|
Studiolo
A cabinet (also known by other terms) was a private room in the houses and palaces of early modern Europe serving as a study or retreat, usually for a man. The cabinet would be furnished with books and works of art, and sited adjacent to his bedchamber, the equivalent of the Italian Renaissance ''studiolo''. In the Late Medieval period, such newly perceived requirements for privacy had been served by the solar of the English gentry house, and a similar, less secular purpose had been served by a private oratory. Such a room might be used as a study or office, or just a sitting room. Heating the main rooms in large palaces or mansions in the winter was difficult, and small rooms were more comfortable. They also offered more privacy from servants, other household members, and visitors. Typically such a room would be for the use of a single individual, so that a house might have at least two (his and hers) and often more. Names varied: cabinet, closet, study (from the Italian ''stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Studiolo Of Francesco I
The Studiolo is a small painting-encrusted barrel-vaulted room in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy. It was commissioned by Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It was completed for the duke from 1570 to 1572, by teams of artists under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari and the scholars Giovanni Batista Adriani and Vincenzo Borghini. This small room was part-office, part-laboratory, part-hiding place, and part- cabinet of curiosities. Here the prince tinkered with alchemy and kept his collection of small, precious, unusual or rare objects. The walls and ceiling were decorated with paintings showing a similar variety of subjects, some showing exotic forms of industry and others mythology. The inset paintings are now all that remains in the room of the original contents. They are rather larger than what is normally meant by the term cabinet painting. The late-Mannerist decorative program of paintings and sculpture was based on items encompassed by the collection. The ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palazzo Vecchio
The Palazzo Vecchio ( "Old Palace") is the town hall of Florence, Italy. It overlooks the Piazza della Signoria, which holds a copy of Michelangelo's ''David'' statue, and the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi. Originally called the ''Palazzo della Signoria'', after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence, this building was also known by several other names: ''Palazzo del Popolo'', ''Palazzo dei Priori'', and ''Palazzo Ducale'', in accordance with the varying use of the palace during its long history. The building acquired its current name when the Medici duke's residence was moved across the Arno River to the Palazzo Pitti. History In 1299, the commune and people of Florence decided to build a palace that would be worthy of the city's importance, and that would be more secure and defensible in times of turbulence for the magistrates of the commune.Bartlett, 37. Arnolfo di Cambio, the architect of the Duomo and the Santa C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
The Ducal Palace ( it, Palazzo Ducale) is a Renaissance building in the Italian city of Urbino in the Marche. One of the most important monuments in Italy, it is listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. History The construction of the Ducal Palace was begun for Duke Federico III da Montefeltro around the mid-fifteenth century by the Florentine Maso di Bartolomeo. The new construction included the pre-existing Palace of the Jole. The solid rock hillside salient was impregnable to siege but was problematic for carving out the foundation of a palace. Thus, a prominent fortress-builder, Luciano Laurana, from Dalmatia, was hired to build the substructure; but Laurana departed Urbino before the living quarters of the palace were begun. After Laurana, the designer or designers of the Ducal Palace are unknown with certainty. Leading High Renaissance architect Donato Bramante was a native of Urbino and may have worked on the completion of the palace. The Ducal Palace is famou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gubbio
Gubbio () is an Italian town and ''comune'' in the far northeastern part of the Italian province of Perugia (Umbria). It is located on the lowest slope of Mt. Ingino, a small mountain of the Apennines. History The city's origins are very ancient. The hills above the town were already occupied in the Bronze Age. As ''Ikuvium'', it was an important town of the Umbri in pre-Roman times, made famous for the discovery there in 1444 of the Iguvine Tablets, a set of bronze tablets that together constitute the largest surviving text in the Umbrian language. After the Roman conquest in the 2nd century BC – it kept its name as ''Iguvium'' – the city remained important, as attested by its Roman theatre, the second-largest surviving in the world. Gubbio became very powerful in the beginning of the Middle Ages. The town sent 1000 knights to fight in the First Crusade under the lead of Girolamo Gabrielli, and according to an undocumented local tradition, they were the first to penetrate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isabella D'Este
Isabella d'Este (19 May 1474 – 13 February 1539) was Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by numerous women. The poet Ariosto labeled her as the "liberal and magnanimous Isabella", while author Matteo Bandello described her as having been "supreme among women". Diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went even further by hailing her as "The First Lady of the world". She served as the regent of Mantua during the absence of her husband Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, Francesco II Gonzaga and during the minority of her son Federico II, Duke of Mantua, Federico. She was a prolific letter-writer and maintained a lifelong correspondence with her sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga. Isabella grew up in a cultured family in the city-state of Ferrara. She received a fine classical education and as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intarsia
