title: Roy E. Disney

text: Roy Edward Disney KCSG (January 10, 1930 – December 16, 2009) was an American businessman. He was the longtime senior executive for the Walt Disney Company, which was founded by his father, Roy O. Disney, and his uncle, Walt Disney. At the time of his death, he held more than 16 million shares (about 1% of the company), and served as a consultant for the company, as director emeritus for the board of directors. During his tenure, he organized the ousting of two top Disney executives: Ron W. Miller in 1984 and Michael Eisner in 2005.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: As the last member of the Disney family to be actively involved in the company, Disney was often compared to his uncle and to his father. In 2006, "Forbes" magazine estimated his personal fortune at $1.2 billion.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney was also a celebrated yachtsman, a member of the San Diego Yacht Club best known for his success in the Transpacific Yacht Race and winning the Newport Bermuda Race. Disney died of stomach cancer on December 16, 2009.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Edna ("" Francis; 1890–1984) and Roy O. Disney (1893–1971), the brother of Walt Disney. He graduated from Pomona College in 1951 and first began working for Walt Disney Productions as an assistant director and producer ("True-Life Adventure"). He continued until 1967, when he was elected to the company's board of directors.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney resigned as an executive from Walt Disney Productions in 1977 over disagreements with corporate decisions. He later said, "I just felt creatively the company was not going anywhere interesting. It was very stifling."


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney retained a seat on the board of directors until 1984, when he resigned in the midst of a corporate takeover battle. This began a series of events that ultimately led to the replacement of Ron Miller (husband of Walt's daughter Diane Marie Disney) by Frank Wells and Michael Eisner as president and CEO, respectively. While investors were attempting the hostile takeover of Disney with the intention of dismantling the company and selling off its assets, Disney and his attorney and financial advisor Stanley Gold organized a consortium of white knight investors to fend off the takeover attempts. With the introduction of Wells and Eisner, Roy returned to the company as vice chairman and chairman of the animation department, which became Walt Disney Feature Animation.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Disney's department produced a number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed films, an era which has been called the "Disney Renaissance". "The Lion King", for instance, garnered nearly $1 billion following its release in the summer of 1994 and was the second-highest-grossing film of the year. Despite this, Disney experienced a marked decline in profits beginning in the late 1990s as it expanded into lower-grossing, though still profitable direct-to-video spin-offs and sequels.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney was concerned about Jeffrey Katzenberg taking too much credit for the success of Disney's early 1990s releases. When Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash in 1994, Michael Eisner refused to promote Katzenberg to the vacated position of president. Eisner recalled, "Roy [Walt Disney's nephew and a force on Disney's board who Eisner says "could be a troublemaker"], who did not like him at all — I forget the reason, but Jeffrey probably did not treat him the way that Roy would have wanted to be treated — said to me, 'If you make him the president, I will start a proxy fight.'" Tensions between Katzenberg, Eisner and Disney resulted in Katzenberg's resignation from the company that October. Katzenberg launched a lawsuit against Disney to recover money he felt he was owed and settled out of court for an estimated $250 million.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: On October 16, 1998, in a surprise presentation made at the newly unveiled Disney Legends Plaza at the company's headquarters, Eisner presented Disney with the Disney Legends Award. Disney's pet project was the film "Fantasia 2000", a sequel to his uncle's 1940 animated movie "Fantasia". Walt Disney had planned a sequel to the original movie, but it was not finally released until December 17, 1999, after nine years of production under Disney. Like its predecessor, the film combined high-quality contemporary animation and classical music, but also suffered at the US box office.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: After relations with Eisner began to sour, Disney's influence began to wane as important executive posts were filled by those friendly to Eisner. When the board of directors rejected Disney's request for an extension of his term as a member, he announced his resignation on November 30, 2003, citing "serious differences of opinion about the direction and style of management" in the company. He issued a letter criticizing Eisner's alleged mismanagement, neglect of the studio's animation division, failures with ABC, timidity in the theme-park business, corporate mentality in the executive structure turning the Walt Disney Company into a "rapacious, soul-less" conglomerate, and refusal to establish a clear succession plan.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: After his resignation, Disney helped establish the website SaveDisney.com, intended to oust Michael Eisner and his supporters from their positions and revamp the Walt Disney Company. On March 3, 2004, at the company's annual shareholders' meeting, a surprising 43% of shareholders, predominantly rallied by Disney and fellow former board member Stanley Gold, voted to oppose the re-election of Eisner to the corporate board of directors. This vigorous opposition, unusual in major public corporations, persuaded the board to replace Eisner as chairman with George J. Mitchell; he did, however, remain as chief executive. This "Save Disney" campaign regarded Mitchell himself unfavorably, and in the same election, 25% of shareholders opposed Mitchell's re-election to the board.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: As criticism of Eisner intensified in the wake of the shareholder meeting, his position became increasingly tenuous, culminating on March 13, 2005, with the announcement of Eisner's resignation as CEO effective September 30, one year before his contract would expire. On July 8, Roy and the Walt Disney Company agreed to "put aside their differences." Roy rejoined the board as a nonvoting director emeritus and consultant. Roy and Gold consequently shut down their SaveDisney.com website effective August 7 that year.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: As announced, on September 30, Eisner resigned as both chief executive and a member of the board. Severing all formal ties with the company, he waived his contractual rights to perks such as use of a corporate jet, a Gold Pass, and an office at the company's Burbank headquarters. Bob Iger, Eisner's long-time lieutenant, who had been effectively running the company, now assumed the title of CEO. One of Roy Disney's stated reasons for engineering his second "Save Disney" initiative had been Eisner's well-publicized disputes with long-time production partner Pixar Animation Studios and its CEO Steve Jobs, with whom Disney had produced such computer-animated hits as "Toy Story", "Monsters, Inc.", and "Finding Nemo", which were critically acclaimed and financially successful for both partners. Iger quickly repaired the estrangement, and on January 24, 2006, the company announced the acquisition of Pixar in an all-stock deal worth $7.4 billion. This deal made Jobs, best known as co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc, Disney's largest shareholder with 7% of all outstanding shares and gave him a new seat on Disney's board of directors. Eisner, who retained 1.7% of shares, became Disney's second-largest shareholder, followed by Roy Disney, with 1% of shares. Disney's second "Save Disney" campaign against Eisner was chronicled by James B. Stewart in his best-selling book, "DisneyWar".


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney held several sailing speed records, including the Los Angeles to Honolulu monohull time record. He set it on his boat "Pyewacket" in July 1999 (7 days, 11 hours, 41 minutes, 27 seconds).


title: Roy E. Disney

text: On January 19, 2007, after beginning a relationship with Leslie DeMeuse, Disney (then 77 years old) filed for divorce from his wife, Patricia (then 72), citing "irreconcilable differences", according to court documents. The couple, married 52 years, had been living apart, according to the Los Angeles County Superior Court filing. They had four adult children, Abigail Disney, Susan Disney Lord, Tim Disney (a documentary film producer). and Roy Patrick Disney (step-father Charlee Corra).


title: Roy E. Disney

text: Disney died of stomach cancer on December 16, 2009, 43 years to the day his uncle died, at Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, California. He was 79 years old, and had been battling the disease for over a year. He was cremated after his funeral service, and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: On January 4, 1998, Pope John Paul II made Disney a Knight Commander of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great.


title: Roy E. Disney

text: On April 26, 2008, Disney received an honorary doctorate from the California Maritime Academy "for his many contributions to the state and the nation, including international sailing."


title: Roy E. Disney

text: The animation studio building at the Walt Disney Studios, in Burbank, California, was rededicated as the "Roy E. Disney Animation Building" on May 7, 2010.


title: G-code

text: G-code (also RS-274) is the most widely used computer numerical control (CNC) programming language. It is used mainly in computer-aided manufacturing to control automated machine tools, and has many variants.


title: G-code

text: G-code instructions are provided to a machine controller (industrial computer) that tells the motors where to move, how fast to move, and what path to follow. The two most common situations are that, within a machine tool such as a lathe or mill, a cutting tool is moved according to these instructions through a toolpath cutting away material to leave only the finished workpiece and/or an unfinished workpiece is precisely positioned in any of up to nine axes around the three dimensions relative to a toolpath and, either or both can move relative to each other. The same concept also extends to noncutting tools such as forming or burnishing tools, photoplotting, additive methods such as 3D printing, and measuring instruments.


title: G-code

text: The first implementation of a numerical control programming language was developed at the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory in the late 1950s. In the decades since, many implementations have been developed by many (commercial and noncommercial) organizations. G-code has often been used in these implementations. The main standardized version used in the United States was settled by the Electronic Industries Alliance in the early 1960s. A final revision was approved in February 1980 as "RS-274-D". In other countries, the standard "ISO 6983" is often used, but many European countries use other standards. For example, "DIN 66025" is used in Germany, and PN-73M-55256 and PN-93/M-55251 were formerly used in Poland.


title: G-code

text: Extensions and variations have been added independently by control manufacturers and machine tool manufacturers, and operators of a specific controller must be aware of differences of each manufacturer's product.


title: G-code

text: One standardized version of G-code, known as "BCL" (Binary Cutter Language), is used only on very few machines. Developed at MIT, BCL was developed to control CNC machines in terms of straight lines and arcs.


