istoryworld
Baroque Rome
During these same years Bernini's great contribution to the exterior of St Peter's is also under construction. The open space in front of the church, where pilgrims gather to hear the pope's Easter address, needs to be enclosed in some way to form a welcoming piazza. Bernini achieves a perfect solution in the form of an open curving colonnade. The four concentric rows of columns provide covered walkways and a shape for the piazza, but they do so without closing it in - for there ...
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The abdication crisis
The issue breaks in the newspapers early in December, after the bishop of Bradford has declared in a sermon that the king should be more aware of his Christian duty. Baldwin, almost certainly in tune with the majority of public opinion, feels that a marriage of any kind between the king and a divorced woman is out of the question. Yet Edward insists that he must marry.Abdication is the only solution. On December 10 Edward becomes the only British monarch voluntarily to give up the ...
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Boston Tea Party
Early in December 1773 three East India Company ships are in Boston harbour, waiting for their cargo of tea to be unloaded. No one will take it off the ship, because it will pay British duty as soon as it is transferred to American soil. However, if it is still in the harbour on December 17, the cargo can be legally seized by the British customs and sold.At a mass meeting in Boston on the evening of December 16 the question is pointedly raised: 'Who ...
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Waterloo
With about 124,000 men Napoleon advances towards Brussels, hoping to take a position between Wellington's and Blücher's armies - with the intention of containing or driving off one of them while defeating the other. The way north is blocked by Wellington at Quatre Bras. On June 16 Napoleon leaves marshal Ney to assault this position while he tackles Blücher a few miles to the east, at Ligny. The engagement at Quatre Bras is indecisive. But Napoleon wins convincingly at Ligny, causing the Prussians to retreat ...
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International Gothic
The style can be traced back to Italian artists of the early 14th century, such as Simone Martini. It reaches its mature form at the end of the century. The Wilton Diptych, painted in about 1395-9 and now in London's National Gallery, is often quoted as an outstanding example. Against gilded backgrounds a kneeling king, Richard II, is presented by three saints to the Virgin and Child and a host of blue-robed angels. The stillness of the scene, and the beauty of the robes and ...
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Edward I and Wales
Llywelyn is forced to sign a treaty on November 9 at Conwy. It strips him of nearly all his territories, reducing the principality to the area of Snowdon. Anglesey is allowed him on lease from the king of England, but the rest of Wales is now to be administered by English agents - a role which they fulfil with such brutality that there is a widespread uprising, headed by Llywelyn, in 1282. Edward reacts as forcefully as before, with another invasion of Wales during which ...
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Victoria, Albert and the Great Exhi....
The best of the Victorian age is seen in the extraordinary event of 1851, the Great Exhibition. A brainchild of Prince Albert, its intention and scope is evident in its full title - The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations. This is to be a celebration of the new industrial era and of Britain's leading role in bringing it to pass.Astonishingly the first committee to discuss the proposal, chaired by Albert in January 1850, meets a mere sixteen months before the ...
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Magna Carta
Having accepted the document under duress, John immediately sends a request to the pope (now his ally) to have it annulled. Innocent III obliges in August of this same year, 1215. The result is a renewal of the civil war. The king's death in 1216, followed by the succession of his 9-year-old son as Henry III, brings a pause during which more moderate council prevails. When Henry comes of age, in 1225, archbishop Stephen Langton persuades him to reissue Magna Carta in a slightly modified ...
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Ashikaga shogunate
The Ashikaga shoguns are never as firmly in control of Japan as their predecessors in Kamakura. From 1467 the country is in an almost permanent state of civil war, until their shogunate is brought to an end in 1573. But the Ashikaga make a great contribution to the cultural life of Japan. They create Zen temples and gardens, with areas specially designed for the Tea Ceremony. The famous Golden Pavilion in Kyoto is built in 1397 by the shogun Yoshimitsu as a villa for his ...
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The vaulted stone roof
The vault, like the dome, is among the technical achievements of Roman architecture, but the Romans are content to cover their large rectangular buildings (or basilicas) with wooden roofs. This remains the case with the first Christian churches, based on the Roman basilica. And it is still the case with all rectangular Romanesque churches until the last few decades of the 11th century. Before that time naves are either covered with flat wooden ceilings or are open up to the timbers of the roof. The ...
