Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 January 23

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From today's featured article

Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed is a painting by English artist William Etty, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1830. It shows a scene from the Histories by Herodotus, in which Candaules, king of Lydia, invites his bodyguard Gyges to hide in the couple's bedroom and watch his wife Nyssia undress. After Nyssia notices Gyges, he kills Candaules and takes his place as king. The painting shows the moment at which Nyssia, unaware of Gyges, removes the last of her clothes. Etty hoped to impart the moral that women are not chattels and that men violating their rights should be punished, but he made little effort to explain this to audiences. The painting was immediately controversial, seen as a cynical combination of pornography and a violent unpleasant narrative, and critics condemned it as an immoral work of the type they would not expect from a British artist. In 1929 it was among several artworks transferred to the newly expanded Tate Gallery, where it remains. (Full article...)

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Henry Buttelmann

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In the news

The Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul

Rocket Lab's Electron becomes the first rocket to reach orbit using an electric pump-fed engine.
An attack on a hotel (pictured) in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills at least 18 people and injures more than 20 others.
Turkey begins a military offensive against US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria.
A bus fire in the Aktobe Region, Kazakhstan, kills 52 people.
Russell M. Nelson becomes President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The British construction and services company Carillion goes into compulsory liquidation.

On this day...

January 23

USS Pueblo

1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history killed about 830,000 people in Shaanxi Province, China.
1793 – The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for the second time.
1915 – The Chilembwe uprising, regarded as a key moment in the history of Malawi, began as rebels, led by a minister, attacked local plantation owners.
1942 – World War II: Japan began its invasion of the island of New Britain in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.
1968 – USS Pueblo (pictured) was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.

Muthu Coomaraswamy (b. 1834) · Mykola Leontovych (d. 1921) · Louisa Cadamuro (b. 1987)

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Today's featured picture

Allegory of Vanity, a vanitas completed by Antonio de Pereda between 1632 and 1636. Works in this category of symbolic art, especially associated with still life paintings of 16th- and 17th-century Flanders and the Netherlands, refer to the traditional Christian view of earthly life and the worthless nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. The Latin noun vanĭtās means "emptiness" and derives its prominence from Ecclesiastes. Common symbols in vanitas include skulls, rotten fruit; bubbles; smoke, watches, hourglasses, and musical instruments.

Painting: Antonio de Pereda

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