Constantine the Great

Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus;c. 27 February 272 -- 22 May 337), also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity,[notes Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all religions throughout the empire.
The foremost general of his time, Constantine defeated the emperors Maxentius and Licinius during civil wars. He also fought successfully against the Franks, Alamanni, Visigoths, and Sarmatians during his reign -- even resettling parts of Dacia which had been abandoned during the previous century. Constantine built a new imperial residence in place of Byzantium, naming it Constantinople, which would later be the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for over one thousand years. He is thought of as the founder of the Eastern Roman Empire.
 

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Helen Of Troy

Helen of Troy and the Trojan War were central to the early history of ancient Greece.
Helen is the object of one of the most dramatic love stories of all time and one of the main reasons for a ten-year war between the Greeks and Trojans, known as the Trojan War. Hers was the face that launched a thousand ships because of the vast number of warships the Greeks sailed to Troy to retrieve Helen. The poems known as the Trojan War Cycle were the culmination of many myths about the ancient Greek warriors and heroes who fought and died at Troy.

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The Life Of Al Capone

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947) was an Chicago gangster who achieved worldwide fame during the Prohibition era.

Born in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City to Italian immigrants, Capone was a Five Points Gang member who became a bouncer in organised crime premises such as brothels. He apparently contracted syphilis without seeking medical attention, although there was an effective treatment available. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago becoming bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate illegally supplying alcohol, and politically protected through the Unione Siciliane. On Torrio's retirement Capone succeeded him as boss. Capone was able to expanding the bootlegging business through violent means that included bombings by James Belcastro. With his last rivals eliminated in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and mutually profitable relationships with mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police, Capone was undisputed boss and safe from local law enforcement. His wealth, influence, and corruption of the city authorities made him a nationally debated symbol of prohibition and crime. Apparently revelling in the attention, such as the cheers when he appeared at ball games, Capone made donations to various charities and was viewed by many to be a "modern-day Robin Hood". 

 

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True Story Of Henry Hill

Documentary about Henry Hill a former Newyork gangster on which the film Goodfellas is based on.

 

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The True Story Of Hannibal

Known as one of the greatest commanders of the ancient world, Hannibal excelled as a tactician. No battle in history is a finer sample of tactics than Cannae. But he was yet greater in logistics and strategy. No captain ever marched to and fro among so many armies of troops superior to his own numbers and material as fearlessly and skillfully as he. No man ever held his own so long or so ably against such odds. 

Constantly over matched by better soldiers, led by generals always respectable, often of great ability, he yet defied all their efforts to drive him from Italy, for half a generation. ... As a soldier, in the countenance he presented to the stoutest of foes and in the constancy he exhibited under the bitterest adversity, Hannibal stands alone and unequaled. As a man, no character in history exhibits a purer life or nobler patriotism.
Again, all we know of him comes for the most part from hostile sources. The Romans feared and hated him so much that they could not do him justice.

 

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Spartacus: Behind The Myth

It began with a breakout from a prison kitchen; it became a civil war. Based on the latest research, this dramatised documentary reveals how around 70 men armed themselves with kitchen knives and roasting spits, and chose a man called Spartacus as their leader. People came to join them in their thousands, and within a matter of months, the fugitive band was an army 100,000 strong. Strong enough to threaten the destruction of Rome. This film tells the story of a modern, dirty war of propaganda, psychological warfare and guerrilla tactics fought two thousand years ago. And it reveals the true character of Spartacus, a ruthless and charismatic leader very different to the figure created by two thousand years of myth-making. 

 

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One Day, One Destiny: The story behind Tom Cruise and Scientology

Interesting video tracing Tom Cruise's path from naive young actor, to gung ho Scientologist. It originally aired on French TV (but has been subbed by Anon).

One Day, One Destiny: The story behind Tom Cruise and Scientology. A French documentary by Magneto Presse.

Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-helpsystem, Dianetics. Hubbard characterized Scientology as a religion, and in 1953 incorporated the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey.

Scientology teaches that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature. Its method of spiritual rehabilitation is a type of counselling known as auditing, in which practitioners aim to consciously re-experience painful or traumatic events in their past in order to free themselves of their limiting effects. Study materials and auditing courses are made available to members in return for specified donations.

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The Life Of Brad Pitt

William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and three Academy Award nominations in acting categories, and received two further Academy Award nominations, winning one, for productions of his film production company Plan B Entertainment. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a label for which he has received substantial media attention.
  
THE LIFE OF BRAD PITT - Entertainment/Hollywood/Biography (documentary) by MyVids101

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The Life and Art Of Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, his works are marked by a frank eroticism.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 1800s yielded a collection of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec – along with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – is among the most well-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period. In a 2005 auction at Christie's auction house, a new record was set when La blanchisseuse, an early painting of a young laundress, sold for US$22.4 million.

