Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 June 2

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From today's featured article

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) was an Italian composer known for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote his most popular works including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, building on the traditions of masters such as Domenico Cimarosa. He also composed opera seria works such as Otello, Tancredi and Semiramide. All of these show innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims, later cannibalized for Le comte Ory, and in 1829 his last opera, Guillaume Tell (William Tell). He retired from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. (Full article...)

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In the news

Brigitte Bierlein

In association football, Liverpool win the UEFA Champions League, defeating Tottenham Hotspur in the final.
Brigitte Bierlein (pictured) is named interim chancellor of Austria, after a parliamentary motion of no confidence dismisses the government of Sebastian Kurz.
James Marape is elected Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, following the resignation of Peter O'Neill.
A river cruiser collides with another vessel and sinks in Budapest, Hungary, killing at least seven people.

On this day

June 2: Jerusalem Day in Israel (2019)

Diamond Rock

455 – After having removed Petronius Maximus from the throne, Vandals led by Genseric entered Rome and sacked it for two weeks.
1805 – Napoleonic Wars: A Franco-Spanish fleet recaptured British-held Diamond Rock (pictured), an uninhabited island at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France.
1919 – First Red Scare: Anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani set off eight bombs in eight cities across the United States.
1967 – German university student Benno Ohnesorg was killed during a protest in West Berlin against the visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, sparking the formation of the militant group 2 June Movement.
1994 – The Royal Air Force suffered its worst peacetime disaster when a Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, killing all 29 people on board.

Al-Muwaffaq (d. 891) · William Salmon (b. 1644) · Adelaide Casely-Hayford (b. 1865)

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Today's featured picture

The Mystical Nativity is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, dated around 1500 to 1501. It is his only signed work and has unusual iconography for a painting of the Nativity. The Virgin Mary is shown kneeling before the Christ Child in the centre, in the presence of the shepherds and wise men who are visiting him. At the bottom of the work, three angels embrace three men, seeming to raise them up from the ground, while seven devils behind them flee to the underworld. In Renaissance times, paintings of the Last Judgement showed viewers the reckoning of the damned and the saved at the time of Christ's Second Coming. According to art historian Jonathan Nelson, "in echoing this kind of painting the Mystical Nativity is asking us to think not only of Christ's birth but of his return".

The Greek inscription at the top of the work, referencing the Book of Revelation, translates as: 'This picture, at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, I, Alessandro, in the half-time after the time, painted, according to the eleventh [chapter] of Saint John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the release of the devil for three and a half years; then he shall be bound in the twelfth [chapter] and we shall see [him buried] as in this picture'. It has been suggested that the work may be connected with the influence of the fanatical preacher Girolamo Savonarola, who was active in Florence at the time and whose influence appears in a number of late paintings by Botticelli. The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

Painting credit: Sandro Botticelli

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