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57 results
Kiev-Mezhyhirya Earthenware Factory
This book is a compilation of articles about the famed Kiev-Mezhyhirya Earthenware Factory, which was part of the 10th-century Mezhyhirya Monastery. The factory was founded at the end of the 18th century and produced such quantities of faience that by the mid-19th century it was the largest industrial enterprise in Kiev. The first part of the book is dedicated to the history of the factory, and includes details and illustrations of the wide range of its products, both decorative pieces and more practical ones. The factory hallmarks (seals) are shown ...
Contributed by
National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine
Ismāʻīl, the Persian Ambassador of Ṭahmāsp, King of Persia
Melchior Lorck, or Lorichs (1527–circa 1590), was the most brilliant graphic artist in 16th-century Denmark. He was born in Flensburg of distinguished parents; the Danish kings took up residence in the Lorck house when visiting the city. In 1549 King Christian III gave Lorck financial support to go on an educational journey. Lorck’s wanderlust led him throughout Europe and in the end to Vienna, where he gained employment with Emperor Charles V. From 1555 to 1559 Lorck was one of three ambassadors sent by the emperor to Constantinople ...
Contributed by
Royal Library (The), Denmark
Landscape and Notes on Shading and Perspective
This sketch showing a landscape with mountains, farm buildings, and a European man is from a set of 27 drawings on 15 sheets that was discovered in the National Library of South Africa in 1986. The drawings are important for presenting the earliest realistic depictions of the Khoikhoi people, the original inhabitants of the Western Cape. The artist most likely was a Dutchman, born in the 17th century, who was attached in some capacity to the Dutch East India Company and possibly en route to the Dutch East Indies or ...
Contributed by
National Library of South Africa
Active Passage, Saturna Group, Looking West
The Northwest Boundary Survey of 1857-61 was a joint U.S.-British project to survey the border between the United States and Canada from the crest of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Carried out jointly by American and British experts, it involved four years of strenuous work in rugged and heavily forested terrain. James Madison Alden (1834-1922) was a Massachusetts artist who, in 1854, enlisted in the U.S. Navy and worked as a cartographer on a project to chart the California coast. In January 1858, Alden became ...
Contributed by
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Su Ruolan
The portrait is of Su Hui, a gifted fourth-century female scholar and poet who had the courtesy name of Ruolan (“like an orchid”). She is famous for a palindromic poem that she embroidered in several colors of silk to express her love for her husband, who had been exiled to a distant point on the trade routes to Central Asia. Different versions of the poem exist. One has 112 characters arranged in eight rows of 14 characters. They make no sense unless the reader starts with the character "husband" in ...
Contributed by
National Central Library
The Plum Blossom
The plum blossom and bamboo sometimes are paired as friends in Chinese culture. Both are symbols of purity and steadfastness. This pairing is reflected in this late 17th-early 18th century painting and the accompanying poem. He Shikun was a Ming-dynasty figure who is identified in two local gazetteers as being from Xinhui, in Guangdong. The inscription here, however, identifies him as being from Wuyang, an old name for Guangzhou, to the north of Xinhui. In 1646, in the chaotic weeks before Xinhui surrendered to the Qing dynasty forces that had ...
Contributed by
National Central Library
Raden Saleh (1814-1880), Painter in Batavia
This photograph depicts Raden Saleh (1807-80), regarded by many scholars as the first modern artist from the Dutch East Indies. Saleh was born into a noble Javanese family and studied with a Belgian artist in the West Javan city of Bogor before going to study in the Netherlands. He spent 20 years in Europe before returning to his native country, where he lived for the remainder of his life, painting landscapes, local aristocrats, and conceptions of Javanese history. Saleh’s paintings reflect the romanticism popular in Europe at the time ...
Contributed by
Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and the Caribbean Studies KITLV
A Light Note on the Science of Writing and Inks
This manuscript in 20 folios contains two works. The first is a treatise by Muḥammad ibn ʻĪsā al-Ṭanṭāwī on writing tools and the craft of making ink. The work is organized in seven chapters. In the first chapter, the author briefly discusses the best type of reed pens to select for writing. In subsequent chapters, he explains ways to make red, black, and other kinds of ink, including how to write in gold. The treatise was completed on Friday, 1 Rabī‘ II 1268 AH (January 24, 1852). The second work ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Henry Solomon Wellcome: three-quarter length. Oil painting by Hugh Goldwin Riviere, 1906.
Henry S. Wellcome was born in 1853 to a poor farm family in Almond, Wisconsin. Upon his death in 1936, the Wellcome Trust, a British charity, was created. Many years later, it became the most highly endowed charity in the world, with assets of 15 billion pounds. Wellcome owed this achievement to his success as a pharmaceutical manufacturer and salesman. After training as a pharmacist at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, he went to England in 1880 to join his college friend S. Mainville Burroughs in a new pharmaceutical company ...
Contributed by
Wellcome Library
A verger's dream: Saints Cosmas and Damian performing a miraculous cure by transplantation of a leg. Oil painting attributed to the Master of Los Balbases, ca. 1495.
Saints Cosmas and Damian were early Christian martyrs who, according to legend, practiced medicine without payment and therefore were represented to the public as medical ideals. In this Spanish altarpiece, the saints appear in a vision, dressed in the full finery of academic doctors as they perform the miracle of transplanting a leg. The vision is described in a book of 1275 by Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea (The golden legend). The vision was received in the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, in Rome, by a verger who had ...
Contributed by
Wellcome Library
Zhong Kui Painted by Sesshu
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. Isoda Koryūsai, who flourished 1764–88, significantly contributed to the development ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Updated Version of Hagoromo
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. This playful print by Ishikawa Toyonobu (1711–85) depicts a scene ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Heian Period Tale of the Nightingale in the Plum Tree
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. This print by Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820) illustrates an 11th-century tale ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Kume the Immortal Spies on a Beauty
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. This sumizuri-e (monochrome print) is unsigned, but recent scholars have attributed ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
A View of Nakazu
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. Utagawa Toyoharu (1735–1814) was the founder of the Utagawa school ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Courtesan
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. Shunshō (1726–93) was a leading artist of the Katsukawa school ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Courtesan Gazing at Nihon Embankment
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. Bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women) capture the trends in feminine beauty ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Cry of the Crane
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. These two prints are by Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764). The larger ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
Tagasago Couple in the Hollow of a Pine Tree
A new and less formal style of poetry called haikai (linked verse) spread among the urbanites of Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo in 17th-century Japan. Haikai was also very much a social activity, with linked-verse parties held on regular occasions in homes or at restaurants. Such poetic gatherings helped give rise to privately commissioned woodblock prints, called surimono (printed matter), which paired images with representative verses from the circle. Both were typically intended to carry the cachet of “insider knowledge” for a cultured and well-educated audience. Because such surimono were not ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
The Courtesan Hanao of Ōgi-ya
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. This aizuri-e (indigo-printed picture) is a panel from a triptych. Various ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
The Courtesan Usugumo of Tama-ya
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. This aizuri-e (indigo-printed picture) is a panel from a triptych. Various ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress