1.
Vienna
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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
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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)
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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
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
10.
Vienna Ring Road
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The Ring Road is a circular, more properly called grand boulevard ring road surrounding the oldest historical city centre Innere Stadt district of Vienna, Austria and is one of its main sights. It is located on the site of the medieval city fortifications. Known for its architectural beauty and history, it has also been called the Lord of the ring roads. The walls were surrounded by a glacis about 500m wide, where buildings, but by the late 18th century these fortifications had become obsolete. Under Emperor Joseph II, streets and walkways were built in the glacis, lit by lanterns, craftsmen built open-air workshops, and stalls were set up. But the Revolution of 1848 was required to trigger a significant change. In 1850, the sububs or Vorstädte were incorporated into the municipality, in 1857, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria issued the decree I have resolved to command ordering the demolition of the city walls and moats. In his decree, he laid out the size of the boulevard. The Ringstraße and the buildings were intended to be a showcase for the grandeur. Since the Ringstraße had always been meant primarily for show, a parallel Lastenstraße was built on the outside of the former glacis and this street is commonly known as 2-er Linie, named after the number 2 in the identifiers of the various streetcar or tram lines which used it. It is still an important traffic thoroughfare, after some disputes about competence between the government and the municipality, a City Extension Fund was created, which was administered by the government. Only the city hall or town hall was planned by the city, during the following years, a large number of opulent public and private buildings were erected. Both the nobility and the rushed to build showy mansions. One of the first buildings was the Heinrichshof, owned by the beer brewer Heinrich Drasche, one of the earliest art historians to study the Ringstraße is Renate Wagner-Rieger, a professor and alumnus at the University of Vienna. Sigmund Freud was known to take a daily walk around the Ring. Many of the buildings that line the Ringstraße date back to the time before 1870, the Winter Palace or Hofburg was extended by an annex, the Neue Hofburg, which houses the Museum of Ethnology and the Austrian National Library today. On the other side of the boulevard, there are the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum, originally, there should have been a parallel wing opposite the Neue Hofburg, which would have been located across the Ringstrasse from the Museum of Natural History. Together with the Heldenplatz and the Maria-Theresien-Platz this plan would have constituted the Imperial Forum/Kaiserforum, however, that plan was shelved for lack of funds
11.
Dome
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A dome is an architectural element that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. The precise definition has been a matter of controversy, there are also a wide variety of forms and specialized terms to describe them. A dome can rest upon a rotunda or drum, and can be supported by columns or piers that transition to the dome through squinches or pendentives, a lantern may cover an oculus and may itself have another dome. Domes have a long architectural lineage that extends back into prehistory and they have been constructed from mud, snow, stone, wood, brick, concrete, metal, glass, and plastic over the centuries. The symbolism associated with domes includes mortuary, celestial, and governmental traditions that have developed over time. Domes have been found from early Mesopotamia, which may explain the forms spread and they are found in Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Chinese architecture in the Ancient world, as well as among a number of contemporary indigenous building traditions. They were popular in Byzantine and medieval Islamic architecture, and there are examples from Western Europe in the Middle Ages. The Renaissance style spread from Italy in the Early modern period, advancements in mathematics, materials, and production techniques since that time resulted in new dome types. The domes of the world can be found over religious buildings, legislative chambers, sports stadiums. The English word dome ultimately derives from the Latin domus —which, up through the Renaissance, labeled a revered house, such as a Domus Dei, or House of God, the French word dosme came to acquire the meaning of a cupola vault, specifically, by 1660. A dome is a rounded vault made of either curved segments or a shell of revolution, sometimes called false domes, corbel domes achieve their shape by extending each horizontal layer of stones inward slightly farther than the lower one until they meet at the top. A false dome may also refer to a wooden dome, true domes are said to be those whose structure is in a state of compression, with constituent elements of wedge-shaped voussoirs, the joints of which align with a central point. The validity of this is unclear, as domes built underground with corbelled stone layers are also in compression from the surrounding earth, as with arches, the springing of a dome is the level from which the dome rises. The top of a dome is the crown, the inner side of a dome is called the intrados and the outer side is called the extrados. The haunch is the part of an arch that lies halfway between the base and the top. The word cupola is another word for dome, and is used for a small dome upon a roof or turret. Cupola has also used to describe the inner side of a dome. Drums, also called tholobates, are cylindrical or polygonal walls with or without windows that support a dome, a tambour or lantern is the equivalent structure over a domes oculus, supporting a cupola
12.
Natural History Museum, Vienna
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The Natural History Museum is a large natural history museum located in Vienna, Austria. The museums website provides an overview in the form of a virtual tour, the museums earliest collections of artifacts were begun over 250 years ago. Today, its collections on display cover 8,700 square metres, as of 2011, the museum houses approximately 30 million objects and the number is growing. Behind the scenes, collections comprising some 25 million specimens and artefacts are the basis for the work of over 60 staff scientists. The museum building opened in 1889 at the time as the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The two museums have identical exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz, the Museum was built to house the huge collection of the Habsburgs. Both buildings were built between 1872 and 1891 on the Ringstraße according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer, the insect collections date from 1793 when Franz I of Austria purchased the scientific collections of Joseph Natterer, Sr. In 1806 the museum purchased a collection of European insects made by Johann Carl Megerle von Mühlfeld and he organised the purchase of the Gundian collection of European butterflies. In 1859, the frigate SMS Novara returned from a voyage with Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld and Johann Zelebor. These were worked on by Ludwig Redtenbacher, Friedrich Moritz Brauer, Henri Louis Frederic de Saussure, Gustav Mayr, Ignaz Rudolph Schiner, C Felder, R. Felder, the present museum organization dates from 1876. The main building of the museum is a palace that has accommodated these constantly growing collections. However, some of the collections had been moved from older buildings, such as the Austrian National Library. The interaction of the building, its decoration, furniture. A contemporary presentation of the exhibits, using modern technology, has been possible without any destruction of the buildings historical structures. The first floor displays the variety of the animal world. Note that some signs and explanations in the museum are in German, while much of the museum is in German, Imperial Natural History Museum, the current museums predecessor. Other major museums in Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Museum of Fine Art sitting opposite the Vienna Museum of Natural History, lobkowitz Palace, housing the Kunsthistorisches Museums theatrical department and the Austrian National Library. Technisches Museum Wien, the Museum of Technology, Museum of Ethnology Official website Annals, an early history of the museum
13.
Franz Joseph I of Austria
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Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, and many others from 2 December 1848 until his death on 21 November 1916. From 1 May 1850 to 24 August 1866 he was also President of the German Confederation, in December 1848, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated the throne at Olomouc as part of Ministerpräsident Felix zu Schwarzenbergs plan to end the Revolutions of 1848 in Hungary. This allowed Ferdinands nephew Franz Joseph to accede to the throne, largely considered to be a reactionary, Franz Joseph spent his early reign resisting constitutionalism in his domains. Franz Joseph was troubled by nationalism during his entire reign and he concluded the Ausgleich of 1867, which granted greater autonomy to Hungary, hence transforming the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire under his dual monarchy. After the Austro-Prussian War, Austria-Hungary turned its attention to the Balkans, the Bosnian crisis was a result of Franz Josephs annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, which had been occupied by his troops since the Congress of Berlin. On 28 June 1914, the assassination of his nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo resulted in Austria-Hungarys declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia and this activated a system of alliances which resulted in World War I. Franz Joseph died on 21 November 1916, after ruling his domains for almost 68 years and he was succeeded by his grandnephew Charles. His name in German was Franz Joseph I and I and his names in other languages were, Croatian and Bosnian, Franjo Josip I. Ukrainian, Фра́нц Йо́сиф I, Romanian, Francisc Iosif Slovene, serbian, Фрања Јосиф Franz Joseph was born in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl, and his wife Princess Sophie of Bavaria. Franzl came to idolise his grandfather, der Gute Kaiser Franz, at the age of thirteen, Franzl started a career as a colonel in the Austrian army. From that point onward, his fashion was dictated by army style, Franz Joseph was soon joined by three younger brothers, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, Archduke Karl Ludwig, and Archduke Ludwig Viktor, and a sister, Maria Anna, who died at the age of four. Instead, Franz was sent to the front in Italy, joining Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on 29 April, by all accounts he handled his first military experience calmly and with dignity. Around the same time, the Imperial Family was fleeing revolutionary Vienna for the setting of Innsbruck. Soon, the Archduke was called back from Italy, joining the rest of his family at Innsbruck by mid-June. It was at Innsbruck at this time that Franz Joseph first met his cousin Elisabeth, his bride, then a girl of ten. Following victory over the Italians at Custoza in late July, the court felt safe to return to Vienna, but within a few months Vienna again appeared unsafe, and in September the court left again, this time for Olomouc in Moravia. By now, Prince Alfred I of Windisch-Grätz, the military commander in Bohemia, was determined to see the young Archduke soon put on the throne. By the abdication of his uncle Ferdinand and the renunciation of his father, at this time he first became known by his second as well as his first Christian name
14.
Austria-Hungary
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The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal, Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states. Austria-Hungary was a state and one of the worlds great powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as a state religion due to Bosnias Muslim population. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I and it was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The realms full, official name was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship, one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, however, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungarys central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government, the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the union, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separated. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, from 1527 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated her from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories
15.
Maria-Theresien-Platz
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Maria-Theresien-Platz is a large public square in Vienna, Austria, that joins the Ringstraße with the Museumsquartier, a museum of modern arts located in the former Imperial Stables. Facing each other from the sides of the square are two identical buildings, the Naturhistorisches Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The buildings are identical, except for the statuary on their façades. The Naturhistorisches façade has statues depicting personifications of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Kunsthistorisches façade features famous European artists, such as the Dutch Bruegel, among others. The Naturhistorisches Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the square adjoining them were built in 1889, at the center of the square is a large statue depicting Empress Maria Theresa, namesake of the square. The Modern Art Museum in the former Imperial Stables shows contemporary works that some may consider controversial, the three museums are popular destinations for tourists. The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains numerous works by the Northern European masters, such as Bruegels Tower of Babel. The Egyptian collection houses mummified forms, stone carvings, and the tomb of an Egyptian prince that was transported to Vienna, on the stairwells roof are frescoes by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The stairwell contains paintings of Emperor Franz Joseph, Empress Maria Theresa and her stuffed pet lap dog, a miniature hound
16.
Gottfried Semper
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Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later to London, later he returned to Germany after the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries. Semper designed works at all scales, from a baton for Richard Wagner to major urban interventions like the re-design of the Ringstraße in Vienna, Semper was born into a well-to-do industrialist family in Altona. The fifth of eight children, he attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg before starting his university education at Göttingen in 1823 and he subsequently studied architecture in 1825 at the University of Munich under Friedrich von Gärtner. In 1826, Semper travelled to Paris in order to work for the architect Franz Christian Gau, between 1830 and 1833 he travelled to Italy and Greece in order to study the architecture and designs of antiquity. In 1832 he participated for four months in archaeological research at the Acropolis in Athens, the drawn reconstructions of the painterly decorations of ancient villas he created in Athens inspired his later designs for the painted decorations in Dresden and Vienna. The flourishing growth of Dresden during this period provided the young architect with considerable creative opportunities, in 1838-40 a synagogue was built in Dresden to Sempers design, it was ever afterward called the Semper Synagogue and is noted for its Moorish Revival interior style. The Synagogues exterior was built in romanesque style so as not to call attention to itself, the interior design included not only the Moorish inspired wall decorations, but furnishings, specifically, a silver lamp of eternal light, which caught Richard Wagner and his wife Cosimas fancy. They gave a great deal of effort to have a copy of this lamp, Sempers student, Otto Simonson would construct the magnificent Moorish Revival Leipzig synagogue in 1855. Certain civic structures remain today, such as the Elbe-facing gallery of the Zwinger Palace complex and his first building for the Dresden Hoftheater burnt down, and the second, today called the Semperoper, was built in 1841. Other buildings also remain indelibly attached to his name, such as the Maternity Hospital, the Synagogue, the Oppenheim Palace, and this last construction stands as a prototype of German villa architecture. On September 1,1835 Semper married Bertha Thimmig, the marriage ultimately produced six children. A convinced Republican, Semper took a role, along with his friend Richard Wagner. He was a member of the Civic Guard and helped to erect barricades in the streets, when the rebellion collapsed, Semper was considered a leading agitator for democratic change and a ringleader against government authority and he was forced to flee the city. He was destined never to return to the city that would, ironically, the Saxon government maintained a warrant for his arrest until 1863. When the Semper-designed Hoftheater burnt down in 1869, King John, on the urging of the citizenry, Semper produced the plans, but left the actual construction to his son, Manfred. What must I have done in 48, that one persecutes me forever, one single barricade did I construct - it held, because it was practical, and as it was practical, it was beautiful, wrote Semper in dismay
17.
Baron Karl von Hasenauer
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Baron Karl von Hasenauer was an important Austrian architect and key representative of the Historismus school. He created several Neo-Baroque monuments, many around near the Ringstraße in Vienna and he was also a student of August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll. For his outstanding work, he was ennobled by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1873, and made Freiherr, Hasenauer was the chief architect for the Vienna Worlds Fair in 1873. Together with Gottfried Semper he designed the complex with the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum, the Burgtheater, the Hermesvilla, after a conflict with his former business partner Semper he managed the building of the Hofburg alone. The conflict over attribution of their joint projects continues to this day between the supporters of Semper and Hasenauer, however, because the older master Semper is credited with the Semperoper in Dresden, Hasenauer receives more credit for the architecture in the Ringstraße
18.
Habsburg
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The House of Habsburg, also called House of Hapsburg, or House of Austria, was one of the most influential royal houses of Europe. The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs between 1438 and 1740, from the sixteenth century, following the reign of Charles V, the dynasty was split between its Austrian and Spanish branches. Although they ruled distinct territories, they maintained close relations. The House takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a built in the 1020s in present-day Switzerland, in the canton of Aargau, by Count Radbot of Klettgau. His grandson Otto II was the first to take the name as his own. The House of Habsburg gathered dynastic momentum through the 11th, 12th, by 1276, Count Radbots seventh generation descendant Rudolph of Habsburg had moved the familys power base from Habsburg Castle to the Duchy of Austria. Rudolph had become King of Germany in 1273, and the dynasty of the House of Habsburg was truly entrenched in 1276 when Rudolph became ruler of Austria, which the Habsburgs ruled until 1918. A series of dynastic marriages enabled the family to expand its domains to include Burgundy, Spain and its colonial empire, Bohemia, Hungary. In the 16th century, the separated into the senior Habsburg Spain and the junior Habsburg Monarchy branches. The House of Habsburg became extinct in the 18th century, the senior Spanish branch ended upon the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and was replaced by the House of Bourbon. It was succeeded by the Vaudemont branch of the House of Lorraine, the new successor house styled itself formally as the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, although it was often referred to as simply the House of Habsburg. His grandson Radbot, Count of Habsburg founded the Habsburg Castle, the origins of the castles name, located in what is now the Swiss canton of Aargau, are uncertain. There is disagreement on whether the name is derived from the High German Habichtsburg, or from the Middle High German word hab/hap meaning ford, the first documented use of the name by the dynasty itself has been traced to the year 1108. The Habsburg Castle was the seat in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. The Habsburgs expanded their influence through arranged marriages and by gaining political privileges, in the 13th century, the house aimed its marriage policy at families in Upper Alsace and Swabia. They were also able to high positions in the church hierarchy for their members. Territorially, they often profited from the extinction of other families such as the House of Kyburg. By the second half of the 13th century, count Rudolph IV had become one of the most influential territorial lords in the area between the Vosges Mountains and Lake Constance
19.
