Early Depictions Research Articles

A ‘sea monster’ depicted in the 1585 map of Iceland may exemplify spy-hopping behaviour in cetaceans

While there is a long history of misidentifying whales as sea monsters, historical maps and anecdotes can provide early depictions and descriptions of cetacean biology. For example, the map of ‘Islandia’ [Iceland] reproduced by Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) in numerous printings of his atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum has an array of sea monsters, including the ‘Staukul’, that was said to stand upright out of the water for extended periods. This may be the earliest portrayal of spy-hopping, a common behaviour in which whales elevate themselves above the water to observe their surroundings.

Zoffany’s ‘monkey’ and other early depictions of the western hoolock gibbon

The animal included in Johan Zoffany’s painting Claude Martin and his Friends ( c. 1786) is here identified as a male western hoolock gibbon ( Hoolock hoolock ( Harlan, 1834 )). Other early images of the animal made in India and elsewhere are discussed, including those commissioned by Francis Buchanan Hamilton at the Barrackpore Menagerie, Bengal. The scientific description of the species by Richard Harlan, made belatedly and in North America, is discussed, as is a possible route by which the individual depicted by Zoffany could have reached captivity in Lucknow far from its native habitat in north-east India.

Early depictions of deficit of hand extension in the Gospels and art.

Early depictions of deficit of hand extension in the Gospels and art.

Plotting and characterisation in Sophie Hannah’sThe Other Half Lives: a cognitive stylistic approach

Abstract(Sophie Hannah’s. 2009.The Other Half Lives. London: Hodder).The Other Half Livesboth complies with, and departs from, the crime fiction formula or text schema. It features a mystery the specifics of which are unravelled non-chronologically, while its numerous crimes and non-ideal criminals and victims disrupt readers’ world schemas and help enable its surprising effects. Not unlike such fiction, the story’s early happenings feature late in the telling, while many happenings are given from different character perspectives. Both of these help unsettle narrative perspective, and generate suspense, mystery, and readers’ later repairing and replacing of frames. Focalisation and the working and reworking of killing characters’ early depiction are techniques also enabling foreshadowing and misdirection, for readers’ sympathies and prejudices to be manipulated accordingly, and for surprise revelations to prove effective, even when a surprise ending is – given the nature of this genre – only to be expected.

Added value of 3D THRIVE (T1-weighted high-resolution isotropic volume examination) MRI pulse sequence in the detection of bony erosions of sacroiliac joints in patients of spondyloarthritis.

Early depiction of bony erosions in sacroiliac (SI) joints increases the diagnostic accuracy of spondyloarthritis. The new 3D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequence THRIVE (T1-weighted high-resolution isotropic volume examination) can depict cartilage erosions in sacroiliac joints. The aim of the study was to compare the diagnostic capacity of the new MRI sequence 3D THRIVE (T1-weighted high-resolution isotropic volume examination) with the routinely used T1 TSE pulse sequence in the depiction of structural erosions in sacroiliac joints by using MRI sequence zero echo time (zero ET) as a reference standard. Seventy five adult patients were included in this study. They underwent MRI sacroiliac joints examination using routine T1 TSE and STIR pulse sequences with the addition of the new 3D THRIVE and zero echo time (zero ET) sequences. Images of T1 TSE, 3D THRIVE, and zero ET sequences were evaluated by 2 radiolo-gists separately for the detection of sacroiliac joints erosions, then a comparison between T1 TSE and 3D THRIVE sequences was done using a CT-like image MRI sequence zero ET as a reference standard. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for each sequence were calculated by the 2 readers. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 3D THRIVE were higher than those of T1 TSE for reader 1 (sensitivity: 94.5% vs. 86.2%; specificity: 93.4% vs. 85.1%; and accuracy 95.2% vs. 88.5%) and for reader 2 (sensitivity: 93.3% vs. 79.9%; specificity: 94.7% vs. 86.2%; and accuracy 95.8% vs. 82.1%). Using CT-like image MRI sequence zero ET as the reference standard, 3D THRIVE pulse sequencing of the sacroiliac joints has much better diagnostic value in the depiction of bony erosions in patients suspected having spondyloarthritis as compared to the routinely used T1 TSE sequence.

Hunting grounds for painters

This article focuses on the intersection of the hunt and art as it is reflected in three early modern depictions of artists as successful hunters: Gabriel Metsu’s Hunter getting dressed after bathing, Ary de Vois’s Self-portrait as a hunter, and Rembrandt’s A dead bittern held high by a hunter. These three self-referential paintings show different ways in which the hunt and dead animals were used to characterise artistic practice, and to what extent they were underpinned by the semantics of other forms of ‘the chase’: the pursuit of love, knowledge, and power.

Representations of Indian ascetics: from Johann Martin Honigberger’s memoir to early twentieth century Romanian newspapers and journals

In recent times, Indian ascetics have become pop icons due to the influence of visual entertainment media. Outside their country of origin, they are often negatively stereotyped to foster derogatory understandings of the Others and their cultures. In this paper, we will focus on representations of Indian ascetics. Starting with their early depictions in the memoir of the Transylvanian physician Dr Honigberger, we will examine their representations in Romanian newspapers and journals. In order to account for Romanian interest in ascetics from a faraway land, this paper will take into consideration the historical developments that led to the growth of European interest in them. Through a comparison between nineteenth century British (Osborne 1840) and East-European (Honigberger 1851, 1852) writings on Indian ascetics, we will try to understand whether conceptualization of Indian ascetics in Romanian-speaking territories differed in any way from that of the British colonizers in India. The paper will then move on to examine how the Romanian press conceptualized these ascetics. Evidences point to the fact that the Romanian press became interested in Indian ascetics, erroneously generalized as fakirs, from ca. 1900 to 1940. Analysing Romanian journal and magazine articles on Indian fakirs, which till now remain untranslated into English, this article will try to show how the Romanian press conceived of the ascetics of a faraway country. Our research methodology is based on text analysis, relying on a broader cultural perspective. For the purpose of this paper, we have selected a series of article samples, taking into consideration diversity in terms of regions (southern Romania and Transylvania), as well as the most relevant period (1906-1935). The interest in Indian sadhus and their doings basically emerged starting with the mid-nineteenth century. Yet over the following decades accounts have changed in terms of focus. While nineteenth century authors were primarily concerned with the physical aspects of their work, texts written in the first decades of the twentieth century suggest that journalists and writers generally looked at the more surprising and entertaining side of fakirs’ actions. Finally, the paper suggests why Romanian press lost interest in Indian ascetics after the 1940s.

Plaques Portraying Late Porcelain Production in Jingdezhen

Although there are many illustrations of porcelain production in Jingdezhen before the mid-nineteenth Century, late handcrafted porcelain production scenes are unknown. Here, I describe a recently discovered set of seventeen handcrafted porcelain plaques datable from the end of the nineteenth to the first part of the twentieth century which fill in that gap. These plaques are unique in that they are three dimensional, carved rather than molded, and sagger production is emphasized, a characteristic not found on earlier depictions. Furthermore, Chinese script on each plaque describes the step(s) of porcelain production portrayed. In summary, these plaques are not only additive to previous depictions of Jingdezhen porcelain production but historically significant in that they portray a later date than those described earlier.

Psychoanalytic Readings of Hawthorne's Romances: Narratives of Unconscious Crisis and Transformation by David Diamond

