Traditional Art

> The use of blue glaze on pottery is an imported technique, first developed by Mongol artisans who combined Chinese glazing technology with Persian decorative arts. This technique traveled east to India with early Turkic conquests in the 14th century. During its infancy, it was used to make tiles to decorate mosques, tombs and palaces in Central Asia. Later, following their conquests and arrival in India, the Mughals began using them in India. Gradually the blue glaze technique grew beyond an architectural accessory to Indian potters. From there, the technique traveled to the plains of Delhi and in the 17th century went to Jaipur.

Sir Walter Allward's inspiration for the Vimy Memorial came to him in a dream, in which, he said, dead soldiers "rose in masses, filed silently by and entered the fight to aid the living. So vivid was this impression, that when I awoke it stayed with me for months. Without the dead we were helpless. So I have tried to show this in this monument to Canada's fallen, what we owed them and we will forever owe them." Captain William Longstaff's "Vimy Ridge" artwork (circa 1930-1939) combines Allward's inspiration with the resulting striking monument.

> Tobias Verhaecht (1561–1631) was a painter from Antwerp in the Duchy of Brabant who primarily painted landscapes. His style was indebted to the mannerist world landscape developed by artists like Joachim Patinir and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He was the first teacher of Pieter Paul Rubens.

> The original page 13 of the Codex Borbonicus, showing the 13th trecena of the Aztec sacred calendar. This 13th trecena was under the auspices of the goddess Tlazolteotl, who is shown on the upper left wearing a flayed skin, giving birth to Cinteotl. The 13 day-signs of this trecena, starting with 1 Earthquake, 2 Flint/Knife, 3 Rain, etc., are shown on the bottom row and the right column. > > The Codex Borbonicus is one of a very few Aztec codices that survived the colonial Spanish inquisition. When the Spanish conquistadors (led by Hernán Cortés) entered Aztec cities, they would often find libraries filled with thousands of native works. However, most of the works were destroyed during the conquest as a means to hasten the conversion of the Aztec to European ideals.

> Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) is a medieval poem written in Old French and presented as an allegorical dream vision. As poetry, The Romance of the Rose is a notable instance of courtly literature, purporting to provide a "mirror of love" in which the whole art of romantic love is disclosed. Its two authors conceived it as a psychological allegory; throughout the Lover's quest, the word Rose is used both as the name of the titular lady and as an abstract symbol of female sexuality. The names of the other characters function both as personal names and as metonyms illustrating the different factors that lead to and constitute a love affair. Its long-lasting influence is evident in the number of surviving manuscripts of the work, in the many translations and imitations it inspired, and in the praise and controversy it inspired. > >The Romance of the Rose was both popular and controversial. One of the most widely read works in France through the Renaissance, it was possibly the most read book in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. Its emphasis on sensual language and imagery, along with its supposed promulgation of misogyny, provoked attacks by Jean Gerson, Christine de Pizan, Pierre d'Ailly, and many other writers and moralists of the 14th and 15th centuries. The historian Johan Huizinga has written: "It is astonishing that the Church, which so rigorously repressed the slightest deviations from dogma of a speculative character, suffered the teaching of this breviary of the aristocracy (for the Roman de la Rose was nothing else) to be disseminated with impunity."

The entire manuscript can be viewed online here.

> Lear's illustrations were produced using lithography, in which artists copied their paintings onto a fine-textured limestone slab using a special waxy crayon. The block was then treated with nitric acid and gum arabic to etch away the parts of the stone not protected by the wax. The etched surface was wetted before adding an oil-based ink, which would be held only by the greasy crayon lines, and copies were printed from the stone. The printed plates were hand-coloured, mainly by young women. > > Lear drew directly on to the limestone instead of first making a painting and then copying it onto the stone, thus saving him considerable expense. Although this method was technically more difficult, drawing directly onto stone could give a livelier feel to the final illustration, and was favoured by some other contemporary bird artists such as John Gerrard Keulemans. Lear largely taught himself lithographic techniques, using stones hired at the studio of his printer, Charles Joseph Hullmandel. Hullmandel was the author of The Art of Drawing on Stone (1824), and the leading exponent of lithographic printing in Britain. His colourists used egg white to give a sheen to the parrot's plumage and a shine to the bird's eye.

> Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second Napoleonic Empire in 1870. He earned a living producing caricatures and cartoons in newspapers and periodicals such as La Caricature and Le Charivari, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still remembered today. He was a republican democrat (working class liberal), who satirized and lampooned the monarchy, politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the bourgeoisie, as well as his countrymen and human nature in general.

Apologies for the slightly skewed picture. I actually own this artwork. A close family friend has been collecting 19th Century Japanese woodcuts his entire life, and he gifted this one of a wedding scene to my wife and I when we got married.

More details about the work. The artist Kunisada lived from 1786 to 1864 and he shared a studio / teacher with the (perhaps more famous) artist Kuniyoshi. This work was published by Hayashiya Shogoro in 1850.

The work depicts a Kabuki theatre scene; traditional Japanese theatre. Actors are playing the roles of Aburu-ya Oshin and Fukuoka Mitsugi in the play Ise Ondo. In this scene the couple are getting married.

A very early depiction of the Buddha.

> For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his studio from memory, photographs, or live models. The figure remained his primary subject; his few landscapes were produced from memory or imagination. It was not unusual for him to repeat a subject many times, varying the composition or treatment. He was a deliberative artist whose works, as Andrew Forge has written, "were prepared, calculated, practiced, developed in stages. They were made up of parts. The adjustment of each part to the whole, their linear arrangement, was the occasion for infinite reflection and experiment." Degas explained, "In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement". He was most interested in the presentation of his paintings, patronizing Pierre Cluzel as a framer, and disliking ornate styles of the day, often insisting on his choices for the framing as a condition of purchase.

> Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and "hydrostatic balances". He was one of the earliest Renaissance developers of the thermoscope and the inventor of various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn's rings, lunar craters and sunspots. He also built an early microscope.