Facade
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A façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. It is a loan word from the French façade, which means frontage or face. In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint, from the engineering perspective of a building, the façade is also of great importance due to its impact on energy efficiency. For historical façades, many local zoning regulations or other laws restrict or even forbid their alteration. The word comes from the French foreign loan word façade, which in turn comes from the Italian facciata, from faccia meaning face, the earliest usage recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is 1656. It was quite common in the Georgian period for existing houses in English towns to be given a fashionable new façade, in modern highrise building, the exterior walls are often suspended from the concrete floor slabs. Examples include curtain walls and precast concrete walls, the façade can at times be required to have a fire-resistance rating, for instance, if two buildings are very close together, to lower the likelihood of fire spreading from one building to another. In general, the systems that are suspended or attached to the precast concrete slabs will be made from aluminium or stainless steel. In recent years more lavish materials such as titanium have sometimes been used, whether rated or not, fire protection is always a design consideration. The melting point of aluminium,660 °C, is reached within minutes of the start of a fire. Firestops for such building joints can be qualified, too, putting fire sprinkler systems on each floor has a profoundly positive effect on the fire safety of buildings with curtain walls. Some building codes also limit the percentage of area in exterior walls. When the exterior wall is not rated, the slab edge becomes a junction where rated slabs are abutting an unrated wall. For rated walls, one may also choose rated windows and fire doors, on a film set and within most themed attractions, many of the buildings are only façades, which are far cheaper than actual buildings, and not subject to building codes. In film sets, they are held up with supports from behind. Within theme parks, they are usually decoration for the interior ride/attraction/restaurant, by Ulrich Knaack, Tillmann Klein, Marcel Bilow and Thomas Auer. ISBN 978-3-7643-7961-2 ISBN 978-3-7643-7962-9 Giving buildings an illusion of grandeur Poole, the article outlines the development of the façade in ecclesiastical architecture from the early Christian period to the Renaissance
20.
Sandstone
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Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earths crust, like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, quartz-bearing sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure, usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. They are formed from cemented grains that may either be fragments of a rock or be mono-minerallic crystals. The cements binding these grains together are typically calcite, clays, grain sizes in sands are defined within the range of 0.0625 mm to 2 mm. The formation of sandstone involves two principal stages, first, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation, either from water or from air. Typically, sedimentation occurs by the settling out from suspension. The most common cementing materials are silica and calcium carbonate, which are derived either from dissolution or from alteration of the sand after it was buried. Colours will usually be tan or yellow, a predominant additional colourant in the southwestern United States is iron oxide, which imparts reddish tints ranging from pink to dark red, with additional manganese imparting a purplish hue. Red sandstones are seen in the Southwest and West of Britain, as well as central Europe. The regularity of the latter favours use as a source for masonry, either as a building material or as a facing stone. These physical properties allow the grains to survive multiple recycling events. Quartz grains evolve from rock, which are felsic in origin. Feldspathic framework grains are commonly the second most abundant mineral in sandstones, Feldspar can be divided into two smaller subdivisions, alkali feldspars and plagioclase feldspars. The different types of feldspar can be distinguished under a petrographic microscope, below is a description of the different types of feldspar. Alkali feldspar is a group of minerals in which the composition of the mineral can range from KAlSi3O8 to NaAlSi3O8. Plagioclase feldspar is a group of solid solution minerals that range in composition from NaAlSi3O8 to CaAl2Si2O8. Lithic framework grains are pieces of ancient source rock that have yet to weather away to individual mineral grains, accessory minerals are all other mineral grains in a sandstone, commonly these minerals make up just a small percentage of the grains in a sandstone
21.
Stucco
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Stucco or render is a material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a dense solid. It is used as coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural. Stucco may be used to cover less visually appealing construction materials such as metal, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe. In English, stucco usually means a coating for the outside of a building, and plaster one for interiors, as described below, but other European languages, importantly including Italian, do not have the same distinction, stucco means plaster in Italian and serves for both. This has led to English often using stucco for interior decorative plasterwork in relief, especially in art history, the difference in nomenclature between stucco, plaster, and mortar is based more on use than composition. Animal or plant fibers were often added for additional strength, in the latter nineteenth century, Portland cement was added with increasing frequency in an attempt to improve the durability of stucco. At the same time, traditional lime plasters were being replaced by gypsum plaster, traditional stucco is made of lime, sand, and water. Modern stucco is made of Portland cement, sand, and water, lime is added to increase the permeability and workability of modern stucco. Sometimes additives such as acrylics and glass fibers are added to improve the properties of the stucco. This is usually done with what is considered a one-coat stucco system, lime stucco is a relatively hard material that can be broken or chipped by hand without too much difficulty. The lime itself is white, color comes from the aggregate or any added pigments. Lime stucco has the property of being self-healing to a degree because of the slight water solubility of lime. Portland cement stucco is very hard and brittle and can easily crack if the base on which it is applied is not stable, typically its color was gray, from the innate color of most Portland cement, but white Portland cement is also used. Todays stucco manufacturers offer a wide range of colors that can be mixed integrally in the finish coat. As a building material, stucco is a durable, attractive and it was traditionally used as both an interior and exterior finish applied in one or two thin layers directly over a solid masonry, brick or stone surface. The finish coat usually contained a color and was typically textured for appearance. The lath added support for the wet plaster and tensile strength to the brittle, cured stucco, while the increased thickness, the traditional application of stucco and lath occurs in three coats — the scratch coat, the brown coat and the finish coat
22.
Portrait
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A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person, for this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, nonetheless, many subjects, such as Akhenaten and some other Egyptian pharaohs, can be recognised by their distinctive features. The 28 surviving rather small statues of Gudea, ruler of Lagash in Sumeria between c.2144 -2124 BC, show a consistent appearance with some individuality. Some of the earliest surviving painted portraits of people who were not rulers are the Greco-Roman funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypts Fayum district. These are almost the only paintings from the world that have survived, apart from frescos, though many sculptures. Although the appearance of the figures differs considerably, they are considerably idealized, the art of the portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where sitters demanded individualized and realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of a symbol of what that person looked like. In the Europe of the Early Middle Ages representations of individuals are mostly generalized, true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in tomb monuments, donor portraits, miniatures in illuminated manuscripts and then panel paintings. Moche culture of Peru was one of the few ancient civilizations which produced portraits and these works accurately represent anatomical features in great detail. The individuals portrayed would have been recognizable without the need for other symbols or a reference to their names. The individuals portrayed were members of the elite, priests, warriors. They were represented during several stages of their lives, the faces of gods were also depicted. To date, no portraits of women have been found, there is particular emphasis on the representation of the details of headdresses, hairstyles, body adornment and face painting. One of the portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vincis painting titled Mona Lisa. What has been claimed as the worlds oldest known portrait was found in 2006 in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old. Profile view, full view, and three-quarter view, are three common designations for portraits, each referring to a particular orientation of the head of the individual depicted. Such terms would tend to have greater applicability to two-dimensional artwork such as photography, in the case of three-dimensional artwork, the viewer can usually alter their orientation to the artwork by moving around it
23.
