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120-433: The Embriachi workshop ( Italian : Bottega degli Embriachi ) was an important producer of objects in carved ivory and carved bone , set in a framework of inlaid wood. They operated in north Italy from around 1375 to perhaps as late as 1433, apparently moving from Florence to Venice about 1395. They are especially known for what are now called marriage caskets or wedding caskets , hexagonal or oblong caskets about

240-408: A camel ) arranged in a single or double row along a flat ferrule made of wood or cardboard. In order to transfer the gold leaf, the hairs are first given a very light coating of adhesive by brushing them against a surface such as the back of the user's hand which has been coated with a thin layer of petroleum jelly (a common misconception is that static electricity causes the gold foil to attach to

360-421: A background of large leaves, usually rose leaves. These often run round the lid of caskets, or the frames of mirrors. In some religious works they wear long gowns and can be understood as angels, but in most works they are rather grown-up putti , or winged "victories" . Pieces where the painted colours have not been cleaned away by later dealers suggest that relatively sparing gilding and painting of highlights

480-419: A bride-to-be. The presentation of a marriage casket came after the conclusion of the legal and financial negotiations for a wedding between affluent families, but before the marriage itself. It was made the occasion of a certain amount of ceremony, as part of a symbolic courtship, carried to the bride's house and presented on the groom's behalf by a small child, and at that point containing symbolic gifts such as

600-449: A foot across, with lids that rise up in the centre. Their output of these was probably made for stock rather than individual commissions, and filled a market for gifts for betrothals and weddings. They sold mirrors framed in a similar style, though fewer of these have survived, and religious pieces both small and in a few cases very large. The workshop takes its name from Baldassare Ubriachi or Baldassare Embriachi , variously described as

720-626: A form of mass-production, with the various components produced separately for later assembly. The pieces of bone in particular were mostly carved as narrow tall panels containing one or two figures, which were set in rows along a face. A typical size for an individual plaque is about 10.2 cm high and 3.5 cm wide. Caskets and other objects normally have a framework of wood, and the areas not fitted with bone or ivory carving are decorated with certosina work, small geometrical inlays of various materials in contrasting colours. They are often called "marriage caskets", though their actual original context

840-462: A girdle (elaborately decorated belt) representing virginity. Scenes from medieval romance literature and, less often, classical mythology are seen, and also generalized and rather decorous pairs of couples or lovers, "couples in conversation, in codified stances full of restraint". The lids of secular caskets may feature personifications of the Virtues. There are also religious subjects, some following

960-550: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when

1080-464: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of

1200-657: A local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has

1320-559: A nobleman, merchant and diplomat, or an "international man of business and politics". He was presumably not a carver himself, but supplied the capital, and no doubt was involved with negotiating the larger sales to courts and nobles north of the Alps; some documentary records of this survive. His two sons eventually carried on the business, also probably never carving anything themselves. The great majority of works are undocumented and unsigned, and there were almost certainly other workshops working in

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1440-645: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as

1560-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving

1680-558: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of

1800-518: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Gilding Gilding gives an object a gold appearance at a fraction of the cost of creating a solid gold object. In addition, a solid gold piece would often be too soft or too heavy for practical use. A gilt surface also does not tarnish as silver does. Modern gilding

1920-474: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility

2040-501: A thin layer of bitumen underneath to help adhesion. The next advances involved two simple processes. The first involves gold leaf, which is gold that is hammered or cut into very thin sheets. Gold leaf is often thinner than standard paper today, and when held to the light is semi-transparent. In ancient times it was typically about ten times thicker than today, and perhaps half that in the Middle Ages . If gilding on canvas or on wood,

2160-504: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to

2280-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin

2400-668: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and

2520-439: Is a type of gilding brush used for transferring sheets of metal leaf to either a surface that has been prepared to accept the leaf or to a gilder's block where the leaf is then cut with a gilder's knife into smaller portions before being transferred to the prepared surface. The hairs on a gilder's tip are usually made of either blue squirrel hair or the hair of a badger (sometimes other hairs are also used, such as that of

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2640-729: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about

