Iconographic Study Research Articles

Iranian Revolutionary Painting on Canvas: Iconographic Study on the Martyred Body

The figure of the martyred soldier is so ingrained in the Iranian public sphere that today, thirty years after the Revolution and twenty years after the cessation of the hostilities against Iraq, Iranian revolutionary painting on canvas keeps drawing most of its inspiration from the Shiite rhetoric of the martyred body and from the war. this article identifies and analyzes the iconographic forms of the martyred body in this pictorial production, which expresses primarily the concerns of the state. Relying on six works on canvas – painted before, during and thirty years after the Revolution – a scalable approach to the various representations of the martyred body is proposed, referring to Iran's history.

JEJAKARSITEKTUR DAN LOKALITAS KOTA MASA HIND lA BELAND A DALAMIKONOG~SGAMBARTEMPEL

The building architecture has at least some jUnctions, as well as the work of an architect form offruit, trail markers era, technology, as well as the locality of the city landmarks. In its representation issometimes manifested in the work of architectural photography, drawing, emblem of the region in theform of stickers and charming as a form of memento or souvenir.Through an iconographic studies, traces the architecture of a building can be traced how thephysical form, the elements that make up, philosophy, history and even the quot "spirit"; of the architectof the members live in buildings that formed and established.Keywords: Traces of Architecture, Image Paste, Local Identities City.

Landscapes, Vegetation, and Folklore in Late Medieval Art: An Iconographic Study Based on Selected Austrian and South German Panel Paintings

This article examines the symbolism and realism of naturalistically depicted flowering plants in Late Gothic art from Southern Central Europe. A large number of fifteenth- to sixteenth-century pre-Reformation panel paintings with a landscape context were studied in order to learn about their plant species, the contexts the plants were shown in, and their symbolism in connection to religious subjects. Paintings were studied in groups of 1) roadsides and execution sites and 2) fenced meadows, gardens and courtyards. In addition, the seasonality of depicted plants was observed in the scenes of the Passion cycle and in the scene of the Visitation. The realism of these landscapes was manifested in these pictures by showing plants growing in places they belonged to naturally or culturally, and in seasons of religious feasts that the paintings were connected with. However, this realism was not consistent, but combined with plant metaphors and symbols, neatly associated to the subject, and recognised by plants’ overall frequency, placement, properties and naming. Plant names in late medieval and early modern herbals appeared to be a particularly good tool for understanding their possible meanings in paintings, assuming that the first question the late medieval viewer could have asked was: ‘What is this?’ The religious art of the period is rich in links between natural and cultural environments; from it we can learn about the diversity of past vegetation as well as the spirituality and poetics of the society.

Style and Configuration in Prehistoric Iconography

The iconography of ancient art has to do with making propositions about what that art depicts. Stylistic studies, in contrast, make propositions about the sharedness of formal properties with other objects. These can be done separately. Although many iconographic analyses of ancient art proceed with little or no consideration of style, I argue that the two modes of analysis are interdependent. I offer a methodological case that stylistic analysis is logically prior to iconographic study in the domain of ancient art. This observation argues for a distinctively staged approach to the iconography of ancient objects, one in which detailed stylistic study is a necessary prerequisite to success in determining the referents of representations.

Imágenes de la sexualidad y potencias de la naturaleza: el caso de las esculturas fálicas chalchihuiteñas de Molino, Durango

Los discursos huicholes y hopis del placer, la fertilidad y la muerte entretejen un heterogéneo conjunto de elementos que se proyecta dentro de un campo semántico bien definido. A manera de hipótesis de trabajo nos interesa examinar la posible utilidad de una puesta en relación analítica de dichas concepciones con un conjunto de enigmáticas esculturas fálicas características de la llamada cultura chalchihuites, que en un espléndido juego de imágenes aluden principalmente al cuerpo humano, a la sexualidad y a los elementos de la naturaleza. Para efectuar el examen de algunas de las representaciones fálicas chalchihuiteñas se emplearon tres planos de observación complementarios: geográfica, histórica y socialmente. Dichos ejes de observación fueron el estudio iconográfico de una escultura fálica que carga una vulva procedente de Molino, Durango, así como los testimonios míticos y rituales de huicholes y hopis. La relación con estas sociedades indígenas resultó pertinente, debido a que retoman las imágenes de la sexualidad evocadas por las esculturas fálicas de Molino para adjudicarles funciones y sentidos contemporáneos. Asimismo, este ejercicio metodológico comparativo se apoyó en los descubrimientos recientes sobre la extensión del territorio chalchihuiteño y su función de puente de comunicación tanto ideológica como material entre los pueblos que habitaron la Sierra Huichola en el sur y la región de los indios pueblo en el norte.

