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Under examination are two Temptations of Saint Anthony on stone: one painted on ruin marble by Jacob van Swanenburgh, the other on oriental alabaster by an unknown Flemish artist. I explore the optical properties of the pictorial surface, the ontology of representation, and the impact of the stone support on visual perception. The unique surface qualities of the paintings are considered to function as subiconographic elements closely related to the pictorial subject. I argue that the use of stone as support is largely motivated by both the pictorial subject and religious practices related to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse plants, animals, humans, and supernatural hybrids decorate the paving stones of an early Islamic reservoir platform in the Azraq oasis, Jordan. Built for an unknown Umayyad-era patron in the late seventh or early eighth century, the platform is typically eclectic in its iconography but features an unusual composition adapted from Roman-Byzantine zodiac diagrams and unprecedented "jigsaw-puzzle" interlocking masonry. The stone pieces of this Umayyad puzzle echo the rhetoric of political and cosmic fragmentation and reassembly that appears in early Arabic poetry and chronicles, suggesting that Umayyad patrons and builders articulated meaning through technique as well as composition and content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigation of the early development of ivory carving and trade centered around colonial Manila from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries reveals that the production of ivories depicting Christian subjects in the Spanish Philippines was inextricably linked to three interlocking developments in Southeast Asia: maritime trade, migration, and competition. Ivory carvers in Southeast Asia supplied the quickly rising ivory market on a regional and transoceanic scale with visually impactful sculptures of Christian iconography, which claimed authoritative status as preferred religious objects in the colonial Spanish territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interface between verbal and visual modes of artistic expression is demonstrated in the work of the poet Antonio Bruni and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bruni published verse on Apollo and Daphne and the bronze Urban VIII, epitomizing their poetic effects. Conversely, his ode on the transverberation of Saint Teresa by an angel creates a dramatic mise-en-scène that antecedes the amorous conceits, bodily forms, and celestial staging in Bernini's sculpture of the ecstatic mystic within the multimedia Cornaro Chapel. Both Bruni and Bernini exemplified a new poetica sacra, applying lyrical tropes to religious truth, presented vividly to the senses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proskynetaria-Ottoman-era paintings of the Holy Land on textiles, made in Jerusalem for Christian pilgrims-can be seen as icons of iconic landscape. From this perspective, the paintings and the biblical land functioned as a chain of topographical media that, by mediating between the faithful and the absent divinity, fortified faith. The stimulating nature of the biblical landscape is the point of departure for an examination of the paintings as a means of concretizing religious values, as substitutes for the biblical land in remote places, and as cultural instruments for constructing individual and collective identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Cyprus and Italy during the thirteenth century, focusing upon similar aesthetics presented in their art. Particular focus is given to religious depictions of icons and saints in these works. Additional topics discussed include the links between Apulia, Italy, and the Holy Land, stylistic and thematic linkages in church buildings in the regions and the works of artists including Rinaldo da Taranto.

