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Woman Holding A Balance
''Woman Holding a Balance'' (Dutch: ''Vrouw met weegschaal''), also called ''Woman Testing a Balance'', is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. At one time the painting, completed ''c.'' 1662–1663, was known as ''Woman Weighing Gold'', but closer evaluation has determined that the balance in her hand is empty. Opinions on the theme and symbolism of the painting differ, with the woman alternatively viewed as a symbol of holiness or earthliness. Theme In the painting, Vermeer has depicted, what discreetly appears to be a young pregnant woman holding an empty balance before a table on which stands an open jewelry box, the pearls and gold within spilling over. A blue cloth rests in the left foreground, beneath a mirror, and a window to the left — unseen save its golden curtain — provides light. Behind the woman is a painting of the Last Judgment featuring Christ with raised, outstretched hands. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer ( , , #Pronunciation of name, see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period Painting, painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class, middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial Genre works, genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. Nonetheless, he produced relatively few paintings and evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death. Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. "Almost all his paintings", Hans Koningsberger wrote, "are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women." His modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was bare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vanity
Vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant ''futility''. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for ''vanity'', but originally meant ''considering one's own capabilities and that God's help was not needed'', i.e. unjustified boasting; although ''glory'' is now seen as having a predominantly positive meaning, the Latin term from which it derives, ''gloria'', roughly means ''boasting'', and was often used as a negative criticism. Religion and philosophy In many religions, vanity, in its modern sense, is considered a form of self-idolatry in which one likens oneself to the greatness of God for the sake of one's own image, and thereby becomes separated and perhaps in time divorced from the Divine grace of God. In Christian teachings, ''vanity'' is an example of pride, one of the seven deadly sins. Also, in the Baháʼí Faith, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1660s Paintings
Year 166 ( CLXVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Pudens and Pollio (or, less frequently, year 919 '' Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 166 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Dacia is invaded by barbarians. * Conflict erupts on the Danube frontier between Rome and the Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni. * Emperor Marcus Aurelius appoints his sons Commodus and Marcus Annius Verus as co-rulers (Caesar), while he and Lucius Verus travel to Germany. * End of the war with Parthia: The Parthians leave Armenia and eastern Mesopotamia, which both become Roman protectorates. * A plague (possibly small pox) comes from the East and spreads throughout the Roman Empire, lasting for roughly twenty years. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metropolitan Museum Of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lead-tin-yellow
Lead-tin-yellow is a yellow pigment, of historical importance in oil painting, sometimes called the "Yellow of the Old Masters" because of the frequency with which it was used by those famous painters. Nomenclature The name lead-tin yellow is a modern label. During the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries when it was in widest use, it was known by a variety of names. In Italy, it was ''giallorino'' or ''giallolino''. In other countries of Europe, it was massicot, (Spanish), (German), ''general'' (English) or (Portuguese). All of these names were often applied to other yellow pigments as well as lead-tin yellow. Composition Lead-tin-yellow historically occurred in two varieties. The first and more common one, today known as "Type I", was a lead stannate, an oxide of lead and tin with the chemical formula Pb2SnO4. The second, "Type II", was a silicate with the formula .Hermann Kühn, 1967, "Blei-Zinn-Gelb und seine Verwendung in der Malerei", ''Farbe und Lack'' 73: 938-949 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Yellow
Indian yellow is a complex pigment consisting primarily of euxanthic acid salts (magnesium euxanthate and calcium euxanthate), euxanthone and sulphonated euxanthone. It is also known as purree, snowshoe yellow, gaugoli, gogili, Hardwari peori, Monghyr puri, peoli, peori, peri rung, pioury, piuri, purrea arabica, pwree, jaune indien (French, Dutch), Indischgelb (German), yìndù huáng (Chinese), giallo indiano (Italian), amarillo indio (Spanish). The crystalline form dissolved in water or mixed with oil to produce a transparent yellow paint which was used in Indian frescoes, oil painting and watercolors. After application Indian yellow produced a clear, deep and luminescent orange-yellow color which, due to its fluorescence, appears especially vivid and bright in sunlight. It was said to be of a disagreeable odour. It was most used in India in the Mughal period and in Europe in the nineteenth century, before becoming commercially unavailable circa 1921. The origin and manufact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ultramarine
Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. The name comes from the Latin ''ultramarinus'', literally 'beyond the sea', because the pigment was imported into Europe from mines in Afghanistan by Italian traders during the 14th and 15th centuries. Ultramarine was the finest and most expensive blue used by Renaissance painters. It was often used for the robes of the Virgin Mary and symbolized holiness and humility. It remained an extremely expensive pigment until a synthetic ultramarine was invented in 1826. Structure The pigment consists primarily of a zeolite-based mineral containing small amounts of polysulfides. It occurs in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli containing a blue cubic mineral called lazurite. In the Colour Index International, the pigment of ultramarine is identified as P. Blue 29 77007. The major component of lazurite is a complex sulfur-containing sodium-silicate (Na8–10Al6Si6O24 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
''The Milkmaid'' (Dutch: ''De Melkmeid'' or ''Het Melkmeisje''), sometimes called ''The Kitchen Maid'', is an Oil painting, oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact, a Kitchen maid (domestic worker), domestic kitchen maid, by the Netherlands, Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions". The exact year of the painting's completion is unknown, with estimates varying by source. The Rijksmuseum estimates it as circa 1658. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, it was painted in about 1657 or 1658. The "Essential Vermeer" website gives a broader range of 1658–1661. Descriptions and commentary The painting shows a milkmaid, a woman who milks cows and makes dairy products like butter and cheese, in a plain room carefully pouring milk into a squat earthenware container on a table. Milkmaids began working sol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Officer And Laughing Girl
''Officer and Laughing Girl'', also known as ''Officer and a Laughing Girl'', ''Officer With a Laughing Girl'' or ''De Soldaat en het Lachende Meisje'', was painted by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in around 1657. It was painted in oil on canvas, typical of most Dutch artists of the time, and is 50.5 by 46 cm. It is now one of three pictures by Vermeer in The Frick Collection in New York ''Officer and Laughing Girl'' includes many of the characteristics of Vermeer's style. The main subject is a woman in a yellow dress, light is coming from the left-hand side of the painting from an open window, and there is a large map on the wall. Each of these elements occur in some of his other paintings, although this painting differs slightly with the man also sitting at the table. Art historians, who have suggested conflicting interpretations of the work, believe that a painting by Gerard van Honthorst inspired the composition and that Vermeer used a camera obscura to create the pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Girl Asleep (Vermeer)
''A Girl Asleep'' (Dutch: ''Slapend meisje''), also known as ''A Woman Asleep'', ''A Woman Asleep at Table'', and ''A Maid Asleep'',Liedtke, Walter, with Michael C. Plomp and Axel Rüger, ''Vermeer and the Delft School'', pp 369-371; New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001 (catalogue of an exhibition of the same name New York, March 8-May 27, 2001, and at the National Gallery, London, June 20 – September 16, 2001) is a painting by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, created ''c.'' 1657.Benjamin Binstock ''Vermeer's Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice'' 1136087060 2013 p.117 "Vermeer's Girl Asleep, likely from 1656, portrays a young woman seated at a table with her eyes closed, in the .. " It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and may not be lent elsewhere under the terms of the donor's bequest. Theme, influences and composition changes According to Liedtke, the presence of the d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guilders
Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch and German ''gulden'', originally shortened from Middle High German ''guldin pfenninc'' "gold penny". This was the term that became current in the southern and western parts of the Holy Roman Empire for the Fiorino d'oro (introduced in 1252). Hence, the name has often been interchangeable with ''florin'' ( currency sign ''ƒ'' or ''fl.''). The guilder is also the name of several currencies used in Europe and the former colonies of the Dutch Empire. Gold guilder The guilder or gulden was the name of several gold coins used during the Holy Roman Empire. It first referred to the Italian gold florin introduced in the 13th century. It then referred to the Rhenish gulden (florenus Rheni) issued by several states of the Holy Roman Empire from the 14th century. The Rhenish gulden was issued by Trier, Cologne and Mainz in the 14th and 15th centuries. Basel minted its own ''Apfelgulden'' between 1429 and 1509. Bern and Solothurn followed i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacob Dissius
Jacob Abrahamsz. Dissius (1653 - 1695) was a Dutch typography, typographer and printer. He is most notable as an art collector and for his links to Johannes Vermeer - his collection included 21 Vermeer works (including ''The Milkmaid (Vermeer), The Milkmaid'', ''Portrait of a Young Woman (Vermeer, New York), Portrait of a Young Woman'', ''A Girl Asleep (Vermeer), A Girl Asleep'', ''Woman Holding a Balance'' and ''The Music Lesson'') and in 1680 he married Madgdalene, daughter and sole heir of Vermeer's main patron Pieter van Ruijven. Dissius died in 1695 and his collection was auctioned off in Amsterdam the following year. Biography Jacob Dissius was baptised on 23 November 1653 in Delft as the son of Maria Cloeting and the printer Abraham Dissius. He married Magdalena Pieters van Ruijven, daughter of Pieter van Ruijven, born in 1655. Dissius' father-in-law was one of the wealthier citizens of Delft, and became a patron of Vermeer. She inherited her parents' money and art collection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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