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David (Michelangelo)

David is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture, created from 1501 to 1504 by Michelangelo. With a height of 5.17 m, the David was the first colossal marble statue made in the early modern period following classical antiquity, a precedent for the 16th century and beyond. David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of twelve prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral (Duomo di Firenze), but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. In 1873, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, and in 1910 replaced at the original location by a replica.

The biblical figure David was a favoured subject in the art of Florence. Because of the nature of the figure it represented, the statue soon came to symbolize the defence of civil liberties embodied in the 1494 constitution of the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the political aspirations of the Medici family.

Commission
The history of the statue of David begins before Michelangelo's work on it from 1501 to 1504. The commission was made during a decisive period in the history of the Florentine republic established after the expulsion of the Medici. The advantages of democratic government never materialized, and internal circumstances grew worse as dangers from without increased. Lorenzo de' Medici's successors and their supporters were a constant threat to the republic, and it was in defiance of the menace they represented that the project of a marble David was renewed.

The Overseers of the Office of Works, known as the Operai del Duomo, were officers of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the organization charged with the construction and maintenance of the new Cathedral of Florence. The Operai consisted of a 12-member committee that organized competitions, chose the best entries, commissioned the prevailing artists, and paid for the finished work. Most of them were members of the influential woolen cloth guild, the Arte della Lana. They had plans long before Michelangelo's involvement to commission a series of twelve large sculptures of Old Testament prophets for the twelve spurs, or protrusions, generated by the four diagonal buttresses that helped support the enormous weight of the cathedral dome.

In 1410, Donatello had made the first of the series of statues, a colossal figure of Joshua in terracotta, gessoed and painted white to give it the appearance of marble at a distance. Although Charles Seymour Jr says Donatello's protégé Agostino di Duccio was commissioned in 1463 to create a terracotta figure of Hercules for the series, almost certainly under the supervision of Donatello, Paoletti writes that "The term 'hercules' may not be a specific indication of the subject of the figure but simply a synonym... used at the time for a 'giant' or very large figure."

Ready to continue their project, in 1464 the Operai contracted Agostino to create a marble sculpture of the young David, a symbol of Florence, to be mounted high on the eastern end of the Duomo. This was to be formed in the Roman manner from several blocks of marble, but in 1465 Agostino himself went to Carrara, a town in the Apuan Alps, and acquired a very large block of bianco ordinario from the Fantiscritti quarry. He began work on the statue but got only as far as beginning to shape the torso, legs, and feet, roughing out drapery, and possibly hollowing a hole between the legs. For unknown reasons his work on the block of marble halted with the death of his master Donatello in 1466. Antonio Rossellino, also a Florentine, was commissioned in 1476 to resume the work, but the contract was apparently rescinded, and the block lay neglected and exposed to the weather in the yard of the cathedral workshop for another twenty-five years. This was of great concern to the Operai authorities, as such a large piece of marble was not only costly, but represented considerable labour and difficulty in its transportation to Florence.

In 1500, an inventory of the cathedral workshops described the piece as "a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine." A year later, documents showed that the Operai were determined to find an artist who could take this large piece of marble and turn it into a finished work of art. They ordered that the block of stone, which they called il gigante (the giant), be "raised on its feet" so that a master experienced in this kind of work might examine it and express an opinion. Though Leonardo da Vinci among others was consulted, and Andrea Sansovino was also keen to get the commission, it was Michelangelo, at 26 years of age, who convinced the Operai that he deserved the commission. On 16 August 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this task. It said (English translation of the Latin text):

"... the Consuls of the Arte della Lana and the Lords Overseers being met, have chosen as sculptor to the said Cathedral the worthy master, Michelangelo, the son of Lodovico Buonarrotti, a citizen of Florence, to the end that he may make, finish and bring to perfection the male figure known as the Giant, nine braccia in height, already blocked out in marble by Maestro Agostino grande, of Florence, and badly blocked; and now stored in the workshops of the Cathedral. The work shall be completed within the period and term of two years next ensuing, beginning from the first day of September ..."

He began carving the statue early in the morning on 13 September, a month after he was awarded the contract. The contract provided him a workspace in the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore behind the Duomo, paid him a salary of six fiorini per month, and allowed him two years to complete the sculpture.

When the finished statue was moved from the Opera del Duomo to the Piazza della Signoria over the course of four days, as reported by two contemporary diarists, Luca Landucci and Pietro di Marco Parenti, a guard was placed to protect it from violence by other artists in Florence who had hoped for the commission. They were hostile to Michelangelo because of his bold request to the wardens of the Cathedral and the governor of the city, Piero Soderini. Despite the precaution, the sculpture was damaged by stones, leaving still visible marks on the upper part of its back. Four youths from prominent Florentine families were subsequently arrested by the Otto di Guardia and all but one were imprisoned for what may have been simple vandalism without a political motive.

Process
Michelangelo regarded a single block of stone as containing all the possible conceptions for a work of art, and believed that the artist's task is sculpting the marble block to reveal the ideal form within, an expression of his Neo-Platonic belief that body and mind are separate, and must work in concert and strive to attain union with one another and with the divine. In later years, speaking of his early commissions sculpting marble, he contended that he was merely liberating figures that were already existent in the stone, and that he could see them in his mind's eye.

Giorgio Vasari wrote of Michelangelo sculpting the Prisoners that his method was to chisel the parts in highest relief first, then gradually revealing the lower parts. According to Franca Falletti, the passage describes Michelangelo's process of working marble in general. Lengthy preparatory work was done before the actual sculpting began – this included sketches, drawings and the making of small-scale terracotta or wax models. After these preliminary studies he went directly to sculpting the marble, using the method described by Vasari. He chiseled layer after layer from the main face of the stone, and then gradually more and more of the other sides. The unfinished state of the Prisoners demonstrates this process, and David must have been sculpted in the same manner.

The massive block of white marble that was to become the David, measuring nine braccia in length, was of bianco ordinario grade stone, rather than the superior statuario. It came from the old Roman Fantiscritti quarry at the centre of the Carrara marble basins, and had been transported by oxen-pulled carts to the sea, whence it was carried on barges dragged by oxen up the river Arno to Florence.

The Operai del Duomo had raised the block to an upright position prior to the first inspection of their purchase, but a scaffolding had to be built so that Michelangelo could reach every part. The artist, who made his steel chisels himself, began cutting the stone with the subbia, a heavy, pointed iron tool used to rough out the main mass, before he employed the two-toothed shorter blade called the calcagnuolo. By the time he began to use the three-toothed gradina, a serrated claw chisel whose marks are seen in his unfinished sculptures, the basic form of the statue was emerging from the matrix. When he sculpted David's hair and the pupils of his eyes, he used the trapano, a drill worked with a bow, like the ancient sculptors.

Michelangelo did without flat chisels in his sculpturing, and brought his pieces to the state of non finito almost entirely with toothed chisels. During the 2003 restoration of David, Italian researchers observed marks of the subbia, the sharpened subbia da taglio, the slightly flattened unghietto (fingernail), and the gradina, as well as marks from a smaller-toothed chisel, the dente di cane (dog's tooth). They found no evidence of Michelangelo using flat chisels in the work.

A node of marble on the gigante that Michelangelo chiseled away before he began work on David in earnest has been interpreted by historians as a knot of drapery, based on the surmise that Agostino di Duccio's figure was intended to be clothed. Irving Lavin proposes that the node may have been a point, that is, a knob of marble left purposely by Agostino as a fixed reference for a mechanical transfer measuring off his statue from the model. Lavin suggests that Agostino's aborted attempt was the result of an error in his pointing system, and that if his conjecture is correct, it may illuminate a note added in the margin next to the passage in the commission giving il gigante to Michelangelo: "The said Michelangelo began to work on the said giant on the morning of 13 September 1501, although a few days earlier, on 9 September, he had with one or two blows of the chisel (uno vel duo ictibus) removed a certain nodus (quoddam nodum) that it had on its chest."

Placement
On 25 January 1504, when the sculpture was nearing completion, Florentine authorities had to acknowledge there would be little possibility of raising the 5.17 metre high statue weighing approximately 8.5 tons to the roof of the cathedral. They convened a committee of 30 Florentine citizens that included many artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, to decide on an appropriate site for David. While nine different locations for the statue were discussed, the majority of members seem to have been closely split between two sites.

One group, led by Giuliano da Sangallo and supported by Leonardo and Piero di Cosimo, among others, believed that, due to the imperfections in the marble, the sculpture should be placed under the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi on Piazza della Signoria; the other group thought it should stand at the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, the city's town hall (now known as Palazzo Vecchio). Another opinion, shared by Botticelli and Cosimo Rosselli, was that the sculpture should be situated in front of the cathedral.

In June 1504, David was installed next to the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which also embodied a theme of heroic resistance. It took four days to move it the half mile from the cathedral's workshop into the Piazza della Signoria. The statue was suspended in a wooden frame and rolled on fourteen greased logs by more than 40 men. Later that summer, the sling and tree-stump support were gilded, and the figure was given a gilt loin-garland.

Later history
In 1525 the block of marble intended to be the pendant for the David fell off a barge into the river Arno as it was being transported to Florence. Vasari wrote that it had jumped into the river in despair when it heard that Baccio Bandinelli would be carving it rather than Michelangelo, to whom the commission for a colossal statue of Hercules and Cacus at the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria had originally been given.

In the mid-1800s, small cracks were noticed on the left leg on the David, which can possibly be attributed to an uneven sinking of the ground under the massive statue. In 1873, it was removed from the piazza to protect it from damage, and was moved to the Accademia Gallery where it would attract many visitors. The sculpture was secured in a wheeled wooden crate, and moved slowly across the city from 30 July to 10 August that year. Its 16th-century base, said to be decrepit in contemporary reports, was lost when the crate was disassembled. A model of the crate is in the Museo di Casa Buonarroti, the house-museum in Florence's Via Ghibellina where Michelangelo lived. The statue was not placed in its permanent setting in the Accademia until 1882. The architect Emilio De Fabris, professor at the Accademia, designed a tribune to house the David in a vaulted interior exedra, towards the apse, where it was bathed in light that streamed in through windows in the dome above. A replica was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in 1910.

In 1991, Piero Cannata, an artist whom the police described as deranged, attacked the statue with a hammer he had concealed beneath his jacket and damaged the second toe of the left foot. He later said that a 16th-century Venetian painter's model ordered him to do so. Cannata was restrained by museum patrons until the police arrived. Fragments fell to the floor, and three tourists were caught by guards as they were trying to leave the gallery with pieces in their pockets.

