Academic literature on the topic 'Reverse Iconographic Paintings'

The subject of this research is Flemish painting the XVII century in the spiritual and cultural context of the Counter-Reformation, which created remarkable decorative and religious images to counter the iconoclastic trends of the Reformation movement. The object of this research is Flemish paintings of the Baroque Period of the XVII century with flower garlands edging the central image of Madonna. Special attention is given to the variety of iconographic patterns of the image of Virgin Mary framed in a flower garland, which was widely popular in painting of the Baroque period. Some artists use the pattern of “painting in a painting”; others imitate sculpture, the color of which accentuates the brightness of garlands. The article employs iconographic, iconological, and artistic methods, as well as stylistic analysis. The scientific novelty consists in proving the fact that Virgin Mary appears in painting not only as an individual image, but in paintings of flower garlands as well. The acquired results demonstrate that in the XVII centuries, the artists used different iconographic patterns for creating the image of Virgin Mary. The masters were able to combine different types of flowers, reaching the harmony of floral motifs and balancing them with the image of Madonna. The artists demonstrated the beauty of flower garlands by adding different living creatures in their paintings, such as birds and animals, to make them look more colorful, peaceful and vibrant. Thanks to these works, the image of Madonna remained extremely revered in the XVII century.

The Niobid krater in Paris (Louvre G341) is not one of the masterpieces of Greek vase painting. The vase is not even one of the best works of the artist, who receives his name, the Niobid Painter, from the rare depiction of Apollo and Artemis killing the children of Niobe on the reverse. The vase is, however, one of the touchstones of the history of ancient Greek art. The Niobid krater has this distinction because it is the earliest contemporaneous witness to the new developments in mural painting in the Early Classical Period, developments best understood from the descriptions of the traveler Pausanias six centuries later. The actual quality of the Niobid krater is therefore secondary to its documentary value.Since the krater's discovery in 1881, most discussion has focused on the iconography of the scene on the obverse, showing a group of warriors with Athena (PLATE IIa). The ambiguity of the scene comes from the large number of figures and the lack of action or iconographical evidence to help in their identification. Of the 11 figures, only Herakles (figure 6 on PLATE IIb), with his club and lionskin and Athena (4) in her aegis and helmet are clearly identifiable.

Introduction. The images of holy warriors were extremely popular in the art of Byzantium and the countries of the Byzantine cultural circle of the 11th – 14th centuries. They are known for numerous images in iconography, monumental painting, applied art. They are numerous in sphragistics. The image of a warrior horseman best known for the early 13th century monuments is the rarest and most recent formation. Introducing new sigilographic monuments into the scientific circulation and determining the time of appearance of this iconographic type on their basis are among the main goals of the proposed research. Methods. The methodological basis of the study is an interdisciplinary integrated approach that involves using methods of the comparative analysis of sfragistics, numismatic and other categories of monuments. Analysis. Two seals are kept in the State Hermitage Museum collection. Both sides of the first seal (M-12374) have the depiction of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki as a horseman triumphant. On the left, under the cloak, there is the inscription ΟΔΗ. that, apparently, can be revealed as Ὁ (ἅγιος) Δη(μήτριος). On the other side of the seal there is a full-length image of Saint Stephanos with a censer and pyxis in his hands. On the front side of the second seal (M-3751) there is the same image of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki with a similar inscription. On the reverse side of the seal there is the inscription “Defender, look at me, your slave Christopher”. Results. The images of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki on both seals are almost identical, which implies the existence of a common prototype, most likely an honored icon. We can assume that it was in Thessaloniki in the Basilica of Saint Demetrios. Probably, the image of the warrior triumphant is the latest version of the iconography of saint warrior and it is known for the few monuments of the late 11th – 12th centuries. As a result, both seals can be dated to the same time.