Armour
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Personal armour is used to protect soldiers and war animals. Vehicle armour is used on warships and armoured fighting vehicles, a second use of the term armour describes armoured forces, armoured weapons, and their role in combat. After the evolution of armoured warfare, mechanised infantry and their weapons came to be referred to collectively as armour, the word armour began to appear in the Middle Ages as a derivative of Old French. It is dated from 1297 as a mail, defensive covering worn in combat, the word originates from the Old French armure, itself derived from the Latin armatura meaning arms and/or equipment, with the root armare meaning arms or gear. Armour has been used throughout recorded history and it has been made from a variety of materials, beginning with rudimentary leather protection and evolving through mail and metal plate into todays modern composites. For much of history the manufacture of metal personal armour has dominated the technology. Its production was influential in the revolution, and furthered commercial development of metallurgy. Armour was the single most influential factor in the development of firearms, significant factors in the development of armour include the economic and technological necessities of its production. For instance, plate armour first appeared in Medieval Europe when water-powered trip hammers made the formation of plates faster and cheaper, also, modern militaries usually do not equip their forces with the best armour available because it would be prohibitively expensive. The samurai warriors of feudal Japan utilised many types of armour for hundreds of years up to the 19th century, Japanese lamellar armour passed through Korea and reached Japan around the 5th century. These early Japanese lamellar armours took the form of a sleeveless jacket, armour did not always cover all of the body, sometimes no more than a helmet and leg plates were worn. The rest of the body was protected by means of a large shield. Examples of armies equipping their troops in this fashion were the Aztecs, in East Asia many types of armour were commonly used at different times by various cultures including, scale armour, lamellar armour, laminar armour, plated mail, mail, plate armour and brigandine. Around the dynastic Tang, Song, and early Ming Period, cuirasses and plates were also used, the Chinese, during that time used partial plates for important body parts instead of covering their whole body since too much plate armour hinders their martial arts movement. The other body parts were covered in cloth, leather, lamellar, in pre-Qin dynasty times, leather armour was made out of various animals, with more exotic ones such as the rhinoceros. Mail, sometimes called chainmail, made of interlocking iron rings is believed to have first appeared some time after 300 BC and its invention is credited to the Celts, the Romans were thought to have adopted their design. Gradually, small plates or discs of iron were added to the mail to protect vulnerable areas. Hardened leather and splinted construction were used for arm and leg pieces, the coat of plates was developed, an armour made of large plates sewn inside a textile or leather coat
24.
Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria
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Ferdinand II, Archduke of Further Austria was ruler of Further Austria including Tirol. The son of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, he was married to Philippine Welser in his first marriage, in his second marriage to Anna Juliana Gonzaga, he was the father of Anna of Tyrol, the would-be Holy Roman Empress. Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was the son of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia. He was a brother of Emperor Maximilian II. At the behest of his father, he was put in charge of the administration of Bohemia in 1547 and he also led the campaign against the Turks in Hungary in 1556. In 1557 he was married to Philippine Welser, daughter of a patrician from Augsburg. The marriage was accepted by Emperor Ferdinand I in 1559 under the condition of secrecy. The children were to receive the name of Austria but would only be entitled to if the House of Habsburg became totally extinct in the male line. The sons born of this received the title Margrave of Burgau, after the Margraviate of Burgau. The younger of the sons, who survived their father, later received the title of Fürst zu Burgau. After his fathers death in 1564, Ferdinand became the ruler of Tirol, however, he remained governor of Bohemia in Prague until 1567 according to the wishes of his brother Maximilian II. In his own lands, Ferdinand made sure that the Catholic counterreformation would prevail, the cultured humanist from the House of Habsburg was instrumental in promoting the Renaissance in central European. He also was a collector of art. He accommodated his world-famous collections in a museum built specifically for that purpose, the collection was started during his time in Bohemia and subsequently moved it to Tyrol. In particular, the Chamber of Art and Curiosities, the gallery of portraits and the collection of armor were highly expensive, today these collections are at Ambras Castle Innsbruck and in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. After the death of Philippine in 1580, he married Anne Catherine, Archduke Ferdinand died on 24 January 1595. Since his sons from the first marriage were not entitled to the inheritance, and his daughter from the Mantuan marriage became the Empress Anna, consort of Emperor Mathias, who received his Further Austrian inheritance. He and his first wife Philippine Welser were parents of four children, became a Cardinal in 1576, Margrave of Burgau in 1578, Bishop of Constance in 1589 and Bishop of Brixen in 1591
25.
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor
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Rudolf II was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia and Archduke of Austria. He was a member of the House of Habsburg, Rudolf was born in Vienna on 18 July 1552. Rudolf spent eight years, from age 11 to 19, in Spain. Rudolf would remain for the rest of his reserved, secretive. He suffered from bouts of melancholy, which was common in the Habsburg line. These became worse with age, and were manifested by a withdrawal from the world, like his contemporary, Elizabeth I of England, Rudolf dangled himself as a prize in a string of diplomatic negotiations for marriages, but never in fact married. It has been proposed by A. L. Rowse that he was homosexual, during his periods of self-imposed isolation, Rudolf reportedly had affairs with his court chamberlain, Wolfgang von Rumpf, and a series of valets. One of these, Philip Lang, ruled him for years and was hated by those seeking favour with the emperor, in addition, Rudolf was known to have had a succession of affairs with women, some of whom claimed to have been impregnated by him. He had several children with his mistress Catherina Strada. Their eldest son, Don Julius Caesar dAustria, was born between 1584 and 1586 and received an education and opportunities for political and social prominence from his father. In 1607, Rudolf sent Julius to live at Český Krumlov in Bohemia castle, Julius lived at Český Krumlov when in 1608 he reportedly abused and murdered the daughter of a local barber, who had been living in the castle, and then disfigured her body. Rudolf condemned his sons act and suggested that he should be imprisoned for the rest of his life, however, Julius died in 1609 after showing signs of schizophrenia, refusing to bathe, and living in squalor, his death was apparently caused by an ulcer that ruptured. Many artworks commissioned by Rudolf are unusually erotic, the emperor was the subject of a whispering campaign by his enemies in his family and the Catholic Church in the years before he was deposed. Sexual allegations may well have formed a part of the campaign against him, historians have traditionally blamed Rudolfs preoccupation with the arts, occult sciences, and other personal interests as the reason for the political disasters of his reign. Although raised in his uncles Catholic court in Spain, Rudolf was tolerant of Protestantism and he largely withdrew from Catholic observances, even in death denying last sacramental rites. He had little attachment to Protestants either, except as counter-weight to repressive Papal policies and he put his primary support behind conciliarists, irenicists, and humanists. His conflict with the Ottoman Empire was the cause of his undoing. Unwilling to compromise with the Turks, and stubbornly determined that he could all of Christendom with a new Crusade, he started a long
26.