2760-401: Is applied to numerous and diverse surfaces and by various processes. More traditional techniques still form an important part of framemaking and are sometimes still employed in general woodworking , cabinet -work, decorative painting and interior decoration , bookbinding , and ornamental leather work, and in the decoration of pottery , porcelain, and glass . Herodotus mentions that

2880-475: Is estimated that additional parts were added to give a total of five original objects used as sources for the current array. The price for the chests, paid by the monastery to Baldassare Ubriachi, was 1,000 gold florins , an "astronomical sum". Payments for this are documented between 1400 and 1409. A third large work was commissioned by the French prince Jean, Duke of Berry for the priory at Poissy around 1400; it

3000-421: Is hardly ever known. Though the workshop was patronized by the richest and most style-conscious princes, much of its output of smaller objects was aimed at a much wider group of clients in the merchant and tradesman classes. These were generally decorated with secular subjects, often designed with female tastes in mind, as most were probably given as presents to women, especially as part of the donora of gifts to

3120-528: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since

3240-455: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it

3360-498: Is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and a local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of

3480-458: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around

3600-703: Is now in the Louvre . It is broadly similar to the Pavia altarpiece, with scenes in bone from the lives of Christ, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist , as well as saints and donor portraits of the duke and his second duchess . It measures 276 cm by 236 cm. Baldassare Ubriachi was originally a Florentine, though he traced his descent to the Embriaco family of Genoa , who were distinguished military and political leaders in

3720-433: Is performed by a solution of gold in aqua regia , applied by dipping a linen rag into the solution, burning it, and rubbing the black and heavy ashes on the silver with the finger or a piece of leather or cork. Wet gilding is effected by means of a dilute solution of gold(III) chloride in aqua regia with twice its quantity of ether . The liquids are agitated and allowed to rest, to allow the ether to separate and float on

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3840-626: Is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and

3960-405: Is then applied with a small brush, and as it evaporates it deposits the gold, which can now be heated and polished. For small delicate figures, a pen or a fine brush may be used for laying on the ether solution. The gold(III) chloride can also be dissolved in water in electroless plating wherein the gold is slowly reduced out of solution onto the surface to be gilded. When this technique is used on

4080-423: Is then exposed to heat, before being quenched in water. By this method, the color of the gilding is further improved and brought nearer to that of gold, probably by removing any particles of copper that may have been on the gilt surface. This process, when skillfully carried out, produces gilding of great solidity and beauty. This method of gilding metallic objects was formerly widespread, but fell into disuse as

4200-538: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as

4320-435: Is wrought or chased, the application of mercury before the amalgam is applied allows for it to be more easily spread. When the surface of the metal is plain, the amalgam can be applied to it directly. When no such preparation is applied, the surface to be gilded is simply bitten and cleaned with nitric acid . A deposit of mercury is obtained on a metallic surface by means of quicksilver water, a solution of mercury(II) nitrate ,

4440-501: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,

4560-936: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),

4680-625: The Certosa di Pavia , an extravagant monastery the Visconti built to use as their family burial place. Other similar large religious pieces for the courts of France and Burgundy are confidently attributed to the same workshop on stylistic grounds. Another important work was commissioned by the Certosa as chests for their Visconti benefactors to use for clothes and belongings in their room at the monastery. It no longer has this form; after extensive rearrangements in

4800-615: The Crusader Kingdoms from around 1100 to the late 13th century. He was involved in a number of areas of business, including trading jewels, money management and diplomacy for the Visconti of Milan , dukes of Milan , as well as the bone and ivory carving workshop. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor made him a count palatine in 1369 for his work buying jewels for the emperor. In 1379 Charles' successor Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia had an Embriachi-type marriage casket containing relics walled-up in

4920-564: The Egyptians gilded wood and metals, and many such objects have been excavated. Certain Ancient Greek statues of great prestige were chryselephantine , i.e., made of gold (for the clothing) and ivory (for the flesh); these however, were constructed with sheets of gold over a timber framework, not gilded. Extensive ornamental gilding was also used in the ceiling coffers of the Propylaea . Pliny

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5040-672: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in

