100px|The Entombment
The Entombment is a glue-size painting on linen attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Dirk Bouts. It shows a scene from the biblical entombment of Christ, probably completed between 1440 and 1455 as a wing panel for a large hinged polyptych altarpiece. The now lost altarpiece is thought to have contained a central crucifixion scene flanked by four wing panel works half its length (two either side) depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The larger work was probably commissioned for export, possibly to a Venetian patron whose identity is lost. The Entombment was first recorded in a mid-19th century Milan inventory and has been in the National Gallery, London since its purchase on the gallery's behalf by Charles Eastlake in 1861. The Entombment is renowned for its austere but affecting portrayal of sorrow and grief. It shows four female and three male mourners grieving over the body of Christ. It is one of the few surviving 15th-century paintings created using glue-size, an extremely fragile medium lacking durability. (more...)
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Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entombment_%28Bouts%29
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1797:
The first official Italian tricolour was adopted by the government of the Cispadane Republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Italy
1940:
Winter War: The Finnish 9th Division stopped and completely destroyed the overwhelming Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raate_Road
1979:
The Vietnam People's Army captured the Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh, deposing Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, which marked the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_War
1993:
The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as its president. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ghana
2010:
Muslim gunmen opened fire on a crowd of Coptic Christians leaving church after celebrating a midnight Christmas Mass, killing eight of them as well as one Muslim bystander. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_massacre
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
tin ear (n): Insensitivity to and inability to appreciate the elements of performed music or the rhythm, elegance, or nuances of language http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tin_ear
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors. --Gerald Durrell http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_Durrell