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A portrait by Italian renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is expected to sell for more than $80 million when it goes up for auction at Sotheby's in New York on Thursday.
"Young Man Holding a Roundel," believed to have been painted in the 1470s or 1480s, is considered one of Botticelli's finest portraits and is the highlight of Sotheby's Masters Week sale.
<p>"This Botticelli is so much more spectacular in every way than anything we've seen coming to the market," Christopher Apostle, Sotheby's senior vice president, told AFP.</p><p>The 23-inch by 15.5-inch (58-centimeter by 39-centimeter) painting shows a man in his late teenage years with long golden hair sitting holding a disc featuring a bearded saint.</p><p>The roundel, which depicts the saint with his right hand raised, is an original 14th-century artwork attributed to Sienese painter Bartolommeo Bulgarini.</p><p>Art historians suspect the Botticelli depicts a nobleman proudly showing off the earlier artwork.</p><p>"This image symbolizes and exemplifies the Renaissance in Florence. We haven't seen anything like it in my lifetime," said Apostle, describing it as "a masterpiece."</p><p>The portrait was handed down through several generations of an aristocratic family in Wales for around 200 years.</p><p>Art scholars were unaware of the painting's existence until it first appeared on the market in the early 20th century.</p><p>"Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel" has spent much of the last 40 years on public display since its current owner acquired it in 1982 for just 810,000 pounds ($1.1 million at 2021 rates).</p><p>It has appeared at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in London and elsewhere.</p><p>Sotheby's says a sale of over $80 million would establish the work as one of the most significant portraits to have ever sold at auction.</p><p>The previous record for a Botticelli was set in 2013 when "Madonna and Child with Young Saint John the Baptist" sold for $10.4 million.</p><h1>Rembrandt</h1><p>The sale would rank alongside Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II," which sold for $87.9 million in 2006 and Vincent Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr Gachet," which fetched $82.5 million in 1990.</p><p>The auction house says "Young Man Holding a Roundel" is as significant as Botticelli's "Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder" and "Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici."</p><p>Botticelli, who lived from the 1440s to 1510, is one of the most celebrated painters of the early Renaissance period, but only about a dozen examples of his work survive today.</p><p>His best-known works are "The Birth of Venus" and "Primavera."</p><p>"I think we underestimate how groundbreaking he was," said Apostle.</p><p>The Sotheby's sale, which is virtual and starts at 10:00 am (1500 GMT), is also selling one of Rembrandt's 136 biblical paintings.</p><p>The Dutch painter's "Abraham and the Angels" is expected to go for between $20 million and $30 million.</p><p>It has been in private collections for 150 years and last sold at auction in 1848, for a mere $64.</p><p>The auction record for a Rembrandt is the $33.2 million spent on "Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo" in 2009.</p>
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Facebook is seeking to "turn down the temperature" on its sprawling platform by reducing the kind of divisive and inflammatory political talk it has long hosted.
Facebook has been pounded with criticism that it not only hasn't done enough to curb misinformation and vitriol on its network, but that its algorithm actually tended to encourage such posts because of the attention they grab.
<p>The social media giant will no longer recommend politics-themed groups to users, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday, making permanent a measure put in place during the combative US election won by President Joe Biden.</p><p>The Silicon Valley-based internet giant is also working on ways to reduce the amount of political content served up in users' news feeds by its automated systems.</p><p>"We're still going to enable people to engage in political groups and discussions if they want to," Zuckerberg said.</p><p>But he added the decision to reduce political content in users' main news feeds is part of a push "to turn down the temperature and discourage divisive conversation."</p><p>The social media giant has long been a fertile ground for users to tangle over opposing views or surround themselves with those who agree emphatically.</p><p>"But one of the top pieces of feedback that we are hearing from our community right now is that people don't want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services," Zuckerberg said in an earnings call.</p><p>"We plan to keep civic and political groups out of recommendations for the long term and we plan to expand that policy globally," he added.</p><h1>Trump ban to stand?</h1><p>These moves come as Facebook wrangles with whether former president Donald Trump's suspension from the network for "fomenting insurrection" should stand.</p><p>Facebook and Instagram barred Trump after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, an attack on the seat of US democracy that led to Trump's unprecedented second impeachment.</p><p>The platform is referring the matter to its independent oversight board, which is tasked with making final decisions on appeals regarding what is removed or allowed to remain on the world's biggest social network.</p><p>"We believe our decision was necessary and right," Facebook vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post at the time.</p><p>Members of the oversight board come from various countries and include jurists, human rights activists, journalists, a Nobel Peace laureate and a former Danish prime minister.</p><p>Reaction to the Trump ban has ranged from criticism that Facebook should have booted him long ago to outrage over his online voice being muted.</p><p>Facebook's stance was never meant to mean "that politicians can say whatever they like," Clegg said.