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disturbthebookmites: Julian of Norwich, 14th C. English...


Artist: Unknown Sculpture: bronze, gilded wood [body of ibis],...

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Artist: Unknown Sculpture: bronze, gilded wood [body of ibis], black glass [inlays for eyes of ibis]; cedar base Height: including base, 7.7 in. (19.5 cm.) Circa 300-200 BCE Site: Egypt: Tuna el-Gebel Location: West Germany: Hanover, Kestner Museum, no. 1957,83

The primary animal form of the god Thoth is the ibis, although he also appears sometimes as a baboon. The ancient Egyptians imagined that in the beginning the universe was nothing more than a vast ocean. This ocean lacked a surface; it completely filled the universe and was often referred to as the cosmic egg. Variations of this creation myth were told at Hermopolis, a city of Middle Egypt. According to one tale, the world was said to have originated in a cosmic egg that had been laid by the celestial goose, which had first broken the silence of the world and was called the Great Cackler. This egg, laid upon a primeval hill, contained the bird of light, Re, who then created the cosmos as we know it. A second version was similar to the first, except that in this tale the egg was laid by an ibisis, by Thoth. The cult of Thoth at Hermopolis was rather late, and it has been suggested that this variation of the myth was an attempt by the Hermopolitan priests to graft the Thoth legend on to older traditions.

Perhaps Thoth assumes the form of the ibis because, like him, the bird is connected with the moon. The ibis has a bill that resembles the crescent moon, and its gait suggests the movement of the moon to some classical authors. Plutarch has written that the alternating black and white feathers of the male ibis are reminiscent of the dark and light phases of the moon. In addition to being a lunar animal, the ibis was well known in antiquity, because it would refuse to drink unhealthy or poisoned water, killed poisonous reptiles, and set mankind an example of cleanliness. Like the god Thoth, the ibis was hostile to dangerous forces and a model for purity and good sense; for Thoth, in addition to being the moon god, was the god of wisdom, who maintained the cosmic order that pervades the created world.

It is in his role as god of wisdom that Thoth demonstrates his connection to Maat, the embodiment of cosmic order. Together, as a divine couple, they serve the sun god, Re. Thoth is the scribe of the gods and, as such, the secretary of Re. One hymn to Re runs: “Daily Thoth writes Maat for thee.” Every day Thoth must determine the course of Re; it is his wisdom and creative power that ensures the regular movement of the sun through the sky. Moreover, it is Thoth who crushes the hostile forces that oppose Re during his voyage. As a result, Thoth is often depicted standing in the prow of the sun-boat.

Maat reveals the other side of the situation, for she embodies the order that Thoth protects. She is called the food of Re: “Thy nourishment consists of Maat, thy beverage is Maat, thy bread is Maat, thy beer is Maat.” The law that governs the regularity of the heavens is understood to be the nourishing matrix of both the sun’s power and the goodness of life that depends thereon; for Maat is not only the goddess of law but also of justice. Her symbol is the feather of the ostrich. This is a bird that inhabits desert and savanna, although it must never wander too far away from rivers and lakes, since it drinks more than a gallon of water a day. The ostrich cannot fly, but it is a fast runner and a strong fighter. Often Thoth and Maat are depicted together, usually riding in the sun-boat. The law that governs the day and the night, the revolving seasons, and the cycle of years is Maat. It is she who supports the sun god, with Thoth’s protection.

All I know of that sculpture is that it is contemporary and it is from a church in Norwich, England. I know it does not really help, but it's something.

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thank you for your kindness to attempt- just was trying to make sure that it indeed is contemporary, anyway.

Detail from coffin of Nespawershepi, chief scribe of the Temple...

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Detail from coffin of Nespawershepi, chief scribe of the Temple of Amun. The weighing of the heart in the Hall of Judgement. The owner (right) watches as this heart is weighed against the feather of Truth (Maat). Anubis adjusts the scales while Thoth records the result. 21st Dynasty, c.984 BC. Western Thebes, painted wood.
Location :Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Great Britain

winged man with a divine Assyrian or Urartian horned crown;...

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winged man with a divine Assyrian or Urartian horned crown; often interpreted as a representation of Ahuramazda but its the farr of Darius the Great who built the monument which is most important recorded relief of Iranian history; historical account of Darius’ victories;

Anders Paulsson and Andrew Canning performing It ain’t...

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Anders Paulsson and Andrew Canning performing It ain’t necessarily so…

“The dwellings constitute the most remarkable...

