Wikipedia:Picture of the day/November 2020

This large silk-embroidered wall hanging is part of the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art. The embroidery is worked in long and short silk stitch, with a composite imaginary view of Japan, including flowers, shrines, bridges, lakes and forests, with Mount Fuji rising in the distance. The private collection of decorative art, dating from Meiji-era Japan (1868–1912), was assembled by the British-Iranian scholar Nasser D. Khalili. It includes metalwork, enamels, ceramics, and lacquered objects, including works by artists of the imperial court that were exhibited at the Great Exhibitions of the late 19th century.

Artwork credit: unknown

The Cassini–Huygens space-research project involved a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and its natural satellites.

This natural-color mosaic image, combining thirty photographs, was taken by the Cassini orbiter over the course of approximately two hours on 23 July 2008 as it panned its wide-angle camera across Saturn and its ring system as the planet approached equinox. Six moons are pictured in the panorama, with the largest, Titan, visible at the bottom left.

Photograph credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

After much heavy rain on 3 November 1966, devastating floods occurred in Florence, damaging or destroying millions of works of art and rare books. New conservation techniques were inspired by the disaster, but even decades later, hundreds of works still await restoration. Due to a lack of awareness, funding and manpower, a great number of works of art and books lie in storage, dirty and damaged. In a 2007 letter, a conservator called attention to this problem, stating that the National Central Library still has a "warehouse" full of books to be repaired and bound, with many others needing to be cleaned or reassembled. This photograph shows the cleaning of manuscripts from the National Central Library in the boiler room of Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station.

Photograph credit: Dominique Roger; restored by Adam Cuerden

Le comte Ory is a comic opera written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. The opera is set in France in around 1200; most of the men are away at the Crusades, and the Countess Adèle and the women remaining in the castle of Formoutiers are melancholy. They are tricked into admitting a group of pilgrim nuns during a storm; these are really the scheming young Count Ory and his companions in disguise. He attempts to seduce the countess, but flees when the crusaders return. This engraving depicts the final scene of the opera, as performed by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier in 1828.

Engraving credit: Dubois; restored by Adam Cuerden

Ida Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American writer, journalist, biographer and lecturer. One of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she pioneered investigative journalism. Her best-known exposé was of the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. This inspired other journalists to investigate and write about trusts, large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust laws in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries. She also wrote biographies of businessmen Elbert Henry Gary, chairman of U.S. Steel, and Owen D. Young, president of General Electric.

Photograph credit: James E. Purdy; restored by Adam Cuerden

An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in the open sea. Because the sea around this iceberg is so calm, the underwater portion is visible through the clear water. The largest iceberg ever detected was B-15, which split from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in 2000, and had a flat top; it had a surface area of 11,000 km² (4,200 sq mi) and broke into several pieces in 2002 and 2003. This picture depicts an irregularly shaped iceberg with a rounded top, calved from a glacier in the Arctic and photographed in the Arctic Ocean north of Svalbard.

Photograph credit: Andreas Weith

Cirsium vulgare is a species of thistle in the plant family Asteraceae. Native to Europe and Western Asia, it has become naturalised in North America, Africa and Australia, and is an invasive weed in some areas. It is a ruderal species, able to colonise bare ground, but also persists well on pasture as its thorny leaves and stems make it unpalatable to most grazing animals. The flowers are rich in nectar, attracting bees and butterflies, and the seeds are a favourite with goldfinches, linnets and greenfinches. The downy pappus, which assists in wind dispersal of the seeds, is used by birds as nest-lining material.

Photograph credit: Dominicus Johannes Bergsma

St Cyprian's Church is an Anglican parish church in the Marylebone district of London, dedicated to Saint Cyprian, a third-century martyr and bishop of Carthage. The church was designed by Sir Ninian Comper in a Perpendicular Gothic style, and was constructed between 1901 and 1903. The sanctuary, seen here, has a delicate carved and painted rood screen and parclose screens around an "English altar", i.e. an altar surrounded on three sides by hangings and a painted dossal, riddelposts with angels, and a painted and gilded reredos. The altar is set beneath a gilded tester placed high up in the roof.

Photograph credit: David Iliff

The Arcadian or Pastoral State is the second in a series of five oil-on-canvas paintings entitled The Course of Empire, created by American artist Thomas Cole between 1833 and 1836. The series, now in the collection of the New-York Historical Society, depicts the growth and fall of an imaginary city, situated at the lower end of a river valley. In this second painting, the wilderness has given way to settled lands where agriculture and commerce take place. The man drawing a mathematical figure, the ship being built and the primitive temple on the hill are evidence that the arts and sciences have made considerable progress.

Painting credit: Thomas Cole

The Chesme Column is a victory column in the Catherine Park at the Catherine Palace, a former Russian royal residence in Tsarskoye Selo, a suburb of Saint Petersburg. It was erected to commemorate three Russian naval victories in the 1768–1774 Russo-Turkish War, including the Battle of Chesma in 1770. The column is made from three pieces of white-and-pink marble; decorated with the rostra of three ships' bows, and crowned by a triumphal bronze statue depicting a Russian eagle trampling a crescent moon, the symbol of Turkey. Bronze plaques on three sides of the pedestal depict scenes from the battles, and the campaign is described on the plaque on the fourth side.

