Tag Archives: Italy
Blending into the Street with MP5.
Italian street artist MP5 added a little optical illusion with a street piece he completed in Abruzzo, Italy for the Visione Periferica Street Art Festival.
The piece, titled Root of Evil, is quite eye-catching with the thick black and white composition.
But it is the fact that it bleeds onto the sidewalk below that really creates an interesting illusion.
via Juxtapoz Magazine – Blending Into the Street: MP5 in Italy.
Weird, Wonderful Photos From Another Era.
Original caption, from April 4, 1934: “The word Si, or yes, fills every bit of this large election billboard, except for the space taken by a huge modernistic conception of Premier Benito Mussolini.
The great placard covers the front of the Palazzo Braschi, the most modern of Rome’s office buildings and home of the Fascist Party’s offices.”
Image Credit: Photograph by Bettmann / Getty
Source: Weird, Wonderful Photos From Another Era – The Atlantic
‘The Prince’ and the Politics of Power by Machiavelli.
The father of modern political theory, Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, was born at Florence, May 3, 1469, saw the troubles of the French invasion (1493), when the Medici fled, and in 1498 became secretary of the Ten, a post he held until the fall of the republic in 1512.
He was employed in a great variety of missions, including one to the Emperor Maximilian, and four to France.
His dispatches during these journeys, and his treatises on the Affairs of France and Germany, are full of far-reaching insight.
On the restoration of the Medici, Machiavelli was involved in the downfall of his patron, Gonfaloniere Soderini.
Arrested on a charge of conspiracy in 1513, and put to the torture, he disclaimed all knowledge of the alleged conspiracy.
Although pardoned, he was obliged to retire from public life and devoted himself to literature.
It was not until 1519 that he was commissioned by Leo X to draw up his report on a reform of the state of Florence.
In 1521-25 he was employed in diplomatic services and as historiographer.
After the defeat of the French at Pavia (1525), Italy was helpless before the advancing forces of the Emperor Charles V and Machiavelli strove to avert from Florence the invading army on its way to Rome.
In May 1527 the Florentines again drove out the Medici and proclaimed the republic — but Machiavelli, bitterly disappointed that he was to be allowed no part in the movement for liberty, and already in declining health, died on June 22.
Through misrepresentation and misunderstanding his writings were spoken of as almost diabolical, his most violent assailants being the clergy. The first great edition of his works was not issued until 1782. From that period his fame as the founder of political science has steadily increased.
Besides his letters and state papers, Machiavelli’s historical writings comprise Florentine Histories, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius (commonly known as The Discourses), a Life of Castruccio Castrancani (unfinished) and History of the Affairs of Lucca.
His literary works comprise an imitation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, an essay on the Italian language, the play Mandragola, and several minor compositions. He also wrote Seven Books on the Art of War.
The greatest source of Machiavelli’s reputation is, of course, The Prince (1532).
The main theme of this short book is that all means may be resorted to for the establishment and preservation of authority — the end justifies the means — and that the worst and most treacherous acts of the ruler are justified by the wickedness and treachery of the governed.
The Prince was condemned by Pope Clement VIII.
via Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527.
Flowers Bloom across the Plain of Castelluccio, Italy.
The village of Castelluccio sits on a hill above the flowering landscape, in the highlands of the Sibillini Mountains, in central Italy, in the summer of 2018.
Image Credit: Photograph by Valerio Mei / Shutterstock
Source: Colors Bloom Across the Great Plain of Castelluccio, Italy – The Atlantic
Fortinio Liceti’s Monsters, 1665.
Highlights from the illustrations in the 1665 edition of Fortunio Liceti’s De Monstris, originally published, without the illustrations, in 1616.
Liceti’s work, although not the first on the topic of deformities in nature, was perhaps the most influential of the period.
In the wake of the book there was a huge rise in interest throughout Europe in “monstrosities”: pygmies, supposed mermaids, deformed fetuses, and other natural marvels were put on display and widely discussed, becoming the circus freak-shows of their time.
However, unlike many of his contemporaries Licenti did not see deformity as something negative, as the result of errors or failures in the course of nature.
Instead he likened nature to an artist who, faced with some imperfection in the materials to be shaped, ingeniously creates another form still more admirable.
