Journal articles on the topic 'Renaissance Portrait painting'

An Unusual Portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola has gained new prominence from its illustration in color in a recent publication. In her Women, Art, and Society (1990), Whitney Chadwick claims of the portrait in question, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (fig. 1), that in presenting herself in the guise of a portrait being painted by her teacher, Anguissola produced “the first historical example of the woman artist consciously collapsing the subject-object position.” Chadwick's succinct observation opens up the possibility of understanding the painting in a new way, for she points to the peculiar conflation of subject and object that uniquely befell women artists in the Renaissance and complicates their art, especially their self-portraits. From this starting point, I will here explore the form of self-presentation offered by Anguissola in the Siena portrait and several other works in the context of what was a fundamental problem for the Renaissance female artist: the differentiation of herself as artist (the subject position) from her self as trope and theme for the male artist (the object position).

The aim of this paper is to analyse facial similarity and apply it to identify the individuals depicted in the mural paintings of the apse of St. Leocadia Church, located in Chaves Municipality (North of Portugal), which were painted during the first quarter of the 16th century. This study also compares the portraits of this mural paintings with the oil paintings by the Proto-Renaissance Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves. Through this research, the feasibility of face recognition technology is explored to answer many ambiguities about Manueline stylistic identity and iconography. Additionally, it aims to associate historical events, artistic discoveries, and the expansion of portraiture as propaganda of power during the Portuguese Proto-Renaissance and Early Renaissance. On the other hand, it focuses on the prevalence of the religious and devotional over the sacred in Manueline painting. A proposal was made to identify the characters that are fundamental to the meaning of the mural paintings. An experiment was conducted on seven characters from the paintings at St. Leocadia Church, which were then compared to Nuno Gonçalves’ portraits. Facial similarity analysis was conducted on the faces portrayed in the Panels of St. Vincent, a remarkable portrait gallery from 15th-century Portugal, which has been the subject of national and international research for 130 years. Other paintings that were analysed were the oil paintings of St. Peter and St. Paul and of Infanta St. Joana, which were created by the same Quattrocento master. The purpose of the mural paintings of St. Leocadia Church could be catechetical in nature or related to the ritual practices of royal ancestor worship in royal portrait apses of the churches. It could also be associated with the Portuguese maritime expansion and the macro-imperial ideology of D. Manuel I.

Raffaello is renowned as one of the Old Renaissance Masters and his paintings and painting technique are famous for the details and naturality of the characters. Raffaello is famous in particular for the then-new technique of oil painting, which he mastered and perfected. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Raffaello (2020), there was a large exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, where many paintings and drawings by the Old Master were on show. One of these paintings was the portrait of Leo X with two cardinals belonging to the collection of the Uffizi galleries in Florence. Before going to Rome, the painting underwent conservation treatments at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, where a comprehensive diagnostic campaign was carried out with the aim of understanding the painting materials and technique of the Old Master. In this paper, the results of macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) analysis, carried out exploiting the instrument developed by INFN-CHNet, are shown. Among the results, “bismuth black” and the likely use of glass powders in lakes are discussed.

Background: Aesthetic experience begins through an intentional shift from automatic visual perceptual processing to an aesthetic state of mind that is evidently directed towards sensory experience. In the present study, we investigated whether portrait descriptions affect the aesthetic pleasure of both ambiguous (i.e., Arcimboldo’s portraits) and unambiguous portraits (i.e., Renaissance portraits). Method: A total sample of 86 participants were recruited and completed both a baseline and a retest session. In the retest session, we implemented a sample audio description for each portrait. The portraits were described by three types of treatment, namely global, local, and historical descriptions. Results: During the retest session, aesthetic pleasure was higher than the baseline. Both the local and the historical treatments improved the aesthetic appreciation of ambiguous portraits; instead, the global and the historical treatment improved aesthetic appreciation of Renaissance portraits during the retest session. Additionally, we found that the response times were slower in the retest session. Conclusion: taken together, these findings suggest that aesthetic preference was affected by the description of an artwork, likely due to a better knowledge of the painting, which prompts a more accurate (and slower) reading of the artwork.

Georg Pencz’s picturesque portraits represent one of the brightest stages of development in the master’s work. In the 1540s, after his second Italian trip, the artist became the leading portrait painter of the Nuremberg nobility and turned to the type of monumental large-format portrait that included elements of genre painting. Pencz depicted the rich entourage surrounding a patron with the attention to nature inherent in German Renaissance art. It was a demonstration not only of the social status and affluence of his patron, but also of the artist’s skill. At the same time, the image was endowed with an inherent aesthetics of mannerism, in which notional and optical allusions, among other things, indicated the enlightenment and subtle taste of the portrayed individual. Illusion and reality combined to create a symbolic field, within which a picture should be interpreted. This trend continued into XVII century painting.

Near the end of the second part of Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Death of the Heart, the cad Eddie calls the ingenue Portia "Primavera." I wish to argue that in this moment Bowen appropriates Botticelli's painting, Primavera, as a subtext for her novel and with it the grace and charm of Renaissance Italy. The virtual presence of Botticelli's Primavera, or, if not the painting, the Renaissance mythological portrait its name suggests, is perhaps one of the continuities that rule Bowen's text, seen or unseen by her. In any case, even if my arguments for Botticelli's influence are not definitive, it is useful to explore the affinities between Bowen's text and Botticelli's painting. Bowen's visual subtext locates her and her readers between Renaissance houses and modern streets. It endows her social satire and psychological portraiture with latent layers of cultural memory, the kind of memory that Bowen values as a stay against the emotional brittleness and material chaos of modern life.

The purpose of the article is to investigate the significance of the European portrait canon in the genre painting by Mikhailo Guida: "Kuban Wedding: Dedication to Great-Grandfather Demian Doroshenko" (2004). Methodology. The historical-cultural, comparative, iconographic, iconological, and hermeneutic methods are used. Results. Based on a comparison with compositions on the theme of marriage in the art of antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Modern era, in Guida's painting the following has been identified: the presence of a spiritual centre (icon); the role of symmetry in constructing the ritual composition; the national character of the images and symbols (Ukrainian land, home yard, clothing, flowers, ritual objects). The wedding portrait of the Cossack family was created in the iconography of ceremonial aristocratic portraits, developed by Titian, Tintoretto, Velasquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Whistler. Guida created a new form of portrait and self-portrait in the historical portrait, endowing the image of ancestors with the individual psychology of a person in times of crisis, with its inherent reflection and the desire to understand one’s place in the universe. In the composition of the Ukrainian painter, there is a sacralisation of the land and the house-yard through the connection with the universal. The laconic composition plastically corresponds to the definition of the Kuban Cossack family's place in the steppe landscape. The family is shown as a monolithic integrity, which includes horses embodying the energy of nature. The golden ratio of the composition contains the archetype of the cross. The image of the birth-giving earth is revealed by the horizontal of fertile black soil. The family is included in the spiritual vertical of the ritual "axial time" – Axis Mundi. In the connection between heaven and earth, the strength of the Ukrainian lineage and people is affirmed. The scientific novelty of the publication lies in the fact that, for the first time, a comparison is carried out of the ideological content and the form of Guida's painting with ritual compositions on the theme of weddings and the canon of European aristocratic portraits. The art of the Ukrainian painter is incorporated into the context of European art. Practical significance. The presented materials, their artistic-stylistic analysis, and generalization can be used in scientific research dedicated to the art of portrait-painting in Ukraine.

This article aims to present the philosophical perspective upon the birth of the idea of the individual and the consequences of the discovery of the self-image on the techniques of image reproduction from the Renaissance to the present day. The process of projecting the self-image into the public space acquires a special importance with the elaboration of the portrait technique in the Italian painting of the 15th century. Through Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, this technique of reproducing self-image reaches a certain perfection. Following the evolution of this kind of projections and reproductions of the self-image, it is found that there is an obvious tendency by which the individual tends to free himself from certain patterns, or rather canons, which a certain epoch imposes. This process manifested in the visual arts corresponds to a new philosophical perception of man opened by the works of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. The assertion of a new type of dignity, correlated with the idea of the microcosm, of the Renaissance man will lead to an affirmation of his own personality and especially to an increase of the will to power reflected more and more in the works of art. With the resurgence of the Italian renaissance, artists and philosophers experienced a decline, but found a favorable space for their development at the court of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. The art of portraiture, but also the philosophy of renaissance survives and is even more flourishing at the court of this queen. But the most important moment of this renaissance is marked by Dutch art after its liberation from Spanish rule. From this moment on, the emancipation of the individual will occur on an unimaginable scale until then.

