Cleopatra by Gyula Benczur

PD Image: Cleopatra (1911), also spelt as ‘Kleopátra’, oil on canvas painting by Hungarian painter Gyula Benczúr (1844-1920), dimensions 69 cm x 100 cm (27.17 in x 39.37 in), located at Déri Museum, Debrecen, Hungary.

Ruins of the Philippeion, Greece

Photo: Temple of Philip II of Macedon in Olympia, photo taken in July 2006

The Philippeion in the Altis of Olympia, an Ionic circular memorial built of ivory and gold and the only structure inside the Altis dedicated to a humans, contained statues of Philip II's family, Alexander the Great, Olympias, Amyntas III and Eurydice I. It was created by the Athenian sculptor Leochares in celebration of Philip's victory at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC).

Cleopatra - John William Waterhouse

Cleopatra (1888), oil on canvas painting by British painter John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).

The Capitoline Wolf in Rome, USA

Not just the name, but certain other features are also shared between the American city of Rome and the Italian city of Rome. Rome in Georgia, USA, was built on seven hills with a river meandering through them, a feature that was an inspiration for the name. The seven hills that inspired the name of Rome are Blossom Hill, Jackson Hill, Lumpkin Hill, Mount Aventine Hill, Myrtle Hill, Old Shorter Hill, and Neely Hill.

In 1928 Italian Chatillon Corporation began construction of a rayon plant in Georgian Rome, as a joint venture with the American Cotillion Company, for the cornerstone of which Italian premier Benito Mussolini sent a block of marble from the ancient Roman Forum with the inscription, "From Old Rome to New Rome". On completion of the rayon plant in 1929, Mussolini honored Rome with a bronze replica of the sculpture of The Capitoline Wolf, suckling the twin brothers Remus and Romulus, who named Rome after his name.

The bronze statue The Capitoline Wolf, a symbol of the original Rome, was placed in front of the City Hall of the new Rome on a base of white marble from Tate, Georgia, with a brass plaque inscribed, "This statue of the Capitoline Wolf, as a forecast of prosperity and glory, has been sent from Ancient Rome to New Rome during the consulship of Benito Mussolini in the year 1929."

In 1940, anti-Italian sentiments due to World War II ran so strong that the Rome city commission moved the statue into the storage to prevent any possible vandalism, replacing it with an American flag. In 1952, the statue of The Capitoline Wolf was restored to its original location in front of City Hall. You can view the picture of the historical statue above, taken on 8 August 2005.

The Capitoline Wolf - She-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus

The Capitoline Wolf (Lupa Capitolina), a larger than life-size bronze sculpture standing 75 cm tall and 114 cm, long is located in the Museo Nuovo in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio (the ancient Capitoline Hill) in Rome, Italy. The statue's theme is linked to the founding of Rome, when the twins Romulus and Remus saw their father Numitor dethroned by his brother Amulius, who ordered the twins be thrown into the Tiber. But the twin brothers were rescued by a she-wolf that suckled them and took care of them until a herdsman, Faustulus, found them raised them further. The brothers, with the support of their followers decided to found a new city, but in a dispute about the site of the city Romulus killed Remus and built Rome, which was named after his name.

The Capitoline Wolf statue was long thought to be an Etruscan work of the 5th century BCE, with the figures of the twins added in the late 15th century CE, probably by the sculptor Antonio Pollaiolo. However, radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence dating tests found that sculpture was possibly created in the 13th century CE.

The she-wolf from the legend of Romulus and Remus has been regarded as a symbol of Rome from the ancient times. Several ancient sources refer to statues depicting the wolf suckling the twins. Cicero mentions a statue of the she-wolf as one of several sacred objects on the Capitoline that was inauspiciously struck by lightning in 65 BCE, "It was a gilt statue on the Capitol of a baby being given suck from the udders of a wolf."

German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann of the 18th-century attributed the statue to an Etruscan sculptor of the 5th century BCE. But, Winckelmann also identified a Renaissance origin for the figures of Romulus and Remus, saying they were probably added in 1471 or later.

During the 19th century several researchers questioned Winckelmann's dating of the bronze sculpture. In 1854 August Emil Braun, Secretary of the Archaeological Institute of Rome, proposed that the damage to the wolf's paw had been caused by an error during casting of the statue, not due to lightning. Similarly, Conservator of the Louvre, Wilhelm Fröhner, stated in 1878 that the style of the statue was of the Carolingian period rather than Etruscan. In 1885 Wilhelm von Bode also opined that the she-wolf statue was most likely a medieval work.

