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Nativity With St. Francis And St. Lawrence
''Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence'' is a painting of the nativity of Jesus from 1609 by Italian painter Caravaggio. It has been missing since 1969 when it was stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. Investigators believe the painting changed hands among the Sicilian Mafia in the decades following the robbery and may still be hidden. A replica was commissioned in 2015 and now hangs in the altar. Background and robbery The painting was completed by Italian painter Caravaggio in Rome in 1609 and later moved to Palermo. It was believed to have been painted in Sicily, one year before he died. It depicts the nativity of Jesus, with saints Francis of Assisi and Lawrence among other figures surrounding Mary and the newborn Jesus. The painting is about 2.7 metres high and two metres wide. On the night of October 17–18, 1969, two thieves stole the painting from its home in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. They cut the painting from its frame, and al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosario Riccobono
Rosario Riccobono (February 10, 1929 in Palermo – November 30, 1982 in Palermo) was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of Partanna Mondello, a suburb of Palermo, his native city. In 1974 he became a member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission. During the 1970s Riccobono was one of the most influential members of the Commission, and the Cosa Nostra's king of the drug trafficking. Heroin trafficker He was involved in heroin trafficking throughout the 1970s and went on the run at the end of that decade after he came under suspicion of running an operation to smuggle heroin from Turkey through Sicily and on to the United States. His right-hand man was the future pentito Gaspare Mutolo, who organized massive shipments of heroin.Stille, ''Excellent Cadavers'', p. 79 At one point, in the early 1980s, he was negotiating 500 kilogramme shipments of heroin from Thailand together with Nitto Santapaola from Catania. Second Mafia war As capo mandamento he became a member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft (born April 25, 1969) is an Italian-born American contemporary performance artist; she also works with photography, video art, sculpture, and painting. Many of her works have made use of professional models, sometimes in large numbers and sometimes naked or nearly so, to stage '' tableaux vivants''.Francis SummersBeecroft, Vanessa ''Grove Art Online''. ''Oxford Art Online''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . She works in the United States, and is based in Los Angeles . Her early work was focused on gender and appeared to be autobiographical; her later work is focused on race. Starting in 2008 she began working with Kanye West on collaborations and commercial projects. Early life and education Vanessa Beecroft was born April 25, 1969 in Genoa, Italy and raised in Santa Margherita Ligure and Malcesine near Lake Garda. Both of her parents were teachers; she was born to an Italian mother, Maria Luisa and a British father, Andrew Beecroft. After she was born, her f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas Day, the festival commemorating the birth of Jesus. Christmas Day is observed around the world, and Christmas Eve is widely observed as a full or partial holiday in anticipation of Christmas Day. Together, both days are considered one of the most culturally significant celebrations in Christendom and Western society. Christmas celebrations in the denominations of Western Christianity have long begun on Christmas Eve, due in part to the Christian liturgical day starting at sunset, a practice inherited from Jewish tradition and based on the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis: "And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day." Many churches still ring their church bells and hold prayers in the evening; for example, the Nordic Lutheran churches. Since tradition holds that Jesus was born at night (based in Luke 2:6-8), Midnight Mass is celebrated on Christmas Eve, traditionally at mid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative is an image, usually on a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film, in which the lightest areas of the photographed subject appear darkest and the darkest areas appear lightest. This reversed order occurs because the extremely light-sensitive chemicals a camera film must use to capture an image quickly enough for ordinary picture-taking are darkened, rather than bleached, by exposure to light and subsequent photographic processing. In the case of color negatives, the colors are also reversed into their respective complementary colors. Typical color negatives have an overall dull orange tint due to an automatic color-masking feature that ultimately results in improved color reproduction. Negatives are normally used to make positive prints on photographic paper by projecting the negative onto the paper with a photographic enlarger or making a contact print. The paper is also darkened in proportion to its exposure to light, so a second reversal resu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photographic Plate
Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography, and were still used in some communities up until the late 20th century. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinner than common window glass. History Glass plates were far superior to film for research-quality imaging because they were stable and less likely to bend or distort, especially in large-format frames for wide-field imaging. Early plates used the wet collodion process. The wet plate process was replaced late in the 19th century by gelatin dry plates. A view camera nicknamed "The Mammoth" weighing was built by George R. Lawrence in 1899, specifically to photograph "The Alton Limited" train owned by the Chicago & Alton Railway. It took photographs on glass plates measuring × . Glass plate photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