title: G-code

text: During the 1970s through 1990s, many CNC machine tool builders attempted to overcome compatibility difficulties by standardizing on machine tool controllers built by Fanuc. Siemens was another market dominator in CNC controls, especially in Europe. In the 2010s, controller differences and incompatibility are not as troublesome because machining operations are usually developed with CAD/CAM applications that can output the appropriate G-code for a specific machine through a software tool called a post-processor (sometimes shortened to just a "post").


title: G-code

text: Some CNC machines use "conversational" programming, which is a wizard-like programming mode that either hides G-code or completely bypasses the use of G-code. Some popular examples are Okuma's Advanced One Touch (AOT), Southwestern Industries' ProtoTRAK, Mazak's Mazatrol, Hurco's Ultimax and Winmax, Haas' Intuitive Programming System (IPS), and Mori Seiki's CAPS conversational software.


title: G-code

text: G-code began as a limited language that lacked constructs such as loops, conditional operators, and programmer-declared variables with natural-word-including names (or the expressions in which to use them). It was unable to encode logic, but was just a way to "connect the dots" where the programmer figured out many of the dots' locations longhand. The latest implementations of G-code include macro language capabilities somewhat closer to a high-level programming language. Additionally, all primary manufacturers (e.g., Fanuc, Siemens, Heidenhain) provide access to programmable logic controller (PLC) data, such as axis positioning data and tool data, via variables used by NC programs. These constructs make it easier to develop automation applications.


title: G-code

text: G-codes, also called preparatory codes, are any word in a CNC program that begins with the letter G. Generally it is a code telling the machine tool what type of action to perform, such as:


title: G-code

text: It has been pointed out over the years that the term "G-code" is imprecise because "G" is only one of many letter addresses in the complete language. It comes from the literal sense of the term, referring to one letter address and to the specific codes that can be formed with it (for example, G00, G01, G28), but every letter of the English alphabet is used somewhere in the language. Nevertheless, "G-code" is metonymically established as the common name of the language.


title: G-code

text: Some letter addresses are used only in milling or only in turning; most are used in both. Bold below are the letters seen most frequently throughout a program.


title: G-code

text: This is a generic program that demonstrates the use of G-Code to turn a part that is 1" diameter by 1" long. Assume that a bar of material is in the machine and that the bar is slightly oversized in length and diameter and that the bar protrudes by more than 1" from the face of the chuck. (Caution: This is generic, it might not work on any real machine! Pay particular attention to point 5 below.)


title: G-code

text: G-code's programming environments have evolved in parallel with those of general programming—from the earliest environments (e.g., writing a program with a pencil, typing it into a tape puncher) to the latest environments that combine CAD (computer-aided design), CAM (computer-aided manufacturing), and richly featured G-code editors. (G-code editors are analogous to XML editors, using colors and indents semantically [plus other features] to aid the user in ways that basic text editors can't. CAM packages are analogous to IDEs in general programming.)


title: G-code

text: Macro (parametric) CNC programming uses human-friendly variable names, relational operators, and loop structures, much as general programming does, to capture information and logic with machine-readable semantics. Whereas older manual CNC programming could only describe particular instances of parts in numeric form, macro programming describes abstractions that can easily apply in a wide variety of instances.


title: G-code

text: The tendency is comparable to a computer programming evolution from low-level programming languages to high-level ones.


title: G-code

text: STEP-NC reflects the same theme, which can be viewed as yet another step along a path that started with the development of machine tools, jigs and fixtures, and numerical control, which all sought to "build the skill into the tool." Recent developments of G-code and STEP-NC aim to build the information and semantics into the tool. This idea is not new; from the beginning of numerical control, the concept of an end-to-end CAD/CAM environment was the goal of such early technologies as DAC-1 and APT. Those efforts were fine for huge corporations like GM and Boeing. However, small and medium enterprises went through an era of simpler implementations of NC, with relatively primitive "connect-the-dots" G-code and manual programming until CAD/CAM improved and disseminated throughout the industry.


title: G-code

text: Any machine tool with a great number of axes, spindles, and tool stations is difficult to program well manually. It has been done over the years, but not easily. This challenge has existed for decades in CNC screw machine and rotary transfer programming, and it now also arises with today's newer machining centers called "turn-mills", "mill-turns", "multitasking machines", and "multifunction machines". Now that CAD/CAM systems are widely used, CNC programming (such as with G-code) requires CAD/CAM (as opposed to manual programming) to be practical and competitive in the market segments these classes of machines serve. As Smid says, "Combine all these axes with some additional features, and the amount of knowledge required to succeed is quite overwhelming, to say the least." At the same time, however, programmers still must thoroughly understand the principles of manual programming and must think critically and second-guess some aspects of the software's decisions.


title: G-code

text: Since about the mid-2000s, it seems "the death of manual programming" (that is, of writing lines of G-code without CAD/CAM assistance) may be approaching. However, it is currently only in "some" contexts that manual programming is obsolete. Plenty of CAM programming takes place nowadays among people who are rusty on, or incapable of, manual programming—but it is not true that "all" CNC programming can be done, or done "as well" or "as efficiently", without knowing G-code. Tailoring and refining the CNC program at the machine is an area of practice where it can be easier or more efficient to edit the G-code directly rather than editing the CAM toolpaths and re-post-processing the program.


title: G-code

text: Making a living cutting parts on computer-controlled machines has been made both easier and harder by CAD/CAM software. Efficiently written G-code can be a challenge for CAM software. Ideally, a CNC machinist should know both manual and CAM programming well so that the benefits of both brute-force CAM and elegant hand programming can be used where needed. Many older machines were built with limited computer memory at a time when memory was very expensive; 32K was considered plenty of room for manual programs whereas modern CAM software can post gigabytes of code. CAM excels at getting a program out quickly that may take up more machine memory and take longer to run. This often makes it quite valuable to machining a low quantity of parts. But a balance must be struck between the time it takes to create a program and the time the program takes to machine a part. It has become easier and faster to make just a few parts on the newer machines with much memory. This has taken its toll on both hand programmers and manual machinists. Given natural turnover into retirement, it is not realistic to expect to maintain a large pool of operators who are highly skilled in manual programming when their commercial environment "mostly" can no longer provide the countless hours of deep experience it took to build that skill; and yet the loss of this experience base can be appreciated, and there are times when such a pool is sorely missed because some CNC runs still cannot be optimized without such skill.


title: G-code

text: This list is only a selection and, except for a few key terms, mostly avoids duplicating the many abbreviations listed at engineering drawing abbreviations and symbols.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: 20th Century Animation, Inc. (originally known as Fox Family Films, Fox Animation Studios, and 20th Century Fox Animation and sometimes referred to as Fox Animation) is an American animation studio located in Century City, Los Angeles. Formed in 1994, it is organized as a division and label of 20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox), a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios, and is tasked with producing animated feature-length films. At one point, 20th Century Animation had two subsidiaries: Fox Animation Studios, which was shut down on June 26, 2000, and Blue Sky Studios (the latter became the primary unit of 20th Century Animation), which was closed on April 10, 2021. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment distributes the films produced by 20th Century Animation in home media under the 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment banner.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: The studio has produced a total of 30 feature films (6 films as Fox Family Films, 3 films from Fox Animation Studios, 13 feature films from Blue Sky Studios, and 8 original films), most of them being distributed by 20th Century Studios. Their first film was "" and their first animated film was "Anastasia", with the most recent release being "".


title: 20th Century Animation

text: "Anastasia", "Ice Age" and "Rio" are the studio's most commercially successful franchises, while "Robots" (2005), "The Simpsons Movie" (2007), "Horton Hears a Who!" (2008), "The Book of Life" (2014), "The Peanuts Movie" (2015), "Spies in Disguise" (2019), "Ron's Gone Wrong" (2021) and "The Bob's Burgers Movie" (2022) are among its most critically praised films.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Before 20th Century Fox started its animation division, Fox released its first seven animated films, such as "Hugo the Hippo" (1975), "Wizards", "" (1977), "Fire and Ice" (1983), "" (1992) "Once Upon a Forest" (1993) and "The Pagemaster" (1994).