Media news made the name of Wenzel Pohl known in Hungary in the early 2000s, for the two large history paintings (The Battle of Mohács, Saint Stephen converting the Hungarians to the christian faith), which had cropped up in the art trade and which were purchased by the Hungarian state and deposited in the Hungarian embassy in Vienna, were attributed to him. Although more recent research has proposed that the painter of the cycle once consisting of six pieces was most probably August Rumel and not Pohl, it is worth knowing of Pohl’s artistic activity irrespective of the Hungarian relevance, too, because his person is gradually fading out of art historiography – for example, his name is missing from the 96th volume of the Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon published in 2017.The best-known Pohl portraits are the ones he painted of the noted Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and physicist Miksa Hell. A full-figure portrait shows the scientist in traditional Sami costume during his research trip to the North, and we know of a portrait showing Hell is a monk’s frock. His engraved copies of paintings in the Viennese imperial collection, real forerunners to the representative 19th century album of prints presenting the collection, probably belong to a series. In the cycle of paintings about the coronation of Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor (Frankfurt, 1765) he was assigned the painting of architectural details, which is confirmed by the fact that he was sent on a study trip to Frankfurt to make drawn sketches of the venues of the event. After the representative painting of Martin van Meytens he made a small-scale version of the group portrait of Maria Theresa and her family. His chef d’oeuvre is the representative painting series showing the events of the coronation of Maria Theresa in Pozsony in 1741 painted for the Hungarian court chancellery in Vienna. He painted it with Franz Messmer in the second half of the 1760s. In contrast, the three portraits of monarchs in Riesensaal in Innsbruck so far attributed to him by researchers were actually painted by Jakob Kohl.The other part of the paper contributes a few new viewpoints to the examination of the painting about the battle of Mohács earlier attributed to Pohl. In addition to contemporaneous woodcuts of the tragic battle of 1526 in news-letters and pamphlets in German, to 16th century Turkish miniatures, and diverse 16–18th century European manuscript and book illustrations, a ceiling fresco in Garamszentbenedek and several large paintings – including Rumel’s work – also conjured up the battle in the 18th century. Since in the nation’s historical consciousness and cultural memory the battle of Mohács did not acquire its symbolic, mythic position represented to this day before the 19th century, the two works of art were way ahead of their time in anticipating the salient position of the tragic event, because, unlike, for example, István dorffmaister’s late 18th century pictures ordered in Mohács, they show the battle as a fatal even in the history of the entire nation. on the other side, by the terminating piece of the series ordered for the Transylvanian court chancellery being the battle of Mohács, the client departed from the 18th century imperial, dynastic outlook which presented as positive parallels to the battle of Mohács and the capture of Szigetvár by the Turks the victorious battles of the late 17th century liberating war led by the Habsburg Empire: the second battle of Mohács and the recapture of Szigetvár, partly as examples of divine justice and partly as legitimation of the Habsburg Empire’s territorial expansion “earned with blood”. It is noteworthy that the right side of central scene of Rumel’s Battle of Mohács resembles the composition of leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari surviving in copies only. It is presumable that the renaissance battle scenes served as a model example for the painter.

The painting “Bacchus” by Peter Paul Rubens (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) has frequently attracted the attention of both local and foreign researchers. In this article, we question the interpretation of the painting as a simple allegory of the autumn grape harvest and the celebration of production of young wine. Bacchanalian subjects since Antiquity have been loaded with additional meanings associated with regeneration and creative potentials. The latter aspect was picked up and developed by Renaissance artists. Rubens followed often that tradition. L. D. Davis saw in the Hermitage painting a metaphor of the creative method of the Flemish painter, who trusted intuitive impulses more than rigid rules. We share partially this point of view, but we propose to consider the named work in a broader sense than that scholar did. It seems to us that Rubens presented in “Bacchus” his allegorical self-portrait, emphasizing his love of life and his philosophical emancipation. Thus, the Flemish artist expressed his opposition to moralizing and short-sighted opinions in contemporary culture and his desire to return to the breadth of the Renaissance vision. As a consequence, the allusions contained in his painting to “The Andrians” by Titian, some emblems by Andrea Alciato, as well as the new Rubens interpretation of Comus, an ancient character, which John Milton used in his didactic mask a few years before the creation of Hermitage work, — don’t seem accidental. The portly Bacchus in the painting is presented as the lord of earthly diversity and boundless abundance, at the same time he is a wise mentor-judge, indicating how to properly handle all this wealth open to human race. The concept of the boon as the right disposal of freedom and desires, reflected in iconographic system of the Hermitage painting, fits with the ideas of Plato’s dialogue “Feast”.

Resum: Aquest treball pretén emfatitzar l’errònia identitat que ha arribat fins als nostres dies de Lucrècia Borja i l’equivocada atribució que se n’ha fet d’alguns retrats. Com ara, la pintura de Flora (c.1520), pintada per Bartolomeo Veneto, que ha passat a la història com una indissoluble identificació de Lucrècia. Els estudis actuals han demostrat que representa un model ideal influït pel context literari probablement relacionat amb Pietro Bembo. Durant el Renaixement, els retrats representen molt més que una identitat concreta i mimètica. Són suports de prestigi i transmissió ideològica, de virtuts morals, memòria, etc. En l’àmbit artístic venecià de principis del segle XVI sorgeixen múltiples retrats femenins de difícil identificació que la crítica freqüentment ha relacionat amb cortesanes, amants, dones. Moltes, però, representen ideals poètics a través dels quals la pintura demostra la seva capacitat de rivalitzar amb la poesia quant a demostració de l’ideal estètic de la bellesa. Aquest breu treball pretén examinar les successives interpretacions historiogràfiques que erròniament han identificat la pintura de Flora amb Lucrecia Borja a causa del valor eròtic pejorativament relacionat amb ella, però també vol posar èmfasi en les altres propostes que han permès que l’obra sigui interpretada amb l’exegesi més adequada. Paraules clau: Lucrècia Borja, Pol Coronado, Retrat, Bartolomeo Veneto, Flora Abstract: This study intended to emphasize the identity has been wrong that has reached our days of Lucrezia Borgia and the wrong attribution has been made of some pictures. One of the most paradigmatic paintings is Flora (c.1520), painted by artist Bartolomeo Veneto. This work has gone down in history as one indissoluble portrait of Lucrezia, but recent studies have shown represents an ideal model influenced by the literary context probably related to Pietro Bembo. During the Renaissance, portraits represent much more than a specific and mimetic identity. They are supports of prestige and ideological transmission, of moral virtues, memory, etc. In the Venetian art scene of the early sixteenth century, multiple female portraits often difficult to identify that criticism have related courtesans, mistresses, wives. Many of these paintings also represent poetic ideals through which painting demonstrate its ability to compete with poetry in terms of demonstrating the aesthetic ideal of beauty. This short paper aims to examine the successive historiographical interpretations erroneously identified the painting of Flora with Lucrezia Borgia due to the erotic value related to her pejoratively, but also wants to highlight other proposals that have allowed the work to be performed with the most appropriate exegesis. Keywords: Lucrezia Borgia, Pol Coronado, Portrait, Bartolomeo Veneto, Flora

The 2010s has witnessed the visibility of literature based on China’s Northeast (Dongbei), exemplified by literary works composed by Zheng Zhi, Ban Yu and Shuang Xuetao, viz. the ‘three masters of Dongbei Renaissance’. In a 2020 novella anthology, Zheng Zhi expatiates upon a veritable cornucopia of representations of folk religion (aka popular religion) and established religions via depictions concerning shamanism, Buddhism and Christianity. In a narrative entitled Xian Zheng ‘Divine Illness’, Zheng Zhi manifests animal worship as a form of folk religion, by means of painting a vivid portrait of shamanic practices pertaining to ‘five major deity families’ that denotes fox, weasel, hedgehog, snake and rat spirits. In a narrative entitled Taxintong ‘Telepathy’, Zheng Zhi depicts Buddhist practices, the preponderant motivations for which are analogous to those for folk religion in contemporary Dongbei, namely, physical wellbeing and psychological solace.

In an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of the work of William Dobson entitled “The Royalists at War,” one portrait among the Cavalier soldiers and commanders was that of Sir Thomas Aylesbury. Aylesbury holds in his hand a document that begins, “To the King's most Excellent Majesty The Humble Petition.” By posing in his official black robes that evoke the solemnity of the law and by giving the petition prominence, Aylesbury celebrates his position as a master of requests. As a master of requests even at Oxford in the 1640s, it was his role to present petitions to the king asking for redress of grievances or for personal advancement, in short, asking for royal bounty. As Dobson's portrait signifies, such petitions were not merely the seedy clamorings of early Stuart courtiers but an open and important link between the monarch and the subject, one suitable for commemoration in portraiture. The painting makes concrete, even in the midst of civil war, the king's traditional role as guarantor of justice and giver of favor. While the king's promise of justice goes back to early Anglo-Saxon dooms and tenth-century coronation oaths, his giving of largesse had expanded with the Renaissance monarchy of the Tudors.Historians of early modern Europe have become interested in court patronage as they have analyzed politics and political elites. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, from the work of MacFarlane to Namier, the study of relationships between patrons and clients has been at the forefront of modern historiography.

The purpose of this publication is to systematise knowledge and conduct an iconographic analysis of Jacopo Tintoretto’s cycle of works entitled The Last Supper. Jacopo Tintoretto’s work is a clear expression of new trends in High Renaissance art, having absorbed all the best from the masters of that period, the following motto was written on the wall of his studio on the San Luca Canal: «Il disegno di Michelangelo ed il colourito di Tiziano» (Michelangelo’s drawing and Titian’s colour). In this way, the artist expressed the main aspiration of his youth: to combine the achievements of the two masters. Such a combination of the best aspects of the High Renaissance artists allowed Tintoretto to outgrow this period of art and engage in a creative search for new forms and ideas. There are only two reliable sources on Jacopo Tintoretto, which makes it difficult to expand knowledge about his life. But despite this, we have reached the main milestones of his life, and from the available sources we can draw a conditional psychological portrait of the artist. In contrast, he left behind a significant body of work, the study of which is promising, because it can be traced to a mixture of artistic trends from several eras. The ideological foundations of Renaissance aesthetics underwent significant changes, both in relation to antiquity and in the relationship between matter and idea, which resulted in Mannerism. At the beginning of its existence, Mannerist art used a set of techniques from the Renaissance, but over time they became insufficient, and it was necessary to look for new ones to embody the new aesthetics. This process can be traced in the studied painting, the use of a diagonal composition, the glow of the halos of saints and the presence of angels on the canvas. The author concludes that the characteristic Baroque compositional solution was achieved by the artist in an evolutionary way, as similar trends can be seen in other artists of the time, such as Titian.

