CROSS-CULTURAL
Made for a Daoist shrine, they are decorated with cobalt blue and have handles in the shape of elephants.
The DAVID VASES
The Prima Porta Augustus’ breastplate depicts the future emperor Tiberius receiving back the Roman eagle standards that had been taken from Crassus by this empire located on the eastern frontier.
The PARTHIANS
Written in a square Sephardic script and bound on the right hand side of the pages, this manuscript found its way to Italy when the Jews were banished from Spain in 1492.
Billfrith the Anchorite made the metal ornaments on the outside cover of this gospel book, while Eadfrith supposedly wrote it in honor of St. Cuthbert.
The LINDISFARNE GOSPELS
A mace is the chosen weapon of this ruler who united upper and lower Egypt.
NARMER
The London Missionary Society didn’t quite finish the job on the island of Rarotonga, because there is still one surviving example of this phallic symbol wrapped in barkcloth.
STAFF GOD
Hasegawa Tohaku made a famous pair of these objects, decorated with charcoal ink brush paintings of pine trees, but they were introduced to colonial Mexico by galleons from Manila.
BYOBU or BIOMBO
He conquered the Kalingas in a bloody war and was so disturbed by the slaughter that he converted to Buddhism and built the Great Stupa of Sanchi.
ASHOKA
One of these books is in Toledo, a gift from Blanche of Castille‘s son Louis IX, whom she taught using its pictures.
This Frenchman painted imaginary “capriccios”of Roman ruins. BOTH his names end in -bert!
HUBERT ROBERT
This goddess is about to smite Alcyoneus, whom she holds by the hair on the frieze of the Great Altar of Pergamum.
ATHENA
Though paralyzed on one side of his body, he uses assistants to make his works with colorful Ankara fabric and headless mannequins, to “represent European leaders as mindless” in their rush to get a slice of Africa.
YINKA SHONIBARE
Made by Mamluk artisans in Egypt, this object was ironically used for the baptisms of French kings, though not Louis IX.
BAPTISTÉRE de St. LOUIS
This dynasty conquered most of Spain and named it Al-Andalus, producing the Pyxis of Al-Mughira, the Alhambra, and the Great Mosque of Cordoba.
UMAYYAD Caliphate
Titled “Tianshu,” it is made with 4000 invented Hanzu, or Mandarin-style letters, which earned disapproval for its artist after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Xu Bing’s A BOOK FROM THE SKY
The Great Salt Lake is the location of this conceptual artist’s Spiral Jetty.
ROBERT SMITHSON
Henry Fuseli painted this god smiting Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent.
THOR
Sir Harry Rawson commanded the 1897 Expedition that drove this ruler into exile and confiscated all the brass plaques that had decorated his palace.
The OBA
Hiroshige and Hokusai were among the first ukiyo-e artists in Japan to use this pigment from Europe, invented by Johann Conrad Dippel, especially in their views of Mt Fuji and the sea.
PRUSSIAN BLUE
The first Ilkhanid ruler of Persia was the grandson of this conqueror, as commemorated in the Great Mongol Shahnameh.
GENGHIS KHAN
Written in silver ink on lambskin, it’s the second oldest illustrated Bible manuscript in the world, and depicts characters twice or more in the same picture to show narrative progression.
VIENNA GENESIS
DAILY DOUBLE
“Of course he does well for a little boy, but it is I who am the big artist,” joked this Mexican painter about her husband Diego Rivera. Her name is derived from the Norse word frith.
An old man feebly smites some stones while a young boy gathers them up in a basket in this painting by Courbet that was destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII.
The STONEBREAKERS
Originally it included Ignacio Ramirez holding a sign saying “Dios no existe”; it also features Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and the American general Winfield Scott, who took Mexico City. Name this mural by Diego Rivera.
DREAM OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE ALAMEDA (Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central)
The design of Korean Silla crowns is derived from similar crowns produced by this reindeer-herding nomadic people who ranged from Ukraine to Afghanistan.
SCYTHIANS
Canova’s Napoleon as Mars is now located in Apsley House, the London residence of this man, who defeated Napoleon.
The Duke of WELLINGTON
DAILY DOUBLE
Named after the then-viceroy of New Spain who oversaw its creation by Francisco Gualpuyogualcal, this book’s first page shows an eagle on a cactus marking the foundation of Tenochtitlan.
BERTHA
The Lullibi people are depicted being smitten by this Akkadian ruler, the son of Sargon, on a relief sculpture that was later plundered by the Elamite ruler Shutruk-Nahhunte.
NARAM-SIN
Given as gifts to European sea captains and then taken back to kings and nobles who commissioned them, they were made with yellow and black feathers from the o’o bird.
AHU-ULA