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There was little in his family or his circumstances"*#tlkling6" to explain this ascent divinity. Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, to Lodovico Buonarroti substantial citizen and mayor of the village of Caprese, near Arezzo, o family that boasted its descent from the counts of Canossa. "A fine Moncler Womens Jackets In Cora Rose Rose nativ truly," Condivi noted, "which showed how great the child would be a of how noble a genius; for the planet Mercury with Venus in red pumps seconda bei received into the house of Jupiter with benign aspect, promised what aft wards followed, that the birth should be of a noble and high genius, al to succeed in every undertaking, but principally in those arts that delif the senses, such as painting, Supra Women Skytop blue white sculpture, and architecture." The family so moved to Florence. Michelangelo's mother died when he was only six, a the artist liked to note that his nurse was the daughter of a stone carver a the wife of a stone carver. "If my brains are any good at all," he told Vasz"it's because I was born in the pure air of your Arezzo countryside, just with my mother's milk I sucked in the hammer and chisels I use for r statues." Lodovico Buonarroti placed his other four sons with the wool and silk guilds, but he could afford to send Michelangelo to a grammar school. There the boy stole time from his studies to pursue his obsession with drawing, which his father and older brothers tried to cure by occasional beatings. Finally abandoning hope of forcing the boy to give up drawing for some more elevated pursuit, Lodovico apprenticed him at the age of four- teen to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. The precocious Michelangelo made copies of works by masters that were indistinguishable from the originals, then aged them with smoke, and exchanged them for the originals that he coveted. After a year he left the painter's workshop for a curious art school that Lorenzo the Magnificent had set up in the Supra Vaiders Women White Gold Medici gardens. Lorenzo, who had collected antique sculpture and employed a pupil of Donatello as teacher, now hoped by gathering young talents like Michelangelo to estab- lish a new school ofpainters and sculptors. Even as a boy Michelangelo had sculpted masterly reliefs, his Madonna of the Stairs and the Battle of the Centaurs. Discovering Michelangelo's rare talent in "the prime art," sculp- ture, Lorenzo added the boy to his household.

Pope Urban II at the end of the eleventh "*#tlkling6"century developed the "indul- gence," a formal remittance of punishment for sins by visiting certain shrines. Pilgrims, like widows and orphans, had the legal status of a miserabilis persona, which gave Moncler Womens Jackets In Limited Edition Down Jacket White them special protection en route to fulfill their vows. The crowds of pilgrims benefited innkeepers and merchants, while they enriched the churches. When Henry VIII dissolved the Canter- bury Cathedral priory, he hauled away twenty-six cartfuls ofjewels and precious metals, the gifts of grateful pilgrims. Pilgrim shrines, too, like modern tourist centers, had their ups and downs. The appeal of the tomb of Saint Thomas at Canterbury, popular in the late eleventh century, declined with rumors in the next century that the saint had lost his power to work miracles.Pilgrimage had its own ritual. A pilgrim was blessed by a priest at theoutset, took a special oath, carried a staff, and wore a distinctive garment, with a bag for provisions hanging at his side. When he returned home his hat bore the badge of the shrine he had visited. Like modern tourists, pilgrims organized in groups pumps blue and engaged experienced guides to find the way and lead them to hospitable inns. Illustrated pilgrim Baedekers with maps noted sights along the way and warned of risks to health and purse."Now let us ryde, and herkneth what I seye And with that word we ride forth our weye."To make his journey count for penance the pilgrim was expected to suffer. In addition to suffering the usual trials of medieval travel, the more devout would walk barefoot, while fasting and constantly praying. But as the institution became popular it became more pleasant, less a penance than a travel holiday. Pilgrims who joined the tours from Venice to Muslim Jerusa- lem went to see the exotic, buy souvenirs, and then write their own journals. Sir John Mandeville (who, if there was such a person, must have been a contemporary of Chaucer) wrote the most popular travel book of the age,toward the sick." We now know that at least half of Florence's ioo,ooo population Moncler Womens Jackets In Multiple Logo Grey died in that plague year. People would retire apparently well Moncler Womens Jackets In Bady Down Black and die of the disease before they awoke. Seldom did an afflicted person survive more than five days. The usual course was much shorter. A doctor, it was said, might catch the disease at the patient's bedside and die before he could leave the room. The chronicler of Florence, Giovanni Villani (1280?-1348) ended his life in the middle of a sentence-punctuated by the Black DeathLuckily for us, Boccaccio was there and survived to write the Decameron between 1348 and 1352. His eyewitness account of the plague became the"Introduction to the First Day." "To take pity on people in distress is a human quality which every man and woman should possess," Boccaccio begins, while asking the reader's sympathy for his own frustration in love. To all who have been kind to him he offers this book and "where it seems to be most needed"-to women.