Water-Land Retreat, a late twelfth-century Chinese Buddhist painting crafted for use in large-scale offering rituals, depicts the liminal moment of ghosts' manifestation during a nocturnal liturgy of spectral salvation. Taking inspiration from the sensory dimensions of ritual performance and making use of a sophisticated stratigraphy of pigmentation, the painting leads the viewer-worshipper from consideration of external acts of offering and recitation to contemplation of internal visualizations performed solely in the minds of meditating monks. The viewer-worshipper is thus awakened to the multisensory matrix of ritual that unites liturgical art, text, and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two related historical trajectories surround the medieval Chinese reception of the Buddha statue at the Mahābodhi Temple in Bodhgayā, India: first, the shift in the perception of the ontological status of the image from “as if real” to the “real,” and second, the transmission and the subsequent replication of the foreign image in China as ruixiang, or an auspicious image. While the awareness of the Indian prototype as substituting the real presence of the Buddha grew stronger, the medieval Chinese produced ruixiang China as a material mediation of the divine presence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike any Japanese object before them, the jeweled pagoda mandalas challenge viewers to discern word from picture. Analyzing their production and the complicated process of viewing a surface that refuses strict delimitation as text or image and as relic or reliquary reveals these mandalas to be visualizations of the multiplicity of the Buddha body. The paintings collapse distinction with indivisibility while the constant slippage of signifier into signified escapes rigid duality, a realization urged by the surface's perlocutionary effect. These singular works uncover underlying dynamics in premodern Japanese Buddhist art, such as invisibility, performativity, and an increasingly textualized visual world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hans Burgkmair the Elder's Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, painted in 1504 as part of the Basilikabilder series at Augsburg's Dominican convent of St. Katherine, incorporates an intriguing catoptric motif in the Crucifixion scene. From the Good Centurion's polished armor, the reflected image of an ugly Jewish soldier stares back in horror. Blind to Jesus’ christological identity and to his own nature, he appears as an antimodel of “recognition” (anagnôrisis), which Aristotle defines in The Poeticsas a “change from ignorance to knowledge.” Set in confrontation with the Centurion, who exemplifies recognition, the character thematizes an enduring challenge to Christian conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jan van Eyck's van der PaeleVirgin, commissioned to mark his patron's chaplaincies at St. Donatian's church, Bruges, can be situated within the visual culture of commemoration in the Netherlands, and specifically within the tradition of erecting a wall-mounted memorial to mark one's burial place or the site of a pious foundation. Scrutiny of written sources—both archival documents and the inscriptions on the picture's frame—together with comparisons with contemporary memorials clarify not only the circumstances of the painting's commission but also the question of its original setting and the precise nature of its memorializing function. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ottoman incense burners, a group of which is now in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in Istanbul, represent a type of object that contributed to communicating a “multi-sensorial message of the divine” in mosques and mausolea. An examination of the various contexts in which they stood, in addition to style and form, reveals pre-Islamic and Islamic olfactory traditions, the fumigatories used in them, the professions related to fumigation, the object's spatial and temporal contexts, and, finally, the practical, religious, social, and political meanings of the deployed fragrances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the ways in which Jewish-Christian relations and Christian teleology are reflected in the art history treatise "Le vite de' piu eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani," written by Giorgio Vasari and several other, unnamed authors—including Pier Francesco Giambullari—and first published in 1550. The author highlights the role Vasari attributes to the sculpture "Moses," by Renaissance artist Michelangelo, and its alleged reception by Jews. Issues addressed include Vasari's interlinked description of religious and art history, the efforts of the papacy under Pope Paul III to convert Jews to Christianity, and aniconism.

The article focuses on the bronze doors created in the mid 15th-century by the Italian artist Antonio Averlino, called Filarete, for St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Commissioned by Pope Eugenius IV in 1433 and installed in 1445, the doors feature an unusual number of self-portraits and signatures by the artist. The author presents a detailed examinations of the door's iconographic program, focusing on Filarete's depiction of himself and his assistants celebrating their artistic achievement. It is suggested that Filarete conceived the work as a way of expressing status and honor in the hopes of increasing his social standing at the papal court.

The article discusses the practice of iconoclasm, the deliberate physical attack of images and works of art, from archaic antiquity up to and including the period known as the Iconoclastic era in Byzantium. More specifically, the author explores discourses regarding iconoclasm over this period and how these discourses enabled a long tradition of theorizing about what an image was and to come to an understanding about the relation of a visual image to the model or prototype that it imitated through representation. Particular focus is paid to the iconoclastic discourse which took place in Byzantium during the 8th century, a transformative period in which the image was freed from an emphasis on ontology to place it in an epistemological relation to its referent.

The article discusses 15th-century Japanese Zen Buddhist monk-painter Sesshū Tōyō, focusing on his 1495 ink painting "Splashed Ink Landscape." The author focuses on splashed ink painting in the Japanese medieval period and how it fits into Zen monastic culture. The author traces scholarship on Sesshū Tōyō's painting beginning in the 1930s, including Shimao Arata's 1990s work on the painting. Specific topics include poetic inscriptions added to the painting by Zen monks, ink painting as part of the history of East Asian painting, the painting as part of the pictorial culture of the Gozan, or Five Mountains, group of Buddhist temples, and how the painting relates to its poetic inscriptions.