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm
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Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria was an Austrian military commander, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647 to 1656, and a patron of the arts. Born at Wiener Neustadt, he was the youngest son of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Maria Anna of Bavaria, daughter of William V and his elder brother became Emperor Ferdinand III. Leopold Wilhelm served as a general in the Thirty Years War, during the latter, the Spanish-Low Country forces under Leopold Wilhelm lost the Battle of Lens in an attempt to recover the city in 1648. Later in the war, he sallied forth from the Netherlands on two occasions, on the second, he successfully seized a number of northern French forts in February–March 1652, forcing the French to withdraw forces from Catalonia to reinforce their northern frontier. This assisted Spanish forces in Spain in recovering Catalonia from the French-backed Catalan rebellion, even though Leopold Wilhelm lacked the canonical qualifications, he was invested, with the help of his father, with a number of prince-bishoprics in order to provide him with an income. In 1635, Pope Urban VIII authorised him to become the prince-archbishop of Bremen and he returned to Vienna after the situation in the Spanish Netherlands had deteriorated in 1656. In Vienna he was occupied with the administration of his various bishoprics, the Teutonic Order which he led as Grand Master. After the death of his elder brother Emperor Ferdinand III several electors put him forward for the position of Emperor. However, he stalled to allow his nephew to reach the age to ascend the imperial throne. After devoting himself to the affairs of state, Leopold Wilhelm retired in his final years and he died in Vienna in 1662. With the rank and title of ayuda de camara, Teniers took up his abode in Brussels shortly after 1647. A number of works of the Italian masters, now in the Vienna Museum, came from Leopolds gallery after having belonged to Bartolomeo della Nave, Charles I. He commissioned the British painter John Michael Wright in 1650 to travel to Cromwells England and this expansion of his collection was celebrated by having his most prized pieces engraved in the book Theatrum Pictorium, often called the first art catalog. When Leopold returned to Vienna, his collection of paintings was relocated to the Stallburg gallery in Hofburg Palace, jan Anton van der Baren, a Flemish priest, who was also a first-rate flower painter, became director of the archducal gallery. Leopold bequeathed his gallery to his nephew Leopold I, and it became imperial property and it is now part of the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Ein Galeria nach meinem Humor, Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm, liedtke, Walter A. Flemish paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, media related to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria at Wikimedia Commons
27.
Jan van Eyck
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Jan van Eyck was a Flemish/Netherlandish painter active in Bruges. He is often considered one of the founders of Early Netherlandish painting school, the few surviving records of his early life indicate that he was born c. After Johns death in 1425 he was employed in Lille as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, until 1429 before moving to Bruges, where he lived until his death. Apart from the Ghent Altarpiece and the miniatures of the Turin-Milan Hours, about 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him. Ten, including the Ghent altarpiece, are dated and signed with a variation of his motto, ALS IK KAN always written in Greek characters, Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, including altarpieces, single panel religious figures and commissioned portraits. His work includes single panels, diptychs, triptychs, and polyptych panels and he was well paid by Philip, who sought that the painter was secure financially and had artistic freedom and could paint whenever he pleased. Van Eycks work comes from the International Gothic style, but he soon eclipsed it, through his developments in the use of oil paint he achieved a new level of virtuosity. Van Eyck was highly influential and his techniques and style were adopted and refined by the Early Netherlandish painters, little is known of Jan van Eycks early life and neither the date nor place of his birth is documented. This suggests a date of birth of 1395 at the latest, however, his apparent age in the London probable self-portrait of 1433 suggests to most scholars a date closer to 1380. He was identified in the late 1500s as having been born in Maaseik and this claim is still considered credible on etymological grounds, considering that Van Eyck means of Eyck which is an old variant spelling of eik. He had a sister Margareta, and at least two brothers, Hubert and Lambert, both painters, but the order of their births has not been established. Another significant, and rather younger, painter who worked in Southern France and it is not known where Jan was educated, but he had knowledge of Latin and used the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in his inscriptions, indicating that he was schooled in the classics. This level of education was rare among painters, and would have made him attractive to the cultivated Philip. Van Eyck served John of Bavaria-Straubing, ruler of Holland, Hainault, by this time van Eyck had assembled a small workshop and was involved in redecorating the Binnenhof palace in The Hague. After Johns death in 1425 he moved to Bruges and came to the attention of Philip the Good c and his emergence as a collectable painter generally follows his appointment to Philips court, and from this point his activity in the court is comparatively well documented. He served as court artist and diplomat, and a was a member of the Tournai painters guild. On 18 October 1427, the Feast of St. Luke, he travelled to Tournai to attend a banquet in his honour, also attended by Robert Campin, a court salary freed him from commissioned work, and allowed a large degree of artistic freedom. Over the following decade van Eycks reputation and technical ability grew, unlike most of his peers his reputation never diminished and he remained well regarded over the following centuries
28.
Adoration of the Trinity
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Adoration of the Trinity is an oil-on-panel painting by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, executed in 1511 and currently housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. The house was a charity institution which could house up to twelve artisans who were unable to sustain themselves with their work, the altarpiece was commissioned in 1508, but was delivered three years later, when it was placed in the church. The altar had no movable panels, as in numerous previous similar installations, there is a carved depiction of the Last Judgement at the top of the frame, and it also displays the donors coats of arms. The crowded altarpiece depicts the Trinity, with God the Father holding a crucifix with a still-alive Jesus, above them, in a cloud of light surrounded by cherubims, is the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. God the Father wears a crown and a wide gilt cloak, lined in green. The artist paints a host of male and female saints of Heaven, inspired by Augustine, who are led by John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, respectively. Below, the human multitudes are divided between men and women, and laymen, led by the Holy Roman Emperor—a division similar to that already adopted by Dürer in the Feast of the Rosary. At left, near a cardinal who is perhaps interceding for him, is the aged Matthäus Landauer, wearing rich garments, a peasant, with one of his tools, represents the poor classes. On the right is a queen whose face is entirely hidden by a veil. The lower section is occupied by a landscape with the dawn above a lake, among hills, inspired by landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer
29.
Tintoretto
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Tintoretto was an Italian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso and his work is characterized by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures, and bold use of perspective in the Mannerist style, while maintaining color and light typical of the Venetian School. His real name Comin was discovered by Miguel Falomir of the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Comin translates to the spice cumin in the local language. Tintoretto was born in Venice in 1518, as the eldest of 21 children and his father, Giovanni, was a dyer, or tintore, hence the son got the nickname of Tintoretto, little dyer, or dyers boy, which is anglicized as Tintoret. The family originated from Brescia, in Lombardy, then part of the Republic of Venice, older studies gave the Tuscan town of Lucca as the origin of the family. In childhood Jacopo, a painter, began daubing on the dyers walls, his father, noticing his bent. This was supposedly towards 1533, when Titian was already fifty-six years of age, active disparagement also was not wanting, but it passed unnoticed by Tintoretto. The latter sought for no further teaching, but studied on his own account with laborious zeal, he lived poorly, collecting casts, bas-reliefs etc. and practising by their aid. His noble conception of art and his personal ambition were evidenced in the inscription which he placed over his studio Il disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano. Now and afterwards he very frequently worked by night as well as by day, the young painter Andrea Schiavone, four years Tintorettos junior, was much in his company. Tintoretto helped Schiavone gratis in wall-paintings, and in many subsequent instances he worked also for nothing, the two earliest mural paintings of Tintoretto—done, like others, for next to no pay—are said to have been Belshazzars Feast and a Cavalry Fight. These are both long since perished, as are all his frescoes, early or later, the first work of his to attract some considerable notice was a portrait-group of himself and his brother—the latter playing a guitar—with a nocturnal effect, this also is lost. It was followed by some subject, which Titian was candid enough to praise. For the Scuola della Trinità he painted four subjects from Genesis, up till 2012, The Embarkation of St Helena in the Holy Land was attributed to his contemporary Andrea Schiavone. But new analysis of the work has revealed it as one of a series of three paintings by Tintoretto, depicting the legend of St Helena And The Holy Cross, the error was uncovered during work on a project to catalogue continental European oil paintings in the UK. The Embarkation of St Helena was acquired by the V&A in 1865 and its sister paintings, The Discovery Of The True Cross and St Helen Testing The True Cross, are held in galleries in the US. Towards 1546 Tintoretto painted for the church of the Madonna dellOrto three of his works, the Worship of the Golden Calf, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. He took the commission for two of the paintings, the Worship of the Golden Calf and the Last Judgment, on a cost only basis in order to make himself better known and he settled down in a house hard by the church
30.