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“The dwellings constitute the most remarkable architecturel evidence as late Neolithic houses are virtually unknown in other areas of Britain. The Orcadian examples display a consistency of design which is maintained over several hundred years. The internal organization of stone furniture is a central square stone-built hearth, a rear shelving arrangement, known as a dresser, and two rectangular boxes, interpreted as box-beds, situated on wither side of the hearth. The single entrance is positioned opposite the dresser thereby forming a cruciform pattern with the spatial organization of the house interior. (Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards, Architecture and Order, Routledge, 1994, p 41).

Reconstructions of Ukrainian shelters depict a low domical shape...

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Reconstructions of Ukrainian shelters depict a low domical shape covered with animal skins and the tent is restrained by heaped mammoth bones. Later shelters are crude teepees reminiscent of those used by present day reindeer herders in Northern Asia.

  • Mousterian domical shelter comprising a wood frame covered with skins (44,000 years old).
  • Upperpaleolithic teepee-like shelter (13,000 years old).
  • Tepee-like shelter, 12,000 years old. The skin cover was attached to the wood frame by reindeer antlers.
  • Pushkari: Upper Paleolithic earth house: plan & reconstruction

These structures are supposed to have required 50 person-days to build (Pearson and Richards, p. 56).


Captain Thomas Coram was born at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, in...

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Captain Thomas Coram was born at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, in 1668. He emigrated to Massachusetts, where, after working a while as a shipwright, he became master of a trading vessel, made some money, and at last settled in London. In 1720, when living at Rotherhithe, and walking to and from the city early in the morning and late at night, his feelings were often keenly tried in coming across infants exposed and deserted in the streets. His tender heart at once set his head devising some remedy. ‘There were hospitals for foundlings in France and Holland, and why not in England?’

Coram was an honest mariner, without much learning or art of address; but he had energy and patience, and for seven-teen years he spent the most of his time in writing letters and visiting in advocacy of a home for foundlings. After long striking, a spark caught the tinder of the fashionable world; such an institution was voted a necessity of the age; and in 1739, the Foundling Hospital was established by Royal Charter. Subscriptions poured freely in, and in 1741 the Lamb’s Conduit estate of 56 acres was bought as a site and grounds for £5,500. It was a fortunate investment.

London rapidly girdled the Hospital, which now lies at its very centre, and from the leases of superfluous outskirts the Hospital draws an annual income equal to the original purchase-money. Hogarth was a great friend of the Hospital, and was one of its earliest Governors. For its walls he painted Coram’s portrait, ‘one of the first,’ he writes, ‘that I did the size of life, and with a particular desire to excel.’ He and other painters displayed their works in the rooms of the Foundling, and out of the practice grew the first Exhibition of the Royal Academy in the Adelphi, in 1760. The show of pictures drew ‘the town’ to the Hospital, and its grounds became the morning lounge of the belles and beaux of London in the last years of George II.

Handel also served the Foundling nobly. To its chapel he presented an organ, and for eleven years, from 1749 to his death in 1759, he conducted an oratorio for its benefit, from which sums varying from £300 to £900 were annually realized. The original score of his ‘Messiah’ is preserved among the curiosities of the Hospital.

Lavinia Powlett, Duchess of Bolton (1708 – 24 January 1760),...

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Lavinia Powlett, Duchess of Bolton (1708 – 24 January 1760), known by her stagename as Lavinia Fenton, was an English actress.

She was probably the daughter of a naval lieutenant named Beswick, but she bore the name of her mother’s husband. She was thought to have been born in Charring Cross, and had been a child prostitute before becoming an actress. Her first appearance was as Monimia in Thomas Otway’s The Orphan, in 1726 at the Haymarket Theatre. She then joined the company of players at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where her success and beauty made her the toast of the beaux. It was in John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, as Polly Peachum, that Miss Fenton made her greatest success. Her pictures were in great demand, verses were written to her and books published about her, and she was the most talked-of person in London. Hogarth’s picture shows her in one of the scenes, with the Duke of Bolton in a box. (not this one presumably)

After appearing in several comedies, and then in numerous repetitions of the Beggar’s Opera in 1728, she ran away with her lover Charles Powlett, 3rd Duke of Bolton, a man much older than herself, who, after the death of his wife in 1751, married her at Aix-en-Provence. They already had three sons: Charles, Percy, and Horatio Armand, who entered the church, the navy, and the army respectively. The duchess survived her husband and died in 1760 at Westcombe House in Greenwich, being buried in St Alfege’s Church, Greenwich[1] on 3 February 1760.[2]

sealmaiden: Vladimir Tolman “Swallows” 1930s (by Art &...

alicedaydreams: Another cute one from the nucleus Harry Potter...

centuriespast: RAFFAELLO SanzioPsyche Gives Venus the...

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centuriespast:

RAFFAELLO Sanzio
Psyche Gives Venus the Vessel
1517-18
Fresco
Villa Farnesina, Rome

Gigantomachy…. Perino (or Perin) del Vaga (nickname of...