The article discusses images showing flowery trappings worn by nuns in convents in New Spain, or colonial Mexico. The author discusses the influence of indigenous Mesoamerican traditions on Euro-Christian practices in New Spanish nunneries, including the floral trappings worn by nuns during profession and funerals. The author describes Spanish influence on funerary and profession portraits of New Spanish nuns wearing floral trappings and discusses portraits of indigenous women. Specific topics addressed include the integration of Amerindian and European women at the Corpus Christi Convent in Mexico City, Mexico in 1724, multicultural meanings of nuns' floral trappings, and other indigenous crafts in New Spanish nunneries.

The article discusses the 1594 altarpiece painting "Encounter of Christ and Veronica on the Way to Calvary" by Federico Zuccari, located at the S. Prassede Basilica in Rome, Italy. The author discusses the revival of ancient art in early modern art and describes parameters for ecclesiastical artwork following the Council of Trent. Specific topics addressed include Zuccari's use of ancient forms in the painting, the depiction of Jesus Christ as the devotional center of the painting, changes in Christian art and icons from Renaissance art to early modern art, and the depiction of the veil of Veronica relic in the painting.

The article discusses the concept of the exegetical stained-glass window in relation to the stained glass program designed by Abbot Suger from 1125-1144 at the monastery of St-Denis in France. The author suggests that the the exegetical stained glass window was created to justify monastic use of art and that it helped to foster the formation of elite art for the literate layperson. Specific topics addressed include the reintroduction of allegory in Christian art, the use of stained glass windows for scriptural study, the depiction of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Tree of Jesse window at St-Denis, and the role of theologian Hugh of St. Victor in developing the exegetical stained-glass window.

The article presents a discussion of Buddhist art in the famous caves of Mogao, in Dunhuang, China. Constructed along the Silk Road between the fifth and 14th centuries, the richly decorated caves represent Buddhist iconography and ritual practice, and many ancient Buddhist manuscripts have been found at these sites. The article focuses on the murals and sculptures of one cave, designated number 231, which are believed to date from the early ninth century. The cave was constructed by the Yin family, and the artwork is said to combine representations of filial piety and Buddhist sutras.

The article discusses a triptych by Peter Paul Rubens, depicting a lamentation scene from Christian tradition, which was commissioned to commemorate the merchant Jan Michielsen. Known as the Michielsen Triptych, it is said to be a good example of Rubens' tendency to incorporate elements of traditional Netherlandish art, both in its format and in its structuring of space. The relationship between the center and side panels is analyzed in terms of Christian symbolism, and Rubens' style is described as connecting traditional Netherlandish iconography with early modern painting techniques.

The article focuses on appearance and disappearance in Caravaggio's London Supper at Emmanus. The author argues that Caravaggio manipulated the conventional techniques of Renaissance narration to create a new pictorial narrative, one that structurally incorporated ambivalence and subjectivity. Article topics include the author's opinion on how the figures, expressions and gestures in the painting were best defined as a symbolic narrative, as well as his thoughts on various Christian concepts.

The article discusses the origins of early painting in the Netherlands. The author examines the contention that all of the work in that area of Northern Europe was done by collective artists performing in workshops and engaged in copying known works of art. The article explores the relationship between a sacred painting as art and as a devotional image meant to have spiritual impact on the viewer.

This article discusses the word "icon" as it was understood in Byzantium. In Greek the word simply means "image" or "picture." In the Byzantine sense, an icon was a representation of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints imbued with a divine grace, as well as tactile and visual elements that stimulated all the senses. The article examines icons created with a number of materials and in different eras.

Focuses on Islamic art. Definition of Islamic art; Global events that had several ramifications for the study of Islamic art; Time of exponential growth in Islamic studies.

Argues that the iconography of Donatello's David and Judith and Holofernes bronze sculptures was meant to evoke republican themes of the Florentine elite in Italy. Setting of the statues; Inscription discovered on the David sculpture; Meaning and symbols of David and Judith; Relationship of the sculptures to the Athenian tyrannicide known to the Medici and educated elite in Florence, Italy.