The state of preservation of the David has been monitored and evaluated since 2000 using high-resolution 3D scanning, photogrammetry, finite element method (FEM) analyses, and in situ fracture monitoring through fibre optic Bragg gratings. These observations have shown that in its present vertical orientation, with the basal plinth horizontal, the centre of gravity of the base does not align with the David's centre of gravity. Nevertheless, FEM analysis suggests that the statue is stable in its current position and indicates that its forward inclination of 1 degree to 3 degrees has played a major part in the development of cracks in the ankles.

In 2006, Borri and Grazini, using historical analysis and a finite element model of the David, identified the probable cause of the cracks in its legs as a slight forward inclination of the statue that developed after the flood of 1844 in Florence. The statue being located outdoors in front of the Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio) from 1504 to 1873, this inclination likely occurred because of the "uneven subsidence and rotation of the statue's foundations". Further damage occurred with the additional weight placed on the statue when, in 1847, Clemente Papi made a plaster mould composed of more than 1,500 separate segments, some weighing as much as 680 kg. The sculpture was also inclined on other occasions, such as when it was moved in 1873 to its placement in the Galleria dell'Accademia, after which the tilt was corrected. Ultrasonic crack assessment tests carried out by Pascale and Lolli in 2014 determined that cracks in the broncone, the tree trunk against which the David's right leg rests, are the most worrisome of those in the statue. The left ankle and the area where the left heel and the base are attached also show cracks of critical concern.

Some scholars have suggested that the relative weakness caused by the cracks in its legs could make the statue vulnerable to the vibrations of foot traffic from visitors to the gallery. Nearly a million and a half tourists (about four thousand people each day it is open) visit the Accademia Gallery annually to see the David. In 2015, Pieraccini et al. measured its dynamic movements with interferometric radar. Measurements were made of such displacements on two days: Monday, 27 July and Tuesday, 28 July 2015; on Monday the Accademia is closed, while Tuesday is statistically the peak attendance day. Their results did not show a significant increase in the vibration amplitude on days the Accademia was open, compared to days it was closed.

In 2010, a dispute over the ownership of David arose when, based on a legal review of historical documents, the municipality of Florence claimed ownership of the statue in opposition to the Italian Culture Ministry, which disputes the municipal claim.

Interpretation
The pose of Michelangelo's David is unlike that of earlier Renaissance depictions of David. The bronze statues by Donatello and Verrocchio represented the hero standing victorious over the head of Goliath, and the painter Andrea del Castagno had shown the boy in mid-swing, even as Goliath's head rested between his legs, but no earlier Florentine artist had omitted the giant altogether. According to such scholars as Howard Hibbard, David is depicted before his battle with Goliath. Rather than being shown victorious over a foe much larger than he, David looks wary as he sizes up the giant Goliath before the battle has actually taken place. His brow is drawn, his neck tense, and the veins bulge out of his lowered right hand. His left hand holds a sling that is draped over his shoulder and down to his right hand, which holds the handle of the sling.

The twist of his body in contrapposto, standing with most of its weight on his right foot and the other leg forward, effectively conveys to the viewer a sense of potential energy, the feeling that he is about to move. The statue is a Renaissance interpretation of a common ancient Greek theme of the standing heroic male nude. In the Renaissance, contrapposto poses were thought of as a distinctive feature of antique sculpture, initially manifested in the Doryphoros of Polykleitos (c. 440 BC). This is typified in David; this classic pose causes both hips and shoulders to rest at opposing angles, giving a slight s-curve to the entire torso. The contrapposto stance is emphasized by the left leg stepping forward, and by the contrasting positions of the arms: the left arm raised with its hand to the shoulder and the other hand touching the thigh.

Michelangelo's David has become one of the most recognized works of Renaissance sculpture; a symbol of strength and youthful beauty. The colossal size of the statue alone impressed Michelangelo's contemporaries. Vasari described it as "certainly a miracle that Michelangelo was able to raise up one who had died", and then listed all of the largest and most grand of the ancient statues that he had ever seen, concluding that Michelangelo's work surpassed "all ancient and modern statues, whether Greek or Latin, that have ever existed."

The proportions of the David are atypical of Michelangelo's work as well as of antique models; the figure has an unusually large head and hands (particularly apparent in the right hand). These enlargements may be due to the fact that the statue was originally intended to be placed on the cathedral roofline, where the important parts of the sculpture may have been accentuated in order to be visible from below. The small size of the genitals, though, is in line with his other works and with Renaissance conventions in general. The statue is unusually slender (front to back) in comparison to its height, which may be a result of the work done on the block before Michelangelo began carving it.

A naturalistic rendition of the nude human body, if rendered successfully, has an erotic aspect. Vasari alludes to the statue's sexual locus when he acclaims the figure's "very divine flanks". The flanks (fianchi) frame this part of the body, the nexus of its carnality. Antonio Forcellino calls the David's sexual organs "the most disquieting genitals of Renaissance sculpture", referring to the manner in which the small bulge, typical of adolescence, frames a tuft of pubic hair that "supports a penis full of energy and displays the testicles, also full of vigour". Commentators have noted the presence of foreskin on David penis, which may appear at odds with the Judaic practice of circumcision. An artistic deviation from what very likely would have been accurately portrayed as a circumcised penis, it is in keeping with the conventions of Renaissance art, in which the Christ Child, for example, is represented as being uncircumcised, although clearly older than the eight days compelled by Jewish scripture.

Political implications
David the giant-killer had long been seen as a political symbol in Florence, and images of the biblical hero already carried political implications there. Donatello's bronze David, made for Cosimo de' Medici, perhaps c. 1440, had been appropriated by the Signoria in 1494, when the Medici were exiled from Florence, and the statue was installed in the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria, where it symbolized the Republican government of the city. According to Levine, by placing Michelangelo's statue in the same general location, it is likely that the David was conceived as politically controversial before Michelangelo began work on it, as well as an artistic response to that earlier work. While the originally intended location for the David was high up on the cathedral, its location was still in question. The commission, consisting of the most prominent artists of the day, debated in great detail the best placement for the colossal figure to be seen and appreciated, with consideration for its aria, moda, and qualità (its aura, style, and excellence). The political overtones led to the statue being attacked twice in its early days. Protesters pelted it with stones the year it debuted, and, in 1527, an anti-Medici riot resulted in its left arm being broken into three pieces. Giorgio Vasari later claimed that he and his friend Francesco Silviati, although just boys, braved the violence and saved the pieces, storing them in Silviati's father's house.

Machiavelli wrote of the long Florentine tradition that represented David as defender of the patria, a convention most completely developed in the arts – especially in the series of statues, from Donatello's to Michelangelo's, depicting him as the protector of his people. Having returned the armour given him by King Saul, and choosing to fight Goliath with his own weapons – a sling and a knife – David personified the citizen soldier of Florence, and the city's ability to defend itself with its own arms.

Rather than placing Goliath's severed head between or underneath the David's feet, Michelangelo carved the stump of a tree on the back of the right leg, a device conventionally employed by sculptors in ancient times to help support the weight of a statue. In a contemporary document the stump was called broncone, the same Italian word used for Lorenzo de' Medici's personal emblem, or impresa – a dead branch of laurel sprouting new green growth. Soon after David's installation in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, certain adornments were added that have since disappeared: the stump and the strap of the sling were gilded, a vine of copper leaves was strung around the groin covering the genitals, and a laurel wreath of gilt bronze was added.

The gilt garland of leaves did not entirely negate the figure's erotic aura. Machiavelli penned a brief text in satirical vein describing the laws of an imaginary society devoted to seeking pleasure. Its people were required to violate all the normal rules of society and decorum, and were punished with even more pleasurable tasks if they failed to satisfy these demands. For example, women offenders would be forced to gaze at the David closely, "with eyeglasses" (a notable product of the city).

According to Paoletti, a naked colossus situated in the primary public space of the city was necessarily politically charged, the David's nakedness being more than merely a reference to the sculpture of antiquity that inspired the arts in the Italian Renaissance. Standing at the entrance to Florence's town hall, it had power as a political symbol, using an image of the sexualized human body to represent the corporality of the Florentine body politic. As a civic metaphor, it resonated with the everyday life experiences of 16th-century Florentine people among all the social classes.

Pedestal
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt makes the case that pedestals are of great significance for Renaissance sculpture, and, following Rosalind Krauss, that it is the support, not the statue itself that decides the monumentality of a work of sculpture. She describes how the pedestal that supports the David has been neglected in the literature as a component of Michelangelo's extraordinary achievement with his completion of the statue, and is usually not seen in photographs. The bases of most Renaissance statues have historically suffered a similar fate. When Michelangelo was young, pedestals were seldom a matter of much consideration to the sculptor; freestanding sculpture executed by contemporaries was rare and was made to surmount antique or new columns. Imbasamento is the Italian word generally used for the supports of sculpture; these and other kinds of pedestals were customarily made by scarpellini, that is, professional carvers of architectural ornament, or ideally by other sculptors.

On 11 June 1504, the architects in charge of the transportation of the statue to the Palazzo della Signoria, Simone del Pollaiolo and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, were ordered by the Operai of the Cathedral to make a marble base subtus et circum circa pedes gigantis (underneath and around the feet of the giant). Because the David was already situated, the pedestal apparently consisted of a sheath surrounding a core rather than a solid block of stone meant to support the weight of the statue. As it was architects who built and installed the pedestal, they have been credited entirely for its execution, but Brandt thinks it more likely to have been Michelangelo's idea.

According to Brandt, the David marked a pivotal event in the history of pedestals: the first still existent use in the Renaissance of an antique architectural socle form to support a sculptural colossus. Practical considerations such as the support's ability to bear the weight and the difficulty of installation were necessarily taken into account, but otherwise its dimensions and form were a matter of free discretion. Nevertheless, the pedestal was not an arbitrary decorative element that could be exchanged for another. In one sense it was an extension of the architectural surroundings, but its form responded to the figure it supports. Thereafter, pedestals would become integral parts of sculptures.

Alison Wright, drawing on the work of social historian Richard Trexler, calls the innovative installation of statues in the Piazza della Signoria in 16th-century Florence the "greatest public forum for the display of modern freestanding sculpture in Renaissance Italy", a reflection of the importance given in the city to upholding collective and personal honour. The pedestal created for Michelangelo's colossus was novel in this social context, installed as the terminus of the balustrade that stood before the town hall, the Palazzo della Signoria. Considered within this framing of the performative and ritual functions of the city's important sites, pedestals expressed the will to do honour in public and sacred spaces.

Conservation
Officials responsible for the artistic heritage of Florence had become concerned about the David's physical state by the middle of the 19th century. A cleaning of the statue had apparently occurred about 1746, and in 1813 the sculptor Stefano Ricci gave the statue a gentle cleaning and applied a thin coat of encaustic, consisting of beeswax, possibly mixed with linseed oil, to its surface as a protective coating. The sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini recommended in 1842 that a thorough conservation of the statue should be performed, and, like most of the advisory committee formed in 1504, that the David be moved to the Loggia della Signoria for its protection. In 1843 the sculptor Aristodemo Costoli cleaned the statue with a 50 per cent hydrochloric acid solution that removed the encaustic coating and left the marble surface pitted and porous, damaging the statue far more than the weathering it had suffered in the previous 400 years.

