Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What was Hans Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff's most famous painting?
Knobelsdorff was involved in the construction of St. Hedwig's Cathedral, but it is uncertain to what extent. Frederick II presented the Catholic community with complete building plans, which were probably primarily his ideas which were then realized by Knobelsdorff. The opera house, by contrast, was completely designed by Knobelsdorff and is considered to be one of his most important works. For the frontage of the externally modestly structured building the architect followed the model of two views from Colin Campbell's ""Vitruvius Britannicus"", one of the most important collections of architectonic engravings, which included works of English Palladian architecture. For the interior he designed a series of three prominent rooms with different functions, which were at different levels, and were decorated differently: the Apollo Hall, the spectator viewing area, and the stage. By technical means they could be turned into one large room for major festivities. Knobelsdorff described the technical features in a Berlin newspaper, proudly commenting that "this theater is one of the longest and widest in the world". In 1843 the building burned down to the foundation. In World War II it suffered several times from bombing. Each time the rebuilding followed Knobelsdorff's intentions, but there were also clear modifications of both the facing and the interior. Soon after they were completed, the opera house and St. Hedwig's Cathedral were featured in textbooks and manuals on architecture.
"Gneisenau" was recommissioned for another tour abroad on 5 October 1884 to join the newly-formed West African Cruiser Squadron, which was commanded by "Konteradmiral" (Rear Admiral) Eduard von Knorr aboard his flagship . The ship's new commander was "KzS" Victor Valois. While en route from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven to join the rest of the squadron, "Gneisenau" ran aground off the island of Lolland in heavy fog; she had to be towed free by the ironclad , though she was undamaged in the accident. The squadron left Wilhelmshaven on 30 October, bound for West Africa. While in the Cape Verde islands, Knorr detached "Gneisenau" to Cape Town, where she arrived on 8 January 1885. There, she embarked Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs, who had been appointed consul to Zanzibar, and took him to the island on 28 January. "Gneisenau" then went to the port of Lamu to survey the coast of eastern Africa, particularly the area around Wituland. "Gneisenau"s survey of the area led the German government to instruct Rohlfs to accept the offer of the Witu Sultan, Ahmed ibn Fumo Bakari, to form a protectorate on 27 May.
Hohenzollern Castle is a hilltop castle located on the Berg Hohenzollern, an isolated promontory of the Swabian Jura (NHN) above sea level, above and to the south of Hechingen, Germany approximately south of Stuttgart, capital of Baden-Württemberg. This mountain lends its name to the local geographic region, "der Zollernalbkreis", and is known among locals as "Zollerberg" (Zoller Mountain), or simply "Zoller".
The American historian Edward Ross Dickinson wrote the "pieces" of Ehrenfels's thinking were all mainstream, but the way he brought them together was "idiosyncratic". Dickinson suggested that these ideas were rooted in Ehrenfels's own tormented sexuality as he was both fascinated/repulsed by sex. Ehrenfels had been brought up in an extremely conservative, sexually repressive Roman Catholic family, and from his teenage years onwards, always felt deep shame and guilt about his sexual desires. Despite his obsession with sex, Ehrenfels was enraged by pornography (which he wanted to see ruthlessly stamped out) and by the "indecent" popular culture of Vienna, which he saw as far too sexualized. Ehrenfels was especially offended by the "Animierkneipen" ("hostess bar"), a type of popular bar in Austria where the buxom waitresses wore very low-cut dresses and were encouraged to flirt with the male customers in order to get them to buy more drinks; in the "Animierkneipen", the waitresses were paid commissions based on their nightly sales of alcohol. Ehrenfels was deeply disgusted by the sight of women flaunting their sexuality to manipulate men, and wanted the "Animierkneipen" banned. Besides for that, Ehrenfels complained constantly about "indecent puns" used by ordinary people, the "courtesan style" in modern fashion and by the "pornography of the humorous weeklies, in comic songs, farces and operettas".
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. However, he was not commercially successful and his suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his 32 piano sonatas between 1795 and 1822. Although originally not intended to be a meaningful whole, as a set they compose one of the most important collections of works in the history of music. Hans von Bülow called them "The New Testament" of the piano literature (Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" being "The Old Testament").
The painting is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. Recent academic work suggests that it would not have been started before 1513. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797.
Blenheim Palace was the birthplace of the 1st Duke's famous descendant, Winston Churchill, whose life and times are commemorated by a permanent exhibition in the suite of rooms in which he was born "(marked "K" on the plan)". Blenheim Palace was designed with all its principal and secondary rooms on the "piano nobile", thus there is no great staircase of state: anyone worthy of such state would have no cause to leave the "piano nobile". Insofar as Blenheim does have a grand staircase, it is the series of steps in the Great Court which lead to the North Portico. There are staircases of various sizes and grandeur in the central block, but none are designed on the same scale of magnificence as the palace. James Thornhill painted the ceiling of the hall in 1716. It depicts Marlborough kneeling to Britannia and proffering a map of the Battle of Blenheim. The hall is high, and remarkable chiefly for its size and for its stone carvings by Gibbons, yet in spite of its immense size it is merely a vast anteroom to the saloon.
Hohenzollern is a mountain, 855 m, of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located in Zollernalbkreis. On its top the famous Hohenzollern Castle is located. The mountain is an outlier, about 1 km north of the Swabian Jura.
Jacques-Louis David (; 30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and heightened feeling, harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (; ; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), and "Guernica" (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War.
Christian von Ehrenfels was born on 20 June 1859 in Rodaun near Vienna and grew up at his father's castle Brunn am Walde in Lower Austria. He joined secondary school in Krems and first studied at the Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna and then changed to the Universität Wien.
