Fayum mummy portrait

Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits (also Faiyum mummy portraits) is the modern term given to a type of realistic painted portraits on wooden boards attached to mummies from the Coptic period. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of art in the Classical world. In fact, the Fayum portraits are the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived.

Mummy portraits have been found across Egypt, but are most common in the Faiyum Basin, particularly from Hawara and Antinoopolis, hence the common name. "Faiyum Portraits" is generally thought of as a stylistic, rather than a geographic, description. While painted Cartonnage mummy cases date back to pharaonic times, the Faiyum mummy portraits were an innovation dating to the Coptic period on time of the Roman occupation of Egypt.

They date to the Roman period, from the late 1st century BC or the early 1st century AD onwards. It is not clear when their production ended, but recent research suggests the middle of the 3rd century. They are among the largest groups among the very few survivors of the highly prestigious panel painting tradition of the classical world, which was continued into Byzantine and Western traditions in the post-classical world, including the local tradition of Coptic iconography in Egypt.

The portraits covered the faces of bodies that were mummified for burial. Extant examples indicate that they were mounted into the bands of cloth that were used to wrap the bodies. Almost all have now been detached from the mummies. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Graeco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones.

Two groups of portraits can be distinguished by technique: one of encaustic (wax) paintings, the other in tempera. The former are usually of higher quality.

About 900 mummy portraits are known at present. The majority were found in the necropoleis of Faiyum. Due to the hot dry Egyptian climate, the paintings are frequently very well preserved, often retaining their brilliant colours seemingly unfaded by time.

Fayum mummy portraits

Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin

Baba-Yaga is a witch-like character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant pestle or broomstick, kidnaps (and presumably eats) small children, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs. In most Slavic folk tales, she is portrayed as an antagonist; however, some characters in other mythological folk stories have been known to seek her out for her wisdom, and she has been known on rare occasions to offer guidance to lost souls. According to Propp, she often fulfills the function of donor; that is, her role is in supplying the hero (sometimes unwillingly) with something necessary for the further quest.

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (16 August [O.S. 4 August] 1876 – 7 February 1942) was a 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore.

Ivan Bilibin was born in a suburb of St. Petersburg. He studied in 1898 at Anton Ažbe Art School in Munich, then under Ilya Repin in St. Peterburg. In 1902-1904 Bilibin travelled in the Russian North, where he became fascinated with old wooden architecture and Russian folklore. He published his findings in the monograph Folk Arts of the Russian North in 1904. Another influence on his art was traditional Japanese prints.

Bilibin gained renown in 1899, when he released his illustrations of Russian fairy tales. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew revolutionary cartoons. He was the designer for the 1909 première production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel. The October Revolution, however, proved alien to him. After brief stints in Cairo and Alexandria, he settled in Paris in 1925. There he took to decorating private mansions and Orthodox churches. He still longed for his homeland and, after decorating the Soviet Embassy in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia. He delivered lectures in the Soviet Academy of Arts until 1941. Bilibin died during the Siege of Leningrad.

Ivan Bilibin
Baba Yaga

Sandro Botticelli. Card from Nataly

"Venus and the Graces Offering Gifts to a Young Girl", с. 1483
Fresque
Musee du Louvre, Paris - France

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello "The Little Barrel"; (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting. Among his best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera.

Botticelli

Pippi Longstocking

Pippi Longstocking (Swedish Pippi Långstrump) is a fictional character in a series of children's books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, and adapted into multiple films and television series. Pippi was named by Lindgren's then nine-year-old daughter, Karin, who requested a get-well story from her mother one day when she was home sick from school.

Nine-year-old Pippi is unconventional, assertive, and has superhuman strength, being able to lift her horse one-handed without difficulty. She frequently mocks and dupes adults she encounters, an attitude likely to appeal to young readers; however, Pippi usually reserves her worst behavior for the most pompous and condescending of adults. She turns white around the nose whenever she gets angry, and considering her superhuman strength, this fortunately happens very rarely. Pippi's anger is reserved for the most extreme cases, such as when a man ill-treats his horse. And like Peter Pan, Pippi does not want to grow up.

After an initial rejection from Bonnier Publishers in 1944, Lindgren's manuscript was accepted for publication by the Swedish publisher Rabén and Sjögren. The first three Pippi chapter books were published from 1945 to 1948, with an additional series of six books published in 1969–1975. Two final stories were printed in 1979 and 2000. The books have been translated into 64 languages.

Pippi

Mail-art project "4 Senses"

Nonprofit institution of disabled people of Samara region "The Center of Social Initiatives" invites you to participate in mail-art project.

The topic is "4 Senses".

Usually one have 5 base sensations: visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory and sense of smell. visual sensation is critical because it gives majority of infor…mation about environment.
There are colourful ads, shop windows, coloured walls, vivid buses and trams around us. There is a lot of visual information so we often pay a little attention to it. But the people with no visual sensation usually have only four base sensations. How does one lives without critical sensaton?

One who wish to participate are proposed to reflect his own vision of blind's world.
Size is not restricted.
Tecnique: not restricted to particular tecnique.
The works should be sent via post not in an envelope. No copies, no E-mail contribution please.
The works received will not be rated or returned to sender.

The end date of work's registration: 1st March 2011.

Exhibition: we are planning to make a mobile exhibition in organizations andpublic places of Togliatti city. Also we will make a negotiations about making an exhibition in other Russian cities.

Documents: if the project will be successful then the catalogue printing is planned. Everyone who participated will get a printed catalogue in 2011.
All works received will be published in project's blog: 4 Senses
Works should be sent to:
445040, Togliatti, Samara obl.,
P.O. box 5154,
Russia

News

New post in "Pearl of my collection":
Pearl number one


Welcome!

Postcard from Poland

"Wanted, dead of alive. $1.000.000 reward".
Martyna from Poland, Send me your address please so I will send you a letter.
*****************************************************************************



Gdańsk, formerly known by its German name Danzig (see Names below), is a city on the Baltic coast in northern Poland, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.

Gdańsk is Poland's principal seaport as well as the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. It is also historically the largest city of the Kashubian region. The city is close to the former boundary between West Slavic and Germanic lands and it has a complex political history with periods of Polish rule, periods of German rule, and two spells as a free city. It has been part of modern Poland since 1945.

The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay (of the Baltic Sea), in a conurbation with the spa town of Sopot, the city of Gdynia and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the Tricity (Trójmiasto), with a population of over 800,000. Gdańsk itself has a population of 455,830 (June 2009), making it the largest city in the Pomerania region of Northern Poland.

Gdańsk is situated at the mouth of the Motława River, connected to the Leniwka, a branch in the delta of the nearby Vistula River, whose waterway system supplies 60% of the area of Poland and connects Gdańsk to the national capital in Warsaw. This gives the city a unique advantage as the centre of Poland's sea trade. Together with the nearby port of Gdynia, Gdańsk is also an important industrial centre. Historically an important seaport and shipbuilding centre, Gdańsk was a member of the Hanseatic League.

The city was the birthplace of the Solidarity movement which, under the leadership of Gdańsk political activist Lech Wałęsa, played a major role in bringing an end to Communist rule across Central Europe. It is also the home and birthplace of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is of Kashubian origin.

Gdańsk