Word: viii
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...adopted son, the Swiss city of Basel just about knocked itself out that autumn day in 1538. Twelve years before. Hans Holbein the Younger had quit the town to seek richer rewards elsewhere. Now, dressed in the finest silk and velvet, he was court painter to King Henry VIII of England; his name was known throughout Europe, and Basel was ready to shower him with honors and commissions to lure him back permanently. The city failed, but it has cherished Holbein as its own ever since. This summer, when the University of Basel celebrated its 500th birthday, it decided...
...time of the Reformation so stifled intellectual life that Erasmus complained to a friend in England, "The arts are freezing in this city." Armed with letters of introduction from the old scholar, Hans finally settled in England, where he painted everyone from Sir Thomas More to King Henry VIII himself. He made a couple of visits home, but each time returned to his fatter commissions in England, and there in 1543 he died of the plague...
...devil's hoofs beneath the princess' skirt. King James I of Great Britain called tobacco "the lively image and pattern of hell," slapped on a big import tax. Louis XIII of France and Czar Michael I decreed penalties for smoking, ranging from death to castration, and Pope Urban VIII threatened excommunication for anyone found smoking in church or on church premises. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, attacked tobacco on grounds of health ?one of a host of doctors who through the years have attributed to the plant 300 diseases ranging from impotence...
...reads all scripts, adapted Oedipus Rex for Omnibus, is now adapting Richard Marsh's The Datchett Diamonds for the new classical mystery series, which he thought up. Kerr would like to do the historical plays of Shakespeare, in order, on consecutive nights, from King John to Henry VIII, is meanwhile having a rough time finding a Sherlock Holmes story for the mystery series because A. Conan Doyle's plots were so "simple-minded...
...year (as against 200,000 each for Munich and Cologne). Yet Kassel's Gemaeldegalerie can boast of one of the world's most brilliant collections of early German and Flemish paintings, topped by no fewer than 19 Rembrandts. Kassel can thank the art-loving Landgrave Wilhelm VIII, who ruled Hesse from 1751 to 1760. As a youth, Wilhelm did military service in the Low Countries, fell in love with Flemish art, and got in the habit of collecting it. Wilhelm's finest trophy was Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, which Rembrandt painted in 1656, the year...