Download or read book An Elephant in Rome written by Loyd Grossman and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1650, the spiritual and political power of the Catholic Church was shattered. Thanks to the twin blows of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Rome, celebrated both as the Eternal City and Caput Mundi - the head of the world - had lost its pre-eminent place in Europe. Then a new Pope, Alexander VII, fired with religious zeal, political guile and a mania for building, determined to restore the prestige of his church by making Rome the must-visit destination for Europe's intellectual, political and cultural elite. To help him do so, he enlisted the talents of Gianlorenzo Bernini, already celebrated as the most important living artist: no mean feat in the age of Rubens, Rembrandt and Velazquez.0Together, Alexander VII and Bernini made the greatest artistic double act in history, inventing the concept of soft power and the bucket list destination. Their creation of Baroque Rome as a city more beautiful and grander than since the days of the Emperor Augustus continues to delight and attract. 0Famous as a TV Presenter for MasterChef and Through the Keyhole, Loyd Grossman has also been deeply involved in heritage and art history. His love of Rome was kindled by his first encounter with the enigmatic and strangely beautiful monument to this relationship between artist and pope: the elephant carrying on obelisk outside Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, just behind the Pantheon. Written with this as a starting point, An Elephant in Rome is a book for those who love the endless fascination of the Eternal City and want a deeper and more entertaining tale of how it came to be.
Download or read book The Artist and the Eternal City written by Loyd Grossman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brilliant vignette of seventeenth-century Rome, its Baroque architecture, and its relationship to the Catholic Church brings to life the friendship between a genius and his patron with an ease of writing that is rare in art history. By 1650, the spiritual and political power of the Catholic Church was shattered. Thanks to the twin blows of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Rome—celebrated both as the Eternal City and Caput Mundi (the head of the world)—had lost its preeminent place in Europe. Then a new Pope, Alexander VII, fired with religious zeal, political guile, and a mania for creating new architecture, determined to restore the prestige of his church by making Rome the key destination for Europe's intellectual, political, and cultural elite. To help him do so, he enlisted the talents of Gianlorenzo Bernini, already celebrated as the most important living artist—no mean feat in the age of Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velazquez.
Download or read book The Pope s Elephant written by Silvio A. Bedini and published by Penguin Mass Market. This book was released on 2000 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the court of Pope Leo X in sixteenth-century Rome, and discusses the popularity of the Pope's white elephant, Hanno, a gift from the king of Portugal.
Download or read book The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World written by Howard Hayes Scullard and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a full picture of the elephant in the Graeco-Roman world, featuring contemporary accounts of elephants performing on the battlefield. The author first traces the natural history of the elephant and then evaluates the references to elephants in the works of Ctesias, Aristotle, and other early writers. He shows the animal in action under Alexander the Great and his successors, under the Carthaginians, and under Hannibal, describing how they were captured and trained and how they were dealt with by opposing armies. He discusses what later writers such as Pliny, Aelian, and Ammianus knew about elephants, and he concludes with an account of the animals' roles in such peacetime activities as circuses and ceremonies.--From publisher's description.
Download or read book Naked Statues Fat Gladiators and War Elephants written by Garrett Ryan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why didn't the ancient Greeks or Romans wear pants? How did they shave? How likely were they to drink fine wine, use birth control, or survive surgery? In a series of short and humorous essays, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants explores some of the questions about the Greeks and Romans that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has answered in the classroom and online. Unlike most books on the classical world, the focus is not on famous figures or events, but on the fascinating details of daily life. Learn the answers to: How tall were the ancient Greeks and Romans? How long did they live? What kind of pets did they have? How dangerous were their cities? Did they believe their myths? Did they believe in ghosts, monsters, and/or aliens? Did they jog or lift weights? How did they capture animals for the Colosseum? Were there secret police, spies, or assassins? What happened to the city of Rome after the Empire collapsed? Can any families trace their ancestry back to the Greeks or Romans?
Download or read book I was an Elephant Salesman written by Pap Khouma and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark bestseller in Italy, I Was an Elephant Salesman gives a name and a face to the thousands of anonymous African street vendors in cities across Europe. Through the voice of a thinly veiled first-person narrator, Pap Khouma offers us a chilling, intimate, and often ironic glimpse into the life of an illegal immigrant. Khouma invents a life for himself as an itinerant trader of carved elephants, small ivories, and other "African" trinkets, struggling to maintain courage and dignity in the face of despair and humiliation. Constantly on the run from the authorities, he finds insight into the vicissitudes of law and politics, the constraints of citizenship, national borders, skin color, and the often paralyzing difficulties of obtaining basic human needs. His story reveals a contemporary Europe struggling to come to terms with its multiracial, multireligious, and multicultural identity.
Download or read book Master of Rome Masters of the Sea written by John Stack and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stirring adventure novel set amid the tumultuous clashes between the Roman and Carthaginian empires, battling for control of the Mediterranean, north Africa and Rome itself.
Download or read book Bernini written by Franco Mormando and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the whirlwind life of the famed Italian sculptor who is known for his artistic and architectural contributions to the city of Rome.
Download or read book Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome written by George Jennison and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1937 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome" is a complete and comprehensive investigation of the rise, function, and pageantry of wild and domesticated animals as household pets and as fodder for entertainment in the Roman world.