</p><h1>Healthful vs Hurtful</h1><p>Facebook updated its mission a few years ago, from connecting the world to "bringing the world closer together."</p><p>Letting people create groups devoted to topics, hobbies, ideas or interests was touted as enabling people to get to know one another in virtual clubhouses.</p><p>More than 600 million of Facebook's approximately 2.6 billion monthly users take part in groups, according to Zuckerberg.</p><p>"Our product focus now is to develop this community infrastructure beyond feeds and message boards to help people build and run full self-sustaining community institutions," he said.</p><p>"As we continue to focus on this, we need to make sure that the communities people connect with are healthy and positive."</p><p>Part of that effort involves building tools such as messaging and video chat into groups, and creating ways for groups to raise money from donations, membership fees, or merchandise sales, according to the Facebook chief.</p><p>It also means taking down groups that break Facebook rules about promoting violence or hate, Zuckerberg said, noting that the social network has removed more than a million groups for policy violations in the past year.</p>
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Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York late Wednesday offered a damning assessment of the state of the Republican Party in the wake of Donald Trump's departure from the White House, warning that the GOP's ongoing refusal to condemn—and ready embrace of—the violent right-wing forces that the former president animated is "extremely dangerous" for the country.
"There are no consequences in the Republican caucus for violence," Ocasio-Cortez, a frequent target of deranged right-wing threats, said in an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday night. "No consequences for racism. No consequences for misogyny. No consequences for insurrection. And no consequences means that they condone it. It means that that silence is acceptance."
<p>Far from distancing themselves from the most extreme elements of Trump's base now that he's out of power, Republicans are still attempting to wield those violent and racist forces for political gain, said Ocasio-Cortez. On Tuesday, all but five Republican senators <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/26/after-delaying-trump-impeachment-trial-all-5-gop-senators-vote-favor-saying-now-its" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">voted to dismiss</a> the upcoming impeachment trial against Trump, which will decide whether the former president is convicted for inciting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.</p><p>The New York Democrat on Wednesday explicitly called out House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for refusing to hold his members accountable for their behavior, including their <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/07/co-conspirators-sedition-here-are-names-every-republican-who-voted-overturn-election" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">complicity in the January 6 mob assault</a>. "Kevin McCarthy answers to these QAnon members of Congress, not the other way around," Ocasio-Cortez argued, referring to the far-right conspiracy theory that <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/11/05/qanon-goes-to-washington-two-supporters-win-seats-in-congress/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some Republican lawmakers </a>have espoused and backed.</p><p>"We are now away from acting out of fealty to their president that they had in the Oval Office, and now we are talking about fealty to white supremacist organizations as a political tool," the congresswoman continued. "We really, really need to ask ourselves what they are evolving into, because this is no longer a party of limited government. This is about something much more nefarious."</p><p>Watch:</p> <iframe src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=commondreams&creatorUserId=14296273&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1354603247034634240&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2021%2F01%2F28%2Fkevin-mccarthy-answers-these-qanon-members-aoc-rips-republicans-embracing-violence&siteScreenName=commondreams&siteUserId=14296273&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 573px; flex-grow: 1;" title="Twitter Tweet"></iframe> <p>Ocasio-Cortez's comments came days after <em>CNN</em> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-democrats-violence/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reported</a> that freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) "repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians"—including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)—prior to her election to Congress last November.</p><p>"Greene, who represents Georgia's 14th Congressional District, frequently posted far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories on her page, including the baseless QAnon conspiracy which casts former President Donald Trump in an imagined battle against a sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abuse children," according to <em>CNN</em>.</p><p>In response to the new reporting, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) warned that Greene's "very presence in office represents a direct threat against the elected officials and staff who serve our government" and said he plans to introduce a resolution to expel the Georgia Republican from the House.</p><p>"Such advocacy for extremism and sedition not only demands her immediate expulsion from Congress, but it also merits strong and clear condemnation from all of her Republican colleagues, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell," Gomez said in a <a href="https://gomez.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2222" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">statement</a> Wednesday. "I call on my House colleagues to support my resolution to immediately remove Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from this legislative body."</p>
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