post a random picture here ...

[Gen]

Sue, I think I read that story about the school bus, I thought he had a kitchen/sink like area and a bucket for toilet

was this the one that was driving it all over the country ?

[Gen]

Built in a quarry-guess where ?

[Gen]

Skaftafell, Iceland







rainbow mountains china (shot in hdr suh dem color enhanced but still amazing)

[Peasie]

I give up. China?

Built in a quarry-guess where ?

[Gen]

yes china those crazy peeps

[kia027]

59f82d07a9c3b2ead4c35cd5084dcc49.jpg African De Medici girl (her father was a Medici bastard child)

[kia027]

Portrait of Prince Alessandro de' Medici Alessandro, the first Duke of Florence, born of a union between a North African slave named Simonetta, and, it appears, the future Pope Clement VII
fece95d4ccca13a6f749954a099fc4ce.jpg

[Gen]

unnu doing art history kia ?

[kia027]

unnu doing art history kia ?

World history but found the art while doing search

[Suesumba]

Alessandro De’ Medici, 1529-1537: Europe’s First Black Prince?

John Brackett







I propose to present a paper based on my research area of Renaissance Florence, with particular emphasis on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The paper would be entitled as above. Many historians of the Italian Renaissance well know Alessandro de’ Medici as the first Medici duke, a tyrant who finally deprived republican Florence of its natural liberties. Less well known today is that his mother was an African slave woman; I argue, an African from below the Sahara, making Alessandro a black Afro-Florentine. My primary interest is in exploring how race and its connection (or not) to skin color was viewed by Florentines and other Europeans in the sixteenth century.
A collateral interest to this study is how and why Alessandro’s racial heritage seems to have slipped the notice of so many intellectuals today, not only historians but art historians, theater people, and museum managers.

There are a number of well known portraits of Alessandro, for example. Two or possibly three are by the Florentine artist Pontormo, who lived during the same time as the duke, and painted him from life. Other portraits were painted by artists working from other sources (even one of the Pontormo portraits), well after the duke’s assassination in 1537, at the hand of a distant cousin, Lorenzino. Although he was represented in other pictorial media—tapestry, and medals, for example—Pontormo best captured his physical appearance in a portrait now at the Chicago Museum of Fine Arts, which leaves little doubt as to his African heritage. His father was most likely Lorenzo de’ Medici, duke of Urbino, although others argue that his father was actually Giulio de’ Medici, the future pope Clement VII, who selected Alessandro as duke pending the successful conclusion of the siege of Florence (1527-30) by troops of the Emperor Charles V. Charles gave his own illegitimate daughter, Margherita, in marriage to Alessandro to seal to the partnership of Emperor and Pope.

Ennoblement of the Medici, backed by imperial troops was Clement’s price. In 1537, Alessandro was assassinated by Lorenzino, who immediately fled to Venice where he was hailed by the community of Florentine exiles there as the “New Brutus.” Since then, Alessandro and Lorenzino have been locked together by history, yet far more interest has been devoted to Lorenzino that his victim. The story has been the subject of histories, even a novel, and a number of plays. In March of this year, Alfred de Musset’s play Lorenzaccio (mid-eighteenth century) was presented in Washington DC to critical acclaim! But Alessandro appears only as a stereotypical tyrant played by a white actor.

....http://www.best.uni-mainz.de/modules...php?storyid=40

[Suesumba]

... i should point out that when we quote from other sources we shouldn't be quoting entire articles because they're copyrighted.

[Peasie]

2013 Photo by Peasie


Can you guess who, what, where this is?

[Suesumba]

that's a great pic peasie. is it david beckham?



miley cyrus scaring a cat!

[Peasie]

Not Beckham Statue of American Youth Rising, Normandy, France.

as for Miley Cyrus and The Kitty *smdh*

[mountaingal]

Design for the new stadium to be built in Qatar for the 2022 Football World Cup. It's being dubbed the vaginarena, much to the architect's annoyance.