The reign of Abū al-Fath Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Akbar (1556–1605) was a fruitful period of the political, cultural and spiritual synthesis of Persian, Indian, and European tradition, as well as an artistic and aesthetic renaissance. This cosmopolitan, universal and charismatic ruler strived for the external, political, material and spiritual well-being of his colourful empire. In search of a balance between the external and internal, and in his endeavours for the unification and uniformity of India he gradually created a completely new style of Mughal arts, which is a stunning reflection of his personality’s transformations, principles, insights, interests, and spiritual growth.The paper focuses on a psychological portrait of the ruler, who dictated aesthetics and the style of the classical period of Mughal arts which consists of the three basic developmental phases of Akbar’s enigmatic character. The thesis on the parallel development of Akbar’s personality and Mughal arts is supported by research on the influence of certain European and Persian aesthetic elements, and mainly on the influence of Indian philosophical-religious tradition (the doctrines on rasa, bhakti, yoga, and tantra). The early period of Mughal arts, with predominantly realistic elements, coincides with the ruler’s dynamic, youthful enthusiasm and immense curiosity to acquaint himself the most varied aspects of external events and appearances. The second, the mature period, which enriches this earlier realism by means of mystical elements and the symbolism of Indian pre-Mughal painting, is marked by the shift into the interior and by searching for the harmony between the material and spiritual. In the late period of Mughal painting, however, reflexive and lyrical works prevail, which are a reflection of completion of Akbar’s spiritual quests, and the unique project of multifaceted synthesis that he undertook and promoted.

This paper addresses the making of portrait-images of Mughal emperors, in which distinctness and particularity in individual features distinguished portraits of emperor Akbar from his ancestors and successors. Scholars have argued that the technique of ‘accurate’ portraits or mimesis was introduced to Mughal artists with the arrival of renaissance paintings and prints from Europe, brought by Jesuit priests to the Mughal court. However, the question of why Mughal emperors saw a need to arrive at portraiture in the likeness of individuals remains to be addressed. This paper argues that the desire to portray a ruler, in all his individual particularity, can arise only within a literary and intellectual matrix in which the individual is valued and where ideas about selfhood and subjectivity have already permeated the philosophical, political, and literary thought. Tracing the transhistorical and transcultural migration of ideas and motifs from Timurid Central Asia to Mughal India, this paper examines the transference of Sufi thought on image-making practices, particularly portraiture, in the imperial court of the Mughals in early seventeenth century. Keywords: Portrait-images of Akbar, subjectivity, Sufi thought, poetics between text and image.

To compose art, artists rely on a set of sensory evaluations performed fluently by the brain. The outcome of these evaluations, which we call neuroaesthetic variables, helps to compose art with high aesthetic value. In this study, we probed whether these variables varied across art periods despite relatively unvaried neural function. We measured several neuroaesthetic variables in portrait paintings from the Early and High Renaissance, and from Mannerism. The variables included symmetry, balance, and contrast (chiaroscuro), as well as intensity and spatial complexities measured by two forms of normalized entropy. The results showed that the degree of symmetry remained relatively constant during the Renaissance. However, the balance of portraits decayed abruptly at the end of the Early Renaissance, that is, at the closing of the 15th century. Intensity and spatial complexities, and thus entropies, of portraits also fell in such manner around the same time. Our data also showed that the decline of complexity and entropy could be attributed to the rise of chiaroscuro. With few exceptions, the values of aesthetic variables from the top of artists of the Renaissance resembled those of their peers. We conclude that neuroaesthetic variables have flexibility to change in brains of artists (and observers).

The paper starts with the conceptual/theoretical approaches to social representations, structures of time, and vision of the future (anticipation) in three works of art. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes is a model example for illustrating the stated approaches. The concept of social representations (Durkheim, Moscovici, Abric) can be illustrated by the protagonist in Cervantes’ novel. Cervantes’ implicit vision of the future, except a turnover at the end of the novel, is closer to Sancho’s realism and pessimism than Don Quixote’s idealism and optimism. Such a shift in the central field of social awareness has a double impact on the way of understanding social reality. First, complementarity between the central (visionary) and the peripheral area (of everyday experience) of social consciousness is reduced, and contradiction is enhanced. Second, this contradiction exacerbates reversal in the relation between the sublime and banal for the sake of the unfettered market. The conclusive remarks offer a new research field concerning the impact of the subsequent epoch of the Enlightenment on the levelling of the values in the name of both the scientific disenchantments of the world and the expansion of the centrifugal forces of the marketplace. The concept of anticipation is further discussed with two works of art from the Renaissance: Jan van Eyck’s “Portrait of Arnolfini” and Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”. Both works anticipate the coming of capitalism. The first painting points out the function of marriage as the institution of inheritance and accumulation of private property, as a part of the new alliance of power between the new middle class and the old upper (feudal) class. In the second painting, Jesus’ announcement of his death results in the emptying of the moral centre-stage of Christianity. This moment opens the space for the penetration and eventual hegemony of capitalism in society. The morality of the Church is rather provisory and fluctuates between two contrasts: One is the illusion of the return of Jesus, and the other is the rise of the new secular power, the totalitarian capitalism, which does not permit any alternative, as if wanting to replace the “only one God”.

AbstractIn Italy, notably Florence, the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries witnessed the proliferation of texts that discuss the relationship between the mirror and painting. In them, the mirror is closely associated with major innovations of the time such as naturalistic representation and linear perspective. On a technical level, the authors describe the mirror's function in the painting of self-portraits and recommend it be used to draw foreshortened objects more easily and to judge the quality of finished paintings. The technical aspects often lead over to theoretical considerations such as the limitations of perspective, the origins of painting, the analogy between the mirror image and the painted image, and the concept that the mind of the painter resembles a mirror. The fact that these texts do not mention the concave mirror projection method described by Hockney and Falco speaks strongly against its use in the early Renaissance.

The article provides an overview and reveals the features of the professional formation, development and social status of female artists’ creativity in the Italian fine arts of the XVI-XVII centuries. The value of their artistic heritage for future generations has been established. It was stated that the role of a female artist in society was influenced by both social and gender factors, in particular, the fact that the profession of a master artist was assigned to men, and the teaching of art to girls was related to obligatory household chores or hobbies. It has been proven that already in the XV century, artists appeared in Italy whose activities went beyond these boundaries. Initially, they were self-taught nuns, such as Catherine of Bologna, but by the end of the century, the work of female artists acquired a professional character (for example, Pr. de’Rossi). It is noted that, since that time, works of art by female artists have influenced the change in social stereotypes about their work. It was found that Italian female artists of the Renaissance and subsequent centuries turned mainly to the genres of portrait, landscape and still life. However, there are cases of creation of monumental works (Pl. Nelli) or reflections of dramatic events (A. Gentileschi). It was revealed that by the beginning of the XVIII century in these genres, female artists were in full competition with men and were the inventors of both new genres (S. Anguissola) and new painting techniques (R. Carriera). There is also a manifestation of their author’s vision in compositions on religious themes, on historical and mythological themes. It has been proven that the achievements of Italian female artists of the XV–XVII centuries were no less significant than those of male artists.

On the 8th of July 2018 died Janusz Wałek, art historian, museologist, pedagogue, born in 1941 in Bobowa. He graduated from the Jagiellonian University, the history of art faculty. In 1968, he started working in the Czartoryskis’ Museum – Branch of the National Museum in Krakow, where some time after he became a head of the European Painting Department for many years. He was a lecturer at the Fine Arts Academy, the National Academy of Theatre Arts and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He wrote two books and numerous articles about art. He was also a poet, the winner of the Main Prize in the 1997 edition of the General Polish Poetry Competition. He was a student of Marek Rostworowski, they worked together on a number of publicly acclaimed exhibitions: “Romanticism and Romanticity in Polish Art of the 19th and 20th centuries”, “The Poles’ Own Portrait”, “Jews – Polish”. Many exhibitions and artistic shows were prepared by him alone, inter alia “The Vast Theatre of Stanisław Wyspiański”, presentations of artworks by great artists: Goya, Rafael, Titian, El Greco. He also created a few scenarios of permanent exhibitions from the Czartoryskis’ Collection – in Krakow and in Niepołomice – being a great expert on this collection. “Europeum” – European Culture Centre was organised according to the programme written by him. He specialised mostly, although not exclusively, in art and culture of the Renaissance. Janusz Wałek is presented herein as a museologist who was fully devoted to art, characterised by: creativity, broad perception of art and culture, unconventional approach to museum undertakings, unusual sensitivity and imagination. What the author of the article found worth emphasising is that J. Wałek talked and wrote about art not only as a scholar, but first of all as a poet, with beauty and zest of the language he used.

Aim. The aim of this article is to examine and trace a selection of double portraits all adhering to social codes and norms, from the Renaissance to the present day depicting married couples who were well known in their day and highlighting that artistic fashion especially in northern Europe. Double portraits of a man and a woman are psychologically complex, since they usually provide a visual document of an emotional relationship. The artists’ styles of presentation analyse the characters and relationships of the couples as well as their social status. Methods. The method applied in this paper was that of a qualitative collective case-study based on specific paintings, the comparing and contrasting of which leads to general conclusions. Ten double portraits were selected. They portray well known figures and were painted by a variety of artists. In the second stage, the chosen works were sorted and catalogued chronologically to reflect diversity in terms of people, professions or status. Next, they were analysed on the basis of the language of plastic art: line, colour, light and shadow, composition and overall unifying organization. Results and Conclusions. Since art reflects reality, I demonstrated the development of the field of double portraits across time and how it clearly reflects social change in the role and perception of the wife. Parallel to the development and change in art from the 15th century to the present day, the topic of the double portrait has also changed; each era had its prevailing conventions in terms of fashion, customs, a woman’s status, the development of technology and industry, freedom, liberation, and ‘artistic license’ that surprised, shocked and changed world orders. All these left their mark on the double portrait, which has come a long way from the height of formality to the hovering Chagall and Bella, or the self-annihilation of Picasso.

Abstract Among astral representations in Renaissance paintings and frescoes, a particular and very complex class stands out: that of Illustrated Horoscopes, that is, complete charts disguised under the cover of innocent pastoral landscapes or conventional mythological scenes. Two examples pertaining to this elusive class are proposed and analyzed in this article. The first is a Giorgionesque painting in the Royal Gallery in Dresden, the so-called Horoscope, that probably portrays the casting of a birth-chart for Ercole II d’Este, the son of Lucrezia Borgia, and at the same time a scene from the epic of Orlando and the Paladins. The second is Zucchi’s Assembly of the Gods, a copper panel painted for Ferdinando de Medici’s studiolo in the Roman Villa Medici, which arranges the planetary divinities in correlation to the zodiacal constellations, building the extraordinary nativity of the owner. Both astrological charts, albeit veiled and ambiguous by nature, are substantiated by internal signals, verified on the basis of contemporary horoscopes, and justified by the overall painting narrative.

Purpose Some famous artistic representations created throughout the centuries can reveal a hidden or mysterious diagnosis of some diseases and these paintings have always drawn the attention of physicians interested in art. Artistic illustration of a child with a malformation or disability can reflect the characteristic appearance of a disease and its historic perspective. Some articles have revealed the definite diagnosis of a child with achondroplasia through portraits of dwarfs and some studies have discussed the secret diagnosis of a crippled child with Pes Equinovarus or poliomyelitis. In this study, we aim to introduce some paintings that reveal musculoskeletal diseases related to paediatric orthopaedics. Methods Paintings painted since the Renaissance were reviewed and collected via web searches. Artistic paintings depicting children with suspected paediatric orthopaedic diseases were analyzed in this study. Results Paintings in which artists have depicted children with achondroplasia, poliomyelitis and clubfoot were found. Conclusion The investigation of a drawing depicting a disabled child may encourage an orthopaedic surgeon to introduce an analytical approach using visual cues. These paintings may also enhance the observational skills of paediatric orthopaedic surgeons, give information about the historical process of a disease and demonstrate the impact of the disease at the time the painting was painted.

Abstract Renaissance diplomatic relationships between sovereigns can often be understood vis-à-vis the gifting of portraiture. Such presentations enacted exchanges of an essential part of the individual portrayed – their presence. Hence, portraiture as a diplomatic gift served as an exchanged acknowledgement between rulers of their respective political authority. Using this mode of political messaging, Cosimo I de’ Medici (r. 1537–74) sought to bolster his reign by commissioning a portrait series of historical and contemporary, Mediterranean-wide potentates. When installed alongside maps and globes of the known terrestrial and celestial universe within the Guardaroba nuova, the painted effigies dissimulated multi-generational Medici involvement in international diplomacy because displaying the portraits en masse suggested that Cosimo and his predecessors had continuously received the paintings as diplomatic gifts, and thus recognition as masters of Florence.

The results of a more careful examination of the painting in Raska from the period of the king and later, of the emperor, Stefan Dusan (1331-1355) render untenable the earlier assessments about its strikingly provincial character and negligible artistic value. The fragmentarily preserved painting of the exonarthex in Djurdjevi stupovi, in Budimlja (spring 1343 - autumn 1345), and St. Nikola in Palez near Studenica (probably the fifth decade of the 14th century), undoubtedly indicate a highly progressive style and very high artistic value. According to their pictorial features, these two monuments are no less sophisticated than the most advanced fresco ensembles of Dusan's times in Macedonia. Besides that, in the painting of the Budimlja exonarthex and the church in Palez, one can also perceive certain iconographic and programmatic novelties, which are characteristic of churches from that period in the south eastern parts of the Serbian state (the Menologion, the elevation of the rulers' portraits to the second zone of the fresco paintings, etc). The coordination of the iconography and the programme with the principles of the Palaiologan high renaissance can also be observed in the fresco painting of some other monuments of Raska from the reign of Stefan Dusan. We refer to the Church of the Annunciation in Dobrun, the exonarthex in Sopocani, the Chuch of St. Nicholas in Baljevac, the so-called Latin Church in Prokuplje, and St. Nicholas in Usee. In the majority of the said monuments, one can notice traces of the rather lively cultural relations with the central and southern parts of the expanded Serbian state. Nevertheless, the painting in the enumerated churches has been only fragmentarily preserved. Consequently, considerations about the fresco painting of the Bela Crkva Karanska (the White Church of Karan) as a rather well preserved monumental ensemble, acquires particular significance for art research in the north western part of Dusan's state.

Realistic pictures, whether paintings, photographs or rendered images of models, are traditionally obtained using classical perspective projection. Here I focus on pictures of people and discuss evidence suggesting that, for best results, full-length realistic-looking portraits should be produced by combining multiple viewpoints. I test this prediction experimentally and find that full-length portraits look more compelling if appropriate multiple viewpoints are chosen. I notice that multi-viewpoint portraiture has likely been used since the Renaissance, although no explicit mention of it is found in the literature.

Within the framework of this study, the transformation of anthropomorphic images in Medieval and Renaissance painting is analyzed. The visual art of this period is considered as a specific space of "conversation about man", which existed in parallel with discourses about God-man and Man-god. As a means of communication between man and God, the icon, using anthropomorphism in the image of the archetype, represented to the medieval man a certain path and a guide to his own salvation. Along with individual anthropomorphic and naturalistic features, areal ones were also used in iconography, for example, reverse perspective, halo, "twisting of figures" and a number of others that set the symbolic content of the religious image. В В According to the author, the transformation of the icon into a painting in the XIII-XIV centuries was associated not only with the technical development of fine art (the widespread use of direct perspective, the use of camera obscura and oil paints), but also with significant changes that occurred in the intellectual space of Europe. The narcissistic turn in Renaissance art, expressed in the dissolution of the boundaries between the human and the divine, the maximum naturalization of religious content, as well as in the development of self-portraits, is, first of all, a turn from the discourse about God-man to the discourse about Man-God. Relying on philosophical sources, two independent positions (Ficino and da Vinci) on the nature of metamorphosis and the place of pictorial images in the description and definition of man are considered.

The author’s message for this Master’s photo art project consisted of creating a photographic work inspired by the Renaissance and Ukrainian traditions, folklore. A harmonious combination of the Renaissance heritage with the Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage, the disclosure of the concept of “renaissance” in two contexts. The Renaissance heritage is studied as world history and art era. The Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage analysis aims at reviving Ukrainian authenticity and its learning and implementation in a modern interpretation. Since the project’s author is fond of modelling and has participated in the organisation of different shootings for more than five years, and is also the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Visual Culture, it was decided to create a photo art project, where she would be a model and ideological organiser and draw parallels with the help of Fine Art. In this project, the Renaissance features are reflected through associative connections with famous paintings of artists in a new Ukrainian interpretation. The second concept of “renaissance” has the meaning of reviving Ukrainian values, customs, traditions through the symbolic image of a Ukrainian girl who appears in the photos of a photo art project in various roles. The series of works consists of portrait images of a girl following the theme of the project. In total, there are five series in the project.

The author’s message for this Master’s photo art project consisted of creating a photographic work inspired by the Renaissance and Ukrainian traditions, folklore. A harmonious combination of the Renaissance heritage with the Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage, the disclosure of the concept of “renaissance” in two contexts. The Renaissance heritage is studied as world history and art era. The Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage analysis aims at reviving Ukrainian authenticity and its learning and implementation in a modern interpretation. Since the project’s author is fond of modelling and has participated in the organisation of different shootings for more than five years, and is also the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Visual Culture, it was decided to create a photo art project, where she would be a model and ideological organiser and draw parallels with the help of Fine Art. In this project, the Renaissance features are reflected through associative connections with famous paintings of artists in a new Ukrainian interpretation. The second concept of “renaissance” has the meaning of reviving Ukrainian values, customs, traditions through the symbolic image of a Ukrainian girl who appears in the photos of a photo art project in various roles. The series of works consists of portrait images of a girl following the theme of the project. In total, there are five series in the project.