During World War II, David, along with Michelangelo's other sculptures in the Accademia, was packed in sand and entombed in brick to protect it from being damaged.

In 1991, the left foot of the statue was damaged by an unemployed Italian man named Piero Cannata, who was carrying a hammer he had hidden under his jacket and broke off the tip of the second toe. The samples obtained from that incident allowed scientists, utilising spectroscopic, isotopic and petrographic analysis simultaneously, to determine that the marble used was obtained from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara. The chemists and spectroscopists who conducted these tests say the marble of the David consists entirely of the mineral calcite.

Because of the marble's surface degradation, on the eve of the 500th anniversary of the sculpture's unveiling in 2004 the statue was given its first major cleaning since 1843. A scientific committee was formed to advise in the restoration. The committee was composed of university professors and scientists from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (National Research Council) and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a government art-restoration department. They carried out tests and analyses and determined that the statue should be cleaned by poultices soaked in distilled water and applied to the sculpture's surface. Agnese Parronchi, the restorer originally selected by Florentine museums superintendent Antonio Paolucci, assessed the David's condition herself by examining hundreds of photographs and performing a series of tests. Consequently, she opposed the committee's pre-specified method, fearing further deterioration, and insisted that it should be cleaned dry, with soft brushes and motorized erasers. Paolucci demanded that she use the wet pack method instead, but Parronchi refused. After Parronchi resigned, restorer Cinzia Parnigoni undertook the job of restoring the statue under the direction of Franca Falletti, director of the Accademia Gallery.

Researchers at the University of Siena (Università di Siena) performed an investigation of the small cavities, about a millimetre in diameter and of irregular distribution, with which the marble surface of the David is covered. Their macroscopic examination determined that the cavities have not resulted from deterioration of the stone, but rather that they can be attributed to the mineralogical structure of the marble taken from quarries in the Apuan Alps. The local quarrymen in their dialect call those less than a millimetre in size taròli and those several millimetres or larger they call tarme. Observation with optical fibres and magnifying lenses shows that the marble immediately surrounding the cavity may present milky white or greyish "halos" averaging a few millimetres wide. Many of them are completely or partly filled with various substances; this deposition is caused by the statue's exposure over centuries to atmospheric agents or to past restoration processes.

As of 2024 temporary scaffolding is erected around the statue every two months and in an operation that takes a half a day, dust and spider's webs are removed using soft-bristled brushes of various sizes and a bristle tipped vacuum cleaner.

Replicas
Michelangelo's David has stood on display at Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia since 1873. On 29 August 1846, Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany commissioned Clemente Papi, a student of Stefano Ricci, to make a plaster cast of the David. Papi, a master bronze caster, was experienced in making moulds and reproductions, and set about the project in the summer of 1847. He probably used wax to release the mould rather than oil or fat. This was less damaging than the encaustic wax used by Ricci in 1813, but residue from the gypsum of the plaster mould appears to be present in places where removing coatings is difficult, such as between the David's toes.

This cast was to be moved to various locations in the city to determine their suitability for the statue. Papi first made two plaster replicas of the marble David from his moulds, one of which was given in 1857 by Leopold II to Queen Victoria of England. A decree by the Tuscan state on 2 October 1858 ordered the casting of the entire figure of the David, which Papi completed in August 1866, sending the finished statue to the 1867 Paris Exposition the next year. His intention had always been to cast a bronze replica, and this cast was eventually raised on the Piazzale Michelangelo in 1875 to commemorate the fourth centenary of Michelangelo's birth.

The statue sent to Queen Victoria was intended as a diplomatic gesture by Duke Leopoldo II to assuage any ill feelings caused by his refusal to allow the sending of a notable Domenico Ghirlandaio painting from Florence to London. Apparently Queen Victoria was surprised to receive such a gift, and gave the statue to the newly opened South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum. Papi's copy, which was sent to the Accademia di delle Belle Arti of Florence where it resides in the Gipsoteca (Gallery of Plaster Casts) of the Istituto Statale d'Arte, has been used to make all subsequent casts of the David.

The plaster cast of David at the Victoria and Albert Museum has a detachable plaster fig leaf which is displayed nearby. The fig leaf was created in response to Queen Victoria's apparent shock upon first viewing the statue's nudity, and was hung on the figure by means of two strategically placed hooks prior to royal visits.

On 12 November 2010, a fibreglass replica of David was installed atop a buttress on a corner of the north tribune below the roofline of Florence Cathedral for a week. Photographs of the installation reveal the statue the way the Operai who commissioned the work originally expected it to be seen.

Michelangelo's statue is the best known and the most often reproduced of all the artistic works created in Florence. Later reproductions have been made in plaster and in simulated marble fibreglass, signifying an attempt to lend an atmosphere of culture even in some unlikely settings such as beach resorts, gambling casinos and model railroads. Some parody reproductions feature uncharacteristic embellishments, such as a 1966 reproduction that captured attention in San Francisco for portraying David in leather attire.

title: David (Michelangelo)


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Emperor Go-Ichijō

Emperor Go-Ichijō (後一条天皇) was the 68th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.

Go-Ichijō's reign spanned the years from 1016 through 1036.

This 11th century sovereign was named after his father, Emperor Ichijō, and go- (後), translates literally as "later;" and thus, he is sometimes called the "Later Emperor Ichijō", or, in some older sources, may be identified as "Emperor Ichijō, the second."

Biography
Before his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (imina) was Atsuhira -shinnō (敦成親王). He was also known as Atsunari-shinnō.

Atsuhira was the second son of Emperor Ichijō. His mother, Fujiwara no Akiko/Shōshi (藤原彰子) (988–1074), was a daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga. In her later years, Ichijō's chūgo consort was known as Jōtō-mon In (上東門院).

Events of Go-Ichijō's life
Atsuhira-shinnō was used as a pawn in Imperial court politics when he was only a child.

 * 1012 (Chōwa 1, 8th month): Prince Atsuhira marries a daughter of sesshō and later kampaku Fujiwara no Michinaga.

Atsuhira became emperor at the age of 8, upon the abdication of his first cousin once removed, Emperor Sanjō.

 * March 10, 1016 (Chōwa 5, 29th day of the 1st month): In the 5th year of Emperor Sanjō's reign (三条天皇五年), he abdicated; and the succession (‘‘senso’’) was received by a cousin. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Go-Ichijō is said to have acceded to the throne (‘‘sokui’’).

During the initial years of Go-Ichijō's reign, Fujiwara no Michinaga actually ruled from his position as sesshō (regent).

 * June 5, 1017 (Kannin 1, 9th day of the 5th month): The former-Emperor Sanjō died at the age of 41.
 * 1017 (Kannin 1, 8th month): Prince Atsuakira, the eldest son of Emperor Sanjo, had been named Crown Prince. But after he is struck by a skin disease and intense pressure from Michinaga; he withdrew from this role and his younger brother, Prince Atsunaga, was named Crown Prince in his place.
 * 1017 (Kannin 1, 9th month): Michinaga made a pilgrimage to the Iwashimizu Shrine accompanied by many courtiers. The travelers divided themselves amongst 15 boats for a floating trip down the Yotogawa River.  One of the vessels overturned, and more than 30 people lost their lives.
 * 1017 (Kannin 1, 12th month): Michinaga was elevated to the office of Daijō-Diajin.
 * May 15, 1036 (Chōgen 9, 17th day of the 4th month): Emperor Go-Ichijō died at the age of 27.

The actual site of Go-Ichijō's grave is known. This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Kyoto.

The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Go-Ichijō's mausoleum. It is formally named Bodaijuin no misasagi.

Kugyō
Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. Even during those years in which the court's actual influence outside the palace walls was minimal, the hierarchic organization persisted.

In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Go-Ichijō's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:
 * Sesshō, Fujiwara Michinaga, 966–1027.
 * Sesshō, Fujiwara Yorimichi, 992–1074.
 * Kampaku, Fujiwara Yorimichi.
 * Daijō-daijin, Fujiwara Michinaga.
 * Daijō-daijin, Kan'in Kinsue, 956–1029.
 * Sadaijin, Fujiwara Michinaga.
 * Sadaijin, Fujiwara Akimitsu, 944–1021.
 * Sadaijin, Fujiwara Yorimichi.
 * Udaijin, Fujiwara Sanesuke, 957–1046.
 * Nadaijin, Fujiwara Norimichi, 997–1075.
 * Dainagon

Eras of Go-Ichijō's reign
The years of Go-Ichijō's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.
 * Chōwa       (1012–1017)
 * Kannin            (1017–1021)
 * Jian   (1021–1024)
 * Manju (1024–1028)
 * Chōgen     (1028–1037)

Consort and children
Go-Ichijō had one Empress and two Imperial daughters.

Empress (Chūgū): Fujiwara no Ishi (藤原威子; 999–1036), Fujiwara no Michinaga’s third daughter
 * First Daughter: Imperial Princess Akiko/Shōshi (章子内親王) later Nijō-In (二条院), Empress (chūgū) to Emperor Go-Reizei
 * Second Daughter: Imperial Princess Kaoruko/Keishi (馨子内親王; 1029–1093) later Saien-no Kogo (西院皇后), Empress (chūgū) to Emperor Go-Sanjō

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Emperor Go-Ichijō


text:
1036

Year 1036 (MXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Europe

 * Summer – In Naples, Duke Sergius IV abdicates and retires to a monastery; he is succeeded by his son John V.
 * A Zirid expeditionary force invades Sicily and takes Palermo from the Normans, but fails to fully reconquer the island.

England

 * February 5 – Edward the Confessor's younger brother Alfred Aetheling is blinded and murdered, in an apparent attempt to seize the throne of England from Harold I.

Africa

 * June 13 – Caliph al-Zahir li-i'zaz Din Allah dies after a 16-year reign. He is succeeded by his 6-year-old son al-Mustansir as ruler of the Fatimid Caliphate. Vizier Ali ibn Ahmad al-Jarjara'i will guide the regency for the first few years.

China

 * The Tangut script is devised by Yeli Renrong, for Emperor Jing Zong of Western Xia.

Japan

 * May 15 – Emperor Go-Ichijō dies at the age of 27 after a 20-year reign. He is succeeded by his brother Go-Suzaku as the 69th emperor of Japan.

Religion

 * Pope Benedict IX is briefly forced out of Rome, but returns with the help of Emperor Conrad II (the Elder).
 * The Flower Sermon first appears in Buddhist literature.

