Art History Research Articles

Miracles in the MiddleAges and Today // Miracle Healing, Miracle Visions, and Miracle Narratives in the Premodern and Modern World

As much as we live today in a world that is seemingly mostly determined by rationality and technology, we are actually far away from such a status, fortunately so, at least depending on one’s perspective. Hidden behind much scientific research and a mechanistic world determined by machines, for instance, we can easily discover countless examples of superstition, faith, irrationality, wishful thinking, dreams, speculation, and imagination. This is fortunately so, indeed, because it respects the indigenous human nature irrespective of many faults and problems resulting from it. Contrary to Max Weber’s famous formulation, the modern experience of the disenchantment of this world was actually accompanied by a profound rediscovery of or return to magic, spirituality, and fantasy, whether we think of the Romantics, the high popularity of the genre of fairy tales, the ever-growing body of video games and related media today all predicated on science fiction and hence fantasy, or the world of movies. This paper, however, does not intend to develop a large concept about the history of science, the emergence of modernity and individuality, and the steady rise of rationality at the latest since the eighteenth century, all of which have been discussed already at length by historians, anthropologists, philosophers, literary scholars, art historians, and sociologists. Instead, the focus will rest on the belief in miracles and miracle healings and trace the vast discourse on charms and miracles from the early Middle Ages to the modern times as a constant, consistent, and impactful aspect of all human culture we cannot and should not deny if we want to subscribe to a realistic assessment of human culture and mentality. The argument focuses on the curious phenomenon that the belief in miracles continues to run strongly until today both among religious individuals and ordinary individuals who face, for instance, a desperate health situation, a personal crisis, or dangers of all kinds. Popular culture appears to be highly influenced by the belief in miracles, in divine agents who come to people’s rescue in critical moments, and hence the belief in the power of prayer. Each individual aspect would require an extensive scholarly discussion, which this paper cannot offer. Instead, I will trace primarily the discourse on charms and miracles from the early Middle Ages to the present, whereby we can determine the continuity of pre-modern ideas, values, and concepts as valuable aspects for all people throughout time. To make good sense, the concept of the charm as a verbal statement for a magical and religious transformation is widened to include all word magic in medicine, athletics, politics, friendship, and family relationships whenever there is a perceived need to draw from other powers for the well-being of a human being.

Nеw Book on Tatar Art of Jewelry

The article highlights the scientific significance of the catalogue-monograph by the art historian L. Sattarova who has been the first to publish the description of Tatar jewelry with Arabic script inscrip tions. The catalogue, which combines art history and museological approaches to the study of the jew elry collection, has become an important contribution to both the study, interpretation and the popular ization of Islamic art, and Tatar national heritage.

Analysing Historical Paintings with Indian Regional Influences

Abstract: Indian paintings have a long and illustrious history that is firmly rooted in the history of Indian art. Even though there aren't many surviving early examples due to the difficult climate, the importance of paintings has persisted throughout the ancient, mediaeval, and modern periods. Indian paintings' origins can be traced back to the prehistoric era, starting with the age-old art of painting in caves. Ceramics, textiles, miniature paintings, and other media have all contributed to this rich legacy's evolution before ultimately finding expression in contemporary artistic forms. Indian painting's history, from the mysterious cave paintings to the fine details of miniature paintings, captures the spirit of the country's creative and cultural development and represents a significant trip through time. As evidenced by the remains found in caves and other textual sources, painting has been a popular art form in India since prehistoric times. The two main categories of Indian paintings are miniatures and murals. Books, paper, and linen are used for miniature paintings, whereas murals are massive pieces painted on walls and ceilings. The evolution of Indian art is a continuous process, resulting from the blending of various traditions. Indian painting has managed to hold onto its unique style while embracing contemporary trends.

In the footsteps of Lyubomir Dalchev and Anatas Dalchev in Italy – toposes, images, texts (Preliminary notes)

The article reports on the progress of research devoted to the „Italian period“ in the lives of two great Bulgarian artists, Lyubomir Dalchev and Atanas Dalchev, spanning the years 1926 to 1928. It presents observations on the critical reception of this stage in their biographies, the relationship between the cultural geography of Italy and the poetics of their works, and the logic of the translation dialogue facilitated by the poet and translator A. Dalchev. The article also includes visual illustrations outlining the main routes of the two authors‘ creative engagement with Italy. The research establishes the connection between the aesthetic pursuits of the Dalchev brothers and the Italian cultural tradition. It highlights how they not only became familiar with key phenomena and examples from the history of art, cultural studies, and philosophy, but also actively participated in the powerful artistic movements of the 1920s, leaving a lasting mark on the development of the cultural ties between Bulgaria and Italy.

История чувашской живописи в искусствоведческой литературе: нарративный дискурс

The purpose of the study is to obtain a complete historical picture of the development of Chuvash painting based on the publications of Chuvash art historians. The scientific novelty is due to the fact that for the first time the study covers the entire volume of publications on the topic, including modern ones. The article will consider scientific and popular scientific publications, which include monographs and articles published in scientific collections and special journals. The review of publications by researchers of the fine arts of the republic is based on the principle of historicism, which allows us to trace both the development of painting in Chuvash art as a type, and the evolution of art criticism as a science. For the first time, the material will be considered in the chronology and context of historical events.

“Let Our Camp Be Pure”: The Views and Personality of Mordechai Narkiss, “The First Hebrew Curator,” Through His Critiques of Writers on Jewish Art in the 1920s–1950s

Abstract Mordechai Narkiss (1897–1957), the first and long-serving curator of the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem, was a pioneering scholar in Jewish art history. His significant contributions to the field are epitomized by his insightful critiques, written in Hebrew, of the leading scholars in his era. Narkiss’s rigorous reviews, reinforced by his deep immersion in Jewish tradition and extensive knowledge of the visual arts across various cultures, adeptly identified errors, unfounded assumptions, and methodological shortcomings. He underscored the importance of a solid foundation in both Judaism and art history. This article explores six of Narkiss’s critical reviews of seminal works in the field: Karl Schwarz, Die Juden in der Kunst (1928), Cecil Roth, The Casale Pilgrim (1929), Ernst Cohn-Wiener, Die jüdische Kunst (1929), Rachel Wischnitzer, Symbole und Gestalten der Jüdischen Kunst (1935), Franz Landsberger, Einführung in die Jüdische Kunst (1935), and Jacob Pinkerfeld, Synagogues of Italy (1954). It elucidates the complexities and debates within Jewish art historiography, highlighting Narkiss’s pivotal role in both critiquing and shaping scholarly discourse and emphasizing the ongoing relevance of meticulous research in Jewish art history.

The Portrait of Elisabeth Braderic by Pieter Cristus: A Holistic Multidisciplinary Study

ABSTRACT The Adornes Domein, a preserved medieval family estate in Bruges, houses the Portrait of Elisabeth Braderic, which underwent an extensive multidisciplinary investigation in 2024. This portrait of a prominent patrician woman from fifteenth-century Bruges has long intrigued art historians, sparking numerous hypotheses. Due to its extended absence from public view, questions arose regarding its authenticity, casting doubt on whether it was an original portrait or a copy after a lost original. Recently rediscovered, the portrait was subjected to several technical analyses, including MA-XRF, macrophotography, and infrared reflectography by the International Platform for Art Research and Conservation (IPARC), as well as Raman spectroscopy conducted by the Raman Spectroscopy Research Group at Ghent University. These were complemented by a comprehensive art-historical analysis. This article presents the findings from these diverse yet complementary analyses, unveiling a traditional palette of fifteenth-century pigments, a detailed portrayal of 1450s fashion, and the newly detected presence of a pentimento. The main conclusions of the study affirm that, despite some restorations and pigment discolouration, the portrait has remained relatively intact and was most likely painted around 1450 by Pieter Cristus. This hypothesis, previously suggested in earlier studies, has now gained compelling corroboration.

Five Algerian postcards: a brief history of ‘Images Populaires’ in Maghribi chromolithography

ABSTRACT This article provides a historical introduction to chromolithographic printing in the Maghrib, paying special attention to the role of print in the spread of vernacular iconographies and figurative forms of Islamic art. I focus on five postcards – all produced in Algeria before 1928 by Éditions Bonestève – whose vibrant illustrations depict a variety of figures, creatures, and narrative scenes. They act as windows onto a huge visual archive of printed matter from the 19th and early 20th centuries that remains understudied in both the literature on colonial visual culture and Islamic art history. Perhaps due to their explicitly religious iconography, what is often overlooked about these chromolithographic images is how they were co-produced by European and North African actors and consumed by diverse markets of Muslims and non-Muslims alike; understanding them as fundamentally hybrid is crucial to appreciating their full mobility, their widespread aesthetic and political influence, and their ability to be read in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. Ultimately this article challenges the dismissive label ‘images populaires’, while also asking whether a new reading of certain images as ‘popular’ and ‘Islamic’ is in fact possible if we look to their historical (re)appropriations within different communities, geographies, and political or artistic movements.

