Academic literature on the topic 'Miniature painting, european'

Eleonora Mattia: Three Italian illuminated Cuttings in the Royal Library of Copenhagen Some observations on the history of collecting illuminated cuttings serve to introduce three unpublished Italian fragments that are part of a collection of illuminated fragments conserved in the Royal Danish Library. The miniatures are described from the point of view of their liturgical and art-historical content and are presented in the form of entries in a catalogue raisonné. The Master B. F., who grew up under the shadow of Leonardo de Vinci, was among those miniaturists most sought-after by collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century because of his evident stylistic debts to the great painter. The beautiful miniature in Copenhagen can now be added to the other known works of this Master and is critical not only to the reconstruction of his corpus, but also for the history of collecting, as it comes from the prestigious Holford Collection. It was already correctly attributed when it entered the collection of the Royal Library; it is here inserted into the activity of the artist, a dating is proposed, and a provenance is suggested from the series of choir books in the monastery of Santi Angelo e Nicolò a Villanova Sillaro in Lombardy, which were broken up around 1799. The Danish cutting here attributed to Attavante has a specific iconography that demonstrates an originality and an independence from models followed by contemporary Florentine painting, qualities not always acknowledged to the well known miniaturist whose extensive figurative production has sometimes been considered repetitive. A third fragment is here attributed to the Pisan Master of Montepulciano Gradual I. This anonymous miniaturist is at the centre of the most recent and innovative studies of fourteenth-century Tuscan painting: his activity belongs to the diversified texture of artistic production between Florence and its nearby cities, with expressive modalities independent of the tradition of the more strictly Giottesque masters. The miniature attributed to him here is to be added to the catalogue of his works, dispersed as they are in many European and American collections.

From early Christian times up to the sixteenth century, books occur so often in mediaeval illumination that a study of the book as it appears within the book would involve a survey of the whole course of Western miniature painting. Despite its ubiquity, however, little has been written on the subject of the symbolism of the book in art. In The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages, Jesse M. Gellrich takes a semiotic approach rather than the viewpoint of art history. Ernst Curtius has a chapter on “The Book as a Symbol” in his classic European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, but he does not concern himself with artistic representation. Even so, he admits, “The subject, so far as I am aware, has hitherto been touched upon by no one but Goethe” (302). The same is true of the presence of the book in art.

Notarial signs serving to authenticate private and public legal documents emerged in Dalmatia during the 12th century, and by the late Middle Ages they had become a mandatory part of official documents written on parchment for the legal parties. These signs were graphic as a rule: more or less elaborate drawings with decorative motifs, occasionally with integrated typography, yet without any figural elements. Among the very diverse forms of notarial signs preserved in Croatian archives, that of Split’s canon and Zadar’s notary Helias deserves special attention: instead of using a simple graphic symbol, he depicted a young man’s torso, which for several reasons may be presumed to be his self-portrait. More than fifty notarial signs by Helias have been preserved, but it may be presumed that he produced more than a thousand during more than two decades of his career as a notary. These signs are drawing of very small dimensions (3 x 1.5 cm on the average) and most probably not a result of “artistic” ambition, presuming that such terminology applies at all to the visual production of the time. As many other literate men, Helias probably indulged in drawing and incorporated some of this inclination and skill into his work in a peculiar manner. Over the period of two decades, the depicted figure went through several transformations. Starting from a relatively realistic and quite detailed depiction, in the second phase Helias simplified the drawing and enhanced its elements of caricature, ending with a partially stylized and unified version of his sign. Generally speaking, his drawings were closer to the genre of caricature than an official visual representation, which is why he could style them rather freely as compared to the norms that could be observed in the professional circles, especially in the monumental painting of the 14th century. Despite the fact that they seem somehow timeless, their visual features indicate certain knowledge of the formal language of representative painting. Helias’s skilful handling of lines and the ease with which he used a minimum of expressive devices to outline not only the portrait itself, but also the psychological characteristics of the depicted person, are basically a legacy of Gothic visual culture. Self-portrait as a form, albeit absent at least declaratively from medieval monumental painting, was nevertheless present, even if quite rarely and only in isolated cases, in medieval miniature painting (e.g. the self-portraits of St. Dunstan, the notary Vigil, the painter Hildebertus and his assistant Everwinusa, friar Rufillus, the nun Gude, the miniature painter Matthew Paris, or the illuminator Richard de Montbaston and his wife Jeanne). Nevertheless, the paucity of such examples, as well as the spatial and temporal (partly also cultural) distance, makes it difficult to assess the place of Helias’s self-portraits within a broader context. In any case, the group of some fifty portraits from the 14th century, regardless of their dimensions and character, is certainly a peculiar phenomenon in the context of European visual culture. The key point is thereby not the artistic quality of the drawings, but rather the variety of visual communication in 14th-century Dalmatia.

