Public Domain Photo: Altamira Cave, located near Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, 30 km west of the city of Santander in Spain, is famous for its European Upper Paleolithic (also called Late Stone Age, for the period broadly between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago) cave art comprising paintings, drawings and polychrome rock paintings depicting wild animals and human hands. The cave along with its paintings has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Council of Trent, fresco by Italian artist Pasquale Cati (1550-1620), Altemps chapel, Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome
The Council of Trent was the Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church convened in Trent in the Holy Roman Empire (now Italy) between 1545 and 1563 in 25 sessions. The council fathers met in Trent (sessions 1-8, 1545-7) and in Bologna (sessions 9-11, 1547) during the pontificate of Pope Paul III, and in Trent (sessions 12-16, 1551-52) under Pope Julius III, and in Trent (sessions 17-25, 1559-63) under Pope Pius IV.
The council issued important reform decrees, defined Church teachings on the scripture and traditions, sacraments, original sin, justification, the veneration of saints and condemnations on heresies, among many other important matters concerning the Catholic Church.
Savonnerie carpets (Savonnerie tapisserie) were the finest of the knotted-pile carpets produced at the Savonnerie manufactory which was established in a former soap factory near Paris in 1615 by Pierre Dupont. In 1627 Louis XIII granted a patent (privilege) of eighteen years to Dupont and his former apprentice Simon Lourdet to produce these carpets. Under the agreement, until 1768 these carpets were exclusively the property of the French Crown.
These carpets were made of a mixture of wool and a small quantity of silk and had about ninety knots to the square inch. Though the initially produced carpets were imitations of Persian carpets, gradually the Savonnerie style evolved incorporating French designs by renowned artists of the time. The designs of the carpets typically had plants, floral designs and medallions woven against attractive backgrounds of black, deep blue or brown colors and often had multiple borders.
Public Doman Photo: Statue of Athena and Marsyas, a recreation of a lost bronze by Athenian sculptor Myron of Eleutherae (480-440 BC) in Botanic Garden, Copenhagen, Denmark.
The theme of the statue is based on the Greek mythological story of Marsyas, who was an expert in playing the Aulos, a double-piped reed musical instrument. According to myths, he found Aulos on the ground where Athena, its inventor had thrown it away.
Public Domain Photo: Adonis,a bronze sculpture inspired by an antique sculpture from the French royal collections, created by the Swiss sculptor and gunfounder Jean-Balthazar Keller (1638-1702), cast in 1687, dimensions H: 1.62 m (5 ft. 3 ¾ in.), W: 70 cm (27 ½ in.), located at Louvre Museum, Paris.
Public Domain Photo: Lady in Blue, painted terracotta figurine of the type Large Herculaneum Woman, Tanagra Figurine dating 330 to 300 BC, height 32.5 cm (12 ¾ in.), Louvre Museum, Paris
The Lady in blue (Dame en Bleu) is a terracotta figurine that used to be produced in Tanagra, a town north of Athens in Greece from the later part of 4th century BC. They were often painted with natural colors, and were about 4 to 8 inches tall.
Tanagra figures were discovered by ploughmen of Vratsi in Boeotia, Greece by the end of the 1860s when they dug up ancient tombs. The largest collection of figurines were found in 1874 from the tombs of the Hellenistic period, which shows that the city was the main source of these figures which were also exported to distant places.
Here is a scan of a 30 Pfennig postahge stamp of Germany depicting the image of Cleopatra VI, issued on 12 January 1984. The offset-printed issue had a circulation of 14.5 million stamps. The image used for the stamp was the photo of the marlbe head of Cleopatra VI, the last Pharao of Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt (30-40 BC), from the Altes Museum Berlin (Berliner Museumsinsel). The photo of the original marble figure is below:
Public Domain Photo: President John F. Kennedy and his family in Hyannis Port in 1963 with their dogs - photo dated 14 August 1963 by Cecil W. Stoughton, White House Photographs.
The photo shows President John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. (born in 1960, killed in an airplane crash on July 16, 1999), Mrs. Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy, and Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (the only surviving child of the four children of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, born in 1957, a lawyer and the president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation).
Hyannis Port, a village located in Barnstable, Massachusetts, was the location of the Kennedy Compound and Kennedy family residences, and hence it is included in the National Register of Historic Places.
Public Domain Photo: Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876), oil on canvas painting of dimensions 131 cm x 175 cm (52 in x 69 in) currently housed at Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Bal du Moulin de la Galette (commonly referred to as ‘Le Moulin de la Galette’ or ‘Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette’) by the acclaimed French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), is considered one of the most celebrated masterpieces of Impressionism.
In this oil painting created in 1876, Renoir depicts a typical impressionist scene of a social gathering on a Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre district of Paris, where working class people, dressed up in their best outfits, loved to celebrate the evenings by eating galettes, drinking, dancing, and meeting other Parisians. Also, Renoir recreated the late 19th century real Parisian life in Bal du Moulin de la Galette, though his style is typically Impressionist, but rich in color, form, and typical fluidity of his brushstrokes.
Bal du Moulin de la Galette came in the collection of Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in 1896, and in 1929 it was transferred to the Musée du Louvre, and in 1986 it was transferred to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it is still located.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir also created a SMALLER VERSION (78 cm x 114 cm) of “Bal du Moulin de la Galette” with the same title and it is in private collection. It was earlier in the collection of American millionaire and U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, John Hay Whitney. After his death, his widow Betsey Roosevelt Whitney (an American philanthropist and the ex-wife of James Roosevelt) sold the painting for US$78,100,000 at an auction Sotheby's (New York City) to the Japanese business tycoon Ryoei Saito (Saito Ryoei) in May 1990.
In 1991 Saito created an international outcry by declaring that he wished to cremate the painting (which is the fifth most expensive painting ever sold after adjusting for dollar value as per consumer price index), with him when he would be dead, along with Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Portrait of Dr. Gachet’, which also Saito purchased for a record price of US$82.5 million.
Ryoei Saito’s desire to cremate Bal du Moulin de la Galette could not be fulfilled as his bankers, who held the painting as collateral security against his loans, sold the painting through Sotheby's to an unknown buyer, when Saito and his business empire went broke.
Now, though the painting’s ownership and location are uncertain, it is believed to be owned by a Swiss art collector.
Public Domain Image: Suprematist Composition, oil on canvas painting (1916), dimensions 88.5 cm x 71 cm (34.8 in x 28 in), by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935).
Kazimir Malevich’s magnum opus Suprematist Composition (blue rectangle over the red beam), representing a geometrical figures and vibrant colors in space, was sold on November 3, 2008 at an auction at Sotheby's in New York City for just over US$60 million. The purchase by an anonymous buyer set the world record for Suprematist Composition as the most expensive work in Russian art.
Kazimir Malevich, also known by alternatively spelt names such as Kasimir Malewitsch and Kazimierz Malewicz, is considered the pioneer of Geometric Abstract art or Geometric Abstraction, also known as Suprematism.