friends. Frau von Bruening,"*#tlkling5" widow of the chancellor, engaged him as mus teacher for her children. When Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, a Vienne patron of music, visited Bonn in 1788 he was impressed by young Beethovc and commissioned him to write a piece for ballet. Waldstein offered tl. over his own name, and then secured a number of other commissions Moncler Womens Jackets In Cora Rose Rose f Beethoven. In July 1792, when Haydn passed through Bonn on his way bac from London, he admired a cantata score of Beethoven's composition, ar invited the young man to be his pupil in Vienna. The timing was provide tial. Waldstein and Beethoven's teacher persuaded the elector of Bonn support Beethoven's study in Vienna. And in November, Beethoven k Bonn, never to return. The forces of Napoleon were approaching the cit All his life Beethoven would be caught in the maelstrom of revolution ar counterrevolution, in the age of Robespierre and Metternich. But Beethoven was not cut out to be a disciple. In 1794 his lessons wir Haydn in Vienna did not go well. While Haydn charged very little for h lessons, Beethoven felt he was getting little. Beethoven began taking oth lessons in secret, for his teacher was preoccupied and not demandir enough of him. Preparing for his second London visit, Haydn had actual invited Beethoven to Supra Women Skytop red black join him. Then, on Haydn's departure alone for Lor don, the lessons ended. The two temperaments were plainly incompatibl When Haydn asked Beethoven to put "Pupil of Josef Haydn," on his ear publications Beethoven refused. He did dedicate to Haydn his first thr* piano sonatas, but ungraciously insisted that he had "never learned an: thing" from him. In convivial Vienna, Beethoven quickly became a social success, whic was not irrelevant to his musical career. On arrival he was grateful for garret room in Prince Lichnowsky's house, but within a year he had elega] quarters. His musical talents were developing in these next seven year which were relatively carefree, for he did not yet feel the Supra TK Women Society white point black threat of Moncler Womens Jackets In Multiple Logo Grey deafnes He took lessons on three instruments, studied counterpoint, and bega filling his notebooks. Often compared with Leonardo's, these notebool reveal efforts to elaborate a major work from simple elements continuaU worked over. In Vienna Beethoven enjoyed applause as a virtuoso piani: and improviser, and toured Germany and Hungary. A rival pianist con plained, "Ah, he's no man-he's a devil. He will play me and all of us r death." Unlike the private preserve of the Esterhazy family where Haydn ha spent most of his life, Vienna offered a more public audience. The city w: a refuge for the rich, vastly more cosmopolitan than any country estate, bi not yet threatened by the spreading fever of revolution. Noble families c wealth originating in Italy, France, Russia, or Hungary had establishe households there. And, after dining and dancing, music became their mai

But neither was "*#tlkling5"anything like this to be built in Milan! Leonardo's full-scale clay model was displayed in the city square for the marriage of Sforza's niece to Emperor Maximilian. It was then moved to the court of the Castello. Vasari and other visitors reported that there was "never a more beautiful thing or more superb." But when French soldiers invaded Milan they used it for red pumps target practice. Meanwhile war had taken precedence over filial piety, and the bronze set aside for the horse was sold to Ludovico's ally the duke of Ferrara to be made into cannon. "About the horse I will say nothing," a resigned Leonardo wrote to Ludovico of his sixteen years' labor, "for I know the pumps blue times."Leonardo knew the times well enough to change his loyalties and his patron as occasion required. When Gian Giacomo Trivulzio (1440?-1518) of a rival Milanese family, passionate enemy of the Sforzas, conquered Milan in 1499, Leonardo eagerly accepted the commission for his tomb-another monumental equestrian statue. Leonardo's notebooks show plans for a life-size rider on a high pedestal containing the sarcophagus, along with brilliant new anatomical studies of the horse. He finally began work on the The Last Supper, painted for the refectory of the cloister of Dominican friars in Milan (1495-98), is commonly considered Leonardo's masterpiece. The contemporary writer Matteo Bandello (1480?-1562) blue suede shoes recalled: Many a time I have seen Leonardo go early in the morning to work on Moncler Womens Jackets In Multiple Logo Grey the platform before the Last Supper; and there he would stay from sunrise till darkness, never laying down the brush, but continuing to paint without eating or drinking. Then three or four days would pass without his touching the work, yet each day he would spend several hours examining it and criticising the figures to himself. I have also seen him, when the fancy took him, leave the Corte Vecchia when he was at work on the stupendous horse of clay, and go straight to the Grazie. There, climbing on the platform, he would take a brush and give a few touches to one of the figures: and then suddenly he would leave and go elsewhere.