Births

 * Anselm of Lucca (the Younger), Italian bishop (d. 1086)
 * Fujiwara no Hiroko, Japanese empress (d. 1127)
 * Igor Yaroslavich, prince of Smolensk (d. 1060)
 * Wang Shen, Chinese painter and poet (d. 1093)

Deaths

 * February 5 – Alfred Aetheling, Anglo-Saxon prince
 * March 17 – Gebhard II, bishop of Regensburg
 * May 15 – Go-Ichijō, emperor of Japan (b. 1008)
 * June 12 – Tedald (or Theobald), Italian bishop
 * June 13 – al-Zahir li-i'zaz Din Allah, Fatimid caliph (b. 1005)
 * August 25 – Pilgrim, archbishop of Cologne
 * Abu Nasr Mansur, Persian mathematician (b. 960)
 * Alric of Asti (or Adalric), Lombard bishop
 * Berengar of Gascony, French nobleman
 * Emilia of Gaeta, Italian duchess and regent
 * Fujiwara no Ishi, Japanese empress (b. 999)
 * Hárek of Tjøtta, Norwegian Viking chieftain
 * Hisham III, Umayyad caliph of Córdoba (b. 973)

title: 1036


text:
Emperor Go-Suzaku

Emperor Go-Suzaku (後朱雀天皇) was the 69th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.

Go-Suzaku's reign spanned the years from 1036 through 1045.

This 11th-century sovereign was named after the 10th-century Emperor Suzaku and go- (後), translates literally as "later;" and thus, he is sometimes called the "Later Emperor Suzaku". The Japanese word "go" has also been translated to mean the "second one;" and in some older sources, this emperor may be identified as "Suzaku, the second" or as "Suzaku II."

Biography
Before his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (his imina) was Atsunaga-shinnō (敦良親王).

His father was Emperor Ichijō. His mother was Fujiwara no Akiko/Shōshi (藤原彰子), the daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga (藤原道長). He was the younger brother and heir to Emperor Go-Ichijō.

Go-Suzaku had five Empresses and seven Imperial children.

Events of Go-Suzaku's life
[[Image:Go-shichi no kiri crest 2.svg|thumb|left|140px|Decorative emblems (kiri) of the Hosokawa clan are found at [[Ryōan-ji]].
 * May 15, 1036 (Chōgen 9, 17th day of the 4th month) : In the 9th year of Emperor Go-Ichijō's reign (後一条天皇九年), he died; and the succession (‘‘senso’’) was received by his younger brother.
 * 1036 (Chōgen 9, 7th month): Emperor Go-Suzaku is said to have acceded to the throne (‘‘sokui’’).
 * February 5, 1045 (Kantoku 2, 16th day of the 1st month): Emperor Go-Suzaku abdicated.
 * February 7, 1045 (Kantoku 2, 18th day of the 1st month): The former-Emperor Go-Suzaku ordained as a Buddhist monk and died the same day at the age of 37. His reign has lasted nine years—five in the nengō Chōryaku, four in Chōkyu, and 2 in Kantoku.

Go-Suzaku is amongst six other emperors entombed near what had been the residence of Hosokawa Katsumoto before the Ōnin War.]]

The actual site of Go-Suzaku's grave is unknown. This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Kyoto.

The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Go-Suzaku's mausoleum. It is formally named Enjō-ji no misasagi.

Go-Suzaku is buried amongst the "Seven Imperial Tombs" at Ryōan-ji Temple in Kyoto.

The specific mound which commemorates the Hosokawa Emperor Go-Suzaku is today named Shu-zan.

The emperor's burial place would have been quite humble in the period after Go-Suzaku died.

These tombs reached their present state as a result of the 19th century restoration of imperial sepulchers (misasagi) which were ordered by Emperor Meiji.

The final resting place of Emperor Go-Suzaku's consort, Teishi Nai-shinnō (1013–1094), is here as well.

Kugyō
Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. Even during those years in which the court's actual influence outside the palace walls was minimal, the hierarchic organization persisted.

In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Go-Suzaku's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:
 * Sadaijin, Fujiwara Yorimichi, 992–1074.
 * Udaijin, Fujiwara Sanesuke, 957–1046.
 * Nadaijin, Fujiwara Norimichi, 997–1075.
 * Dainagon

Eras of Go-Suzaku's reign
The years of Go-Suzaku's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.
 * Chōgen     (1028–1037)
 * Chōryaku (1037–1040)
 * Chōkyū     (1040–1044)
 * Kantoku           (1044–1046)

Consorts and children
Empress (kōgō): Imperial Princess Teishi (禎子内親王; 1013–1094) later Yōmeimon’in (陽明門院), Emperor Sanjō‘s 3rd daughter
 * First Daughter: Imperial Princess Nagako/Ryōshi (良子内親王, 1029–1077) – Saiō at Ise Shrine 1036–1045 (Ippon-Jusangū, 一品准三宮)
 * Second daughter: Imperial Princess Yoshiko/Kenshi (娟子内親王, 1032–1103) – Saiin at Kamo Shrine 1036–1045, later married Minamoto Toshifusa
 * Second Son: Imperial Prince Takahito (尊仁親王) later Emperor Go-Sanjo

Empress (chūgū): Fujiwara no Genshi (藤原嫄子; 1016–1039), Imperial Prince Atsuyasu's daughter and Fujiwara no Yorimichi‘s adopted daughter
 * Third Daughter: Imperial Princess Sukeko/Yūshi (祐子内親王; 1038–1105) – (Sanpon-Jusangū, 三品准三宮)
 * Fourth Daughter: Imperial Princess Miwako/Baishi (禖子内親王; 1039–1096) (Rokujō Saiin, 六条斎院) – Saiin at Kamo Shrine 1046–1058

Crown Princess (died before Emperor's accession): Fujiwara no Yoshiko (藤原嬉子; 1007-1025), Fujiwara no Michinaga‘s 6th daughter
 * First Son: Imperial Prince Chikahito (親仁親王) later Emperor Go-Reizei

Consort (Nyōgo): Fujiwara no Nariko/Seishi (藤原生子; 1014–1068), Fujiwara no Norimichi‘s eldest daughter

Consort (Nyōgo): Fujiwara no Nobuko/Enshi (藤原延子; 1016–1095), Fujiwara no Yorimune‘s 2nd daughter
 * Fifth Daughter: Imperial Princess Masako/Seishi (正子内親王; 1045–1114) (Oshinokōji-Saiin, 押小路斎院) – Saiin at Kamo Shrine 1058–1069

title: Emperor Go-Suzaku


text:
1045

Year 1045 (MXLV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events

 * January 20 – Pope Sylvester III becomes the 146th pope, succeeding Benedict IX, who abdicated during the previous year.
 * January 23 – Edward the Confessor, King of England, marries Edith of Wessex, and begins construction of Westminster Abbey in England.
 * February – Pope Sylvester III is deposed (election deemed invalid); Pope Benedict IX is elected once more, becoming the 147th pope.
 * February 5 – Emperor Go-Reizei ascends the throne of Japan.
 * May 5 – Pope Gregory VI becomes the 148th pope, following the resignation of Pope Benedict IX in exchange for money. There are growing allegations that simony is taking place during Gregory VI's reign.
 * Movable type printing is invented by Bi Sheng in China.
 * The Qingli Reforms, put forth by the Chinese statesman Fan Zhongyan in 1043, are halted by their conservative ministerial peers, but will later influence reform efforts under Wang Anshi.
 * The Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia is surrendered to the Eastern Roman Empire, ending the Kingdom.

Births

 * Robert of Arbrissel (approximately) (d. 1116), Bretonic preacher and founder of Fontevraud Abbey
 * Stephen, Count of Blois (approximately) (d. 1102)
 * Huang Tingjian, famous Chinese calligrapher, painter, and poet (d. 1105)
 * Probable
 * Margaret, queen of Scotland (d. 1093)

Deaths

 * February 7 – Emperor Go-Suzaku of Japan (b. 1009)
 * May 27 – Bruno of Würzburg, imperial chancellor of Italy (b. c. 1005)
 * Hemma of Gurk, Austrian religious founder and countess (b. 980)
 * Maria Skleraina, Byzantine Imperial political adviser
 * Radbot, Count of Habsburg (b. 985)

title: 1045


text:
User:Ap

I started contributing to Wikipedia starting somewhere around mid-2001. I have worked on and contributed to many articles. I occasionally do article translations for the Dutch Wikipedia.

I write mainly about topics that interest me. I live in Eindhoven, I have a Master's degree in electrical engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology. Over the years, I have specialized myself in software development. I like to spend my spare time dancing Lindy hop.

As an experiment, I have written a small conversion utility in Perl to convert Wikipedia articles to LaTeX. The conversion is still a bit rough around the edges. The script retrieves the articles in namespace 0 (articles only) and converts the Wiki syntax to something TeX can understand.

For those familiar with LaTeX: I have used the book documentclass on A4 paper with margins set at 1cm all around, 10pt font size, two columns, articles start new sections. Redirects are included. Pictures are not included.

I used a snapshot from around 2003-08-19.

When processed like this, the English language Wikipedia counts 62555 pages. If we were to print it on paper, using as a rough measure 500 pages = 2.5 cm or approx. 1 inch, this would correspond to roughly 250 cm (about 100 inch) of shelf space.

nl:Gebruiker:Ap

title: User:Ap


text:
Emperor Go-Reizei

Emperor Go-Reizei (後冷泉天皇) was the 70th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.

Go-Reizei's reign spanned the years 1045–1068.

This 11th century sovereign was named after the 10th century Emperor Reizei and go- (後), translates literally as "later"; and thus, he is sometimes called the "Later Emperor Reizei". The Japanese word "go" has also been translated to mean the "second one"; and in some older sources, this emperor may be identified as "Reizei, the second", or as "Reizei II".

Biography
Before his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (imina) was Chikahito-shinnō (親仁親王). He was the eldest son of Emperor Go-Suzaku. His mother was Fujiwara no Kishi (藤原嬉子), formerly Naishi-no kami, daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga. Go-Reizei had three Empresses and no Imperial sons or daughters.

Events of Go-Reizei's life

When Emperor Go-Suzaku abdicated on February 5, 1045, his eldest son received the succession (‘‘senso’’) on the same day. Emperor Go-Reizei formally acceded to the throne (‘‘sokui’’) shortly after, and the era name was changed the following year to mark the beginning of his reign. His father Go-Suzaku died at the age of 37 on February 7, 1045, of unknown causes The one major event in Go-Reizei's life occurred in the year 1051, when Abe no Sadatō and Munetō instigated a rebellion that became known as the Zenkunen War (1051–1062). In response, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi is appointed governor of Mutsu and he is named chinjufu shōgun. He is given these titles and powers so that he will be able to restore peace in the north. Yoriyoshi would have been the first to receive this specific shogunal title, although his grandfather (Minamoto no Tsunemoto) had been seitō fuku-shōgun (assistant commander for pacification of the east). Go-Reizei later died on May 22, 1068, at the age of 44 leaving no direct heirs to the throne. He was succeeded by his father's second son Takahito-shinnō aka Emperor Go-Sanjō.