Photograph credit: Andrew Shiva

Harold H. Piffard (1867–1939) was a British artist and illustrator. This illustration by Piffard, entitled The Thin Red Line, appeared in the 1917 edition of the magazine Canada in Khaki. It depicts a narrow belt of poppies separating a war-ravaged scene from a stretch of peaceful countryside. The scarlet poppy has come to be seen as a symbol of remembrance. Macaulay, quoting an account of a 1693 battle in Flanders, wrote that "the ground was strewn with skulls and bones of horses and men, and with fragments of hats, shoes, saddles, and holsters. The next summer the soil, fertilised by 20,000 corpses, broke forth into millions of scarlet poppies." Similarly, the opening verse of the World War I poem "In Flanders Fields" refers to poppies springing up among the graves of war victims in Belgium.

Painting credit: Harold H. Piffard; restored by Adam Cuerden

Portrait of Pablo de Valladolid is an oil-on-canvas painting dating from around 1635 by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez depicting Pablo, or "Pablillos" de Valladolid (1587–1648), a jester and actor at Philip IV's court. The subject is portrayed full-length and dressed in black, with the right arm flung out in a declamatory gesture. He is set against a neutral background, with no spatial reference to the point where the feet rest except that provided by the shadow cast by the body. The French painter Édouard Manet was amazed at this innovation when he saw the work. The painting is in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Painting credit: Diego Velázquez

The round ribbontail ray (Taeniura meyeni) is a species of stingray in the family Dasyatidae, found throughout the nearshore waters of the tropical Indo-Pacific region. Reaching 1.8 m (6 ft) across, this large ray is characterized by a thick, rounded pectoral fin disc covered by small tubercles on top, and a relatively short tail bearing a single venomous spine. The ray is well-camouflaged when lying on the seabed; it is largely nocturnal, and preys on molluscs, crustaceans and bony fish. Mature females bear litters of up to seven pups, which are fed during gestation on "uterine milk", a product secreted by the walls of the oviduct. This round ribbontail ray was photographed in Lakshadweep, India.

Photograph credit: Rucha Karkarey; edited by John Harrison

The Hunting of the Snark is a poem composed by the English writer Lewis Carroll between 1874 and 1876, typically characterised as a nonsense poem. The plot follows a crew of ten who cross the ocean to hunt the Snark, which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. This is the second of Henry Holiday's original illustrations for the first edition of the poem. It introduces some of the crew, whose names all start with "B"; the Bellman and Baker are on the upper deck, with the Barrister seated in the background; below are the Billiard-marker, the Banker and the Broker, with the maker of Bonnets and Hoods visible behind.

Illustration credit: Henry Holiday, after Lewis Carroll; restored by Adam Cuerden

The First Brazilian Republic was proclaimed on 15 November 1889, overthrowing the constitutional monarchy of the Empire of Brazil and ending the reign of Emperor Pedro II. This 1893 oil-on-canvas painting by Benedito Calixto depicts the event, which took place in Rio de Janeiro. A group of officers of the Brazilian Army, led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca, had staged a bloodless coup d'état, deposing the Emperor and the Viscount of Ouro Preto, President of the Council of Ministers. The official proclamation of the republic was approved without a vote. The Emperor was informed and decided not to offer any resistance; he and the Brazilian imperial family were exiled to Europe. Calixto's painting now hangs in the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo.

Painting credit: Benedito Calixto

Portrait of a Man is an oil-on-poplar painting from about 1475 by the Italian Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina. The work portrays an unknown man, whose garments belonged to the upper middle class of the time. He wears a leather blouse, under which a white shirt is visible, and a red cloth cap. The portrait is in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

Painting credit: Antonello da Messina

The paddyfield pipit (Anthus rufulus) is a passerine bird in the family Motacillidae, comprising pipits, longclaws and wagtails. About 15 cm (6 in) in length and native to southern Asia, its plumage in both sexes is greyish-brown above and paler yellowish-brown below, with dark streaking on the breast. A bird of open country, pasture and cultivated fields, it sometimes makes short flights, but mostly runs on the ground, foraging for insects and other small invertebrates. The paddyfield pipit builds its cup-shaped nest in a concealed location on the ground, and may have two or more broods in a year. This A. r. rufulus individual was photographed in Kanha Tiger Reserve, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, the first coastal national park of Thailand, was established in 1966 and covers 98 square kilometres (38 sq mi) of Prachuap Khiri Khan Province. It includes a limestone sub-range of the Tenasserim Hills, freshwater marshes, mangrove forests and sandy beaches. The large Phraya Nakhon Cave, pictured here, has an opening in its roof through which sunlight streams. The historic Khuha Kharuehat Pavilion within the cave was built for a visit by King Chulalongkorn in 1890 and is directly illuminated for a short period each day during certain months of the year. Later kings, including Vajiravudh and Bhumibol Adulyadej, have also visited the site.