In 2006 Italian art historian Anna Maria Carruba and Etruscologist Adriano La Regina contested the traditional origin of the she-wolf on the basis of the bronze casting technique. Carruba was restoring the sculpture in 1997, when she examined how it had been made. She observed that the statue had been cast as a single piece, using a ‘lost-wax casting’ technique that was not used in ancient times. Ancient Greek and Roman bronze statues were constructed from multiple pieces. Whereas, single piece casting technique was widely used in medieval times to mould bronze items. Carruba argued, like Braun, that the damage to the she-wolf's paw had resulted from an error in the moulding process. In addition, La Regina, the state superintendent of Rome's cultural heritage, argued that the sculpture's artistic style is more akin to Carolingian and Romanesque art than to the ancient times.

In February 2007, radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence dating tests was conducted at the University of Salento. Although in July 2008 La Regina announced that the results of the tests had produced a ‘very precise indication in the 13th century’, the question of the age of the statue was not solved. The results of the tests were not to be disclosed before the end of 2008, but as of April 2010, they have not been published by the Museo Nuovo.

The twelfth-century English cleric Magister Gregorius in his essay, De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae, recorded in an appendix three pieces of sculpture he had neglected, one being the wolf in the portico at the principal entrance to the Vatican Palace. But he mentioned no twins.

The present-day Capitoline Wolf could not have been the sculpture seen by Benedict and Gregorius, if its newly attributed age is accepted, though it could have been a replacement for an earlier, now lost, statue of the Roman wolf. In December 1471 Pope Sixtus IV ordered the present sculpture transferred to the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill, and the twins were possibly added then.

The Capitoline Wolf was a favorite of Benito Mussolini, who projected himself as the founder of the ‘New Rome’. To win American goodwill, he sent several copies of the Capitoline Wolf to U.S. cities. In 1929 he sent one replica to Cincinnati, Ohio, which was replaced in 1931by another replica of the statue, which still stands in Eden Park, Cincinnati. The same year another replica was given by Mussolini to the city of Rome, in Georgia, located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, United States. A third replica was sent to New York City.

The Capitoline Wolf has a special place in the past and present history, as well as the culture of Rome. The image of the Capitoline Wolf was used on both the emblem and the poster for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Also, the Roman football club A.S. Roma uses the Capitoline Wolf in its emblem.

Cleopatra, oil painting by Artemisia Gentileschi

Image: Cleopatra, oil on canvas painting by Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656), Cavallini-Sgarbi Foundation, Ferrara, Italy

Cleopatra (1621) by Artemisia Gentileschi

Image: Cleopatra (1621), painting by Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656)

The Lion man of Hohlenstein Stadel

The lion-headed figure, first called the lion man (Löwenmensch) and later the lion lady (Löwenfrau), is an ivory sculpture that is one of the oldest known sculptures, determined to be about 32,000 years old by carbon dating. It is 29.6 cm tall, 5.6 cm wide and 5.9 cm thick. It was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. It has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, or it might have been a deity.

Its pieces were found in 1939 in Stadel-Höhle im Hohlenstein (Stadel cave in Hohlenstein Mountain) in the Lone valley, Swabian Alb, Germany. Due to the Second World War, it was forgotten and rediscovered after thirty years. The first reconstruction revealed a humanoid figurine without head. During 1997-1998 additional pieces of the sculpture were discovered and the head was reassembled and restored.

The sculpture shares certain similarities with French cave wall paintings, though the French paintings are several thousand years younger. Later, a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture was found, along with other animal figures and several flutes, in another cave in the same region of Germany. These findings indicate the possibility that the lion-figure played an important role in the mythology of humans of the early Upper Paleolithic period. The sculpture can be seen in the Ulmer Museum in Ulm, Germany.

Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia

Image: Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia (1861) by the French painter Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904)

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) was a statesman, writer and founder of the Republic of Turkey as well as its first president. Atatürk became famous as a capable military officer during World War I. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, he led the Turkish National Movement in the Turkish War of Independence. After establishing a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies - the initial Allies countries in WWI were the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empire, though many others joined them later. With his able leadership, the successful Turkish National Movement campaigns led to the liberation of Turkey. During his presidency, Atatürk introduced many progressive programs aimed at political, economic and cultural reforms of modern Turkey. He sought to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular country.

Mata Hari, exotic dancer and WWI spy

The most famous and controversial spy of World War One was a Dutch woman Margaretha Geertruida Zelle McLeod, popularly known as Mata Hari, who portrayed herself as an exotic dancer. Though many myths and legends have been circulated surrounding her past, Mata Hari was a courtesan. However, she had invented an identity as an exotic dancer from India. She was shot by the French as a spy on October 15, 1917. In 1931 a film loosely based on the life of Mata Hari starred Greta Garbo and popularized her legend.

Painting: Bathsheba by Willem Drost

This is a photo of the 1654 oil on canvas painting (dimension 103 cm x 87 cm) of Bathsheba, wife of David and mother of Solomon, by Willem Drost, currently located at Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Drost (1633-1659) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker of history paintings and portraits.

A Christian Dirce by Henryk Siemiradzki

Painting: ‘A Christian Dirce’ by Henryk Siemiradzki - a Christian woman is martyred in this re-enactment of the myth of Dirce. Siemiradzki (1843-1902) was a Polish Academic painter, known for depictions of scenes from the ancient Greco-Roman world and the New Testament.

