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Equestrian Statue Of Louis XIV (Bernini)
The ''Equestrian Statue of King Louis XIV'' is a sculpture designed and partially executed by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who was originally brought to France to design a new facade of the Louvre, a portrait bust, and an equestrian statue. Bernini first discussed the project while in France in the mid-1660s, but it did not start until later in the decade, when back in Rome. It was not completed until 1684 and then shipped to Paris in 1685. Louis XIV of France was extremely unhappy with the end result and had it placed in a corner of the gardens of the royal palace at Versailles. Soon after, the sculpture was modified by François Girardon and altered into an equestrian sculpture of the ancient Roman hero Marcus Curtius. History Invitation For much of the 17th century, Bernini was regarded as the premier artist of the era, serving as the primary source of artistic works commissioned by Pope Urban VIII. As a result, Louis XIV invited him to come to France to work i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini (, , ; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 159828 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented, "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful ..." In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly Carnival satires), for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery. He produced designs as well for a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches. As an architect and city planner, he designed secular buildings, churches, chapels, and publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antoine Coysevox
Charles Antoine Coysevox ( or ; 29 September 164010 October 1720), was a French sculptor in the Baroque and Louis XIV style, best known for his sculpture decorating the gardens and Palace of Versailles and his portrait busts. Biography Coysevox was born 29 September 1640 in Lyon. He was the son of a sculptor, from a family which had emigrated from Franche-Comté, a Spanish possession at the time. He made his first work of sculpture of the Madonna when he was only seventeen, Coysevox came to Paris in 1657 and joined the workshop of the sculptor Louis Lerambert. He trained himself further by making copies in marble of Roman sculptures, including a ''Venus de Medici'' and the ''Castor and Pollux''. In 1666, he married Marguerite Quillerier, Lerambert's niece, who died a year after the marriage. In 1679 he married Claude Bourdict. In 1667 he was commissioned by the bishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal Fürstenberg, to statuary for his château at Saverne (Zabern). In 1671, after f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orangerie At Versailles
An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very large form of greenhouse or conservatory. The orangery provided a luxurious extension of the normal range and season of woody plants, extending the protection which had long been afforded by the warmth offered from a masonry fruit wall. During the 17th century, fruits like orange, pomegranate, and bananas arrived in huge quantities to European ports. Since these plants were not adapted to the harsh European winters, orangeries were invented to protect and sustain them. The high cost of glass made orangeries a status symbol showing wealth and luxury. Gradually, due to technological advancements, orangeries became more of a classic architectural structure that enhanced the beauty of an estate garden, rather than a room used for wintering p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palazzo Barberini
The Palazzo Barberini ( en, Barberini Palace) is a 17th-century palace in Rome, facing the Piazza Barberini in Rione Trevi. Today, it houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, the main national collection of older paintings in Rome. History The sloping site had formerly been occupied by a garden-vineyard of the Sforza family, in which a ''palazzetto'' had been built in 1549. The sloping site passed from one cardinal to another during the sixteenth century, with no project fully getting off the ground. When Cardinal Alessandro Sforza met financial hardships, the still semi-urban site was purchased in 1625 by Maffeo Barberini, of the Barberini family, who became Pope Urban VIII. Three great architects worked to create the Palazzo, each contributing his own style and character to the building. Carlo Maderno, then at work extending the nave of St Peter's, was commissioned to enclose the Villa Sforza within a vast Renaissance block along the lines of Palazzo Farnese; however, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and its monocentric metropolitan area is the third-largest in the EU.United Nations Department of Economic and Social AffairWorld Urbanization Prospects (2007 revision), (United Nations, 2008), Table A.12. Data for 2007. The municipality covers geographical area. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the central part of the Iberian Peninsula. Capital city of both Spain (almost without interruption since 1561) and the surrounding autonomous community of Madrid (since 1983), it is also the political, economic and cultural centre of the country. The city is situated on an elevated plain about from the closest seaside location. The climate of Madrid features hot summers and cool winters. The Madrid urban agglomeration has the second-large ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buen Retiro Palace
