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Nicolau Nasoni
Nicolau Nasoni (or originally Niccoló Nasoni, 2 June 1691 – 30 August 1773) was an Italian artist and architect mostly active in Portugal. He became one of the most influential figures in Portuguese Baroque architecture with his original and vigorous and theatrical style of Baroque and Rococo architecture. Born in San Giovanni Valdarno, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, he received his education in Siena from Giuseppe Nicolo Nasini (1657–1736) from 1713 and 1720. During this early period he constructed a catafalque for Ferdinando de Medici in the cathedral of Siena and the triumphal arch for the reception of the new archbishop. At the same time he studied architecture and painting while working with his master for the Opera del Duomo di Siena. He was then employed, first as a painter in Rome and, between 1723 and 1725, in Malta. The new Grand Master of the Order of Malta was a Portuguese nobleman Dom António Manoel de Vilhena. Nasoni designed the Mars display for the parade in hi ...
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San Giovanni Valdarno
San Giovanni Valdarno is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany, central Italy, located in the valley of the Arno River. History According to the Italian medieval historian Giovanni Villani, the town was founded in 1296, by the Republic of Florence. The design of the historic center is based on the organization of Roman cities with a large central piazza from which two main roads run perpendicular to each other. From these two main roads run other secondary streets. The town is the birthplace of the early Renaissance painter Masaccio. Main sights * ''Palazzo Pretorio'' or ''Palazzo d'Arnolfo'' (13th century) * Convent of ''San Francesco a Montecarlo''. It houses an ''Incoronation of the Virgin'' by Neri di Bicci (1472–1475) * Basilica of ''Santa Maria delle Grazie'' (built in 1484, but with a 19th-century Neoclassical façade). Its museum houses Beato Angelico's ''Annunciation The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to ...
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Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies south of Sicily (Italy), east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The official languages are Maltese and English, and 66% of the current Maltese population is at least conversational in the Italian language. Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, amongst others. With a population of about 516,000 over an area of , Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country in area and fourth most densely populated sovereign co ...
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Manueline
The Manueline ( pt, estilo manuelino, ), occasionally known as Portuguese late Gothic, is the sumptuous, composite Portuguese architectural style originating in the 16th century, during the Portuguese Renaissance and Age of Discoveries. Manueline architecture incorporates maritime elements and representations of the discoveries brought from the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral. This innovative style synthesizes aspects of Late Gothic Flamboyant architecture with original motifs and influences of the Plateresque, Mudéjar, Italian, and Flemish architecture. It marks the transition from Late Gothic to Renaissance. The construction of churches and monasteries in Manueline was largely financed by proceeds of the lucrative spice trade with Africa and India. The style was given its name, many years later, by Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Viscount of Porto Seguro, in his 1842 book ''Noticia historica e descriptiva do Mosteiro de Belem, com um glossario de var ...
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Azulejo
''Azulejo'' (, ; from the Arabic ''al- zillīj'', ) is a form of Spanish and Portuguese painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework. ''Azulejos'' are found on the interior and exterior of churches, palaces, ordinary houses, schools, and nowadays, restaurants, bars and even railways or subway stations. They are an ornamental art form, but also had a specific functional capacity like temperature control in homes. There is also a tradition of their production in former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in North America, South America, the Philippines, Goa (India), Lusophone Africa, East Timor, and Macau (China). ''Azulejos'' constitute a major aspect of Spanish architecture and Portuguese architecture to this day and are fixtures of buildings across Spain and Portugal and its former territories. Many azulejos chronicle major historical and cultural aspects of Spanish and Portuguese history. History 13th to 15th century The word ''azulejo'' (as well as the Ligurian ''laggion'') i ...
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Quadratura
Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective ''di sotto in sù'' and ''quadratura'', is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which ''trompe-l'œil'', perspective tools such as foreshortening, and other spatial effects are used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on an otherwise two-dimensional or mostly flat ceiling surface above the viewer. It is frequently used to create the illusion of an open sky, such as with the oculus in Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi, or the illusion of an architectural space such as the cupola, one of Andrea Pozzo's frescoes in Sant'Ignazio, Rome. Illusionistic ceiling painting belongs to the general class of illusionism in art, designed to create accurate representations of reality. Di sotto in sù ''Di sotto in sù'' (or ''sotto in su''), which means "seen from below" or "from below, upward" in Italian, developed in late quattrocento Italian Renaissance painting, notably in Andre ...
