Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Locke, Alain LeRoy

(Encyclopedia)Locke, Alain LeRoy, 1885–1954, American writer, educator, philosopher, and cultural critic, b. Philadelphia, grad. Harvard (A.B., 1907; Ph.D., 1918), first African-American Rhodes Scholar at Oxford ...

Michelozzo Michelozzi

(Encyclopedia)Michelozzo Michelozzi mēkālôtˈtsō mēkālôtˈtsē [key], 1396–1472, Italian sculptor, architect, goldsmith, and founder. He was long associated with Donatello and Ghiberti. His first independe...

hula

(Encyclopedia)hula, traditional Hawaiian dance usually performed standing with symbolically descriptive arm and hand movements and gracefully sensual undulations of the hips; it is also done in a sitting position. ...

Beham

(Encyclopedia)Beham pā– [key], name of two German Renaissance artists, brothers, who were both influenced by Dürer and later by Italian art. Hans Sebald Beham, 1500–1550, engraver, etcher, and miniaturist, wi...

drawing

(Encyclopedia)drawing, art of the draftsman. In its broadest sense it includes every use of the delineated line and is thus basic to the arts of painting, architecture, sculpture, calligraphy, and geometry. The wor...

Toltec

(Encyclopedia)Toltec tŏlˈtĕk [key], ancient civilization of Mexico. The name in Nahuatl means “master builders.” The Toltec formed a warrior aristocracy that gained ascendancy in the Valley of Mexico c.a.d. ...

Nicholas of Cusa

(Encyclopedia)Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus), 1401?–1464, German humanist, scientist, statesman, and philosopher, from 1448 cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. The son of a fisherman, Nicholas was educate...

Delaunay, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Delaunay, Robert rōbĕrˈ dəlōnāˈ [key], 1885–1941, French painter; husband of Sonia Delaunay-Terk. By 1909, Delaunay had progressed from a neoimpressionist phase to cubism, applying cubist pri...

liberal arts

(Encyclopedia)liberal arts, term originally used to designate the arts or studies suited to freemen. It was applied in the Middle Ages to seven branches of learning, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and...

Agricola, Rudolphus

(Encyclopedia)Agricola, Rudolphus, 1443–85, Dutch humanist, whose real name was Roelof Huysmann. He opposed scholasticism and spread the culture of the Renaissance throughout Germany greatly influencing Erasmus a...