Book Review - MONA MOMESCU, EDUARD ANDREI, Risipitorul de talent: Ilie Cristoloveanu, pictor și filolog în România și SUA [The Prodigal Prodigy Ilie Cristoloveanu, an Artist and Philologist in Romania and the USA], Bucharest, Paideia, 2022, 522 p., with ill.

Ilie Cristoloveanu (1893-1964), an artist trained in fine arts in the Belle Époque Romania, has recently made the subject of a consistent monograph written by philologist Mona Momescu and art historian Eduard Andrei. The artist’s archive and quasi-complete donation of works (about two hundred paintings, sketches, drawings, portraits), were identified in 2021 at the Romanian National Museum of Art in Bucharest. They came to the museum’s collection after a last-minute decision of the artist’s late wife Olga Cristoloveanu – herself an art lover, a soprano and her husband’s muse – to donate them in 1977 to a Romanian museum, against her husband’s anti- Communist will. Olga Cristoloveanu, a voluntary character, outlived her husband more than two decades and tried to leave his inheritance to Columbia University, New York, where her husband had lived and worked. Eventually, she donated the works to probably the most visible museum in Romania, which now appears to have been a wise decision, as it offered the artworks better visibility and recognition. The volume also includes a consistent corpus of images taken after the main assets of this archive.

Theory and practice of pictorial avant-garde in the creation of the Ukrainian artist David Burlyuk

Modeling the theory of the Ukrainian pictorial avant-garde based on the study of the theoretical views of avant-garde artists is an urgent scientific task of art history. The theory of the avant-garde unites a number of concepts of co-existing artistic currents with its ideals of the human creator and constitutes a certain integral essence of various aesthetic and artistic features. Avant-garde art, as the art of a new and unknown future, needed a theoretical basis for explaining the nature of artistic creation, interpreting it as a synthesis of the conscious and unconscious, the role of the artist and the viewer in their dialectical unity, the importance of the artistic process in social progress. Davyd Burlyuk became a bright follower of the ideas of the avant-garde, which stood out in addition to artistic creativity and its theoretical justification. The Ukrainian avant-garde is built on David Burlyuk’s concept of movement and change. At the center of the artist’s theoretical views is the creative personality with its freedom of choice of individual self-expression. The artist’s views on the essence of avant-garde art became the theoretical basis of the avant-garde in the crowd of traditional ones, which allowed the new art to occupy its own separate place. David Burlyuk’s theoretical canons for the construction of the composition of the work by the method of shifted construction, multiple perspective, texture, color space, free drawing are the basis of the creation of a new pictorial language, new aesthetics and the reconstruction of the artistic space of culture and a contribution to its development. The formation of the worldview basis of the artist’s creativity took place on the basis of the traditions of his own national culture in organic unity with the European trends of renewal of the artistic space, which is a significant contribution to the development of the world avant-garde.

The Impact of Historical Art Movements on Medicine

Art and medicine have long influenced one another, with historical art movements shaping not only aesthetic trends but also conceptions of health, disease, and human anatomy. This paper examines the intertwined evolution of art and medicine across pivotal historical periods, highlighting the Renaissance’s focus on anatomical accuracy, Romanticism’s emotional engagement with the human condition, and Modernism’s reflection of trauma from warfare and disease. The analysis considers how visual representations, from anatomical sketches to symbolic portrayals of illness, have impacted public health perceptions and medical education. Additionally, the study examines the therapeutic uses of art in contemporary settings, underscoring the psychological benefits of art therapy in clinical care. By tracing these influences, this paper sheds light on art’s role in shaping healthcare practices, patient experience, and medical ethics, while advocating for continued interdisciplinary collaboration to enhance medical humanities and patient-centered care. Keywords: Art and Medicine, Historical Art Movements, Renaissance Anatomy, Modernism and Trauma, Art Therapy.

계룡산국립공원 내 석조미술의 특징과 미술사적 의의

Gyeryongsan Mountain has long been recognized as an important mountain on the Korean Peninsula, as it was chosen as one of the five mountains of the Unified Silla Dynasty. Therefore, it was designated as a national park in 1968 . Gyeryongsan National Park has a considerable amount of stone art associated with temples and tombs, with the ones related to Buddhist beliefs predominating. The Dangganjiju, Stone Pagoda, and Budo, which were handed down to Gap-sa Temple, Donghak-sa Temple, and Shinwon-sa Temple in the national park, are representative of such stone art. From this viewpoint, it can be said that Buddhist stone art forms the center of the stone art history in Gyeryongsan National Park. From a timeline perspective, the Buddhist stone art in Gyeryongsan National Park shows a development process that is in line with the flow of stone art history in Korea. Each piece of stone artwork is believed to reflect the trend or culture of the time in which it was produced. However, although Gyeryongsan Mountain has long been recognized as an important mountain, stone artworks that are certain to have been created during the Three Kingdoms or Unified Silla Period have not been identified, as in other regions or cultural zones. It is expected that stone art related to this period will be excavated in the future.

