Refine your search

The results of your search are listed below alongside the search terms you entered on the previous page. You can refine your search by amending any of the parameters in the form and resubmitting it.

Select all Deselect all Add selection to lightbox
Large Small
Thumbnails per page
Italy: The 16th century Praetorian Fountain (Fontana Pretoria), Piazza Pretoria, Palermo, Sicily. The Praetorian Fountain is located in the heart of the historic centre of Palermo and represents the most important landmark of Piazza Pretoria. The fountain was originally built by Francesco Camilliani (1530 - 1586), a Tuscan sculptor, in the city of Florence in 1554, but was transferred to Palermo in 1574
Italy: The 16th century Praetorian Fountain (Fontana Pretoria), Piazza Pretoria, Palermo, Sicily. The Praetorian Fountain is located in the heart of the historic centre of Palermo and represents the most important landmark of Piazza Pretoria. The fountain was originally built by Francesco Camilliani (1530 - 1586), a Tuscan sculptor, in the city of Florence in 1554, but was transferred to Palermo in 1574
Italy: The 16th century Praetorian Fountain (Fontana Pretoria), Piazza Pretoria, Palermo, Sicily. The Praetorian Fountain is located in the heart of the historic centre of Palermo and represents the most important landmark of Piazza Pretoria. The fountain was originally built by Francesco Camilliani (1530 - 1586), a Tuscan sculptor, in the city of Florence in 1554, but was transferred to Palermo in 1574
The <i>Anwar-i Suhayli</i> or 'The Lights of Canopus', commonly known as the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i> in the West, is a Persian version of the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, the <i>Panchatantra</i>. It tells a tale of a Persian physician, Burzuyah, and his mission to India, where he stumbles upon a book of stories collected from the animals who reside there.<br/><br/> In a similar vein to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, the fables in the manuscript are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, leading up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many usually have morals or offer philosophical glimpses into human behaviour, emphasising loyalty and teamwork.
The <i>Anwar-i Suhayli</i> or 'The Lights of Canopus', commonly known as the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i> in the West, is a Persian version of the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, the <i>Panchatantra</i>. It tells a tale of a Persian physician, Burzuyah, and his mission to India, where he stumbles upon a book of stories collected from the animals who reside there.<br/><br/> In a similar vein to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, the fables in the manuscript are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, leading up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many usually have morals or offer philosophical glimpses into human behaviour, emphasising loyalty and teamwork.
The <i>Anwar-i Suhayli</i> or 'The Lights of Canopus', commonly known as the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i> in the West, is a Persian version of the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, the <i>Panchatantra</i>. It tells a tale of a Persian physician, Burzuyah, and his mission to India, where he stumbles upon a book of stories collected from the animals who reside there.<br/><br/> In a similar vein to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, the fables in the manuscript are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, leading up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many usually have morals or offer philosophical glimpses into human behaviour, emphasising loyalty and teamwork.
Wat Pho Maen Khunaram is a Mahayana Buddhist temple built in 1959. It mixes Thai, Chinese and Tibetan architectural styles.
Toyohara Chikanobu, better known to his contemporaries as Yōshū Chikanobu, was a prolific woodblock artist of Japan's Meiji period. His works capture the transition from the age of the samurai to Meiji modernity.<br/><br/> In 1875 (Meiji 8), he decided to try to make a living as an artist. He travelled to Tokyo. He found work as an artist for the Kaishin Shimbun. In addition, he produced nishiki-e artworks. In his younger days, he had studied the Kanō school of painting; but his interest was drawn to ukiyo-e.<br/><br/> Like many ukiyo-e artists, Chikanobu turned his attention towards a great variety of subjects. His work ranged from Japanese mythology to depictions of the battlefields of his lifetime to women's fashions. As well as a number of the other artists of this period, he too portrayed kabuki actors in character, and is well-known for his impressions of the mie (formal pose) of kabuki productions.<br/><br/> Chikanobu was known as a master of bijinga, images of beautiful women, and for illustrating changes in women's fashion, including both traditional and Western clothing. His work illustrated the changes in coiffures and make-up across time. For example, in Chikanobu's images in Mirror of Ages (1897), the hair styles of the Tenmei era, 1781-1789 are distinguished from those of the Keio era, 1865-1867.