Susanna (Book of Daniel)
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Susanna or Shoshana is included in the Book of Daniel by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. It is one of the additions to Daniel, considered apocryphal by Protestants and it is listed in Article VI of the 95 Articles of the Church of England among the books which are read for example of life and instruction of manners, but not for the formation of doctrine. As the story goes, a fair Hebrew wife named Susanna was falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs, as she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lustful elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, after being separated, the two men are cross-examined about details of what they saw but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover. In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentence given by Daniel, the first says they were under a mastic, and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to cut him in two. The second says they were under an oak tree. The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders lie plain to all the observers, the false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs. The Anchor Bible uses yew and hew and clove and cleave to get this effect in English, the Greek text survives in two versions. Sextus Julius Africanus did not regard the story as canonical, jerome, while translating the Vulgate, treated this section as a non-canonical fable. In his introduction, he indicated that Susanna was an addition because it was not present in the Hebrew text of Daniel. Origens claim is reminiscent of Justin Martyrs charge that Jewish scribes removed certain verses from their Scriptures, there are no known early Jewish references to the Susannah story. Susanna is the subject of paintings by artists, including Lorenzo Lotto, Guido Reni, Rubens, Van Dyck, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Tiepolo. Some treatments, especially in the Baroque period, emphasize the drama, others concentrate on the nude, the story is portrayed on the Lothair Crystal, an engraved rock crystal made in the Lotharingia region of northwest Europe in the mid 9th century, now in the British Museum. In 1749, George Frideric Handel wrote an English-language oratorio Susanna, Susanna is the subject of the 1915 poem Peter Quince at the Clavier by Wallace Stevens, which has been set to music by the American composer Dominic Argento and by the Canadian Gerald Berg. American artist Thomas Hart Benton painted a modern Susanna in 1938 and he consciously included pubic hair, unlike the statue-like images of classical art. The fable was set during the Great Depression, and Benton included himself as one of the voyeurs, the Belgian writer Marnix Gijsen borrows elements of the story in his first novel Het boek van Joachim van Babylon,1947. Pablo Picasso, too, rendered the subject in the mid-twentieth century, the elders are depicted as paintings hanging on the wall behind her. The picture, painted in 1955, is part of the permanent collection at the Museo Picasso Málaga
31.
Antonello da Messina
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His work shows strong influences from Early Netherlandish painting although there is no documentary evidence that he ever travelled beyond Italy. Giorgio Vasari credited him with the introduction of oil painting into Italy, unusually for a south Italian artist of the Renaissance, his work proved influential on painters in northern Italy, especially in Venice. Antonello was born at Messina around 1429–1431, to Giovanni de Antonio Mazonus and this account of his training is accepted by most art historians. Antonello returned to Messina from Naples during the 1450s, in around 1455 he painted the so-called Sibiu Crucifixion, inspired by Flemish treatments of the subject, which is now in the Muzeul de Artǎ in Bucharest. A Crucifixion in the Royal Museum of Antwerp dates from the same period, in his biography of the artist, Giorgio Vasari remarked that Antonello saw an oil painting by Jan Van Eyck belonging to King Alfonso V of Aragon at Naples. Another theory, supported only by vague documentary evidence, suggests that in 1456 Antonello visited Milan, however, neither is known for certain to have been in Milan at the time. Between the years of 1456 and 1457, Antonello proved himself to be a painter in Messina. He also shared his home with Paolo di Ciacio, a student from Calabria, at this date, he was already married, and his son Jacobello had been born. In 1460, his father is mentioned leasing a brigantine to bring back Antonello, also from around 1460 are two small panels depicting Abraham Served by the Angels and St. Jerome Penitent now in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria. In 1461 Antonellos younger brother Giordano entered his workshop, signing a three-year contract, in that year Antonello painted a Madonna with Child for the Messinese nobleman Giovanni Mirulla, now lost. Historians believe that Antonello painted his first portraits in the late 1460s, john Pope-Hennessy described him as the first Italian painter for whom the individual portrait was an art form in its own right. In 1474, he painted the Annunciation, now in Syracuse, Antonello went to Venice in 1475 and remained there until the fall of 1476. His works of this begin to show a greater attention to the human figure. His most famous pictures from this include the Condottiero, the San Cassiano Altarpiece. While in Venice he was offered, but did not accept, Antonello had returned to Sicily by September 1476. Works from near the end of his include the famous Virgin Annunciate, now in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo. He died at Messina in 1479 and his testament dates from February of that year, and he is documented as no longer alive two months later. Some of his last works remained unfinished, but were completed by his son Jacobello, Antonellos style is remarkable for its union of Italian simplicity with Flemish concern for detail
32.
San Cassiano Altarpiece
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The San Cassiano Altarpiece is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Antonello da Messina, dating to 1475-1476. Commissioned for the church of San Cassiano in Venice, it was disassembeld in the early 17th-century and it was one of the most influential paintings in the Veneto area of the time. It is unknown when it was disassembeld or why, but it was already in fragments when parts of it were documented by David Teniers the Younger for his Theatrum Pictorium in 1660. It wasnt until 1929 that three of the fragments were reunited by the Hungarian art historian Johannes Wilde, other surviving fragments have been analysed to fit according to the model of a reconstruction in a virtual architectural study. Originally a larger altarpiece, it now only the central panel with the Virgin Enthroned. Allegedly inspired by another Holy Conversation by Giovanni Bellini in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, it however a more balance composition. Antonello adopted a pyramidal layout, enhanced by the use of light. The book with three golden balls held by St. Nicholas alludes to the episode in which he gave them to three girls to be used as dowry, Italian Renaissance painting, development of themes J. Wilde, Pala di San Cassiano Rekonstruktionsversuch, Jahrbuch der Kunsthist. III, pp. 57-72 De Vecchi, Pierluigi, Elda Cerchiari, page at the museums website Antonello da Messina, Sicilys Renaissance Master, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on the altarpiece
33.
Caravaggio
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, in scarcely a year or so’s sojourn in Naples, he rapidly established himself once more as the most prominent painter, exploiting high-ranking connections. It was not long before these connections gave him an opening to travel on in 1607 to Malta, governed by the Order of Knights Hospitallers, Caravaggio probably hoped that the Knights would provide a channel whereby he could obtain a pardon from the Papacy. Once more his talents made an instant impression, along with the support of noble patrons and his hopes dashed, he contrived to escape and flee once, which before the end of 1608 led to his cancellation from the rolls of the Order. He made for Syracuse in Sicily, where he was received as a guest by a friend from his Roman days, the painter’s face was disfigured and rumours started to circulate of his death. Various commentators have formulated opinions about his state from works supposedly executed at this period. In fact, Caravaggio’s end is shrouded in mystery, mystery that is rendered only denser by conflicting hypotheses, some speak of a natural death from a persistent fever, others of an assassination by emissaries of the Knights of Malta. The loss of the paintings put the deal and his future in doubt, there is evidence that dogged by a serious fever, he was tended by a local religious confraternity near Porto Ercole, then in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but succumbed. His death was certified by them as taking place on 18 July 1610, if the story to this point is exact, it is likely he was buried in a paupers’ common grave. As to the place, though this continues to be contested. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, despite this, his influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism was profound. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy claimed, What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting. Caravaggio was born in Milan where his father, Fermo, was an administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. His mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a family of the same district. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague which ravaged Milan, Caravaggios mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592 Caravaggio left Milan for Rome, in flight after certain quarrels, in Rome, where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for an alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of Protestantism. Caravaggios innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close observation with a dramatic, even theatrical
34.
