1.
Vienna
–
Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
2.
Austria
–
Austria, officially the Republic of Austria, is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.7 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, the territory of Austria covers 83,879 km2. The terrain is mountainous, lying within the Alps, only 32% of the country is below 500 m. The majority of the population speaks local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene. The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty, from the time of the Reformation, many northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. Following Napoleons defeat, Prussia emerged as Austrias chief competitor for rule of a greater Germany, Austrias defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary, Austria was thus the first to go to war in the July Crisis, which would ultimately escalate into World War I. The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919, in 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies, in 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral, today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna, other major urban areas of Austria include Graz, Linz, Salzburg and Innsbruck. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $43,724, the country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro currency in 1999. The German name for Austria, Österreich, meant eastern realm in Old High German, and is cognate with the word Ostarrîchi and this word is probably a translation of Medieval Latin Marchia orientalis into a local dialect. Austria was a prefecture of Bavaria created in 976, the word Austria is a Latinisation of the German name and was first recorded in the 12th century. Accordingly, Norig would essentially mean the same as Ostarrîchi and Österreich, the Celtic name was eventually Latinised to Noricum after the Romans conquered the area that encloses most of modern-day Austria, around 15 BC. Noricum later became a Roman province in the mid-first century AD, heers hypothesis is not accepted by linguists. Settled in ancient times, the Central European land that is now Austria was occupied in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes, the Celtic kingdom of Noricum was later claimed by the Roman Empire and made a province
3.
Madonna del Prato (Raphael)
–
The Madonna with the Christ Child and Saint John the Baptist is a 1506 painting by Raphael, now held in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is also known as Madonna del prato or Madonna del Belvedere, the three figures in a calm green meadow are linked by looks and touching hands. The Virgin Mary is shown wearing a blue mantle set against a red dress. The blue symbolizes the church and the red Christs death, with the Madonna the uniting of Mother Church with Christs sacrifice. With her eyes fixed on Christ, her head is turned to the left and slightly inclined, the poppy refers to Christs passion, death and resurrection
4.
Raphael
–
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running a large workshop and, despite his death at 37. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings and he was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region and his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture, growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a humanistic education however, it is unclear how easily he read Latin. His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1,1494 by his father, Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master and he had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been a great help to his father. A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity and his fathers workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter, and Luca Signorelli, according to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice despite the tears of his mother. The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, an alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters, the Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a master, that is to say fully trained and his first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was named in the commission
5.
The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)
–
The Tower of Babel was the subject of three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first, a painted on ivory, was painted while Bruegel was in Rome and is now lost. The two surviving paintings, often distinguished by the prefix Great and Little are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, both are oil paintings on wood panels. The Rotterdam painting is about half the size of the Vienna one, in broad terms they have exactly the same composition, but at a detailed level everything is different, whether in the architecture of the tower, the sky and the landscape around the tower. In Vienna the tower rises at the edge of a large city, Bruegel had visited Rome in 1552–1553. The Tower was also symbolic of the turmoil between the Catholic church and the polyglot Protestant religion that was increasingly popular in the Netherlands. The subject may have had a specific topicality, as the famous Polyglot Bible in six languages, although at first glance the tower appears to be a stable series of concentric pillars, upon closer examination it is apparent that none of the layers lies at a true horizontal. Rather the tower is built as an ascending spiral, the workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. The foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the layers were constructed. Lucas van Valckenborch, a contemporary of Bruegels, also painted the Tower of Babel in the 1560s and later in his career, both were part of a larger tradition of painting the tower during the 16th and 17th centuries. The story of the Tower of Babel was interpreted as an example of pride punished, moreover, the hectic activity of the engineers, masons and workmen points to a second moral, the futility of much human endeavour. Nimrods doomed building was used to illustrate this meaning in Sebastian Brants Ship of Fools Bruegels knowledge of building procedures and techniques is considerable and correct in detail. Both towers are shown partly-built with stone facings over a massive brick framework, grand and formal architecture of this sort is not a usual interest of Bruegel in either paintings or drawings, although it was typical subject matter for many of his contemporaries. There are no surviving drawings that are studies for this or any other of Bruegels paintings and this is despite indications that Bruegel did make use of preparatory studies. Both Tower versions are full of the type of details which are likely to have worked out in sketches first. Except for a lack of mountains, the paintings contain the ingredients of the world landscape. The Vienna tower is built around a very small mountain. The Vienna painting is signed and dated Brvegel, M. CCCCC. LXIII, on the stone block directly in front of the king
6.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
–
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. Giuseppes father, Biagio Arcimboldo, was an artist of Milan, like his father, Giuseppe Arcimboldo started his career as a designer for stained glass and frescoes at local cathedrals when he was 21 years old. In 1562, he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court in Vienna and he was also the court decorator and costume designer. Augustus, Elector of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldos work, at a distance, his portraits looked like normal human portraits. However, individual objects in each portrait were actually overlapped together to various anatomical shapes of a human. They were carefully constructed by his imagination, the assembled objects in each portrait were not random, each was related by characterization. The animal tails, which became the beard of the portrait, were used as dusters, by using everyday objects, the portraits were decoration and still-life paintings at the same time. His works showed not only nature and human beings, but also how closely they were related, after a portrait was released to the public, some scholars, who had a close relationship with the book culture at that time, argued that the portrait ridiculed their scholarship. In fact, Arcimboldo criticized rich people’s misbehavior and showed others what happened at that time through his art. In The Librarian, although the painting might have appeared ridiculous, it contained a criticism of wealthy people who collected books only to own them. Art critics debate whether his paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind, Arcimboldo died in Milan, where he had retired after leaving the Prague service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the portrait of Rudolph II. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career, when the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years War, many of Arcimboldos paintings were taken from Rudolf IIs collection. His works can be found in Viennas Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, in Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Arcimboldo is known as a 16th-century Mannerist, a transitional period from 1520 to 1590, Mannerism adopted some artistic elements from the High Renaissance and influenced other elements in the Baroque period. A Mannerist tended to close relationships between human and nature. Arcimboldo also tried to show his appreciation of nature through his portraits, in The Spring, the human portrait was composed of only various spring flowers and plants. From the hat to the neck, every part of the portrait, even the lips and nose, was composed of flowers, on the other hand, in The Winter, the human was composed mostly of roots of trees
7.
Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress
–
Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress is one of the best known portraits by Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. Executed in oil on canvas, it measures 127 cm high by 107 cm wide and was one of Velázquezs last paintings, produced in 1659 and it shows Margaret Theresa of Spain who also appears in the artists Las Meninas. Currently, the painting is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum and this is one of the several court portraits made by Velázquez on different occasions of Infanta Margaret Theresa who, at fifteen, married her uncle, Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. Shes the little infanta who appears in Las Meninas and these paintings show her in different stages of her childhood, they were sent to Vienna to inform Leopold of what his young fiancée looked like. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has two other outstanding paintings by Velázquez, Infanta Maria Teresa and Prince Philip Prospero, however, this portrait of Infanta Margarita is possibly the best of the three. In this portrait, Velázquez used the technique of loose brushstrokes that fuse into coherence only when viewed from a certain distance, the infanta, here eight years old, is shown with a solemn expression. In one of her hands she holds a brown fur muff, the young girl, who is presented as pretty and appealing, has a pale countenance which is enhanced by the blue and silver tones. In the background, there is a console table with a round mirror behind it. Carr, Dawson, Velázquez, London, National Gallery,2006, cirlot, L. Kunsthistorisches, Col. «Museos del Mundo», Tomo 11, Espasa,2007. ISBN 978-84-674-3814-7, page 177 Monreal, L. Grandes Museos, Vol.2, ISBN 84-320-0460-X Olivar, M. Cien obras maestras de la pintura, Biblioteca Básica Salvat,1971. ISBN 84-345-7215-X Velázquez, exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on this portrait
8.
Art history
–
Art history is the study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i. e. genre, design, format, and style. This includes the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the minor arts of ceramics, furniture. As a term, art history encompasses several methods of studying the arts, in common usage referring to works of art. One branch of this area of study is aesthetics, which includes investigating the enigma of the sublime, technically, art history is not these things, because the art historian uses historical method to answer the questions, How did the artist come to create the work. Who were his or her teachers, who were his or her disciples. What historical forces shaped the artists oeuvre, and How did he or she and the creation, in turn, affect the course of artistic, political, and social events. It is, however, questionable whether many questions of this kind can be answered satisfactorily without also considering basic questions about the nature of art, unfortunately the current disciplinary gap between art history and the philosophy of art often hinders this inquiry. Art history is not only a biographical endeavor, Art historians often root their studies in the scrutiny of individual objects. They thus attempt to answer in historically specific ways, questions such as, what meaning did this object convey. Did the artist meet their goals well, the historical backbone of the discipline is a celebratory chronology of beautiful creations commissioned by public or religious bodies or wealthy individuals in western Europe. Such a canon remains prominent, as indicated by the selection of objects present in art history textbooks, nonetheless, since the 20th century there has been an effort to re-define the discipline to be more inclusive of non-Western art, art made by women, and vernacular creativity. Art history as we know it in the 21st century began in the 19th century but has precedents that date to the ancient world, advances in photographic reproduction and printing techniques after World War II increased the ability of reproductions of artworks. Such technologies have helped to advance the discipline in profound ways, the study of visual art thus described, can be a practice that involves understanding context, form, and social significance. Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the ontology, Art historians often examine work in the context of its time. In short, this approach examines the work of art in the context of the world within which it was created, Art historians also often examine work through an analysis of form, that is, the creators use of line, shape, color, texture, and composition. This approach examines how the artist uses a picture plane or the three dimensions of sculptural or architectural space to create his or her art. The way these individual elements are employed results in representational or non-representational art, is the artist imitating an object or image found in nature. The closer the art hews to perfect imitation, the more the art is realistic, is the artist not imitating, but instead relying on symbolism, or in an important way striving to capture natures essence, rather than copy it directly
9.
Art museum
–
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg)
Media related to Kunsthistorisches Museum at Wikimedia Commons
_-_WGA20386.jpg){kind=link}