El toro orientalizante de Porcuna (Jaén)

La escultura en piedra ha sido considerada como un elemento diagnóstico de la Cultura Ibérica. Sin embargo, recienteshallazgos y revisiones de piezas permiten apreciar que también se recurrió a estas manifestaciones iconográficas enépocas pre-ibéricas. Se presenta como ejemplo el toro echado de Porcuna como evidencia de la escultura orientalizanteen piedra en el área central de Andalucía, proponiéndose una cronología de fines del s. VII o inicios del s. VI a.C. Alanálisis iconográfico tradicional se añade una primera valoración como obra de un taller escultórico, analizando loscomplejos trabajos de diseño y manufactura aplicados en esta obra. Uno de los aspectos más interesantes es la presenciade elementos accesorios, probablemente de materiales valiosos. Proponemos asociar este toro a un lugar de cultosituado en la entrada de la antigua población de Porcuna.

Gis and 3D Models as Support to Documentation and Planning of the Baku Historical Centre (Republic of Azerbaijan)

The walled city of Baku, Icherisheher has been described as one of the best examples of a city that has retained its historical stratigraphy in over a thousand years, where the different influences and its evolution in time may be appreciated. In realising the Master Plan of the historical city, many problems were solved with different information technologies (GIS, DEM, DTM, etc.) for the survey and data mapping management during all the phases of the project. Initially the analysis was addressed to systematic reading of the documents collected during the iconographic study, verifying the process of deterioration that the historic city had suffered during various periods from the Khans to the Tsarist domain, and from the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Soviet period through to its independence. The entire central part of the historic city was analyzed, including not only on its special architectural and urban monuments, but even minor buildings, which are in part still intact, used as a basis for a digital map created in order to focus on Baku's historical evolution. A three-dimensional model of the historic centre of Baku was then produced as a basis not only for virtual navigation in real time, but as additional support for planning studies and to better understand the principles of various design choices. The request to produce a model in VRML format addressed the choice of better modelling methods. The combination of these different technologies and their application in the analysis of historical cities led to further considerations on data acquisition systems, standardization of formats, the use of survey instruments and the use of different software, etc., all fundamental elements to the define their correct use.

Transport in Medieval England

AbstractMedieval transport might strike the uninitiated as inherently primitive, but developments in the technology and infrastructure of getting goods and people around in the Middle Ages were constantly occurring. In the case of medieval England, they contributed critically to the commercialization in the country, particularly for the period from 1066 to around 1300. Nor was the story one of gradual and inexorable progress, but one of many twists and turns, as transport adjusted to major shifts in the social and economic environment, particularly when the Black Death struck in the middle of the 14th century. In broad terms, it appears that inland water transport developed quite significantly in the early medieval period (up to, say, 1300), but that land transport gradually improved to the extent that river navigation, while remaining important in certain parts of the country, especially the east, began an overall decline (although coastal shipping continued to be important). A key factor in this was the building of bridges, which were critical in integrating the road network. However, a particularly salient and as yet unexplained paradox was that, as commercial traffic increased, the legal and social framework for the upkeep of road and river transport networks seemingly relaxed, so that enforcement of the maintenance provisions of bridges and roads became more uncertain. Despite this, the excitement for travel continued to grow, for religious and other reasons, and began to be reflected in a growing popularity of maps, from displaying local institutions and communities to depictions of the world and cosmos (the so‐called mappae mundi). Thus, over recent decades, medieval English transport has become situated more securely within larger social, economic and cultural visions of the period, as documentary, archaeological and iconographic studies with strong transport orientations have become more common and inventive.