5160-816: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian

5280-649: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in

5400-763: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and

5520-539: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after

5640-531: The Sigismund Chapel of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, where it was recovered in 1918. The themes of the carvings were secular, indeed mildly erotic, but this did not prevent its use as a reliquary, though one not on public view. Martin I of Aragon similarly gave a secular casket to Barcelona Cathedral in 1405 for use as a reliquary. Baldassare Ubriachi moved to Venice "soon after 1390", where another branch of

5760-595: The Spaniards . The surface is etched with acids, resulting in a surface of porous gold. The porous surface is then burnished down, resulting in a shiny gold surface. The results fooled the conquistadors into thinking they had massive quantities of pure gold. The results startled modern archaeologists , because at first the pieces resemble electroplated articles. Keum-boo is a special Korean technique of silver-gilding, using depletion gilding . The gilding of decorative ceramics has been undertaken for centuries, with

5880-514: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed

6000-519: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From

6120-506: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and

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6240-773: The 18th and 19th centuries there are now two groups of carved bone panels set in a framework for display, which are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, donated by John Pierpont Morgan , whose collections also included several Embriachi caskets. Some parts from other pieces seem to have been used for the current configuration, which may contain parts from as many as five original works. The subjects are secular, stories from various romances, including Il Pecorone ( The Golden Eagle ) and classical mythology. The current presentation does not seem to respect their original sequence, leading to much modern scholarly debate, and it

6360-549: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian

6480-598: The Elder recorded that the first gilding seen at Rome was after the destruction of Carthage , under the censorship of Lucius Mummius , when the Romans began to gild the ceilings of their temples and palaces, the Capitol being the first place where this process was used. Gilding became a popular luxury within Rome soon after the introduction of the technique, with gilding soon being seen used on

6600-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has

6720-485: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,

6840-550: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from

6960-434: The body; the mercury used in the process also evaporates into the atmosphere, thus polluting it. This process has generally been supplanted by the electroplating of gold over a nickel substrate , which is more economical and less dangerous. In depletion gilding, a subtractive process discovered in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica , articles are fabricated by various techniques from an alloy of copper and gold, named tumbaga by

7080-412: The brush, but this is not so) and then laying the edge of the brush along the edge of the piece of metal foil. The jelly will cause the metal to adhere very gently to the hairs and allow the piece to be floated from the paper surface on which had previously been stored. Because the leaf is so thin, this must be done in a room with extremely still air, and the user of the tip usually does not breathe until

7200-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside

7320-630: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian

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7440-405: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of

7560-408: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to

7680-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during

7800-415: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in

7920-426: The dangers of mercury toxicity became known. Since fire-gilding requires that the mercury be volatilized to drive off the mercury and leave the gold behind on the surface, it is extremely dangerous. Breathing the fumes generated by this process can quickly result in serious health problems, such as neurological damage and endocrine disorders , since inhalation is a very efficient route for mercuric compounds to enter

8040-420: The decorated ware is fired in a kiln to fuse the gold to the glaze and hence ensure its permanence. The most important factors affecting coating quality are the composition of applied gold, the state of the surface before application, the thickness of the layer and the firing conditions. A number of different forms and compositions are available to apply gold to ceramic, and these include: A gilder's tip

8160-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date

8280-420: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of

8400-420: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until

8520-409: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by

8640-433: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in

8760-546: The family was already settled, having been exiled from Florence in the political upheavals of the late 13th century. The move may have been forced by financial difficulties in Florence; his sons-in-law took legal action to get their dowries paid as promised. He apparently took the workshop with him. He died there in 1406. The family are recorded there until 1431. Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] )

8880-405: The following substances: red ochre , verdigris , copper scales, alum , vitriol , and borax . By this operation the color of the gilding is heightened, as a result of the perfect dissipation of some of the remaining mercury. The gilt surface is then covered over with potassium nitrate , alum or other salts, ground together, and mixed into a paste with water or weak ammonia . The piece of metal

9000-474: The formulae of the Parisian ivory workshops that dominated ivory carving, with triptychs for private devotion. These follow the conventional religious iconography of the period. The main images are made up of vertical panels, most with one or two standing figures each, arranged in a row. There is often a secondary zone of panels arranged horizontally with distinctive figures, usually naked males with wings, set on

