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Danaë (Titian Paintings)
The Venetian painter Titian and his workshop made at least six versions of the same composition showing ''Danaë'' (or ''Danaë and the Shower of Gold''), painted between about 1544 and the 1560s. The scene is based on the Greek mythology, mythological princess Danaë, as – very briefly – recounted by the Roman poet Ovid, and at greater length by Boccaccio. She was isolated in a bronze tower following a prophecy that her firstborn would eventually kill her father. Although aware of the consequences, Danaë was seduced and became pregnant by Zeus (in Roman mythology Jupiter (mythology), Jupiter), who, inflamed by lust, descended from Mount Olympus to seduce her in the form of a shower of gold. Though the composition, especially the main figure, is essentially the same, the six or more versions vary considerably. The major surviving versions are in Naples, London, Madrid, Vienna, Chicago, and St. Petersburg. The voluptuous figure of Danaë, with legs half spread, hardly ch ...
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Tizian 011
Tiziano Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exerted a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Art of Europe, Western artists. His career was successful from the start, and he became sought after by patrons, initially from Venice and its possessions, then joined by the north Italian princes, and finally the Habsburgs and the papacy. Along with Giorgione, he is considered a founder of the Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting. In 1590, the painter and art theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo describe ...
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Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideological foundation of Western art history, art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born. Vasari was a Mannerist painter who was highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day but rather less so in later centuries. He was effectively what would now be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the ''Lives'' promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts. Vasari designed the ''Tomb of Michelangelo'', his hero, in the Santa Croce, Fl ...
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Giorgione
Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (; 1470s – 17 September 1510), known as Giorgione, was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are firmly attributed to him. The uncertainty surrounding the identity and meaning of his work has made Giorgione one of the most mysterious figures in European art. Together with his younger contemporary Titian, he founded the Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting, characterised by its use of colour and mood. The school is traditionally contrasted with Florentine painting, which relied on a more linear disegno-led style. Life What little is known of Giorgione's life is given in Giorgio Vasari's '' Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects''. He came from the small town of Castelfranco Veneto, 40 km inland from Venice. His name sometimes appears as ''Zorz ...
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Virtue
A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpose of life or a foundational principle of being. In human practical ethics, a virtue is a disposition to choose actions that succeed in showing high moral standards: doing what is said to be right and avoiding what is wrong in a given field of endeavour, even when doing so may be unnecessary from a utilitarianism, utilitarian perspective. When someone takes pleasure in doing what is right, even when it is difficult or initially unpleasant, they can establish virtue as a habit. Such a person is said to be virtuous through having cultivated such a disposition. The opposite of virtue is vice. Other examples of this notion include the concept of Merit (Buddhism), merit in Asian traditions as well as (Chinese language, Chinese ). Etymology The ...
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Dictys
Dictys (, ''Díktus'') was a name attributed to four men in Greek mythology. * Dictys, a fisherman and brother of King Polydectes of Seriphos, both being the sons of Magnes (mythology), Magnes and a Naiad, or of Peristhenes and Androthoe,Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, 4.1091 or else of Poseidon and Cerebia. He discovered Danaë and Perseus inside a chest that had been washed up on shore (or was caught in his fishing net). He treated them well and raised Perseus as his own son. After Perseus killed Medusa (mythology), Medusa, rescued Andromeda (mythology), Andromeda, and later showed Medusa's head to Polydectes turning him and the nobles with him to stone, he made Dictys king. Dictys and his wife, Clymene (mythology), Clymene, had an altar within a sacred precinct of Perseus in Athens. * Dictys, one of the sailors who tried to abduct Dionysus but was turned into a dolphin by the god. * Dictys, a centaur who attended Pirithous' wedding and battled against the Lapiths. While fleeing ...
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Serifos
Serifos () is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, located in the western Cyclades, south of Kythnos and northwest of Sifnos. It is part of the Milos regional unit. The area is and the population was 1,241 at the 2021 census. It is located about ESE of the Athenian port of Piraeus. In Greek mythology, Serifos is where Danaë and her infant son Perseus washed ashore after her father Acrisius, in response to an oracle that his own grandson would kill him, set them adrift at sea in a wooden chest. When Perseus returned to Serifos with the head of the Gorgon Medusa, he turned Polydektes, the king of Serifos, and his retainers into stone as punishment for the king's attempt to marry his mother by force. In antiquity, the island was proverbial for the alleged muteness of its frogs. During the Roman imperial period, Serifos was a place of exile. After 1204 it became a minor dependency of the Venetian dukes of the Archipelago. In the late 19th century Serifos experienced a modest e ...