urban "*#tlkling5"entertainment. Rival families supported groups of musicians, quar- tets, and chamber orchestras. Playing a musicalinstrument and patronizing musicians was as acceptable an aristocratic pastime as hunting or attending masked balls. Prince Karl Lichnowsky, Beethoven's friend and neighbor on fashionable Alserstrasse, was a pianist of high competence. The emperor himself played the violin. But the motley audiences who paid admission to urban concerts would hardly have been among Count Esterhazy's invited guests. Beethoven's first public appearance in a benefit concert for Mozart's widow spread his fame across the whole community. Pleased by his piano concertos, the audiences came back. On April z, 1800, at the first public concert all his own, he offered the First air max ltd white red (C Major) Symphony, which was still in the Mozartian mold. The widening audience for orchestral music and for Beethoven's work was revealed in the three earliest performances of the "Eroica." First heard in August 1804 in the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, in a room only fifty-four feet long and twenty-four feet wide, it was played again that December in the home of a wealthy banker. Then in April 1805 it was performed in the Theater an der Wien to a large paying audience. Located just outside the city walls, this spacious playhouse was said to be the largest on the Conti- nent. It was the jordan se 15 white on white scene of the premieres of Mozart's Magic Flute and Beetho- ven's own Fidelio. Court officials noted that the occasion showed how music was appealing to not only the "higher and middle orders" but "even the lower orders." About 1798, at the maturing of his powers as a composer, Beethoven, not yet thirty, began to be troubled by the ringing in his ears, the first hints of the affliction that would dominate his life. Perhaps originating in an Nike women air max 2009 white blue attack of typhus or another dangerous illness about 1798, the deafness became increasingly troublesome. On October 6, 1802, from a village near Vienna, he wrote his premature farewell in nike air maxes 2011 a letter to his two brothers. This cameto be known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, for it was written in the villagewhere he had hoped to enjoy the sounds as well as the sights of the country- side, but where he realized that his deafness would be incurable. After asking forgiveness for seeming "unfriendly, peevish, or even misanthropic," he recounted his six years' affliction "with an incurable complaint which has been made worse by incompetent doctors." His deafness, he was now convinced, was permanent:Though endowed with a passionate and lively temperament and even fond of the distractions offered by society I was soon obliged to seclude myself and live in solitude. If at times I decided just to ignore my infirmity, alas! how cruelly was I then driven back by the intensified sad experience of my poor hearing. Yet I could not bring myself to say to people: "Speak up, shout, for I am deaf." Alas!

Leonardo seems to have black and yellow jordans luxuriated in the experimental tentativeness of his observations. And also to have enjoyed projecting numerous never-to- be-written '6treatises"_on painting, anatomy, mathematics, optics, and mechanics. Yet this "greatest of great amateurs" had something to add to all the sciences. He amazes us by his reach in all directions. Grand engineering projects also remained unfulfilled. Leonardo had commended himself to Ludovico Sforza as a military engineer and inventor of bridges, with secret plans for "an infinite number of engines of attack and When he returned to Florence in 1503 and found his city at war with Pisa, he offered an ingenious scheme to deprive Pisa of access to the sea by diverting the river Arno. Then he planned an Arno canal to improve Florence's own access to the sea by circumventing the stretch of the river that was not navigable. Neither of these proved feasible, but the modern highway from Florence to the sea was eventually built along the course he had charted. Back in Milan in 1506, he developed a similar grand scheme for making the Adda River navigable, providing a waterway to Lake Como and the sea. In Rome ten years later he explored the draining of the Pontine Marshes. And in his last years with Francis I he proposed a plan to drain marshes for a palace for the king's mother. None of these projects was fulfilled in his time. There is a monumental irony, too, in Leonardo's Nike women air max 2009 white blue sculptural projects. When Leonardo first came to Milan, air max 2011 Ludovico Sforza jordans with yellow blue white black 23s had long been plan- ning an equestrian monument to his father, Francesco. The self-confident Leonardo about 1483 boasted to Ludovico that his sculpture and painting"will stand comparison with that of anyone else, whoever he may be. Moreover, I would undertake the work of the bronze horse, which shall endue with immortal glory and eternal honour the auspicious memory of the Prince your father and of the illustrious house of Sforza." His notebooks for the next years showed scaffolding, lifting devices, and casting methods for the monumental horse, which was to be twenty-three feet high, twice the height of Verrocchio's equestrian statue of Colleoni, and consume two hundred thousand pounds of copper. "Tell me if ever," he asked himselfin his notebook, "anything like this was built in Rome."