istoryworld
Babur in Kabul
Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, is one of history's more endearing conquerors. In his youth he is one among many impoverished princes, all descended from Timur, who fight among themselves for possession of some small part of the great man's fragmented empire. Babur even captures Samarkand itself on three separate occasions, each for only a few months. The first time he achieves this he is only fourteen. What distinguishes Babur from other brawling princes is that he is a keen oberver of ...
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Michelangelo the sculptor
Early in 1499 a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, holding on her lap the dead Christ, is placed in one of the chapels of old St Peter's in Rome. This Pietà is still one of the most beautiful works of art in the mighty new St Peter's, completed a century later. It is by a sculptor who has just turned twenty-four - Michelangelo.The precocious genius receives a commission two years later in his home city of Florence. The authorities want a marble statue of David. ...
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A new Rome
Constantine, now in firm command of the entire Roman empire (the first man for a long while to be in that position), is planning another initiative as significant as his adoption of Christianity. Immediately after the defeat of Licinius he sets about rebuilding Byzantium as a Christian capital city - one in which pagan sacrifice, the central rite of imperial Rome until this time, is specifically forbidden. The city is ready by AD 330 for a ceremony of inauguration. Byzantium acquires two new names - ...
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Battles on western front
The pressure on Verdun is eased in July, when the Allies advance in the valley of the Somme, in the centre of the line, in what becomes the most deadly single engagement of the entire war. On the very first day 60,000 of the British troops running forward from their trenches are mown down by enemy fire. Four months later, when torrential rain brings the battle finally to an end with little gained, the British have lost 420,000 men, the French 195,000 and the Germans ...
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Falklands War
On May 3 the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano is torpedoed and sinks with heavy casualties (368 dead). This becomes the most controversial event of the war, because of allegations that the ship was outside the exclusion zone and was heading away from it. The following day the British destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile, with the loss of twenty men.The first British landing is on East Falkland, where a bridgehead is established by May 21. Within the following week Port Darwin and ...
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The First Fleet
On January 21 Phillip sails a few miles north and finds the great natural harbour of Port Jackson. Here he selects an inlet with a good water supply as the site for the new colony. He names the place Sydney Cove in honour of the home secretary, Viscount Sydney.A prefabricated house of wood and canvas, designed in London for the governor, is erected at the centre of the settlement. Tents are put up for the marines and the convicts, with a separate encampment a little ...
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Palmyra
The other great staging post on the route to Antioch is also an important site, and today a much more visible one. It is Palmyra, famous as one of the great ruined classical cities. From Doura-Europus, on the Euphrates, the caravans strike west through the desert to the Mediterranean coast. Palmyra is an oasis half way across this difficult terrain. Its wealth derives from its position on the east-west axis from Persia to the coast, in addition to being on the older routes up from ...
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Neoclassicism
Ancient Greek sites in southern Italy (in particular Paestum) and in Sicily begin to be studied in the 1740s. In 1755 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a German archaeologist and a key figure in the Greek Revival, publishes a work on Greek painting and sculpture in which he argues that the art of Greece provides the best example of ideal beauty.The avant-garde greets this notion with enthusiasm. Over the next century Greek themes increasingly pervade the decorative arts. Greek porticos and colonnades grace public buildings. Greek refinement ...
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Indian sculpture
In the early centuries, Hindu and Buddhist art falls within the same tradition (the magnificent Buddhist carvings on the Great Stupa at Sanchi seem entirely Hindu). But Buddhist sculpture acquires a character of its own when the religion moves outwards from India to the northwest. From the 1st century AD there is a strong school of Buddhist sculpture in what is now northwest Pakistan. Known by the ancient name of Gandhara, this region is open to foreign influences arriving along the newly opened Silk Road. ...
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Moghul domes
The first dome of this kind surmounts the tomb of Humayun in Delhi, built between 1564 and 1573. The style is then overlooked for a while - no doubt because of Akbar's preference for Hindu architecture, as in Fatehpur Sikri - until Shah Jahan, the greatest builder of the dynasty, develops it in the 17th century with vigour and sophistication. His first attempt in this line is also his masterpiece - a building which has become the most famous in the world, for its beauty ...
