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Francesco Algarotti
Count Francesco Algarotti (11 December 1712 – 3 May 1764) was an Italian polymath, philosopher, poet, essayist, anglophile, art critic and art collector. He was a man of broad knowledge, an expert in Newtonianism, architecture and opera. He was a friend of Frederick the Great and leading authors of his times: Voltaire, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis and the atheist Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Lord Chesterfield, Thomas Gray, George Lyttelton, Thomas Hollis, Metastasio, Benedict XIV and Heinrich von Brühl were among his correspondents. Early life Algarotti was born in Venice as the son of a rich merchant. His father and uncle were art collectors. Unlike his older brother, Bonomo he did not step into the company, but decided to become an author. Francesco obtained a classical education. He also studied natural sciences and mathematics at the Rome and experimental physics and medicine at the University of Bologna under Francesco M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Jean-Étienne Liotard
Jean-Étienne Liotard () or Giovanni Stefano Liotard (22 December 1702 – 12 June 1789) was a Genevan painter, pastellist, printmaker, art theorist and art dealer. Born in the Republic of Geneva as the son of exiled French Huguenots, he spent most of his career working in cities such Rome, Istanbul, Paris, Vienna, London, Amsterdam and other cities. He is best known for his detailed, strikingly naturalistic portraits in pastel and Orientalist scenes of life in Turkey. As an art theorist he wrote the ''Traité des Principes et règles de la Peinture'' (Treatise on the Principles and Rules of Painting) in which he argued that painting should to be a mirror of nature.Bell, Janis. "Jean-Étienne Liotard: The Rules of Art and the Late Still Life Paintings." Iconocrazia [Online], 2.24 (2023): 107-128. Consulted on 5 June 2025 Life Liotard was born in Geneva as the son of Antoine, a merchant and citizen of Geneva, and Anne Sauvage. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Julien Offray De La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (; November 23, 1709 – November 11, 1751) was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his 1747 work '' L'homme machine'' (''Man a Machine''). La Mettrie is most remembered for taking the position that humans are complex animals and no more have souls than other animals do. He considered that the mind is part of the body and that life should be lived so as to produce pleasure (hedonism). His views were so controversial that he had to flee France and settle in Berlin. Early life La Mettrie was born at Saint-Malo in Brittany on November 23, 1709, and was the son of a prosperous textile merchant. His initial schooling took place in the colleges of Coutances and Caen. After attending the Collège du Plessis in Paris, he seemed to have acquired a vocational interest in becoming a clergyman, but after studying theology in the Jansenist schools for some years, his i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont; 15 May 168921 August 1762) was an English aristocrat, medical pioneer, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762. Although having regularly socialised with the court of George I and George Augustus, Prince of Wales (later King George II) , Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her '' Turkish Embassy Letters'' describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which Billie Melman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey
John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, (13 October 16965 August 1743) was an English courtier and political writer. Heir to the Earl of Bristol, he obtained the key patronage of Walpole, and was involved in many court intrigues and literary quarrels, being apparently caricatured by Pope and Fielding. His memoirs of the early reign of George II were too revealing to be published in his time and did not appear for more than a century. Family background Hervey was the eldest son of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, by his second wife, Elizabeth. He was known as Lord Hervey from 1723, upon the death of his elder half-brother, Carr, the only son of his father's first wife, Isabella, but Lord Hervey never became Earl of Bristol, as he predeceased his father. Life Hervey was educated at Westminster School and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. degree in 1715. His father then sent him to Paris in 1716, and thence to Hanover to pay court to George I. He was a frequent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by Charles II of England, King Charles II and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the society's president, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the president are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows. , there are about 1,700 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible light, visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Light is a type of electromagnetic radiation, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for by using the Classical electromagnetism, classical electromagnetic description of light, however complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are often difficult to apply in practice. Practical optics is usually done using simplified models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of Ray (optics), rays that travel in straight lines and bend when they pass through or reflect from surfaces. Physical optics is a more comprehensive mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Francesco Maria Zanotti