Mountain Last Judgment and Rural Apocalypse: Patterns of Imagery

John-Paul Himka, Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians. 368 pp., illus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0802098092. $75.00. Gleb Markelov and Arina Bil'diug, eds., Litsevye apokalipsisy Russkogo Severa: Rukopisi XVII-XIX vv. iz fondov Drevlekhranilishcha Pushkinskogo doma (Illuminated Apocalypses of the Russian North: 17th- to 19th-Century Manuscripts from the Pushkin House Archives). 172 pp., illus. St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Pushkinskogo doma, 2008. ISBN-13 978-5877810051. Both books reviewed here deal with regions that may be described as peripheries of the Orthodox world. In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, the Carpathian Mountains and the nearby foothills sheltered small monastic communities that were never important cultural centers, and their libraries were at most modest. Wooden churches in highland Rusyn villages did not boast of frescoes similar to those painted in the stone churches of Muscovy, Moldavia, and the Balkans. In peasant, mainly Old Believer, communities in the Russian North, the medieval traditions and religious imagery remained preserved for two centuries after the painful ruptures of the religious schism and reforms of Peter the Great. Both in the Russian North and the Carpathians, everyday religious experience, hopes, and, even more so, fears were imbued with eschatological imagery that is not always easy to decipher. The Last Judgment icons and the illuminated Apocalypses shaped and at the same time reflected the beliefs and the changing worldview of these communities and serve as one of the keys to a better understanding of medieval religious culture, including both political theology and popular demonology. Yet Eastern Orthodox eschatological imagery remains for historians largely unexplored territory, if not a terra incagnita. The principal Byzantine and Old Russian apocrypha, treaties, and homilies about the end of the world or the struggle between angels and demons were published as late as the 19th century. Still, the historical and cultural importance of the visual material contained in these complex sources is generally underestimated by scholars. In the last two years the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) in St. Petersburg and the University of Toronto Press have brought us two books that throw light on the eschatological imagery of the Carpathian region in the 15th-16th centuries and the Russian North from the 18th to the end of the 19th centuries. Although these books have almost nothing in common in terms of their analytical objectives and ambitions, both nonetheless provide valuable insights for analyzing the relations between ecclesiastical teaching and popular religion. Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians, by John-Paul Himka of the University of Alberta, is more than a highly specialized iconographic study. The author not only explores the Last Judgment imagery in the Carpathian region, tracing the paths and mechanisms of its development, but tries to answer a broader question: is it possible to speak about a specifically Ukrainian sacred art in the early modern period? Illuminated Apocalypses of the Russian North, by the Russian scholars Gleb Markelov and Arina Bil'diug, is not a scholarly study in the proper sense of the term but rather an album, accompanied by an essay that presents the modern reader with the tradition of manuscript Apocalypses written, painted, mediated, and transmitted from generation to generation by the Old Believers. The Carpathian tradition of Last Judgment iconography originated in the 15th century in the large region that includes present-day western Ukraine, southeastern Poland, and eastern Slovakia. The area was inhabited by Rusyns/Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Romanians. What is special about the Carpathians is that it has always been a border region, open to multiple cultural and religious influences from Moldavia, the Balkans, Poland, remote Rus' principalities, and eventually Muscovy. …

