Tribuna of the Uffizi | The first museum of the Modern Age

In the Eighties of the 16th century, the Grand Duke Francesco I and his friend and collaborator, the architect Bernardo Buontalenti, started the project of the Tribuna.

It is the most important room at the first floor of the Uffizi palace, which ground floor was - at that time - occupied by the Florentine magistrates.

The Tribuna was the first nucleus of the Uffizi Gallery: it is a space conceived and realized to display to the public artworks considered the most precious of the Medici collection.

Marble Roman copy after a Greek original

Hindu Art | Ancient Origins

Hinduism, one of the great religions of the world, has a long and rich history of depicting the divine in art. Originating in India in remote antiquity, it is a polytheistic system with a myriad of gods and goddesses.

The challenge for artists was not a shortage of subject matter, but rather how to give form to beings that by their very natures are formless. Relying mainly on sacred religious texts wherein the exploits of the gods and goddesses are told and retold, certain tales and episodes became favorites for illustration, and standard iconographies were established for specific deities.

Sleeping Hermaphroditos / L'Ermafrodito dormiente

The ambivalence and voluptuous curves of this figure of Hermaphroditos, who lies asleep on a mattress sculpted by Bernini, are still a source of fascination today.

His body merged with that of the nymph Salmacis, whose advances he had rejected, Hermaphroditos, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is represented as a bisexed figure.

The original that inspired this figure would have dated from the 2nd century BC, reflecting the late Hellenistic taste for the theatrical.

Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities: Hellenistic Art (3rd-1st centuries BC) Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities - Musée du Louvre.

Bust gallery | Louvre Museum, Paris

The following collection include the Bust gallery in the collections of the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Musée du Louvre is the world's largest art museum and an historic monument in Paris, France.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796-1801.

Hatshepsut | The first woman Pharoah / La prima donna Faraone

Hatshepsut (Hat-shep-soot) (1507–1458 BCE), the first important female ruler known to history, lived a thousand years after the pyramids were built and seventeen centuries after the Egyptians had begun writing their language in hieroglyphs.

She ruled Egypt for two decades (ca. 1473-1458 B.C.) during Egypt's Dynasty 18. Although less familiar to modern audiences than her much later successor, the notorious Cleopatra (51–30 B.C.), Hatshepsut's achievements were far more significant.

Ruling first as regent for, then as co-ruler with, her nephew Thutmose III (who ruled for another thirty-three years after her death), Hatshepsut enjoyed a relatively peaceful reign, at the beginning of the New Kingdom.

The Marathon Boy, 340-330 bc | Underwater discoveries

• National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece
• Marathon Youth or Ephebe of Marathon. 
• Bronze statue of a young athlete, found in the sea near Marathon (Attic coast). 
• The left hand was replaced at a later date by another shaped as a lamp. 
• Work of the Praxiteles school, ca. 340-330 B.C.
• Dimensions H. 1.3 m (4 ft. 3 in.)
• Accession number X 15118
• Department of Sculptures

The Marathon Boy or Ephebe of Marathon is a Greek bronze sculpture found in the Aegean Sea in the bay of Marathon in 1925. It is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where it is dated to around 340-330 BC. The Museum suggests that the subject is the winner of an athletic competition.

Nefertiti, la Dea dell'Egitto

Il pezzo più pregiato della collezione di reperti archeologici egizi è senza dubbio il busto della regina Nefertiti.
C'è chi afferma che valga da solo un viaggio a Berlino.

Nefertiti, che per gli egiziani "la bella che è arrivata", identifica la regina egiziana (XIV secolo a.C.), sposa di Amenophis IV (Akhenaton, 1364-1347 a.C.).

Non si limitò ad interpretare il ruolo di grande sposa reale, poiché il faraone l’aveva coinvolta nella gestione del potere, e la sua influenza sulla guida politica del regno fu notevolissima.

Platone | The Philosophy of Music / La Filosofia della Musica

Raffaello - Scuola di Atene -Platone / Raphael - The School of Athens (1509-1511)

"Music is a moral law.
It gives soul to the universe,
wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination,
and charm and gaiety to life and to everything".

Alekos Fassianos /Αλέκος Φασιανός, 1935 | Expressionist painter

France Honors Greek Artist Alekos Fassianos

Acclaimed Greek artist Alekos Fassianos, who has studied in Paris for 35 years, received one of the greatest honors of the French Republic a few days ago at the French Embassy in Athens.

In his brief greeting after receiving the award of the “Celebrities of the Officer of the Legion of Honor” by the French Ambassador Jean - Louis Delfosse,  Alekos Fasianos expressed his gratitude to the country that allowed him to show his talent.

Alekos Fassianos, officier de la Légion d’honneur, 2013

David Roberts RA | Romantic Orientalist painter

Artist David Roberts and Near Eastern Archaeology

by Dr. Patrick Hunt

Scottish artist David Roberts (1796-1864) was instrumental in helping to stimulate a growing fascination with the Near East by Europeans, especially within British society where biblical accounts of the rise and fall of empires were familiar, as much intellectual fare as anything else and staple bread and butter for religious imagination. The Romantic Movement’s eschewing of Enlightenment ideals turned instead to exotic themes and ruins, also replacing Neoclassicism with Orientalism.

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. 600 AD).

Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in ancient Greece is the period of Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC.

Classical Greece began with the repelling of a Persian invasion by Athenian leadership. Because of conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea.

Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered as the cradle of Western civilization.

William Wetmore Story | Delilah, 1877

Delilah (/dɪˈlaɪlə/; Hebrew: דלילה Dəlilah, meaning "[She who] weakened") is a character in the Hebrew bible Book of Judges, where she is the "woman in the valley of Sorek" whom Samson loved, and who was his downfall.

Her figure, one of several dangerous temptresses in the Hebrew Bible, has become emblematic: "Samson loved Delilah, she betrayed him, and, what is worse, she did it for money", Madlyn Kahr begins her study of the Delilah motif in European painting.

William Wetmore Story | The Libyan Sibyl, 1867

"The Libyan Sibyl", which American sculptor William Wetmore Story (1819-1895) described as “my anti-slavery sermon in stone”, was inspired by events leading up to the Civil War.

Oracle in hand, the Libyan Sibyl, eldest of the legendary prophetesses of antiquity, foresees the terrible fate of the African people.

This premonition is suggested by the heroic figure’s state of brooding cogitation.

Ancient Rome / La Civiltà romana

Ancient Rome, the state centred on the city of Rome. This article discusses the period from the founding of the city and the regal period, which began in 753 bc, through the events leading to the founding of the republic in 509 bc, the establishment of the empire in 27 bc, and the final eclipse of the Empire of the West in the 5th century ad. For later events of the Empire of the East, see Byzantine Empire.

William Wetmore Story | Medea, 1865

In the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Medea was the sorceress who assisted Jason in obtaining the Golden Fleece and later became his wife.

When he abandoned her, Medea murdered their two children and planned the death of his new love, Creusa.

To nineteenth-century theater audiences, Medea was a sympathetic character forced to choose between relinquishing her children and protecting them by destroying them herself. Story similarly deemphasized Medea’s revenge, leaving to the viewer’s imagination the scene of infanticide to come. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Wetmore Story | Cleopatra, 1858

Neoclassical sculptors often drew upon mythology, ancient history, the Bible, and classical and contemporary literature for their subject matter. The full-size marbles of Massachusetts native William Wetmore Story exemplify this trend, and Cleopatra, his most famous work, was one of dozens of subjects such as Medea, Delilah, Electra, and Saul that were produced in his Rome studio.

Kostas Rigoula Tsigris, 1954 | Symbolist /Figurative painter

Greek painter Kostas Rigoula - Tsigris /Κώστας Ρηγούλης - Τσίγκρης, was born at Megara. Began his studies at the Mathematics Department of the University of Athens but his love for the painting turned in other directions. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the teachers and D. Mitaras P. Tetsis.

In the early years of paintings dealt with almost all issues but mainly landscapes with scenes inspired by ancient sculptures and compositions where the dominant element was the human figure with realistic display.

Edward McCartan | Figurative/Art Déco style sculptor

Edward Francis McCartan (August 16, 1879 - September 20, 1947) was an American sculptor, best known for his decorative bronzes done in an elegant style popular in the 1920s.

Born in Albany, New York, he studied at the Pratt Institute, with Herbert Adams. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York with George Grey Barnard and Hermon Atkins MacNeil, and then in Paris for three years under Jean Antoine Injalbert before his return to the United States in 1910.

Edward McCartan | Dream Lady, 1922, Lincoln Park

Eugene Field

"Dream Lady", also known as the Eugene Field Memorial, is a bronze sculpture by Edward Francis McCartan (August 16, 1879 - September 20, 1947).
It is located in Lincoln Park, Chicago.
Eugene Field (1850-1895) was an author and journalist, and wrote a humor column, "Sharps and Flats", for the Chicago Daily News. He was also well known as an author of poems for children.
The memorial cost $35,000, and was funded by public school children, citizens of Chicago and the B. F. Ferguson Monument Fund. It was dedicated on October 9, 1922.
Erected in 1922 by school children and citizens aided by the Benj. F. Ferguson Fund unsigned | From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia.

Edward McCartan | Isoult, 1926

Edward Francis McCartan (August 16, 1879 - September 20, 1947) sculptor, was born in Albany, New York, the son of Michael McCartan, an Irish immigrant merchant of limited means, and Anna Hyland. McCartan began to draw instinctively at age five or six and by age ten had modeled a lion in clay. In his teens he entered Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and studied with Herbert Adams.