Reviewed by: Psychoanalytic Readings of Hawthorne's Romances: Narratives of Unconscious Crisis and Transformation by David Diamond Magnus Ullén David Diamond. Psychoanalytic Readings of Hawthorne's Romances: Narratives of Unconscious Crisis and Transformation. Routledge, 2021. 191 + x pp. £120.00 (hardback). In contemporary Hawthorne criticism "[c]lose reading and psychoanalysis are not in favor," David Diamond notes in the introduction to his own refreshingly unapologetic attempt to provide a Freudian reading of Hawthorne's four major romances. While fully aware that "a psychoanalytic investigation of a fictional character is a perilous matter" (10), Diamond nevertheless insists that a Freudian reading, carefully performed, can "bring the reader back to the texts that Hawthorne wrote and draw attention to the urgent moral and spiritual conflicts that envelop the protagonists, conflicts that underpin all movement toward human liberation" (17). Unlike the famous Freudian reading by Frederick Crews (1966), Diamond seeks to diagnose not Hawthorne himself, but his characters. He stresses that he approaches the texts as a practicing psychoanalyst rather than a literary scholar and is careful to hedge his claims accordingly. Even so, his explicitly recuperative aim suggests he is also keen to present his own mode of reading as something of an antidote to much recent Hawthorne criticism. This makes for an engaging study that thrives on its ardent engagement with Hawthorne's texts, even if it does not always convince. Diamond focuses exclusively on the four canonical romances, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun. References to the tales and sketches are few and in passing, with the exception of a passage from the 1835 sketch "The Haunted Mind," which is repeatedly advanced as proof that Hawthorne prefigures Freud: "In the depths of every heart, is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above, may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open" (Hawthorne 9: 306). [End Page E-1] According to Diamond, Hawthorne in this passage "drafts the broad outline of what would be central aspects of the Freudian topographic system set forth in The Ego and the Id: the division of the psychic territory of the id, and superego, and the mediating function of the ego" (4). He identifies, in each of the romances, a moment that repeats this early depiction of how "the hidden contents of the haunted mind may flood into consciousness" (23): this is "what Dimmesdale experiences in the aftermath of his encounter with Hester in the forest" (23); it is "what Holgrave experiences in his hour-long vigil with Jaffrey Pyncheon's corpse" (51); it is what Zenobia suffers when losing her "fortune and prospects for love" (82); and it is what makes Miriam signal to Donatello to kill the Model (110–11). In all cases, Diamond starts out from this scene when the unconscious is momentarily let loose, in order "to elucidate the dynamics of this critical moment and the transformation that result from it" (111). The first thing to notice about this approach is that it seems much less dependent upon psychoanalytic theory than Diamond lets on. One can disagree with Freud (or Diamond's understanding of Freud) and still find his discussion of the structural pattern he identifies rewarding. Diamond persuasively argues that critics have tended to overlook to what extent Hester's development in The Scarlet Letter is aided rather than impeded by Dimmesdale's actions. He believes that The House of the Seven Gables truly has a happy ending and that Coverdale, despite his protestations to the contrary, was never in love with Priscilla but with Zenobia. And he holds, finally, that The Marble Faun does not end "with the defeat of romance but by asserting its unique power to effect and transform" and that "there is every reason to believe that as an artist [Hilda] will fulfill the potential that the narrator finds in her" (135). Whatever we make of these judgments (I personally find myself agreeing and disagreeing in about equal measures), many readers will no doubt take delight in the...

Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities by Lisa Tatonetti

Reviewed by: Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities by Lisa Tatonetti Kai Pyle Lisa Tatonetti. Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. 296 pp. Paper, $25.00. In the past decade, scholarship in Indigenous feminisms, queer Indigenous studies, and Indigenous masculinities has flourished, including lively debate about the relationship between the three. Lisa Tatonetti’s book Written by the Body brings these three co-constituted yet unruly fields together in her wide-ranging analysis of what she terms “Indigenous non-cis masculinities.” Focusing on expressions of masculinity by Indigenous people other than straight cisgender men—women both cis and trans as well as queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming people of all genders—she powerfully argues that these expressions do not detract from Indigenous cis men’s masculinities but transform the concept of Indigenous masculinity altogether. By focusing on depictions of the body, erotics, and affect in various forms of Indigenous media, she develops the notion that these form “a somatic archive of Indigenous knowledge” (17). By the end of the book, she has forcefully shown how this archive of embodied knowledge can serve as a tool for decolonization, transformation, and the creation of new worlds. The book’s evidence encompasses a large array of historical material, literature, and film, beginning in the first chapter, which focuses on both real-life stories of nineteenth-century Indigenous women warriors as well as their earliest depictions in Native women’s writing. From there the book jumps forward to the late twentieth century with an analysis of the erotic in Native women and queer writers’ fiction and an investigation of the place of “big moms” in popular Native writing by Sherman Alexie, Craig Womack, and Louise Erdrich. Chapters 4 and 5 return to the nonfictional stories of Native women as portrayed in documentary films, particularly those who are queer or working in male-dominated spheres; Tatonetti revisits here her previous work on lesbian Ojibwe writer and activist Carole laFavor to demonstrate the impact laFavor’s work has had in Indian Country despite the lack of critical attention she has received. The final chapter addresses most directly the work of recent queer, trans, nonbinary and Two-Spirit writers and filmmakers, showing how they articulate what Tatonetti calls “an erotics of responsibility” that “move[s] beyond merely saying ‘we exist’” (219) into transforming [End Page 151] what Indigenous masculinity, femininity, and queerness actually look like. Although Indigenous masculinity serves as an organizing concept for the book, Tatonetti carefully avoids projecting any definition or even ascribing masculinity onto the Indigenous women and gender noncon-forming people she writes about. This is particularly noticeable in the chapter on “big moms,” some of whom Tatonetti notes are from matriarchal cultures where their actions and self-presentations are not outside the boundary of womanhood or femininity, while others do indeed move into what they themselves consider fields of masculinity. Instead of attributing masculinity to all these figures, her analysis foregrounds their engagement with the body, erotics, and affect to show that “gender is an embodied knowledge that Indigenous peoples use as a shield, as tool, or simply as play, every day” (8). Furthermore, she argues that Indigenous non-cis embodiments of masculinity are potentially central contributors to decolonization through the ways they denaturalize and undo cisheteropatriarchal norms that have been imposed upon and taken up by Indigenous communities. One of the most impressive things about the range of sources Tatonetti has brought together is her equal attentiveness to both high-profile figures of Native literature as well as to those whose work is less well-known. Zitkala-Sa and Louise Erdrich are comfortably placed alongside Carrie House and Carole laFavor, strengthening Tatonetti’s case for the widespread and diverse incarnations of an erotics of responsibility and Indigenous non-cis masculinities in Native literature. This abundance of sources anticipates any potential counterarguments that Indigenous non-cis masculinities are only a small side chapter in the larger story of Indigenous masculinity—counterarguments that Tatonetti hints toward having already received in the introduction. She deftly addresses these possible complaints by showing how Indigenous women and gender-variant people...

