Ben

This will blow your mind!! Nanjing Yunjin brocade woven by hand with silk, gold thread & peacock feathers. Just 5cm a day. Centuries-old royal craft. Pure mastery!

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The art of intricacy ✨ A masterpiece of chased gold, filigree & modular design.

When marble speaks...

In 1625, a sculpture was unveiled in Rome that made the people who saw it believe in miracles. And the man who carved it was just 23 when he started... The story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, written in the year 8 AD. Apollo, struck by Cupid's golden arrow, falls helplessly in love with the nymph Daphne. She, struck by Cupid's arrow of lead, despises him. He chases her through the woods. She runs until her strength gives out, and then she calls to her father, the river god Peneus, to save her. Peneus answers his daughter the only way he can: he transforms her into a laurel tree. Her feet take root. Bark closes over her skin. Her arms become branches and her fingers become leaves... Gian Lorenzo Bernini chose to carve the exact moment it begins. Cardinal Scipione Borghese commissioned the work in 1622 and Bernini bought the block of Carrara marble that August. He worked on it for three years and by the time the sculpture was finished in 1625, he had done something no one had ever done in stone. Apollo's fingers press into Daphne's side, and the marble gives way under them like flesh. Her toes have become roots, and you can see the bark spiraling up her leg. Her hair fans behind her as if still caught in the wind. And at the tips of her fingers, where her hands are turning into branches, the marble becomes leaves so thin that light passes through them. When it was unveiled, Bernini's biographer Filippo Baldinucci recorded what happened: "Immediately when it was finished, there arose such a cry that all Rome concurred in seeing it as a miracle." 400 years later, the sculpture has never left the room it was made for. It still stands in the Galleria Borghese, in the same villa, in the same city where it was first called a miracle. Centuries have come and gone, and Daphne is still mid-transformation, frozen forever in the instant before she disappears... If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the wonder and beauty of history. You can join us here: james-lucas.com/welcome Subscribe and never miss a story like this.

Learn Vernier Calliper in 60 Seconds

Look closely at where the fluted cup meets the winged lion on this 2,500-year-old gold rhyton. The soldering is so precise the joints are nearly invisible to the naked eye. We are looking at a level of metallurgical mastery from Achaemenid Iran that seriously challenges our understanding of ancient manufacturing.

La caída de los condenados (c. 1620) es una de las obras más monumentales y dramáticas del pintor barroco flamenco Peter Paul Rubens. Actualmente se conserva en la Alte Pinakothek en Múnich.

500 years before modern near-death experiences... Bosch already painted this. Hope, calm, and the unknown all in one hauntingly beautiful scene.

Tumba del faraón Seti I en el Valle de los Reyes. (Vídeo©️unlimitedluxor)

Romulus founded the city of Rome on this date in 753 BC! 🏛️

BMW Kingston Spirit of Passion Limited Edition

The ULTIMATE most Luxurious Cadillac ever built Like - Love - Leave?

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These Jacob & Co masterpiece plays two different music on clicks, limited to 74 pieces. Priced at $440,000

No one will steal this hood ornament

when a $40,000,000 mansion is so over-the-top it has an underwater garage... and you have to cover your Gucci shoes just to walk inside 😂

🇮🇹 Quand vous irez à Rome, profitez-en pour pousser la porte de la Gallerie du Palazzo Colonna. La grande salle est absolument magnifique ! 🤩

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