Portrait of Maria Portinari (c. 1470–72) is a small tempera and oil-
on-wood painting by Hans Memling. It portrays Maria Maddalena
Baroncelli, about whom very little is known. Around 14 years old, she is
depicted shortly before her wedding to the Italian banker Tommaso
Portinari, who was an intimate of Charles the Bold and manager of the
Bruges branch of a bank controlled by Lorenzo de' Medici. Maria is
dressed in the height of late 15th-century fashion, with an elaborate
jewel-studded necklace and a long black hennin with a transparent veil.
Her headdress is similar and necklace identical to those in her
depiction in Hugo van der Goes's Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1475), a
painting that may have been partly based on Memling's portrait. The
panel is the right wing of a hinged devotional triptych; the lost center
panel is recorded in 16th-century inventories as a Virgin and Child.
Maria and Tommaso's portraits are hung alongside each other at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Maria_Portinari>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1760:
The chapel of the new Castellania Palace in Valletta, Malta,
was consecrated.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellania_%28Valletta%29>
1859:
Sponsored by Greek businessman Evangelos Zappas, the first
modern revival of the Olympic Games took place in Athens.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zappas_Olympics>
1943:
The Holocaust: Heinrich Himmler ordered that Romanies were to
be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_genocide>
1988:
The Soviet Buran spacecraft, a reusable vehicle built in
response to NASA's Space Shuttle program, was launched, unmanned, on its
only flight.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
high roller:
1. (Canada, US, informal, gambling) A gambler who wagers large amounts
of money, usually in a casino.
2. (Canada, US, informal) One who has a lot of money and lives
luxuriously.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/high_roller>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who
sees him not in man.
--Johann Kaspar Lavater
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Kaspar_Lavater>