Ancient Greek coins for auction

historyoftheancientworld.com

 

The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance

http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/

Rodin – The Gates of Hell

From Amazon.com:

In 1880, Auguste Rodin was commissioned to create a set of bronze doors for a proposed museum in Paris. The museum was never built, but The Gates of Hell became Rodin’s most ambitious endeavor, taking over twenty years to complete.
During Rodin’s lifetime, The Gates was exhibited only once, in plaster. In 1977, Rodin’s intention of casting the plaster in bronze was fulfilled when American art collector and financier B. Gerald Cantor and his wife, Iris, commissioned a casting of the monumental work using the traditional and painstaking lost-wax process. When finished, it stood nearly 21 feet high and had taken more than three years to complete. This cast of The Gates of Hell was the first time in more than a century that such a large-scale lost wax bronze pouring had been attempted.

This DVD documents the triumphs and difficulties encountered during the casting of this eight-ton work and chronicles the life and work of Rodin –from the challengers of his early career to his later years of success and fame.

Wikipedia article

Raphael’s tapestries unveiled

The Victoria and Albert Museum has unveiled Raphael’s Sistine Chapel tapestries along with their original cartoons for the first time in 500 years.

See the video here.

And the full article here.

The World of Dante

See “The World of Dante” website here.

Napoleon on His Imperial Throne

Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne
By Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Also see this earlier post: Concise Napoleon Timeline

Freyja

John Bauer

The Pagan Roots of Christmas

Parts of our Christmas celebrations have roots in Pagan Roman festivals Saturnalia, Sol Invictus & the Calends.

See a short video from discovery.com here.

Sacred Destinations

Text from sacred-destinations.com:

A richly illustrated guide to the world’s sacred places, sacred art, religious architecture and historic religious sites.

Explore sacred sites, ancient wonders and religious places of the world.

See the site here.

Top 10 Color Classical Reproductions

From the listverse.com site:
When we think of statues and buildings of the classical period, we tend to imagine white marble; scientists in recent years have discovered that it is in fact most likely that many of the buildings and statues were painted and probably adorned with jewelry. The Vatican Museum has recently put on an exhibition of some of the most famous antiquities from the era with reproductions painted as close to the originals as they can – this is possible because many statues contain trace amounts of pigment from their original coats of paint. This is a list of ten spectacular reproduction statues from the Classical Period. As usual, click each image to view a larger version.

See more comparison pictures here.