Word: medici
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Callot was born to a noble family in Nancy about 1592, and after a rather turbulent childhood (he is said to have run away from home at the age of twelve to join a band of gypsies), finally landed at the court of the Medici in Florence, where he was given a studio and the privilege of eating at the page boys' table. By the time he returned to Nancy in 1621, he was a celebrated artist. By using a hard varnish on his plates, he was able to eliminate lines and create others at will. His etchings were...
...most prestigious names in French art. One admirer is Pablo Picasso, who has a prized Balthus painting of two children in his Vallauris villa. Another is Minister of Culture André Malraux, who three months ago flabbergasted Paris by making the eccentric Balthus director of the Villa Medici, the home of the academy that France established 295 years ago in Rome in order to benefit from Italian models and taste in painting and architecture...
...daring appointment. The Villa Medici, like its parent school, the Beaux-Arts of Paris, has never been known for its tolerance of individualism. Of all the French artists sent there, only David and Ingres stand out as painters of the first rank. Malraux's plan is to give the Villa a new vitality. "This is what I propose," he told his friend Balthus. "A second ambassador in Italy. An ambassador of French culture. I would have conferences, receptions, movement!" Balthus was delighted to accept...
...French Ambassador to Lisbon in 1561, Diplomat Jean Nicot failed in his mission to marry off Queen Catherine de Medici's daughter to the King of Portugal. But Nicot won royal favor all the same by picking up in Lisbon an American weed whose most important ingredient today bears his name: nicotine. Ground into snuff, the tobacco successfully cured Queen Catherine of incessant headaches -it made her sneeze hard enough to clear out her sinuses...
...mother at six and found his vocation before his teens. There is the taunt ("Big man, big wind") by the small Michelangelo to a large fellow artist that cost the hero a smashed nose and lifelong disfigurement. There is the early patronage and early death of Lorenzo de' Medici ("77 Magnifico"). There are the later duels of wills (with Pope Julius II) and skills (with Da Vinci, Bramante, Raphael). There is the unmarried Michelangelo's dutiful, lifelong support of his brothers and of a father who believed that "working with his hands" was beneath a Buonarroti...