Intarsia is a form of wood inlaying that is similar to marquetry. The start of the practice dates from before the seventh century AD. The technique of intarsia inlays sections of wood (at times with contrasting ivory or bone, or mother-of-pearl) within the solid wood matrix of floors and walls or of tabletops and other furniture; by contrast marquetry assembles a pattern out of veneers glued upon the carcass. The word ''intarsia'' may derive from the Latin word '' interserere'' (to insert). Certosina is a variant also using pieces of ivory, bone or mother of pearl. Intarsia is mostly used of Italian, or at least European work. Similar techniques are found over much of Asia and the Middle East. History When Egypt came under Arab rule in the seventh century, indigenous arts of intarsia and wood inlay, which lent themselves to non-representational decors and tiling patterns, spread throughout the Maghreb. The technique of intarsia was already perfected in Islamic North Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illuminated Manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories and deeds. While Islamic manuscripts can also be called illuminated, and use essentially the same techniques, comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as ''painted''. The earliest illuminated manuscripts in existence come from the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire and date from between 400 and 600 CE. Examples include the Codex Argenteus and the Rossano Gospels, both of which are from the 6th century. The majority of extant manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parable
A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of metaphorical analogy. Some scholars of the canonical gospels and the New Testament apply the term "parable" only to the parables of Jesus, although that is not a common restriction of the term. Parables such as the parable of the Prodigal Son are important to Jesus's teaching method. Etymology The word ''parable'' comes from the Greek παραβολή (''parabolē''), literally "throwing" (''bolē'') "alongside" (''para-''), by extension meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy." It was the name given by Greek rhetoricians to an illustration in the form of a brief fictional narrative. History The Bible contains numerous parables in the Gospels of the New Testament ( Jesus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domenico Fetti
Domenico Fetti (also spelled Feti) (c. 1589 – 1623) was an Italian Baroque painter who had been active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice. Biography Born in Rome to a little-known painter, Pietro Fetti, Domenico is said to have apprenticed initially under Ludovico Cigoli, or his pupil Andrea Commodi in Rome from circa 1604–1613. He then worked in Mantua from 1613 to 1622, patronized by the Cardinal, later Duke Ferdinando I Gonzaga. In the Ducal Palace, he painted the ''Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes''. The series of representations of New Testament parables he carried out for his patron's '' studiolo'' gave rise to a popular specialty, and he and his studio often repeated his compositions. In August or September 1622, his feuds with some prominent Mantuans led him to move to Venice, which for the first few decades of the seventeenth century had persisted in sponsoring Mannerist styles (epitomized by Palma the Younger and the successors of Tintoretto and Veronese). I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantua
Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the European Capital of Gastronomy, included in the Eastern Lombardy District (together with the cities of Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona). In 2008, Mantua's ''centro storico'' (old town) and Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family has made it one of the main artistic, cultural, and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole. Having one of the most splendid courts of Europe of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera; the city is also known for its architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces, and the medieval and Renaissance cityscape. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinando I Gonzaga
Ferdinand I Gonzaga (26 April 1587 – 29 October 1626) was Duke of Mantua and Duke of Montferrat from 1612 until his death. Biography Born in Mantua, he was the son of Vincenzo I and Eleonora de' Medici. He was appointed a cardinal at the age of 20. A few years after his elder brother, Duke Francesco IV, died in 1612 without male heirs, he renounced the ecclesiastical career and succeeded his brother in both the Duchy of Mantua and the Duchy of Montferrat. In 1616 he secretly married Camilla Faà di Bruno, whom he divorced in the same year. Their son Francesco Giacinto Teodoro Giovanni Gonzaga, although accepted at court, was not made Ferdinando's heir. He died of the plague during the 1630 siege of Mantua. On 16 February 1617 he married Catherine de' Medici (1593–1629), the daughter of Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Ferdinand Gonzaga died in 1626. His younger brother Vincenzo II inherited the duchy. Family In 1616 he married Camilla Faà di Bruno, they had: *Fra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trompe-l'œil
''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving painted objects or spaces as real. Forced perspective is a related illusion in architecture. History in painting The phrase, which can also be spelled without the hyphen and ligature in English as ''trompe l'oeil'', originates with the artist Louis-Léopold Boilly, who used it as the title of a painting he exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1800. Although the term gained currency only in the early 19th century, the illusionistic technique associated with ''trompe-l'œil'' dates much further back. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical ''trompe-l'œil'' mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room. A version ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Illuminated Manuscript")
