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George Washington (Houdon)
''George Washington'' is a statue by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon from the late 18th century. Based on a life mask and other measurements of George Washington taken by Houdon, it is considered one of the most accurate depictions of the subject. The original sculpture is located in the rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, and has been copied extensively. The date given for the sculpture varies. It was commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly in 1784, begun in 1785, signed "1788", completed in 1791 or 1792, and delivered in 1796. Description The original statue is carved from Carrara marble, weighing 18 tons. It depicts a standing life-sized Washington. In his right hand is a cane, his left arm rests on a fasces on which is slung his cape and sword, and at the back is a plow. He is shown wearing his military uniform, as Washington wished to be depicted in contemporary attire, rather than that of antiquity popular in Neo-classical sculpture. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Antoine Houdon
Jean-Antoine Houdon (; 20 March 1741 – 15 July 1828) was a French neoclassical sculptor. Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and political figures of the Enlightenment. Houdon's subjects included Denis Diderot (1771), Benjamin Franklin (1778-1809), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778), Voltaire (1781), Molière (1781), George Washington (1785–1788), Thomas Jefferson (1789), Louis XVI (1790), Robert Fulton (1803–04), and Napoléon Bonaparte (1806). Biography Houdon was born in Versailles, on 20 March 1741. In 1752, he entered the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he studied with René-Michel Slodtz, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, and Jean-Baptiste Pigalle. From 1761 to 1764, he studied at the École royale des élèves protégés. Houdon won the Prix de Rome in 1761, but was not greatly influenced by ancient and Renaissance art in Rome. His stay in the city is marked by two characteristic and important productions: the supe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the nation's second vice president under John Adams and the first United States secretary of state under George Washington. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels. During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence. As a Virginia legislator, he drafted a state law for religious freedom. He served as the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, during the Revolutionary War. In 1785 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Carolina State House
The North Carolina State House was built from 1792 to 1796 as the state capitol for North Carolina. It was located at Union Square in the state capital, Raleigh, in Wake County. The building was extensively renovated in the neoclassical style by William Nichols, the state architect, from 1820 to 1824. On December 24, 1821, the statue of George Washington by Antonio Canova was displayed in the rotunda. Both were destroyed by fire in 1831. History In 1792, Union Square in Raleigh was set as the location for the state capitol. The General Assembly first met here in 1794. The original two-story brick state house was completed in 1796. On December 16, 1815, several months after the American success in the War of 1812, the House of Commons, and the Senate soon afterwards, unanimously resolved to commission, with no limit on expense, a statue of George Washington for the state house. Governor William Miller asked U.S. senators James Turner and Nathaniel Macon to find the best scul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova (; 1 November 1757 – 13 October 1822) was an Italian Neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble sculptures. Often regarded as the greatest of the Neoclassical artists,. his sculpture was inspired by the Baroque and the classical revival, and has been characterised as having avoided the melodramatics of the former, and the cold artificiality of the latter.Jean Martineau & Andrew Robinson, ''The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century.'' Yale University Press, 1994. Print. Life Possagno In 1757, Antonio Canova was born in the Venetian Republic city of Possagno to Pietro Canova, a stonecutter, and Maria Angela Zardo Fantolini.. In 1761, his father died. A year later, his mother remarried. As such, in 1762, he was put into the care of his paternal grandfather Pasino Canova, who was a stonemason, owner of a quarry, and was a "sculptor who specialized in altars with statues and low reliefs in late Baroque style". He led Antonio into the art of sculpti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Washington (Canova)
''George Washington'' was a life-size marble statue of George Washington, done in the style of a Roman general, by the Italian Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova. Commissioned by the State of North Carolina in 1815, it was completed in 1820 and installed in the rotunda of the North Carolina State House on December 24, 1821. The building and the statue were destroyed by fire on June 21, 1831. This work was the only one created by Canova for the United States. History In December 1815, the House of Commons and the Senate of North Carolina unanimously resolved to commission a full-length statue of Washington. Governor William Miller, with the assistance and recommendation of Thomas Jefferson, determined that Canova should be the sculptor and that Thomas Appleton, American consul in Livorno, Italy, should handle the negotiations. Washington had died in 1799, and Jefferson recommended that Canova use the marble bust of Washington by Giuseppe Ceracchi as a model for the head; Applet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washington Circle