title: 20th Century Animation

text: In May 1993, Fox agreed to a two-year first-look deal with Nickelodeon for family films. The deal would mostly include original material, though a Nickelodeon executive did not rule out the possibility of making films based on "The Ren & Stimpy Show", "Rugrats" and "Doug". However, no films came out of the deal due to the 1994 acquisition of Paramount Pictures by Nickelodeon's parent company, Viacom, and they would distribute the film projects instead.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: The division initially started in February 1994 as Fox Family Films, as one of four film divisions of 20th Century Fox under executive John Matoian. The division was planned to produce six feature films a year as part of a plan to produce more films per year overall. Fox senior vice president of production Chris Meledandri was transferred into the unit as executive vice president in March 1994 after having been hired the previous year. The week of May 6, 1994, Fox Family announced the hiring of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman for a new $100 million animation studio which began construction that year in Phoenix, Arizona. In three years, the animation studio would produce and release its first film, "Anastasia". In September 1994, Matoian was promoted by Rupert Murdoch to head up the Fox network. Meledandri was selected to head up the unit in 1994.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: It produced live-action films such as "" (1995), "Dunston Checks In" (1996) and "Home Alone 3". By August 1997, Fox Family had decreased the number of live films. R.L. Stine agreed with Fox Family Films in January 1998 for a film adaptation of the "Goosebumps" book franchise with Tim Burton producing.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: In August 1997, Fox's Los Angeles-based visual effects company, VIFX, acquired majority interest in Blue Sky Studios to form a new visual effects and animation company, temporarily renamed "Blue Sky/VIFX". Blue Sky had previously did the character animation of MTV Films' first film "Joe's Apartment. "Following the studio's expansion, Blue Sky produced character animation for the films "Alien Resurrection", "A Simple Wish", "Mouse Hunt", "" and "Fight Club". VIFX was later sold to another VFX studio Rhythm and Hues Studios in March 1999. According to Blue Sky founder Chris Wedge, Fox considered selling Blue Sky as well by 2000 due to financial difficulties in the visual effects industry in general.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: In 1998, following the success of "Anastasia", the division was renamed to Fox Animation Studios, refocusing on animated feature films, including stop-motion, mixed media and digital production. The division's live action films in development at the time included Marvel Comics' Silver Surfer, the disaster film spoof "Disaster Area", "Fantastic Voyage" and "Goosebumps". The 1998 film "Ever After", a Cinderella adaptation, was the division's last live action film. At this time, there were several animated films on the company's development slate: "Dark Town" with Henry Selick, Chris Columbus and Sam Hamm, "Santa Calls" at Blue Sky, and Matt Groening ("The Simpsons"), Steve Oedekerk and Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") projects. The Phoenix studio at the time was producing "Planet Ice" expected in 1999 and directed by Art Vitello and "Anastasia" producer/directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's then soon to be announced project. Chris Meledandri remained as the president of the division, which was known by 1999 as 20th Century Fox Animation. The only television series that the Phoenix studio produced was "Adventures from the Book of Virtues", which was a co-production between Fox Animation Studios and PorchLight Entertainment; that series would air on PBS between 1996 and December 2000.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: 20th Century Fox Animation vice president of physical production Chuck Richardson was sent in early December 1999 to Fox subsidiary Blue Sky Studios as general manager and senior vice president. Richardson was sent to prepare Blue Sky for feature animation production.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: The Phoenix studio, which kept the Fox Animation Studios name, laid off 2/3 of its employee workforce in February 2000 before its closure in late June of that year, ten days after "Titan A.E." was released and six months before "Adventures from the Book of Virtues" aired its final episode. Fox Animation looked to produce films at Blue Sky and its Los Angeles headquarters.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Chris Wedge, film producer Lori Forte, and Meledandri presented Fox with a script for a comedy feature film titled "Ice Age". Studio management pressured staff to sell their remaining shares and options to Fox on the promise of continued employment on feature-length films. The studio moved to White Plains NY and started production on "Ice Age". As the film wrapped, Fox, having little faith in the film, feared that it might bomb at the box office, terminated half of the production staff, and tried unsuccessfully to find a buyer for the film and the studio. Instead, "Ice Age", Blue Sky's first feature film, was released by Fox in conjunction with 20th Century Fox Animation on March 15, 2002 with financial success and critical acclaim, receiving a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003. "Ice Age" would subsequently spawn a successful franchise and launch Blue Sky into producing feature films and into becoming a household name in feature animation.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: In January 2007, Meledandri left for Universal Pictures to set up Illumination there with Vanessa Morrison as his replacement while answering to newly appointed 20th Century Fox Film Group vice chairman Hutch Parker. Morrison moved from the live action division where she handled family-children fare as senior vice president of production. Morrision was making deal with outside producers like she approved a stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox".


title: 20th Century Animation

text: In September 2017, Locksmith Animation formed a multi-year production deal with 20th Century Fox, who would distribute Locksmith's films, with Locksmith aiming to release a film every 12–18 months. Fox Animation was later brought on to oversee the deal, which was to bolster Blue Sky's output and replace the loss of distributing DreamWorks Animation films, which are now owned and distributed by Universal Pictures.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: On October 30, 2017, Morrison was named president of a newly created 20th Century Fox division, Fox Family, which has a mandate similar to Fox Animation when it was called Fox Family Films. Andrea Miloro and Robert Baird were named co-president of Fox Animation the same day and would also have direct oversight of Blue Sky and oversee the Locksmith Animation deal and grow Fox Animation with other partnerships and producer deals.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: On October 18, 2018, it was announced that Fox Animation would be added alongside 20th Century Fox to the Walt Disney Studios following their acquisition, with co-presidents Andrea Miloro and Robert Baird retaining leadership while reporting to Walt Disney Studios Chairman, Alan Horn and Twentieth Century Fox vice chairman Emma Watts.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: On March 21, 2019, Disney announced that Fox Animation (including Blue Sky Studios) would be integrated as new units within the Walt Disney Studios with Co-presidents Andrea Miloro and Robert Baird continuing to lead the studio reporting directly to Alan Horn. Miloro step down as co-president in late July 2019. In August 2019, Walt Disney Animation Studios head Andrew Millstein was named as co-president of Blue Sky for day-to-day operations alongside Baird, while Pixar Animation Studios president Jim Morris would also be taking a supervisory role over Millstein. With the Disney take over, the Locksmith deal left 20th Century Fox for Warner Bros. in October 2019 except for the first and now only film under the deal, "Ron's Gone Wrong".


title: 20th Century Animation

text: With the August 2019 20th Century Fox slate overhaul announcement, projects from 20th Century Fox franchises such as "Night at the Museum", "Diary of the Wimpy Kid", and "Ice Age" were announced for the then-upcoming Disney+ streaming service. These projects would later be announced during Disney's Investor Day in December 2020 as animated feature films for the aforementioned streaming service. The first of these projects was an animated reboot of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", which was released on December 3, 2021 under Walt Disney Pictures.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: On January 17, 2020, Disney dropped the "Fox" name from the two main film studio units acquired from 21st Century Fox—20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures, while there were no mention of changes to other lesser-known feature film units. Fox Animation took on its current name on his incorporation on January 28, 2020 to avoid confussion with Fox Corporation.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: On February 9, 2021, Disney announced that it was shutting down Blue Sky Studios in April 2021, the main unit of 20th Century Animation. It closed on April 10, 2021.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Unlike animation studios such as Pixar or Walt Disney Animation Studios, 20th Century Animation does not act as a typical animation studio, but rather as a division and somewhat of a distribution label for animated films that are made under or acquired by 20th Century Studios. An example of this is with Fox Animation Studios and Blue Sky Studios' films; both of which were subsidiaries of the company. Another example of this is "Fantastic Mr. Fox". Additionally, "Ron's Gone Wrong" was the first and only film made under a deal between 20th Century and Locksmith Animation.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: However, the animation production of 20th Century Animation's films (except for Blue Sky Studios) is outsourced to other studios. For example, "The Simpsons Movie" was animated at Film Roman alongside AKOM and Rough Draft Studios, while "Ron's Gone Wrong" was animated by DNEG. "The Book of Life" was developed outside of 20th Century Animation at Reel FX, with the studio co-producing the film later on. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and "The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild" were animated by Bardel Entertainment.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Fox Animation Studios (headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona) and Blue Sky Studios (headquartered in White Plains, New York and later Greenwich, Connecticut) animated their respective films internally, however "Anastasia" and "Titan A.E." were outsourced to multiple animation studios, including Bardel Entertainment, Reality Check Studios, and Blue Sky, when the latter of the three was still a VFX studio.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Both Fox Animation Studios and Blue Sky had their own unique animation style, with the former having the same animation style as Don Bluth.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: From 1994 to 2000, Fox operated Fox Animation Studios, a traditional animation studio which was started to compete with Walt Disney Animation Studios, which was experiencing great success with films such as "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin" and "The Lion King". The Fox studio, however, was not as successful. Their first feature "Anastasia" made nearly $140 million at the worldwide box office on a $53 million budget in 1997, but their next feature, "Titan A.E.", was a large financial loss, losing $100 million for 20th Century Fox in 2000. The lack of box office success, coupled with the rise of computer animation, led Fox to shut down the studios.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: From 1997 until 2021, Fox owned Blue Sky Studios, a computer animation company known for the "Ice Age" franchise. Fox has had much more success with the studio, with the box office receipts of their films becoming competitive with the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks Animation. On March 21, 2019, Blue Sky Studios was integrated as a separate unit within Walt Disney Studios, yet they would continue to report to Fox Animation presidents Andrea Miloro and Robert Baird. In February 2021, Disney had announced that Blue Sky would cease all operations and close sometime within April 2021, eventually shuttering on April 10, 2021.