Истоки поздних версий скульптурной визуализации Александра Невского были заложены еще в древности; важно, что в допетровскую эпоху иконописный канон по преимуществу предусматривал изображение князя в образе схимника, но не был единственно возможным. Установлено с высокой степенью достоверности, что первым дошедшим до нас его изображением является неатрибутированная ранее фигура, представленная на иконе «Богоматерь Тихвинская с протоевангельским циклом и святыми» (первая половина XVI в.). Изменение иконописного канона на «светскую» версию (1724) имело объективные предпосылки, поскольку и до этого Александр изображался в княжеских одеждах в монументальной живописи, миниатюрах, на житийных иконах. «Переходный» характер имеет фреска из Софийского собора в Вологде. Изготовление первой скульптуры Александра Невского («грудной статуи», 1754) связано с именем М. В. Ломоносова, из мозаичной мастерской которого происходят и два портрета князя. Указанному скульптурному произведению предшествовал барельефный портрет князя на его раке (1747–1752, ГЭ (Санкт-Петербург)). В XIX в. статуи князя установили на южных вратах Исаакиевского собора в Санкт-Петербурге (И. П. Витали, 1841–1846) и памятнике «1000-летие России» в Великом Новгороде (М. О. Микешин, И. Н. Шредер, 1862). В постреволюционную эпоху власть отказалась от использования в идеологических установках прежних символов, и герой Невской битвы оказался в забвении. Ренессанс произошел после выхода кинокартины С. М. Эйзенштейна. Это привело к появлению новой версии визуализации князя – в образе Н. К. Черкасова. В послевоенные годы эта версия была отражена и в скульптуре (памятник в Переславле-Залесском). Однако в Российской империи и Советском Союзе скульптурных изображений князя было создано все же слишком мало. На примере установки стелы в Усть-Ижоре (Архив Санкт-Петербургского Дома ученых) показано, что процесс согласования даже небольших памятных знаков был крайне сложным. С начала 1990-х годов ситуация изменилась. Памятники князю и скульптурные композиции, связанные с его именем, появились во многих городах страны, что делает актуальной задачу их типологизации. Самым ранним по времени появления является тип «часовни», представляющий собой вертикальную архитектурно-пластическую композицию, завершенную «куполом» и крестом. Сам же князь представлен в виде воина (Пушкин, Усть-Ижора, Кобылье Городище, отчасти пос. Ленинское). К этим памятникам примыкает еще один тип – «инок» (Городец). Данные скульптурные изображения можно соотнести с образцами иконописной традиции – допетровской («инок», клейма житийных икон) и петровской («святой воин»), а также с миниатюрами лицевых сводов. Остальные типы монументов представляют князя в образе воина, где атрибуты его святости, за редким исключением, играют второстепенную роль. В первую очередь это относится к конным памятникам (Псков (гора Соколиха), Санкт-Петербург (пл. Александра Невского) и др.). В статье показана связь этих произведений с отечественной и зарубежной художественными традициями. Широко распространенным типом памятников Александру Невскому является скульптура в виде одиночной фигуры (Городец, Курск, Волгоград, Владимир и др.). Несмотря на то, что в большинстве случаев связь с тенденциями визуализации, идущими из глубины веков, в этом типе сведена к минимуму, тем не менее она прослеживается, прежде всего, через элементы православной символики. И только два памятника этого типа – в Петрозаводске и Александрове – представляют Александра Невского в образе и воина, и святого. The origins of the later versions of Alexander Nevsky’s sculptural visualization were laid back in ancient times. It is important that, in the pre-Petrine era, the icon-painting canon mainly provided for the image of Nevsky as a schemamonk, but it was not the only possible one. It has been established with a high degree of certainty that the first image of Alexander that came to us is the previously non-attributed figure represented on the icon “Our Lady of Tikhvin with the Proto-Gospel Cycle and Saints” (first half of the 16th century). The change of the icon-painting canon to the “secular” version (1724) had objective prerequisites, since, before that, Alexander had been depicted in princely robes in monumental painting, miniatures, on hagiographic icons. The fresco from Saint Sophia Cathedral in Vologda has a “transitional” nature. The creation of the first sculpture of Alexander Nevsky (the “chest statue”, 1754) is associated with the name of Mikhail Lomonosov; two portraits of Nevsky also come from his mosaic workshop. This sculpture was preceded by a bas-relief portrait of Nevsky on his shrine (1747–1752, State Hermitage, St. Petersburg). In the 19th century, statues of Nevsky were erected on the southern gates of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg (I.P. Vitali, 1841–1846) and on the monument “1000th Anniversary of Russia” in Veliky Novgorod (M.O. Mikeshin, I.N. Schroeder, 1862). In the post-revolutionary era, the government refused to use the old symbols in ideological settings, and the hero of the Neva battle was forgotten. The renaissance occurred after the release of the film Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein. This led to the emergence of a new version of the visualization of the prince – in the image of Nikolay Cherkasov. In the postwar years, this version was also reflected in sculpture (a monument in Pereslavl-Zalessky). However, in the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union, too few sculptural images of the prince were created. Using the installation of a stele in Ust-Izhora (Archive of the St. Petersburg House of Scientists) as an example, it is shown that the reconciling of even small commemorative plaques was extremely difficult. Since the early 1990s, the situation has changed. Monuments to the prince and sculptural compositions associated with his name appeared in many cities of the country, which makes the task of typologizing them urgent. The earliest type is a “chapel”. It is a vertical architectural plastic composition completed with a “dome” and a cross. The prince himself is represented in the image of a warrior (Pushkin, Ust-Izhora, Kobyl’ye Gorodishche, partly the Leninskoye village). One more type adjoins these monuments – a “monk” (Gorodets). The sculptural images of this type can be correlated with samples of the icon-painting tradition, both of the pre-Petrine (“monk”, the scenes of life of hagiographic icons) and Petrine (“holy warrior”) eras, and with miniatures of illustrated chronicles. The remaining types of monuments represent Nevsky in the image of a warrior, in which the attributes of his holiness, with rare exceptions, play a secondary role. First of all, this refers to equestrian monuments (Pskov (Sokolikha Mountain), St. Petersburg (Alexander Nevsky Square), etc.). The article shows the relationship of these works with domestic and foreign artistic traditions. A widespread type of monuments to Alexander Nevsky is a sculpture in the form of a single figure (Gorodets, Kursk, Volgograd, Vladimir, etc.). Despite the fact that in most cases the connection with visualization trends that come from the depths of centuries is minimized in this type, it can still be traced, first of all, through elements of Orthodox symbolism. Only two monuments of this type – in Petrozavodsk and Alexandrov – represent Alexander Nevsky in the image of both a warrior and a saint.

This article documents the discovery of ‘bismuth white’ on three late eighteenth-century portrait miniatures in the Victoria and Albert Museum collections, painted by renowned English artist George Engleheart. Metallic bismuth and bismuth-containing minerals have been known for centuries and were used on various types of artistic production, from German Wismutmalerei to medieval manuscripts and Renaissance paintings. However, until now they had never been documented on portrait miniatures, despite documentary evidence that suggests their use. The Raman analysis of the three miniatures shows that bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl, corresponding to the mineral bismoclite) is present, and XRF data prove that this material was used as a white pigment in its own right. This work is a pilot study: it represents the first step in the rediscovery of bismuth white as an artist’s pigment, and hopes to provide encouragement to other institutions to look deeper in their collections and map out the use of a relatively rare white material which until now had not been detected or documented in fine art objects.

Abstract Elizabeth I’s portraits span more than 40 years of her reign: during this time her courtiers commissioned paintings that developed both her own image and a complex set of symbols that transmitted her power. These paintings, together with other iconological representations of her sovereignty, embody her personal way to advertise her own power and keep her subjects within the fascination of her figure. By commissioning portraits of the Queen her courtiers both expressed their loyalty to her and helped to develop the wide range of emblems and visual devices through which her propaganda could be promulgated. The analysis of the symbols interwoven with the dresses which enwrapped the Queen in her portraits conveys both the social situation of the period and Elizabeth’s will to impose her figure as divine so as to stress her legitimacy to the throne. The problem of power, legitimacy and legality are all intertwined in the dresses: the yarn that is spun by the painter’s brush represents the rules that keep society together. It symbolises the legal system with all its paraphernalia and anticipates an awareness for those in power to advertise their image which typifies our age. The fundamental function of clothing in making or unmaking a person’s status within society is often used in Renaissance plays. In many passages of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for example, clothing is clearly connected to authority and it becomes the central device in the taming process itself.

The origin of the idea to establish art collections in various socio-cultural contexts represents a special topic of the museum history, on one hand, and of the institutionalization of art, on the other. The expressions of the intentions to form certain collections, especially art collections, in order to preserve the memory of the art works and the likeness of their creators still stir the scholarly debates. The creation of art collections as such, and along with them the collections of artists' portraits and self-portraits, is the result of several trends in the renaissance concept of art. One is the status of liberal arts, which the fine arts, especially painting, gradually assumed since the beginning of 15th century, owing to Leon Battista Alberti's Treatise on Painting. Another phenomenon that contributed to this process is the formation of the value system of art in the 16th century art theory, with Giorgio Vasari as its main proponent. We would like to point to certain other instances that anticipated the tendency to form art collections. One such instance is the collection of portraits of famous men that Paolo Giovio, the prominent humanist, started to acquire in 1521. Another instance is the room in Giorgio Vasari's house in Arezzo with the portraits of artists, which he had painted in early 1540s. Yet another is the cycle of graphic representations of artists' portraits that appeared in the second edition of Vasari's Lives, in 1568, as mnemonic devices to accompany the literary portraits. Concurrent with the design of the illustrated edition of the Lives were the preparations for the establishment of the Academy of the Arts of Drawing (Accademia del Disegno), founded in 1563, whose Statute introduced the need to form a collection of artists' portraits and an art collection featuring their works. These were supposed to serve didactic purposes, in the first place, but also to preserve the memory of the artistic forebears. It paved the way for the future academic art collections, such as the Borromeo's Milan Ambrosiana that was created as an art academy. All these played important roles in the establishment of a visible history that grew into museum that shaped the memory of art and its history, not only by exhibition of the art works, but also by exhibition and preservation of the portraits of their creators. Moreover, they established the practice, the obligation, of artists to leave to their artistic progeny not only their works but also their likeness that became the image and the guarantee of a newly established history, the history of art.

Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482), the Duke of Urbino, was a well-known historical figure during the Italian Renaissance. He is the subject of a famous painting by Piero della Francesca (1416–1492), which displays the Duke from the left and highlights his oddly shaped nose. The Duke is known to have lost his right eye due to an injury sustained during a jousting tournament, which is why the painting portrays him from the left. Some historians teach that the Duke subsequently underwent nasal surgery to remove tissue from the bridge of his nose in order to expand his visual field in an attempt to compensate for the lost eye. In theory, removal of a piece of the nose may have expanded the nasal visual field, especially the “eye motion visual field” that encompasses eye movements. In addition, removing part of the nose may have reduced some of the effects of ocular parallax. Finally, shifting of the visual egocenter may have occurred, although this seems likely unrelated to the proposed nasal surgery. Whether or not the Duke actually underwent the surgery cannot be proven, but it seems unlikely that this would have substantially improved his visual function.

The article explores various aspects of the practice of collecting works of classical art in Renaissance Venice, as well as its influence on the content program formation of the so-called “Collector’s Portrait”, a typological kind of portraiture common in the art of the 16th century. The most interesting examples of it are the “Portrait of Andrea Odoni” by Lorenzo Lotto and the “Portrait of Jacopo Strada” by Titian, considered in this article. The study is relevant because of its connection with the research attention, outlined in recent decades, to the history of collecting, antique trade and the role of socio-economic factors in the development of art history. The article aims to investigate, on the basis of written sources, the matter of how the content of such paintings reflects the moral and ethical ideas about the meaning of antique collecting, as well as to identify its characteristic features on the Venetian grounds. One of the features was that a significant proportion of the artistic material in private collections was composed of works of Greek-Hellenistic art. The interest in collecting these works speaks about the special aesthetic predilections of collectors, their sensitivity to the actual artistic merits of antiques, and not only about their desire to possess antiquities. In addition, the practice of collecting was intended to express the moral virtues of the collector, the greatness of their spirit and the nobility of their thoughts. On the other hand, it served as an important way of social self-assertion for those who were not part of the exclusive elite of Venetian society (patricians), but sought to approach it in their social ambitions. First of all, the article is of interest to historians, art historians, culturologists, museum specialists and antique trade specialists.

The article highlights the peculiarities of the encaustic painting technique and the main problems of preserving this unique technique in the modern art of Ukraine. The meaning of the concept of “encaustic” is revealed. Considerable attention is paid to the technological varieties of encaustic as an ancient pictorial art. Thus, ancient authors wrote about the expressiveness and beauty of the encaustic technique, but, at the same time, “wax painting of the ancients” turned out to be one of the mysterious techniques. First of all, this is due to the fact that very few encaustic works have survived, and the description of technologies was almost absent. Thus, after studying the “Fayum portraits” found in 1887 in Middle Egypt (the Fayum oasis), it was possible to determine that the funerary masks were made in the encaustic technique. Mentions of encaustic works date back to the ancient literature of the times of imperial Rome. During the Renaissance, even Leonardo da Vinci tried to unravel the mystery of encaustic painting, but even he had very little information about this technology. According to the descriptions, it was necessary to solve a complex technological process, so the masters collected information piece by piece and experimentally implemented this technique. These were the first stages of the revival of encaustic painting, which is also called wax painting, because the basis of encaustic paints was wax. The stability of this painting technique was ensured, in particular, by the presence of various resins, linseed oil and dyes of natural origin in the composition of encaustic paints. These paints were applied layer by layer on special soils under high temperature. The exceptional artistic value of the encaustic technique made it possible to preserve it and gave the prospect of revival thanks to the creative searches of artists of the 1970-1995 years of the 20th century. Painting with wax paints meets all the requirements of modern monumental art along with frescoes and mosaics. Modern construction technologies and materials provide ample opportunities for monumental artists to solve various artistic and plastic tasks related to the application of the encaustic technique. The article also considers the role of encaustic in modern easel and monumental art. The work of modern masters of Ukraine who worked in the encaustic technique is analyzed.

Famed for his collection of drawings of naturalia and his thoughts on the relationship between painting and natural knowledge, it now appears that the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) also pondered specifically color and pigments, compiling not only lists and diagrams of color terms but also a full-length unpublished manuscript entitled De coloribus or Trattato dei colori. Introducing these writings for the first time, this article portrays a scholar not so much interested in the materiality of pigment production, as in the cultural history of hues. It argues that these writings constituted an effort to build a language of color, in the sense both of a standard nomenclature of hues and of a lexicon, a dictionary of their denotations and connotations as documented in the literature of ancients and moderns. This language would serve the naturalist in his artistic patronage and his natural historical studies, where color was considered one of the most reliable signs for the correct identification of specimens, and a guarantee of accuracy in their illustration. Far from being an exception, Aldrovandi’s ‘color sensibility’ spoke of that of his university-educated nature-loving peers.

Objective: Simonetta Vespucci, considered the most beautiful woman of the Renaissance, is the inspiration and face of one of the most famous paintings of all times, “The Birth of Venus,” by Botticelli. She died in 1476 at the age of 23 years. We postulate she suffered from a pituitary-secreting tumor progressing to pituitary apoplexy. The goals of this study were 3-fold: (i) verify that the subject depicted by Botticelli in different paintings represents the same woman; (ii) identify the facial traits affected by the progression of a growth hormone– and prolactin-secreting tumor; and (iii) confirm that the observed changes of the face traits observed in the portraits of Simonetta Vespucci are compatible with the facial traits changes identified earlier. Methods: Comparison among face traits was based on the analysis of the face regions measured by means of fiducial points and their distances, and after pose compensation based on three-dimensional head modelling. Results: In favor of the hypothesis that Simonetta suffered from a pituitary growth hormone– and prolactin-secreting tumor stands changes of her lineaments, a feature which becomes evident over the years and particularly manifest in the Allegorical Lady, where galactorrhea is depicted. Conclusion: We conclude that sufficient evidence is presented to suggest that Simonetta Vespucci, the Venus depicted by Botticelli, suffered from pituitary adenoma secreting prolactin and growth hormon with parasellar expansion. The current interpretation of the Venus strabism should be revisited according to this finding. Abbreviation: GH = growth hormone

The kaleidoscope of pseudonyms behind which he hid himself on the pages of the Russian- Jewish weekly Rassvet is a reflection of the multifaceted personality of Zakharia Klyuchevich. Historian, archaeologist, linguist, teacher, political activist, journalist, caricaturist, painter, poet, screenwriter, biologist, it is difficult to find an area into which he did not venture. The spectrum of languages he mastered, or tried ​​as an author, is equally colorful: from his native Russian to quasi-native French, through English, Hebrew, German, Yiddish, Polish, Ancient Greek, Turkish, up to Albanian and Etruscan, two languages he tried to link by identifying the latter as a protolanguage of the former. The amount of material left behind by this polyhedric author is voluminous. Correspondence in various languages (Italian, Russian, English, and French), diaries, theater screenplays (Hebrew, English), essays (French), poetry (French, Russian, and Hebrew), authored language textbooks (French-Hebrew, Russian-Hebrew), sketches, paintings, and newspaper clippings are preserved at the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv. Through a thorough analysis of this material, we will try to draw the portrait of this ish eshkolot, this Renaissance type of intellectual, who has been forgotten in their treatises by historians of literature, Zionism, art and archeology, perhaps precisely because of the difficulty in tracing his movements and activities, the excessive chameleon-like nature of his occupations and cryptonyms.

Portraiture remains one of the most fascinating genres of Art; it is engaging, intriguing and often, perhaps, a little controversial. Portraiture has been executed through the centuries in a variety of styles and media and for different purposes, from the ancient Egyptian cave paintings, through the medieval civilisations to the renaissance, new world, the great divide, modern era and ultimately to post-modernism pop art portraiture. One question that has always resurfaced in the interrogation of portraiture is what is the role of portraiture. There have also been incessant questions about the effectiveness or even need for some painting styles used in portraiture as well as other genres. Within contemporary Art, one of these styles that have often generated passionate arguments between those who love it and those who do not subscribe to it is hyperrealism. Detractors of hyperrealism, which started in the early 1970s, have consistently argued that by virtue of its reliance upon photography, what it seeks to portray is already achieved through photography and hence it is artistically ‘pointless’ since it serves no further visual purpose. Dwelling specifically on this artistic ‘pointlessness’, they have even questioned whether hyperrealism is Art or just a very refined and admirable show of skill. Proponents of hyperrealism, however, bask in the satisfaction that it retrieves all photographic cues from a digital image or a high-resolution photograph and converts or transforms these into a different realm of artistry and perfection by the placement of even more minute and meticulous details that would otherwise be invisible to the eye. This creativity culminates in an entirely new form, an ‘illusion of reality’ more artistically and visually engaging than the original photograph. The detractors, therefore, state that since hyperrealism is derived from photography as a reference base, then it is redundant as a style. In order to address this query, this paper examines the role of hyperrealism in modern portraiture as it is specifically applied to Kenyan portraiture executed by Eddie Ochieng’, an outstanding Kenyan hyperrealist, in order to determine its own ‘visual efficacy’ as a sub-genre. The portraiture itself, as featured in this paper, focuses on aspects of culture to explore the overall visual impact as a result of the application of hyperrealism.