Defining Religion: Durkheim and Weber Compared

Emile Durkheim began The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life with an injunction: “In order to identify the simplest and most primitive religion that observation can make known to us, we must first define what is properly understood as a religion”. Almost simultaneously, Max Weber would begin the long section on the sociology of religion in his unfinished work Economy and Society by insisting, “To define ‘religion’, to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the study” (1978, p. 399). Durkheim’s insistence and Weber’s reticence are equally surprising. By and large, Durkheim’s writings are relatively sparing of definitions. He did not generally bother to define words that were already in common currency. “Religion” is unquestionably the most notable counterexample. On the other hand, Weber was far more scrupulous—one might even say obsessive—about defining terms that were not specifically his own, including “capitalism”, “class”, and “bureaucracy” to select only a few examples. Durkheim’s long disquisition on the definition of “religion” was as radically atypical of his modus operandi as was Weber’s avoidance. The question of religion’s definition provides a fruitful window into their opposing analyses of non-European societies as a means of characterizing European modernity, ways that derive in important respects from early modern depictions of “savages” and “Orientals”.

The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture by Samantha Baskind

Reviewed by: The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture by Samantha Baskind Cordula Grewe (bio) The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture By Samantha Baskind. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2018. 328 pp. Striding forward with unstoppable determination while cradling a blond girl asleep from exhaustion, "Superman breaks the wall!" With a startled Lois Lane clinging to his overly muscular biceps and a few vividly colored main characters by his side, the caped crusader leads a group of downtrodden survivors, a mass of grayish-blue shadows, toward a bright future that lies beyond our sight and their imagination. The image of the well-known superhero might be a surprise first encounter when it comes to the imaginary afterlife of the Warsaw Ghetto. But it aptly points to the ghetto's widespread presence in American visual culture and to the breadth of material explored in Samantha Baskind's engaging study, ranging from contemporary radio dramas to the unprecedented uprising of Warsaw's doomed Jews on April 19, 1943, to Joe Kubert's rattling graphic novel commemorating that day, his 2003 Yossel. Second in prominence as "a potent emblem of the war and Jewish life in Europe" (1) only to Auschwitz, yet by its nature more intricate in its richly textured sociocultural fabric and various forms of resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto had many facets, with an equally multifold kaleidoscope of reflections across media and mediums. With great sensitivity for the nuances of the life in the festering city within a city, and a determined advocacy to do justice to a moment in time that defies essentialist readings, Baskind sets out "to widen our understanding of the ghetto's legacy in the American consciousness" (7). The result is a reception and perception history that, written for a general as much as an academic audience, lives off a series of astute, often descriptive close readings. Drawn from high art and popular culture alike, judiciously contextualized—historically, political, culturally—and approached with a keen awareness for the effects of "postmemory" (Marianne Hirsch) and the psychology of viewership, they "reveal much about identity, memory, and values in American Jewish life" (8). Unearthing the persistent role of the Warsaw Ghetto, [End Page 208] Baskind reveals it "as a recurrent tool for fashioning and refashioning Jewish identity" (13). Before World War II, Warsaw's Jewish community had been the largest in Europe, making up a tenth of Poland's population and a third of its capital. In November 1940, the occupying forces began to sequester the city's Jews in a ghetto of merely 1.3 square miles. By 1941, almost half a million people, including Jews from outside the capital, were trapped inside the now iconic brick wall that sealed it off from the outside. By then life in the overcrowded ghetto had become unbearable, marked by squalor, starvation, and widespread disease, dead bodies littering the