KV62
The tomb of Tutankhamun, also known by its tomb number, KV62, is the burial place of Tutankhamun (reigned c. 1334–1325 BC), a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb consists of four chambers and an entrance staircase and corridor. It is smaller and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian royal tombs of its time, and it probably originated as a tomb for a non-royal individual that was adapted for Tutankhamun's use after his premature death. Like other pharaohs, Tutankhamun was buried with a wide variety of funerary objects and personal possessions, such as coffins, furniture, clothing and jewellery, though in the unusually limited space these goods had to be densely packed. Robbers entered the tomb twice in the years immediately following the burial, but Tutankhamun's mummy and most of the burial goods remained intact. The tomb's low position, dug into the floor of the valley, allowed its entrance to be hidden by debris de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Factum Arte
Factum Arte is an art conservation company based in Madrid, Milan, and London. Its commercial activity involves assisting contemporary artists to create technically difficult and innovative works of art. It also seeks to promote the use of non-contact 3D digitisation technologies to record museum collections and historic monuments, especially in areas where these are at risk. Since 2009, Factum Arte's non-profit cultural heritage projects have been carried out through the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation. In 2014, Factum Arte completed the installation of an exact facsimile of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, near Howard Carter’s house. The facsimile, and its proximity to the original tomb, is intended to provoke a debate about preservation; as Factum Arte's Director, Adam Lowe, was said: "The tomb of Tutankhamun was built to last for eternity, but it wasn't built to be visited". Factum Arte has worked with institutions such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sky (company)
Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate, which is a division of Comcast, and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue (), with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2019. The company is primarily involved in satellite television, producing and broadcasting. The current CEO is Dana Strong. Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital pay television company. In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged company changed its name to Sky plc. Prior to November 2018, Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox owned a 39.14% controlling stake in the company; on 9 December 2016, following a previous attempt under News Corporation that was affected by th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1980 Irpinia Earthquake
The 1980 Irpinia earthquake ( it, Terremoto dell'Irpinia) took place in Italy on 23 November 1980, with a moment magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). It left at least 2,483 people dead, at least 7,700 injured, and 250,000 homeless. Event The quake struck at 18:34 UTC (19:34 local), centered on the village of Castelnuovo di Conza, Campania, Southern Italy. The first jolt was followed by 90 aftershocks. There were three main shocks, each with epicenters in a different place, within 80 seconds. The largest shock registered a peak acceleration of 0.38g, with 10 seconds of motion greater than 0.1g. The three main shocks combined produced 70 seconds of shaking greater than 0.01g. Thus the shaking was severe and lasted a long time. Towns in the province of Avellino were hit the hardest. In Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi, 300 were killed, including 27 children in an orphanage, and eighty percent of the town was destroyed and many historical buildings wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Sicilian Mafia Commission (Italian: ''Commissione provinciale''), known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Sicilian Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra. It is composed of representatives of a mandamento (a district of three geographically contiguous Mafia families) that are called ''capo mandamento'' or ''rappresentante''. The Commission is not a central government of the Mafia, but a representative mechanism for consultation of independent Mafia families who decide by consensus. "Contrary to the wide-spread image presented by the media, these superordinate bodies of coordination cannot be compared with the executive boards of major legal firms. Their power is intentionally limited ndit would be entirely wrong to see in the Cosa Nostra a centrally managed, internationally active Mafia holding company," according to criminologist Letizia Paoli.< ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaetano Badalamenti
Gaetano Badalamenti (; 14 September 1923 – 29 April 2004) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. ''Don Tano'' Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s. In 1987, he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders in the so-called " Pizza Connection", a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984."Extra Cheese: Busting a pizza connection" ''Time'', 23 April 1984. He was also sentenced in Italy to life imprisonment in 2002, for the 1978 murder of Peppino Impastato. Early years |
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