The actual site of Go-Reizei's grave is known. This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) though at Kyoto. The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Go-Reizei's mausoleum. It is formally named Enkyo-ji no misasagi. Go-Reizei is buried amongst the "Seven Imperial Tombs" at Ryōan-ji Temple in Kyoto. The mound which commemorates the Hosokawa Emperor Go-Reizei is today named Shu-zan. The emperor's burial place would have been quite humble in the period after Go-Reizei died. These tombs reached their present state as a result of the 19th century restoration of imperial sepulchers (misasagi) which were ordered by Emperor Meiji.

Kugyō
Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. Even during those years in which the court's actual influence outside the palace walls was minimal, the hierarchic organization persisted.

In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Go-Reizei's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:
 * Kampaku, Fujiwara Yorimichi, 992–1074.
 * Kampaku, Fujiwara Norimichi, 997–1075.
 * Daijō-daijin, Fujiwara Yorimichi.
 * Sadaijin, Fujiwara Norimichi.
 * Sadaijin
 * Udaijin, Fujiwara Sanesuke, 957–1046.
 * Udaijin, Fujiwara Yorimune, 993–1065.
 * Udaijin, Fujiwara Morozane, 1042–1101.
 * Nadaijin, Minamoto Morofusa, 1009–1077.
 * Dainagon

Eras of Go-Reizei's reign
The years of Go-Reizei's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.
 * Kantoku     (1044–1046)
 * Eishō   (1046–1053)
 * Tengi       (1053–1058)
 * Kōhei (1058–1065)
 * Jiryaku     (1065–1069)

Empresses and consorts
Empress (chūgū): Imperial Princess Shōshi (章子内親王, 1027–1105) later Nijō-in (二条院), Emperor Go-Ichijo’s daughter.

Empress (kōgō): Fujiwara no Hiroko (藤原寛子; 1036–1127) later Shijō no Miya (四条宮), Fujiwara no Yorimichi‘s daughter

Empress (kōgō): Fujiwara no Kanshi (藤原歓子; 1021–1102) later Ono-no-Kōtaigō (小野皇太后), Fujiwara no Norimichi‘s daughter
 * Son (1049)

Consort: Sugawara family's daughter
 * son: Takashina Tameyuki (高階為行; 1059–1107)

title: Emperor Go-Reizei


text:
1068

Year 1068 (MLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * January 1 – Empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa, wife of the late Emperor Constantine X, marries General Romanos Diogenes (a member of a prominent Cappadocian family) – who is proclaimed co-emperor as Romanos IV of the Byzantine Empire.
 * Autumn – Romanos IV begins a campaign against the Seljuk Turks, leading a Byzantine expeditionary force (which is in poor condition). He is successful in recapturing the fortress city of Hieropolis (modern-day Manbij) near Aleppo in northern Syria.
 * Winter – Romanos IV leaves a portion of his army as a rearguard at Melitene. The Byzantine garrison fails to check a Seljuk raid that manages to sack Amorium (penetrating deep in Byzantine territory). Romanos winters near Aleppo before returning to Constantinople.

Europe

 * Norman conquest of southern Italy: Norman forces under Robert Guiscard (duke of Apulia and Calabria) lay siege to the Byzantine city of Bari.
 * Battle of the Alta River: The Cumans defeat the Kievan Rus' forces of Grand Prince Iziaslav I, and his brothers Sviatoslav II and Vsevolod I.
 * Kiev Uprising: The city of Kiev rebels against Iziaslav I, in the aftermath of the Kievan Rus' defeat against the Cumans.
 * Rethra destruction: In Annals of Augsburg the slavic city is mentioned for the last time under the year 1068. It was captured by bishop Burchard, who destroyed their temple and abducted the sacred white horse living there.

England

 * Siege of Exeter: Norman forces under King William I (the Conqueror) take the city of Exeter after a siege of 18-days.
 * William I begins a campaign in the East Midlands to put down the rebellions at Nottingham, Stafford, Lincoln and York.
 * Edgar the Ætheling takes refuge with King Malcolm III of Scotland along with Edgar's sister Margaret, who marries King Malcolm.
 * May 11 – William I brings his wife Matilda of Flanders to England. She is crowned queen in Westminster Abbey.

Africa

 * September – Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyah marries Abu Bakr ibn Umar, leader of the Almoravids, and becomes his queen and co-regent.

Asia

 * Spring – Emperor Yi Zong of the Western Xia (or Xi Xia) dies after a 19-year reign. He is succeeded by his 7-year-old son Hui Zong, who assumes the throne (until 1086).
 * May 22 – Emperor Go-Reizei dies after a 23-year reign, leaving no direct heirs to the throne. He is succeeded by his brother Go-Sanjō as the 71st emperor of Japan.

Geology

 * March 18 – An earthquake affects the Near East, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The shock has a magnitude greater than 7, and leaves about 20,000 people dead.

Births

 * August 1 – Taizu (Aguda), emperor of the Jin Dynasty (d. 1123)
 * Abu al-Salt, Moorish astronomer and polymath (approximate date)
 * Ermengarde of Anjou, duchess of Aquitaine and Brittany (d. 1146)
 * Haakon Magnusson (Toresfostre), king of Norway (d. 1095)
 * Henry I, king of England (approximate date) (d. 1135)
 * Peter I, king of Aragon (approximate date)
 * Robert de Ferrers, 1st Earl Derby (d. 1139)

Deaths

 * January 11 – Egbert I, margrave of Meissen
 * May 22 – Go-Reizei, emperor of Japan (b. 1025)
 * November 10 – Agnes of Burgundy, duchess of Aquitaine
 * Abulchares, Byzantine general and catepan
 * Ali ibn Yusuf al-Ilaqi, Persian physician
 * Argyrus, Lombard nobleman and general
 * Böritigin, ruler of Transoxiana (Kara-Khanid Khanate)
 * Choe Chung, Korean Confucian scholar (b. 984)
 * Eadnoth the Constable, English landowner
 * Ralph the Staller, English nobleman
 * William IV (or Guillem), French nobleman
 * William of Montreuil, Italo-Norman duke
 * Yi Zong, emperor of Western Xia (b. 1047)
 * Vijayaditya VI, king of the Eastern Chalukyas (unconfirmed)

title: 1068


text:
1025

Year 1025 (MXXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * December 15 – Byzantine Emperor Basil II ("Bulgar Slayer") dies in Constantinople after a 50-year reign. Never married, he is succeeded by his brother and co-emperor Constantine VIII, who becomes sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Constantine calls the Sicilian invasion off. Catapan Basil Boioannes diverts the Byzantine expeditionary force already assembled on Calabria, to join the siege of Capua.

Europe

 * April 18 – Bolesław I the Brave is crowned in Gniezno as the first king of Poland. He takes advantage of the interregnum in Germany (see 1024) and receives permission for his coronation from Pope John XIX; however, he dies on June 17.
 * September – At the urging of Queen Constance of Arles, the three sons of King Robert II of France ("the Pious") revolt against their father – Hugh Magnus (heir and co-king), Henry I and Robert I, Duke of Burgundy start a civil war over power.
 * December 25 – Mieszko II Lambert, son of Bolosław I, is crowned as king of Poland by archbishop Hippolytus in Gniezno Cathedral.

Africa

 * Emir Al-Mu'izz ibn Badis of the Zirid dynasty in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia) attempts to retake Sicily but is unsuccessful.

Asia

 * January 21 – Chifuru, daughter of powerful Japanese court official Fujiwara no Sanesuke (rival of Fujiwara no Michinaga) has her mogi ceremony. Sanesuke wants to make his daughter an imperial consort which causes the dislike of Empress Ishi (daughter of Michinaga) – eventually Kampaku (Regent) Fujiwara no Yorimichi prevents it.
 * Srivijaya, a Buddhist kingdom based in Sumatra, is attacked by Emperor Rajendra I of the Chola dynasty of southern India in a dispute over trading rights in Southeast Asia. It survives but declines in importance.
 * Completion and publishing of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine.
 * Japanese Kampaku (Regent) Fujiwara no Yorimichi holds horse racing at his mansion; the emperor attends.

Births

 * August 28 – Go-Reizei, Japanese emperor (d. 1068)
 * Agnes of Poitou, Holy Roman Empress (d. 1077)
 * Anna Dalassene, Byzantine empress and regent
 * Edith of Wessex, English queen (approximate date)
 * Elisaveta Yaroslavna of Kiev, Norwegian queen
 * Gerald of Sauve-Majeure, French abbot (d. 1095)
 * Gertrude of Poland, Grand Princess of Kiev (d. 1108)
 * John Italus, Byzantine philosopher (d. 1090)
 * John of Lodi, Italian hermit and bishop (d. 1106)
 * Lothair Udo II, German margrave (d. 1082)
 * Nong Zhigao, Vietnamese chieftain of Nong
 * Ruben I, Armenian prince (approximate date)
 * Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia (d. 1080)
 * Simon I, French nobleman (approximate date)
 * Tora Torbergsdatter, Norwegian Viking queen
 * William VIII, French nobleman (approximate date)

Deaths

 * April 25 – Fujiwara no Seishi, Japanese empress consort (b. 972)
 * May – Musharrif al-Dawla, Buyid emir of Iraq (b. 1003)
 * June 17 – Bolesław I the Brave, king of Poland (b. 967)
 * August 10 – Burchard of Worms, German bishop and writer
 * August 11 – Kanshi, Japanese princess consort
 * c. August 30 – Fujiwara no Kishi, Japanese crown princess, posthumously named empress, mother of Emperor Go-Reizei (b. 1007)
 * September 17 – Hugh Magnus, king of France (b. 1007)
 * September 29 – Louis I, count of Chiny and Verdun
 * November
 * Koshikibu no Naishi, Japanese waka poet and lady-in-waiting (b. c.999)
 * Matilda, countess palatine of Lotharingia (b. 979)
 * December 15 – Basil II, Byzantine emperor (b. 958)
 * December 22 – Wang Qinruo, Chinese chancellor
 * December – Eustathius of Constantinople, Byzantine patriarch
 * Al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad, Muslim theologian (b. 935)
 * Mhic Mac Comhaltan Ua Cleirigh, Irish king
 * Sabur ibn Ardashir, Persian statesman (b. 942)
 * Watanabe no Tsuna, Japanese samurai (b. 953)

title: 1025


text:
1034

Year 1034 (MXXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * April 11 – Emperor Romanos III (Argyros) is drowned in his bath, at the urging of his wife Zoë, who marries her chamberlain, and elevates him to the throne of the Byzantine Empire, as Michael IV. Romanos is buried in the Church of St. Mary Peribleptos in Constantinople.