Hohenzollern Castle (German: ) is the ancestral seat of the imperial House of Hohenzollern. The third of three hilltop castles on the site, it is located atop Mount Hohenzollern, above and south of Hechingen, on the edge of the Swabian Jura of central Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
With over 350,000 visitors per year Hohenzollern castle is one of the most visited castles in Germany. The castle is privately owned by the House of Hohenzollern, with two-thirds belonging to the Brandenburg-Prussian branch, and the balance to the Swabian branch. Since 1952, the Princess Kira of Prussia Foundation has used the castle for an annual summer camp for children. Whenever Prince George and his family are staying at the castle, the Prussian flag flies over the castle.
Wagner's composition of "Tristan und Isolde" was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly "The World as Will and Representation"), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, "Tristan" was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.
At the 1912 Salon des Indépendants Albert Gleizes exhibited "Les Baigneuses (The Bathers)" (no. 1347) — Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" was listed in the catalogue (n. 1001) but was withdrawn prior to the exhibition — Roger de La Fresnaye exhibited "Artillerie" (no. 1235) — Robert Delaunay showed his monumental "Ville de Paris" (no. 868) — Jean Metzinger exhibited "La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a horse)" and "Le Port" — Fernand Léger showed "La Noce" — Henri Le Fauconnier, "Le Chasseur (The Huntsman)" — and the newcomer Juan Gris exhibited his "Portrait of Picasso".
Wolfstein was founded in 1275 on Habsburg King Rudolph I's orders, which called for a “fortified and free” town near his castle, “Woluisstein”, now known as the "Alt-Wolfstein" (“Old Wolfstein”) ruin. Rudolph forthwith granted the new town the same town rights and freedoms as the town of Speyer. As an “everlasting marketplace”, it was to be a sanctuary for commerce, trade and dealing. The first townsmen and -women came from the surrounding, much older villages.
Much surviving prehistoric art is small portable sculptures. It includes the oldest known representation of the human body, the Venus of Hohle Fel, dating from 40,000-35,000 BC, found in Schelklingen, Germany. It is part of a small group of female Venus figurines found in Central Europe. The Löwenmensch figurine, from about 30,000 BC, is the oldest undisputed piece of figurative art. The Swimming Reindeer of about 11,000 BCE is among the finest Magdalenian carvings in bone or antler of animals in the art of the Upper Paleolithic. At the beginning of the Mesolithic in Europe figurative sculpture greatly reduced, and remained a less common element in art than relief decoration of practical objects until the Roman period, despite some works such as the Gundestrup cauldron from the European Iron Age and the Bronze Age Trundholm sun chariot.
The "Amtskellerei", whose mostly noble "Amtskeller" were charged with executing princely orders, was to be found at Neu-Wolfstein Castle, and after that was destroyed in 1688 by King Louis XIV’s troops in the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the "Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg", or War of the Palatine Succession), at a small house beside the old town hall at the foot of the Schlossberg; beginning in 1753 it was at the great building before the outer town gate (today the town hall) built on Elector Karl Theodor’s (1742-1799) orders from "Amtsgefällen" – "Amt" taxes. By territorial swap between the Elector and the Duke of Zweibrücken in 1768, the places within the "Schultheißerei" of Einöllen (Einöllen, Hohenöllen, Tiefenbach, Oberweiler, Roßbach and Sulzhof) passed to Electoral Palatinate and were assigned to the "Amt" of Wolfstein.
Bruno Alfred Döblin was born on 10 August 1878 at the house at Bollwerk 37 in Stettin (Szczecin), a port city in what was then the Province of Pomerania. He was the fourth of five children born to Max Döblin (1846–1921), a master tailor from Posen (Poznań), and Sophie Döblin (1844–1920), née Freudenheim, the daughter of a merchant. Their marriage was characterized by a tension between Max's multifaceted artistic interests—to which Döblin would later attribute his and his siblings' artistic inclinations—and Sophie's cool pragmatism. The Döblins were assimilated Jews, and Alfred became aware of a broad, societal anti-Semitism early on.
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; ; ; (30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and sciences. Sometimes referred to as the "Princeps mathematicorum" () and "the greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had an exceptional influence in many fields of mathematics and science, and is ranked among history's most influential mathematicians.
Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, the son of Silesian landed gentry, was born on February 17, 1699 on the estate of Kuckädel (now Polish Kukadlo) near Crossen (now the Polish city Krosno Odrzańskie) on the Oder River. After the early death of his father he was raised by his godfather, the chief senior forester Georg von Knobelsdorff. In keeping with family tradition he began his professional career in the Prussian army. Already at 16 years of age he participated in a campaign against King Charles XII of Sweden, and in 1715 in the siege of Stralsund.
His interest in architecture developed in a roundabout way, and came from representing buildings in his pictures. Later, the pictorial aspect of his architectural sketches was often noted and met with varying reactions. Heinrich Ludwig Manger, as an architect more a technician than an artist, wrote with a critical undertone in 1789 in his "Baugeschichte von Potsdam", that Knobelsdorff designed his buildings "merely in a perspective and picturesque way", but praised his paintings. Frederick the Great, in contrast, commented positively on the architect's "picturesque style" ("gout pittoresque"). There is also no evidence that the informal style of his drawings ever posed a serious impediment to the execution of his buildings.
While still a soldier he developed his artistic talents in self-study. After leaving military service he arranged to be trained in various painting techniques by the Prussian court painter Antoine Pesne, with whom he shared a lifelong friendship. Knobelsdorff also acquired additional expertise in geometry and anatomy. He saw his professional future in painting, and his pictures and drawings were always highly appreciated, even after the focus of his activities turned elsewhere.
Hans Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff (17 February 1699 – 16 September 1753) was a painter and architect in Prussia.