AbstractThe visual artist most commonly linked with the name of Richard Wagner from the 1870s to the early twentieth century was the now relatively little-known Viennese painter Hans Makart (1844–84). Makart's Viennese atelier – no less than his sumptuous history paintings, ‘bacchanals’, society portraits and multi-media design-projects (notably a lavish 1879 historical pageant celebrating the Hapsburg monarchy) – defined an influential visual and stylistic idiom for the early fin-de-siècle. The style is recognisable in the salon at villa Wahnfried, in Paul Joukowsky's set designs for the first Parsifal, and arguably, in aspects of Wagner's music itself. Like most artists of the era, Makart occasionally depicted Wagnerian motifs, but his affinity with the composer was recognised as a matter of style and technique. Two breakthrough works from around 1868 in triptych form, Moderne Amoretten (Modern Cupids) and Der Pest in Florenz (The Plague in Florence), suggest thematic and conceptual parallels with Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde, respectively. Makart's Renaissance history paintings and the 1879 Vienna Festzug stage national history as a collective aesthetic experience in the manner of Die Meistersinger. A ubiquitous theme in comparisons of artist and composer is the role of colour (visual, harmonic and timbral), raised to a quasi-autonomous force that dominates composition and ‘idea’. Makart's resistance to conventions of visual narrative, as read by contemporary critics, recalls Wagner's resistance to conventional melodic periodicity.This article investigates the cultural and technical sources of Makart's appeal in the later nineteenth century and traces the comparison of Makart's and Wagner's styles as a critical topos. The disappearance of Makart and his ‘style’ from modern critical consciousness, I argue, mirrors a cultural Amnesia regarding features central to Wagner's irresistible fascination for his contemporaries.

A documentary photograph from the exhibition 15 Years of Artists of the RSFSR (Khudozhniki RSFSR za 15 let) that opened in Moscow in June 1933 shows the extent to which contemporaries perceived this show as a watershed, a moment when the last remnants of the bourgeois culture of prerevolutionary Russia definitively gave way to the proletarian culture of the rapidly modernizing Soviet Union. A clean-cut and athletic Soviet youth looks straight into the eyes of the refined symbolist poet, playwright, critic, and translator Mikhail Kuz'min as painted in 1926 by a fellow member of the artistic group World of Art (Mir Iskusstva), Nikolai Radlov. In this confrontation, Kuz'min seems to embody everything the Soviet Union had done away with. The height of his fame as a Symbolist poet was the 1900s and 1910s; in the early 1930s, he was still writing poetry, but was unable to publish and increasingly marginalized. In the painting's background, a mythic landscape set within an arched window typical of Renaissance portraits ties him to the Western humanist tradition. Kuz'min's bodily posture invites contact: Seated close to the picture plane with open arms, he appears to look out. Yet the poet also seems reserved and distant, perhaps because of his formal dress, and introspective: The lit cigarette at the level of his mouth and his semi-open book signal that he is preoccupied with a subject other than his interlocutor. The youth, on the other hand, has the confident, even somewhat condescending look of a master of the universe (khoziain zhizni), with folded arms and a slightly skeptical glance. Wearing a fashionable sports shirt on his fit body, he represents the ideal of the times: a healthy, physically strong, and ideologically prepared builder of a socialist society who, both literally and figuratively, embodies the Soviet future. Such an ideal is exemplified by Aleksandr Samokhvalov's contemporaneous painting Girl in a Soccer Jersey (Devushka v futbolke), which was displayed in the same exhibition and quickly became an iconic symbol of Soviet athletic youth. This seemingly antagonistic encounter between representatives of the Soviet past and future simultaneously reflects the change in the official rhetoric. By 1933 it was conciliatory in tone, having firmly replaced the open class conflict of the preceding years, and bourgeois specialists were not only welcomed back into the fold of Soviet society, they were offered privileges if they worked for the new state.

Abstract: The English woman’s sleeve in the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum provides a fine example of Elizabethan embroidery. The sleeve embodies distinct materials and motifs that invite concentrated research into its origins, social implications, and visibility in art. Its embroidery style is the product of diverse cultural inspirations that traveled across Europe via pattern books and textiles during the Renaissance. Natural world depictions and geometrical designs, as well as the use of metallic threads and spangles, constitute essential elements of this style of embroidery. Depictions of this embroidery style within contemporaneous portraiture also assist in performing a social analysis of a painting’s sitter and their elegant dress within broader Elizabethan society. By examining objects closely within museum collections, scholars can discern the social meanings of Elizabethan embroidered textiles. The ability to view the sleeve at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum speaks to the importance of the accessibility of historical garments. Through careful examination of the embroidered sleeve from the Cotsen collection, this emerging research note will explore these topics in two parts. First, it will introduce the design and material properties of the sleeve. A brief historiography of Elizabethan embroidery will also be provided to establish the origins and detailed characteristics of the style. The second part will analyze the sleeve through the lenses of gender and class in Elizabethan England with the help of portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, which showcase stylistic examples of the sleeve in art.

Koenraad Jonckheere is associate professor in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art at Ghent University. The interview was recorded in August 2017 by assistant professor Stefaniia Demchuk (Chair of Art History, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv). In the first part, Prof. Jonckheere talks about his career path of art historian, his teachers and the most influential books. He explains how the scope of his interests shifted from the Seventeenth-Eighteenth century art markets towards Iconoclasm, its impact and the theoretical debates on the Sixteenth century art. His Ph.D. research on art markets was summarized and published in 2008 under the title “The Auction of King William’s paintings”. It was innovative because the author developed a new approach to work on art markets using auction catalogue. In 2012 appeared his monograph on experiments in decorum in the Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm. The next year he curated the exhibition on the Sixteenth century Romanist artist Michiel Coxcie for Museum M (Leuven). Since 2014 Prof. Jonckheere has been working as an Editor-in-Chief at the Centrum Rubenianum (Antwerp). His own research on Rubens resulted in a monograph titled “Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard: portraits after existing prototypes” (2016). Now Prof. Jonckheere is developing a new methodological approach towards historical interpretation of artworks, which he called the “Thimanthes effect”. This approach uses the rhetorical concept of “quaestio” as a guiding principle for interpretation. Prof. Jonckheere discusses it in the second part of the interview. The third part focuses on the Reformation art and Iconoclasm. Prof. Jonckheere points out main directions in contemporary research on the Reformation art and highlights issues that are still to be solved. The interview concludes with advices to early-career art historians.

The unique location of Alexandria city in the Mediterranean Basin has attracted several artistic civilizations ever since the time of Ptolemy. This has been the case during the Roman era, and the subsequent eras throughout which Alexandria remained the window of Egypt and most of the Middle East to the European cultures and arts. As a result, Alexandria has witnessed the cultural and artistic renaissance during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, since "Muhammad Ali" –and his family–permitted the foreign delegations to come and form colonies fused with the human component of Alexandria that had a unique character. Consequently, the foreign artists’ rooms were widely spread and the Alexandrian pioneers of painting art, of the first and second generations, studied under their supervision. Despite being trained by foreigners, their sense of belonging to the Egyptian identity or their participation in laying groundwork for a national art project deeply rooted in the heritage of the nation wasn’t affected. However, they were receptive to maturely cope with the modernity of the western schools of arts. Mahmoud Said, a painter, after completing the art foundation phase, employed his art to portray the modern Egyptian man as a national hero. This portrayal was possible through his use of environmental elements and characters. Seif Wanli was one of the most receptive Egyptian painters to the modern and contemporary western schools of art. He was allegedly known to be unconcerned with the issue of national identity; however, Alexandria kept its high rank in his art despite being characterized by global features. Adham Wanli remained loyal to his impressive and symbolic realism as Alexandria, with all its components, was the core of his artistic creativity. Hamid Aweys left his hometown and went to Alexandria and spent most of his age therein. His belonging to the identity and environment of that ancient coastal city was the same as that of the previously mentioned artists. He was inspired by the city’s environmental and cultural elements in a distinctive way.

