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The Portrait of a Musician is an unfinished painting widely attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. His only known male portrait painting, it was probably painted between 1483 and 1487 while Leonardo was in Milan. It has been in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan since at least 1672. Perhaps influenced by Antonello da Messina's introduction of the Early Netherlandish style of portrait painting to Italy, the work marks a shift from the profile portraiture that predominated in 15th-century Milan. It shares many similarities with other paintings Leonardo executed there, such as the Virgin of the Rocks and the Lady with an Ermine. Most current scholarship attributes at least the portrait's face to Leonardo, based on stylistic resemblances to his other works. Uncertainty over the rest of the painting is due to the stiff and rigid qualities of the body, which are uncharacteristic of Leonardo's work. (Full article...)

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In the news

Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic

In tennis, Naomi Osaka wins the women's singles and Novak Djokovic wins the men's singles at the Australian Open (both winners pictured).
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NASA's Perseverance rover, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter, successfully lands on Mars.
A winter storm in North America leaves at least 70 people dead and several million others without clean water or power.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes the first woman and the first African to be appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

On this day

February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918)

Japanese-Canadian internment camp in British Columbia

1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional for the first time, forming the basis of judicial review in the United States.
1826 – The Treaty of Yandabo was signed, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in the history of British India.
1942 – World War II: The Canadian government ordered the removal of "all persons of Japanese origin" to internment camps (example pictured).
1968 – Vietnam War: South Vietnamese forces led by Ngô Quang Trưởng recaptured the citadel of Huế.
1989 – United Airlines Flight 811 experienced uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii, blowing seats out of the aircraft and killing nine passengers.

Properzia de' Rossi (d. 1530)
Leo von Caprivi (b. 1831)
Denis Law (b. 1940)

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Today's featured picture

The Bathers is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Paul Cézanne, first exhibited in 1906. The painting is the largest of a series of paintings of bathers by the artist, and is considered a masterpiece of modern art. He worked on the painting for seven years, and it remained unfinished at the time of his death. Often considered Cézanne's finest work, it is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Painting credit: Paul Cézanne

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