Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledge

by Pearson, Will

• ISBN13: 9780060568061
• ISBN10: 0060568062
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-03
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

From the team that brought you the enormously successful magazine of the same name comes this trove of fun and useful information that blurs the line between great education and great entertainment.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Condensed_Art History	1	(22)
Condensed_Biology	23	(20)
Condensed_Chemistry	43	(22)
Condensed_Economics	65	(22)
Condensed_General Science	87	(20)
Condensed_Geography and Culture	107	(22)
Condensed_History	129	(22)
Condensed_Literature	151	(22)
Condensed_Music	173	(22)
Condensed_Performing Arts	195	(22)
Condensed_Philosophy	217	(22)
Condensed_Physics	239	(20)
Condensed_Pop Culture	259	(22)
Condensed_Psychology	281	(22)
Condensed_Religion	303	(22)
Contributors	325

Excerpts

mental floss presents Condensed Knowledge
A Deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again

Chapter One

5 Scandals That Rocked Art

Forgeries, thefts, and outright vandalism? That's right. Art history's about to get a whole lot more interesting.

_01:: The Vermeer Forgeries
Every age sees art through its own eyes, andthe cleverest forgers play up to this. One ofthe most notorious forgeries ever occurred inthe 1930s. A Dutchman named Han vanMeegeren (1889–1947) produced forgeries ofearly works by the Dutch 17th-century masterJan Vermeer. They were technically brilliantand faultless, using old canvas and thecorrect 17th-century pigments. Cunningly,van Meegeren chose religious imagery thatsome experts believed Vermeer had painted,but very few examples of which existed. Most(though not all) of the greatest experts werecompletely taken in, but when you see thepaintings now, you'll wonder why. All thefaces look like the great film stars of the 1930s,such as Marlene Dietrich and Douglas Fairbanks.

_02:: The Mona Lisa Theft
It's sometimes suggested that rich criminalsarrange for famous works of art to be stolen sothat they can have them exclusively to themselvesin private. Such theories have neverbeen proven, and the truth is usually just a bitsimpler. One of the most bizarre thefts was ofthe Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. AnItalian workman, Vincenzo Perugia, walkedinto the gallery, took the painting off the wall,and carried it out. Security was nonexistent.

About two years later it was discovered in atrunk in his cheap lodging rooms in Florence.So, why did he take it? It was nothing to dowith money. He said that as the painting wasby an Italian, Leonardo da Vinci, it was part ofItaly's national cultural heritage, and he wassimply taking it back to where it belonged:Florence. (The painting was returned to theLouvre.)

_03:: The Auction Houses Scandal
The major commercial scandal of recent yearshas been the alleged collusion between thetwo big international auction houses Christie'sand Sotheby's. As the supply of expensivemasterpieces began to run out, competitionbetween the two firms became increasinglyfierce and each of them found it difficult tomake a profit. They got together secretly to fixnot the price of works of art themselves butthe commission that they would each chargeto sellers. In certain parts of the world, suchan arrangement is quite legal but not in theUnited States. Eventually the practice came tolight. The federal authorities imposed finesrunning into hundreds of millions of dollars,and prison sentences were also handed out.

_04:: The Portland Vase
Wanton acts of destruction in the art worldare fortunately rare. One of the strangest occurred in 1845 in the British Museum, London,and is worthy of a Sherlock Holmesstory. The Portland Vase, the most famous exampleof ancient Roman glass, decorated indark-blue-and-white cameo technique, wasbrought from Italy in 1783 and purchased bythe Duchess of Portland. A drunken youngman entered the museum and without explanationsmashed the vase and its glass displaycase. He was imprisoned for breaking the casebut not the vase, as British law didn't imposepenalties for destroying works of art of highvalue. The vase has since been repaired; however,you can still see the bruises.

_05:: Cellini's Saltcellar
A recent art world disaster/scandal occurredon May 13, 2003 (and it wasn't even a Friday!).Thieves climbed scaffolding andsmashed windows to enter Vienna's Art HistoryMuseum and stole the "Mona Lisa ofsculptures" -- Cellini's Saltcellar. This intricate16-centimeter-high sculpture was commissionedby François I, king of France, fromBenvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), the Renaissance'smost ingenious and gifted goldsmith.Crafted with amazingly rich detail and skill,its principal figures are a naked sea god and awoman who sit opposite each other, with legsentwined -- a symbolic representation of theplanet earth. The thieves set off the alarms, but these were ignored as false, and the theftremained undiscovered until 8:20 A.M. Thereasons for the theft are as yet unknown. Thefear is that these thieves will destroy the sculptureor melt it down, an act of vandalism thatwould be the equivalent of burning theMona Lisa.

mental floss presents Condensed Knowledge
A Deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again. Copyright © by Anne (None). Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledge: A Deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again
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