Mata Hari performing in 1905

Photo: Mata Hari performing in 1905

After returning from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to the Netherlands with her husband Rudolf John MacLeod, Mata Hari was legally separated in 1902 (divorced in 1906), and in 1903 she moved to Paris, where she performed as a circus horse rider using the name Lady MacLeod. Struggling to earn a livelihood, she also posed as an artist's model.

By 1905, Mata Hari became famous as an exotic dancer, adopting the stage name Mata Hari. She was a contemporary of the famous dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, who were pioneers of the early modern dance movement, which looked to Egypt, India and other Asian countries for artistic inspiration. Flirtatious and openly flaunting her body, she was an instance success from her debut at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905.

Mata Hari's Scrap Book

Photo: The scrapbook of Mata Hari exhibited at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

Mata Hari, who was accused of as a German spy during the World War I and executed by a French firing squad on 15 October 1917, was born as Margaretha Zelle on 7 August 1876 in Leeuwarden, where the museum is situated and in which there is a 'Mata Hari Room', well-known for research into the life and career of Leeuwarden's world-famous citizen.

Venus de Milo

Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo, currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, is an ancient Greek statue that is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) the Greek goddess of love and beauty. The marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high with its arms and original plinth lost, is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch. Earlier, its creation was mistakenly attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles.

Mata Hari, exotic dancer and WWI spy

The most famous and controversial spy of World War One was a Dutch woman Margaretha Geertruida Zelle McLeod, popularly known as Mata Hari, who portrayed herself as an exotic dancer. Though many myths and legends have been circulated surrounding her past, Mata Hari was a courtesan. However, she had invented an identity as an exotic dancer from India. She was shot by the French as a spy on October 15, 1917. In 1931 a film loosely based on the life of Mata Hari starred Greta Garbo and popularized her legend.

Mona Lisa: restored version

Mona Lisa: retouched picture

This is a retouched picture; digitally altered from its original version to modify color and remove yellowing.

Mona Lisa: Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde), a sixteen-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel in Florence, Italy by Leonardo da Vinci, is owned by the Government of France and is on display at the Louvre museum in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

Described by art-lovers as the most famous and iconic painting in the world, Mona Lisa was in obscurity until the mid-nineteenth century when artists of the Symbolist movement began to appreciate it and associated it with ideas of feminine mystique. Walter Pater, in his 1867 essay expressed this view by describing ‘the figure in the painting as a kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity’, who is ‘older than the rocks among which she sits’ and who ‘has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave.’

Leonardo Da Vinci began painting Mona Lisa in 1503, lingered over it four years and left it unfinished. He continued to work on it for three years after he moved to France and finished it shortly before he died in 1519. He took the painting from Italy to France in 1516 when King François I invited him to work at the Clos Lucé near the king's castle in Amboise. Then, most likely, through the heirs of Leonardo's assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV, who moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre. Napoleon I had it moved to his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace and returned it later to the Louvre. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) it was moved from the Louvre to a hiding place elsewhere in France.

Salai as John the Baptist

Painting: Salai as John the Baptist (1514), Louvre

For the painting of John the Baptist, Leonardo da Vinci used his pupil Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed Salai, as a model. Salai entered Leonardo's household in 1490, in a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanors (a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton) after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions and spent a fortune on clothes. Still, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence and Salai lived in his house for the next thirty years. Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai.

Casa Leonardo, the house where Leonardo da Vinci grew up

Photo: Casa Leonardo, the house where Leonardo da Vinci is believed to have grown up. It is situated alongside Via di Anchiano, 3km north of Vinci, Tuscany, Italy.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the Italian painter, sculptor, architect, cartographer, anatomist, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, geologist, botanist and writer, was born on April 15, 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci in Florence. He was the illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant woman. It is believed Leonardo spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, which is shown in the above photo.

A Christian Dirce by Henryk Siemiradzki

Painting: ‘A Christian Dirce’ by Henryk Siemiradzki - a Christian woman is martyred in this re-enactment of the myth of Dirce. Siemiradzki (1843-1902) was a Polish Academic painter, known for depictions of scenes from the ancient Greco-Roman world and the New Testament.

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (15 December AD 37-9 June AD 68), generally known as Nero, was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Christian tradition and other historical sources hold Nero as the first major state sponsor of Christian persecution. The non-Christian historian Tacitus describes Nero as extensively torturing and executing Christians after the Fire of Rome in AD 64. Suetonius also mentions Nero persecuting Christians in the Roman Empire. The Christian writer Tertullian (155-230) was the first to call Nero as the first persecutor of Christians, when he wrote, "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine".

Nero is also accused as the killer of Apostles Peter and Paul. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (275-339) was the first to write that Apostle Paul was beheaded in Rome during the reign of Nero. He states that Nero's persecution led to Peter and Paul's deaths, but that Nero did not give any specific orders. However, some other accounts have Paul surviving his two years in Rome and traveling to Hispania. By the 4th century, a number of writers were stating that Nero killed Peter and Paul.