Abstract Chagall’s crucifixion paintings, long a delicate subject among art historians, are best contextualized in the light of his life-long repatriation of Christian iconography to its Jewish foundation. Chagall reverses typological sequences familiar to Christians, so that instead of the Old Testament being seen as prefiguring the events of the Gospels, in his work the New Testament refers back to the Hebrew Scriptures in such a way as to illuminate the universal in Jewish experience. In Solitude (1933) and The Yellow Crucifixion (1943) we see how Chagall achieves a remarkable fusion of Jewish and Christian understandings of meditation and visual commentary on the Scriptures, prophetically calling both traditions to repentance and reconciliation.

In Byzantium, writing ekphrases was one of the standard literary skills, de­veloped during school instruction. Yet, in Byzantine art history, the analysis of Byzantine ekphrases had long been beyond the scope of researchers who favoured rather the iconographic and formal comparative methods. It was not until the dis­covery of the role of rhetoric in the shaping of pictorial formulae and iconographic programmes of paintings, by H. Maguire, that the importance of ekphrases was fully recognised – especially as far as interpretation of the contents of art works and the understanding of mechanisms governing the development of iconographic and compositional programmes that ‘defied’ the canon were concerned. The examples of ‘reversed’ compositional schemes in the Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem scene in the Church of the Virgin at Daphni or the Holy Myrrhbearers at the Sepulchre in the Mileševa Monastery, discussed in the present paper, consi­dered within a broad context of architectural space and the liturgy, have demons­trated that the Byzantine artist was able to freely shape his pictorial formulae while looking for new ways of visualising dogmatic content, especially in the period after the Iconoclastic Controversy (726-843). An example of Michael Psellos’ ekphrasis of an image of the Crucifixion fur­ther proves that also Byzantine writers were faced with a similar problem of fin­ding adequate forms for expressing dogmatic content in keeping with the literary canon. In his description of the image, Psellos not only identified its particular elements (schemata) but also referred to the experience and knowledge of the recipient who was supposed to be able to discern in the picture also the reality that could not be represented using artistic means. Thus, the above affinity between the artistic and literary stances seems to re­lease the researchers of Byzantine art from strict adherence to stereotypical inter­pretations in keeping with the methodological canon.

In his treatise on Suprematism, Kazimir Malevich criticises transcendentalism and contrasts it with transcendence. Malevich is critical of the transcendental paradigm, as he essentially turns out to be a platonist. Pavel Florensky also criticizes transcendentalism – that precedes Malevich in time. Florensky views Kant as rooted in a “human” perspective and matches him with Plato. Florensky’s proposal, like Malevich’s later, is to return the transcendent. By comparing Florensky’s work on aesthetics and Malevich’s theory of new art, one sees that both authors criticize the illusionistic character of perspective and European painting. Florensky continued the concept of “reverse perspective” in iconography. Malevich argued that his fellows felt a close connection to the icon. It is also known that both Florensky and Malevich taught at art institutes (GINHUK and VKhUTEMAS) and worked to protect cultural heritage. In the theoretical works on metaphysics and art, the positions of Malevich and Florensky converge, as both were platonic. Thus, it is important to compare these figures in their different guises in order to identify the features of the revolutionary era