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Oporto Cathedral
The Porto Cathedral ( pt, Sé do Porto) is a Roman Catholic church located in the historical centre of the city of Porto, Portugal. It is one of the city's oldest monuments and one of the most important local Romanesque monuments. Overview Unlike what's often written, the current Cathedral of Porto was not built under the patronage of Bishop Hugo since the pre-Romanesque church is still mentioned in the '' De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi'' as still extant in 1147. This means the present building was only started in the second half of the century and it would be constantly under works well until the 16th century (without counting later Baroque and 20th century interventions), but there is evidence that the city has been a bishopric seat since the Suevi domination in the 5th-6th centuries. The cathedral is flanked by two square towers, each supported with two buttresses and crowned with a cupola. The façade lacks decoration and is rather architecturally heterogeneous. It shows a ...
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Fresco
Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word ''fresco'' ( it, affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective ''fresco'' meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. The word ''fresco'' is commonly and inaccurately used in English to refer to any wall painting regardless of the plaster technology or binding medium. This, in part, contributes to a misconception that the most geographically and temporally common wall painting technology was the painting into wet lime plaster. Even in app ...
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Porto08
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropolitan area, with an estimated population of just 231,800 people in a municipality with only 41.42 km2. Porto's metropolitan area has around 1.7 million people (2021) in an area of ,Demographia: World Urban Areas
March 2010
making it the second-largest urban area in Portugal. It is recognized as a global city with a Gamma + rating from the

Times Of Malta
The ''Times of Malta'' is an English-language daily newspaper in Malta. Founded in 1935, by Lord and Lady Strickland and Lord Strickland's daughter Mabel, it is the oldest daily newspaper still in circulation in Malta. It has the widest circulation and is seen as the daily newspaper of record of the Maltese press. The newspaper is published by Allied Newspapers Limited, which is owned by the Strickland Foundation, a charitable trust established by Mabel Strickland in 1979 to control the majority of the company. History The history of ''The Times'' of Malta is linked with that of its publishing house, Allied Newspapers Limited. This institution has a history going back to the 1920s, when it pioneered journalism and the printing industry in Malta. It all started with the publication, by Gerald Strickland, of Malta's first evening newspaper in Maltese, ''Il-Progress''. This was a four-page daily with its own printing offices in what was then 10A, Strada Reale, Valletta. The na ...
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Spinola Palace (Valletta)
Spinola Palace ( mt, Palazz ta' Spinola; it, Palazzo Spinola), also known as Spinola House, is a palace in Valletta, Malta. It belonged to the Spinola family between the 17th and 18th centuries. One third of the building was demolished in the 20th century, but the remaining two wings still exist and are now used as the head office of Lombard Bank. History The palace originally belonged to Fra Giovanni de Villaroel, the Balì of Noveville. In 1660, the palace was transferred to Fra Paolo Raffaele Spinola, the Balì of Lombardy, who later built another Spinola Palace in St. Julian's. In the 1720s, the Italian artist Nicolau Nasoni painted frescoes on the palace's ceiling. The palace remained in the hands of the Spinola family until 1780. Architect Romano Fortunato Carapecchia have given the palace a baroque facelift, from an austere façade, in the eighteenth century. The palace was divided into three parts in 1922. The wing facing St. Christopher Street was demolished to ma ...
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Grandmaster's Palace (Valletta)
The Grandmaster's Palace ( mt, Il-Palazz tal-Granmastru), officially known as The Palace ( mt, Il-Palazz), is a palace in Valletta, Malta. It was built between the 16th and 18th centuries as the palace of the Grand Master of the Order of St. John, who ruled Malta from 1530 to 1798, and was also known as the Magisterial Palace ( mt, Palazz Maġisterjali). When the knights were expelled by Napoleonic France, it became the National Palace. During the period of British rule beginning in 1800, it was the Governor's Palace ( mt, Palazz tal-Gvernatur). The Palace currently houses the Office of the President of Malta. It was also the seat of the Parliament of Malta from 1921 to 2015. Parts of the building, namely the Palace State Rooms and the Palace Armoury are open to the public as a museum run by Heritage Malta. The building is currently undergoing a major restoration project with only part of the armoury accessible to the public via the entrance on Merchant's Street. Locatio ...
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Mars (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Mars ( la, Mārs, ) was the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was the son of Jupiter and Juno, and was pre-eminent among the Roman army's military gods. Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him ( Latin ''Martius''), and in October, which began the season for military campaigning and ended the season for farming. Under the influence of Greek culture, Mars was identified with the Greek god Ares,''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. whose myths were reinterpreted in Roman literature and art under the name of Mars. The character and dignity of Mars differed in fundamental ways from that of his Greek counterpart, who is often treated with contempt and revulsion in Greek literature. Mars's altar in the Campus Martius, the area of Rome that took its name from him, was supposed to have been dedicated by Numa, the p ...
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