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Article

Antiphilos  

C. Hobey-Hamsher

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(fl later 4th century bc–early 3rd).

Greek painter. Born in Egypt, Antiphilos was a pupil of Ktesidemos. Although none of his works survives, he painted both large and small pictures and was famous for the facility of his technique (Quintilian: Principles of Oratory XII.x.6). Pliny (Natural History XXXV.114, 138) listed many of his pictures, which included portraits (Philip II and Alexander the Great with the Goddess Athena, in Rome in Pliny’s day; Alexander the Great as a Boy, also taken to Rome; and Ptolemy I of Egypt Hunting) and mythological subjects (Hesione; Dionysos; Hippolytos Terrified of the Bull; and Cadmus and Europa), all of which were in Rome in Pliny’s day. He also painted genre pictures: A Boy Blowing a Fire, a painting much admired for the reflections cast about the room and on the boy’s face, and Women Spinning Wool. The Egyptian city of Alexandria was an artistic centre famous for the depiction of comic figures and grotesques in several media. In that context, Antiphilos contributed a picture of a man called ...

Article

Astrology in medieval art  

Sophie Page

Publication History:

Published online:
16 September 2010
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Astrology is the art of predicting events on earth as well as human character and disposition from the movements of the planets and fixed stars. Medieval astrology encompassed both general concepts of celestial influence, and the technical art of making predictions with horoscopes, symbolic maps of the heavens at particular moments and places constructed from astronomical information. The scientific foundations of the art were developed in ancient Greece, largely lost in early medieval Europe and recovered by the Latin West from Arabic sources in the 12th and 13th centuries. Late medieval astrological images were successfully Christianized and were adapted to particular contexts, acquired local meanings and changed over time.

Astrology developed into a scientific branch of learning in ancient Greece, but because of the opposition of the Church Fathers it was transmitted to early medieval Europe in only fragmentary form in technically unsophisticated textbooks and popular divinatory genres. Literary and scientific texts provided more general ideas about the nature and attributes of the planets which were influential on later iconography. The first significant astrological images appear in 11th-century illustrated astronomical texts (e.g. London, BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius BV), which were acquired and produced by monasteries to aid with time-keeping and the construction of the Christian calendar....

Article

Osman Hamdi  

S. J. Vernoit

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Edhem, Osman HamdiHamdi Bey]

(b Istanbul, Dec 30, 1842; d Eskihisar, Gebze, nr Istanbul, Feb 24, 1910).

Turkish painter, museum director and archaeologist. In 1857 he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for 11 years, training as a painter under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme. On returning to Turkey he served in various official positions, including two years in Baghdad as chargé d’affaires, while at the same time continuing to paint. In 1873 he worked on a catalogue of costumes of the Ottoman empire, with photographic illustrations, for the Weltausstellung in Vienna. In 1881 he was appointed director of the Archaeological Museum at the Çinili Köşk, Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul. He persuaded Sultan Abdülhamid II (reg 1876–1909) to issue an order against the traffic in antiquities, which was put into effect in 1883, and he began to direct excavations within the Ottoman empire. As a result he brought together Classical and Islamic objects for the museum in Istanbul, including the Sarcophagus of Alexander, unearthed in Sidon in ...

Article

Kleanthes of Corinth  

C. Hobey-Hamsher

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Greek painter of unknown date. According to Pliny (XXXV.16), it was either Kleanthes or the otherwise unknown Philokles of Egypt who invented outline drawing. Athenagoras (xvii) gave credit to the otherwise unknown Saurios of Samos for the invention of this technique, but included Kleanthes in his list of the earliest artists (those who worked before the gods were depicted), incorrectly assuming that secular subjects were depicted before divine ones. Indeed, deities were shown in at least two of the three paintings by Kleanthes held in the Temple of Artemis Alpheiosa in the territory around Olympia (Strabo: VIII.343; Athenaeus: VIII.346b–c): the Birth of Athena and Poseidon Offering a Tunny Fish to Zeus (Zeus was in labour, perhaps with the second birth of Dionysos). The third painting was the Fall of Troy. No other painting by Kleanthes is recorded, and none of his work survives.

Pauly–Wissowa; Thieme–Becker Athenaeus: Deipnosophists Athenagoras: Intercession Concerning the Christians...

Article

Rallis, Theodoros  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Greek, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 16 February 1852, in Istanbul, Turkey; died 2 October 1909, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman. Genre scenes, portraits, local figures, architectural subjects, interiors with figures, animals.

Theodoros Rallis (Théodore Jacques Ralli) studied in Paris under Gérôme and Lecomte du Nouy and at the École des Beaux-Arts. He travelled widely in the Middle East and North Africa, finding many sources of inspiration. He exhibited first in 1875 at the Paris Salon, and subsequently at the Salon des Artistes Français, of which he was a member. He received an honourable mention in 1885 and a silver medal in 1889 for the Exposition Universelle, and served as a member of the jury for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1879. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1901....