Buen Retiro Palace (Spanish: ''Palacio del Buen Retiro'') in Madrid was a large palace complex designed by the architect Alonso Carbonell (c. 1590–1660) and built on the orders of Philip IV of Spain as a secondary residence and place of recreation (hence its name). It was built in what was then the eastern limits of the city of Madrid. Today, what little remains of its buildings and gardens forms the Retiro Park. History Philip IV used to stay occasionally in some rooms annexed to the monastery of San Jerónimo el Real (close to the current location of the Prado Museum, which received the name of the ''Royal Quarters''. The reason for these frequent visits could be that the so-called ''Planet King'' particularly enjoyed walking in the attached farm, property of the Count-Duke of Olivares, his royal favourite and minister. Olivares, with the intention of pleasing the monarch, planned in 1629 and started in 1630 the construction of a series of offices and pavilions as an ext ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip IV Of Spain
Philip IV ( es, Felipe, pt, Filipe; 8 April 160517 September 1665), also called the Planet King (Spanish: ''Rey Planeta''), was King of Spain from 1621 to his death and (as Philip III) King of Portugal from 1621 to 1640. Philip is remembered for his patronage of the arts, including such artists as Diego Velázquez, and his rule over Spain during the Thirty Years' War. By the time of his death, the Spanish Empire had reached approximately 12.2 million square kilometers (4.7 million square miles) in area but in other aspects was in decline, a process to which Philip contributed with his inability to achieve successful domestic and military reform. Personal life Philip IV was born in the Royal Palace of Valladolid, and was the eldest son of Philip III of Spain, Philip III and his wife, Margaret of Austria (1584–1611), Margaret of Austria. In 1615, at the age of 10, Philip was married to 13-year-old Elisabeth of France (1602–1644), Elisabeth of France. Although the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pietro Tacca
Pietro Tacca (16 September 1577 – 26 October 1640) was an Italian sculptor, who was the chief pupil and follower of Giambologna. Tacca began in a Mannerist style and worked in the Baroque style during his maturity. Biography Born in Carrara, Tuscany, he joined Giambologna's atelier in 1592. Tacca took over the workshop of his master on the elder sculptor's death in 1608, finishing a number of Giambologna's incomplete projects, and succeeding him almost immediately as court sculptor to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Like his master he took full advantage of the fashion among connoisseurs for table-top reductions of fine bronze sculptures. Louis XIV possessed Giambolognesque bronzes of ''Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar''and ''Heracles and the Cerynian Stag'(now Louvre Museum) that are now attributed to Tacca, and dated to the 1620s Tacca began by finishing Giambologna's equestrian bronze of Ferdinand de' Medici for the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault ( , also , ; 12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was an iconic French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from earlier folk tales, published in his 1697 book ''Histoires ou contes du temps passé'' (''Stories or Tales from Past Times''). The best known of his tales include ''Le Petit Chaperon Rouge'' ("Little Red Riding Hood"), ''Cendrillon'' ("Cinderella"), ''Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté'' ("Puss in Boots"), ''La Belle au bois dormant'' ("Sleeping Beauty"), and ''Barbe Bleue'' ("Bluebeard"). Some of Perrault's versions of old stories influenced the German versions published by the Brothers Grimm more than 100 years later. The stories continue to be printed and have been adapted to most entertainment formats. Perrault was an influential figure in the 17th-century French literary scene, and was the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the Ancients ... [...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] |
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert (; 29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) was a French statesman who served as First Minister of State from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His lasting impact on the organization of the country's politics and markets, known as Colbertism, a doctrine often characterized as a variant of mercantilism, earned him the nickname ''le Grand Colbert'' (; "the Great Colbert"). A native of Reims, he was appointed Intendant of Finances on 4 May 1661. Colbert took over as Controller-General of Finances, a newly elevated position, in the aftermath of the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet for embezzlement, an event that led to the abolishment of the office of Superintendent of Finances. He worked to develop the domestic economy by raising tariffs and encouraging major public works projects, as well as to ensure that the French East India Company had access to foreign markets, so that they could always obtain coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
