The Portrait of a Musician is an unfinished painting widely attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. His only known male portrait painting, it was probably painted between 1483 and 1487 while Leonardo was in Milan. It has been in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan since at least 1672. Perhaps influenced by Antonello da Messina's introduction of the Early Netherlandish style of portrait painting to Italy, the work marks a shift from the profile portraiture that predominated in 15th-century Milan. It shares many similarities with other paintings Leonardo executed there, such as the Virgin of the Rocks and the Lady with an Ermine. Most current scholarship attributes at least the portrait's face to Leonardo, based on stylistic resemblances to his other works. Uncertainty over the rest of the painting is due to the stiff and rigid qualities of the body, which are uncharacteristic of Leonardo's work.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Musician
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1826:
The Treaty of Yandabo was signed, ending the First Anglo- Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in the history of British India. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Yandabo
1942:
World War II: The Canadian government ordered the removal of "all persons of Japanese origin" to internment camps (example pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Canadians
1968:
Vietnam War: South Vietnamese forces led by Ngô Quang Trưởng recaptured the citadel of Huế. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hu%E1%BA%BF
1989:
United Airlines Flight 811 experienced uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii, blowing seats out of the aircraft and killing nine passengers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
histrionic: 1. Of or relating to actors or acting. 2. (by extension) Excessively dramatic or emotional, especially with the intention to draw attention. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/histrionic
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Whoever, in the present juncture of our affairs, can proclaim his entire political creed as frankly in Charleston as in Boston, can do it only because he has stricken from the list our distinctive national principle, without which we are not Americans at all — the natural equal rights of men. If Washington or Jefferson or Madison should utter upon his native soil today the opinions he entertained and expressed upon this question, he would be denounced as a fanatical abolitionist. To declare the right of all men to liberty is sectional, because slavery is afraid of liberty and strikes the mouth that speaks the word. --George William Curtis https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_William_Curtis