This paper discusses an interesting silver fragment showing an image of a saint which was found a few years ago in the rectory of the island of Olib. Based on a thorough comparison of the fragment with similar liturgical objects from the wider area of Zadar, especially with the processional cross from Vlašići (Pag), the authoress proposes that the fragment once belonged to a Gothic proccessional cross dating from the end of the 14th century and that it was nailed as the middle part of its reverse side. The image of the saint depicted on this fragment is identified, based partly on the place of its discovery, with the patron saint of the parish of Olib, St.Anastasia. This identification is further strenghtened also by an iconographical analysis of various depictions of St. Ananstasia in Romanesque and Gothic art of Zadar and its area, especially in goldsmiths’ work of the time, where there are relatively many of her images considering that St. Anastasia was the patron saint of Zadar cathedral, where her relic was treasured for centuries, and also one of four main patron saints of this important Adriatic city. That analysis led to the conclusion that there was a certain evolutive change in the depiction of the saintly patroness during that era, and that, starting form ourfragment and the end of the 14th century, she is more often adorned with a book as her standard attribute.It was also noted that the image depicted on the Olib fragment may, perhaps, be identified with St. Catherine of Alexandria who was also often depicted with a book. Namely, she was the patron saint of a church in Novigrad, a small medieval town situated in the hinterland of Zadar,whence its inhabitants could have brought a whole cross, or solely this fragment, centuries after its making, as C. F. Bianchi recorded thet they brought to Olib a worshipped painting when fleeing from the Turks. This move of the local treasure from Novigrad to Olib in times of crisis and flight would thus coincide with the same practice of the move of the processional cross from Gorica to Pašman, as proposed by N. Jakšić. The stumbling stone of this theory is, of, course, the existence of the 14th century processional cross in Novigrad, with very similar image of St. Catherine on its reverse. Although she is iconographically coherent with the saintly image on the fragment from Olib, it is rather difficult toexplain the making of two similar processional crosses in such a short period of time, since the evident stylistic and tehnical differences between the two images allow only for a short time difference. On the other hand, if the saint on the Olib fragment indeed is St. Anastasia, this would mean that the parish church of Olib regularly refurbished its liturgical equipment during the period of less than two centuries, since one processional cross from Olib older than our fragment has also survived, still partly Romanesque in its morphology and iconography, as well as has survived the late 15th century cross attributed to Toma Martinov, goldsmith from Zadar, whose style is already Rennaissance in many aspects. In course of the search for the images of St. Anastasia in the medieval goldsmiths’ work of Zadar it was also observed that the long established iconographical identification of the figures depicted on the luxurious bishop’s staff of the archbishop Maffeo Vallaresso (1460) has to be partially revised.

In 2011 the National Museum in Cracow received a bequest that had been specified in the last will and testament of Zofia Ruebenbauer from Ottawa. The gift was described as a 19th century Russian icon. Comparative stylistic analysis complemented by restoration work and a material study revealed an exquisite paint layer, for which analogies may be found in the mid-14th-century Greek art of the Paleologian period. The icon was probably painted in the third quarter of the 14th century in one of the centres in northern Greece including Kastoria, Veria, Mt. Athos, Thessalonike and Constantinople itself. The collection of the Byzantine Museum in Kastoria includes many icons of the holy physicians depicted in a similar pose. Iconographical details such as the surgical knives in the hands of the physicians and in the open tool case find close analogies in the 14th-century wall paintings in Peloponnese, e.g. in the Church of Saint Paraskevi (Αγία Παρασκευή, Agia Paraskevi) and Saint John Chrysostom (Άγιος Ιωάννης Χρυσόστομος, Agios Ioannes Chrisostomos) in Geraki, as well as in the Orthodox Church of the Holy Unmercenaries (Άγιοι Ανάργυροι, Agioi Anargyroi) in Nomitsi. The conclusions of the analysis regarding the icon’s provenance find indirect corroboration in the recently discovered fact that in the first half of the 19th century the work of art was owned by Haryklia Mavrocordatos-Serini, Sas-Hoszowska (1836–1906), a member of the Lvov line of the Greek princely family of Mavrocordatos. The names of her children with the exact dates of their birth appear on the reverse side of the icon. The work of art was passed down to Jerzy Ruebenbauer, who carried it away from Lvov during the Second World War, taking it first to Warsaw, where he met his future wife Zofia, and after the war to Canada via Belgium.