streets, and orphaned children begging for a morsel of food or a moment of warmth. By the spring of 1942 liquidation began, and a year later, the numbers had shrunk to 60,000. Yet a second series of mass deportations in January 1943 provoked spontaneous resistance, and a small number of deportees escaped. Heartened by this unexpected success, the remaining inhabitants united across factions, and on Passover eve 1943, they mounted what has become a legendary revolt against the Nazi oppressors—proudly described by the commander of the Jewish Combat Organization, twenty-three-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, as "the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle" (14–15). It is this moment, and this vision of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as "heroic, empowering, and epic," that dominated the ghetto's earliest depictions and thus mark, with historical inevitability, also the beginning of Baskind's account. The initial artistic responses between 1943 and 1950, mapped out in chapter 1, were fueled by the need to rally support for Europe's persecuted Jews and to defy the caricature of the Diaspora Jew as bookish, passive, and weak, a person who—as an all-too-common canard claimed—went to the gas chamber like a "sheep to the slaughter" (15). As their coreligionists were herded off in cattle...

Some Medieval and Post-Golden Horde’s Towns of the Itil (Volga) and Syr-Darya Basins According to the Arabic and Chinese Maps

Research objectives: The earliest depictions of the towns of the Itil (Volga) and Syr-Darya Basins in medieval cartography are found on the Idrisi map (1154). The post-Golden Horde towns in these areas are found in the Jenkinson map and the Kunyu wanguo quan tu (Map of the Ten Thousand Countries of the Earth, 1602) by Matteo Ricci. In 1772, the Qianlong neifu yutu 乾隆内府舆圖 (Terrestrial Map of the Imperial Repository of Qianlong), which used modern cartographic techniques, enriched the geographic information of Central Asian countries and filled the gaps in contemporary European maps. Research materials: Influenced by the map of Al-Idrīsī’, the geographic gaps and blind spots on the European maps were filled, reconstructed, and connected with the new world geographic knowledge, forming a relatively complete world map. At the end of the Ming and early Qing dynasties, a large amount of overseas geographic knowledge was introduced by Western missionaries who entered China. Results and novelty of the research: The analysis of Arab, European, and Chinese maps made it possible to assess the degree of accuracy of their information about the post-Golden Horde cities of the Itil (Volga) and Syr-Darya basins. The authors managed to determine the geographical ideas of Arab, European, and Chinese geographers about Central Asia. Specifically, this article examined the place names of the Itil Basin (including Western Siberia) and the Qazaq Steppe (including adjacent regions) in the European-Russian imperial maps and in the Qing Chinese maps. Historical maps provide rich resources of knowledge that graphically encode information about the state of a fraction of the real world at a certain point in time.

The Art of Coining Christians: Indians and Authority in the Iconography of British Atlantic Colonial Seals, 1606–1767

AbstractBetween the founding of Jamestown in 1606 and the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, images of Indigenous men and women rose and fell on the great seals of the British Atlantic colonies. At the peak of this process, “the Indian” was the most persistent seal icon save for that of the arms and image of the monarch himself. This essay traces the sigillary Indian's illustrious career, as evolving imperial structures and legal debates about the nature of empire positioned and repositioned him (and her) in relation to just claims of authority. Early depictions reflected the settler colony concerns of private charter companies, justifying claims to land, not the rule over people. Royal colonies, by contrast, imagined Indians as a form of vassal, essential aids in the procurement of raw materials from the land. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the image of the Indian had yielded to classical motifs and representations of the land through maps, mirroring the increasing centrality of territoriality to British imperial thought. Taken together, seal images of Indians in the British Atlantic present the rise and fall of a visual paradox: depicting Indigenous people as symbols of authority over white settler colonies.

