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Château D'Asnières
The château d’Asnières is a stately home at 89 rue du Château in the town of Asnières-sur-Seine in Hauts-de-Seine, France. History Construction With adjoining stables at the edge of its grounds (capable of housing 120 horses and known as the "entrepôt général" or central depot for the Asnières stud), the château was one of the finest estates near Paris in the mid 18th century. It shows the artistic ambitions of Marc-René d'Argenson, marquis de Voyer, who gathered the best artists and craftsmen of his time to work on the building—the architect Jacques Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, the craftsman Nicolas Pineau, the sculptor Guillaume Coustou the Younger, the painters Brunetti and Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, and the bronze worker Jacques Caffieri. Its gallery contained one of the best collections of Flemish and Dutch art of the period along with some of the largest cabinet furniture. D'Argenson wished to replace the marquis de Marigny, directeur des Bâtiments, Arts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Mansart
François Mansart (; 23 January 1598 – 23 September 1666) was a French architect credited with introducing classicism into Baroque architecture of France. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' cites him as the most accomplished of 17th-century French architects whose works "are renowned for their high degree of refinement, subtlety, and elegance". Mansart, as he is generally known, popularized the mansard roof, a four-sided, double slope gambrel roof punctuated with windows on the steeper lower slope which created additional habitable space in the garrets. Career François Mansart was born to a master carpenter in Paris. He was not trained as an architect; his relatives helped train him in as a stonemason and a sculptor. He is thought to have learned the skills of architect in the studio of Salomon de Brosse, the most popular architect of Henry IV's reign. Mansart was highly recognized from the 1620s onward for his style and skill as an architect, but he was viewed as a stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hôtel Porgès - Façade Jardin
H, or h, is the eighth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''aitch'' (pronounced , plural ''aitches''), or regionally ''haitch'' ."H" ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993); "aitch" or "haitch", op. cit. History The original Semitic letter Heth most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts. The Greek Eta 'Η' in archaic Greek alphabets, before coming to represent a long vowel, , still represented a similar sound, the voiceless glottal fricative . In this context, the letter eta is also known as Heta to underline this fact. Thus, in the Old Italic alphabets, the letter Heta of the Euboean alphabet was adopted with its original sound value . While Etruscan and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cliveden
Cliveden (pronounced ) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills close to the South Bucks villages of Burnham and Taplow. The main house sits above the banks of the River Thames, and its grounds slope down to the river. There have been three houses on this site: the first, built in 1666, burned down in 1795 and the second house (1824) was also destroyed by fire, in 1849. The present Grade I listed house was built in 1851 by the architect Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland. Cliveden has been the home to a Prince of Wales, two Dukes, an Earl, and finally the Viscounts Astor. As the home of Nancy Astor, wife of the 2nd Viscount Astor, Cliveden was the meeting place of the Cliveden Set of the 1920s and 30s—a group of political intellectuals. Later, during the early 1960s when it was t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geneviève De Brabant
''Geneviève de Brabant'' is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach, first performed in Paris in 1859. The plot is based on the medieval legend of Genevieve of Brabant. For the 1867 version two additional characters, men-at-arms, were added to Act 2 and given a comic duet, in English-speaking countries widely known as the "Gendarmes' Duet" or the "bold gendarmes", from H. B. Farnie's English adaptation. As well as being a popular performance piece, it formed the basis for the U.S. "Marines' Hymn". Performance history The two-act French libretto was written by Louis-Adolphe Jaime and Étienne Tréfeu, and the opera was first staged at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, on 19 November 1859. A new three-act version (in which the "Gendarmes' Duet" first appeared), revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux, was first given at the Théâtre des Menus-Plaisirs, Paris, on 26 December 1867. An expanded five-act version was devised for a production at the Théâtre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Vie Parisienne (operetta)
''La vie parisienne'' (, Parisian life) is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects. It became one of Offenbach's most popular operettas. In 1864 the Théâtre du Palais-Royal presented a comedy by Meilhac and Halévy entitled ''Le Photographe'' (''The Photographer''), which featured a character called Raoul Gardefeu, the lover of Métella, trying to seduce a baroness. Two years earlier, a comedy by the same authors ''La Clé de Métella'' (''The Key of Métella'') was played at the Théâtre du Vaudeville. These two pieces presage the libretto of ''La vie parisienne'' which can be dated from late 1865. Performance history It was first produced in a five-act version at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, Paris, on 31 October 1866. The work was revived in four acts ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' remains part of the standard opera repertory. Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while phrases like ''liberté, égalité, fraternité'' reappeared in other revolts, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution, and inspired campaigns for the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage. The values and institutions it created dominate French politics to this day. Its causes are generally agreed to be a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the ''Ancien Régime'' proved unable to manage. In May 1789, widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly in June. Continuing unrest culminated in the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July, which led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (21 March 1736 – 18 November 1806) was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but also town planning; as a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian. His greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be perceived as symbols of the Ancien Régime rather than Utopia. The French Revolution hampered his career; much of his work was destroyed in the nineteenth century. In 1804, he published a collection of his designs under the title ''L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation'' (Architecture considered in relation to art, morals, and legislation). In this book he took the opportunity of revising his earlier designs, making them more rigorously neoclassical and up to date. This revision has distorted an accurate assessment of his role in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude-Henri Watelet
Claude-Henri Watelet (28 August 1718 – 12 January 1786) was a rich French '' fermier-général'' who was an amateur painter, a well-respected etcher, a writer on the arts and a connoisseur of gardens. Watelet's inherited privilege of farming taxes in the Orléanais left him free to pursue his avocations, art and literature and gardens. His ''Essai sur les jardins'', 1774, firmly founded on English ideas expressed by Thomas Whately, introduced the English landscape garden to France, as the ''jardin Anglois''. The sociable Watelet, who was born and died in Paris, was at the center of the French art world of his time. Biography Watelet was born in Paris, where he kept house in the rue Charlot and attended the Monday '' salons'' of Mme Geoffrin, where he would have seen La Live de Jully, who engraved one of Watelet's drawings and who, like Watelet, was an early patron of Greuze Jean-Baptiste Greuze (, 21 August 1725 – 4 March 1805) was a French painter of portraits, gen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Putti
A putto (; plural putti ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism,Dempsey, Charles. ''Inventing the Renaissance Putto''. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2001. the putto came to represent the sacred cherub (plural cherubim), and in Baroque art the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God. A putto representing a cupid is also called an amorino (plural amorini) or amoretto (plural amoretti). Etymology The more commonly found form ''putti'' is the plural of the Italian word ''putto''. The Italian word comes from the Latin word ''putus'', meaning "boy" or "child". Today, in Italian, ''putto'' means either toddler winged angel or, rarely, toddler boy. It may have been derived from the same Indo-European root as the Sanskrit word "putra" (meaning "boy child", as opposed to "son"), Avestan ''puθra''-, Old Persian ''puça''-, Pahlavi (Middle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