The production of silk originates in China in the Neolithic (Yangshao culture, 4th millennium BCE). Silk remained confined to China until the Silk Road opened at some point during the later half of the first millennium BCE. China maintained its virtual monopoly over silk production for another thousand years.<br/><br/> Not confined to clothing, silk was also used for a number of other applications, including writing, and the color of silk worn was an important guide of social class during the Tang Dynasty.
Luang Prabang was formerly the capital of a kingdom of the same name. Until the communist takeover in 1975, it was the royal capital and seat of government of the Kingdom of Laos. The city is nowadays a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The <i>Anwar-i Suhayli</i> or 'The Lights of Canopus', commonly known as the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i> in the West, is a Persian version of the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, the <i>Panchatantra</i>. It tells a tale of a Persian physician, Burzuyah, and his mission to India, where he stumbles upon a book of stories collected from the animals who reside there.<br/><br/> In a similar vein to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, the fables in the manuscript are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, leading up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many usually have morals or offer philosophical glimpses into human behaviour, emphasising loyalty and teamwork.
In Japan, Jurojin is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune - or Shichifukujin - and is based on the Taoist deity of the Old Man of the South Pole. Jurojin was considered the god of longevity, and is the personification of the Southern Polar Star, and may have been based on a historical figure from the Northern Song Dynasty.<br/><br/> Jurojin is often depicted as an old man with a very tall, bald head and a long white beard, wielding a staff and a fan. Tied to his staff is a scroll, sometimes identified as a Buddhist sutra, with the lifespan of all living things written on it. He is sometimes accompanied by a deer, which is a symbol of longevity alongside other long-lived animals such as the crane and tortoise.<br/><br/> While there are many paintings and statues of him, which are considered auspicious, he never developed a strong independent following like some of the other Seven Gods of Fortune.
Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings.<br/><br/> The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old. They primarily consist of images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time.<br/><br/> In 1979, Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley.
Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings.<br/><br/> The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old. They primarily consist of images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time.<br/><br/> In 1979, Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley.
Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings.<br/><br/> The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old. They primarily consist of images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time.<br/><br/> In 1979, Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley.
Ma Lin, Japanese name Tettekisen Barin, lifting a stag above his head to throw at an enormous monkey at his feet.<br/><br/> The Water Margin (known in Chinese as Shuihu Zhuan, sometimes abbreviated to Shuihu, 水滸傳), known as Suikoden in Japanese, as well as Outlaws of the Marsh, Tale of the Marshes, All Men Are Brothers, Men of the Marshes, or The Marshes of Mount Liang in English, is a 14th century novel and one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.<br/><br/> Attributed to Shi Nai'an and written in vernacular Chinese, the story, set in the Song Dynasty, tells of how a group of 108 outlaws gathered at Mount Liang (or Liangshan Marsh) to form a sizable army before they are eventually granted amnesty by the government and sent on campaigns to resist foreign invaders and suppress rebel forces.<br/><br/> In 1827, Japanese publisher Kagaya Kichibei commissioned Utagawa Kuniyoshi to produce a series of woodblock prints illustrating the 108 heroes of the Suikoden. The 1827-1830 series, called '108 Heroes of the Water Margin' or 'Tsuzoku Suikoden goketsu hyakuhachinin no hitori', made Utagawa Kuniyoshi's famous.
Zahir ud-din Muhammad Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of South Asia. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother.<br/><br/> Babur identified his lineage as Timurid and Chaghatay-Turkic, while his origin, milieu, training, and culture were steeped in Persian culture and so he was largely responsible for the fostering of this culture by his descendants, and for the expansion of Persian cultural influence in the Indian subcontinent, with brilliant literary, artistic, and historiographical results.
Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ;´, literally: 'Book of Babur' or 'Letters of Babur'; alternatively known as Tuzk-e Babri) is the name given to the memoirs of Ẓahīr ud-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal Empire and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur. It is an autobiographical work, originally written in the Chagatai language, known to Babur as 'Turki' (meaning Turkic), the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids.<br/><br/> Because of Babur's cultural origin, his prose is highly Persianized in its sentence structure, morphology, and vocabulary, and also contains many phrases and smaller poems in Persian. During Emperor Akbar's reign, the work was completely translated to Persian by a Mughal courtier, Abdul Rahīm, in AH 998 (1589-90 CE).
Taiwanese aborigines (Chinese: yuánzhùmín; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: gôan-chū-bîn; literally "original inhabitants") may have been living on the islands for approximately 8,000 years before major Han Chinese immigration began in the 17th century. Taiwanese aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian ethnic groups, such as peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar and Oceania. For centuries, Taiwan's aboriginal peoples experienced economic competition and military conflict with a series of colonizing peoples. Centralized government policies designed to foster language shift and cultural assimilation, as well as continued contact with the colonizers through trade, intermarriage and other dispassionate intercultural processes, have resulted in varying degrees of language death and loss of original cultural identity. Taiwan's Austronesian speakers were formerly distributed over much of the island's rugged central mountain range and were concentrated in villages along the alluvial plains. As of 2009, their total population was around 500,000 (approximately 2 percent of Taiwan's population).
Shahab-ud-din Muhammad Khurram Shah Jahan I (1592 –1666), or Shah Jahan, from the Persian meaning ‘king of the world’, was the fifth Mughal ruler in India and a favourite of his legendary grandfather Akbar the Great.<br/><br/> He is best known for commissioning the ‘Phadshahnamah’ as a chronicle of his reign, and for the building of the Taj Mahal in Agra as a tomb for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Under Shah Jahan, the Mughal Empire attained its highest union of strength and magnificence. A war of succession to the Mughal throne ensued and the emperor's youngest son, the governor of Deccan, Abu Muzaffar Muhiuddin Awrangzeb, was the ultimate victor after deposing and imprisoning his father.
Siyah Kalem or 'Black Pen' is the name given to the 15th century school of painting attributed to Mehmed Siyah Kalem. Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian Turkic origin, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. The paintings appear in the 'Conqueror’s Albums', so named because two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror are present in one of them.<br/><br/> The albums are made up of miniatures taken from manuscripts of the 14th, 15th, and early 16th centuries, and one series of paintings is inscribed 'work of Master Muḥammad Siyah Kalem'. Something of the style and techniques of Chinese paintings is apparent in these, and an acquaintance with Buddhist art, particularly in the depictions of grotesque demonic figures.<br/><br/> It seems likely that certain paintings contained in the 'Conqueror's Albums' are of Chinese origin and may have been used as stylistic guides for painters in the Siyah Kalem tradition.
A raga is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.<br/><br/> A raga uses a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is constructed. However, the way the notes are approached and rendered in musical phrases and the mood they convey are more important in defining a raga than the notes themselves. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons.<br/><br/> Rāginī (Devanagari: रागिनी) is a term for the 'feminine' counterpart or 'wife' to a rāga. The rāga-rāgini scheme dates from about the 14th century and aligns 6 'male' rāgas with 6 'wives'.
This drawing by A. de Neuville is based on an original by Louis Delaporte which was sketched during the French Mekong Exploration Commission's two-year venture (1866-68) into the jungles of Indochina. The deer was slain in front of their eyes by the tiger. The French colonialists fired off a couple of shots and drove the animal away, then cut off the stag's hindquarters and carried it to Siem Reap where the meat was salted, and fed the explorers for several days.
This fable by Luqman, well-known in Arabic and Turkish folk literature, is the moral story of a conceited stag that is very proud of his great antlers but ashamed of his skinny legs. One day, hunters chase him and he escapes thanks to his speed and his spindly legs, but runs between some trees. He becomes trapped in the branches of the trees due to his large antlers and is killed by the hunters.