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>
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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>
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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>
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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>