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (15 December AD 37-9 June AD 68), generally known as Nero, was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Christian tradition and other historical sources hold Nero as the first major state sponsor of Christian persecution. The non-Christian historian Tacitus describes Nero as extensively torturing and executing Christians after the Fire of Rome in AD 64. Suetonius also mentions Nero persecuting Christians in the Roman Empire. The Christian writer Tertullian (155-230) was the first to call Nero as the first persecutor of Christians, when he wrote, "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine".

Nero is also accused as the killer of Apostles Peter and Paul. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (275-339) was the first to write that Apostle Paul was beheaded in Rome during the reign of Nero. He states that Nero's persecution led to Peter and Paul's deaths, but that Nero did not give any specific orders. However, some other accounts have Paul surviving his two years in Rome and traveling to Hispania. By the 4th century, a number of writers were stating that Nero killed Peter and Paul.

Signing of the Constitution of the United States

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952): Christy's Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States is a painting depicting members of the Constitutional Convention, painted in 1940. In the portrait, George Washington, who presided over the convention, is the figure standing on the dais. The other central figures of the portrait are Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. The work is located in the U.S. Capitol.

The United States Declaration of Independence

This is an 1823-facsimile of the engrossed copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, created on June-July 1776 and ratified on July 4, 1776. The location of Engrossed copy is at the National Archives and the rough draft is at Library of Congress. It is signed by 56 delegates to the Continental Congress to announce and explain separation of the United States from Great Britain.

The United States Declaration of Independence announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain became independent and thus were no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, over a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The US Independence Day is celebrated on July 4, the day the wording of the Declaration was approved by Congress.

To read the Declaration, click on the image and use the magnified version.

American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH), established in 1869, is built in Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture, a style of Romanesque Revival named after the architect Henry Hobson Richardson, incorporating a very free revival style of 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish and Italian Romanesque characteristics.

AMNH, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, is one of the largest, most famous museums in the world, comprising 25 interconnected buildings that house 46 permanent exhibition halls, research laboratories and a very renowned library. It has a mammoth collection of over 32 million specimens.

Photo dated 7 Jan 2007 shows side entrance of AMNH.

Early Christian martyrs’ last prayer in Rome

Painting (1883) of early Christians being slaughtered for entertainment in the Colosseum in Rome by French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 - 10 January 1904). The artist is known for the style known as Academicism, and the range of his oeuvre included historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism and portraits.

The oldest heliographic engraving in the world

Photo: The first known surviving heliographic engraving in the world, made by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1825 by contact under an engraving with the heliographic process.

Niepce’s seminal work was a step towards the first permanent photography taken with a camera obscura, an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is a reproduction of a 17th century Flemish engraving, showing a man leading a horse. The Bibliothèque nationale de France bought it for euro 450,000 € in 2002, deeming it as a national treasure.

Photography evolved as a result of studies and scientific inventions over many centuries. Long before the first photographs were shot, Chinese philosopher Mo Di described a pinhole camera in 5th century BCE. Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040) studied the camera obscura and pinhole camera, Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) invented silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516-1571) invented silver chloride. Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg explained photochemical effect, i.e., how light darkened some chemicals, in 1694. The fiction book Giphantie (1760) by French author Tiphaigne de la Roche described what can be interpreted as photography.

The first permanent photo-etching was an image produced in 1822 by Nicéphore Niépce, but it was destroyed by an attempt to duplicate it. However, Niépce was successful to produce another etching again in 1825 (see photo). He made the first permanent photograph with a camera obscura in 1826. His photographs took as long as 8 hours to expose. So, to find a new process, he worked with Louis Daguerre and they experimented with silver compounds, based on the discovery by Johann Heinrich Schultz in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light.

Though Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre continued the work and developed the daguerreotype in 1837, and took the first ever photo of a person in 1839 when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be captured by the long exposure of several minutes. Later, France agreed to pay Daguerre a pension for his formula in exchange for his promise to announce his discovery to the world as the gift of France which he did in 1839.

Alexander fighting Persian King Darius III

This image of Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon, 356-323 BC), the king of Macedon, on his horse Bucephalus fighting the Persian King Darius III, is from Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii, Naples National Archaeological Museum. He held such varied titles as Hegemon of the Hellenic League, Shahanshah of Persia, Pharaoh of Egypt and Lord of Asia.

Alexander, credited in history as the conqueror of one of the largest empires in ancient history, had classical Greek education as a student of the famed philosopher Aristotle, and succeeded his father Philip II of Macedon to the throne in 336 BC after the King was assassinated. He died thirteen years later at the age of 32 in Babylon. Though Alexander's reign and empire were short-lived, the impact of his conquests lasted for centuries. He is remembered for his tactical ability and for spreading Greek culture to the East, heralding Hellenistic civilization.