Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Francis Danby (16 November 1793 – 9 February 1861) was an Irish painter of the Romantic era. His imaginative, dramatic landscapes were comparable to those of John Martin. Danby initially developed his creative style while he was the central figure in a group of artists who have come to be known as the Bristol School. His period of greatest success was in London in the 1820s.
Early life:
Born in the south of Ireland, he was one of a set of twins; his father, James Danby, farmed small assets he owned near Wexford, but his death, in 1807, caused the family to move to Dublin, while Francis was still a schoolboy. He began to practice drawing at the Royal Dublin Society's schools; and under an erratic young artist named James Arthur O'Connor he began painting landscapes. Danby also made acquaintance with George Petrie.
In 1813 Danby left for London together with O'Connor and Petrie.This journey, undertaken with very inadequate funds, quickly came to an end, and they had to get home again by walking. At Bristol they made a pause, and Danby, finding he could get trifling sums for water-color drawings, remained there working diligently and sending to the London exhibitions pictures of importance. There his large oil paintings quickly attracted attention.
Latest Years:
Danby exhibited his large (15 feet wide) and powerful The Deluge that year; the success of that painting, "the largest and most dramatic of all his Martinique visions," revitalized his reputation and career. Other pictures by him were The Golden Age (c. 1827, exhibited 1831), Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore (1837), and The Evening Gun (1848).
Some of Danby's later paintings, like The Wood nymph’s Hymn to the Rising Sun (1845), tended toward a calmer, more restrained, more cheerful manner than those in his earlier style; but he returned to his early mode for The Shipwreck (1859). He lived his final years at Exmouth in Devon, where he died in 1861. Along with John Martin and J. M. W. Turner, Danby is considered among the leading British artists of the Romantic period.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Vele's is also called Volos, is a major Slavic supernatural force of earth, waters and the underworld associated with dragons, cattle, magic etc. He is one of the opponents of the Supreme thunder god Perun, and battle between two of them constitutes one of the most important myths of Slavic Mythology.
No direct accounts survive, but reconstructions speculate that he may directly continue aspects of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon and that he might have been imagined as serpentine, with horns and a long beard.Vels is one of few Slavic gods for which evidence of offerings will be found in all Slavic nations.
Volos is mentioned as god of cattle and pleasants, who will punish oath-breakers with diseases, the opposite of Perun who is described as a decision god of war who punishes by death in battle.
In the latter half of 10th century, Volos was one of seven gods whose statues Vladimir I, Prince of Kiev had erected in his city. It is very interesting that vele’s statue it seems that did not stand next others, but it also shows that worship of perun and veles had to be kept separate, while it was proper for Perun's shrines to be built high, on the top of the hill, Vele’s place was down, in the lowlands.
The reason of enmity between the two god’s is Vele’s theft of Perun's son, wife or, usually, cattle. It is also an act of challenge: Vele’s, in the form of an enormous serpent, slithers from the caves of the Underworld and coils upwards the Slavic world tree towards Perun's heavenly domain.
Perun retaliates and attacks Vele’s with his lightning bolts. Vele’s flees hiding or transforming himself into trees, animals or people. In the end he is killed by Perun, and in this ritual death, whatever Vele’s stole is released from his battered body in form of rain falling from the skies.
This Storm myth, as it is usually referred to by scholars today, explained to ancient Slavs the changing of seasons through the year. The dry periods were interpreted as chaotic results of Vele’s thievery. Storms and lightning were seen as divine battles. The following rain was the victory of Perun over Vele’s and re-establishment of world order.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The Peterhof Palace is actually a series of palaces and gardens located in Saint Petersburg, Russia laid out on the orders of Peter the Great. The most dominant natural feature of Peterhof is a sixteen-meter-high bluff lying less than a hundred meters from the shore.
The majority of Peterhof's fountains are contained here, as are several small palaces and outbuildings. East of the Lower Gardens lies the Alexandria Park with 19th-century Gothic Revival structures such as the Kapella.
The Grand Cascade is modeled on one constructed for Louis XIV at his Château de Marly, which is likewise memorialized in one of the park's outbuildings.
At the centre of the cascade is an artificial grotto with two stories, faced inside and out with hewn brown stone. It currently contains a modest museum of the fountains' history. One of the exhibits is a table carrying a bowl of (artificial) fruit, a replica of a similar table built under Peter's direction. The table is rigged with jets of water that soak visitors when they reach for the fruit, a feature from Mannerist gardens that remained popular in Germany. The grotto is connected to the palace above and behind by a hidden corridor.
The fountains of the Grand Cascade are located below the grotto and on either side of it. Their waters flow into a semicircular pool, the terminus of the fountain-lined Sea Channel. In the 1730s, the large Samson Fountain was placed in this pool.
It depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, representing Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, and is doubly symbolic. The lion is an element of the Swedish coat of arms, and one of the great victories of the war was won on St Samson's Day.
From the lion's mouth shoots a 20-metre-high vertical jet of water, the highest in all of Peterhof. This masterpiece by Mikhail Kozlovsky was looted by the invading Germans during the Second World War; see History below. A replica of the statue was installed in 1947.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia. Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century. Their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241-42. The re-established town became one of the centers of Renaissance humanist culture in the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohacs and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, development of the region entered a fresh age of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became a global city after the 1873 unification.
It also became the second capital of Austria-Hungary, an excellent power that dissolved in 1918. Budapest was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Operation Panzerfaust in 1944, the Battle of Budapest of 1945, and also the Revolution of 1956.
The first settlement on the territory of Budapest was built by Celts before 1 AD. It was later occupied by the Romans. The Roman settlement - Aquincum - became the main city of Lower Pannonia in 106 AD. The Romans constructed roads, amphitheaters, baths and houses with heated floors during this fortified military camp.
The peace treaty of 829 added Pannonia to Bulgaria due to the victory of Bulgarian army of Omurtag over Holy Roman Empire of Louis the Pious. Budapest arose out of two Bulgarian military frontier fortresses Buda and Pest, situated on the two banks of Danube. Hungarians led by Arpad settled in the territory at the end of the 9th century, and a century later officially founded the Kingdom of Hungary. Research places the probable residence of the Arpads as an early place of central power close to what became Budapest.
The Tatar invasion in the 13th century quickly proved that defence is difficult on a plain. King Bella IV of Hungary thus ordered the construction of reinforced stone walls around the towns and set his own royal palace on the top of the protecting hills of Buda. In 1361 it became the capital of Hungary.
The cultural role of Buda was particularly significant throughout the reign of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. The Italian Renaissance had an excellent influence on the city. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican Library.
After the foundation of the first Hungarian university in Pecs in 1367, the second one was established in Obuda in 1395. The first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473. Buda had about 5,000 inhabitants around 1500
Thursday, December 15, 2011
"The Princess and the Pea" may be a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her physical sensitivity. The story was first published with three others by Andersen in an inexpensive booklet on 8 May 1835 in Copenhagen by C.A. Reitzel.
Andersen had heard the story as a child, and it likely has its source in folk material, possibly originating from Sweden as it is unknown within the Danish oral tradition. Neither “The Princess nor the Pea" nor Andersen's other story of 1835 were well received by Danish critics, who disliked their casual, chatty style, and their lack of morals.
In 1959 "The Princess and therefore the Pea" was adapted to the musical stage in a production referred to as once upon a Mattress starring Carol Burnett.
Plot:
The story tells of a prince who desires to marry a princess, but is having difficulty finding a suitable wife. Something is always wrong with those he meets, and he cannot be certain they are real princesses. One stormy night, a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince's castle.
She claims to be a princess, so the prince's mother decides to test their unexpected guest by placing a pea in the bed she is offered for the night, covered by 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds. In the morning the guest tells her hosts—in a speech colored with double entendres —that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed; which she is certain has bruised her.
The prince rejoices. Only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding. The two are married, and the pea is placed in the Royal Museum.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sadko may be a Russian medieval epic. The title character is an adventurer, merchant and gusli musician from Novgorod. Sadko played the gusli on the shores of a lake.
Motifs:
The Sea Tsar enjoyed his music, and offered to help him. Sadko was instructed to create a bet with the local merchants regarding catching a certain fish in the lake; when he caught it, the merchants had to pay the wager, making Sadko a rich merchant.
Sadko traded on the seas along with his new wealth, but did not pay proper respects to the Tsar as per their agreement. The Tsar stopped Sadko's ships in the sea.
He and his sailors tried to appease the Sea Tsar with gold, to no avail. Sadko's crew forced him to jump into the ocean. There, he played the gusli for the Sea Tsar, who offered him a new bride. On advice, he took the last maiden during a long line, and lay down beside her.
He woke up on the seashore and rejoined his wife.
Motifs:
In some variants, Sadko is chosen to jump overboard by throwing lots between the men. This motif may be a widespread device, appearing, for instance, in Child ballad 57 Brown Robyn's Confession.
Adaptations:
This tale attracted the attention of many authors in the 19th century with the rise of the Slavophile movement and served as a basis for a variety of derived works, most notably the poem "Sadko" by Alexei Tolstoy (1871–1872) and the opera Sadko composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who also wrote the libretto. In 1953, Aleksandr Ptushko directed a movie based on the opera entitled Sadko. A shortened and heavily-modified American version of this film entitled The Magic Voyage of Sinbad was spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Historical parallels:
Sadko will be viewed as a metaphor for Yaroslavl the Wise. The liberation of the Novgorodian people by Sadko may be linked to the establishment of the Novgorod Republic by Yaroslavl. Sadko might also be based on an exact Sedko Sitinits, who is mentioned in the Novgorodian First Chronicle as the patron of the stone Church of Boris and Gleb built in the Novgorodian Detinets in 116.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
I and the Village may be a 1911 painting by the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall. It is currently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The work contains several soft, dreamlike images overlapping each other in a continuous space: within the foreground, a cap-wearing green-faced man stares at a goat or sheep with the image of a smaller goat being milked on its cheek. In the foreground maybe a glowing tree held in the man's dark hand.
The background features a collection of houses next to an Orthodox church, and an upside-down female violinist in front of a black-clothed man holding a scythe. Note that the green-faced man wears a necklace with St. Andrew's cross, indicating that the man is a Christian. As the title suggests, I and the Village is influenced by memories of the artist's place of birth and his relationship to it.
The significance of the painting lies in its seamless integration of various elements of Eastern European folktales and culture, both Russian and Yiddish. Its clearly defined semiotic elements and daringly whimsical style were at the time considered groundbreaking. Its frenetic, fanciful style is credited to Chagall's childhood memories becoming, in the words of scholar H.W. Janson, a "cubist fairy tale" reshaped by his imagination, without regard to natural color, size or even the laws of gravity.
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