Download or read book Elephants Kings written by Thomas R. Trautmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests.
Download or read book Adua written by Igiaba Scego and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Utterly sublime . . . Aduatells a gripping story of war, migration and family, exposing us to the pain and hope that reside in each encounter” (Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King). Adua, an immigrant from Somalia, has lived in Italy nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of becoming a film star ended in shame. A searing novel about a young immigrant woman’s dream of finding freedom in Rome and the bittersweet legacies of her African past. “Lovely prose and memorable characters make this novel a thought-provoking and moving consideration of the wreckage of European oppression.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Igiaba Scego is an original voice who connects Italy’s present with its colonial past. Adua is an important novel that obliges the country to confront both memory and truth.” —Amara Lakhous, author of Dispute over a Very Italian Piglet “This book depicts the soul and the body of a daughter and a father, illuminating words that are used every day and swiftly emptied of meaning: migrants, diaspora, refugees, separation, hope, humiliation, death.” —Panorama “A memorable, affecting tale . . . Brings the decolonialization of Africa to life . . . All the more affecting for being told without sentimentality or self-pity.” —ForeWord Reviews “Deeply and thoroughly researched . . . Also a captivating read: the novel is sweeping in its geographical and temporal scope, yet Scego nonetheless renders her complex protagonists richly and lovingly.” —Africa Is a Country
Download or read book The Roman Triumph written by Mary Beard and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-31 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It followed every major military victory in ancient Rome: the successful general drove through the streets to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill; behind him streamed his raucous soldiers; in front were his most glamorous prisoners, as well as the booty he’d captured, from enemy ships and precious statues to plants and animals from the conquered territory. Occasionally there was so much on display that the show lasted two or three days. A radical reexamination of this most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman triumph, but also its darker side. What did it mean when the axle broke under Julius Caesar’s chariot? Or when Pompey’s elephants got stuck trying to squeeze through an arch? Or when exotic or pathetic prisoners stole the general’s show? And what are the implications of the Roman triumph, as a celebration of imperialism and military might, for questions about military power and “victory” in our own day? The triumph, Mary Beard contends, prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory. Her richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture—and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since. But how can we re-create the ceremony as it was celebrated in Rome? How can we piece together its elusive traces in art and literature? Beard addresses these questions, opening a window on the intriguing process of sifting through and making sense of what constitutes “history.”
Download or read book Greece Rome Monsters written by John Harris and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces monsters from Greek and Roman mythology, such as the basilisk and the phoenix, and includes a "monster quiz" and pronunciation guide.
Download or read book Egypt Greece and Rome written by Charles Freeman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Tell Them of Battles Kings and Elephants written by Mathias Énard and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michelangelo’s adventure in Constantinople, from the “mesmerizing” (New Yorker) and “masterful” (Washington Post) author of Compass In 1506, Michelangelo—a young but already renowned sculptor—is invited by the sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered, along with an enormous payment, the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci’s design was rejected: “You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal.” Michelangelo, after some hesitation, flees Rome and an irritated Pope Julius II—whose commission he leaves unfinished—and arrives in Constantinople for this truly epic project. Once there, he explores the beauty and wonder of the Ottoman Empire, sketching and describing his impressions along the way, as he struggles to create what could be his greatest architectural masterwork. Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants—constructed from real historical fragments—is a thrilling page-turner about why stories are told, why bridges are built, and how seemingly unmatched fragments, seen from the opposite sides of civilization, can mirror one another.
Download or read book Elephant Destiny written by Martin Meredith and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thousands of years, the majestic elephant has roamed the African continent, as beloved by man as it has been preyed upon. But centuries of exploitation and ivory hunting have taken their toll: now, as wars and poachers continue to ravage its habitat, as disease and political strife deflect attention from its plight, the African elephant faces imminent extinction. What will become of these magnificent beasts? As the elephant's future looms ever darker, Martin Meredith's concise and richly illustrated biography traces the elephant's history from the first ivory expeditions of the Egyptian pharaohs 2500 years ago to today, exploring along the way the indelible imprint the African elephant has made in art, literature, culture, and society. He shares recent extraordinary discoveries about the elephant's sophisticated family and community structure and reveals the remarkable ways in which elephants show compassion and loyalty to each other. Elegant, illuminating, and urgent, Elephant Destiny offers a beautiful and important tribute to one of earth's most magisterial creatures at the very moment it threatens to vanish from being.
Download or read book The Land of the Elephant Kings written by Paul J. Kosmin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year The Seleucid Empire (311–64 BCE) was unlike anything the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds had seen. Stretching from present-day Bulgaria to Tajikistan—the bulk of Alexander the Great’s Asian conquests—the kingdom encompassed a territory of remarkable ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity; yet it did not include Macedonia, the ancestral homeland of the dynasty. The Land of the Elephant Kings investigates how the Seleucid kings, ruling over lands to which they had no historic claim, attempted to transform this territory into a coherent and meaningful space. “This engaging book appeals to the specialist and non-specialist alike. Kosmin has successfully brought together a number of disparate fields in a new and creative way that will cause a reevaluation of how the Seleucids have traditionally been studied.” —Jeffrey D. Lerner, American Historical Review “It is a useful and bright introduction to Seleucid ideology, history, and position in the ancient world.” —Jan P. Stronk, American Journal of Archaeology