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The Power of Art - Picasso

What makes Picasso's Guernica a masterpiece and Modern Art's most powerful anti-war statement of the 20th Century?




Born in Malaga, Spain, Picasso's many styles and prolific work rate have marked him out as one of the most recognized artists of the twentieth century. Not limited to one medium he created sculptures, etchings and prints. His artistic career only began to boom once he moved to Paris in the early 1900s. His Blue Period, reflecting the colour and his mood at the time was followed by his Rose Period, work inspired by primitive art and then Cubism, which shocked the critics, but ultimately made his name.

Guernica (1937) was created during Picasso's Surrealist period and captures the horror of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. By the end of World War II, Picasso had become an internationally known artist and celebrity.

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Biography Of Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne, 1839–1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all."

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Bernini - The Power Of Art

Born in Naples, Bernini was an exceptional talent from an early age and went on to dominate the art world of 17th century Rome. His work epitomised the Baroque style and his sculpture, church interiors and exteriors and town planning could be seen everywhere. He was also a painter, playwright, costume and theatre designer. 
 



Bernini worked under successive Popes; Pope Gregory XV made him a knight and Pope Urban VIII took him as his best friend. He was revered in his time until a jealous rage caused him to have the face of his mistress slashed after discovering her romance with his brother. His reputation fell further after his bell towers for the Cathedral of St Peter's started cracking in 1641. He redeemed himself and kick started his career again with arguably his most famous work, The Ecstasy of St Theresa, in 1652. 

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Biography Of Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro de Mariano di Vanni Filipepi is best known by his nickname, Sandro Botticelli, and by his works, which only long after his death were considered to be some of the greatest of the Renaissance, particularly by groups such as the Pre-Raphaelites.

Botticelli's life, for the most part, was personified by success, the height of which saw him paint some of the wall frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli is most fondly remembered for his works The Birth of Venus, Primavera and Venus and Mars.
Despite a considerable amount of fame and recognition, Botticelli's working career is blighted by its conclusion, which was undermined by the new artistic movement of the High Renaissance.

 

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Biography Of Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch,12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

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Katsushika Hokusai Biography

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a well-known Japanese artist. Originally born Tokitarō to a prominent mirror-maker in the Katsushika district of Edo, Japan. Katsushika Hokusai is thought to have learned art from his father. He began painting around the age of 6, and by the time he was 12 he was sent to work in a library and bookshop where many of the middle and upper class would go to appreciate wood block art and read stories. At the age of 14, he was taken in as an apprentice to learn the art of wood carving. When he was 18, he was accepted into the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō to learn the art of wood block prints.

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The Master Of Light - Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (Dutch: [joˈɦɑnəs jɑn vərˈmeːr]; 1632 – December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.




Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.[6][7] In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today.[2] Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

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Biography Of Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin, born in Paris on November 12, 1840, was a famous sculptor known for creating "The Age of Bronze," "The Gates of Hell" and "The Burghers of Calais," among several other works. Unlike many famous artists, Rodin didn't establish his distinct artistic style or a credible list of works until he was in his 40s. Despite becoming a talented artist by his late teens, several years without validation or encouragement caused Rodin enter a different career. He worked as a decorative bricklayer for nearly two decades, from the late 1850s to late 1870s, when a trip to Italy provided inspiration. Soon after returning to Paris, he sculpted his first piece, "The Vanquished" (renamed "The Age of Bronze"), which was exhibited in 1878. Among Rodin's most famous works is "The Gates of Hell," a monument of various sculpted figures, including "The Thinker" (1880) and "The Kiss" (1886). Rodin didn't live to finish the intricate piece; he died on November 17, 1917, in Meudon, France. 

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Biography Of Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 - August 11, 1956), was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident. In December 1956, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.

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The Art and Life of Roy Lichtenstein

The life of the great Pop Art painter Roy Lichtenstein, illustrated with his most famous artworks.
 


In the newest of Abrams’ award-winning line of picture book biographies of artists, Susan Goldman Rubin evocatively explores Roy Lichtenstein’s work and life and his groundbreaking influence on the art world. In Roy’s long career as a teacher, artist, and innovator, he changed the way that people thought about art and how artists thought about their subjects, challenging people to see familiar sights with new eyes.

Classically trained in painting and drawing, Roy found inspiration from cartoons, newspaper comics, and children’s books—images most people didn’t consider “serious” art. He also chose to paint, in meticulous detail, the building blocks of painting—a single brushstroke or the back of a canvas—drawing attention to the way that artists use these tools. Roy and the other Pop Artists, including Andy Warhol, broke down the rules about what makes proper subjects for fine art. In over a thousand paintings and numerous other works, Roy brought familiar images into new light and captured the imagination of the world.

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