Abstract In seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, ascetics are a rare and remarkable subject, even more so when they are Hindu ascetics. The drawing of a yogi created by Rembrandt’s contemporary Willem Schellinks (1623– 1678) is unique for this reason. This article investigates the various possible sources of Schellinks’ drawing – an eyewitness report, the many travel accounts on South Asia, Indian miniatures, or the like – and discusses its place between the European tradition of exoticism and the iconography of saints, as well as its position in Schellinks’ own oeuvre. Far from resorting to exotic stereotypes, Schellinks enlarged the canon of Dutch painting by combining observed foreign objects with established exotic motifs.

The historical research of the illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle [Schedelsche Weltchronik (English: Schedel’s World Chronicle)] of Hartmann Schedel com­prises the complex historical knowledge about numerous woodcuts which pre­sent views of various cities important in the world’s history, e.g. Jerusalem, Constantinople, or the European ones such as: Rome, some Italian, German or Polish cities e.g. Wrocław and Cracow; some Hungarian and some Czech Republic cities. Researchers have made a serious study to recognize certain constructions in the woodcuts; they indicated the conservative and contractual architecture, the existing places and the unrealistic (non-existent) places. The results show that there is a common detail in all the views – the defensive wall round each of the described cities. However, in reality, it may not have existed in some cities during the lifetime of the authors of the woodcuts. As for some further details: behind the walls we can see feudal castles on the hills shown as strongholds. Within the defensive walls there are numerous buildings with many towers typical for the Middle Ages and true-to-life in certain ways of building the cities. Schematically drawn buildings surrounded by the ring of defensive walls indicate that the author used certain patterns based on the previously created panoramic views. This article is an attempt of making analogical comparisons of the cities in medieval painting. The Author of the article presents Roman mosaics and the miniature painting e.g. the ones created in the scriptorium in Reichenau. Since the beginning of 14th century Italian painters such as: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted parts of the cities or the entire monumental panoramas in various compositions and with various meanings. One defining rule in this painting concerned the definitions of the cities given by Saint Isidore of Seville, based on the rules which he knew from the antique tradition. These are: urbs – the cities full of architecture and buildings but uninhabited or civita – the city, the living space of the human life, build-up space, engaged according to the law, kind of work and social hierarchy. The tra­dition of both ways of describing the city is rooted in Italy. This article indicates the particular meaning of Italian painting in distributing the image of the city – as the votive offering. The research conducted by Chiara Frugoni and others indica­ted the meaning of the city images in the painting of various forms of panegyrics created in high praise of cities, known as laude (Lat.). We can find the examples of them rooted in the Roman tradition of mosaics, e.g. in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. They present both palatium and civitas. The medieval Italian painting, especially the panel painting, presents the city structure models which are uninha­bited and deprived of any signs of everyday life. The models of cities – urbs, are presented as votive offerings devoted to their patron saints, especially to Virgin Mary. The city shaped as oval or sinusoidal rings surrounded by the defensive walls resembled a container filled with buildings. Only few of them reflected the existing cities and could mainly be identified thanks to the inscriptions. The most characteristic examples were: the fresco of Taddeo di Bartolo in Palazzo Publico in Siena, which presented the Dominican Order friar Ambrogio Sansedoni holding the model of his city – Siena, with its most recognizable building - the Cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. The same painter, referred to as the master painter of the views of the cities as the votive offerings, painted the Saint Antilla with the model of Montepulciano in the painting from 1401 for the Cathedral devoted to the Assumption of Mary in Montepulciano. In the painting made by T. di Bartolo, the bishop of the city of Gimignano, Saint Gimignano, presents the city in the shape of a round lens surrounded by defence walls with numerous church towers and the feudal headquarters characteristic for the city. His dummer of the city is pyramidally-structured, the hills are mounted on the steep slopes reflecting the analogy to the topography of the city. We can also find the texts of songs, laude (Lat.) and panegyrics created in honour of the cities and their rulers, e.g. the texts in honour of Milan, Bonvesin for La Riva, known in Europe at that time. The city – Arcadia (utopia) in the modern style. Hartman Schedel, as a bibliophile and a scholar, knew the texts of medieval writers and Italian art but, as an ambitious humanist, he could not disregard the latest, contemporary trends of Renaissance which were coming from Nuremberg and from Italian ci­ties. The views of Arcadia – the utopian city, were rapidly developing, as they were of great importance for the rich recipient in the beginning of the modern era overwhelmed by the early capitalism. It was then when the two opposites were combined – the shepherd and the knight, the Greek Arcadia with the medie­val city. The reception of Virgil’s Arcadia in the medieval literature and art was being developed again in the elite circles at the end of 15th century. The cultural meaning of the historical loci, the Greek places of the ancient history and the memory of Christianity constituted the essence of historicism in the Renaissance at the courts of the Comnenos and of the Palaiologos dynasty, which inspired the Renaissance of the Latin culture circle. The pastoral idleness concept came from Venice where Virgil’s books were published in print in 1470, the books of Ovid: Fasti and Metamorphoses were published in 1497 and Sannazaro’s Arcadia was published in 1502, previously distributed in his handwriting since 1480. Literature topics presented the historical works as memoria, both ancient and Christian, composed into the images. The city maps drawn by Hartmann Schedel, the doctor and humanist from Nurnberg, refer to the medieval images of urbs, the woodcuts with the cities, known to the author from the Italian painting of the greatest masters of the Trecenta period. As a humanist he knew the literature of the Renaissance of Florence and Venice with the Arcadian themes of both the Greek and the Roman tradition. The view of Constantinople in the context of the contemporary political situation, is presented in a series of monuments of architecture, with columns and defensive walls, which reminded of the history of the city from its greatest time of Constantine the Great, Justinian I and the Comnenus dynasty. Schedel’s work of art is the sum of the knowledge written down or painted. It is also the result of the experiments of new technology. It is possible that Schedel was inspired by the hymns, laude, written by Psellos in honour of Constantinople in his elaborate ecphrases as the panegyrics for the rulers of the Greek dynasty – the Macedonians. Already in that time, the Greek ideal of beauty was reborn, both in literature and in fine arts. The illustrated History of the World presented in Schedel’s woodcuts is given to the recipients who are educated and to those who are anonymous, in the spirit of the new anthropology. It results from the nature of the woodcut reproduc­tion, that is from the way of copying the same images. The artist must have strived to gain the recipients for his works as the woodcuts were created both in Latin and in German. The collected views were supposed to transfer historical, biblical and mythological knowledge in the new way of communication.