‘It is said that I see the convergence of both Nature and art,’ wrote Liceti, ‘because one or the other not being able to make what they want, they at least make what they can.”
Read more via Fortunio Liceti’s Monsters (1665) | The Public Domain Review.
Paolo Mascagni’s Exploded Torso.
Illustration of human viscera by Paulo Mascagni, from his Anatomia Universa (1823-31) – Source: Wellcome Library, London.
Paolo Mascagni (January 25, 1755 – October 19, 1815) was an Italian physician and anatomist. He is most well known for publishing the first complete description of the lymphatic system.
Mascagni was born in the comune of Pomarance (in the Province of Pisa) to Aurelio Mascagni and Elisabetta Burroni, both belonging to old gentry families of Chiusdino.
He studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Siena. Upon graduating in 1777, renowned anatomist Pietro Tabarrini took Mascagni as an assistant. Upon Tabarrini’s death in 1780, Mascagni was appointed as an anatomy lecturer at the University of Siena.
As a young man, Mascagni was interested in geological sciences, as evidenced by his several papers on the Lagoni (thermal springs) of Siena and Volterra. Upon graduation, he turned his interest to the human lymphatic system. His many discoveries in this field led to the composition and publication of Vasorum lymphaticorum corporis humani historia et iconographia in 1787.
He was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1796, and president of the Accademia dei Fisiocritici in 1798.
During the French occupation of Tuscany in the spring of 1799, Mascagni showed himself to be an enthusiastic Jacobin.
For this reason, he spent seven months in prison after the French were expelled. Mascagni was freed from prison by a motu proprio of the King of Etruria, who on October 22, 1801 appointed Mascagni a professor of anatomy at the University of Pisa, with the additional charge of lecturing twice a week at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.
In 1807, Mascagni was appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Florence. There, he wrote Treatise of Anatomy.
Mascagni died of sepsis in 1815. Via. Wikipedia
Source: The Wellcome Library’s Top 10 Open Images – The Public Domain Review
Illustrations from ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy’ by Martini.
In 1901, Vittorio Alinari, head of Fratelli Alinari, the world’s oldest photographic firm, decided to publish a new illustrated edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
To do so, Alinari announced a competition for Italian artists: each competitor had to send illustrations of at least two cantos of the epic poem, which would result in one winner and a public exhibition of the drawings.
Among the competitors were Alberto Zardo, Armando Spadini, Ernesto Bellandi, and Alberto Martini.
While Martini did not win the competition, he, as Vittorio Sgarbi wrote in his foreword to Martini’s La Divina Commedia, “seemed born to illustrate the Divine Comedy.”
The 1901 contest was followed by two more sets of illustrations between 1922 and 1944, which produced altogether almost 300 works in a wide range of styles, including pencil and ink to the watercolor tables painted between 1943 and 1944.
While repeatedly rejected publication during his lifetime, a comprehensive edition of Martini’s La Divinia Commedia is available today.
Read more via Alberto Martini’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1901-1944) | Open Culture.
San Giulio Island, Italy.
In this lovely capture by Luca Casartelli, we see Isola San Giulio (or San Giulio Island) on Lake Orta, in the region of Piedmont in northwestern Italy.
The island measures 275 metres (902 feet) long by 140 metres (459 feet) wide.
The most famous building on the island is the Basilica of Saint Giulio, close to which you can see the monumental old Seminary (1840s).
The little island, just west of the lakeshore village of Orta San Giulio, has very picturesque buildings, and takes its name from a local patron saint (Julius of Novara), who lived in the second half of the 4th century.
Luca Casartelli on 500px
via Picture of the Day: San Giulio Island, Italy «TwistedSifter.
‘Faceless’ by Diego Bardone.
In a world of celebrity injunctions and increasingly strict privacy laws, it can be difficult for street photographers to assert their creativity, argues Diego Bardone.
Based in Milan, the 52-year-old has been documenting his home city for the past nine years.
For his recent project, “Faceless: An Ode to Privacy Laws”, Bardone built up a series of candid shots of strangers – their identities obscured – making for a poignant yet playful reflection on human identity.
THE OLD GUV LEGENDS 