Madonna of the Rosary (Caravaggio)
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The Madonna of the Rosary is a painting finished in 1607 by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is the painting by Caravaggio that could be called a standard Baroque altarpiece. The commissioner of the work is uncertain, as altarpiece it would have been commissioned for a Dominican church, given the presence of Saint Dominic and Saint Peter Martyr of Verona. The donor is included in the painting, at the left, dressed in black with a ruff, seeking protection under the cloak of Saint Dominic and peering out at the viewer. The large column to the left may be a reference to the Colonna family, the Feast of the Rosary was established in 1571 after the Battle of Lepanto, and Luigi Carafa-Colonna was a relative of Marcantonio Colonna, a leading admiral in the battle. Another possibility is Cesare dEste, Duke of Modena, the Madonna is seated on a throne, and seems to give assent with a wave of the hand to Saint Dominic who is dressed in his usual habit and holding a rosary. The faithful turn to him for grace, kneeling, with a portrait at far left. On the right is St Peter Martyr with a scar on his forehead. The painting was likely done between the 8th of January and mid-July 1607, that is between the completion of the Seven Works of Mercy and the departure of painter for Malta. Something must have gone wrong with the commission as the painting was very soon on the market. After being offered to Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, it was taken to Antwerp and it is first mentioned in a letter by Frans Pourbus the Younger, a painter at the court of Mantua. On 15 September 1607 he wrote to his employer, Vincenzo I Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, that the painting was on the market in Naples for 400 ducats
35.
The Crowning with Thorns (Caravaggio)
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The Crowning with Thorns is a painting by the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Made probably in 1602/1604 or possibly around 1607, it is now located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, an attribution to Giustiniani would place it in the period before 1606, when Caravaggio fled Rome, but Peter Robb dates it to 1607, when the artist was in Naples. Caravaggios patron Vincenzo Giustiniani was an intellectual as well as a collector, in the highest class he named just two artists, Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, as those capable of combining realism and style in the most accomplished manner. The theme of pain and sadism is central to the work, john Gash points to the way the two torturers ram the crown down with the butts of their staffs, a rhythmic and sadistic hammering. Robb mentions that the painting is about how. to give pain and feel pain, tracing in some work by Caravaggio. Caravaggio and Lesempio davanti del naturale
36.
Peter Paul Rubens
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter. He is widely considered as the most notable artist of Flemish Baroque art school, the catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop. His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects and he painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house and he also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not overly detailed and he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. For altarpieces he painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Jan Rubens and he was named in honour of Saint-Peter and Paul, because he was born on their solemnety. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange. Following Jan Rubens imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, the family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his fathers death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin, by fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy and he stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an effect on Rubenss painting. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601, there, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters
37.
Rembrandt
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
38.
Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, Vienna)
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Self Portrait is an oil on canvas painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. Painted in 1652, it is one of over 40 painted self-portraits by Rembrandt, in composition it is different from his previous self-portraits, depicting the painter in a direct frontal pose, hands on his hips, and with an air of self-confidence. It was painted the year that his financial difficulties began, Art historian Christopher White has called it one of the most magisterial and sombre of these pictures. It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the freely painted clothing includes a brown robe that was most likely casual working attire, secured with a sash, over a black doublet with an upturned collar. A drawing from c.1650 shows Rembrandt in much the same pose and attire, in the drawing Rembrandt is seen wearing a top hat, while in the painting he wears a black beret derivative of artists portraits of the 16th century. As in other portraits and self-portraits by Rembrandt, a painted underlayer shows through in areas of shadow, here particularly in the eye sockets. Microscopic analysis has revealed that this is not the ground layer, which is a similar gray color. This local imprimatura, used in preparation for specific areas of the painting, was practiced by Vermeer. A strong similarity has been noted to the self-portrait of c,1655, also in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum. The later work shares the frontal angle, lighting, and informal attire of the larger painting, a painting of Rembrandt son Titus van Rijn, by another artist in the style of Rembrandt, duplicates the pose and positioning of the figure in the Self Portrait. The Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, the paintings, Volume 2,2004, van de Wetering, Ernst, Rembrandt, The Painter at Work, Amsterdam University Press,2000. ISBN 0-520-22668-2 White, Christopher, et al, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Rembrandts Son Titus, Metropolitan Museum of Art
39.
Johannes Vermeer
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Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He 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 treatment and use of light in his work. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes and he was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbrakens major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting, since that time, Vermeers reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Relatively little was known about Vermeers life until recently and he seems to have been devoted exclusively to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. Until the 19th century, the sources of information were some registers, a few official documents. John Michael Montias added details on the family from the city archives of Delft in his Artists and Artisans in Delft, Johannes Vermeer was baptized in the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632. His father Reijnier Janszoon was a worker of silk or caffa. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, in 1615, he married Digna Baltus. The couple moved to Delft and had a daughter named Geertruy who was baptized in 1620, in 1625, Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier named Willem van Bylandt who died from his wounds five months later. Around this time, Reijnier began dealing in paintings, in 1631, he leased an inn, which he called The Flying Fox. In 1635, he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or 26, in 1641, he bought a larger inn on the market square, named after the Flemish town Mechelen. The acquisition of the inn constituted a financial burden. When Vermeers father died in October 1652, Vermeer took over the operation of the art business. In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic girl, the blessing took place in the quiet nearby village of Schipluiden. Vermeers new mother-in-law Maria Thins was significantly wealthier than he, according to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeers conversion seems to have been made with conviction
40.
The Art of Painting
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The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, or Painter in his Studio, is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and this illusionistic painting is one of Vermeers most famous. In 1868 Thoré-Bürger, known today for his rediscovery of the work of painter Johannes Vermeer, svetlana Alpers describes it as unique and ambitious, Walter Liedtke as a virtuoso display of the artists power of invention and execution, staged in an imaginary version of his studio. According to Albert Blankert No other painting so flawlessly integrates naturalistic technique, brightly illuminated space, many art historians think that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting. Its composition and iconography make it the most complex Vermeer work of all, the painting depicts an artist painting a woman dressed in blue posing as a model in his studio. The subject is standing by a window and a map of the Low Countries hangs on the wall behind. It is signed to the right of the girl I Ver, most experts assume it was executed sometime between 1665/1668, but some suggest the work could have been created as late as 1670–1675. In 1663 Vermeer had been visited by Balthasar de Monconys, but had no painting to show, Vermeer obviously liked the painting, he never sold it during his lifetime. According to Alpers it stands as a kind of summary and assessment of what has been done, the painting has only two figures, the painter and his subject, a woman with downcast eyes. The painter was thought to be a self-portrait of the artist, the painter sits in front of the painting on the easel, where you can see the sketch of the crown. He is dressed in an elegant black garment with cuts on the sleeves and he has short puffy breeches and orange stockings, an expensive and fashionable garment that is also found in other works of the time, as in a well-known self-portrait by Rubens. The tapestry and the chair, both repoussoirs, lead the viewer into the painting, as in The Allegory of Faith the ceiling can be seen. Experts attribute symbols to various aspects of the painting, the representation of the marble tiled floor and the splendid golden chandelier are examples of Vermeers craftsmanship and show his knowledge of perspective. Each object reflects or absorbs light differently, getting the most accurate rendering of material effects, the map, remarkable is the representation of light on it, shows the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, flanked by 20 views of prominent Dutch cities. It was published by Claes Janszoon Visscher in 1636 and this map, but without the city views on the left and right can be seen on paintings by Jacob Ochtervelt and Nicolaes Maes. Similar maps were found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and in the Swedish Skokloster. In the top left of the map two women can be seen, one bearing a cross-staff and compasses, while the other has a palette, brush, Vermeer had a theoretical interest for painting. However, according to Ripa History should look back and not down as in this painting, following Vermeers contemporary Gerard de Lairesse, interested in French Classicism and Ripa, there is another explanation, he mentions history and poetry as the main resources of a painter
41.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp and he does the same with the fantastic and anarchic world developed in Renaissance prints and book illustrations. He is sometimes referred to as Peasant Bruegel, to him from the many later painters in his family. From 1559, he dropped the h from his name and signed his paintings as Bruegel, the two main early sources for Bruegels biography are Lodovico Guicciardinis account of the Low Countries and Karel van Manders 1604 Schilder-boeck. Guicciardini recorded that Bruegel was born in Breda, but van Mander specified that Bruegel was born in a village near Breda called Brueghel, nothing at all is known of his family background. Van Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant background, in keeping with the over-emphasis on Bruegels peasant genre scenes given by van Mander and many art historians. Breda was already a significant centre as the base of the House of Orange-Nassau, with a population of some 8,000, from the fact that Bruegel entered the Antwerp painters guild in 1551, it is inferred that he was born between 1525 and 1530. His master, according to van Mander, was the Antwerp painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550. Bruegel possibly got this work via the connections of Mayken Verhulst, maykens father and eight siblings were all artists or married an artist, and lived in Mechelen. In 1551 Bruegel became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, probably by way of France. He visited Rome and, rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 he had reached Reggio Calabria at the tip of the mainland. He probably continued to Sicily, but by 1553 was back in Rome, there he met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whose will of 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel, in one case a joint work. These works, apparently landscapes, have not survived, but marginal miniatures in manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel, with one exception, Bruegel did not work the plates himself, but produced a drawing which Cocks specialists worked from. In 1563 he was married in Brussels, where he lived for the rest of his life, while Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce as well as the art market, Brussels was the centre of government. Van Mander tells a story that his mother-in-law pushed for the move to him from his established servant girl mistress. By now painting had become his main activity, and his most famous come from these years. His paintings were sought after, with patrons including wealthy Flemish collectors and Cardinal Granvelle, in effect the Habsburg chief minister
42.