Europe

 * Spring – Emperor Conrad II (the Elder) leads a German military expedition via the Rhone River into Burgundy, while two Italian armies led by Archbishop Aribert and Boniface III (margrave of Tuscany) head over the Alps and join with Count Humbert I at Great St. Bernard Pass.
 * March – Conrad II converges his armies on Lake Lemano and defeats Count Odo II in battle at Geneva (modern Switzerland). For his assistance, Conrad grants Humbert I with the Burgundian county of Maurienne.
 * May – King Mieszko II dies after a 6-year reign (probably killed as a result of a conspiracy) and is succeeded by his 17-year-old son Casimir I (the Restorer). A violent revolt spreads throughout Poland.
 * King Sancho III (the Great) of Pamplona captures León, after defeating a string of rivals. His rule now extends from the borders of Galicia in the west to the County of Barcelona in the east.
 * Summer – Poland is broke up into regions (during the so-called Pagan Reaction). Queen Richeza, Casimir I and his sisters Ryksa and Gertruda are driven into exile in Germany.
 * November 25 – King Malcolm II dies in battle at Glamis. He is succeeded by Duncan I, son of his eldest daughter, rather than Macbeth, who is possibly another grandson of his.
 * In Al-Andalus, benefiting from the weakening of the Muslim central authority, the count of Portugal, Gonçalo Maia, conquers Montemor-o-Velho (approximate date).
 * Franche-Comté becomes subject to the Holy Roman Empire.

Africa

 * A Pisan and Genovese fleet attack Bona (modern Annaba) on the Maghribi coast (modern Tunisia). The city is occupied for one year.

Births

 * Joscelin I de Courtenay, French nobleman (House of Courtenay)
 * Khön Könchok Gyalpo, founder of Sakya Monastery (d. 1102)

Deaths

 * February 21 – Hawise of Normandy, French duchess and regent
 * March 21 – Ezzo (or Ehrenfried), German count palatine
 * April 11 – Romanos III (Argyros), Byzantine emperor (b. 968)
 * October 31 – Deokjong, ruler of Goryeo (Korea) (b. 1016)
 * November 9 – Oldřich (or Odalric), duke of Bohemia
 * November 19 – Theodoric II, margrave of Lower Lusatia
 * November 25 – Malcolm II, king of Alba (Scotland)
 * December 8 – Æthelric (or Brihtmær), English bishop
 * Adémar de Chabannes, French monk and historian
 * Ali ibn Hasan (Ali-Tegin), Karakhanid ruler (khagan)
 * Amlaíb mac Sitriuc, Norse-Gaelic king of Dublin
 * Bernard Roger, French nobleman (approximate date)
 * Manuchihr I, Persian ruler (shah) of Shirvan
 * Matilda of Franconia, daughter of Conrad II
 * Mieszko II (St. Lambert), king of Poland
 * Qian Weiyan, Chinese politician and poet
 * Salim ibn Mustafad, Mirdasid rebel leader
 * Samuel ben Hofni, Jewish rabbi and writer

title: 1034


text:
1073

Year 1073 (MLXXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * Spring – Emperor Michael VII (Doukas) sends a Byzantine army to deal with Seljuk raiding in Cappadocia, supported with a mixed force of Norman and French mercenary heavy cavalry under Roussel de Bailleul. Roussel re-conquers some territory in Galatia and declares it an independent Norman state. Michael, enraged, sends another army led by his uncle, Caesar John Doukas and the veteran General Nikephoros Botaneiates to deal with the rising of the Norman threat in Asia minor. But the Byzantines are defeated and John is captured. Roussel marches with a force (3,000 men) across Bithynia to the Bosporus and sacks Chrysopolis, near Constantinople.

Europe

 * May 25 – King Sancho IV of Navarre and Ahmad al-Muqtadir, Muslim ruler of the Taifa of Zaragoza, conclude an alliance by treaty.
 * Ebles II of Roucy leads a French army in Spain, to support King Sancho V of Aragon in his struggle against his Muslim neighbors.
 * Sviatoslav II and Vsevolod I unite the Kievan forces and expel their brother Iziaslav I. Sviatoslav II becomes Grand Prince of Kiev.
 * October 14 – The Judicate of Arborea (one of the four independent kingdoms in Sardinia) is recognised by Pope Gregory VII.

Britain

 * Edgar Ætheling, last male member of the House of Wessex, joins forces with King Malcolm III of Scotland and King Philip I (the Amorous) of France in an attempt to take the English throne.

Asia

 * Wang Anshi, Chinese chief chancellor of the Song Dynasty, creates a new bureau of the central government (called the Directorate of Weapons), which supervises the manufacture of military armaments and ensures quality control.
 * June 15 – Emperor Go-Sanjō dies after a 5-year reign and is succeeded by his 19-year-old son Shirakawa as the 72nd emperor of Japan.

Religion

 * Pope Alexander II dies after a 11½-year pontificate at Rome. He is succeeded by Gregory VII as the 157th pope of the Catholic Church.
 * Rabbi Yitchaki Alfassi finishes writing the Rif, an important work of Jewish law.
 * John IX bar Shushan ends his term as Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.

Births

 * Agnes of Waiblingen, daughter of Henry IV (or 1072)
 * Alfonso I (the Battler), king of Aragon (approximate date)
 * Al-Tighnari, Moorish botanist and physician (d. 1118)
 * Anastatius IV, pope of the Catholic Church (d. 1154)
 * David IV (the Builder), king of Georgia (d. 1125)
 * Leopold III (the Good), margrave of Austria (d. 1136)
 * Magnus III (Barefoot), king of Norway (d. 1103)
 * Meng, empress of the Song Dynasty (d. 1131)
 * Philippa, French noblewoman (approximate date)
 * Shaykh Tabarsi, Persian Shia scholar (d. 1153)
 * Thomas of Marle, lord of Coucy (d. 1130)
 * Zbigniew, duke of Poland (approximate date)
 * Lady Six Monkey, queen of the Mixtec city State of Huachino and queen of Jaltepec (d. 1100)

Deaths

 * April 21 – Alexander II, pope of the Catholic Church
 * June 15 – Go-Sanjō, emperor of Japan (b. 1032)
 * July 12 – John Gualbert, Italian monk and abbot
 * December 20 – Dominic of Silos, Spanish abbot (b. 1000)
 * Al-Qushayri, Persian Sufi scholar and theologian (or 1072)
 * Anthony of Kiev, Russian monk and saint (b. 983)
 * Badis ibn Habus, Berber king of the Taifa of Granada
 * Barisone I of Torres, Sardinian ruler (judge) of Arborea
 * Peter Damian, cardinal-bishop of Ostia (or 1072)
 * Zhou Dunyi, Chinese philosopher and cosmologist (b. 1017)

title: 1073


text:
Shirakawa

Shirakawa (白川 or 白河) may refer to:

People

 * Shirakawa (surname)
 * Emperor Shirakawa, an eleventh-century emperor of Japan

Places

 * Shirakawa, Fukushima, a city in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan
 * Shirakawa Domain, a feudal domain of Edo-period Japan
 * Shirakawa, Gifu (town), a town in Gifu Prefecture, Japan
 * Shirakawa, Gifu (village), a World Heritage site in Gifu Prefecture, Japan
 * Shirakawa, a neighborhood of Koto, Tokyo
 * Shirakawa, Miyagi, a town in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan
 * Shirakawa River, a river in Kyoto
 * Shirakawa River (Kumamoto), a river in Kumamoto

title: Shirakawa


text:
1053

Year 1053 (MLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * End of the Pecheneg Revolt: Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos makes peace with the Pechenegs. However, Pecheneg raids do not cease; they not only damage the economy by plundering, but Constantine is also forced to buy protection or peace from them by gifts, land grants, privileges and titles.

Europe

 * June 18 – Battle of Civitate: Norman horsemen (3,000 men), led by Humphrey of Hauteville, count of Apulia and Calabria, rout the combined forces under Pope Leo IX, in Southern Italy. The Normans destroy the allied Papal army and capture Leo, who is imprisoned (as a hostage for 8 months) in Benevento.
 * December – Conrad I, duke of Bavaria, is summoned to a Christmas court at Merseburg, and deposed by Emperor Henry III. He flees to King Andrew I in Hungary, and joins a coalition with the rebellious Welf III, duke of Carinthia. Henry's 4-year-old son Henry becomes the new duke of Bavaria.

England

 * April – Harold Godwinson succeeds his father Godwin as earl of Wessex. He invites the exiled Edward the Exile, son of Edmund II, to return in the hope that he can claim the English throne from King Edward the Confessor.

Religion

 * Jōchō sculpts Amida Buddha for the Byōdō-in Temple during the Heian Period (approximate date).

Births

 * July 7 – Shirakawa, emperor of Japan (d. 1129)
 * Berenguer Ramon II, count of Barcelona (approximate date)
 * Guibert of Nogent, French historian and theologian (d. 1124)
 * Hugh of Châteauneuf, bishop of Grenoble (d. 1132)
 * Iorwerth ap Bleddyn, prince of Powys (d. 1111)
 * Maria of Alania, Byzantine empress (d. 1118)
 * Ramon Berenguer II, count of Barcelona (or 1054)
 * Solomon (or Salomon), king of Hungary (d. 1087)
 * Toba Sōjō, Japanese artist-monk (d. 1140)
 * Vladimir II, Grand Prince of Kiev (d. 1125)

Deaths

 * March 25 – Procopius of Sázava, Czech hermit
 * April 15 – Godwin of Wessex, English nobleman
 * October 25 – Enguerrand II, count of Ponthieu
 * November 7 – Lazaros, Byzantine monk and stylite
 * Abu'l-Fath an-Nasir ad-Dailami, imam of Yemen
 * Chananel ben Chushiel, Tunisian Jewish rabbi (b. 990)
 * Cormac O'Ruadrach, Irish priest and archdeacon
 * Liu Yong, Chinese poet of the Song Dynasty (b. 987)
 * Murchadh Ua Beolláin, Irish priest and archdeacon
 * Rhys ap Rhydderch, co-ruler of Morgannwg
 * Wulfsige (or Wulsy), bishop of Lichfield

title: 1053


text:
1086

Year 1086 (MLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Europe

 * October 23 – Battle of Sagrajas: Spanish forces under King Alfonso VI (the Brave) of Castile are defeated by the Moors and their allies, the Almoravids, who had been invited to help on orders by Emir Abbad III.
 * Norman forces under Count Roger I (Bosso) conquer Syracuse, the last Muslim stronghold in Sicily.

England

 * August 1 – King William I (the Conqueror) calls for a meeting at Old Sarum, where he invites his major vassals and tenants-in-chief to swear allegiance to him. The oath is known as the Oath of Salisbury.
 * The Domesday Book is completed, which is drawn up on the orders of William I. It describes in detail the landholdings and resources in England.
 * The population in England is estimated to be 1.25 million citizens with 10% living in boroughs.