Focuses on inscription, ethnicity and ethnography in Jewish art. History of scientific representation; Clues to the history of Christian-Jewish ethnic conflict; Materialization of ethnic genealogy; Circumcision among Christians and Jews; Notarial writing in the inquisition.

Documents the odyssey of the `bestiary elephant,' an iconographic device with unequivocally Christian associations, in medieval through mid-eighteenth-century Jewish art. Jewish art as a derivative of its cultural menu; Illumination of the internal religious and sociopolitical landscape; Appropriation of images from Christian art into meaningful Jewish motifs.

Studies a group of psalter images expressing a spiritual warfare theme in different ways over a period of time. Presentation and analysis of psalter samples; Societal context of psalter image.

Presents a chronological account of the gradual revelation of the significant figures under God's arm in Michaelangelo's `Creation of Adam' and the reactions of scholars since the 1870s. Identity of the two figures embraced by God; Presence of the rebel angels; Lucifer's imminent confrontation with Archangel Michael.

States that an unusual fresco cycle in the Cathedral of Le Puy consisted of scenes from the lives of Moses, Solomon, and Christ. Intention of the cycle to celebrate the life of a local hero, Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, hailed as `alter Moyses' in contemporary texts and papal legate to the First Crusade; Frescoes as a monument to Adhemar and to the crusading ideology that made Le Puy a major pilgrimage site in the wake of the First Crusade; Notion that the crusades influenced aspects of Romanesque iconography.

Examines a group of 15th century monuments in Burma that commemorate a special seven-week period associated with Buddha's Enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in India. Layout of the shrines or stations; Foundation of Buddhism in Burma; Indian origin of the seven stations of Buddhist art at Pegu; Demons and temptresses on glazed terra-cotta plaques that once belonged to the compound walls of the central temple and the goatherd's shrine.

Asserts that the preference of some modernists for primitive cultures was an act of social criticism as well as a search for new art. Awareness of colonial exploitation on the part of Picasso and his circle; Power of the allusion to Africa in the period between 1905 to 1909; Left-wing avant-gardism in pre-World War I Paris; Romantic attitudes toward primitive peoples; Africanism as a movement in early twentieth-century art.

Argues that the paintings at Castelseprio are Mariological rather than Christological. Evidence of three damaged scenes; Theological equation of Mary with the Church; Origination of the imagery in the late eighth or early ninth century; Reconstruction of the lost scenes; Compositional and typological relationships among the scenes that express a theological equation of Mary with the Church.

Addresses the technique of presentation of the stories portraying the legend of the Buddha and analyzes the structure of visual narratives. Seven distinct modes of narration; Suggestion that the artists might have considered them to be equally acceptable alternatives since they frequently occur together on the same monument; Mann in which the viewer-cum-worshipper might have responded to these works of art; Buddhist Canon; Monoscenic and synoptic narratives.

Examines the circumstances of the activity of painter Andrea di Bartolo for Venetian religious foundations and his later sojourn to the Veneto. Details of the painting of patrons by Andrea di Bartolo; Discussion of the historical framework surrounding his activity for patrons in Venice; Oeuvre and chronology of his works.

Examines the commentary illustrations in the Gulbenkian Apocalypse. Anti-Jewish imagery in the thirteenth century; Derisive cartoons in the margins of the judicial rolls or the derogatory caricatures of Jews in scenes of the Passion; Description of thirteenth-century illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts.

Presents an interpretation of the 'M é rode Triptych,' featuring Virgin Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Role of the themes of marriage and family in the composition of the triptych; Symbolism of the triptych; Use of the metaphor of the Artisan of the Soul in understanding the presence of Joseph in the triptych.

The article discusses miraculous images and their role in the lives of devotees, suggesting that art historical literature does not usually consider responses to images and is more concerned with aesthetic quality. The author focus on miraculous images in Italy, including images of the Virgin Mary and an 1871 ex-voto painting at the sanctuary of Montallegro in Italy. The author describe their work on miraculous images in Italy from 1500-2000, focusing on the personal stories of people's interactions with the artworks.

The article presents a list of books received by the journal for the month of September 2007, including "Jewish Art in America: An Introduction," by Matthew Baigell, "The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission," by Michele H. Bogart, and "The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation," by Judy Chicago.