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Blue Sky released thirteen feature films, numerous short films and television specials. "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" is the studio's highest-grossing film. Major feature films include:


title: 20th Century Animation

text: Starting in 2007, 20th Century Animation occasionally produces their own films without Blue Sky Studios' involvement while also co-producing films from other studios. The company is not credited on these films like how they are with Blue Sky's films and Fox Animation Studios' "Anastasia" and "Titan A.E". As of 2022, "The Simpsons Movie" remains their highest-grossing original film.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. – is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac. It is bounded primarily by Lake Superior to the north, separated from the Canadian province of Ontario at the east end by the St. Marys River, and flanked by Lake Huron and Lake Michigan along much of its south. Although the peninsula extends as a geographic feature into the state of Wisconsin, the state boundary follows the Montreal and Menominee rivers and a line connecting them.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: First inhabited by Algonquian-speaking native American tribes, the area was explored by French colonists, then occupied by British forces, before being ceded to the newly established United States in the late 18th century. After being assigned to various territorial jurisdictions, it was granted to the newly formed state of Michigan as part of the settlement of a dispute with Ohio over the city of Toledo. The region's exploitable timber resources and the discovery of iron and copper deposits in the 19th century brought immigrants, especially French Canadian, Finnish, Swedish, Cornish, and Italian. (The peninsula includes the only counties in the United States where a plurality of residents claim Finnish ancestry.) With the exhaustion of readily available minerals, the area's economy declined in the 20th century, largely becoming dependent on logging and tourism.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula contains 29% of the land area of Michigan but only 3% of its total population. Residents are nicknamed "Yoopers" (derived from "UP-ers") and have a strong regional identity, enhanced by the perception that the rest of the state neglects them. Proposals have been made to establish the UP as a separate state, but have failed to gain traction. Its largest cities are Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie, Escanaba, Menominee, Houghton, and Iron Mountain. Because of the surrounding waters and northern latitude, it receives more snow than most of the eastern U.S. The heavily forested land, soil types, short growing season, and logistical factors (e.g. long distance to market, lack of infrastructure) make the Upper Peninsula poorly suited for agriculture. The region is home to a variety of wildlife, including moose, wolves, coyotes, deer, foxes, bears, bobcats, eagles, hawks, owls, and smaller animals.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The first known inhabitants of the Upper Peninsula were tribes speaking Algonquian languages. They arrived roughly around 800 C.E. and subsisted chiefly from fishing. Early tribes included the Menominee, Odawa, Ojibwa, Nocquet, Potawatomi. Étienne Brûlé of France was probably the first European to visit the peninsula, crossing the St. Marys River around 1620 in search of a route to the Far East.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: French colonists laid claim to the land in the 17th century, establishing missions and fur trading posts such as Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace. Following the end of the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years' War) in 1763, the territory was ceded to Great Britain. Sault Ste Marie is the oldest European settlement in Michigan and the site of Native American settlements for centuries.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: American Indian tribes formerly allied with the French were dissatisfied with the British occupation, which brought new territorial policies. Whereas the French cultivated alliances among the Indians, the British postwar approach was to treat the tribes as conquered peoples. In 1763, tribes united in Pontiac's Rebellion to try to drive the British from the area. American Indians captured Fort Michilimackinac, at present-day Mackinaw City, then the principal fort of the British in the Michilimackinac region, as well as others and killed hundreds of British. In 1764, they began negotiations with the British, resulting in temporary peace and changes in objectionable British policies.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Although the Upper Peninsula nominally became United States territory with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the British did not give up control until 1797 under terms of the Jay Treaty. As an American territory, the Upper Peninsula was still dominated by the fur trade. John Jacob Astor founded the American Fur Company on Mackinac Island in 1808; however, the industry began to decline in the 1830s as beaver and other game were overhunted.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: When the Michigan Territory was first established in 1805, it included only the Lower Peninsula and the eastern portion of the Upper Peninsula. In 1819, the territory was expanded to include the remainder of the Upper Peninsula, all of what later became Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota (previously included in the Indiana and Illinois Territories). When Michigan applied for statehood in the 1830s, the proposal corresponded to the original territorial boundaries.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: However, there was an armed conflict known as the Toledo War with the state of Ohio over the location of their mutual border. Meanwhile, the people of Michigan approved a constitution in May 1835 and elected state officials in late autumn 1835. Although the state government was not yet recognized by the United States Congress, the territorial government effectively ceased to exist. President Andrew Jackson's government offered the remainder of the Upper Peninsula to Michigan if it would cede the Toledo Strip to Ohio. A constitutional convention of the state legislature refused, but a second convention, hastily convened by Governor Stevens Thomson Mason, consisting primarily of his supporters, agreed in December 1836 to the deal. In January 1837, the U.S. Congress admitted Michigan as a state of the Union.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: At the time, Michigan was considered the losing party in the compromise. The land in the Upper Peninsula was described in a federal report as a "sterile region on the shores of Lake Superior destined by soil and climate to remain forever a wilderness." This belief changed when rich mineral deposits (primarily copper and iron) were discovered in the 1840s. The Upper Peninsula's mines produced more mineral wealth than the California Gold Rush, especially after shipping was improved by the opening of the Soo Locks in 1855, and docks in Marquette in 1859. The Upper Peninsula supplied 90% of America's copper by the 1860s. It was the largest supplier of iron ore by the 1890s, and production continued to a peak in the 1920s, but sharply declined shortly afterward. The last copper mine closed in 1995, although the majority of mines had closed decades before. Some iron mining continues near Marquette. The Eagle Mine, a nickel-copper mine, opened in 2014.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Thousands of Americans and immigrants moved to the area during the mining boom, prompting the federal government to create Fort Wilkins near Copper Harbor to maintain order. The first wave were the Cornish from Great Britain, with centuries of mining experience; followed by Irish, Germans, and French Canadians. During the 1890s, Finnish immigrants began settling there in large numbers, forming the population plurality in the northwestern half of the peninsula. In the early 20th century, 75% of the population was foreign-born.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: From 1861 to 1865, 90,000 Michigan men fought in the American Civil War, including 1,209 from the Upper Peninsula. Houghton County contributed 460 soldiers, while Marquette County, Michigan sent 265.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: There was a boundary dispute over the border with Wisconsin. The northwesternmost portion of the border follows a line from Lac Vieux Desert to the headwaters of the Montreal River. An 1847 survey established the east branch of the Montreal River as the border. However, the 1908 revision of the Constitution of Michigan specified that the west branch of the Montreal River was the proper border, which would have placed an additional 360 square miles of land on the Michigan side of the border. A 1926 Supreme Court decision awarded this tract of land to Wisconsin.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula contains , about 29 percent of the land area of the state (exclusive of territorial waters, which constitute about 40% of Michigan's total jurisdictional area). It is bounded on the north by Lake Superior, on the east by St. Marys River, on the south by Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and on the west by Wisconsin and (counting the water border on Lake Superior) by Minnesota. It has about of continuous shoreline with the Great Lakes. There are about 4,300 inland lakes, the largest of which is Lake Gogebic, and of streams.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Michigan's Upper Peninsula is bounded on land by Wisconsin to the southwest and west; and in territorial waters by Minnesota to the west, Ontario to the west, north and east, and the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin extends into Lake Michigan east of the western Upper Peninsula.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Five Michigan Upper Peninsula counties include nearby major islands: Mackinac Island, Round Island and Bois Blanc Island in Lake Huron are in Mackinac County; Sugar Island and Neebish Island in the St. Marys River, and Drummond Island in Lake Huron are in Chippewa County; Grand Island is in Alger County; Summer Island is Delta County; and Isle Royale is part of Keweenaw County.The peninsula is divided between the flat, swampy areas in the east, part of the Great Lakes Plain, and the steeper, more rugged western half, called the Superior Upland, part of the Canadian Shield. The rock in the western portion is the result of volcanic eruptions and is estimated to be at least 3.5 billion years old (much older than the eastern portion) and contains the region's ore resources. Banded-iron formations were deposited 2 billion years ago; this is the Marquette Range Supergroup. A considerable amount of bedrock is visible. Mount Arvon, the highest point in Michigan, is found in the region, as well as the Porcupine and Huron mountains. All of the higher areas are the remnants of ancient peaks, worn down over millions of years by erosion and glaciers.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Keweenaw Peninsula is the northernmost part of the peninsula (not counting Isle Royale, which is politically part of the UP). It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States, part of a larger region of the peninsula called the Copper Country. Copper Island is its northernmost section. Its lowest elevation is along the shoreline of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, averaging above sea level. Its highest elevation is Mount Arvon, at .


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: About one-third of the peninsula is government-owned recreational forest land today, including the Ottawa National Forest and Hiawatha National Forest. Although heavily logged in the 19th century, the majority of the land was forested with mature trees by the 1970s.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula contains a large variety of wildlife. Some of the mammals found in the UP include shrews, moles, mice, white-tailed deer, moose, black bears, cougar, gray and red foxes, wolves, river otters, martens, fishers, muskrats, bobcats, coyotes, snowshoe hares, cotton-tail rabbits, porcupines, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, opossum and bats. There is a large variety of birds, including hawks, osprey, owls, gulls, hummingbirds, chickadees, robins (the state bird), woodpeckers, warblers, and bald eagles. In terms of reptiles and amphibians, the UP has common garter snakes, red bellied snakes, pine snakes, northern water snakes, brown snakes, eastern garter snakes, eastern fox snakes, eastern ribbon back snakes, green snakes, northern ringneck snakes, eastern milk snakes (Mackinac and Marquette counties) and eastern hognose snakes (Menominee County only), plus snapping turtles, wood turtles, and painted turtles (the state reptile), green frogs, bullfrogs, northern leopard frogs, and salamanders. Lakes and rivers contain many fish such as walleye, muskie, northern pike, trout, salmon, bullhead catfish, and bass. Invasive species like the alewife and sea lamprey can be found in the Great Lakes. The UP also contains many shellfish, such as clams, aquatic snails, and crayfish. The American Bird Conservancy and the National Audubon Society have designated several locations as internationally Important Bird Areas.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: After being nearly extirpated from the conterminous United States, gray wolves survived in the remote northeastern corner of Minnesota and Ontario. The repopulation of wolves in this region has occurred naturally as they have expanded their territory.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: There is significant discussion and studies over the presence of eastern cougars in the UP. Historically, the last of the species, or subspecies, was extirpated near Newberry in 1906, although there have been sightings of the creatures over the years since. These reports increased in number over the first decade of the 21st century. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) formed a four-person team to investigate sightings in the state. The biologists with the DNRE currently do not believe that there is a breeding population anywhere in the state, rather that the sighted animals are visitors to the state. As late as January 2007, the DNRE's official position was that no cougars lived in Michigan. Several residents in the state disagree with both current and previous positions on the part of the DNRE. Researchers at Central Michigan University and the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy in 2006 published the findings of a study using DNA analysis of fecal samples taken in the Upper and Lower peninsulas that showed the presence of cougars at the time. These results were disputed in a second journal article in 2007 by other researchers from Eastern Michigan University and the U.S. Forest Service. A citizen's group, the Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition (MCCR), independently tracked sightings and in 2009 listed Delta County as the location with the greatest number of reports in the state. The DNRE verified five sets of tracks and two trail camera photos in Delta, Chippewa, Marquette, and Menominee counties since 2008. DNRE officials acknowledge that there are cougars in the UP, but not elsewhere in the state. Critics of the DNRE's position on the species, including the founder of the MCCR, say that the department is attempting to "avoid paying for a cougar management program".