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Gigantomachy….

Perino (or Perin) del Vaga (nickname of Piero Buonaccorsi) (1501 – October 14, 1547) was an Italian painter of the Late Renaissance/Mannerism.


Biography

He was born near Florence. His father ruined himself by gambling, and became a soldier in the invading army of Charles VIII. His mother died when he was but two months old; but shortly afterwards he was taken up by his father’s second wife. Perino was first apprenticed to a druggist, but soon passed into the hands of a mediocre painter, Andrea da Ceri, and when eleven years of age, of Ridolfo Ghirlandaio.

Perino was one of Ghirlandaio’s most talented pupils. Another mediocre painter, Vaga from Toscanella, undertook to settle the boy in Rome. Perino, when he at last reached Rome, was utterly poor, and with no clear prospect beyond journey-work for trading decorators. He was eventually entrusted with some of the subordinate work undertaken by Raphael in the Vatican. He assisted Giovanni da Udine in the stucco and arabesque decorations of the Loggie Vaticane, and executed some of those small but finely composed scriptural subjects which go by the name of Raphael’s Bible, Raphael himself furnishing the designs.

Perino’s examples are: Abraham and Isaac, Jacob wrestling with the Angel, Joseph and his Brothers, the Hebrews crossing the Jordan, Fall and Capture of Jericho, Joshua commanding Sun to stand still, Birth of Christ, Baptism and the Last Supper. Some of these are in bronze-tint, while others are in full color. He also painted, after Raphael’s drawings, figures of the planets in the great hall of the Appartamenti Borgia. Perino was soon regarded as his major assistant, second only to Giulio Romano.

To Raphael himself he was always exceedingly attentive. His solo works in the city include the hall of Palazzo Baldassini (1520-1522), a noble building in the center of the city, and the Pietà in the church of Santo Stefano del Cacco.

After Raphael’s death in 1520 and the plague of 1523, a troubled period ensued for Perino. He returned to Florence, and befriended Rosso Fiorentino and executed an admirable design of 10,000 Martyrs (now lost).

Work in Genoa

In 1527 Andrea Doria invited Perino to Genoa to decorate the Palace of Fassolo, where he also executed numerous altarpieces and designs for tapestries. Perino accepted an invitation to Genoa, to help design decorate the newly rebuilt Palazzo del Principe for Andrea Doria. Fresco decoration began in 1529, starting with a now destroyed Quos Egos from the Aeneid. rapidly founded a quasi-Roman school of art in the Ligurian city. He ornamented the palace in a style similar to that of Giulio Romano in the Mantuan Palazzo Te, and frescoed historical and mythological subjects in the apartments, fanciful and graceful arabesque work with sculptural and architectural details. Among the principal works are: the War between the Gods and Giants, Horatius Codes defending the Bridge, and the Fortitude of Mutius Scaevola. The most important work of all, the Shipwreck of Acneas, is no longer extant. From Genoa Perino twice visited Pisa, and began some painting in the cathedral.

A year later he returned to Rome and frescoed the Pucci Chapel in the Trinità dei Monti. Pope Paul III granted him a regular salary. He retouched many works of Raphael. He painted the decoration for the Paoline Chapel and other halls of Castel Sant’Angelo, some frescoes in the church of San Marcello, a monochrome in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican and a cartoon of the Sistine Chapel.

Perino was engaged in the general decoration of the Sala Reale, begun by Paul III when he died on October 19, 1547, in Rome. He is buried in the Pantheon. His work in the Castel Sant’Angelo was continued by his student Pellegrino Tibaldi.

Assessment and legacy

Del Vaga’s style was renowned for his vitality and elegance. His paintings are considered important in the mediation between the Roman Raphaelesque tradition and the first Florentine Mannerism. He combined the manners of Raphael and Andrea del Sarto. Many of his works were engraved, even in his own lifetime. Daniele da Volterra, Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta, Luzio Romano and Marcello Venusti (also known as il Mantovano) were among his principal assistants.

strangerlonerdrifter: RIP, Lucien Freud


artist???

limmynem: “I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.” Frida...

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limmynem:

“I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.” Frida Kahlo

missfolly: The Veteran in a New Field, by Winslow Homer, 1865 

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missfolly:

The Veteran in a New Field, by Winslow Homer, 1865 

reblololo: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Great Lovers ( Mr and Miss...

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reblololo:

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Great Lovers ( Mr and Miss Hembus) - Oil on Carvan - 151 x 112 cm -Kirchner Museum Davos

I wonder what the date for this picture is… So different from the Kirchen I thought I used to know.

100artistsbook: Manolo Yanes - Hector (2008)

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