Tag: Scarves
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Alexandria
Standing as a crossroad between the Hellenistic world and the East, the city of Alexandria in Egypt is a testament to Alexander the Great as a visionary leader, who envisioned a unified world by establishing cities and transplanting populations between continents. It was recorded by the philosopher Plutarch that one night, Alexander recalled Menelaus’ words…
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Winter’s Bone
Considered the greatest Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin is to Russian letters what Leonardo da Vinci is to Western European art. He is regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature, the inventor of the modern Russian language, who bridged the gap between the literary Russian of the past and the vernacular. To the Russian people,…
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Jet Black
The color jet-black, the darkest of black, is derived from jet, which is a gemstone made of pure wood compressed and heated under extreme pressure, and fossilized over millions of years. The wood was of a conifer with banded spiky trunk, lower branches sweeping the ground, and cones the size of human head. Today this…
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A Meditation on Death
In the early 19th century, a school of landscape painters, later coined the Hudson River School, flourished alongside the American conservation movement. Influenced by the European Romantic era, the Hudson River School celebrated and idealized nature above that made by man. Founded by the English émigré Thomas Cole in 1825, its beginning was marked by…
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Neptune
The planet Neptune is the farthest planet orbiting the Sun and is invisible to the naked eye. In 1613, Galileo Galilei had mapped the planet with his telescope, but he mistakenly perceived it as a star, even though he appeared to observe that it had moved relative to other fixed stars. Rather it was unexpected…
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Jupiter
In 1307, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Convivio, a sort of encyclopedia of general knowledge of his time. In its second volume he paid tribute to his lifelong muse Beatrice Portinari, who lived “in heaven with the angels and on earth with [his] soul.” Proceeding to discuss the heavens, Dante allegorized them to…
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Mars
The planet Mars, also known as the Red Planet, is named after the Roman god of war. The association between Mars and war goes back to the Babylonian civilization, in which the planet was known as Nergal, the deity of death, fire, and destruction. Anthropologists disagree upon whether warfare was common throughout human history, but…
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The Moon
While the global calendar in use for official activities is the solar calendar, which keeps track of the Sun’s position relative to the stars, many parts of the world also maintain another calendar, which keeps track of the Moon’s phases. The moon makes a complete orbit around the earth in 28 days, but it takes…
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Mercury
Across cultures since ancient times, mercury has been a substance of fascination and immense utility. Being liquid and shiny, it was commonly known as quicksilver and was associated with the fastest planet, which was named after the Roman god Mercury. In Greek mythology, Mercury is equivalent to the god Hermes, who was the “soul guide,”…
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Tiepolo’s Olympus
The Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is considered one of the greatest painters of 18th-century Europe, the first master of the Grand Manner, and among the most original artists of his time. His art unites ancient history, myths, and legends into masterpieces of imagination and theatrical interpretation, standing as an exemplification of “pictorial intelligence”, which explores…
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