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: There are also many invasive species that are primarily brought in the ballast water of foreign ships, usually from the ocean bordering Northeastern Asia. This water is dumped directly into the Great Lakes, depositing a variety of fresh and salt water fish and invertebrates, most notably the zebra mussel, "Dreissena polymorpha". There are also many plant species that have been transported to the Great Lakes, including purple loosestrife, "Lythrum salicaria" and "Phragmites australis", both of which are considered to be a threat to native hydrophyte wetland plants.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The emerald ash borer was first reported in the UP at Brimley State Park, and is considered to be a serious ecological threat to the habitat and economy.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula has a humid continental climate ("Dfb" in the Köppen climate classification system). The Great Lakes have a great effect on the larger part of the peninsula. Winters tend to be long, cold, and snowy for most of the peninsula, and because of its northern latitude, the daylight hours are short—around 8 hours between sunrise and sunset in the winter. Lake Superior has the greatest effect on the area, especially the northern and western parts. Lake-effect snow causes many areas to get in excess of of snow per year—especially in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Gogebic County, and to a lesser extent Baraga, Marquette and Alger counties, making the western UP a prominent part of the midwestern snow belt.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Records of of snow or more have been set in many communities in this area. The Keweenaw Peninsula averages more snowfall than any other location east of the Mississippi River. Because of the howling storms across Lake Superior, which cause dramatic amounts of precipitation, it has been said that the lake-effect snow makes the Keweenaw Peninsula the snowiest place east of the Rockies. Herman averages of snow every year. Lake-effect snow can cause blinding whiteouts in just minutes, and some storms can last for days. Hancock is found frequently on lists of the snowiest cities in America.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The banana belt along the Wisconsin border has a more continental climate since most of its weather does not arrive from the lakes. Summers tend to be warmer and winter nights much colder. Coastal communities have temperatures tempered by the Great Lakes. In summer, it might be cooler at lakeside than it is inland, and the opposite effect is seen in winter. The area of the Upper Peninsula north of Green Bay through Menominee and Escanaba (and extending west to Iron River) does not have the extreme weather and precipitation found to the north. The coldest temperature officially recorded in the Upper Peninsula was in Humboldt in January 1915.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Like the entire Lower Peninsula, most of the Upper Peninsula observes Eastern Time. However, the four counties bordering Wisconsin are in the Central Time zone.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: In 1967, when the Uniform Time Act came into effect, the Upper Peninsula went under year-round CST, with no daylight saving time. In 1973, the majority of the peninsula switched to Eastern Time; only the four western border counties of Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, and Menominee continue to observe Central Time. Daylight saving time is observed peninsula-wide.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Historically, the Upper Peninsula tended to vote for the Democratic Party due to its legacy of mining and historically high union membership. However, as union strength in the peninsula declined, in the 2010s the region has become more Republican (though split-ticket voting at the local level became a common practice). In the 2012 presidential election, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney carried all but two counties. In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Republican candidate Donald Trump won all counties except Marquette County.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: All counties in the UP are part of Michigan's 1st congressional district. Jack Bergman, a Republican, has been the U.S. representative for this district since January 2017.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: In Michigan's 2010 gubernatorial election Republican Rick Snyder carried every UP county but one, Gogebic, on his way to victory over his Democratic opponent, Virg Bernero.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Due to the geographic separation and perceived cultural and political differences from the Lower Peninsula, at various times there have been proposals for the Upper Peninsula to secede from Michigan as a 51st state named "Superior", sometimes including portions of northern Wisconsin and/or the northern Lower Peninsula. Several prominent legislators, including the region's long-serving state representative Dominic Jacobetti, attempted unsuccessfully to gain passage of such a bill in the 1970s. It would be the least populous state in the union, and as stronger connections to the rest of Michigan have developed since completion of the Mackinac Bridge in the 1950s, the proposal has remained largely dormant since the 1970s.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula remains a predominantly rural region. As of the 2020 census the region had a population of 301,608, just more than 3% of Michigan's total population and a decline of 3.2% from 2010.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: According to the 2010 census, 103,211 people live in the 12 towns of at least 4,000 people, covering . A total of 116,548 people live in the 18 towns and villages of at least 2,000 people, which cover —less than 1% of the peninsula's land area.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Federal censuses indicate that the population of the Upper Peninsula grew throughout the 19th century as European settlers moved into the region, then boomed around the turn of the century, and experienced gradual decline overall during most of the 20th century. The decline was uneven, however: the population in the largest cities – Marquette, Sault Ste Marie, and Escanaba – grew somewhat, while smaller cities and non-urban areas have generally declined in population. The six westernmost counties experienced the largest decrease, from a 1920 population of 153,674 to a 2020 population of 79,392. Many ghost towns exist in the region.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: A "" indicates an increase in population from the previous census, and a "" indicates a decrease in population from the previous census.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula is rich in mineral deposits, including iron, copper, nickel, and silver. Small amounts of gold have also been discovered and mined. In the 19th century, mining dominated the economy, and the UP became home to many isolated company towns. For many years, mines in the Keweenaw Peninsula were the world's largest producers of copper (see Copper mining in Michigan). The mines began declining as early as 1913, with most closing temporarily during the Great Depression. Mines reopened during World War II, but almost all quickly closed after the war ended. The last copper mine in the Copper Country was the White Pine mine, which closed in 1995. Marquette County sits along the Marquette Iron Range, which sent out a significant portion of the iron ore mined in the United States for many years. , Marquette County is home to one remaining iron ore mine and one nickel and copper mine.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: From approximately 1870 to 1915, about 32 quarries mined Jacobsville Sandstone in the Upper Peninsula, particularly near Marquette and the community of Jacobsville. The sandstone was used in many buildings, both locally and around the United States.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Since logging of white pine began in the 1880s, timber has been an important industry. Stands of hemlock and hardwood in the western reaches of the forest experienced larger scale selection-cutting beginning in the mid-20th century. Because of the highly seasonal climate and the short growing season, agriculture is limited in the Upper Peninsula, though potatoes, strawberries and a few other small fruits are grown.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Tourism has become the main industry in recent decades. In 2005, ShermanTravel, LLC listed the Upper Peninsula as #10 in its assessment of all travel destinations worldwide. The peninsula has extensive coastline on the Great Lakes, large tracts of state and national forests, cedar swamps, more than 150 waterfalls, and low population densities. Because of the skiing, camping, boating, fishing, snowmobiling, hunting, and hiking opportunities, many Lower Peninsula and Wisconsin families spend their vacations in the UP, and tourists visit from Detroit, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, and other metropolitan areas. The opening of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 (see below) has made the Upper Peninsula easily accessible to tourists from the Lower Peninsula and southeast of Michigan, and has helped make the UP a year-round tourist destination.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: In 2004, microbreweries began opening across the Upper Peninsula; 14 opened by 2014, and 23 by 2019. In 2019, their annual economic impact totaled $346 million. , three of Michigan's fifty largest breweries were in the Upper Peninsula: Keweenaw Brewing Company, Blackrocks Brewery, and the Ore Dock Brewing Company.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: American Indian casinos contribute to the tourist attractions and are popular in the UP. Originally the casinos were simple, one-room affairs. Some of the casinos are now quite elaborate and are being developed as part of resort and conference facilities, including features such as golf courses, pool and spa, dining, and rooms to accommodate guests.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula is separated from the Lower by the Straits of Mackinac, five miles (8 km) across at the narrowest, and is connected to it by the Mackinac Bridge at St. Ignace, one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Until the bridge was completed in 1957, travel between the two peninsulas was difficult and slow (and sometimes even impossible during winter). In 1881, the Mackinac Transportation Company was established by three railroads, the Michigan Central Railroad, the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, and the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad, to operate a railroad car ferry across the Straits. Beginning in 1923, the State of Michigan operated automobile ferries between the two peninsulas. At the busiest times of year the wait was several hours long, much longer at holidays. In winter, travel was possible over the ice only after the straits had solidly frozen.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The U.S. Forest Service and Federal Highway Administration have designated certain roads within the several National Forests in the UP as Federal Forest Highways. State-maintained highways closest to the Upper Peninsula's Great Lakes shorelines are marked by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) with signs indicating that they are part of the Great Lakes Circle Tour, a designated scenic road system connecting all of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. MDOT has also designated five UP highways as Pure Michigan Byways for their historic, recreational or scenic qualities. They are: US 2 in Iron County (Iron County Heritage Trail) and in Schoolcraft and Mackinac counties (Top of the Lake Scenic Byway), US 41 from Houghton to Copper Harbor (Copper County Trail, also a National Scenic Byway), M-35 (UP Hidden Coast Recreational Heritage Trail), M-123 (Tahquamenon Scenic Heritage Route) and M-134 (M-134 North Huron Byway)


