United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is only later that the word "menuisier," or joiner, appears, and we must enter upon the period of the Renaissance before we find the term "cabinet maker," and later still, after the end of the seventeenth century, we have such masters of their craft as Riesener described as "ebenistes," the word being derived from ebony, which, with other eastern woods, came into use after the Dutch settlement in Ceylon.
Rembrandt's domestic Madonna pictures, equally homely as to environment, are by no means scenes of hilarity, but rather of frugal contentment. Two similar works bear the title of Le Ménage du Menuisier the Carpenter's Home. In both, the scene is the interior of a common room devoted to work and household purposes.
A celebrated picture by Rembrandt, known as le Ménage du Menuisier, exhibits a rustic interior; the Virgin is seated with the volume of the Scriptures open on her knees she turns, and lifting the coverlid of the cradle, contemplates the Infant asleep: in the background Joseph is seen at his work; while angels hover above, keeping watch over the Holy Family.
The clock in the modest dining-room had been secured from the repository of the same merchant, and was warranted to have sounded the last domestic hours of Maximilian Robespierre in his humble lodging chez le Menuisier. The inkstand into which Mr. Hawkehurst dipped his rapid pen had served the literary career of Voltaire; the blotting-book on which he wrote had been used by Balzac.
Word Of The Day