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Perseus
In Greek mythology, Perseus (, ; Greek language, Greek: Περσεύς, Romanization of Greek, translit. Perseús) is the legendary founder of the Perseid dynasty. He was, alongside Cadmus and Bellerophon, the greatest Greek hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. He beheaded the Gorgon Medusa for Polydectes and saved Andromeda (mythology), Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus (mythology), Cetus. He was the son of Zeus and the mortal Danaë, as well as the half-brother and great-grandfather of Heracles (as they were both children of Zeus, and Heracles's mother was Perseus' granddaughter). Etymology Because of the obscurity of the name "Perseus" and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists presume that it might be pre-Greek; however, the name of Perseus's native city was Greek and so were the names of his wife and relatives. There is some idea that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language. In that regard Robert Graves, Grave ...
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Danaë (Rembrandt Painting)
In Greek mythology, Danaë (, ; ; , ) was an Argive princess and mother of the hero Perseus by Zeus. She was credited with founding the city of Ardea in Latium during the Bronze Age. Family Danae was the daughter and only child of King Acrisius of Argos by his wife Queen Eurydice or Aganippe. In some accounts, she had a sister, Evarete, wife of King Oenomaus of Pisa and mother of Hippodamia.Hyginus, ''Fabulae'84 Mythology Disappointed by his lack of male heirs, King Acrisius asked the oracle of Delphi if this would change. The oracle announced to him that he would never have a son, but his daughter would, and that he would be killed by his daughter's son. At the time, Danaë was childless and, meaning to keep her so, King Acrisius shut her up in a bronze chamber to be constructed under the court of his palace (other versions say she was imprisoned in a tall brass tower with a single richly adorned chamber, but with no doors or windows, just a small air vent as the sourc ...
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Annunciation
The Annunciation (; ; also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord; ) is, according to the Gospel of Luke, the announcement made by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth and become the mother of Jesus Christ, the Messiah and Son of God, marking the Incarnation. According to the Annunciation occurred in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist. Many Christians observe this event with the Feast of the Annunciation on 25March, an approximation of the northern vernal equinox nine full months before Christmas, the traditional birthday of Jesus. The Annunciation is a key topic in Christian art in general, as well as in Marian art in the Catholic Church, having been especially prominent during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. A work of art depicting the Annunciation is sometimes itself called an ''Annunciation'' ...
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Oracle
An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Description The word ''oracle'' comes from the Latin verb ''ōrāre'', "to speak" and properly refers to the priest or priestess uttering the prediction. In extended use, ''oracle'' may also refer to the ''site of the oracle'', and the oracular utterances themselves, are called ''khrēsmoí'' (χρησμοί) in Greek. Oracles were thought to be portals through which the gods spoke directly to people. In this sense, they were different from seers (''manteis'', μάντεις) who interpreted signs sent by the gods through bird signs, animal entrails, and other various methods.Flower, Michael Attyah. ''The Seer in Ancient Greece.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. The most important oracles of Greek antiquity were Pythia (priestes ...
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Acrisius
In Greek mythology, Acrisius (; Ancient Greek: Ἀκρίσιος means 'ill-judgment') was a king of Argos. He was the grandfather of the famous Greek demi-god Perseus. Family Acrisius was the son of Abas and Aglaea (or Ocalea, depending on the author), grandson of Lynceus, great-grandson of Aegyptus. He was the twin brother of Proetus and the half brother of Lyrcus. Acrisius was the husband of Eurydice or Aganippe and thus grandfather of the hero Perseus through their daughter Danae. His other daughter was Evarete, wife of King Oenomaus of Pisa in Elis. Mythology Rivalry of twins Acrisius and Proetus were said to have quarrelled even in the womb of their mother and when Abas died and Acrisius had grown up, he expelled Proetus from his inheritance. On his exile, Proetus was supported by his father-in-law Iobates, the Lycian, Proetus returned, and Acrisius was compelled to share his kingdom with his brother by giving Tiryns to him, while he retained Argos for him ...
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Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six Roman comedy, comedies based on Greek comedy, Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. All six of Terence's plays survive complete and were originally produced between 166–160 BC. According to ancient authors, Terence was born in Carthage and was brought to Rome as a slave, where he gained an education and his freedom; around the age of 25, Terence is said to have made a voyage to the east in search of inspiration for his plays, where he died either of disease in Greece, or by shipwreck on the return voyage. However, Terence's traditional biography is often thought to consist of speculation by ancient scholars who lived too long after Terence to have access to reliable facts about his life. Terence's plays quickly became standard school texts. He ultimately secured a place as one of the four authors taught to all grammar p ...
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