The Acidale test: Spenser’s jettisoning of Sidney as poetic authoriser

This article questions the commonplace that Edmund Spenser always depicted Philip Sidney as his poetic authoriser by finding undercurrents in works through 1595 and by reading the Mount Acidale scene in the 1596 Faerie Queene as jettisoning Sidney. This study calls into question the accepted version of Spenser’s role in the historical development of Sidney’s image. It demonstrates that Spenser rethought his relationship to Sidney and reimagined himself as a poet. This study also resolves the disjunction between earlier depictions of Sidney as poet and the Sidney-like qualities of the unpoetical Calidore.

Liver magnetic resonance relaxometry can provide useful markers for the assessment of right heart failure in dilated cardiomyopathy

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Introduction In dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) patients at risk of developing right heart failure (RHF), early depiction of congestive heart failure (CHF) is pivotal to inform about the hemodynamic status and tailor medical therapy. Purpose We hypothesized that increased liver relaxation times measured at routine cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), reflecting passive hepatic congestion, may be a valuable imaging biomarker to depict CHF. Methods The study cohort included DCM patients with (n = 48) and without (n = 46) right ventricular dysfunction (RVD), defined as a right ventricular ejection fraction <35%, and >45%, respectively, and a control group (n = 40). Native T1, T2, and extracellular volume (ECV) liver values were measured on routinely acquired cardiac maps. Results DCM with RVD patients had higher C-reactive protein, troponin I and NT-pro BNP values, and worse LV functional parameters than DCM without RVD patients (all p < 0.001). T1, T2 and ECV liver values were significantly higher in DCM with, compared to DCM without, RVD patients and also compared to controls [T1: 675 ± 88ms vs. 538 ± 39ms and 540 ± 34ms; T2: 54 ± 8ms vs. 45 ± 5ms and 46 ± 4ms; ECV: 36 ± 7% vs. 29 ± 4% and 30 ± 3%, respectively (all p < 0.001)]. Gamma glutamyltranspeptidase (γGT) correlated moderately but significantly with liver native T1 (r2 =0.34), T2 (r2 =0.27), and ECV (r2 =0.23) (all p < 0.001). Using right atrial pressure (RAP > 5 mmHg), as a surrogate measure of RHF, liver native T1 yielded at ROC analysis the highest AUC (0.906), significantly higher than liver ECV (0.813), γGT (0.806), liver T2 (0.797), total bilirubin (0.737) and alkaline phosphatase (0.561) [Figure 1]. A liver native T1 value of 617 ms showed a sensitivity of 79.5% and a specificity of 91.0% in identifying RHF. Density plots to discriminate between presence and absence of RHF are demonstrated at Figure 2. Excellent intra-/inter-observer agreement was found for assessment of native T1/T2/ECV liver values. Conclusion In DCM patients, assessment of liver relaxation times acquired on a CMR exam, may provide valuable information with regard to the presence of RHF.

Late Viking-Age Dragon-Slayers — Two Unusual Urnes-Style Brooches from Sjælland, Denmark

IN 2003 AND 2007, TWO UNUSUAL VIKING-AGE BROOCHES were discovered during metal-detector surveys on Sjælland (Zealand), Denmark. The brooches depict a horseman killing a serpent-like animal with his spear. The stylised beast is clearly associated with the Urnes style, dating to c ad 1050–1100, and the meaning of the motif is discussed in the context of early medieval dragon-slayer narratives and imagery. The acceptance and transformation of Classical and Byzantine iconographic traditions of equestrian saints has a long history in continental Germanic and Scandinavian art. In the Migration and Merovingian periods these images were incorporated into a pagan iconography, but the Urnes style was used in contexts which were definitively Christian, and it is possible that the two Danish brooches represent a very early depiction of Saint George in Scandinavia. Together with other finds, they add new perspectives to our understanding of the adoption of Christian iconography and narratives in Scandinavia.