Photograph credit: Janepop Atirattanachai

Apollo and Daphne is a life-sized Baroque marble sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, created between 1622 and 1625. Housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome as part of the Borghese Collection, the work depicts the climax of the story of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Apollo clutches Daphne's hip, pursuing her as she flees from him. Apollo wears a laurel crown, and Daphne is portrayed halfway through her metamorphosis from human form into the laurel tree, with her arms already transforming into its branches as she flees and calls to her father to save her from Apollo.

Sculpture credit: Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Adolf Mosengel (1837–1885) was a landscape painter from Hamburg, Germany, who built a reputation painting Alpine scenes, later turning to scenes from Westphalia. From 1854 to 1857, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Hans Gude, and from 1858 to 1859 in Paris, after which he moved to Geneva to study under Alexandre Calame. He spent most of his life working in Hamburg, but travelled in 1879 to the lakes of Northern Italy, where he painted en plein air. This oil-on-canvas painting by Mosengel shows a village in the Bernese Alps.

Painting credit: Adolf Mosengel

La forza del destino (The Power of Fate or The Force of Destiny) is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave and is based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino by Ángel de Saavedra, 3rd Duke of Rivas. The complex plot revolves around whether it is possible for the protagonists to escape their destiny, and the opera concludes with most of the main characters dead. In this poster, illustrated by Charles Lecocq, Leonora has just been fatally stabbed by her brother, Carlos, to whom she had run after he was mortally injured in a duel with Alvaro, the suitor from whom she had become separated after they had eloped together.

Poster credit: Charles Lecocq; restored by Adam Cuerden

Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States (1853–1857), a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. He alienated anti-slavery groups by supporting and signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, yet these efforts failed to stem conflict between North and South. The South eventually seceded and the American Civil War began in 1861. Historians and scholars generally rank Pierce as one of the worst and least memorable U.S. presidents.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

The bird-cherry ermine (Yponomeuta evonymella) is a species of moth in the family Yponomeutidae, native to Europe and parts of Asia. The caterpillars are gregarious and feed on the leaves of the bird cherry tree, forming silken webbing for their own protection. They create further webbing on the trunk and near the base of the tree, which hides them as they pupate. This photograph shows one of many bird-cherry ermine caterpillar nests on a tree in Lahemaa National Park, Estonia. In some years, they are so numerous that they can completely strip a tree of its foliage.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Portrait of a Man is a 1514 oil-on-lime-wood painting by Hans Baldung, a German artist and printmaker, considered to be the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer. The unknown sitter seems to be a wealthy man, as indicated by his fur collar, the heavy gold chains around his neck, and the jewel in his cap. Baldung had a distinctive style, with paintings full of colour, expression and imagination. His talents were varied, and he produced a great and extensive variety of work including portraits, woodcuts, drawings, tapestries, altarpieces, stained-glass, allegories and mythological motifs. The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

Painting credit: Hans Baldung

An illustration by Sidney Hall for Urania's Mirror, a set of 32 astronomical star chart cards first published in November 1824. These cards, which were based on Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas, had holes punched allowing them to be held up to the light to view a realistic depiction of the constellation.

The illustrations of the constellations in Urania's Mirror are redrawings from those in Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas, published about three years earlier, and include unique attributes differing from Jamieson's sky atlas; one of these is the "Norma Nilotica" – a measuring device for the Nile floods – seen here held by Aquarius, the water bearer.

Lithograph credit: Sidney Hall; restored by Adam Cuerden

Wrocław is a city in western Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. The city was known as Breslau until 1945; at various times, it has been part of the Kingdom of Poland, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburg monarchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia, and Germany. This picture shows Wrocław Town Hall, located in the centre of the city's Market Square. One of the chief landmarks of the city, the Gothic building was developed over a period of about 250 years, from the end of the 13th century to the middle of the 16th century. During the 1930s, the official role of the town hall was reduced, and the building was converted into a museum. It suffered minor damage during the Siege of Breslau in World War II, after which the entire region was transferred to the Polish People's Republic.

Photograph credit: Kolossos

Billy Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, best remembered for his long-time collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington that lasted nearly three decades. Though classical music was Strayhorn's first love, his ambition to become a classical composer went unrealized because of the harsh reality of a black man trying to make his way in the world of classical music, which at that time was almost completely white. He was introduced to the music of pianists like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson at age 19, and the artistic influence of these musicians guided him into the realm of jazz, where he remained for the rest of his life. This photograph of Strayhorn was taken by William P. Gottlieb in the 1940s.

Photograph credit: William P. Gottlieb; restored by Adam Cuerden

An electric match is a device that uses an externally applied electric current to ignite a combustible compound. This image is a collage of three photographs depicting an electric match at the moment of ignition in the centre, together with the same match before detonation on the left and after detonation on the right. To ignite the match, a suitable electric voltage is applied to a heating element, typically a loop or coil of thin wire, which is encased in a quantity of a flammable pyrotechnic initiator fluid, which then ignites.

Photograph credit: Lucasbosch