Seljuk Empire

 * Summer – Suleiman ibn Qutulmish, ruler of the Turks in Rum, is killed by Emir Tutush I in the battle of Ain Salm near Antioch. Suleiman's 7-year-old son Kilij Arslan is captured and transferred as hostage to Isfahan (modern Iran).
 * Sultan Malik-Shah I rebuilds the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf (modern Iraq), after it was destroyed by fire.

Religion

 * May 24 – Pope Victor III succeeds Gregory VII as the 158th pope of the Catholic Church, though he does not accept election until 1087.

Births

 * April 24 – Ramiro II (the Monk), king of Aragon (d. 1157)
 * August 11 – Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1125)
 * August 20 – Bolesław III, duke of Poland (d. 1138)
 * Al-Shahrastani, Persian scholar and historian (d. 1153)
 * Þorlákur Runólfsson, Icelandic bishop (d. 1133)
 * Vicelinus, bishop of Oldenburg in Holstein (d. 1154)
 * Zhang Jun, Chinese general and official (d. 1154)

Deaths

 * March 15 – Richilde, countess and regent of Flanders
 * March 18 – Anselm of Lucca, Italian bishop (b. 1036)
 * May 21 – Wang Anshi, Chinese chancellor (b. 1021)
 * July 10 – Canute IV (the Holy), king of Denmark
 * July 14 – Toirdelbach Ua Briain, Irish king (b. 1009)
 * July 17 – García Ramírez, Aragonese bishop
 * August 8 – Conrad I, count of Luxembourg (b. 1040)
 * September 25 – William VIII, duke of Aquitaine
 * October 11 – Sima Guang, Chinese politician (b. 1019)
 * October 23 – Rodrigo Muñoz, Galician nobleman
 * December 25 – Judith of Bohemia, duchess of Poland
 * Gregory Pakourianos, Byzantine politician and general
 * Hui Zong, Chinese emperor (Western Xia) (b. 1060)
 * Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin, Irish monk and writer
 * Muhammad ibn Ammar, Moorish poet (b. 1031)
 * Odo I (or Eudes), French nobleman (b. 1040)
 * Suleiman ibn Qutulmish, ruler of the Rum Sultanate

title: 1086


text:
User:JoachimFunke~enwiki

Joachim Funke is full professor at the Department for Psychology, Heidelberg University, Germany.

You can find more information about him at his homepage.

title: User:JoachimFunke~enwiki


text:
Cloistered rule

Cloistered rule (院政) was a form of government in Japan during the Heian period. In this bifurcated system, an emperor abdicated, but retained power and influence. Those retired emperors who withdrew to live in monasteries (in) continued to act in ways intended to counterbalance the influence of Fujiwara regents and the warrior class. Simultaneously, the titular emperor, the former emperor's chosen successor, fulfilled all the ceremonial roles and formal duties of the monarchy.

Retired emperors were called Daijō Tennō or Jōkō. A retired emperor who entered a Buddhist monastic community became a Cloistered Emperor (Japanese 太上法皇 Daijō Hōō).

There were retired emperors, including cloistered emperors, both before and after the Heian period, but the notion of cloistered rule as a system usually refers to the practice put in place by Emperor Shirakawa in 1086 and followed by his successors until the rise of the Kamakura shogunate in 1192.

Background
The ritsuryō code allowed retired emperors to exert some limited powers, and there are early examples such as Empress Jitō, Emperor Shōmu and Emperor Uda in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries respectively.

By the end of the 10th century, the Hokke family of the Fujiwara clan held political power in Japan through the office of the Imperial Regent, and the emperor increasingly became little more than a figurehead. In 1068, Emperor Go-Sanjō became the first emperor in almost 200 years who was not related either by marriage or blood, or both, to the Hokke family. He exerted personal power while the Hokke family was dealing with internal conflicts between Fujiwara no Yorimichi and his brother Fujiwara no Norimichi, and was in a position to issue several laws and regulations, most notably the Enkyū Shōen Regulation Decree, thus weakening the regency. In 1072, however, he fell ill and abdicated in favor of Emperor Shirakawa. He died the following year. Although he did not have time to exert power after his abdication, Sanjō had weakened the regency and paved the way for the practice of cloistered rule.

In 1086, Emperor Shirakawa in his turn abdicated in favor of his son, Emperor Horikawa, who was four years old at the time. Shirakawa's objective appeared to be the protection of his son from his younger brother (Horikawa's uncle), who presented a serious threat of becoming a pretender to the throne, but after his retirement Shirakawa exerted his personal power to set the cloistered rule system in motion.

End of the Heian period
Separate imperial courts (In no Chō (院庁) evolved around the retired emperors, and their will was put into effect through offices known as Inzen (院宣) and In no Chō Kudashi Bumi (院庁下文). Cloistered emperors also had their own troops, the Hokumen no Bushi (北面の武士). The creation of these military units led eventually to the rise to power of the Taira clan, who used their membership of these units to gather political and economic power to themselves.

The end of the Heian period was marked by a rapid succession of cloistered emperors, to the point that there were several retired emperors living at the same time. The Hōgen Rebellion, following the death of the Emperor Toba, was an example of direct opposition between an emperor and an emperor emeritus. Finally, the end of the reign of Emperor Go-Shirakawa was marked by the Genpei War and the rise of Minamoto no Yoritomo as the first Kamakura shōgun.

Table
The succession of power in the Insei system was complex.

During the Shogunates
The establishment of the Kamakura shogunate is taken to mark the beginning of the Kamakura period, but the Insei system was not immediately abandoned. Though the shogunate took over the police force and ruled eastern Japan, the authority of the emperors and retired emperors remained considerable. However, when Go-Toba, a grandson of Go-Shirakawa, sought to overthrow the Kamakura shogunate, his forces were defeated in the Jōkyū War, and the shogunate then took steps to reduce the power (and the finances) of the retired emperors. Even after the Jōkyū War, the cloistered rule system continued to exist, at least formally, for another 200 years. There were movements to take authority back into the hands of the imperial court, such as the Kenmu Restoration attempted by Emperor Go-Daigo, but in general a retired emperor presided as the head of the Kyoto court, with the approval of the shogunate.

There were also a few examples of retired emperors supervising their successors much later, during the Edo period. The last person to use the title Daijō Hōō was Emperor Reigen, in 1686.

title: Cloistered rule


text:
Hex (board game)

Hex (also called Nash) is a two player abstract strategy board game in which players attempt to connect opposite sides of a rhombus-shaped board made of hexagonal cells. Hex was invented by mathematician and poet Piet Hein in 1942 and later rediscovered and popularized by John Nash.

It is traditionally played on an 11×11 rhombus board, although 13×13 and 19×19 boards are also popular. The board is composed of hexagons called cells or hexes. Each player is assigned a pair of opposite sides of the board, which they must try to connect by alternately placing a stone of their color onto any empty hex. Once placed, the stones are never moved or removed. A player wins when they successfully connect their sides together through a chain of adjacent stones. Draws are impossible in Hex due to the topology of the game board.

Despite the simplicity of its rules, the game has deep strategy and sharp tactics. It also has profound mathematical underpinnings related to the Brouwer fixed-point theorem, matroids and graph connectivity. The game was first published under the name Polygon in the Danish newspaper Politiken on December 26, 1942. It was later marketed as a board game in Denmark under the name Con-tac-tix, and Parker Brothers marketed a version of it in 1952 called Hex; they are no longer in production. Hex can also be played with paper and pencil on hexagonally ruled graph paper.

Game type
Hex is a finite, 2-player perfect information game, and an abstract strategy game that belongs to the general category of connection games. It can be classified as a Maker-Breaker game, a particular type of positional game. Since the game can never end in a draw, Hex is also a determined game.

Hex is a special case of the "node" version of the Shannon switching game. Hex can be played as a board game or as a paper-and-pencil game.

Rules

Hex is played on a rhombic grid of hexagons, typically of size 11×11, although other sizes are also possible. Each player has an allocated color, conventionally red and blue, or black and white. Each player is also assigned two opposite board edges. The hexagons on each of the four corners belong to both adjacent board edges.

The players take turns placing a stone of their color on a single cell on the board. The most common convention is for Red or Black to go first. Once placed, stones are not moved, replaced, or removed from the board. Each player's goal is to form a connected path of their own stones linking their two board edges. The player who complete such a connection wins the game.

To compensate for the first player's advantage, the swap rule (also called the pie rule) is normally used. This rule allows the second player to choose whether to switch positions with the first player after the first player makes the first move.

When it is clear to both players who will win the game, it is customary, but not required, for the losing player to resign. In practice, most games of Hex end with one of the players resigning.

Invention
The game was invented by the Danish mathematician Piet Hein, who introduced it in 1942 at the Niels Bohr Institute. Although Hein later renamed it to Con-tac-tix, it became known in Denmark under the name Polygon due to an article by Hein in the 26 December 1942 edition of the Danish newspaper Politiken, the first published description of the game, in which he used that name.

Nash's claim
The game was rediscovered in 1948 or 1949 by the mathematician John Nash at Princeton University. According to Martin Gardner, who featured Hex in his July 1957 Mathematical Games column, Nash's fellow players called the game either Nash or John, with the latter name referring to the fact that the game could be played on hexagonal bathroom tiles. Nash insisted that he discovered the game independently of Hein, but there is some doubt about this, as it is known that there were Danish people, including Aage Bohr, who played Hex at Princeton in the 1940s, so that Nash may have subconsciously picked up the idea. Hein wrote to Gardner in 1957 expressing doubt that Nash discovered Hex independently. Gardner was unable to independently verify or refute Nash's claim. Gardner privately wrote to Hein: "I discussed it with the editor, and we decided that the charitable thing to do was to give Nash the benefit of the doubt. ... The fact that you invented the game before anyone else is undisputed. Any number of people can come along later and say that they thought of the same thing at some later date, but this means little and nobody really cares." In a later letter to Hein, Gardner added: "Just between you and me, and off the record, I think you hit the nail on the head when you referred to a 'flash of a suggestion' which came to Mr. Nash from a Danish source, and which he later forgot about. It seems the most likely explanation."

Published games
Initially in 1942, Hein distributed the game, which was then called Polygon, in the form of 50-sheet game pads. Each sheet contained an empty 11×11 empty board that could be played on with pencils or pens. In 1952, Parker Brothers marketed a version of the game under the name "Hex", and the name stuck. Parker Brothers also sold a version under the "Con-tac-tix" name in 1968. Hex was also issued as one of the games in the 1974 3M Paper Games Series; the game contained a 5+1/2 x 50-sheet pad of ruled Hex grids. Hex is currently published by Nestorgames in a 11×11 size and a 14×14 size.