Washington Circle is a traffic circle in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., United States. It is located on the border of the Foggy Bottom and West End neighborhoods, which is a part of the Ward 2 section in Washington. It is the intersection of 23rd Street, K Street, New Hampshire Avenue, and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. It borders many buildings of the George Washington University campus. The through lanes of K Street (which are U.S. Route 29) travel underneath the circle in a tunnel, while the service lanes intersect the circle. History Early- to mid-19th century Washington Circle was first drawn on Pierre L’Enfant’s map in 1791 (Washington Circle, as well as the majority of the map, is unlabeled in L’Enfant’s original plan). Looking at L’Enfant’s Map, one can see that streets were laid in form of grids and there were many intersections around the circle. In addition to the street grids, there are a couple of other circles beside the circle. These feat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equestrian Statue Of George Washington (Washington Circle)
''Lieutenant General George Washington'' is an 1860 equestrian statue of George Washington, at Washington Circle, at the edge of the George Washington University’s campus in Washington, D.C. The statue was sculpted by Clark Mills. History In 1783, after the close of the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress ordered that an equestrian statue of Washington should be erected, the base of which should represent the principal incident of the war. For some reason the subject was dropped until after Washington's death, when in December, 1799, Congress resolved that a marble monument be erected by the United States Government. This was also, however, delayed, and in May, 1800, a third time it was decided that an erection of a costly mausoleum would resolve it. After talking, 1801, an appropriation of $800,000 was made for the purpose and the issue concerning the statue ended. On February 13, 1832, a resolution of inquiry, introduced by Congressman (and later President ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clark Mills (sculptor)
Clark Mills (September 1, 1815 – January 12, 1883) was an American sculptor, best known for four versions of an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, located in Washington, D.C. with replicas in Nashville, Tennessee, Jacksonville, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Early years Mills was born on September 1, 1815 near Syracuse, in Onondaga County, New York. When his father passed away he was sent to his uncle's but found that he was too harsh so he ran away. He had very little formal education. Before he turned 22, he had worked as a "teamster, lumberjack, farmhand, carpenter, and millwright." When he was quite young Mills was apprenticed to a millwright in New York. When he was twenty years old, in 1835, he overwintered in New Orleans. In 1837, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he began to work as an ornamental plasterer. In the 1840s, he developed a faster, easier method of making plaster life-masks, which he then used to make portrait busts. E. Wayne Craven, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while phrases like ''liberté, égalité, fraternité'' reappeared in other revolts, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution, and inspired campaigns for the abolitionism, abolition of slavery and universal suffrage. The values and institutions it created dominate French politics to this day. Its Causes of the French Revolution, causes are generally agreed to be a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the ''Ancien Régime'' proved unable to manage. In May 1789, widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General of 1789, Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly (French Revolution), National Assembly in June. Contin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon is an American landmark and former plantation of Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States George Washington and his wife, Martha. The estate is on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia. It is located south of Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, and is across the river from Prince George's County, Maryland. The Washington family acquired land in the area in 1674. Around 1734, the family embarked on an expansion of its estate that continued under George Washington, who began leasing the estate in 1754 before becoming its sole owner in 1761. The mansion was built of wood in a loose Palladian style; the original house was built by George Washington's father Augustine, around 1734. George Washington expanded the house twice, once in the late 1750s and again in the 1770s. It remained Washington's home for the rest of his life. Following his death in 1799, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Livre
The livre (abbreviation: £ or ₶., French for (pound)) was the currency of Kingdom of France and its predecessor state of West Francia from 781 to 1794. Several different livres existed, some concurrently. The livre was the name of coins and of units of account. History Origin and etymology The livre was established by Charlemagne as a unit of account equal to one pound of silver. It was subdivided into 20 '' sous'' (also ''sols''), each of 12 '' deniers''. The word ''livre'' came from the Latin word '' libra'', a Roman unit of weight and still the name of a pound in modern French, and the denier comes from the Roman denarius. This system and the denier itself served as the model for many of Europe's currencies, including the British pound, Italian lira, Spanish dinero and the Portuguese dinheiro. This first livre is known as the . Only deniers were initially minted, but debasement led to larger denominations being issued. Different mints in different regions used d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insurance
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss. An entity which provides insurance is known as an insurer, insurance company, insurance carrier, or underwriter. A person or entity who buys insurance is known as a policyholder, while a person or entity covered under the policy is called an insured. The insurance transaction involves the policyholder assuming a guaranteed, known, and relatively small loss in the form of a payment to the insurer (a premium) in exchange for the insurer's promise to compensate the insured in the event of a covered loss. The loss may or may not be financial, but it must be reducible to financial terms. Furthermore, it usually involves something in which the insured has an insurable interest established by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
