-centu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. When a relief is carved into a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving), the field is actually lowered, leaving the unsculpted areas seeming higher. The approach requires a lot of chiselling away of the background, which takes a long time. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, particularly in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mâché the form can be simply added to or raised up from the background. Monumental bronze reliefs a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Townley Hadrian
A bust of Hadrian (), the second-century Roman emperor who rebuilt the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma, was formerly displayed in Pope Sixtus V's Villa Montalto and is now displayed at the British Museum in London. The bust is one of the Townley Marbles collected by Charles Townley (1737–1805) and sold by his heir Peregrine Edward Towneley at a reduced price to the British Museum in 1805. Unlike most busts of Hadrian and other emperors, it shows him in heroic nudity. The bust was found in Rome and is carved from Greek marble. Description and history The Townley bust is comparable with a bronze head of Hadrian in the Louvre. The type is characterized by an elaborate hairstyle of thick curls combed forwards. Both the marble bust and the bronze head have features similar to the marble Head of Constantine the Great () found on Stonegate, a street in York above the ancient ''via praetoria'' thoroughfare of the ''castra'' at Eboracum, garrison of the VI '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nymphaea Lotus
''Nymphaea lotus'', the white Egyptian lotus, tiger lotus, white lotus or Egyptian white water-lily, is a flowering plant of the family Nymphaeaceae. Distribution It grows in various parts of East Africa and Southeast Asia. The ''Nymphaea lotus'' var. ''thermalis'' is a Tertiary relict variety endemic to the thermal waters of Europe, for example the Peţa River in Romania or the Hévíz lake in Hungary . Cultivation It was introduced into Western cultivation in 1802 by Loddiges Nursery. Eduard Ortgies crossed ''Nymphaea lotus'' (''N. dentata'') with ''Nymphaea pubescens'' (''N. rubra'') to produce the first '' Nymphaea'' hybrid, illustrated in ''Flore des serres'' 8 t. 775, 776 under the name ''Nymphaea ortgiesiano-rubra''. It is a popular ornamental aquatic plant in Venezuela. Description This species of water lily has lily pads which float on the water and blossoms which rise above the water. It is a perennial, growing to 45 cm in height. The flower is white, someti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Isis
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Osiris, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Osiris, and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing Spell (paranormal), spells to benefit ordinary people. Originally, she played a limited role in royal rituals and temple rites, although she was more prominent in funerary practices and magical texts. She was usually portrayed in art as a human woman wearing a throne-like hieroglyph on her head. During the New Kingdom (), as she took on traits that originally belo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clytie (Oceanid)
Clytie (; grc, Κλυτίη, Klutíē), or Clytia (; grc, Κλυτία, Klutía) is a water nymph, daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys in Greek mythology. She is thus one of the 3,000 Oceanid nymphs, and sister to the 3,000 Potamoi (the river-gods). According to the myth, Clytie loved the god of the sun Helios in vain, but he left her for another woman, the princess Leucothoe, under the influence of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In anger and bitterness, she revealed their affair to the girl's father, indirectly causing her doom as the king buried her alive. This failed to win Helios back to her, and she was left lovingly staring at him from the ground; eventually she turned into a heliotrope, a violet flower that gazes at the Sun in its diurnal journey. Clytie's story is mostly known from and fully preserved in Ovid's narrative poem ''Metamorphoses'', though other brief accounts and references to her from other authors survive as well. Etymology Her name, spell ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Polykleitos
Polykleitos ( grc, Πολύκλειτος) was an ancient Greek sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the most important sculptors of classical antiquity. The 4th century BCE catalogue attributed to Xenocrates (the "Xenocratic catalogue"), which was Pliny's guide in matters of art, ranked him between Pheidias and Myron. He is particularly known for his lost treatise (a canon of body proportions), the '' Canon of Polykleitos'', setting out his mathematical basis of an idealised male body shape. None of his original sculptures are known to survive, but there are many of what are believed to be later copies in marble, mostly Roman. Name His Greek name was traditionally Latinized ''Polycletus'', but is also transliterated ''Polycleitus'' ( grc, Πολύκλειτος, Classical Greek , "much-renowned") and, due to iotacism in the transition from Ancient to Modern Greek, ''Polyklitos'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (; ; 9 December 17178 June 1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the differences between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology", Boorstin, 584 Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. He was one of the first to separate Greek Art into periods, and time classifications. He had a decisive influence on the rise of the Neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann's ''History of Ancient Art'' (1764) was one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature. His subsequent influe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Knucklebones
Knucklebones, also known as scatter jacks, snobs, astragalus, tali, dibs, fivestones, jacks, or jackstones, among many other names, is a game of dexterity played with a number of small objects that are thrown up, caught, and manipulated in various manners. It is ancient in origin and is found in various cultures worldwide. The name "knucklebones" is derived from the Ancient Greek version of the game, which uses the astragalus (a bone in the ankle, or hock) of a sheep. However, different variants of the game from various cultures use other objects, including stones, seashells, seeds, and cubes. Modern knucklebones consist of six points, or knobs, projecting from a common base and are usually made of metal or plastic. The winner is the first player to successfully complete a prescribed series of throws, which, though similar, differ widely in detail. The simplest throw consists in either tossing up one stone, the jack, or bouncing a ball and picking up one or more stones or kn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |