Thursday, February 24, 2011

Chinese Online Paintings


Ginkaku-ji, the Temple of the Silver Pavilion, is a Zen temple in the Sakyo ward of Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the constructions that represent the Higashiyama Culture of Murom chi period.

Ashikaga Yoshimasa initiated tactics for creating a retirement villa and gardens as early as 1460; and after his death, Yoshimasa would assemble for this property to become a Zen temple. The official name is Jishō-ji or the "Temple of Shining Mercy." The temple is today linked with the Shokoku-ji branch of Rinzai Zen.

The two-storied Kannon-den is the major temple structure. Its construction began February 21, 1482.The structure's design sought to emulate the golden Kinkaku-ji which had been commissioned by his grandfather Ashikaga Yoshimasa. It is popularly known as Ginkaku, the "Silver Pavilion" because of the primary plans to cover its exterior in silver foil; but this familiar nickname dates back only as far as the Edo period (1600–1868).

During the Onin War, construction was halted. Despite Yoshimasa intention to cover the structure with a distinctive silver-foil overlay, this work was delayed for so long that the plans were never realized before Yoshimasa death. The present appearance of the structure is understood to be the same as when Yoshimasa himself last saw it. This "incomplete" appearance illustrates one of the aspects of "wabi-sabi" quality.

 Like Kinkaku-ji, Ginkaku-ji was originally built to serve as a place of rest and solitude for the Shogun. During his reign as Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa inspired a new expression of traditional culture, which came to be known as Higashiyama Bunka. Having retired to the villa, it is said Yoshimasa sat in the pavilion, contemplating the calm and beauty of the grounds as the Onin War worsened and Kyoto was burned to the ground.

In 1485, Yoshimasa became a Zen Buddhist monk. After his death on January 27, 1490 the villa and gardens became a Buddhist temple complex, renamed Jisho-ji after Yoshimasa Buddhist name.

In addition to the temple's famous building, the property features wooded grounds covered with a variety of mosses. The Japanese garden, supposedly designed by the great landscape artist Soami. The sand garden of Ginkaku-ji has become particularly well known; and the carefully formed pile of sand which said to symbolize Mount Fuji is an essential element in the garden.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

About Diamond Head Hawaii


Diamond Head is the name of a volcanic tuff cone on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and known to Hawaiians as Le ahi, most likely from lae 'browridge, promontory' plus ahi 'tuna' because the shape of the ridgeline resembles the shape of a tuna's dorsal fin.Its English name was given by British sailors in the 19th century, who mistook calcite crystals embedded in the rock for diamonds.

Diamond Head is part of the complex of cones, vents, and their associated eruption flows that are collectively known to geologists as the Honolulu Volcanic Series, eruptions from the KO olau Volcano that took place long after the volcano formed and had gone dormant.

The Honolulu Volcanic Series is a series of volcanic eruption events that created many of Oahu's well-known landmarks, including Punchbowl Crater, Hanauma Bay, Koko Head, and Manana Island in addition to Diamond Head.

Diamond Head, like the rest of the Honolulu Volcanics, is much younger than the main mass of the Koolau Mountain Range. While the Koolau Range is about 2.6 million years old, Diamond Head is estimated to be about 150,000 years old and extinct for 150,000 years.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Tessin's Drottningholm Palace




During the golden age of the Swedish Empire, the architecture of Nordic countries was dominated by the Swedish court designer Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and his son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger. Their aesthetic was readily adopted across the Baltic, in Copenhagen and Saint Petersburg.

Born in Germany, Tessin the Elder endowed Sweden with a truly national style, a well-balanced mixture of contemporary French and medieval hanseatic elements. His designs for the royal manor of Drottningholm seasoned French prototypes with Italian elements, while retaining some peculiarly Nordic features, such as the hipped roof.

Tessin the Younger shared his father's enthusiasm for discrete palace facades. His design for the Stockholm Palace draws so heavily on Bernini's unexecuted plans for the Louvre that one could well imagine it standing in Naples, Vienna, or Saint Petersburg. Another example of the so-called International Baroque, based on Roman models with little concern for national specifics, is the Royal Palace of Madrid. The same approach is manifested is Tessin's polychrome dome less Kalmar Cathedral, a skillful pastiche of early Italian Baroque, clothed in a giant order of paired Ionic pilasters.

It was not until the mid-18th century that Danish and Russian architecture were liberated from Swedish influence. A milestone of this late period is Nicolai Eigtved's design for a new district of Copenhagen centered on the Amalienborg Palace. The palace is composed of four rectangular mansions for the four greatest nobles of the kingdom, arranged across the angles of an octagonal square. The restrained facades of the mansions hark back to French antecedents, while their interiors contain some of the finest Rococo decoration in Northern Europe.

Friday, February 4, 2011


Bernardo Be lotto was a Venetians urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching famous for his verdures of European cities .He was the pupil and nephew of Canaletto and sometimes used the latter's memorable name, signing himself as Bernardo Canaletto. Especially in Germany, paintings attributed to Canaletto may actually be by Be lotto rather than by his uncle; in Poland, they are by Be lotto, who is known there as "Canaletto".

Bellbottom’s style was characterized by detailed representation of architectural and natural vistas, and by the specific quality of each place's lighting. It is believable that be lotto, and other Venetian masters of verdure, may have used the camera obscure in order to achieve superior precision of urban views.

When King August III of Poland, also an Elector of Saxony, who usually lived in Dresden, died in 1763, be lotto’s work became less important in Dresden. As a consequence, he left Dresden to seek employment in St Petersburg at the court of Catherine II of Russia. On his way to St. Petersburg, however, be lotto accepted an invitation in 1764 from Poland's newly nominated King Stanislaw August Poniatowski to become his court painter in Warsaw.

Here he remained some 16 years, for the rest of his life, as court painter to the King, for whom he painted several views of the Polish capital and its environs for the Royal Castle in Warsaw, complement of the great historical paintings commissioned by Poniatowski from Marcello Bacciarelli. His paintings of Warsaw, later relocated to Moscow and Leningrad, were restored to the Polish Communist Government and were used in rebuilding the city after its near-complete destruction by German troops during World War II.

There are paintings by Be lotto also at the Czartoryski Museum, in Krakow, Poland (a museum founded by Isabella Czartoryski, (1743 - 1835), with paintings and works of art from her estate, Pulawy), and in Wilanów Palace, in the outskirts of Warsaw, founded around 1805 by Stanislaw Kostka Potocki, where a portrait of the above mentioned Isabella Czartoryska can be seen.

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