Alexander the Great Cutting the Gordian Knot
Alexander the Great Cutting the Gordian Knot c1718-19 by Italian Artist Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691–1765); þekktur sem arkitekt og málari á útsýni sínu yfir Róm, detailing the antiquities of that great city.
This piece follows the legend of the Phrygians an an ancient Indo-European speaking people, who inhabited central-western Anatolia in antiquity; and were related to the Greeks.
The Phrygians were without a king; but an oracle at Telmissus, the ancient capital of Lycia decreed that the next man to enter the city that was driving an ox-cart should become their king.
Then a peasant farmer named Gordias came into the city on an ox-cart and was promptly declared king; and out of gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox-cart his father was driving to the Phrygian god Sabazios; whom the Greeks identified with Zeus and tied it to a post with an intricate knot of cornel bark.
The ox-cart still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia at Gordium in the fourth century BC when Alexander the Great arrived there; by which time the kingdom of Phrygia had been reduced to a satrapy, or province, of the Persian Empire.
Then another oracle declared that the man capable of unraveling the elaborate knot was destined to become the ruler of Asia; and so Alexander gave his hand at unraveling the knot with little success; but he reasoned that it mad no difference how the knot was unraveled, so he drew his sword and sliced it mid way with a single stroke.
This is a retouched digital art reproduction of a public domain image.
Information Above & Below Is Derived From Wikipedia.org
Giovanni Paolo Panini eða Giovanni Paolo Pannini var málari og arkitekt sem starfaði í Róm og er fyrst og fremst þekktur sem einn af vedutisti (“view painters”).
Sem málari, Pannini er þekktastur fyrir útsýnið yfir Róm, in which he took a particular interest in the city’s antiquities.
Meðal frægustu verka hans eru sýn hans á innviði Pantheon (fyrir hönd Francesco Algarotti 1712 – 1764 – Feneyskur fjölfræðingur), og vedute málverk hans af myndasöfnum með útsýni yfir Róm.
Flest verk hans, sérstaklega rústirnar, hafa ímyndaða og óraunverulega skreytingu sem einkennir capriccio þemu. Í þessu líkjast þeir capricci ítalska málarans og prentsmiðsins Marco Ricci (1676 – 1730).
Panini málaði einnig portrett, þar á meðal einn af Benedikt XIV páfa (fæddur Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini 1675 – 1758 – Yfirmaður kaþólsku kirkjunnar frá 1740 – 1758).
Í Róm, Panini vann sér nafn sem hallaskreytingamaður. Sum verka hans voru meðal annars Villa Patrizi c1719/25, Palazzo de Carolis c1720, og rómverska prestaskólann c1721/22).
Í 1719, Panini var tekinn inn í söfnuð Virtuosi al Pantheon. Hann kenndi í Róm við Accademia di San Luca og Académie de France, þar sem hann er sagður hafa haft áhrif á Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Í 1754, hann þjónaði sem prinsinn (leikstjóri) frá Accademia di San Luca.