Recent conservation and restoration work on the icon of the Virgin and Child which stood on the altar in the Church of St. Nicholas at Prijeko in Dubrovnik has enabled a new interpretation of this paining. The icon, painted on a panel made of poplar wood, features a centrally-placed Virgin holding the Child in her arms painted on a gold background between the two smaller figures of St. Peter and St. John the Baptist. The figures are painted in the manner of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dubrovnik style, and represent a later intervention which significantly changed the original appearance and composition of the older icon by adding the two saints and touching up the Virgin’s clothes with Renaissance ornaments, all of which was performed by the well-known Dubrovnik painter Nikola Božidarević. It can be assumed that the icon originally featured a standing or seated Virgin and Child. The Virgin is depicted with her head slightly lowered and pointing to the Christ Child whom she is holding on her right side. The chubby boy is not seated on his mother’s lap but is reclining on his right side and leaningforward while his face is turned towards the spectator. He is dressed in a red sleeveless tunic with a simple neck-line which is embroidered with gold thread. The Child is leaning himself on the Virgin’s right hand which is holding him. He is firmly grasping her thumb with one hand and her index finger with the other in a very intimate nursing gesture while she, true to the Hodegitria scheme, is pointing at him with her left hand, which is raised to the level of her breasts. Such an almost-realistic depiction of Christ as a small child with tiny eyes, mouth and nose, drastically departs from the model which portrays him with the mature face of an adult, as was customary in icon painting. The Virgin is wearing a luxurious gold cloak which was repainted with large Renaissance-style flowers. Her head is covered with a traditional maphorion which forms a wide ring around it and is encircled by a nimbus which was bored into thegold background. Her skin tone is pink and lit diffusely, and was painted with almost no green shadows, which is typical of Byzantine painting. The Virgin’s face is striking and markedly oval. It is characterized by a silhouetted, long, thin nose which is connected to the eyebrows. The ridge of the nose is emphasized with a double edge and gently lit whilethe almond-shaped eyes with dark circles are set below the inky arches of the eyebrows. The Virgin’s cheeks are smooth and rosy while her lips are red. The plasticity of her round chin is emphasized by a crease below the lower lip and its shadow. The Virgin’s eyes, nose and mouth are outlined with a thick red line. Her hands are light pink in colour and haveelongated fingers and pronounced, round muscles on the wrists. The fingers are separated and the nails are outlined with precision. The deep, resounding hues of the colour red and the gilding, together with the pale pink skin tone of her face, create an impression of monumentality. The type of the reclining Christ Child has been identified in Byzantine iconography as the Anapeson. Its theological background lies in the emphasis of Christ’s dual nature: although the Christ Child is asleep, the Christ as God is always keeping watch over humans. The image was inspired by a phrase from Genesis 49: 9 about a sleeping lion to whom Christ is compared: the lion sleeps with his eyes open. The Anapeson is drowsy and awake at the same time, and therefore his eyes are not completely shut. Such a paradox is a theological anticipation of his “sleep” in the tomb and represents an allegory of his death and Resurrection. The position, gesture and clothes of the Anapeson in Byzantine art are not always the same. Most frequently, the ChristChild is not depicted lying in his mother’s arms but on an oval bed or pillow, resting his head on his hand, while the Virgin is kneeling by his side. Therefore, the Anapeson from Dubrovnik is unique thanks to the conspicuously humanized relationship between the figures which is particularly evident in Christ’s explicitly intimate gesture of grasping the fingers of his mother’s hand: his right hand is literally “inserting” itself in the space between the Virgin’s thumb and index finger. At the same time, the baring of his arms provided the painter with an opportunity to depict the pale tones of a child’s tender skin. The problem of the iconography of the Anapeson in the medieval painting at Dubrovnik is further complicated by a painting which was greatly venerated in Župa Dubrovačka as Santa Maria del Breno. It has not been preserved but an illustration of it was published in Gumppenberg’sfamous Atlas Marianus which shows the Virgin seated on a high-backed throne and holding the sleeping and reclining Child. The position of this Anapeson Christ does not correspond fully to the icon from the Church of St. Nicholas because the Child is lying on its back and his naked body is covered with the swaddling fabric. The icon of the Virgin and Child from Prijeko claims a special place in the corpus of Romanesque icons on the Adriatic through its monumentality and intimate character. The details of the striking and lively Virgin’s face, dominated by the pronounced and gently curved Cimabuesque nose joined to the shallow arches of her eyebrows, link her with the Benedictine Virgin at Zadar. Furthermore, based on the manner of painting characterized by the use of intense red for the shadows in the nose and eye area, together with the characteristic shape of the elongated, narrow eyes, this Virgin and Child should be brought into connection with the painter who is known as the Master of the Benedictine Virgin. The so-called Benedictine Virgin is an icon, now at the Benedictine Convent at Zadar, which depicts the Virgin seated on a throne with a red, ceremonial, imperial cushion, in a solemn scheme of the Kyriotissa, the heavenly queen holding the Christ Child on her lap. The throne is wooden and has a round back topped with wooden finials which can also be seen in the Byzantine Kahn Virgin and the Mellon Madonna, as well as in later Veneto-Cretan painting. The throne is set under a shallow ciborium arch which is rendered in relief and supportedby twisted colonettes and so the painting itself is sunk into the surface of the panel. A very similar scheme with a triumphal arch can be seen on Byzantine ivory diptychs with shallow ciborium arches and twisted colonettes. In its composition, the icon from Prijeko is a combination ofthe Kyr i ot i ss a and the Hodegitria, because the Virgin as the heavenly queen does not hold the Christ Child frontally before her but on her right-hand side while pointing at him as the road to salvation. He is seated on his mother’s arm and is supporting himself by pressing his crossed legsagainst her thigh which symbolizes his future Passion. He is wearing a formal classical costume with a red cloak over his shoulder. He is depicted in half profile which opens up the frontal view of the red clavus on his navy blue chiton.He is blessing with the two fingers of his right hand and at the same time reaching for the unusual flower rendered in pastiglia which the Virgin is raising in her left hand and offering to him. At the same time, she is holding the lower part of Christ’s body tightly with her right hand.Various scholars have dated the icon of the Benedictine Virgin to the early fourteenth century. While Gothic features are particularly evident in the costumes of the donors, the elements such as the modelling of the throne and the presence of the ceremonial cushion belong to the Byzantine style of the thirteenth century. The back of the icon of the Benedictine Virgin features the figure of St. Peter set within a border consisting of a lively and colourful vegetal scroll which could be understood as either Romanesque or Byzantine. However, St. Peter’s identifying titulus is written in Latin while that of the Virgin is in Greek. The figure of St. Peter was painted according to the Byzantine tradition: his striking and severe face is rendered linearly in a rigid composition, which is complemented by his classical contrapposto against a green-gray parapet wall, while the background is of dark green-blue colour. Equally Byzantine is themanner of depicting the drapery with flat, shallow folds filled with white lines at the bottom of the garment while, at the same time, the curved undulating hem of the cloak which falls down St. Peter’s right side is Gothic. The overall appearance of St. Peter is perhaps even more Byzantine than that of the Virgin. Such elements, together with the typically Byzantine costumes, speak clearly of a skilful artist who uses hybrid visual language consisting of Byzantine painting and elements of the Romanesque and Gothic. Of particular interest are the wide nimbuses surrounding the heads of the Virgin and Child (St. Peter has a flat one) which are rendered in relief and filled with a neat sequence of shallow blind archesexecuted in the pastiglia technique which, according to M. Frinta, originated in Cyprus. The Venetian and Byzantine elements of the Benedictine Virgin have already been pointed out in the scholarship. Apart from importing art works and artists such as painters and mosaic makers directly from Byzantium into Venice, what was the extent and nature of the Byzantineinfluence on Venetian artistic achievements in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? We know that the art of Venice and the West alike were affected by the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, and by the newly founded Latin Empire which lasted until 1261.The Venetians played a particularly significant political and administrative role in this Empire and the contemporary hybrid artistic style of the eastern Mediterranean, called Crusader Art and marked by the strong involvement of the Knights Templar, must have been disseminated through the established routes. In addition to Cyprus, Apulia and Sicily which served as stops for the artists and art works en route to Venice and Tuscany, another station must have been Dalmatia where eastern and western influences intermingled and complemented each other.However, it is interesting that the icon of the Benedictine Virgin, apart from negligible variations, imitates almost completely the iconographic scheme of the Madonna di Ripalta at Cerignola on the Italian side of the Adriatic, which has been dated to the early thirteenth century and whose provenance has been sought in the area between southern Italy (Campania) and Cyprus. Far more Byzantine is another Apulian icon, that of a fourteenth-century enthroned Virgin from the basilica of St. Nicholas at Bari with which the Benedictine Virgin from Zadar shares certain features such as the composition and posture of the figures, the depictionof donors and Christ’s costume. A similar scheme, which indicates a common source, can be seen on a series of icons of the enthroned Virgin from Tuscany. The icon of the Virgin and Child from Prijeko is very important for local Romanesque painting of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century because it expands the oeuvre of the Master of the Benedictine Virgin. Anicon which is now at Toronto, in the University of Toronto Art Centre Malcove Collection, has also been attributed to this master. This small two-sided icon which might have been a diptych panel, as can be judged from its typology, depicts the Virgin with the Anapeson in the upper register while below is the scene from the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. The Virgin is flanked by the figures of saints: to the left is the figure of St. Francis while the saint on the right-hand side has been lost due to damage sustained to the icon. The busts of SS Peter and Paul are at the top.The physiognomies of the Virgin and Child correspond to those of the Benedictine Virgin and the Prijeko icon. The Anapeson, unlike the one at Dubrovnik, is wrapped in a rich, red cloak decorated with lumeggiature, which covers his entire body except the left fist and shin. On the basis of the upper register of this icon, it can be concluded that the Master of the Benedictine Virgin is equally adept at applying the repertoire and style of Byzantine and Western painting alike; the lower register of the icon with its descriptive depiction of the martyrdom of St.Lawrence is completely Byzantine in that it portrays the Roman emperor attending the saint’s torture as a crowned Byzantine ruler. Such unquestionable stylistic ambivalence – the presence of the elements from both Byzantine and Italian painting – can also be seen on the icons of theBenedictine and Prijeko Virgin and they point to a painter who works in a “combined style.” Perhaps he should be sought among the artists who are mentioned as pictores greci in Dubrovnik, Kotor and Zadar. The links between Dalmatian icons and Apulia and Tuscany have already been noted, but the analysis of these paintings should also contain the hitherto ignored segment of Sicilian and eastern Mediterranean Byzantinism, including Cyprus as the centre of Crusader Art. The question of the provenance of the Master of the Benedictine Virgin remains open although the icon of the Virgin and Child from Prijeko points to the possibility that he may have been active in Dalmatia.However, stylistic expressions of the two icons from Zadar and Dubrovnik, together with the one which is today at Toronto, clearly demonstrate the coalescing of cults and forms which arrived to the Adriatic shores fromfurther afield, well beyond the Adriatic, and which were influenced by the significant, hitherto unrecognized, role of the eastern Mediterranean.