В статье рассмотрена коллекция тхангка с образом Вайшраваны (санскр.), или Намсарая (бур.), хранящаяся в фондах Национального музея Республики Бурятия и датируемая XVIII началом ХХ века. Намсарай бог богатства, бодхисаттва и дхармапала, относится к одному из наиболее почитаемых божеств в бурятском буддизме, и его иконография представляет собой сложный собирательный буддийский образ. Анализ данных тхангка позволяет выделить локальные традиции бурятской тхангкописи, отметить отличительные особенности и влияние иноэтнических традиций в разные периоды истории буддийской живописи Бурятии. The focus of the article is a collection of Thangka with the image of Vaishravana (in Sanskrit), or Namsarai (in Buryat), stored in the funds of the National Museum of the Republic of Buryatia and dating from the 18th early 20th centuries. Namsaray is a god of wealth, a Bodhisattva and Dharmapala, one of the most revered deities in Buryat Buddhism, and his iconography is a complex collective Buddhist image. An analysis of these Thangkas allows us to highlight the local traditions of Buryat Buddhist icon painting, to note the distinctive features and influence of foreign ethnic traditions in different periods of the history of Buddhist painting in Buryatia.

The concept of the aquapelago, an assemblage of terrestrial and aquatic spaces generated by human activities, was first advanced in 2012 and has been subsequently developed with regard to what has been termed the ‘aquapelagic imaginary’ – the figures, symbols, myths and narratives generated by human engagement with such assemblages. Venice, a city premised on the integration of terrestrial and marine elements within an intermediate tidal lagoon, is a paradigmatic aquapelago and its artists have produced a substantial corpus of creative work reflecting various aspects of its Domini da Mar (maritime dominion). This article engages with one aspect of these engagements, the use of sirenas (mermaids), sea serpents, Neptune and associated motifs in visual and narrative culture from the Renaissance to the present. This subject is explored in a reverse chronological order. Commencing with a discussion of two striking contemporary sculptures, the article goes on to analyse modern renditions of Venetian folklore before moving back to explore a variety of Renaissance paintings and sculptures that feature mythic maritime motifs. Having followed this trajectory, the article shifts focus to examine the manner in which the prominence of the winged Lion of Saint Mark in Venetian iconography counteracts the aforementioned aquatic imagery, reflecting different perceptions of Venice as a social locale and as regional and international power at different historical junctures.

This dissertation is an attempt to define the constellation of circumstances and ideas, which has determined my strategy in the paintings and performances submitted for examination. Unlike many artists I do not accept the fact of postmodernity. On the contrary, art and life remain suspended between the future and the past, the essential modernist condition. I argue for this in the introduction and the first two chapters, through a description of the performance work of Joseph Beuys and on my reaction to it in a performance in which I attempted to examine the practical paradoxes of art making in late modernity. I take my position largely from the Frankfurt school and succeeding debates about their work up to Zizek. For, while we remain in modernity we cannot regard it simply as an unfinished project. It is no longer possible to adopt an avant-garde position in one�s practice. The central section of the thesis contains a series of studies of the careers of major artists who have faced up to the paradoxes of modernity from Picasso to Richter and Parr. Through their successes, failures and sometimes duplicity, a practical profile emerges � a guide to the limits of contemporary practice. The last chapter concerns my paintings as a response to this profile.

“I was trying to write myself, paint myself, and my compatriots, my fellow black artists, if you like, into the history of British painting’, Lubaina Himid writes of the aesthetic, political, ideological and cultural philosophies undergirding her series, Revenge (1992), which is the subject of this chapter. Warring against the iconographic and invisibilising stranglehold exerted by white western male artists in particular, she says, ‘I’m trying to make a comment about how European artists ... have hijacked some of our African and Caribbean imagery, our bodies and all the rest of it’. Staging her own acts and arts of revenge against white western strategies of appropriating and objectifying Blackwomen’s bodies and art-making traditions, she exults in her successes by declaring that ‘I’ve hijacked some stuff back’. ‘The old solutions did not seem to allow for creative imaginings nor did they enable the black woman’s story to take its place amongst the other voices’, she concedes. Himid diagnoses a situation in which ‘old solutions’ or dominant representational modes are responsible for denying as well as distorting ‘the black woman’s story’. Working to do justice not to one but to many Blackwomen’s stories, she cuts to the heart of the matter: ‘Her story is complex and constantly interwoven through the whole, yet is often told simply and by others as that of a silent victim’.