Download or read book Luxury Arts of the Renaissance written by Marina Belozerskaya and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

Download or read book The Circle written by Dave Eggers and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Download or read book The Book of the Damned written by Charles Fort and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.

Download or read book Corcoran Gallery of Art written by Corcoran Gallery of Art and published by Lucia Marquand. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

Download or read book The Army Air Forces in World War II Plans and early operations January 1939 to August 1942 written by and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 874 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The English in the West Indies written by James Anthony Froude and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Renaissance Fun written by Philip Steadman and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly across the sky? How were seas created on stage? How did mechanical birds imitate real birdsong? What was ‘artificial music’, three centuries before Edison and the phonograph? How could pipe organs be driven and made to play themselves by waterpower alone? And who were the architects, engineers, and craftsmen who created these wonders? All these questions are answered. At the end of the book we visit the lost ‘garden of marvels’ at Pratolino with its many grottoes, automata and water jokes; and we attend the performance of Mercury and Mars in Parma in 1628, with its spectacular stage effects and its music by Claudio Monteverdi – one of the places where opera was born. Renaissance Fun is offered as an entertainment in itself. But behind the show is a more serious scholarly argument, centred on the enormous influence of two ancient writers on these subjects, Vitruvius and Hero. Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture were widely studied by Renaissance theatre designers. Hero of Alexandria wrote the Pneumatics, a collection of designs for surprising and entertaining devices that were the models for sixteenth and seventeenth century automata. A second book by Hero On Automata-Making – much less well known, then and now – describes two miniature theatres that presented plays without human intervention. One of these, it is argued, provided the model for the type of proscenium theatre introduced from the mid-sixteenth century, the generic design which is still built today. As the influence of Vitruvius waned, the influence of Hero grew.

Download or read book Civil War Maps in the National Archives written by National Archives (U.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Era Almanack written by and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Guide to Civil War Maps in the National Archives written by and published by National Archives & Records Administration. This book was released on 1986 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Mass Ornament written by Siegfried Kracauer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary writings continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.

Download or read book European Drawings written by J. Paul Getty Museum and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Staying Red written by Norman Harding and published by Indexreach Limited. This book was released on 2005 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Caves and Karst Science written by John Gunn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 1971 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Caves and Karst Science contains 350 alphabetically arranged entries. The topics include cave and karst geoscience, cave archaeology and human use of caves, art in caves, hydrology and groundwater, cave and karst history, and conservation and management. The Encyclopedia is extensively illustrated with photographs, maps, diagrams, and tables, and has thematic content lists and a comprehensive index to facilitate searching and browsing.

Download or read book Gatherings from Spain written by Richard Ford and published by . This book was released on 1846 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Expectations Unfulfilled Norwegian Migrants in Latin America 1820 1940 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Expectations Unfulfilled scholars from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, Spain and Sweden study the experiences of Norwegian migrants in Latin America between the Wars of Independence and World War II.

Download or read book The Pocket Guide to the West Indies written by Sir Algernon Edward Aspinall and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: