Portrait of a Young Girl is a small oil-on-oak panel painting in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It was completed between 1465 and 1470, towards the end of the artist's life, and marks a significant advance in the oeuvres of both Christus and contemporary portraiture. The girl is set in an airy, three-dimensional, realistic setting, confronting the viewer with an expression that is reserved, but alert and intelligent. She reflects the Gothic ideal of elongated facial features, narrow shoulders, tightly pinned hair and an almost unnaturally long forehead. The painting is widely regarded as one of the most exquisite Northern Renaissance portraits. Art historian Joel Upton describes the sitter as resembling "a polished pearl, almost opalescent, lying on a cushion of black velvet." The panel builds on the work of the first generation Northern Renaissance painters Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and was highly influential in the decades after its completion. Its appeal lies in part in the intriguing stare, accentuated by the slight misalignment of her eyes and asymmetry of her eyebrows. (Full article...)
1794 – American inventor Eli Whitney(pictured) patented the cotton gin, the first ever machine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seedpods.
Cover of the c. 1895 edition of the vocal score to The Mikado. First performed in London in 1885, The Mikado is the ninth of fourteen comic opera collaborations between the composer Arthur Sullivan and the dramatist W. S. Gilbert. Gilbert was able to satirise British politics and institutions freely by setting the opera in a fictionalised Japan. The story: After a cheap tailor is appointed Lord High Executioner of Titipu, he tries to save the town by pretending to execute the disguised son of the Mikado (the Emperor of Japan) for the capital offence of flirting; this scheme backfires. The Mikado 's original run at the Savoy Theatre was 672 performances, nearly a record at the time. It remains one of the most frequently performed musical theatre pieces in history, with regular professional and amateur revivals.
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