Art Literature

Question 1

Naturalis historia (The Natural History)

What date were the first 10 books completed?
Who wrote it?
Name the 6 female artists of antiquity.

Answer 1

AD 77 (first 10 books completed).
Pliny the Elder.

Final revision of the remainder was not complete at the time of Pliny’s death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny’s nephew, Pliny the Younger.

One of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover all ancient knowledge. The work’s subject area is thus not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as “the natural world, or life”

Question 2

Who were the 6 female artists of antiquity referenced in the ‘Naturalis historia’ and their reported dates

Answer 2

#1 Timarete (or Thamyris, Tamaris, Thamar)
#2 Eirene (or Irene)
#3 Iaia of Cyzicus, sometimes (incorrectly) called Lala or Lalla
#4 Aristarete
#5 Kalypso
#6 Olympias

Question 3

De Mulieribus Claris or De Claris Mulieribus (On Famous Women)

Answer 3

1361–62
Giovanni Boccaccio

Collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.

The author declares in the preface that this collection of 106 short biographies (104 chapters) of women is the first example in Western literature devoted solely and exclusively to women.[5] Some of the lost works of Suetonius’ “illustrious people” and Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium are a mixture of women and men, where others like Petrarch’s De Viris Illustribus and Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus are biographies of exclusively men. Boccaccio himself even says this work was inspired and modeled on Petrarch’s De Viris Illustribus