Творчеството на художника Борис Денев за рубриката „Нашият дневник“ на вестник „Слово“ от 30-те и началото на 40-те години на ХХ век. (По повод 140 години от рождението на твореца)

Among the significant figures of our cultural and artistic history from the first half of the 20th century, the great Velikо Tarnovo artist Boris Denev (1883–1969) stands out – a prominent master of landscapes, of numerous military sketches, studies and countless drawings. Against the multiple and diverse fields in which he appeared during his life, his works, revealed on the pages of our periodicals published until the Second World War, remain out of the researcher’s attention today. “Slovo” newspaper (1922–1944) was among the longest-running Sofia dailies publications, with a significant role in the life of the intelligentsia. It was to it that Denev dedicated a significant part of his creative life fore more than a decade. The object of examination in the text is his writing and at the same time his artistic work for the newspaper column “Our Diary”. Boris Denev’s approach to visualizing his own literary texts is traced. The artist's work is divided into three main thematic groups: nature; war and politics. The texts, accompanied by numerous illustrations, clearly show Denеv's personal attitude to both art and various spheres of life, to which he remained not indifferent throughout his artistic career. Studying the littleknown material from the pages of the newspaper “Slovo” and highlighting parallels and interconnections in the text-image relationship would form a completely different picture of the remarkable and unique personality of the artist Boris Denev.

Exploration of the Role of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Revolutionizing Art Education

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have become increasingly important instruments in the field of art education as information technology develops quickly, transforming the conventional art education approach. The present situation, benefits, difficulties, and potential development tendencies of VR and AR technologies in art education will be investigated in this study. By means of literature analysis and case studies, this paper presents the fundamental ideas of VR and AR technologies together with their several uses in art education, namely virtual museums, interactive art production, art history instruction, and distant art cooperation. The research examines how these technologies might improve students’ immersion, raise their learning motivation, and encourage innovative ideas and multidisciplinary cooperation. Practical application concerns including technology costs, content production obstacles, user acceptance, privacy, and ethical questions also come under discussion. At last, the article offers ideas and suggestions to help VR and AR technologies be effectively integrated into art education through teacher training, curriculum design, technology infrastructure development, and multidisciplinary cooperation. This study offers useful advice for teachers of art as well as important references for legislators and technology developers working together to further the creative growth of art education.

Music – Recording – Aura: Marginal Notes on the Debate between Adorno and Benjamin and on Adorno's Fragmentary Theory of the Gramophone Record

AbstractThere is hardly another Frankfurt School treatise on art theory today which is as much discussed and quoted as Walter Benjamin's notable “artwork”-study. This text has become a mandatory reading; however, it has been largely overlooked by musicologists. Benjamin developed his theory in connection with the visual arts: it is only the image that carries the aura, traveling through time and space and is saturated with historical substance. Benjamin remained seemingly uncertain about the place and role of the sound (and the music) in the historical process of losing the aura. Among the three surviving versions of his study, the first one posited a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the reproduction of sound and the paradigm shift that affects art as a whole, while in the third version, this connection is vanishing. It is generally known how challenging Benjamin's study was to Adorno's ideas on art theory. Adorno tried to deny the positive value of the change that Benjamin described. He raised doubts about the constitutive role of “reception in the distraction” in his famous “Fetish-Character” study. The “distracted perception,” the “atomistic hearing” dissociates the unity of the work. Adorno wanted later to preserve the validity of the “auratic work” and its derivatives that he called “critical works” (for example, in the famous footnote 40 of the “Philosophy of New Music,” or in the 1950s, when he faced efforts aimed at the radical erasure of the musical context, and for example, he classified Křenek's works written in the 1920s as productive forms of loss of aura). According to these, it is difficult to place the technical work of art on Adorno's aesthetic value horizon. This makes his writings on gramophone recordings or the relationship between music and mediality so interesting. Focusing on the discussion of Benjamin and Adorno, this presentation tries to find an answer to the following questions: how can the paradigm shift in art history (and art ontology) described by Benjamin be interpreted in relation to music? And what does this imply about the relationship between the “artwork of music” and the sound recording?

