The painting's fame rests on Leonardo's innovations, its ambiguous expression, and above all a 1911 theft that made it a media sensation, followed by mass reproduction and tourism.
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A critic mocked Monet's 1874 painting Impression, Sunrise as a mere 'impression'. The insult stuck, and the painters later adopted it for themselves.
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Michelangelo painted in buon fresco, laying pigment into wet plaster one day's patch at a time, from his own scaffold, using full-size cartoons transferred to the wall.
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A piano sounds when a key throws a felt hammer against strings, whose vibrations a soundboard amplifies. Cristofori's invention let players vary loudness by touch.
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Jazz grew in New Orleans around the 1890s as African American, Creole, and other musicians blended blues, ragtime, brass band, and dance traditions into an improvised style.
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Twelve notes came from stacking pure fifths, which almost close into a circle after twelve steps, and from the need to play in many keys. Equal temperament made that practical.
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Gothic cathedrals were built over decades by skilled masons and carpenters using models, templates, scaffolds, wooden centring and human- or animal-powered cranes.
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Photography emerged from the camera obscura and light-sensitive chemistry. Niépce made the earliest surviving camera photograph in the 1820s, and Daguerre's 1839 process made it practical.
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In several blind tests, Stradivari violins did not beat good new violins. Players and listeners often preferred the new ones and could not reliably tell old from new.
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Famous claims about the Parthenon, the pyramids and Leonardo lack solid support. A few works did use the ratio deliberately, mostly from the late nineteenth century onward, plus rare Greek cases.
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