*CG* - Chez Giroux Back! - What? Rococo? Victorian? Edwardian? Pearls! (Meow)
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The pearls are perfect for those periods, my favorite item! Ludovika 1860s dress is lovely too, I like the moire silk like skirt 
Forum Activity for @leopoldina
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~Chateau d'Esprit~ New Releases - 01/07/2014 -
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Alexandrina looks great, love the new hairs!
I feel some competition would do SL good, but since it comes from Linden Lab I'm not sure how things will be.
But the idea of a new, modern SL successor coming to slowly replace it in the near future doesn't sound bad. Like ML said, SL will be gone one day, and this new "rival" would then be the only choice left. I mean, if its basically SL's community and contents but in a new and more efficient software/virtual-world (dunno how to say it lol) then why not?
Whale tale: a Dutch seascape and its lost Leviathan
History
Link to the video, I can't put it in here somehow, sorry!
Earlier this year a conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute made a surprising discovery while working on a 17th-century painting owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum. As Shan Kuang cleaned the surface, she revealed the beached whale that had been the intended focus of the composition.The artworkis now back on displayin the Fitzwilliam's newly-refurbished gallery of Dutch Golden Age painting.
As I worked across the surface a man appeared and then next to him a shape that looked like a sail... At the end of the treatment, the whale had returned as a key component of the composition, just as the artist had intended.
-Shan Kuang
In 1873 the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was given a number of Dutch landscape paintings by a benefactor called Richard Kerrich. Among these works of art was a beach scene painted by the artist Hendrick van Anthonissen early in the 17th century.Anthonissen depicts groups of people clustered on a sandy beach at the small town of Scheveningen. Other figures stand on the cliffs and, on the shore, several boats have been pulled up on the sand.
For at least 150 years this seemingly unremarkable work of art has harboured a secret. The cleaning of the painting has now revealed that a beached whale provided the focus of the original composition. The whale explains the hitherto slightly baffling presence of groups of people on the beach, and atop the cliffs, on what appears to be a blustery winters day.With the Leviathan now back where the artist placed it, the scene makes perfect sense.
The hulking shape of the stranded whale was discovered by Shan Kuang, a postgraduate student at the world-renowned Hamilton Kerr Institute, a division of the Fitzwilliam Museum dedicated to the conservation and restoration of easel paintings. Kuang was assigned the painting as part of conservation carried out on Dutch works of art during the refurbishment of the Fitzwilliams gallery of Dutch Golden Age painting, which reopened on Tuesday.
The first inkling that a key feature was missing from the Anthonissen artwork came when Kuang meticulously removed a top layer of varnish and overpaint to reveal a small figure, apparently standing on the sea horizon. As conservators, we take off the resin varnish that was applied to protect and saturate the paint. The varnish yellows and darkens with time, said Kuang.
As I worked across the surface a man appeared and then next to him a shape that looked like a sail. By this time I could also make out an area of the sea which had been painted more crudely than the rest of the ocean. It was a thick layer of repaint covering a large section of original artwork. At the end of the treatment, the whale had returned as a key component of the composition, just as the artist had intended.
The man who seemed to be standing on the horizon is, in fact, balanced on the whales back where Kuang suggests that he might even be measuring its length.The chosen focus of the painting resonates with a surge of public interest in whales: contemporary records show many instances of whale beaching on the coastline of the Netherlands in the first half of the 17th century. While the Anthonissen painting seeks to represent the whale in a realistic manner, some prints from the period portray whales as rampaging monsters of the deep and omens of disaster.
Conservators face difficult decisions when confronted with overpainting. Its important that we are true to the artists intentions. After establishing that Anthonissen had not made this alteration himself, the decision was made in conjunction with curators at the Fitzwilliam to uncover the original paint hiding beneath the repaint, said Kuang.
Removing repaint has its uncertainties: you dont always know how easily the paint can be removed or the condition of the original painting beneath the overpaint. Fortunately, the whale only had a few damages and was overall in good condition. I was able to remove the overpainting by scraping with a scalpel and using carefully chosen solvents. I had to proceed very gently and often work under the microscope to ensure no damage was done to the painting. It was very satisfying to see the whale slowly appearing.
No-one knows why the whale was painted out of the picture or when. Today we treat works of art as entities but in the previous centuries, painting were often elements of interior design that were adapted to fit certain spaces or adjusted to suit changing tastes. Its possible that the whale was removed because the presence of a dead animal was considered offensive or perhaps without the whale the picture was more marketable, said Kuang.
According to the documentation, no-one had any idea that the painting featured a whale when it was gifted to the Fitzwilliam. An analysis of the paint suggests the alteration is very old, but not contemporary to when the picture was paintedcirca 1641.The whale was likely overpainted in the 18th or 19th century, before it was given to the Fitzwilliam in 1873.
Conservators require a thorough grounding in chemistry as well as fine art. On top of that, they need excellent hand-eye coordination and a commitment to detail. Kuang, who took a first degree in chemistry at Yale University in the USA, is in her second year of a three-year course that will lead to a Postgraduate Diploma in Conservation of Easel Paintings.As students at the Hamilton Kerr we are extremely privileged to be able to work, under close supervision from tutors, on the conservation of important works of art. To have made a discovery like this and bring an element of the composition back to life is just wonderful, she said.
View of Scheveningen Sands by Hendrick van Anthonissen is on permanent display in the Fitzwilliam Museum.For information and opening times http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/
For more information about this story contact Alexandra Buxton, Office of Communications, University of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673 or communications@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 332300
updated by @leopoldina: 07 Jun 2017 10:43:34PM
~Chateau d'Esprit~ New Releases - 01/06/2014 -
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Oh this is all so cute! I love the effect you used on the hairs, and the hat is the cutest <3
Traveler Challenge: An Exciting, New Quest
Communty News & Events
That sounds like a very fun challenge! Its very nice to have such things in SL, specially since sometimes it can get kind of boring. I will try to check it out once I'm not so busy.
Shali and Miss Herzo, you'll have to do it with me! lol
271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book
History
In 1692 an artist known only as A. Boogert sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water. The premise sounds simple enough, but the final product is almost unfathomable in its detail and scope.
Spanning nearly 800 completely handwritten (and painted) pages, Trait des couleurs servant la peinture leau , was probably the most comprehensive guide to paint and color of its time. According to Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel who translated part of the introduction, the color book was intended as an educational guide. The irony being there was only a single copy that was probably seen by very few eyes.
Its hard not to compare the hundreds of pages of color to its contemporary equivalent, the Pantone Color Guide , which wouldnt be published for the first time until 1963 .
The entire book is viewable in high resolution here , and you can read a description of it here (it appears E-Corpus might have crashed for the moment). The book is currently kept at the Bibliothque Mjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France. (via Erik Kwakkel )
[ Source ]
updated by @leopoldina: 06 Oct 2016 06:29:01AM
~Chateau d'Esprit~ New Releases - 27/04/2014 -
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Those are all beautiful Sophie, but Edith is my favorite :p