Essays on Embellishment

(Student’s Full Name)

In Julien-David Le Roy’s The Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments in Greece, shows that he was a proponent of creating architecture that had a “pleasing effect on the eyes” (165). Therefore, he was more appreciative of the manner in which the Greeks created their edifices. He noted that the Greeks used their surroundings to influence how they created a building. For instance, he explains how Calimachus, a Greek architect, was inspired to build the “Corinthian capital” after seeing some “Acanthus leaves,” which were in a basket that was “covered with a tile,” growing ...

Italian Renaissance in the 15th Century: Funeral Monument of John XXIII by Donatello

Italian renaissance marks a period of rebirth and renewal in the interest of culture. This period was after the dark ages and lasted from the 14th to the 15th Century (Gardener et al. 14). During this period, Donatello was one of the best skilled artists. Donatello was an Italian sculptor (1386-1466) (Gardener et al. 14). Donatello designs the funeral monument to the anti-pope John XXIII and positions it between two columns inside the baptistery. The style of the work is classical antiquity and reflects the grandest Italian tomb in the medieval times. Donatello retains considerable elements of classical antiquity. The ...

Abstract

For the purpose of this paper, I will be discussing the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, as well as a terracotta bell-krater attributed to the Methyse Painter, and comparing both works in terms of their composition, formal elements, and cultural context. The selection of these works allows for two central activities of the Greeks to be compared, especially ones represented by their own divine figures. The east pediment and the Dionysian vase feature two distinct sides of Greek culture – the former showcasing Greek’s love of justice, and the latter the Greek’s love of wine ...

Truth in fiction is often relative; the extent to which objective truth is embellished in favor of dramatic license or reflecting the emotional tenor of the speaker is important. In “How to Tell a True War Story,” Tim O’Brien tells various tales of his time in Vietnam from various perspectives and sources – it is equally a recounting of his own experiences and embellishment from an author looking to create an interesting story. O’Brien’s story is, in essence, about the nature of storytelling, demonstrating the ability for authors to dramatically change and determine the perception of events while providing ...

Analysis - Giovanni Boccaccio, "The Onset of the Black Death"

Boccaccio's Decameron is a masterpiece of early 14th century European literature; its bawdiness and its sheer wit are a wonderful, funny indicator of what life was like in 14th century Italy. However, the central framing device of the book itself - the Black Plague, which ravaged Europe around the time of the book's setting and publication - plays a somber but vital role in this important work. The importance of the plague to the story is no less evident than in the introduction, which demonstrates the awesome power of the sickness. Boccaccio's account of the plague during the time it hit Florence ...

The Merneptah Stele, also known as the Israel Stele, is the earliest known reference, outside of the Old Testament, to the existence of Israel (Alstrom and Edelman, 1985). It is a tome inscribed by Merneptah, an Egyptian king who conquered Canaan in the 12th century BC. Its significance lies in its mention of the nation or people of Israel in its coda, and as such has gained the title “The Israel Stele,” despite the nations’ relative unimportance in the overall text. In this paper, the examination of early Israel through the Mernaptah Stele will be discussed, as well as how ...