9120-468: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in

9240-446: The gold as pigment in paint: the artist ground the gold into a fine powder and mixed it with a binder such as gum arabic . The resulting gold paint, called shell gold , was applied in the same way as with any paint. Sometimes, after either gold-leafing or gold-painting, the artist would heat the piece enough to melt the gold slightly, ensuring an even coat. These techniques remained the only alternatives for materials like wood, leather,

9360-467: The gold leaf was layered on using a gilder's tip and left to dry before being burnished with a piece of polished agate . Those gilding on canvas and parchment also sometimes employed stiffly-beaten egg whites ("glair"), gum , and/or Armenian bole as sizing, though egg whites and gum both become brittle over time, causing the gold leaf to crack and detach, and so honey was sometimes added to make them more flexible. Other gilding processes involved using

9480-483: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as

9600-510: The language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During the Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak

9720-631: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of

9840-562: The largest prestige commissions, are of bone, apparently mostly from horses and cows, with horns and hoofs also used, but some are "ivory", which is mostly from the teeth of the hippopotamus . African elephant ivory had become even more rare and expensive than previously in Europe at this time. Inventories record the possession of bone mirrors by both Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici (d. 1429) and his great-grandson Lorenzo de' Medici (d. 1490), though both could easily have afforded ivory. Scholarly attempts to identify workshops or artists working in

9960-491: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in

10080-525: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian

10200-514: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of

10320-454: The leaf is in place. Once the leaf has settled, it is often burnished with polished piece of agate to achieve a high degree of brilliance. Gilder's tips are necessary because touching the metal leaf with the finger tips would immediately cause the leaf to lose its coherent flattened shape and crumble irretrievably into metallic dust which then cannot be used for any purpose. [REDACTED]   This article incorporates text from

10440-402: The mercury has evaporated, indicated by the surface taking on a dull yellow color, the metal must undergo further steps to exhibit its fine gold color. First, the gilded surface is rubbed with a scratch brush of brass wire, until its surface is smooth. It is then covered with gilding wax, and again exposed to fire until the wax is burnt off. Gilding wax is composed of beeswax mixed with some of

10560-563: The metallic surface at a temperature just under red-hot, pressing the leaf on with a burnisher, then reheating when additional leaf may be laid on. The process is completed by cold burnishing. "Overlaying" or folding or hammering on gold foil or gold leaf is the simplest and most ancient method, and is mentioned in Homer 's Odyssey and the Old Testament . The Ram in a Thicket (2600–2400 BC) from Ur describes this technique used on wood, with

10680-404: The mixture is stirred with an iron rod, the gold is totally absorbed. The proportion of mercury to gold is generally six or eight to one. When the amalgam is cold, it is squeezed through chamois leather to separate the superfluous mercury; the gold, with about twice its weight of mercury, remains behind, forming a yellowish silvery mass with the consistency of butter. When the metal to be gilded

10800-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity

10920-414: The nitric acid attacking the metal to which it is applied, and thus leaving a film of free metallic mercury. After the amalgam is equally spread over the prepared surface of the metal, the mercury is then carefully volatilized with heat just sufficient to do so, as a temperature too high may cause part of the gold to be driven off, or otherwise run together, leaving some of the metal surface bare. When

11040-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on

11160-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of

11280-419: The operations in which gold leaf is prepared, and the processes to mechanically attach the gold onto surfaces. The techniques include burnishing , water gilding and oil-gilding used by wood carvers and gilders; and the gilding operations of the house decorator, sign painter, bookbinder , the paper stainer and several others. Polished iron, steel and other metals are gilded mechanically by applying gold leaf to

11400-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:

11520-453: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it

11640-427: The permanence and brightness of gold appealing to designers. Both porcelain and earthenware are commonly decorated with gold, and in the late 1970s it was reported that 5 tonnes of gold were used annually for the decoration of these products. Some wall tiles also have gold decoration. Application techniques include spraying , brushing , banding machines, and direct or indirect screen-printing . After application

11760-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to

11880-518: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of

12000-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to

12120-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed

12240-529: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome

12360-499: The second surface of glass and backed with silver, it is known as " Angel gilding ". Fire-gilding or wash-gilding is a process by which an amalgam of gold is applied to metallic surfaces, the mercury being subsequently volatilized , leaving a film of gold or an amalgam containing 13 to 16% mercury. In the preparation of the amalgam, the gold must first be reduced to thin plates or grains, which are heated red-hot, and thrown into previously heated mercury, until it begins to smoke. When

12480-578: The style have led to proposed groups such as the "Nailed Coffer" and "Story of Susanna" workshops. The fairly standard size of the bone pieces with figures has allowed many surviving works to be reassembled and improved by later dealers, combining panels from different pieces to fill missing spaces, at the price of making the original iconography often unclear. A small surviving group of relatively large reredos altarpieces and other large pieces are relatively well-documented. The Visconti family , rulers of Milan , commissioned an altarpiece that remains in

12600-484: The style, so the modern tendency among museums and art historians is to attribute them using "Embriachi workshop", "Embriachi-type" or similar terms. They are also very hard to date with any precision on stylistic grounds. Generally, the quality of carving tends to decline in works dated after about 1410. One scholar, Michele Tomasi, argues that the style of painted, rather than carved, elements of altarpieces suggests that production ceased around 1416. The workshop developed

12720-420: The surface of the acid. The whole mixture is then poured into a separating funnel with a small aperture, and allowed to rest for some time, when the acid is run off from below and the gold dissolved in ether separated. The ether will be found to have taken up all the gold from the acid, and may be used for gilding iron or steel, for which purpose the metal is polished with fine emery and spirits of wine . The ether

12840-448: The surface was often first coated with gesso . "Gesso" is a substance made of finely ground gypsum or chalk mixed with glue. Once the coating of gesso had been applied, allowed to dry, and smoothed, it was re-wet with a sizing made of rabbit-skin glue and water ("water gilding", which allows the surface to be subsequently burnished to a mirror-like finish) or boiled linseed oil mixed with litharge ("oil gilding", which does not) and

12960-464: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,

13080-463: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and

13200-465: The top. The name of the workshop's leading carver, Giovanni di Jacopo, is known; he was apparently in charge of day to day management. He also moved to Venice, where he made a will in 1404. The "workshop" probably operated at several locations, with the essentially separate skills of carving the bone plaques, making the wooden framework and certosina elements, and assembling the final casket very likely done at different places. Most carved panels, even in

13320-529: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),

13440-422: The vellum pages of illuminated manuscripts , and gilt-edged stock. Chemical gilding embraces those processes in which the gold is at some stage of chemical combination. These include cold gilding, wet gilding, fire gilding and depletion gilding. In cold gilding, the gold is obtained in a state of extremely fine division (i.e. atomized or finely powdered), and applied by mechanical means. Cold gilding on silver

13560-425: The walls, vaults and inside the houses of anyone who could afford it, including the poor. Owing to the comparative thickness of the gold leaf used in ancient gilding, the traces of it that remain are remarkably brilliant and solid. Fire-gilding of metal goes back at least to the 4th century BC. Mercury -gilding was invented by Chinese Daoists in the 4th century CE and was used for the gilding of bronze plaques. It

13680-637: The working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian

13800-548: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only

13920-516: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on

14040-519: Was known to Pliny (33,20,64–5), Vitruvius (8,8,4) and in the Early Medieval period to Theophilus (De Diversis Artibus Book III). In Europe, silver-gilt has always been more common than gilt-bronze, but in China the opposite has been the case. The ancient Chinese also developed the gilding of porcelain , which was later taken up by the French and other European potters. Mechanical gilding includes all

14160-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of

14280-630: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by

14400-407: Was typical, but some pieces may never have received additional decoration in colour. Shields commonly feature, but are not carved with heraldry ; this may have been intended to be painted after purchase. The lids often have hinges (perhaps not all original) and are decorated on the underside, and there is often a lock. Many caskets, especially the rectangular ones, have or had metal carrying handles at

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