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: There are 43 airports in the Upper Peninsula. Of these, six airports have commercial passenger service: Gogebic-Iron County Airport north of Ironwood, Houghton County Memorial Airport southwest of Calumet, Ford Airport west of Iron Mountain, Sawyer International Airport south of Marquette, Delta County Airport in Escanaba, and Chippewa County International Airport south of Sault Ste. Marie. There are 19 other public use airports with a hard surface runway. These are used for general aviation and charter. Notably, Mackinac Island, Beaver Island, and Drummond Island are all accessible by airports. There are five public access airports with turf runways and thirteen airports for the private use of their owners. There is only one control tower in the Upper Peninsula, at Sawyer.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Eastern Upper Peninsula Transportation Authority operates car ferries in its area. These include ferries for Sugar Island, Neebish Island, and Drummond Island. Two ferry companies run passenger ferries from St. Ignace to Mackinac Island.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has three state universities (Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Technological University in Houghton, and Northern Michigan University in Marquette), one private university (Finlandia University located in Hancock, Michigan, on the Keweenaw Peninsula), and five community colleges (Bay Mills Community College in Brimley, Bay de Noc Community College in Escanaba and Iron Mountain, Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, and Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College in Baraga).


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Early settlers included multiple waves of people from Nordic countries, and people of Finnish ancestry make up 16% of the peninsula's population; the UP is home to the highest concentration of Finns outside Europe and the only counties of the United States where a plurality of residents claim Finnish ancestry. The Finnish sauna and the concept of sisu have been adopted widely by residents of the Upper Peninsula. The television program "Finland Calling" was for a long period the only Finnish-language television broadcast in the United States; it aired on Marquette station WLUC-TV from March 25, 1962, until March 29, 2015. Finlandia University, America's only college with Finnish roots, is located in Hancock. Street signs in Hancock appear in English and Finnish to celebrate this heritage.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Other sizable ethnic communities in the Upper Peninsula include French-Canadian, German, Cornish, Italian, and Ojibwe ancestry.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Upper Peninsula natives speak a dialect influenced by Scandinavian and French-Canadian speech. A popular bumper sticker, a parody of the "Say YES to Michigan" slogan promoted by state tourism officials, shows an outline of the Upper Peninsula and the slogan, "Say ya to da UP, eh!" The dialect and culture are captured in many songs by Da Yoopers, a comedy music and skit troupe from Ishpeming, Michigan.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Throughout the Upper Peninsula, there are newspapers, such as "The Daily News" in Iron Mountain, "The Menominee County Journal" in Stephenson, "The Daily Mining Gazette" in Houghton, "The Daily Press" in Escanaba, and the "Sault Ste. Marie Evening News" that serve the rest of the UP "The Mining Journal", based in Marquette, is the only daily newspaper that publishes a Sunday edition, which is distributed, with the exception of Chippewa and eastern Mackinac counties, across the entire UP (the other six days are distributed in its local area only).


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Keweenaw Peninsula is home to several ski areas. Mont Ripley, just outside Houghton, is popular among students of Michigan Technological University (the university actually owns the mountain). Further up the peninsula in the small town of Lac La Belle is Mt. Bohemia. A skiing purist's resort, Bohemia is a self-proclaimed "experts only" mountain, and it does not groom its heavily gladed slopes. Other ski areas are Pine Mountain located in Iron Mountain, Norway Mountain in the town of the same name, and the Porcupine Mountains located in Ontonagon.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Today, the western Upper Peninsula is home to about 173,887 people, while the eastern Upper Peninsula is home to about 133,499 people, a total of 307,386—only about 3% of the state's population—living in almost one-third of the state's land area. Residents are known as Yoopers (from "UP-ers"), and many consider themselves Yoopers before they consider themselves Michiganders. (People living in the Lower Peninsula are commonly called "trolls" by Upper Peninsula residents, as they live "Under the Bridge".) This regionalism is not only a result of the physical separation of the two peninsulas, but also the history of the state.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Residents of the western Upper Peninsula take on some of the cultural identities of both Wisconsin and Michigan. In terms of sports fandom, residents may support Detroit professional teams or those of Wisconsin—particularly the Green Bay Packers. This is a result of both proximity and the broadcast and print media of the area. The four counties that border Wisconsin are also in the Central Time Zone, unlike the rest of Michigan, which is on Eastern time. In some cases, commercial cartographers draw incorrect maps that inadvertently annex the Upper Peninsula into Wisconsin.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: The Upper Peninsula has a distinctive local cuisine. The pasty (pronounced "pass-tee"), a kind of meat turnover originally brought to the region by Cornish miners, is popular among locals and tourists alike. Pasty varieties include chicken, venison, pork, hamburger, and pizza, all of which many restaurants serve.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Finnish immigrants contributed "nisu", a cardamom-flavored sweet bread; "limppu", an Eastern Finnish rye bread; "pannukakku", a variant on the pancake with a custard flavor; "viili" (sometimes spelled "fellia"), a stretchy, fermented Finnish milk; and "korppu", hard slices of toasted cinnamon bread, traditionally dipped in coffee. Some Finnish foods such as "juusto" (squeaky cheese, essentially a cheese curd, like Leipäjuusto) and "saunamakkara" (a ring-bologna sausage) have become so ubiquitous in Upper Peninsula cuisine that they are now commonly found in most grocery stores and supermarkets.


title: Upper Peninsula of Michigan

text: Maple syrup is a highly prized local delicacy. Fresh Great Lakes fish, such as the lake trout, whitefish, and (in the spring) smelt are widely eaten. There is minimal concern about contamination of fish from Lake Superior waters. Smoked fish is also popular. Thimbleberry jam and chokecherry jelly are a treat.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of the Baroque period (c.1600–1750). He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style, later developing a freer manner characterized by bold brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece "Las Meninas" (1656).


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez's paintings became a model for 19th-century realist and impressionist painters. In the 20th century, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Francis Bacon paid tribute to Velázquez by re-interpreting some of his most iconic images.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Most of his work entered the Spanish royal collection, and by far the best collection is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, though some portraits were sent abroad as diplomatic gifts, especially to the Austrian Habsburgs.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez was born in Seville, Spain, the first child of Juan Rodríguez de Silva, a notary, and Jerónima Velázquez. He was baptized at the church of St. Peter in Seville on Sunday, June 6, 1599. The baptism most likely occurred a few days or weeks after his birth. His paternal grandparents, Diego da Silva and María Rodríguez, were Portuguese and had moved to Seville decades earlier. When Velázquez was offered knighthood in 1658, he claimed descent from the lesser nobility in order to qualify; in fact, however, his grandparents were tradespeople, and possibly Jewish "conversos".