The Fight Between Carnival and Lent
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The Fight Between Carnival and Lent is an oil-on-panel work painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1559. This painting depicts a festival of the period, as celebrated in the Southern Netherlands. The busy scene depicts well-behaved children near the church and a drinking scene near the inn. At the centre is a well, showing the coming together of different parts of the community, the painting is part of the collection at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Bruegels painting is rich in allegories and symbolisms that have long studied. It is often read as the triumph of Lent, since the figure of Carnival seems to bid farewell with his left hand, a more generalised meaning may be the illustration of Bruegels belief that human activities are motivated by folly and self-seeking. The painting defies any linear narrative, but one may divide it into two sections, the popular and the religious. The scene is set in a market square, with the figure of Carnival impersonated by a fat man who led a procession through the town. In some traditions an effigy of the Carnival figure was burned at the end of the celebrations, in Bruegels painting the figure is a large man riding a beer barrel with a pork chop attached to its front end. He is wearing a meat pie as a head-dress, he is wielding a long spit, complete with a pigs head. The pouch of knives at his belt indicates that he is a butcher - the guild of butchers traditionally provided the meat for the carnival feast so his place at the heart is apt. The man behind the barrel is dressed in yellow, which is connected with deceit, in one hand she holds a tumbler and in the other a candle, again allegorical symbols for deceit. Beside her is a lute-player, which was a frequent symbol of Lutheranism, the Lutherans had abolished Lent but still celebrated the Carnival. A tavern filled with drinkers and onlookers watch the performance of a popular known as The Dirty Bride. At the street crossing a group of cripples have come out to beg, while behind them, led by a bagpiper, a procession of lepers walks past. Lents half of the picture is dominated by abstinence and piety, with people drawing water from the well, giving alms to the poor and the sick, the church itself is the dominant building from which queues of black figures emerge from their prayers. Lady Lent in the foreground, garbed like a nun, is sitting on a cart drawn by a monk and a nun, lady Lents wagon contains traditional Lenten foods, pretzels, waffles, and mussels. In Bruegels time, when the Protestant Reformation was surging, many of the old customs were under threat, the Roman Catholic attachment to Lenten rites was heavily criticised by the Protestant reformers and the spirit of carnival was viewed with suspicion on both sides of the religious divide
43.
Children's Games (Bruegel)
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Childrens Games is an oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1560. It is currently held and exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and this painting, mentioned for the first time by Karel van Mander in 1604, was acquired in 1594 by Archduke Ernest of Austria. It has been suggested that it was the first in a series of paintings representing the Ages of Man. If that was Bruegels intention, it is unlikely that the series progressed beyond this painting and this crowded scene is to some extent relieved by the landscape in the top left-hand corner, but even here children are bathing in the river and playing on its banks. His moral is that in the mind of God childrens games possess as much significance as the activities of their parents
44.
The Procession to Calvary (Bruegel)
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The Procession to Calvary is an oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder of Christ carrying the Cross set in a large landscape, painted in 1564. It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and this is the second-largest known painting by Bruegel. It is one of sixteen paintings by him which are listed in the inventory of the wealthy Antwerp collector, Niclaes Jonghelinck and it was Jonghelinck who commissioned the Months from Bruegel and he may also have commissioned this work. Jonghelincks Bruegels passed into the possession of the city of Antwerp in the year in which the inventory was made. In 1604 it was recorded in the Prague collections of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, then transferred to Vienna, for Bruegel the composition is unusually traditional. Perhaps because he was treating such a religious event, he adopted a well-known scheme, used previously by the Brunswick Monogrammist and Bruegels Antwerp contemporary. Bruegels treatment of landscape evolves in the course of his career from the birds-eye views, impossibly sheer outcrops of rock like this one at left characterize the landscape tradition of the Antwerp school founded by Joachim Patinir. Patinirs followers - in particular Herri met de Bles, Matthys Cock and Cornelis Matsys - had turned his style into a popular, the sequence of Bruegels landscape drawings and of the landscape in his paintings shows the gradual abandonment of this formula. In this case, however, his desire to convey the rocky, in a detail such as this at right, Bruegels painting possesses a vividness which would seem to come from his observation of contemporary life. Public executions were a feature of 16th century life, especially in troubled Flanders. Here Bruegel shows the two thieves who were to hang on either side of Christ being trundled to the place of execution, anachronistically, both clutch crucifixes and are making their final confessions to the cowled priests beside them. The thieves, their confessors and the spectators who surround the cart are all in contemporary dress. In Bruegels day public executions were well attended occasions which had the air of festivals or carnivals, here Bruegel shows the absolute indifference of the gawping crowds to the fear and misery of the condemned men. It is noteworthy that Bruegel makes no distinction between the two thieves, one of whom Christ was to bless. The sacred figures - the fainting Virgin assisted by Saint John and they act out their own, apparently independent, drama, largely unnoticed by the figures behind them. Larger than the figures and isolated from them, are the Virgin. Michael Francis Gibson wrote a book entitled The Mill and the Cross, which served as the basis for the 2011 film The Mill. The film sets into their historical context in sixteenth-century Flanders the characters in the painting, the films stars Rutger Hauer as Bruegel and Michael York as his patron Niclaes Jonghelinck
45.
The Gloomy Day
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The Gloomy Day is an oil on wood painting by Pieter Bruegel in 1565. The painting is one in a series of six works, five of which are still extant, the painting is currently in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, located in Vienna, Austria. The paintings scene is set around the start of the year at around January, portrayed by the bleak atmosphere. The paper crown around the head which refers to Epiphany. The sky, the ships crashing against the shoreline, and the children preparing themselves in the foreground suggest that harsh weather is coming, Bruegel is famous for his paintings of scenery and nature. Most of his paintings of the countryside tell a story or have a moral message, the surviving Months of the Year cycle are, Media related to The Gloomy Day by Pieter Bruegel the Elder at Wikimedia Commons Kunsthistorisches Museum website
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Media related to Kunsthistorisches Museum at Wikimedia Commons
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