Armando Barrios | Cubist / Abstract painter

Venezuelan Artist Armando Barrios (1920-1999) was born in Caracas in 1920. He entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Caracas in 1932. During Rómulo Gallegos management as education minister in the government of Eleazar Lopez Contreras, the institution was reformed in 1936 and changed its name to the School of Visual Arts and Applied Arts of Caracas. Antonio Edmundo Monsanto and other leading painters of the generation of the Fine Arts were called to direct and integrate their teaching staff.

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.

Luca Morelli, 1968 | Figurative Realist painter

Luca Morelli is an Italian painter, known for working in the Figurative style. Morelli was born in Rome. He graduated in 1990 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Lives and works in Rome.

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

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.