Europe

Art in Architecture: Salamanca Cathedrals

There are two famous cathedrals in Salamanca, Spain–the first is the old portion first built in the 12th century and renovated in the 14th century. Within are dozens of antique works of art depicted throughout the tower.

This smaller tower was then built on out in the 16th and 18th centuries into the New Cathedrals that still stand there today. Because the Cathedrals were built and renovated so many times, they reflect centuries of architectural styles and are an amalgam artistic history.

by Laurenz Bobke

“A closer look at the Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour”

“A closer look at the Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour”

via “The Louvre“

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, better known as the Marquise de Pompadour, was born in 1721 into a bourgeois family on its way up in the world thanks to its links to the world of finance. She received a refined, elegant education.

As a child, she studied music and dance with Rameau’s favorite singer, Jélyotte. Crébillon père introduced her to the theatre and the art of declamation. He was a great rival of Voltaire, who was later to become a great friend of hers. She was a young protégée of the farmer-general Le Normant de Tournehem, who may in fact have been her real father. At the age of twenty, she married his nephew Guillaume Le Normant d’Etiolles, also later to become a farmer-general. She was then in a position to be admitted to Louis XV’s court, and became the king’s official mistress in 1745.

As a well-educated young woman who had made an advantageous marriage, she was invited to . . . .

“In the Garden”

“In the Garden” by Pierre Auguste Renoir Currently Housed in the Hermitage in St. Peterburg, Russia

Rockfall Destroys 300 year old Italian Farmhouse

“Incredible Video Shows How Boulders Demolished a 300-Year-Old Italian Farmhouse”

“Incredible Video Shows How Boulders Demolished a 300-Year-Old Italian Farmhouse”

Via Yahoo News

“Miraculously, no one was injured when three enormous boulders rolled down a hill and leveled a 300-year old house in Tramin, Northern Italy.

Drone footage captured the aftermath of the 4,000-cubic-meter rock fall. Two boulders leveled the barn, and then a third stopped just short of the living quarters and a car parked outside, sparing those inside.

It is believed that a rock tower that crumbled caused the accident. The property, which lies below a cliff, is owned by the Servite order of the Catholic Church. Philipp von Hohenbühel, who runs the Freisingerhof estate, estimates to Südtirol News that the boulders caused millions of dollars in damage.”