europeana

Ministers on Europeana: Arūnas Gelūnas

Arti­cle by Arū­nas Gelū­nas, Min­is­ter of Culture:

One of the great­est con­tri­bu­tions of old Lithua­nia to Euro­pean and World sci­ence and cul­ture is the work of Kaz­imieras Seme­nav­ičius ‘Artis Mag­nae Artille­riae’. In his book printed in Ams­ter­dam in 1650, the Lithuan­ian sci­en­tist was the first per­son in the world to have described and drawn a multi-stage rocket – a pro­to­type of the rocket used in cos­mo­nau­tics today.

Author: Kaz­imieras Seme­nav­ičius (Siemienow­icz Kazimierz)

Title: Artis mag­nae artille­riae pars prima. Stu­dio et opera Casimiri Siemienow­icz equi­tis Lithuani

Date: 1650, Amsterdam

The first part of ‘Artis Mag­nae Artille­riae’ was made up of 5 chap­ters (a total of 305 pages of text and 206 illus­tra­tions and draw­ings). In the first chap­ter, Seme­nav­ičius describes can­non cal­ibers, their designs and appli­ca­tions. In the sec­ond chap­ter he analy­ses the tech­nolo­gies of gun­pow­der as well as other mate­ri­als used in artillery. In the third most inter­est­ing and valu­able chap­ter ‘About rock­ets’ he presents his most impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies: the ratio of rocket height to the width of its jet noz­zle, a multi-stage rocket, the sta­bil­i­sa­tion of rock­ets with the help of wings, a rocket bat­tery (a multi-stage rocket of sequen­tial cir­cuit). The sci­en­tist, who called war the biggest scourge of mankind, presents more than 20 exam­ples of rock­ets loaded with pow­der, and accu­rately describes their prop­er­ties and pro­duc­tion . In the fourth and fifth chap­ters, the sci­en­tist sum­marised the achieve­ments of fire­works used in war and for enter­tain­ment. For the first time in his­tory of the world, the work of Kaz­imieras Seme­nav­ičius pre­sented artillery not only as the art of war, but also as a branch of sci­ence based on pre­cise math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions as well as well-understood laws of physics. this work was an unri­valed clas­sic of artillery sci­ence right up to the begin­ning of the nine­teenth century.

Seme­nav­ičius wrote his book ‘Artis Mag­nae Artille­riae in Latin. In the same year that it was pub­lished it was trans­lated into French, later on – into the Ger­man, Eng­lish, Dutch and Pol­ish lan­guages. The author was awarded var­i­ous medals by for­eign countries.

The mil­i­tary engi­neer­ing inven­tions of the sci­en­tist of oldLithua­nia, lying in the pages of the sev­en­teenth cen­tury book, are the result of tar­geted cul­tural and sci­en­tific patron­age. It could be said that the insight and eru­di­tion of King Vladislo­vas Vaza pro­vided a promis­ing Euro­pean sci­en­tist with a strong take-off pitch. It is truly amaz­ing when a weighed deci­sion to allow and sup­port, pro­vides an oppor­tu­nity for unique and inno­v­a­tive research, which, in turn, alters the devel­op­ment direc­tion and speed of a spe­cific sci­en­tific and/or cul­tural area and allows a fresh look to be taken, as well as the avail­able options to be evaluated.

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Event Summary: Culture for Digital Innovation

What do iconic foot­ball boots and the dig­i­tal econ­omy have in com­mon? Euro­peana – Europe’s dig­i­tal library, archive and museum show­cas­ing more than 23 mil­lion objects.

A unique event in Brus­sels, 9 May, high­lighted how the rich and diverse cul­tural her­itage that you can explore online at Euro­peana can drive inno­va­tion and eco­nomic growth and what needs to be done to make that a reality.

More than 350 peo­ple includ­ing Cul­ture Min­is­ters from across Europe, key fig­ures in the cre­ative indus­tries and lead­ers of Europe’s GLAMs (Gal­leries, Libraries, Archives and Muse­ums) got together to debate the hot issues that have to be tack­led, and on the top of that list was why we need to open up dig­i­tal data.

 
Com­mis­sioner Kroes explor­ing Europaena from her iPad

Vice Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Neelie Kroes was a key speaker and pas­sion­ate cham­pion of the dig­i­tal econ­omy and the role cul­tural her­itage and Euro­peana can play in sup­port­ing inno­va­tion and eco­nomic growth. Jill Cousins Europeana’s Chief Exec­u­tive stressed that Euro­peana was for every­one and that open data was the future if its full poten­tial was to be realised.

Euro­peana e-cloud presentation

Dur­ing the event Euro­peana show­cased the lat­est tech­nol­ogy to help bring online cul­tural her­itage alive with the e-cloud. With the help of cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy, a spe­cial 3 metre by 7 metre screen took view­ers on an inter­ac­tive three dimen­sional jour­ney through some of Europeana’s trea­sures and the sto­ries behind them. Cul­ture min­is­ters, Euro­pean Com­mis­sion­ers and key fig­ures in the cre­ative indus­tries were among those who put on their 3D glasses for the inter­ac­tive, inter­spa­tial e-cloud expe­ri­ence. This cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy could be the future of vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence at muse­ums gal­leries and libraries.