Adolphe Duperly's rebellion prints and the historical moment of emancipation

ABSTRACT French lithographer Adolphe Duperly created three remarkable prints in 1833, between Jamaica's last slave revolt (1831–1832) and Emancipation (1834). He appropriated images from James Hakewill's Picturesque Tour of [ … ] Jamaica, calling his prints “occurrences,” a designation whose historical specificity contrasts with the timelessness of the picturesque. Duperly adds rebelling slaves, depicting them in ambiguous ways evoking both threat and celebration. Their figures are individualized, unlike earlier depictions of the enslaved as staffage figures or disciplined laborers. Colored by white paranoia, Duperly's images nonetheless suggest an incipient coming to terms with a changed relationship between free and formerly enslaved Jamaicans. His 1838 lithograph, Commemorative of the Extinction of Slavery, continues this trend. Unlike contemporaries Hakewill and Joseph Kidd, Duperly settled in Jamaica, establishing a business maintained by his family into the twentieth century. His commitment to the colony helps explain the unprecedented visibility given to black Jamaicans in his art.

Tracing the Royal, Romantic and Demonic Roots of the Nio Warrior Guardian

The Nio (or Kongo Rikishi 金剛力士) door guardian or dvarapala symbolic figures that guard the famed Todaiji Temple of Nara, trace an ancient history from primitive roots in the narrative figure of the Vajrapani, attendant of the Buddha Shakyamuni across Asia, and even further back. The origins of this figure remain relatively vaguely defined in comparison to the intrigue caused by contemporary and medieval applications of the figure, and this research clarifies some apparent historic connections evidenced through visual symbolism to connect the vajrapani to royalty through the vajra, through dvarapala positioning, associations with the vajra and other aesthetic traits. The study suggests a possible transformation from the channavira, a decorative chain associated with fertility, depicted in early versions of the vajrapani, with the evolved, inhuman musculature of the more modern Nio guardian figures. This study then branches from Grunwedel’s association of the vajrapani with Mara by positing a possible aesthetic connection between early depictions of Mara’s army (tempters through which the Buddha has to pass in order to achieve enlightenment) and the Nio through channavira symbolism, mudras, positioning and body postures of predominantly the Sanchi Stupa. The Nio figures, while seemingly outlying icons of Mahayana Buddhism, have found resounding significance in modern and historic martial societies and religious orders. Clarifying their branching ancestry from the earliest vajra bearers, along with their cultural and historic significance will inform a modern understanding of their symbolic value, and the cultural understandings of existential circumstances that they confer.

Assessment of Right-Sided Heart Failure in Patients with Dilated Cardiomyopathy using Magnetic Resonance Relaxometry of the Liver

In non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (DC) patients at risk of developing right heart failure (RHF), early depiction of congestive heart failure (CHF) is pivotal to inform about the hemodynamic status and tailor medical therapy. We hypothesized increased liver relaxation times measured at routine cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), reflecting passive hepatic congestion, may be a valuable imaging biomarker to depict congestive heart failure. The study cohort consisted of DC patients with LV dysfunction (i.e., ejection fraction <35%) with (n = 48) and without (n = 46) right ventricular dysfunction (RVD), defined as a right ventricular ejection fraction <35%, and >45%, respectively, and a control group (n = 40). Native T1, T2, and extracellular volume (ECV) liver values were measured on routinely acquired cardiac maps. DC+RVD patients had higher C-reactive protein, troponin I and NT-pro BNP values, and worse LV functional parameters than DC-RVD patients (all p <0.001). T1, T2 and ECV Liver values were significantly higher in DC+RVD compared to DC-RVD patients and controls, that is, T1: 675 ± 88 ms verses 538 ± 39 ms and 540 ± 34 ms; T2: 54± 8 ms versus 45 ± 5 ms and 46 ± 4 ms; ECV: 36 ± 7% versus 29 ± 4% and 30 ± 3% (all p <0.001). Gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT) correlated moderately but significantly with native T1 (r2 = 0.34), T2 (r2 = 0.27), and ECV liver (r2 = 0.23) (all p <0.001). Using right atrial (RA) pressure, as surrogate measure of RHF (i.e., RA pressure >5 mm Hg), native T1 liver yielded at ROC analysis the highest area under the curve (0.906), significantly higher than ECV liver (0.813), GGT (0.806), T2 liver (0.797), total bilirubin (0.737) and alkaline phosphatase (0.561)(p = 0.04). A T1 value of 617 ms yielded a sensitivity of 79.5% and specificity of 91.0% to depict RHF. Excellent intra-/inter-observer agreement was found for assessment of native T1/T2/ECV liver values. In conclusion, in DC patients, assessment of liver relaxation times acquired on a cardiovascular magnetic resonance exam, may provide valuable information with regard to the presence of RHF.