El presente estudio pretende ofrecer un análisis sobre las fuentes visuales de origen árabe y su influencia en las Cantigas de Santa María de Alfonso X el Sabio. Partiendo de un estado de la cuestión donde se tienen en cuenta aquellas propuestas realizadas a lo largo de estos años en relación al marco geográfico de influencias —situadas inicialmente en Francia e Italia pero defendiendo posteriormente la necesidad de reubicar la miniatura alfonsí dentro del ámbito del Mediterráneo— se pretenden aportar nuevas reflexiones críticas, cuestionando algunos de los vínculos concretos e intrínsecos que se han establecido entre el marial alfonsí y otros manuscritos iluminados del mundo árabe, especialmente algunos folios relativos a los Maqamat de al-Hariri.The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the Arabic visual resources and their influences on the Alfonso X the Learned’s Cantigas de Santa Maria.Firstly, I present the current status of the issue taking into account all of the proposals made throughout the last approaches concerning the geographical frame of influences. These frames of influences had been situated by the first researchers, particularly in the 19th Century, in France and Italy.Subsequently, other «inspirations», such as the Arabic and Byzantine world, started to be considered as an important focus to help us understand some of the miniatures of our manuscript, not only in style but also in regards to profane topics, which are generally predominant in the alphonsine productions.In response to these last suggestions, one of the principal purposes of this study is to defend the necessity to understand the alphonsine illumination in a Mediterranean context. Furthermore, I aim to present a new critical approach by questioning some of the specific links established between our codex and the Arabic illuminated manuscripts. In particular, there are some folios of the Maqamat illuminated by al-Wasiti which have been considered an essential influence for the Cantigas miniaturists. I go on to explain that other depictions that can be found in different 13th century painting productions— such as the crusader illumination, the miniatures made in the Staufen Court in Sicily or the Mural paintings of the conquest of Majorca, among others— present a very similar composition to those Arabic depictions and, therefore, to our Castilian manuscript.For that reason, taking these new proposals into consideration allow us to distance the Cantigas de Santa María from the Arabic models, without rejecting their presence, in order to talk about general depictions that appear in different productions made in the second half of the 13th century in diverse European courts and Mediterranean commercial points. Finally, we can affirm that the Cantigas de Santa María is the result of a fusion between foreign and local resources, and consequently it is difficult to find specific sources that could have been known and copied in an itinerant court.

