Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017–18, the two museums held an exhibition of them.
The Viceroyalty of Peru, officially known as the Kingdom of Peru, was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, governed from the capital of Lima. Along with the Viceroyalty of New Spain, Peru was one of two Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Almadén is a town and municipality in the spanish province of Ciudad Real, within the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. The town is located at 4° 49' W and 38° 46' N and is 589 meters above sea level. Almadén is approximately 300 km south of Madrid in the Sierra Morena. The name Almadén is from the Arabic: المعدن, romanized: al-maʻdin, lit. 'the metal', 'the mineral' or 'lode', and so by extension, the place where these are excavated, 'the mine'. Originally a Roman, and later, a Moorish mining settlement when taken from the Visigoths, the town was captured by the Christians in 1151 under king Alfonso VII and given to the Knights of the Order of Calatrava.
Potosí, known as Villa Imperial de Potosí in the colonial period, is the capital city and a municipality of the Department of Potosí in Bolivia. It is one of the highest cities in the world at a nominal 4,090 m (13,420 ft). For centuries, it was the location of the Spanish colonial silver mint. A considerable amount of the city's colonial architecture has been preserved in the historic center of the city, which—along with the globally important Cerro Rico de Potosí—are part of a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
John of Ávila was a Spanish priest, preacher, scholastic author, and religious mystic, who has been declared a saint and Doctor of the Church by the Catholic Church. He is called the "Apostle of Andalusia", for his extensive ministry in that region.
Oriente was the easternmost province of Cuba until 1976. The term "Oriente" is still used to refer to the eastern part of the country, which currently is divided into five different provinces.
Huancavelica or Wankawillka in Quechua is a city in Peru. It is the capital of the department of Huancavelica and according to the 2017 census had a population of 49,570 people. The city was established on August 5, 1572 by the Viceroy of Peru Francisco de Toledo. Indigenous peoples represent a major percentage of the population. It has an approximate altitude of 3,676 meters; the climate is cold and dry between the months of February and August with a rainy season between September and January. It is considered one of the poorest cities in Peru.
In the magical tradition of Europe and the Near East, the aetites or aetite (anglicized) is a stone used to promote childbirth. It is also called an eagle-stone, aquiline, or aquilaeus. The stone is said to prevent spontaneous abortion and premature delivery, while shortening labor and birth for a full-term birth.
The patio process is a process for extracting silver from ore. Smelting, or refining, is most often necessary because silver is only infrequently found as a native element like some metals nobler than the redox couple 2 H+ + 2 e−⇌ H
2 (gold, mercury, ...). Instead, it is made up of a larger ore body. Thus, smelting, or refining, is necessary to reduce the compound containing the Ag+ cation into metallic Ag and to remove other byproducts to get at pure silver. The process, which uses mercury amalgamation to recover silver from ore, was first used at scale by Bartolomé de Medina in Pachuca, Mexico, in 1554. It replaced smelting as the primary method of extracting silver from ore at Spanish colonies in the Americas. Although some knowledge of amalgamation techniques were likely known since the classical era, it was in the New World that it was first used on a large industrial scale. Other amalgamation processes were later developed, importantly the pan amalgamation process, and its variant, the Washoe process. The silver separation process generally differed from gold parting and gold extraction, although amalgamation with mercury is also sometimes used to extract gold. While gold was often found in the Americas as a native metal or alloy, silver was often found as a compound such as silver chloride and silver sulfide, and therefore required mercury amalgamation for refinement.
Fernando de Herrera (~1534–1597), called "El Divino", was a 16th-century Spanish poet and man of letters. He was born in Seville. Much of what is known about him comes from Libro de descripción de verdaderos retratos de illustres y memorables varones (1599) by Francisco Pacheco.
Cerro Rico, Cerro Potosí or Sumaq Urqu, is a mountain in the Andes near the Bolivian city of Potosí. Cerro Rico, which is popularly conceived of as being "made of" silver ore, is famous for providing vast quantities of silver for the Spanish Empire, most of which was shipped to metropolitan Spain. It is estimated that eighty-five percent of the silver produced in the central Andes during this time came from Cerro Rico.
Silver mining is the extraction of silver by mining. Silver is a precious metal and holds high economic value. Because silver is often found in intimate combination with other metals, its extraction requires the use of complex technologies. In 2008, approximately 25,900 metric tons of silver were consumed worldwide, most of which came from mining. Silver mining has a variety of effects on the environment, humans, and animals.
The pan amalgamation process is a method to extract silver from ore, using salt and copper(II) sulfate in addition to mercury. The process was widely used from 1609 through the 19th century; it is no longer used.
Infante Álvaro, Duke of Galliera was a Spanish Infante, 6th Duke of Galliera, and a second cousin of Infante Juan, heir to the Spanish throne from 1941.
The School of Mining Engineering of Madrid is located in calle Ríos Rosas, Madrid, Spain. It is one of the engineering schools of the Technical University of Madrid which was founded in 1971 through the integration of the Higher Technical Schools.
Álvaro Obertos de Valeto, was a knight of the Spanish nobility, as well as a pious jurist who donated the land for construction of the Charterhouse of Jerez de la Frontera, the first stone of which was laid on December 17, 1478.
Pedro de Medina was a Spanish cartographer and author of navigational texts. His well-known Arte de navegar was the first work published in Spain dealing exclusively with navigational techniques.
José María de Azcárate y Ristori was a Spanish art historian, author, researcher, curator, and professor, specializing in medieval Castilian art and Renaissance sculpture.
María del Carmen Laffón de la Escosura was a Spanish figurative painter and sculptor. She was a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando from 1998 until her death, and received numerous awards and honours, such as the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise in 2017.
The Great Potosí Mint Fraud of 1649 was a financial fraud involving the fineness of silver coinage that began in Potosí, Bolivia. The scandal had worldwide effects that lasted for decades.