Com­mis­sioner Kroes launch­ing Hack4Europe! 2012

Com­mis­sioner Kroes also launched Hack4Europe! – a series of ‘hackathons’ in five Euro­pean coun­tries where Europe’s dig­i­tal design­ers, pro­gram­mers and devel­op­ers are chal­lenged to come up with inno­v­a­tive appli­ca­tions based on the open data and the trea­sure trove  of cul­tural objects in Europeana.

UK’s slide from ‘top trea­sures’ presentation

And Euro­pean Cul­ture Min­is­ters revealed their per­sonal ‘top trea­sures’ of the very best of Europe’s sport­ing, lit­er­ary, artis­tic and cul­tural her­itage from Nokia foot­ball boots to Car­vag­gio. In the com­ing weeks all their choices will be pub­lished together with a per­son­alised blog entry on Euro­peana.

Ministers on Europeana: Ed Vaizey / Fiona Hyslop

Arti­cle by Ed Vaizey, Min­is­ter for Cul­ture, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Cre­ative Indus­tries in the UK Gov­ern­ment, and Fiona Hys­lop, Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary for Cul­ture and Exter­nal Affairs in the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment:

We are delighted to choose this pic­ture of John Logie Baird as our key Euro­peana image.

Tele­vi­sion – vision from afar – was one of the great­est inven­tions of the 20^th cen­tury.  And we are proud that it was invented not just by a Briton, but by a Scots­man.  The great thing about tele­vi­sion, though, is that it brings peo­ple across the world together.  From first invent­ing tele­vi­sion in 1925, by 1927 Baird suc­ceeded in trans­mit­ting tele­vi­sion from Lon­don to Glas­gow and the fol­low­ing year saw the first transat­lantic tele­vi­sion transmission.

The Euro­peana project is a wor­thy suc­ces­sor to that way of let­ting peo­ple see images from around the world first devel­oped by Baird.   Using the new medium of the inter­net, Euro­peana allows peo­ple across Europe and, indeed, the world to see fas­ci­nat­ing mem­o­ra­bilia and great works of cre­ativ­ity from Europe’s past at the click of a mouse-key: works of art from such world-renowned muse­ums and gal­leries as the Rijksmu­seum and the Lou­vre on screen in an instant.

In the true John Logie Baird tra­di­tion Euro­peana includes video-recordings (invented by Baird as “Phono­vi­sion” in 1928) as well as sta­tic images, and as tech­nol­ogy devel­ops we are sure that Europeana’s offer­ings will reflect that devel­op­ment.  In Scot­land, for exam­ple, His­toric Scot­land, our exec­u­tive agency charged with safe­guard­ing the nation’s his­toric envi­ron­ment and pro­mot­ing its under­stand­ing and enjoy­ment, has set up the Scot­tish Ten project, a ground­break­ing inter­na­tional 3D scan­ning project to dig­i­tally doc­u­ment Scotland’s five World Her­itage Sites and five inter­na­tional ones. http://www.scottishten.org/

So we look for­ward to the Euro­peana project con­tin­u­ing to draw the peo­ples of Europe and the world together in shar­ing our rich his­toric and cul­tural heritage.

Ministers on Europeana: Géza Szőcs

Arti­cle by Géza Szőcs, Min­is­ter of State for Culture:

We have no knowl­edge of any eques­trian statue on pub­lic dis­play, or indeed, any statue at all which was com­pleted by Leonardo dur­ing his life­time. The well-known, small scale stat­uettes, like those proudly dis­played in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan, or London’s Jean­neret col­lec­tion, may have served as stud­ies for paint­ings, or – as they have been called – „mod­el­los”. These prob­a­bly orig­i­nated from Leonardo’s work­shop, or most prob­a­bly his inner cir­cle, and gained their cur­rent form as bronze stat­ues dur­ing the 18^th or 19^th century.

Sim­i­larly, we have no cer­tain knowl­edge whether the object of art kept in Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts was com­mis­sioned by a Lom­bard prince or war­lord, or whether it was com­mis­sioned by King Fran­cis I of France, who may have even been the model for the statue. We can only assume that it was made for  „the Bat­tle of Anghiara” fresco des­tined for the Palazzo Vec­chio. What we do know, is that unlike any other eques­trian stat­ues attrib­uted to Leonardo, this one was cast in a type of bronze avail­able in the 16^th cen­tury with tech­niques already estab­lished at the time.  Should it be a copy, it must have been made shortly after the artist’s death.

But what does this statue reveal about Leonardo?

His pas­sion.

