An interesting and ironic note can be made concerning the new charter: after everything, men still managed everything (the Lady Managers still had to obtain authority from the male board of directors). ... The Academy's primary instruction when it was first incorporated was the study of casts of classical statues in the Louvre (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). It continued educating its students in a classical manner and drawing from the live nude model was introduced around 1812, followed in succeeding decades by figure modeling and portrait classes. ...

• Word Count: 1912
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Here Botticelli passionately tries to recapture the former glory of Rome, because the classical myths had become popular among educated laymen. To these men, the mythology of the Greeks and Romans represented something more than captivating stories; they were convinced these classical legends must have contained some profound and mysterious truth. ... Simply as a side note: Venus was conceived when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, the god Uranus, the severed genitals falling into the sea and fertilizing it. ...

• Word Count: 1718
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin wrote the essayThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? in 1936. In his essay he discusses art mainly before the 20th century, and specifically, theaura? of that art. Aura, as Mr. Benjamin describes it, is simply uniq...

• Word Count: 1974
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School