Francesco Maria Zanotti Cavazzoni (Bologna, 6 January 1692 – Bologna, 25 December 1777) was an Italians, Italian philosopher and writer. Besides being a writer, he was also a commentator on works of art. He was considered an authoritative source on many topics. Life He was the son of Giampietro Zanotti, and a pupil of Eustachio Manfredi. In 1718 he became professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna, and in 1723 he was appointed as secretary of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli. Initially a Cartesianism, Cartesian, he became a follower of Isaac Newton, Newton. In 1728 Francesco Algarotti experimented with light in his lab, replicating the Prism (optics), prism and spectrum experiments of Isaac Newton. In 1741 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Zanotti's 1741 essay on the 'attractive force of ideas' defended a view of the association of ideas influenced by Newtonian physics. In 1754 Zanotti criticised Pierre-Louis Maupertuis for his views on Stoicism and Christianity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Natural Sciences
Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. Life science is alternatively known as biology. Physical science is subdivided into branches: physics, astronomy, Earth science and chemistry. These branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches (also known as fields). As empirical sciences, natural sciences use tools from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, converting information about nature into measurements that can be explained as clear statements of the " laws of nature". Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Heinrich Von Brühl
Heinrich, Count von Brühl (, 13 August 170028 October 1763), was a Polish-Saxon statesman at the court of Electorate of Saxony, Saxony and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and a member of the powerful German von Brühl family. The incumbency of this ambitious politician coincided with the decline of both states. Brühl was a skillful diplomat and cunning strategist, who managed to attain control over Saxony and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland, partly by controlling its king, Augustus III of Poland, Augustus III, who ultimately could only be accessed through Brühl himself. Polish historian and writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski wrote a novel under the title ''Count Brühl'', in which he described Heinrich as an oppressive and stubborn dictator, who, with greed, but also great determination, unsuccessfully attempted to gain control of the entire nation. It is widely believed that Brühl had Europe's largest collection of watches and military vests; attributed to him wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Benedict XIV
Pope Benedict XIV (; ; 31 March 1675 – 3 May 1758), born Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 17 August 1740 to his death in May 1758. Pope Benedict X (1058–1059) is now considered an antipope. At the time, however, this status was not recognized by church historians, and so the tenth legitimate pontiff by this name is the one who took the official name Benedict XI (1303–1304). This has advanced the numbering of all subsequent Popes Benedict by one. Popes Benedict XI–XVI are therefore the tenth through fifteenth popes by that name. Perhaps one of the best scholars to sit on the papal throne, yet often overlooked, he promoted scientific learning, the Baroque arts, reinvigoration of Thomism, and the study of the human form. Firmly committed to carrying out the decrees of the Council of Trent and authentic Catholic teaching, Benedict removed changes previously made to the Breviary, sought peacefully to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (3 January 1698 – 12 April 1782), better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio (), was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of ''opera seria'' libretti. Early life Metastasio was born in Rome, where his father, Felice Trapassi, a native of Assisi, had taken service in the Corsican regiment of the papal forces. Felice married a Bolognese woman, Francesca Galasti, and became a grocer in the ''Via dei Cappellari''. The couple had two sons and two daughters; Pietro was the younger son. Pietro, while still a child, is said to have attracted crowds by reciting impromptu verses on a given subject. On one such occasion in 1709, two men of distinction stopped to listen: Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, famous for legal and literary erudition as well as his directorship of the Arcadian Academy, and Lorenzini, a critic of some note. Gravina was attracted by the boy's poetic talent and personal charm, and made Pietro h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Thomas Hollis (1720–1774)
Thomas Hollis FRS FRSA (14 April 1720 – 1 January 1774) was an English political philosopher and author. Early life Hollis was educated at Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, until the age 10, and then in St. Albans until 15, before learning French, Dutch, and accountancy in Amsterdam. After the death of his father in 1735, his guardian was a John Hollister. He was trained in this time in public service by John Ward of Gresham College, London. He took Chambers with Lincoln's Inn from 1740 to 1748, though without ever reading law. By this time, he was a man of considerable wealth having inherited from his father, grandfather and uncle. Travel and art From 1748–1749, Hollis toured Europe with Thomas Brand (later Brand Hollis) and again during 1750–1753, largely on his own, meeting many leading French philosophers and several Italian painters, among them possibly Camillo Paderni, who wrote him letters about his excavations as the Villa of the Papyri in 1754 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