All of Leonardo’s paint­ings are suf­fused with an almost aquatic calm. If there is any move­ment, those are restrained, reduced, almost sub­lim­i­nal. If there are any inci­dences in his paint­ings, or indeed, if they can be seen at all, they are either lyric, some­times epic, but never dra­matic. (The drama in The Last Sup­per is only evi­dent for those famil­iar with the New Tes­ta­ment). The mae­stro was wise, com­posed and calm, as was his view of the world con­veyed by his art. This horse­man, how­ever, goes aga

inst equi­lib­rium, a sta­tic state and still­ness: the artist picked up where the cre­ators of the Lao­coon Group, the three sculp­tors from Rhodes, Age­sander and his two com­pan­ions, left off. The pas­sion that radi­ates from this horse­man points for­ward to the Baroque, or even Roman­ti­cism, to some of the works of Shel­ley, Byron and Fer­enc Liszt.

The orig­i­nal fresco „the Bat­tle of Anghiara” has per­ished. The Last Sup­per nearly suf­fered the same fate, in the same way we lost so many mas­ter­pieces by count­less artists! What a fas­ci­nat­ing sce­nario cre­ated by fate! While Italy had to suf­fer the loss of so many mar­vel­lous cre­ations, the province of Pan­nonia, whose his­tory was far more tur­bu­lent over the past cen­tury, man­aged to safe­guard and keep a tiny stat­uette intact, whose gray-haired cre­ator, should he walk among us, would cer­tainly won­der:  how did you get here, next to the Danube?

And he would most cer­tainly dwell upon the fact that not only books have their des­tinies, but every sin­gle statue is like a mes­sage in a bot­tle, cast into the ocean by its cre­ator. This mes­sage was washed up on our shores and its pic­to­r­ial ego, its imprint, has now made its way back into the col­lec­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of great Euro­pean art treasures.

Leonardo would cer­tainly be most pleased.

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New Virtual Exhibition: Untold Stories of WW1

In the lat­est Euro­peana Vir­tual Exhi­bi­tion we show­case some of the most extra­or­di­nary and untold real-life sto­ries from the First World War.  We trav­eled around Europe and col­lected per­sonal sto­ries and items that peo­ple con­tributed through the Euro­peana 1914–1918 project in Ger­many, UK, Ire­land , Slove­nia, Lux­em­bourg, and Denmark.

Renowned his­to­rian and WW1 author Peter Englund endorses the exhi­bi­tion. He said: “This impor­tant and imag­i­na­tive project tells the other side of the story, from the point of view of a young sol­dier who signed up seek­ing adven­ture, to the fam­ily dev­as­tated by news that he was one of mil­lions who would never return. No mat­ter which side of the con­flict they were on, the poignancy of these human expe­ri­ences is the same.”

Peter Englund (Pho­to­graph: Mikael Gus­tavsen) 

The exhi­bi­tion is avail­able in Eng­lish, French, Ger­man and Sloven­ian.

For more infor­ma­tion about the project, col­lec­tion days or how to con­tribute your own items: Europeana1914-1918.

Ministers on Europeana: Joakim Stymne

Arti­cle by Joakim Stymne, State Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Culture:

This is a view of the Old Town in Stock­holm, taken one win­ter day in 1900 by Swedish physi­cian Carl Cur­man.

I have cho­sen this image to rep­re­sent the Swedish con­tent in Euro­peana because it shows how user inter­est and demand can, and should, con­trol pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of what aspects of cul­tural her­itage should be digi­tised and made dig­i­tally available.

You can find this sim­ple snap­shot of Stock­holm on a win­ter day 100 years ago in Euro­peana. It is also posted on Flick­r­Com­mons where it is the most com­mented Swedish image. Thou­sands of peo­ple around the world have admired its beauty on the site. The photo is no inten­tional mas­ter­piece, but it con­veys some­thing that man­ages to touch many peo­ple so many years later. What is it? Is the image com­po­si­tion fas­ci­nat­ing or is it the beau­ti­ful blue color that appeals or is it just the breath­tak­ing his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive in the fact that the pic­ture shows some­thing that really existed over 100 years ago? It is dif­fi­cult to answer. It may be enough to note that in its sim­plic­ity, it is an every­day masterpiece.

Carl Cur­man, born in 1833, was a typ­i­cal ama­teur pho­tog­ra­pher of his era. He was well edu­cated and inter­ested in sci­ence. He used pho­tog­ra­phy as part of his pro­fes­sion as a doc­tor and doc­u­mented many of his patients. He also exper­i­mented with pho­tographs, using dif­fer­ent expo­sure and devel­op­ment tech­niques. But Cur­man also had artis­tic ambi­tions and held a degree in sculp­ture from an art school in Stock­holm. Many early 19^th cen­tury pho­tog­ra­phers ref­er­enced the clas­sic artists, as can be seen in the pic­to­r­ial com­po­si­tion of Curman’s pho­tos. Land­scapes dom­i­nate his images, which also depict the still­ness required for the long expo­sures that the pho­to­sen­si­tive mate­r­ial and tech­nol­ogy needed.

The pho­to­graph  is part of the col­lec­tion of Carl Cur­man pic­tures owned by the National Her­itage Board. Parts of the col­lec­tion can be found in Euro­peana and have been posted on the National Her­itage Board’s pho­to­stream on Flickr Com­mons. The col­lec­tion has more than 600 digi­tised images.

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