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Raised in modest circumstances, he showed an early gift for art, and was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, an artist and teacher in Seville. An early-18th-century biographer, Antonio Palomino, said Velázquez studied for a short time under Francisco de Herrera before beginning his apprenticeship under Pacheco, but this is undocumented. A contract signed on September 17, 1611, formalized a 6-year apprenticeship with Pacheco backdated to December 1610, and it has been suggested that Herrera may have substituted for a traveling Pacheco between December 1610 and September 1611.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Though considered a dull and undistinguished painter, Pacheco sometimes expressed a simple, direct realism although his work remained essentially Mannerist. As a teacher, he was highly learned and encouraged his students' intellectual development. In Pacheco's school, Velázquez studied the classics, was trained in proportion and perspective, and witnessed the trends in the literary and artistic circles of Seville.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: On April 23, 1618, Velázquez married Juana Pacheco (June 1, 1602August 10, 1660), the daughter of his teacher. They had two daughters. The elder, Francisca de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco (1619–1658), married painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo at the Church of Santiago in Madrid on August 21, 1633. The younger, Ignacia de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco, born in 1621, died in infancy.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez's earliest works are bodegones (kitchen scenes with prominent still-life). He was one of the first Spanish artists to paint such scenes, and his "Old Woman Frying Eggs" (1618) demonstrates the young artist's unusual skill in realistic depiction. The realism and dramatic lighting of this work may have been influenced by Caravaggio's work—which Velázquez could have seen second-hand, in copies—and by the polychrome sculpture in Sevillian churches. Two of his bodegones, "Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha" (1618) and "Kitchen Scene with Christ at Emmaus" (c. 1618), feature religious scenes in the background, painted in a way that creates ambiguity as to whether the religious scene is a painting on the wall, a representation of the thoughts of the kitchen maid in the foreground, or an actual incident seen through a window. "The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception" (1618–19) follows a formula used by Pacheco, but replaces the idealized facial type and smoothly finished surfaces of his teacher with the face of a local girl and varied brushwork. His other religious works include "The Adoration of the Magi" (1619) and "Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos" (1618–19), both of which begin to express his more pointed and careful realism.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Also from this period are the portrait of "Sor Jerónima de la Fuente" (1620) – Velázquez's first full-length portrait – and the genre "The Water Seller of Seville" (1618–1622). "The Water Seller of Seville" has been termed "the peak of Velázquez's "bodegones"" and is admired for its virtuoso rendering of volumes and textures as well as for its enigmatic gravitas.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez had established his reputation in Seville by the early 1620s. He traveled to Madrid in April 1622, with letters of introduction to Don Juan de Fonseca, chaplain to the King. Velázquez was not allowed to paint the new king, Philip IV, but portrayed the poet Luis de Góngora at the request of Pacheco. The portrait showed Góngora crowned with a laurel wreath, which Velázquez later painted over. He returned to Seville in January 1623 and remained there until August.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In December 1622, Rodrigo de Villandrando, the king's favorite court painter, died. Velázquez received a command to come to the court from Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, the powerful minister of Philip IV. He was offered 50 ducats (175 g of gold) to defray his expenses, and he was accompanied by his father-in-law. Fonseca lodged the young painter in his home and sat for a portrait, which, when completed, was conveyed to the royal palace. A portrait of the king was commissioned, and on August 30, 1623, Philip IV sat for Velázquez. The portrait pleased the king, and Olivares commanded Velázquez to move to Madrid, promising that no other painter would ever paint Philip's portrait and all other portraits of the king would be withdrawn from circulation. In the following year, 1624, he received 300 ducats from the king to pay the cost of moving his family to Madrid, which became his home for the remainder of his life.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez secured admission to the royal service with a salary of 20 ducats per month, lodgings and payment for the pictures he might paint. His portrait of Philip was exhibited on the steps of San Felipe and received with enthusiasm. It is now lost (as is the portrait of Fonseca). The Museo del Prado, however, has two of Velázquez's portraits of the king (nos. 1070 and 1071) in which the severity of the Seville period has disappeared and the tones are more delicate. The modeling is firm, recalling that of Antonio Mor, the Dutch portrait painter of Philip II, who exercised a considerable influence on the Spanish school. Velázquez depicts Philip wearing the "", a stiff linen collar projecting at right angles from the neck. The "golilla" replaced the earlier court fashion of elaborate ruffed collars as part of Philip's dress reform laws during a period of economic crisis.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: The Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I) arrived at the court of Spain in 1623. Records indicate that he sat for Velázquez, but the picture is now lost.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In 1627, Philip set a competition for the best painters of Spain with the subject to be the expulsion of the Moors. Velázquez won. Recorded descriptions of his painting (destroyed in a fire at the palace in 1734) say it depicted Philip III pointing with his baton to a crowd of men and women being led away by soldiers, while the female personification of Spain sits in calm repose. Velázquez was appointed gentleman usher as reward. Later he also received a daily allowance of 12 réis, the same amount allotted to the court barbers, and 90 ducats a year for dress.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In September 1628, Peter Paul Rubens was positioned in Madrid as an emissary from the Infanta Isabella, and Velázquez accompanied him to view the Titians at the Escorial. Rubens, who demonstrated his brilliance as painter and courtier during the seven months of the diplomatic mission, had a high opinion of Velázquez but had no significant influence on his painting. He did, however, galvanize Velázquez's desire to see Italy and the works of the great Italian masters.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In 1629, Velázquez received 100 ducats for the picture of Bacchus ("The Triumph of Bacchus"), also called "Los Borrachos" (The Drunks), a painting of a group of men in contemporary dress paying homage to a half-naked ivy-crowned young man seated on a wine barrel. Velázquez's first mythological painting, it has been interpreted variously as a depiction of a theatrical performance, as a parody, or as a symbolic representation of peasants asking the god of wine to give them relief from their sorrows. The style shows the naturalism of Velázquez's early works slightly touched by the influence of Titian and Rubens.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In 1629, Velázquez was given permission to spend a year and a half in Italy. Though this first visit is recognized as a crucial chapter in the development of his style—and in the history of Spanish Royal Patronage, since Philip IV sponsored his trip—few details and specifics are known of what the painter saw, whom he met, how he was perceived and what innovations he hoped to introduce into his painting.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: He traveled to Venice, Ferrara, Cento, Loreto, Bologna, and Rome. In 1630, he visited Naples to paint the portrait of Maria Anna of Spain, and there he probably met Ribera. The major works from his first Italian period are "Joseph's Bloody Coat brought to Jacob" (1629–30) and "Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan" (1630), both of which reveal his ambition to rival the Italians as a history painter in the grand manner. The two compositions of several nearly life-sized figures have similar dimensions, and may have been conceived as pendants—the biblical scene depicting a deception, and the mythological scene depicting the revelation of a deception. As he had done in "The Triumph of Bacchus", Velázquez presented his characters as contemporary people whose gestures and facial expressions were those of everyday life. Following the example of Bolognese painters such as Guido Reni, Velázquez painted "Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan" on canvas prepared with a light gray ground rather than the dark reddish ground of all his earlier works. The change resulted in a greater luminosity than he had previously achieved, and he made the use of light-gray grounds his regular practice.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez returned to Madrid in January 1631. That year he completed the first of his many portraits of the young prince, beginning with "Prince Balthasar Charles with a Dwarf" (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). ln portraits such as "Equestrian portrait of prince Balthasar Charles" (1635), Velázquez depicts the prince looking dignified and lordly, or in the dress of a field marshal on his prancing steed. In one version, the scene is in the riding school of the palace, the king and queen looking on from a balcony, while Olivares attends as master of the horse to the prince.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: To decorate the king's new palace, the Palacio del Buen Retiro, Velázquez painted equestrian portraits of the royal family. In "Philip IV on Horseback" (1634–35), the king is represented in profile in an image of imperturbable majesty, demonstrating expert horsemanship by executing an effortless levade. The large "The Surrender of Breda" (1634–35), also painted for the Palacio, is Velázquez's only extant painting depicting contemporary history. Its symbolic treatment of a Spanish military victory over the Dutch eschews the rhetoric of conquest and superiority that is typical in such scenes, in which a general on horseback looks down on his vanquished, kneeling opponent. Instead, Velázquez shows the Spanish general standing before his Dutch counterpart as an equal, and extending to him a hand of consolation.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: The impassive, saturnine face of the influential minister Olivares is familiar to us from the many portraits painted by Velázquez. Two are notable: one is full-length, stately and dignified, in which he wears the green cross of the order of Alcantara and holds a wand, the badge of his office as master of the horse; in the other, "The Count-Duke of Olivares on Horseback" (c. 1635), he is flatteringly represented as a field marshal during action. In these portraits, Velázquez well repaid the debt of gratitude that he owed to the patron who had first brought him to the king's attention.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: The sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés modeled a statue on one of Velázquez's equestrian portraits of the king (painted in 1636; now lost) which was cast in bronze by the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca and now stands in the Plaza de Oriente in Madrid. Velázquez was in close attendance to Philip, and accompanied him to Aragon in 1644, where the artist painted a portrait of the monarch in the costume as he reviewed his troops in Fraga.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez's paintings of "Aesop" and "Menippus" (both c. 1636–1638) portray ancient writers in the guise of portraits of beggars. "Mars Resting" (c. 1638) is both a depiction of a mythological figure and a portrait of a weary-looking, middle-aged man posing as Mars. The model is painted with attention to his individuality, while his unkempt, oversized mustache is a faintly comic incongruity. The equivocal image has been interpreted in various ways: Javier Portús describes it as a "reflection on reality, representation, and the artistic vision", while Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez says it "has also been seen as a melancholy meditation on the arms of Spain in decline".