Intertwining of History and Reality: An Exploration of the Creation of Wang Yingsheng’s “The Return of Hong Kong”

This article aims to delve into the background, process, artistic techniques, and cultural significance and social impact of Wang Yingsheng’s important artistic work “The Return of Hong Kong.” Through an analysis of Wang Yingsheng’s artistic style, combined with a detailed interpretation of “The Return of Hong Kong”, this article reveals how Wang Yingsheng integrated his personal artistic pursuits with significant historical events to create a work that is both characteristic of the times and full of artistic appeal. Simultaneously, this article explores the position of “The Return of Hong Kong” in the history of Chinese contemporary art and its influence on Chinese culture.

ON THE “CATECHISATION” OF THE THEATRE GENRE IN M. GLINKA’S WORKS. THE OPERA A LIFE FOR THE TSAR. Dedicated to the 220th Anniversary of the Composer. Essay I

The essay continues the discussion about the specifics of Russian musical theatre, which was started about two hundred years ago by V. Odoevsky and in which several generations of art historians have already participated. We are talking about the content of the “new direction in art”, according to Vladimir Odoevsky, which appeared and headed the world musical culture in connection with the name of the Russian genius, M. Glinka, the author of three theatrical works: the operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) as well as music for the tragedy Prince Kholmsky (1840). Let us say in advance that the last of the named works, despite its enduring artistic value, has not yet been included in the university curriculum for training musicians. The performance of this work in concerts is also a great rarity, given that the music to the tragedy Prince Kholmsky is, in essence, the first Russian program symphony, a “symphonic miracle”, as P. Tchaikovsky called it. In several essays, we will consider the three named works in detail: the dramaturgy of the libretto and the features of musical expression, the formation of the images of the characters. All these special issues will be studied in their relation to the Christian world-view, which has been, in our opinion, the main “marker” of Russian art at all times of its existence. This idea, although it is more and more pronounced these days, is still not assessed seriously enough in the scientific humanitarian sphere; it is considered most of all from the aesthetic side, only abstractly touching on the dramaturgy and the musical language of the works, in our case — ​operas and music for theatre. In fact, it is precisely the laws of the spiritual life of man, which underlie the world-view and behaviour of a Christian, that directly determine the logic of the theatrical action structure. Moreover, they explain the content of the libretto and music, constituting that very “novelty” designated by V. Odoevsky in connection with M. Glinka’s theatrical creative work.

Making a Case for Ebony

Abstract This essay makes a case for assessing the significance of material and labor in the context of the global history of early modern art, through an analysis of a single case or cabinet dated to the second quarter of the seventeenth century: an imposing ebony chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl created by Herman Doomer (1595–1650), a contemporary and compatriot of the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). The essay endeavors to address the place of enslaved labor in Dutch seventeenth-century taste that favored foreign goods and materials.

Between the Archive and the Feed

This article discusses feminist performance and internet art practices of the 21st century through the lens of Boris Groys’s theory of innovation. It analyses works by Signe Pierce, Molly Soda, and Maya Man, to position practices of self-documentation online in exchange with feminist art histories of performance and electronic media. The text proposes that the discussed contemporary art practices fulfil the process of innovation detailed by Groys through a process of re-valuation of values via an exchange between the everyday, trivial, and heterogenous realm of social media (‘the profane’) and the valorised realm of cultural memory (‘the archive’). Using digital ethnography and contextual analysis, framed by the theory of innovation, the text introduced ‘content value’ as a feature of contemporary art on the Internet. The article demonstrates how feminist internet art practices expand on cultural value through the realisation of a process of innovation via an intra-cultural exchange between the feed and the institution.

Monumental Artworks as Difficult Heritage

Abstract In 1936, Benito Mussolini invaded and occupied Ethiopia. The following year, he declared that Sicily represented „the geographical centre of the Empire“. This new Fascist empire and Sicily’s role within it gave rise to numerous interventions into the island’s urban landscape, from renaming streets and installing commemorative plaques to commissioning monumental colonially-themed artworks. It is on this last category that the present article focuses, examining three such works: two frescoes by Alfonso Amorelli for a privately-owned shopping arcade in Palermo; a mosaic by Michele and Basilio Cascella for a train station in Messina; and a series of frescoes by Gino Morici and Pippo Rizzo for the reception rooms of the local government headquarters in Ragusa. The article explores both the genesis of these works and then, primarily, the factors that have influenced their reception from the end of the Fascist regime in 1943 to today, considering the visibility of the works to the general public; their perceived quality and the artist’s reputation among art historians and critics; and the political and historical moment. Ultimately, the article asks to what extent these artworks should be regarded as examples of „difficult heritage“ and what the management of them in postwar Italy can reveal about memories of Fascist colonialism today.