1.
Bern
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The city of Bern or Berne is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to by the Swiss as their Bundesstadt, or federal city. With a population of 141,762, Bern is the fourth-most populous city in Switzerland, the Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000, Bern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerlands cantons. The official language in Bern is German, but the language is an Alemannic Swiss German dialect. In 1983, the old town in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bern is ranked among the top ten cities for the best quality of life. The etymology of the name Bern is uncertain and it has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern in Middle High German. As a result of the find of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin. The bear was the animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of bears in the Bärengraben dates to the 1440s. No archaeological evidence that indicates a settlement on the site of city centre prior to the 12th century has been found so far. In antiquity, a Celtic oppidum stood on the Engehalbinsel north of Bern, fortified since the second century BC, during the Roman era, a Gallo-Roman vicus was on the same site. The Bern zinc tablet has the name Brenodor, in the Early Middle Ages, a settlement in Bümpliz, now a city district of Bern, was some 4 km from the medieval city. The medieval city is a foundation of the Zähringer ruling family, according to 14th-century historiography, Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen. In 1218, after Berthold died without an heir, Bern was made an imperial city by the Goldene Handfeste of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. In 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of the eight cantons of the period of 1353 to 1481. The city grew out towards the west of the boundaries of the peninsula formed by the river Aare, the Zytglogge tower marked the western boundary of the city from 1191 until 1256, when the Käfigturm took over this role until 1345. It was, in turn, succeeded by the Christoffelturm until 1622, during the time of the Thirty Years War, two new fortifications – the so-called big and small Schanze – were built to protect the whole area of the peninsula
2.
Veduta
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A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often print, of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of vedute are referred to as vedutisti and this genre of landscape originated in Flanders, where artists such as Paul Bril painted vedute as early as the 16th century. In the 17th century Dutch painters made a specialty of detailed and accurate recognizable city, an archetypal example is Johannes Vermeers View of Delft. The Ghent architect, draughtsman and engraver Lieven Cruyl contributed to the development of the vedute during his residence in Rome in the late 17th century, cruyl’s drawings reproduce the topographical aspects of the urban landscape. By the mid-18th century, Venice became renowned as the centre of the vedutisti, the genres greatest practitioners belonged to the Canal and Guardi families of Venice. Some of them went to work as painters in major capitals of Europe, e. g. Canaletto in London and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto in Dresden, in other parts of 18th-century Italy, idiosyncratic varieties of the genre evolved. Giovanni Paolo Pannini was the first veduta artist to concentrate on painting ruins and his collaborators included Hendrik Frans van Lint, who would become one of the leading vedute painters in the first half of the 18th century. In later developments of the vedute, Panninis veduta morphed into the scenes partly or completely imaginary elements, known as capricci, giambattista Piranesi was the foremost master of vedute ideate etchings. His topographical series, Vedute di Roma, went through many printings, in the later 19th century, more personal impressions of cityscapes replaced the desire for topographical accuracy, which was satisfied instead by painted, and later photographed, panoramas. These artists responded to the international market for their city views of Venice and they made such big names for themselves through this genre that they painted nothing. Demand for Federico del Campos views, particularly from English tourists, was so strong, I pittori di vedute in Italia, 1580-1830. Canaletto, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has material on Canalettos contributions to the genre
3.
Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
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The encyclopedia is published by a foundation under the patronage of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Swiss Historical Society and is financed by national research grants. Besides a staff of 35 at the offices, the contributors include 100 academic advisors,2500 historians and 100 translators. The encyclopedia is being edited simultaneously in three languages of Switzerland, German, French and Italian. The first of 13 volumes was published in 2002, the last volume was published in 2014. The 36,000 headings are grouped in, Biographies Articles on families and it makes accessible, for free, all articles ready for publication in print, but no illustrations. It also lists all 36,000 topics that are to be covered, lexicon Istoric Retic is a two volume version with a selection of articles published in Romansh. It includes articles not available in the other languages, the first volume was published in 2010, the second in 2012. An on-line version is also available
4.
Museum of Fine Arts Bern
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The Museum of Fine Arts Bern, established in 1879 in Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is the oldest art museum in Switzerland with a permanent collection. Its holdings run from the Middle Ages to the present and it houses works by Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Ferdinand Hodler, Meret Oppenheim and Ricco Wassmer. The collection consists of over 3,000 paintings and sculptures as well as 48,000 drawings, prints, photographs, videos and films. In May 2014, the museum, much to its surprise, was named heir in the will of Cornelius Gurlitt. The museum was given six months to decide whether it would accept the bequest, the most important proviso required that the museum conduct research into the provenance of the paintings and make restitution where needed to the heirs of the original owners. The museum director, Matthias Frehner, pledged that it would do so if it accepted the bequest, the German government quietly urged the museum to accept the collection in order to provide a neutral place where research into its history could continue. In November 2014 the board voted to accept the collection, official site of the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, with information on its history and collections Interview with the Director of Bern Museum of Fine Arts
5.
Netherlands Institute for Art History
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The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in documentation, archives, and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until modern times, all of this is open to the public, and much of it has been digitized and is available on their website. The main goal of the bureau is to collect, categorize, via the available databases, the visitor can gain insight into archival evidence on the lives of many artists of past centuries. The library owns approximately 450,000 titles, of which ca.150,000 are auction catalogs, there are ca.3,000 magazines, of which 600 are currently running subscriptions. Though most of the text is in Dutch, the record format includes a link to library entries and images of known works. The RKD also manages the Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, the original version is an initiative of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Their bequest formed the basis for both the art collection and the library, which is now housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Though not all of the holdings have been digitised, much of its metadata is accessible online. The website itself is available in both a Dutch and an English user interface, in the artist database RKDartists, each artist is assigned a record number. To reference an artist page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record, usually of the form, https, for example, the artist record number for Salvador Dalí is 19752, so his RKD artist page can be referenced. In the images database RKDimages, each artwork is assigned a record number, to reference an artwork page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record, usually of the form, https, //rkd. nl/en/explore/images/ followed by the artworks record number. For example, the record number for The Night Watch is 3063. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus also assigns a record for each term, rather, they are used in the databases and the databases can be searched for terms. For example, the painting called The Night Watch is a militia painting, the thesaurus is a set of general terms, but the RKD also contains a database for an alternate form of describing artworks, that today is mostly filled with biblical references. To see all images that depict Miriams dance, the associated iconclass code 71E1232 can be used as a search term. Official website Direct link to the databases The Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus
