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Article

Thorsten Opper

Source of a group of Roman and Greek works of art, in particular a group of Greek bronze sculptures and statuettes. In 1900 sponge-divers discovered the remains of an ancient shipwreck in the sea off the Greek island of Antikythera. In one of the first operations of this kind, they salvaged some its cargo. A new investigation of the wreck site took place in 1976 and succeeded in recovering many further objects, as well as (still unpublished) remains of the hull. All the finds are now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The ship, which must have foundered in the second quarter of the 1st century bc, carried a mixed cargo of ‘antique’ and contemporary bronze and marble statuary, as well as luxury products such as bronze furniture attachments, rare and expensive types of glass, gold ingots etc. It also contained the so-called Antikythera Mechanism, an elaborate type of astrolabe....

Article

French, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 17 April 1767, in Avignon; died 27 March 1838, in Orange.

Archaeologist, painter.

A student of Gonichon at the École de Dessin de Lyon, Artaud worked as a fabric designer before becoming an archaeologist. He is best-known for his work on the antiques and mosaics discovered in Lyons, and for organising the town's museum, becoming its first curator ...

Article

Italian, 16th century, male.

Active in Paduac.1550.

Painter, architect, archaeologist.

Alessandro Bassano supplied drawings for the decoration of the Sala dei Giganti of the old town hall in Padua; the actual decoration was done by Campagnola and other Italian artists.

Paris, 25 Nov 1925...

Article

Dutch, 17th century, male.

Born 1583, in Brussels; died 1660, in Frankfurt am Main.

Painter, engraver, archaeologist.

Frankenthal School.

Hendrik van der Borcht the Elder left his native country with his parents in 1586, because of war, and went to Germany, where he was the pupil of Gillis von Valkenburg. According to other biographers, he was the pupil of the elderly Martin von Valkenburg, in Frankfurt. Later he went to Italy, where he devoted himself to archaeology. He lived until 1627 in Frankenthal, and thereafter in Frankfurt am Main. He had also been to England. The engravings for which he is remembered include: ...

Article

Thorsten Opper

Roman town in Italy on the southern slope of Mt Vesuvius immediately to the north of Pompeii, sometimes identified with the ancient Pagus Augustus Felix Suburbanus (one of the town's outer districts). Excavations carried out mainly in the later 19th century brought to light some thirty villae rusticae, part of an intense network of smallholdings situated on the lower slopes of the volcano and the adjacent Sarno plain, and plentiful evidence of intense agricultural activity, principally the production of wine and olive oil. Probably due to its fertility, the area was resettled after the eruption; baths dating to the 2nd or 3rd century ad were discovered in Via Casone Grotta. Most of the villas were reburied after the excavations and documentation tends to be sparse. Finds are now mostly in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as well as a number of private collections; more recent discoveries are exhibited in a new local museum. The nearby Villa Regina is the only structure that can be visited; it has wine production facilities and large storage areas....

Article

Gordon Campbell

In 55 bc Julius Caesar landed in Britain, and the following year returned with a substantial army. He did not attempt to conquer territory, but on his second expedition he installed a client king, and so inaugurated the process whereby Britain established ever closer political and commercial relations with Rome. Caligula attempted an invasion in ad 39 or 40, but it was aborted before his army left Gaul. In ad 43 the army of Claudius invaded successfully, and gradually large tracts of Britain were conquered and incorporated into the Empire. The Roman province was known as Britannia. The northern limit of Roman expansion was achieved in ad 84, when Agricola defeated the Caledonians at the Battle of Mons Graupius, the location of which is unknown. Thereafter the Romans retreated to the narrow expanse of land between the Clyde and the Forth (later to be fortified with the Antonine Wall). Some 30 years later the Romans retreated south to another isthmus, this time between the Solway and the Tyne. When ...

Article

S. J. Vernoit

(b 1872; d Srinagar, 1955).

English art historian, museum curator, educationalist, painter and collector. In 1899, after a short period of training as an archaeologist in Egypt, Brown went to India, where he served as curator of Lahore Museum and principal of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore. While working in these posts, he was also assistant director of the Delhi Exhibition of 1902–3 (see Delhi, §II), under George Watt. In 1909 he took up employment in Calcutta as principal of the Government School of Art and curator of the art section of the Indian Museum. In 1927 he retired from the Indian Educational Service to take up an appointment as secretary and curator of the Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta, where he remained until 1947. After this he lived on a houseboat on the Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Brown’s earliest publications included a contribution to the catalogue of the Delhi Exhibition and a descriptive guide to the Department of Industrial Art at Lahore Museum in ...

Article

Delia Kottmann

Italian village in Lazio, north of Rome, known for its church. The church of SS Anastasius and Nonnosus is all that remains of the 6th-century Benedictine monastery, which submitted to Cluny in ad 940. Apart from some re-used fragments, the architecture is Romanesque, with a Cosmati pavement in opus sectile as well as an ambo and ciborium. The church is famous for its wall paintings from the first quarter of the 12th century. The apse and its adjacent walls, showing the 24 elders, are influenced by Romano–Christian motifs. Christ in the middle of the conch is flanked by Peter and Paul in a Traditio legis depiction, with a procession of lambs below. Underneath, Maria Regina has to be reconstructed in the middle, between two conserved angels followed by female saints in a Byzantine manner. No Romano–Christian iconography seems to have influenced the vast apocalyptic cycle painted on the side walls of the transept. A band of prophets runs beneath the roof on all the walls of the transept. An inscription in the apse indicates three Roman painters....

Article

Thomas J. McCormick

(b Paris, baptAug 28, 1721; d Auteuil, Jan 19, 1820).

French architect, archaeologist and painter. He was an important if controversial figure associated with the development of the Neo-classical style of architecture and interior design and its dissemination throughout Europe and the USA. He studied at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, Paris, under Germain Boffrand and won the Grand Prix in 1746. He spent the years 1749 to 1754 at the Académie Française in Rome but left after an argument with the director Charles-Joseph Natoire over his refusal to make his Easter Communion; this may have been due to his Jansenist sympathies. He nevertheless remained in Italy until 1767. During these years he became a close friend of Piranesi, Winckelmann, Cardinal Alessandro Albani and other members of the international circle interested in the Antique.

In his early student days in Rome, Clérisseau became acquainted in particular with English travellers and began to sell them his attractive topographical drawings of Roman architecture. Initially these were influenced by his studies with ...

Article

Dimitris Plantzos

Greek city situated at the foothills of Mt Olympus in northern Greece (district of Pieria), 14 km south of modern city of Katerini. It was an important Macedonian political and cultural centre from the Classical to the Roman periods (6th century bc–4th century ad). By the 6th century bc it seems that the Macedonians were gathering at Dion in order to honour the Olympian gods, chiefly Zeus; according to myth, Deukalion, the only man to survive the flood at the beginning of time, built an altar to Zeus as a sign of his salvation. His sons, Macedon and Magnes, lived in Pieria, near Olympus, and became the mythical ancestors of the Macedonians. The altar allegedly erected by Deukalion remained the centre of the cult life at Dion throughout its history.

King Archelaos of Macedon (c. 413–399 bc) organized athletic and dramatic contests in the framework of the religious celebrations, following the practice of the Greeks in the south, such as at the great sanctuaries of Olympia and Delphi. Philip II (...

Article

Swiss, 19th century, male.

Born 28 May 1798, in Môtiers; died 7 May 1850, in Peseux.

Draughtsman, archaeologist.

This scholar is the author of an interesting work entitled: Journey around the Caucasus which he illustrated with views of the region, monuments and indigenous objects as well as other illustrations. He lived in Russia and Switzerland where he enjoyed a well-deserved reputation....

Article

French, 19th century, male.

Born 11 January 1815, in Beaugency; died 20 August 1854, in Mer (Loir-et-Cher).

Draughtsman, archaeologist.

Ursin Duchalais was the senior employee of the medallions section of the Bibliothèque Impériale.

Article

French, 19th century, male.

Born 27 April 1817, in Paris; died 5 February 1885, in Paris.

Painter, draughtsman, archaeologist.

In 1841 Edmond Dusommerard exhibited at the Louvre in Paris a View of the Square and Church at Foligno, a View of the Grand Canal in Venice...

Article

Dimitris Plantzos

[Satra]

Greek city situated on the island of Crete, by the north-west foothills of mount Psiloritis (anc. Ida), 30 km south-east of the present-day city of Rethymnon. It was a centre for Aegean and Greek culture from the Prehistoric to the Byzantine periods (4th millennium bc–7th century bc).

Ancient Eleutherna is a typical example of a Cretan polis (city) inhabited continuously from at least from the 9th century bc (the so-called ‘Dark Age’ of Greek history) to the late Roman and Byzantine period (6th–7th century bc). Even before that, archaeological finds suggest the existence of a continuous presence on the site from the late Neolithic (4th millennium bc) through to a flourishing Minoan site of the 3rd to 2nd millennia bc. Although later construction all but eliminated traces of prehistoric architecture, there is still significant evidence to confirm unbroken habitation. In historical times (9th century...

Article

British, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1752; died 21 March 1822, in London.

Painter, archaeologist.

Sir Henry Charles Englefield exhibited landscapes at the Royal Academy in 1787, 1788 and 1789.

Article

Irish, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born c. 1745, in Cork, 5 March 1761 according to some sources; died 26 August 1816, in Rome.

Painter, archaeologist. Portraits.

Robert Fagan entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1781. He left for Rome via Paris in 1783. Of his work, little other than portraits is known, for example ...

Article

John Turpin

(b London, March 5, 1761; d Rome, Aug 26, 1816).

English painter, archaeologist and dealer, of Irish origin. A Roman Catholic, he was the son of a prosperous London baker, originally from Cork. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1781; two years later he travelled to Italy via Flanders and Paris, reaching Rome in January 1784. There, under the influence of Andrea Appiani and François-Xavier Fabre, he evolved an individual and original Neo-classical style of portrait painting, with an emphasis on contour, clear colour and psychological penetration. By the early 1790s he had become a fashionable painter of English visitors and a prominent member of Roman artistic society. His portraits often include evocative Italian landscape settings, as in Elizabeth, Lady Webster (1793; priv. col.), which shows Mt Vesuvius in the background, and the double portrait of his friend Sir Corbet Corbet with his Wife and Dogs in the Roman Campagna (c. 1797; priv. col., see Crookshank and Glin, ...

Article

Olle Granath

(b São Paulo, Dec 28, 1928; d Stockholm, Nov 8, 1976).

Swedish painter. Following a childhood spent in Brazil, he moved to Sweden in 1939. He studied archaeology and the history of art, specializing in pre-Columbian manuscripts, and he showed an interest in the theatre. In the early 1950s he worked as a journalist, wrote plays and poems and in 1952 began to paint his first composite pictures. In 1953 Fahlström published a manifesto, Hipy Papy Bthuthdth Thuthda Bthuthdy: Manifesto for Concrete Poetry (Stockholm), which manipulates language irrespective of the meanings of words. He saw an unexploited wealth, both sensual and intellectual, in its phonetic materials and in the distortions that occur when letters are transposed. In the following years he worked mainly on a large painting entitled Ade-Ledic-Nander II (oil, 1955–7; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.), where little hieroglyphic signs are arranged in major, antagonistic groups. Next, he appropriated images from such comic strips as Krazy Kat (for illustration see Comic-strip art...

Article

Janina Zielińska

(b Tuligłowy, nr Lwów [now Lviv, Ukraine], July 30, 1853; d Habelschwerdt, Silesia [now Bystrzyca Kłodzka, Poland], July 9, 1929).

Polish painter. He studied (1869–71) at the Kraków School of Fine Arts before working as a draughtsman for the archaeologist Stanisław Krzyżanowski (1841–81) on excavations in the Ukraine, then for the architect Feliks G̨siorowski. With the latter’s support, Fałat was able to study architecture in Zurich and Munich, but he gave up his studies to work as a technical draughtsman in Zurich. He continued with his painting studies in Munich (1877–80) under Alexander Strähuber (1814–82) and Georg Raab (1821–85). Fałat’s early work shows the influence of the watercolourists Hubert von Herkomer and Ludwig Passini (1832–1903), and of Eduard Grützner (1846–1925). Fałat’s own watercolour work was soon acclaimed both by the large group of Polish painters in Munich and also by those at home. In 1882–6 Fałat lived in Warsaw painting realistic genre scenes and landscapes and contributing illustrations to Polish and German periodicals, such as the Viennese Secession journal ...

Article

French, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 14 September 1753, in Clermont-en-Beauvaisis; died 12 March 1838, in Smyrna.

Draughtsman, painter, engraver, archaeologist.

Fauvel is known to have produced an engraving in colour, as well as The Philosopher after Janinet and a Portrait of the Poet Delille...