Shannon's Hex machine
About 1950, Claude Shannon and E. F. Moore constructed an analog Hex playing machine, which was essentially a resistance network with resistors for edges and light bulbs for vertices. The move to be made corresponded to a certain specified saddle point in the network. The machine played a reasonably good game of Hex. Later, researchers attempting to solve the game and develop Hex-playing computer algorithms emulated Shannon's network to create strong computer players.

Research timeline
It was known to Hein in 1942 that Hex cannot end in a draw; in fact, one of his design criteria for the game was that "exactly one of the two players can connect their two sides".

It was also known to Hein that the first player has a theoretical winning strategy.

In 1952 John Nash wrote up an existence proof that on symmetrical boards, the first player has a winning strategy.

In 1964, the mathematician Alfred Lehman showed that Hex cannot be represented as a binary matroid, so a determinate winning strategy like that for the Shannon switching game on a regular rectangular grid was unavailable.

In 1981, the Stefan Reisch showed that Hex is PSPACE-complete.

In 2002, the first explicit winning strategy (a reduction-type strategy) on a 7×7 board was described.

In the 2000s, by using brute force search computer algorithms, Hex boards up to size 9×9 (as of 2016) have been completely solved.

Starting about 2006, the field of computer Hex came to be dominated by Monte Carlo tree search methods borrowed from successful computer implementations of Go. These replaced earlier implementations that combined Shannon's Hex-playing heuristic with alpha-beta search. On the subject of early Computer Hex, notable early implementations include Dolphin Microware's Hexmaster, published in the early 1980s for Atari 8-bit computers.

Until 2019, humans remained better than computers at least on big boards such as 19x19, but on Oct 30, 2019 the program Mootwo won against the human player with the best Elo rank on LittleGolem, also winner of various tournaments (the game is available here). This program was based on Polygames (an open-source project, initially developed by Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research and several universities ) using a mix of:
 * zero-learning as in AlphaZero
 * boardsize invariance thanks to fully convolutional neural networks (as in U-Net) and pooling
 * and growing architectures (the program can learn on a small board, and then extrapolate on a big board, as opposed to justified popular claims about earlier artificial intelligence methods such as the original AlphaGo).

Strategy
From the proof of a winning strategy for the first player, it is known that the Hex board must have a complex type of connectivity which has never been solved. Play consists of creating small patterns which have a simpler type of connectivity called "safely connected", and joining them into sequences that form a "path". Eventually, one of the players will succeed in forming a safely connected path of stones and spaces between their sides of the board and win. The final stage of the game, if necessary, consists of filling in the empty spaces in the path.

A "safely connected" pattern is composed of stones of the player's color and open spaces which can be joined into a chain, an unbroken sequence of edge-wise adjacent stones, no matter how the opponent plays. One of the simplest such patterns is the bridge, which consists of a diamond of two stones of the same color and two empty spaces, where the two stones do not touch. If the opponent plays in either space, the player plays in the other, creating a contiguous chain. There are also safely connected patterns which connect stones to edges. There are many more safely connected patterns, some quite complex, built up of simpler ones like those shown. Patterns and paths can be disrupted by the opponent before they are complete, so the configuration of the board during an actual game often looks like a patchwork rather than something planned or designed.

There are weaker types of connectivity than "safely connected" which exist between stones or between safely connected patterns which have multiple spaces between them. The middle part of the game consists of creating a network of such weakly connected stones and patterns which hopefully will allow the player, by filling in the weak links, to construct just one safely connected path between sides as the game progresses.

Success at Hex requires a particular ability to visualize synthesis of complex patterns in a heuristic way, and estimating whether such patterns are 'strongly enough' connected to enable an eventual win. The skill is somewhat similar to the visualization of patterns, sequencing of moves, and evaluating of positions in chess.

Determinacy
It is not difficult to convince oneself by exposition, that hex cannot end in a draw, referred to as the "hex theorem". I.e., no matter how the board is filled with stones, there will always be one and only one player who has connected their edges. This fact was known to Piet Hein in 1942, who mentioned it as one of his design criteria for Hex in the original Politiken article. Hein also stated this fact as "a barrier for your opponent is a connection for you". John Nash wrote up a proof of this fact around 1949, but apparently did not publish the proof. Its first exposition appears in an in-house technical report in 1952, in which Nash states that "connection and blocking the opponent are equivalent acts". A more rigorous proof was published by John R. Pierce in his 1961 book Symbols, Signals, and Noise. In 1979, David Gale published a proof that the determinacy of Hex is equivalent to the two-dimensional Brouwer fixed-point theorem, and that the determinacy of higher-dimensional n-player variants proves the fixed-point theorem in general.

An informal proof of the no-draw property of Hex can be sketched as follows: consider the connected component of one of the red edges. This component either includes the opposite red edge, in which case Red has a connection, or else it does not, in which case the blue stones along the boundary of the connected component form a winning path for Blue. The concept of a connected component is well-defined because in a hexagonal grid, two cells can only meet in an edge or not at all; it is not possible for cells to overlap in a single point.

First-player win, informal existence proof
In Hex without the swap rule on any board of size nxn, the first player has a theoretical winning strategy. This fact was mentioned by Hein in his notes for a lecture he gave in 1943: "in contrast to most other games, it can be proved that the first player in theory always can win, that is, if she could see to the end of all possible lines of play".

All known proofs of this fact are non-constructive, i.e., the proof gives no indication of what the actual winning strategy is. Here is a condensed version of a proof that is attributed to John Nash c. 1949. The proof works for a number of games including Hex, and has come to be called the strategy-stealing argument.

 * 1) Since Hex is a finite two-player game with perfect information either the first or second player has a winning strategy, or both can force a draw by Zermelo's theorem.
 * 2) Since draws are impossible (see above), we can conclude that either the first or second player has a winning strategy.
 * 3) Let us assume that the second player has a winning strategy.
 * 4) The first player can now adopt the following strategy.  They make an arbitrary move.  Thereafter they play the winning second player strategy assumed above. If in playing this strategy, they are required to play on the cell where an arbitrary move was made, they make another arbitrary move.  In this way they play the winning strategy with one extra piece always on the board.
 * 5) This extra piece cannot interfere with the first player's imitation of the winning strategy, for an extra piece is never a disadvantage. Therefore, the first player can win.
 * 6) Because we have now contradicted our assumption that there is a winning strategy for the second player, we conclude that there is no winning strategy for the second player.
 * 7) Consequently, there must be a winning strategy for the first player.

Computational complexity
In 1976, Shimon Even and Robert Tarjan proved that determining whether a position in a game of generalized Hex played on arbitrary graphs is a winning position is PSPACE-complete. A strengthening of this result was proved by Reisch by reducing the quantified Boolean formula problem in conjunctive normal form to Hex. This result means that there is no efficient (polynomial time in board size) algorithm to solve an arbitrary Hex position unless there is an efficient algorithm for all PSPACE problems, which is widely believed not to be the case. However, it doesn't rule out the possibility of a simple winning strategy for the initial position (on boards of arbitrary size), or a simple winning strategy for all positions on a board of a particular size.

In 11×11 Hex, the state space complexity is approximately 2.4×1056; versus 4.6×1046 for chess. The game tree complexity is approximately 1098 versus 10123 for chess.

Computed strategies for smaller boards
In 2002, Jing Yang, Simon Liao and Mirek Pawlak found an explicit winning strategy for the first player on Hex boards of size 7×7 using a decomposition method with a set of reusable local patterns. They extended the method to weakly solve the center pair of topologically congruent openings on 8×8 boards in 2002 and the center opening on 9×9 boards in 2003. In 2009, Philip Henderson, Broderick Arneson and Ryan B. Hayward completed the analysis of the 8×8 board with a computer search, solving all the possible openings. In 2013, Jakub Pawlewicz and Ryan B. Hayward solved all openings for 9×9 boards, and one (the most-central) opening move on the 10×10 board. Since Gardner first postulated in his column in Scientific American in 1957, albeit speciously, that any first play on the short diagonal is a winning play, for all solved game boards up to n=9, that has indeed been the case. In addition, for all boards except n=2 and n=4, there have been numerous additional winning first moves; the number of winning first moves generally is ≥ n²/2.

Variants
Other connection games with similar objectives but different structures include Shannon switching game (also known as Gale and Bridg-It) and TwixT. Both of these bear some degree of similarity to the ancient Chinese game of Go.

Rectangular grids and paper and pencil
The game may be played on a rectangular grid like a chess, checker or go board, by considering that spaces (intersections in the case of go) are connected in one diagonal direction but not the other. The game may be played with paper and pencil on a rectangular array of dots or graph paper in the same way by using two different colored pencils.

Board sizes
Popular dimensions other than the standard 11×11 are 13×13 and 19×19 as a result of the game's relationship to the older game of Go. According to the book A Beautiful Mind, John Nash (one of the game's inventors) advocated 14×14 as the optimal size.

Rex (Reverse Hex)
The misère variant of Hex is called "Rex", in which each player tries to force their opponent to make a chain. Rex is slower than Hex since, on any empty board with equal dimensions, the losing player can delay a loss until the entire board is full. On boards with unequal dimensions, the player whose sides are further apart can win regardless of who plays first. On boards with equal dimensions, the first player can win on a board with an even number of cells per side, and the second player can win on a board with an odd number. On boards with an even number, one of the first player's winning moves is always to place a stone in the acute corner.

Blockbusters
Hex had an incarnation as the question board from the television game show Blockbusters. In order to play a "move", contestants had to answer a question correctly. The board had 5 alternating columns of 4 hexagons; the solo player could connect top-to-bottom in 4 moves, while the team of two could connect left-to-right in 5 moves.

Y
The game of Y is Hex played on a triangular grid of hexagons; the object is for either player to connect all three sides of the triangle. Y is a generalization of Hex to the extent that any position on a Hex board can be represented as an equivalent position on a larger Y board.

Havannah
Havannah is game based on Hex. It differs from Hex in that it is played on a hexagonal grid of hexagons and a win is achieved by forming one of three patterns.

Projex
Projex is a variation of Hex played on a real projective plane, where the players have the goal of creating a noncontractible loop. Like in Hex, there are no ties, and there is no position in which both players have a winning connection.

Dark Hex
Dark Hex (also known as Phantom Hex) is an imperfect information version of Hex. The players are not exposed to each other's stones at any point in the game unless they discover them first. The game is played in the presence of an umpire where each player first verifies the move if its a collision or not. Based on the continuation of this point the game has different versions.

Competition
As of 2016, there were tournaments reported from Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, UK and the US. One of the largest Hex competitions is organized by the International Committee of Mathematical Games in Paris, France, which is annually held since 2013. Hex is also part of the Computer Olympiad.

Reviews

 * Games & Puzzles #16
 * Jeux & Stratégie #6

title: Hex (board game)