Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm

Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm was a German-born French-language journalist, art critic, diplomat and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. In 1765 Grimm wrote Poème lyrique, an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos. Like Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi, Grimm became interested in opera reform. According to Martin Fontius, a German literary theorist, "sooner or later a book entitled The Aesthetic Ideas of Grimm will have to be written."

Chronique de la Pucelle

The Chronique de la Pucelle or Chronique de Cousinot was composed by Guillaume Cousinot (1400-1484), seigneur de Montreuil, the son of Guillaume Cousinot who was chancellor to Louis I, Duke of Orléans. The younger Cousinot is a major contemporary source

Pietro Ottoboni (cardinal)

Pietro Ottoboni was an Italian cardinal and grandnephew of Pope Alexander VIII, who was also born Pietro Ottoboni. He is remembered especially as a great patron of music and art. Ottoboni was the last person to hold the curial office of Cardinal-nephew

Hôtel de Rambouillet

The Hôtel de Rambouillet, formerly the Hôtel de Pisani, was the Paris residence of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, who ran a renowned literary salon there from 1620 until 1648. It was situated on the west side of the rue Saint-Thomas-du

Poggio Bracciolini

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, usually referred to simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early Renaissance humanist. He was responsible for rediscovering and recovering many classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and

The Chocolate Girl

The Chocolate Girl is one of the most prominent pastels of Genevan artist Jean-Étienne Liotard, showing a chocolate-serving maid. The girl carries a tray with a porcelain chocolate cup and a glass of water. Liotard's contemporaries classed The Chocolate

Vincent La Chapelle

Vincent La Chapelle was a French master cook who is known to have worked for Phillip Dormer Stanhope, William IV, Prince of Orange, John V of Portugal, and Madame de Pompadour, the favourite mistress of Louis XV of France

Paolo Falconieri

Paolo Falconieri (1638–1704) was an Italian architect, painter and mathematician, from a noble family of Florence, whose intellectual interests were wide-ranging, one of the virtuosi of the first scientific century

Claude-Henri Watelet

Claude-Henri Watelet was a rich French fermier-général who was an amateur painter, a well-respected etcher, a writer on the arts and a connoisseur of gardens. Watelet's inherited privilege of farming taxes in the Orléanais left him free to pursue his

Monaldeschi

The Monaldeschi were one of the powerful noble families of Orvieto, central Italy, members of the Guelph party who contested with murders and violence the Ghibelline Filippeschi for control of the commune of Orvieto and the castelli of Umbria

Margaret Leshikar-Denton

Margaret E. "Peggy" Leshikar-Denton is an archaeologist specialising in underwater archaeology, and director of the Cayman Islands National Museum