HOME





Niche (architecture)
In architecture, a niche (Canadian English, CanE, or ) is a recess or cavity constructed in the thickness of a wall for the reception of decorative objects such as statues, busts, urns, and vases. In Classical architecture examples are an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. In the first century B.C, there was no exact mention of niches, but rather a zotheca or small room. These rooms closely resemble alcoves similar to a niche but slightly larger. Different sizes and sculpture methods suggest the term niche was understood. Greeks and Romans especially, used niches for important family tombs. Etymology The word derives from the Latin (), via the French . The Italian ''Contrade of Siena#Nicchio (Seashell), nicchio'' () may also be involved in the origin of the word, as the traditional decoration for the top of a niche is a scallop shell, hence also the alternative term of semi-dome, "conch" for a semi-dome, usually ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Paris - Dôme Des Invalides - Statue - PA00088714 - 003
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, fourth-most populous city in the European Union and the List of cities proper by population density, 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, Fashion capital, fashion, and gastronomy. Because of its leading role in the French art, arts and Science and technology in France, sciences and its early adoption of extensive street lighting, Paris became known as the City of Light in the 19th century. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 inhabitants in January 2023, or ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Orsanmichele
Orsanmichele or Orsammichele (; from the Tuscan contraction of ''Orto di San Michele'', "Kitchen Garden of St. Michael") is a church in the Italian city of Florence. The building was constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele which no longer exists. Located on the Via Calzaiuoli in Florence, the church was originally built as a grain market in 1337 by Francesco Talenti, Neri di Fioravante, and Benci di Cione. Between 1380 and 1404, it was converted into a church used as the chapel of Florence's powerful craft and trade guilds. On the ground floor of the square building the 13th-century arches that had originally been open, forming the loggia-style grain market, were walled up. The second floor was devoted to offices, while the third housed one of the city's municipal grain storehouses, maintained to withstand famine or siege. As early as 1339 the main guilds had each been assigned a space between the arches to make a framed niche, with a st ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

La Merced (neighborhood)
La Merced is a barrio or a neighborhood of Mexico City defined by its socioeconomics and history rather than by an official designation. It extends over the southeast of the historic center of Mexico City and is one of the oldest sections of the city, established over 700 years ago by the Mexica as part of the founding of Tenochtitlan. Over its history the area was associated with commerce, first as a major docking area for boats bringing goods to Tenochtitlan/Mexico City on Lake Texcoco, later via canals as the lake was slowly drained. In the latter 19th century, the La Merced Market, Mexico City, La Merced market was established in the area replacing the massive La Merced Cloister, La Merced monastery which was almost completely destroyed in the 1860s. This market was established to centralize the marketing of foodstuffs for the city on one area. The first La Merced market was built in 1890 and then replaced by the current building in 1957, one of the largest Traditional fixed mar ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Palazzo Giusti
The Giusti Palace and Garden () are located in the east of Verona, Italy, a short distance from Piazza Isolo and near the city centre. The palace was built in the sixteenth century. The garden is considered one of the finest examples of an Italian garden. The palace is a 16th-century Mannerist structure with a tower added in 1701. The Italian Renaissance gardens were planted in 1580 and are regarded as some of the most beautiful Renaissance gardens in Europe, a splendid park of terraces climbing upon the hill. They include a parterre and hedge maze, and expansive vistas of the surrounding landscape from the terrace gardens. First, only two square parterres right and left hand of the cypress way were designed, and a maze behind the right one, as figured in ''Nürnbergische Hesperides'' in 1714. Some years later, four additional flower parterres were laid out left hand, as to be seen at a map in the Verona State Archives. The booklet, ''Il paradiso de' Fiori'' by Francesco Po ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Apollo
Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the ''kouros'' (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth). Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as ''Apulu''. As the patron deity of Delphi (''Apollo Pythios''), Apollo is an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Pythia, Delphic Oracle and also the deity of ritual purification. His oracles were often consulted for guidance in various matters. He was in general seen as the god who affords help and wards off e ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Exedra
