Imperial diptych offerings to the emperor. However, the fact that the Barberini ivory was almost certainly not a diptych, but some kind of imperial icon without a second panel is a serious argument against the existence of the imperial diptych type. The two panels representing the empress Ariadne, in the Bargello in Florence and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, also belong to the hypothesied imperial diptych type. They are the only central panels of such a diptych (other than the Barberini ivory) to survive, since all other fragments of such diptychs are from side panels. Imperial diptych In Late Antiquity, an imperial
Imperial Twilight system of bureaucracy that dominated the Qing dynasty during the lead-up to the Opium Wars. Platt concluded in "Imperial Twilight" that the Chinese, though knowledgeable and well-organized, were incapable of understanding the threat that Westernized British Empire's economic system and military posed to Imperial China; he also dedicated later chapters of the book to examining how the defeat of the Qing dynasty's forces in the First Opium War set the empire on the path to dissolution at the start of the 20th century. Several reviews of "Imperial Twilight" noted that the book's release in early 2018 was relevant given the