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Had it not been for his royal appointment, which enabled Velázquez to escape the censorship of the Inquisition, he would not have been able to release his "La Venus del espejo" (c. 1644–1648, English: "Venus at her Mirror") also known as "The Rokeby Venus". It is the first known female nude painted by a Spanish artist, and the only surviving female nude by Velázquez.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Besides the many portraits of Philip by Velázquez—thirty-four by one count—he painted portraits of other members of the royal family: Philip's first wife, Elisabeth of Bourbon, and her children, especially her eldest son, Don Baltasar Carlos, whom Velázquez first depicted at about two years of age. Cavaliers, soldiers, churchmen, and the poet Francisco de Quevedo (now at Apsley House), sat for Velázquez.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez also painted several buffoons and dwarfs in Philip's court, whom he depicted sympathetically and with respect for their individuality, as in "The Jester Don Diego de Acedo" (1644), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his side show him to be a wise and well-educated man. "Pablo de Valladolid" (1635), a buffoon evidently acting a part, and "The Buffoon of Coria" (1639) belong to this middle period.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: As court painter, Velázquez had fewer commissions for religious works than any of his contemporaries. "Christ Crucified" (1632), painted for the Convent of San Plácido in Madrid, depicts Christ immediately after death. The Savior's head hangs on his breast and a mass of dark tangled hair conceals part of the face, visually reinforcing the idea of death. The figure is presented alone before a dark background.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez's son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo had succeeded him as usher in 1634, and Mazo himself had received a steady promotion in the royal household. Mazo received a pension of 500 ducats in 1640, increased to 700 in 1648, for portraits painted and to be painted, and was appointed inspector of works in the palace in 1647.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Philip now entrusted Velázquez with the mission of procuring paintings and sculpture for the royal collection. Rich in pictures, Spain was weak in statuary, and Velázquez was commissioned once again to proceed to Italy to make purchases.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: When he set out in 1649, he was accompanied by his assistant Juan de Pareja who at this point in time was a slave and who had been trained in painting by Velázquez. Velázquez sailed from Málaga, landed at Genoa, and proceeded from Milan to Venice, buying paintings of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese as he went. At Modena he was received with much favor by the duke, and here he painted the portrait of the duke at the Modena gallery and two portraits that now adorn the Dresden gallery, for these paintings came from the Modena sale of 1746.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Those works presage the advent of the painter's third and latest manner, a noble example of which is the great portrait of Pope Innocent X in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome, where Velázquez now proceeded. There he was received with marked favor by the Pope, who presented him with a medal and golden chain. Velázquez took a copy of the portrait—which Sir Joshua Reynolds thought was the finest picture in Rome—with him to Spain. Several copies of it exist in different galleries, some of them possibly studies for the original or replicas painted for Philip. Velázquez, in this work, had now reached the "manera abreviada", a term coined by contemporary Spaniards for this bolder, sharper style. The portrait shows such ruthlessness in Innocent's expression that some in the Vatican feared that it would be seen unfavorably by the Pope; in fact Innocent was pleased with the work, and hung it in his official visitor's waiting room.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In 1650 in Rome Velázquez also painted a "portrait of Juan de Pareja", now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, USA. This portrait procured his election into the Accademia di San Luca. Purportedly Velázquez created this portrait as a warm-up of his skills before his portrait of the Pope. It captures in great detail Pareja's countenance and his somewhat worn and patched clothing with an economic use of brushwork. In November 1650, Juan de Pareja was freed by Velázquez.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: To this period also belong two small landscape paintings both titled "View of the Garden of the Villa Medici". As landscapes apparently painted directly from nature, they were exceptional for their time, and reveal Velázquez's close study of light at different times of day.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: As part of his mission to procure decorations for the "Room of Mirrors" at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid, Velázquez commissioned Matteo Bonuccelli to cast twelve bronze copies of the Medici lions. The copies are now in the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Museo del Prado.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: During his time in Rome, Velázquez fathered a natural son, Antonio, whom he is not known ever to have seen.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: From February 1650, Philip repeatedly sought Velázquez's return to Spain. Accordingly, after visiting Naples—where he saw his old friend Jose Ribera—and Venice, Velázquez returned to Spain via Barcelona in 1651, taking with him many pictures and 300 pieces of statuary, which afterwards were arranged and catalogued for the king.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Elisabeth of France had died in 1644, and the king had married Mariana of Austria, whom Velázquez now painted in many attitudes. In 1652 he was specially chosen by the king to fill the high office of "aposentador mayor", which imposed on him the duty of looking after the quarters occupied by the court—a responsible function which was no sinecure and one which interfered with the exercise of his art. Yet far from indicating any decline, his works of this period are amongst the highest examples of his style.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: One of the "infantas", Margaret Theresa, the eldest daughter of the new queen, appears to be the subject of "Las Meninas" (1656, English: "The Maids of Honour"), Velázquez's magnum opus.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Created four years before his death, it serves as an outstanding example of European baroque art. Luca Giordano, a contemporary Italian painter, referred to it as the "theology of painting", and in the eighteenth century the Englishman Thomas Lawrence cited it as the "philosophy of art". However, it is unclear as to who or what is the true subject of the picture. Is it the royal daughter, or perhaps the painter himself? The king and queen are seen reflected in a mirror on the back wall, but the source of the reflection is a mystery: are the royal pair standing in the viewer's space, or does the mirror reflect the painting on which Velázquez is working? Dale Brown says Velázquez may have conceived the faded image of the king and queen on the back wall as a foreshadowing of the fall of the Spanish Empire that was to gain momentum following Philip's death.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In the 1966 book "Les Mots et Les Choses" ("The Order of Things"), philosopher Michel Foucault devotes the opening chapter to a detailed analysis of "Las Meninas". He describes the ways in which the painting problematizes issues of representation through its use of mirrors, screens, and the subsequent oscillations that occur between the image's interior, surface, and exterior.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: It is said the king painted the honorary "Cross of Saint James" of the Order of Santiago on the breast of the painter as it appears today on the canvas. However, Velázquez did not receive this honor of knighthood until three years after execution of this painting. Even the King of Spain could not make his favorite court painter a belted knight without the consent of the commission established to inquire into the purity of his lineage. The aim of these inquiries would be to prevent the appointment to positions of anyone found to have even a taint of heresy in their lineage—that is, a trace of Jewish or Moorish blood or contamination by trade or commerce in either side of the family for many generations. The records of this commission have been found among the archives of the Order of Santiago. Velázquez was awarded the honor in 1659. His occupation as plebeian and tradesman was justified because, as painter to the king, he was evidently not involved in the practice of "selling" pictures.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: There were essentially only two patrons of art in Spain—the church and the art-loving king and court. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, who toiled for a rich and powerful church, left little means to pay for his burial, while Velázquez lived and died in the enjoyment of a good salary and pension.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: One of his final works was "Las hilanderas" ("The Spinners"), painted circa 1657, a depiction of Ovid's Fable of Arachne. The tapestry in the background is based on Titian's "The Rape of Europa", or, more probably, the copy that Rubens painted in Madrid. It is full of light, air and movement, featuring vibrant colors and careful handling. Anton Raphael Mengs said this work seemed to have been painted not by the hand but by the pure force of will. It displays a concentration of all the art-knowledge Velázquez had gathered during his long artistic career of more than forty years. The scheme is simple—a confluence of varied and blended red, bluish-green, gray and black.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez's final portraits of the royal children are among his finest works and in the "Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress" the painter's personal style reached its high-point: shimmering spots of color on wide painting surfaces produce an almost impressionistic effect – the viewer must stand at a suitable distance to get the impression of complete, three-dimensional spatiality.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: His only surviving portrait of the delicate and sickly Prince Felipe Prospero is remarkable for its combination of the sweet features of the child prince and his dog with a subtle sense of gloom. The hope that was placed at that time in the sole heir to the Spanish crown is reflected in the depiction: fresh red and white stand in contrast to late autumnal, morbid colors. A small dog with wide eyes looks at the viewer as if questioningly, and the largely pale background hints at a gloomy fate: the little prince was barely four years old when he died. As in all of the artist's late paintings, the handling of the colors is extraordinarily fluid and vibrant.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: In 1660 a peace treaty between France and Spain was consummated by the marriage of Maria Theresa with Louis XIV, and the ceremony took place on the Island of Pheasants, a small swampy island in the Bidassoa. Velázquez was charged with the decoration of the Spanish pavilion and with the entire scenic display. He attracted much attention from the nobility of his bearing and the splendor of his costume. On June 26 he returned to Madrid, and on July 31 he was stricken with fever. Feeling his end approaching, he signed his will, appointing as his sole executors his wife and his firm friend named Fuensalida, keeper of the royal records. He died on August 6, 1660. He was buried in the Fuensalida vault of the church of San Juan Bautista, and within eight days his wife Juana was buried beside him. This church was destroyed by the French around 1809, so his place of interment is now unknown.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: There was much difficulty in adjusting the tangled accounts outstanding between Velázquez and the treasury, and it was not until 1666, after the death of King Philip, that they were finally settled.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: It is canonical to divide Velázquez's career by his two visits to Italy. He rarely signed his pictures, and the royal archives give the dates of only his most important works. Internal evidence and history pertaining to his portraits supply the rest to a certain extent.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost painters of his day, Velázquez was strong enough to withstand external influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art. He rejected the pomp that characterized the portraiture of other European courts, and instead brought an even greater reserve to the understated formula for Habsburg portraiture established by Titian, Antonio Mor, and Alonso Sánchez Coello. He is known for using a rather limited palette, but he mixed the available paints with great skill to achieve varying hues. His pigments were not significantly different from those of his contemporaries and he mainly employed azurite, smalt, vermilion, red lake, lead-tin-yellow and ochres. His early works were painted on canvases prepared with a red-brown ground. He adopted the use of light-gray grounds during his first trip to Italy, and continued using them for the rest of his life. The change resulted in paintings with greater luminosity and a generally cool, silvery range of color.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Few drawings are securely attributed to Velázquez. Although preparatory drawings for some of his paintings exist, his method was to paint directly from life, and x-rays of his paintings reveal that he frequently made changes in his composition as a painting progressed.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez was not prolific; he is estimated to have produced between 110 and 120 known canvases. He produced no etchings or engravings, and only a few drawings are attributed to him.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez is the most influential figure in the history of Spanish portraiture. Although he had few immediate followers, Spanish court painters such as his son-in-law Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo and Juan Carreño de Miranda took inspiration from his work. Mazo closely mimicked his style and many paintings and copies by Mazo were formerly attributed to Velázquez. Velázquez's reputation languished in the eighteenth century, when Spanish court portraiture was dominated by artists of foreign birth and training. Towards the end of the century, his importance was increasingly recognized by intellectuals close to the Spanish court—an essay published In 1781 by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos said of Velázquez that "when he died, the glory of Painting in Spain died with him." In 1778, Goya made a set of etchings after paintings by Velázquez, as part of a project by the Count of Floridablanca to produce prints of paintings in the Royal Collection. Goya's free copies reveal a searching engagement with the older master's work, which remained a model for Goya for the rest of his career.


title: Diego Velázquez

text: Velázquez's work was little known outside of Spain until the nineteenth century. His paintings mostly escaped being stolen by the French marshals during the Peninsular War. In 1828, Sir David Wilkie wrote from Madrid that he felt himself in the presence of a new power in art as he looked at the works of Velázquez, and at the same time found a wonderful affinity between this artist and the British school of portrait painters, especially Henry Raeburn. He was struck by the modern impression pervading Velázquez's work in both landscape and portraiture.