An exedra (: exedras or exedrae) is a semicircular architecture, architectural recess or platform, sometimes crowned by a semi-dome, and either set into a building's façade or free-standing. The original Greek word ''ἐξέδρα'' ('a seat out of doors') was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for conversation. An exedra may also be expressed by a curved break in a colonnade, perhaps with a semicircular seat. The exedra would typically have an apse, apsidal podium that supported the stone bench. The free-standing (open air) exedra, often supporting bronze portrait sculpture, is a familiar Hellenistic structure, characteristically sited along shrine, sacred ways or in open places in sanctuaries, such as at Delos or Epidaurus. Some Hellenistic exedras were built in relation to a city's agora, as in Priene. Monument architects have also used this free-standing style in modern times. Rise The exedra achieved pa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including Renaissance art, art, Renaissance architecture, architecture, politics, Renaissance literature, literature, Renaissance exploration, exploration and Science in the Renaissance, science, the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the Italian Renaissance, rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term ''rinascita'' ("rebirth") first appeared in ''Lives of the Artists'' () by Giorgio Vasari, while the corresponding French word was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s. The Renaissance's intellectual basis was founded in its version of Renaiss ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Porta Maggiore (Roma)
The Porta Maggiore ("Larger Gate"), or Porta Prenestina, is one of the eastern gates in the ancient but well-preserved 3rd-century Aurelian Walls of Rome. Through the gate ran two ancient roads: the Via Praenestina and the Via Labicana. The Via Prenestina was the eastern road to the ancient town of Praeneste (modern Palestrina). The Via Labicana (now called the ''Via Casilina'') heads southeast from the city. History The Porta Maggiore was built by Emperor Claudius in 52 AD, and was later restored by Vespasian and Titus around 20 to 30 years after its construction. In the AD 270s, Porta Maggiore became a gate in the Aurelian Walls. In the 19th century, some of the brick infill was removed to ease a large amount of traffic flowing through the gate. The gate The Porta Maggiore is by far a significant urban site to visit for an understanding and view of the ancient aqueducts. It is a monumental double archway built of white travertine. It was first known as the Porta Prenestina, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Baldachin
A baldachin, or baldaquin (from ), is a canopy of state typically placed over an altar or throne. It had its beginnings as a cloth canopy, but in other cases it is a sturdy, permanent Architecture, architectural feature, particularly over Altar, high altars in cathedrals, where such a structure is more correctly called a Ciborium (architecture), ciborium when it is sufficiently architectural in form. Baldachins are often supported on columns, especially when they are disconnected from an enclosing wall. A cloth of honour or cloth of estate is a simpler cloth hanging vertically behind the throne, usually continuing to form a canopy. It can also be used for similar canopies in interior design, for example above beds, and for processional canopies used in formal state ceremonies such as coronations, held up by four or more men with poles attached to the corners of the cloth. "''Baldachin''" was originally a luxurious type of cloth from Baghdad, from which name the word is ultimat ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Trompe-l'œil
; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving painted objects or spaces as real. Forced perspective is a related illusion in architecture. History in painting The phrase, which can also be spelled without the hyphen and Typographic ligature, ligature in English as ''trompe l'oeil'', originates with the artist Louis-Léopold Boilly, who used it as the title of a painting he exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1800. Although the term gained currency only in the early 19th century, the illusionistic technique associated with dates much further back. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room. A version of an oft-told ancient Gr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Filippo Lippi
Filippo Lippi ( – 8 October 1469), also known as Lippo Lippi, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Quattrocento (fifteenth century) and a Carmelite priest. He was an early Renaissance master of a painting workshop, who taught many painters. Sandro Botticelli and Francesco di Pesello (called Pesellino) were among his most distinguished pupils. His son, Filippino Lippi, also studied under him and assisted in some late works. Biography Lippi was born in Florence in 1406 to Tommaso, a butcher, and his wife. He was orphaned when he was two years old and sent to live with his aunt, Mona Lapaccia. Because she was too poor to rear him, she placed him in the neighboring Carmelite convent when he was eight years old. There, he started his education. In 1420, he was admitted to the novitiate of the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, known commonly as the Carmelites, at the priory of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, taking religious vows in the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Nine Worthies
The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural, and legendary men of distinction who personify the ideals of chivalry established in the Middle Ages, whose lives were deemed a valuable study for aspirants to chivalric status. All were commonly referred to as 'Princes', regardless of their historical titles. In French they are called or "Nine Valiants", giving a more specific idea of the moral virtues they exemplified: those of soldierly courage and generalship. In Italy they are known as ''i Nove Prodi''. The Nine Worthies include three pagans (Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus), and three Christians (King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon). Origin They were first described in the early fourteenth century, by Jacques de Longuyon in his ''Voeux du Paon'' (1312). Their selection, as Johan Huizinga pointed out, betrays a close connection with the Romance (heroic literature), romance genre of chivalry ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]