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Albert of Mainz
Both pope and archbishop are men of the world (the pope is a Medici). Leo makes it possible for Albert to recover his costs by granting him the concession for the sale of indulgences towards the building of St Peter's. Half the money for each indulgence is go to Rome; the other half will help to pay off Albert's debts (he has borrowed the money for the original donation from the Fuggers of Augsburg). This secret arrangement might distress the faithful if they knew of ...
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Mastabas and pyramids
The Saqqara pyramid uses stone in small pieces, almost as if it were still mud bricks. But soon the pharaohs bring stone architecture to a peak of monumental grandeur in the pyramids at Giza. The first of these, the Great Pyramid, is built for the pharaoh Khufu from about 2550 BC. The stone is now cut in massive blocks, and the angle of the steps is filled in to give the true pyramid shape (see building methods in Egypt). This is the largest building ever ...
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Virginia
In April 1607 three ships sent out by the London Company sail into Chesapeake Bay. They continue up a broad waterway, which they name the James river in honour of their king, and a few weeks later they select an island to settle on. They call their settlement Jamestown. But to the territory itself they give a more romantic name, honouring England's late virgin queen - Virginia.More than 100 English settlers attempt to make their home in 1607 on the island of Jamestown. A year ...
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Nimrud and Nineveh
Layard continues to dig at Nimrud, finding many more reliefs (Assyrian kings decorate their palace rooms and even their corridors in this way, as freely as lesser mortals apply wallpaper). He also extends his searches to another site by the name of Kuyunjik. This turns out to be the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Here he discovers the superb cuneiform library of Ashurbanipal. Layard leaves Mesopotamia in 1851, but his assistant Hormuzd Rassam continues at Nineveh. In December 1853 he uncovers the palace built by ...
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The vaulted stone roof
Romanesque in the north tends to be more massive in style than the delicate arches of Vézelay. A good example is the interior of Durham cathedral - the glory of English Romanesque (often given the alternative name of Norman architecture). The chunky pillars of Durham, many of them decorated with deeply incised patterns, support a vaulted stone roof over the nave - a significant Romanesque innovation of this period. The construction of Durham begins in 1093, a few decades before the nave of Vézelay.
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Romanesque
By the time of the period properly considered Romanesque, many variations of its Roman origins have evolved. Seeking out the sources of Romanesque is a complex academic exercise. One well-established line of influence comes through Ravenna to Aachen; Justinian's 6th-century church of San Vitale inspires Charlemagne's early 9th-century chapel. Charlemagne's chapel in Aachen, with its classical columns and round striped arches, also recalls the little baptistery at Fréjus. And both are echoed in the full flowering of the Romanesque style, as seen in the 12th-century ...
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Stupas and temples
Buddhism and Hinduism spread together into southeast Asia, often to the same places at the same time. Both the solid stupa and the open temple can be found throughout the region. The famous temples of Angkor Wat and Pagan in Cambodia and Burma, dating from around the 12th century, are in the open Hindu style. The massively tall gilded stupa at the centre of the Shwe Dagon temple in Rangoon (built as recently as the 19th century), is by contrast a solid structure in the ...
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Glazed ceramics
In all the early civilizations, from Mesopotamia and Egypt onwards, pottery is a highly developed craft. An outstanding achievement is the Greek ceramic tradition of the 6th and 5th century BC. But technically all these pots suffer from a major disadvantage. Fired earthenware is tough but it is porous. Liquid will soak into it and eventually leak through it. This has some advantages with water (where evaporation from the surface cools the contents of the jug) but is less appropriate for storing wine or milk. ...
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Virginia
John Smith is one of seven men appointed by the London company to serve on the colony's council. His energy, his resourcefulness and his skill in negotiating with the Indians soon establish him as the leader of the community. Smith soon becomes involved in a famously romantic scene (or so he claims many years later, in a book of 1624). He is captured by Indians and is about to be executed when Pocahontas, the 13-year-old daughter of the tribal chieftain, throws herself between victim and ...
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Venetian sunset
Canaletto lives in England from 1746 to 1755, painting views of the Thames in London and of his aristocratic patrons' country seats. His practice of painting large topographical views is continued by his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, who leaves Venice in 1747 and thereafter works mainly in Dresden and Vienna. In Venice, from about 1760, the demand of the tourists for views is met at a simpler and cheaper level by Francesco Guardi. His small canvases, more vague and informal than Canaletto's topographical studies, are notable ...
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