Jewelry is main aspect of dressing and Mughal Jewelry is a fascinating theme to explore. Its styles can be traced through the paintings that clearly give accurate information of the style and variety of ornaments that were used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jewelry is considered the feminine adornment part but miniature shows the beautiful ornamentation of Mughal emperors also with variation in sizes and design. This article discusses the Mughal male head ornaments and study is focused on the turban ornamentations. As man’s turban is his sacrosanct property and variety of turban ornaments were used by Mughals. This paper is an attempt to understand and examine that how the Mughal turban ornament develops from simple feather to piece of complex jewelry designs and how other culture helps in its development. Why Mughal emperors worn such gemstones in headdress and which techniques were used for its decoration? Is there any specific reason of using such gemstones or just for ornamentations purposes? In the end it concludes that sarpech shapes helps in the development of European aigrette and became a part of European jewelry that later helped in the modification of turban ornaments and Euro-Indian sarpech-aigrette appeared with more delicate style.

This research addresses a sabaton, or an armour element protecting the foot, excavated in the western area of the prince’s palace of Mangup. The artifact is composed by seven cross-curved iron plates. The sabaton was attached to the shoe with strings, as evidenced by the through-holes in its central and lateral parts. The only archaeological analogy to the sabaton from Mangup is the two sets of plates for foot-protection from the collective burial of the participants of the battle of Visby (Sweden) in 1361. A significant number of analogies appeared among the manuscript miniatures and tombstones of Mediaeval Europe and Renaissance paintings and sculptures. According to the analysis of the analogies, the artifact in question is a knightly sabaton of the European pattern typical for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The archaeological context allowed the one to date the find within the period of the functioning of the Mangup palace in 1425–1475. The most probable date for the sabaton to get into the cultural layer is 1475, when the Ottomans besieged and assaulted Mangup. This statement may be confirmed by the finds of other weapons and layers of fire, recorded in the western part of the palace. The paper presents assumptions about the personality of the owner of the sabaton. This person was one of the defenders of the town and, apparently, was wealthy enough to purchase or order expensive armour. The owner of the sabaton possibly was a local noble, a soldier of the 300 “Wallachians” known from written sources, or one of the Genoese nobles who fled to Mangup after the fall of Kaffa.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the role of stylization as a style­forming principle in the evolution of the pastoral genre based on textbook chamber­vocal compositions (arias by W. A. Mozart), as well as little­known ones. The methodology. The proposed research differs from other studies, which are close in the topic (T. Livanova, A. Korobova, A. Taylor and others), by an interpretative­cognitive approach dictated by the challenges of modern performing practice. A comparative analysis of pastoral semantics in European and Chinese poetics was also used. The results. On the basis of vocal miniatures created in the XX century (S. Vasylenko “Pastoral” op. 45, No. 5 and A. Rudianskyi “Lotus” and “The Flute on the Water” from the cycle “The Lake of White Lotus” (2001), a parallel of the European pastorals and ancient Chinese poetry from the point of view of a pastoral person in different pictures of the world has been drawn. The onto­sonological foundation of the pastoral is made up of a human voice accompanied by a shepherd’s pipe, landscape sound painting (the singing of birds, the murmur of a brook), and the vastness of natural landscapes (plain air). The author develops the conceptual apparatus of the theory of the pastoral to reveal the richness of various composing interpretations of the genre, its dynamics: “semantics of the pastoral”, “ontology of the pastoral image”, “pastoral person”, “pastoral picture of the world”. The topicality of the interpretative­comparative analysis is the conclusion about the necessary principles of stylization of the pastoral: the presence of a genre invariant with its own stable, psychological mechanism of recognition by listeners; historical distancing from the prototype (ancient poetry, baroque opera); creative synthesis of many traditions of the artistic existence of the genre and the signs of its national musical attribution. Poetic text and symbolization of the musical language are also the mechanisms of stylization of the pastoral in vocal music. Musical and poetic symbols, created by the author’s intuition, form a new life for the pastoral in the creative work of the XX century composers. If the composer’s interpretation of the genre invariant of the pastoral has ensured its viability for millennia, then the performer of pastoral compositions is responsible for their genre and style “purity”. The performers must master the technique of recreating the sound­like world of a pastoral person. The practical significance of the topic is confirmed by the fact of the actualization of the pastoral in the performance of the XXI century, due to the systematic inclusion of its samples into the concert repertoire of vocalists (including those from the People’s Republic of China), which requires appropriate historical and theoretical knowledge when modelling the behaviour of a pastoral person in the modern cultural situation.