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Luther's ninety-five theses
Martin Luther, a man both solemn and passionate, is an Augustinian friar teaching theology at the university recently founded in Wittenberg by Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony. Obsessed by his own unworthiness, he comes to the conclusion that no amount of virtue or good behaviour can be the basis of salvation (as proposed in the doctrine known as justification by works). If the Christian life is not to be meaningless, he argues, a sinner's faith must be the only merit for which God's ...
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The Book
The Bible (from biblos, Greek for 'book') is the basis of two great religions, Judaism in the Old Testament and Christianity in the New Testament. In each case it brings together a group of documents to tell the story of the founders and early followers of the religion. In doing so it also explains their beliefs. The conventional sources of historical evidence (archaeological remains, written documents) provide few traces of the Old Testament story and none at all of the events described in the New ...
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The contribution of Greece
The pillar and capital are familiar in Greece from prehistoric times. They feature together, for example, in the sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenae, from the 13th century BC. As late as the mid-7th century the pillars in Greek temples are still invariably of wood. But their capitals already divide into the distinct patterns which will become known as Doric and Ionic, the central pair in the classical orders of architecture. Doric, the style of mainland Greece, follows the design featured on the Lion ...
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Pharaohs called Ramses
In Egyptian tradition Ramses II comes to be considered the ideal pharaoh. This is due to many factors - the length of his reign, the size of his harem and family (at least 100 children), the prosperity and calm of Egypt at the time, and a flair for publicity revealed in the vast number of monuments and inscriptions commemorating his achievements (an inconclusive battle against the Hittites at Kadesh, where the pharaoh himself played a central and courageous part on the battlefield, is invariably described ...
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Sculpture as a public statement
The Romans develop very skilfully this Greek theme of a narrative frieze, using it particularly - since this is a militaristic society - for the important matter of publicizing Rome's victories. The outstanding example is the continuous strip, nearly 200 metres long, which circles its way up the marble column of Trajan in Rome. Dating from AD 113, it recounts in minute and realistic detail the emperor's successful campaign in Dacia (the region of modern Romania). But the type of sculpture which the Romans make ...
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Buddhism in east Asia
Mahayana Buddhism travels by a land route. In the 2nd century AD northern India and Afghanistan are ruled by the Kushan dynasty, one of whose kings, Kanishka, is a devotee of this form of Buddhism. His encouragement of it has special significance, since his kingdom occupies a central position on the Silk Road - at one of its busiest times, when its caravans effectively link China with Rome. The western influence on the Kushan region (also known as Gandhara) is seen in the famous style ...
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Steps to independence
Increasingly, during these months, colonists are coming to the view that a complete break from Britain may be the only way forward. In May 1776 the revolutionary convention of Virginia votes for independence and instructs the Virginia delegation to present this motion to the Continental Congress. Early in June, in Philadelphia, a small committee is set up to draft a declaration of independence. Its five members include Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. The task of composing the document is left to Jefferson. It is passed ...
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Vijayanagara
During the declining years of the Delhi sultanate, a great Hindu empire is established in the south. Founded in about 1336 with its capital at Vijayanagara (meaning 'city of victory'), it is a worthy successor to the empire of the Cholas and controls much the same area (the whole of India south of the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers). The site of Vijayanagara is at Hampi - now just a village surrounded by a ruined city of temples and palaces. Deserted in 1565, after a catastrophic ...
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Isfahan
Isfahan is already a city of ancient history and considerable wealth when Shah Abbas decides, in 1598, to turn it into a magnificent capital. It has a Masjid-i-Jami, or Friday Mosque, dating from the Seljuk period (11th-12th century), still surviving today and noted for its fine patterned brickwork. And it has a thriving school of craftsmen skilled in the making of polychrome ceramic tiles. Shah Abbas favours in architecture what comes to seem almost the theme of his city - gently curving domes covered in ...
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British portraits
Reynolds often paints his subjects full length, in splendid poses and in close proximity to a classical column or urn. These are the sort of people who go on the Grand Tour. Their easy self-confidence in Reynolds's canvases revives the great tradition of the English portraits of van Dyck.If anything is missing in these powerful images by Reynolds, it is perhaps the fleeting quality of fashion - a quality abundantly supplied by his slightly younger rival Thomas Gainsborough. When Gainsborough catches William and Elizabeth Hallett ...
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