Preface

Preface Michael C. Jordan, Editor We are in an odd position in relation to visual images. Technologists and entrepreneurs have invented and produced powerful devices of various types that enable us to summon to appearance images both still and moving from almost anywhere at almost any time. We are saturated with images. But are we generally attentive and responsive to the spiritual quality of images, especially considering that the human capacity to imagine and artistically render and preserve images seems to have emerged for spiritual purposes in the first place? I am thinking here of the words of Jean Clottes, a French expert in prehistoric cave paintings, who, when contemplating the images drawn on the walls of what is now called Chauvet Cave in southern France more than 30,000 years ago, summarized how he regards human beings in relation to our remote ancestors who drew these images: "Homo sapiens is Homo spiritualis."1 These words indicate that we find the origins of our kind in the capacity for spiritual experience rather than knowledge. Clottes disavows for himself any specifically religious claims, but when considering what we might now call the remarkable collected words in numerous caves completed in the Paleolithic age by our remote ancestors, [End Page 5] it seems right that we can discern something like spiritual ancestry in relation to the unknown artists or religious celebrants who painted these images. The cultural differentiation indicated by the terms "art" and "religion" makes it necessary for us to imagine the fusion of these concepts in an undifferentiated form that probably prevailed for the makers and users of these images. We live in a time in which we possess the technological capability of discovering, studying, comparing, reproducing, and preserving these images to an extent never before possible. But the ability to discern the spiritual qualities and purposes of these images is probably rare. Although we might think that the extensive knowledge of ancient and contemporary religious doctrine and practice in Christianity would place us in a position of ready responsiveness to Christian religious images, there is reason to believe that this is not generally the case. This point is made clear by Dominican theologian and historian of art François Boespflüg, who has recently published a monumental history of artistic images of God in the Christian tradition titled Dieu et ses images (God and His Images), which he calls in the title of his introduction "Une histoire iconique de Dieu" (An Iconographic History of God).2 Boespflüg asserts that God seems to have departed from contemporary art, that in European art of the second half of the twentieth century depictions of the crucified Christ are almost the only images of God to be found and that these depictions generally seem disconnected from the essential Christian affirmation of Christ as the Incarnation and the Savior, and that generally those contemplating these images are not inclined to make the same declaration as the centurion who, while gazing at Christ on the cross, exclaimed: "Truly, this was the son of God" (484). But the purpose of Boespflüg's book is not to bemoan this current cultural condition, which may, after all, turn out to be temporary. Instead, he recognizes that a number of confluent conditions make an iconographic study such as his possible today, especially the accessibility of an enormous number of images from across long periods of history and the possibility of easy consultation among [End Page 6] experts facilitated by the Internet, and the development of the disciplines of art history and theology such that the former no longer need restrict itself to analyses of provenance and style and the latter need no longer rely exclusively on written documents and linguistic sources in seeking to understand theological truths. Nor is it necessary to subordinate an iconographic history to biographical, political, social, and economic strands of historical change—artistic images can be understood as expressions of faith, and however contested and even sometimes interdicted such expressions might be, they form their own pervasive history and exist in a kind of communal relation to one another in ways that are often independent of other strands of historical change. This iconographic...

Review of Barrick, W. Boyd, BMH as Body Language: A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew (LHBOTS, 477; London, New York: T&T Clark, 2008).

Review of Barrick, W. Boyd, BMH as Body Language: A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew (LHBOTS, 477; London, New York: T&T Clark, 2008).

The Uncreated Light: An Iconographical Study of the Transfiguration in the Eastern Church. By Solrunn Nes

The Uncreated Light: An Iconographical Study of the Transfiguration in the Eastern Church. By Solrunn Nes

Las pinturas murales de la iglesia de San Pablo de Cacha (Canchis, Perú)

Recientemente descubiertos por un equipo de restauradores, las pinturas murales de la iglesia de San Pablo de Cacha en la provincia de Canchis, en el sur peruano, han recibido poca atención académica. Este artículo ofrece el primer estudio iconográfico de los ricos murales, investigándolos a la luz de amplica relevancia histórica y cultural. Las pinturas murales fueron producidos en dos fases distintas: la primera corresponde a los principios del siglo XVII y la segunda fue llevada a cabo a finales del siglo XVIII. Este estudio considera los contextos sociales radicalmente diferentes en los que se pintaron estas imágenes y los diferentes significados que podrían haber transmitido a los feligreses locales durante estos dos momentos críticos de la historia colonial andina.

Viaje a la eternidad. El grupo escultórico del Parque Infantil de Tráfico (Elche, Alicante)

Several archaeological campaigns starting in 1972 followed the accidental finding of some Iberian sculptures at the north of the town of Elche. Among them stands the figure of a Sphinx in limestone carrying a male and a female figure. In this paper an iconographic study is performed, as well as an overview of the characteristics of the finding. The man is interpreted as the soul of a deceased, and the women as a representation of the goddess Tinnit, very popular in this area during Iberian times. The sphinx acts as a suitable transport for the journey to the underworld. These remains are understood in their regional and chronological context.

Personal Fate and the Planets: A Documentary and Iconographical Study of Astrological Divination at Dunhuang, Focusing on the "Dhāraṇī Talisman for Offerings to Ketu and Mercury, Planetary Deity of the North"

L'auteur de cet article s'intéresse à l'impact des croyances indigènes chinoises et des idées étrangères sur le croisement du bouddhisme ésotérique et du taoïsme. Il étudie les pratiques religieuses qui témoignent des liens entre astrologie et divination, des échanges entre l'astronomie occidentale et orientale, et du rapprochement de la magie taoïste des pratiques du bouddhisme ésotérique consacrées à éloigner ou à conjurer le mauvais sort. Le témoignage principal examiné est le manuscrit Dunhuang Ch. liv. 0033, « Talisman dhāraṇī pour l'offrande à Ketu et à Mercure, divinités planétaires du Nord », qui illustre une combinaison de rituels tantriques, de dhāraṇī, et de talismans taoïstes. En outre, l'auteur soutient que les croyances médiévales vis-à-vis de la constellation des divinités regroupent un ensemble d'influences religieuses, parmi lesquelles la notion de correspondance entre les hommes et le ciel, les idées taoïstes, et celles du bouddhisme ésotérique. Les théories et la technologie de l'astrologie occidentale ont été introduites en Chine par des astronomes perses, sogdiens et indiens au cours des dynasties Wei (220-265) et Jin (265-420). Ces premiers fondements ont alimenté un nouveau développement syncrétique au milieu de la dynastie Tang (618-907). La notion des Neuf luminaires a été transformée en concept chinois et assimilée aux croyances astrologiques traditionnelles et aux notions des fangshu concernant la conjuration du mauvais sort. Sous la dynastie Tang, les fidèles croyaient que le port de talismans et d'images de la planète qui leur était associée les aiderait à éloigner tout malheur provenant des cieux. Dans les peintures de Tejaprabhā bouddha et d'autres luminaires, on constate que les peintres chinois avaient développé leur propre façon de représenter la vénération des étoiles. Ch. liv. 0033 nous propose enfin un excellent exemple de l'interaction entre la culture occidentale et orientale et de l'intégration du bouddhisme et du taoïsme.

BMH as Body Language: A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When Not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew (review)

BMH as Body Language: A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When Not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew (review)

Archaeological Research and Conservation in the North of Mexico: A 100 años de su descubrimiento, Alta Vista (Alta Vista: 100 Years After its Discovery)

The review of 100 anos de su descubrimiento, Alta Vista (Alta Vista: 100 Years After its Discovery) by J. Humberto Medina Gonzalez and Baudelina L. Garcia Uranga analyses the contributions of this book recently published by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History, INAH) and the State Government of Zacatecas, Mexico. Being the result of more than twenty years of research in the field, cabi net and in archives of different nature in Mexico and the United States of America, this work represents a compilation of great relevance for the archaeology of northern Mexico because it provides an overview of all the conservation and restoration activities carried out in one of the most important archaeological sites of the region. A learned iconographic study stands out among the interpretative content of the book, which describes the history and meaning of the representation of eagles devouring serpents. This representation appeared as a decoration on several ceramics encountered throughout Alta Vista’s history. Finally, this volume brings together information regarding the conservation on the earthen architecture of the site, a history of interventions that goes back to the beginnings of the nineteenth century.

La nueva estela de guerrero de las Bodeguillas (Esparragosa de Lares, Badajoz) y el paisaje cultural del final de la Edad del Bronce en la Serena

In the first part of this paper the warrior stelae of The Bodeguilla is presented, it is a new exemplar found in Esparragosa de Lares (Badajoz), whose iconographic study not only enables the most features include the so-called “group Guadiana Valley” but also an advanced chronology, in the Late Bronze Age-Orientalizing Period. The work continues in a second part, with a valoration of what we know about the physical and cultural landscape of this horizon in the region of La Serena, offering a very open proposal on the diversity of paleoeconomical factors in protohistoric settlement. Although clearly rural, it is shown fully integrated in dynamics of interaction with other areas of apparently more dynamic, as the very fertile plain of the Guadiana.

BMH as Body Language: A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When Not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew

BMH as Body Language: A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When Not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew

Mapping the Literary to the Literal Image

In a paper read at the International SBL meetings inVienna, 2007, I discussed the relationship between the literary and literal image. Taking metaphor as the most prominent trope of biblical imagery, I concentrated on the relationship betweenmetaphors in theHebrew Bible and iconographic objects in the ANE. My preliminary conclusion was that while both are independent forms of communication which need to be understood in their own right, they nevertheless are linked to each other via the conceptualmetaphor and converge in the concept of what constitutes an image. Thus the literary and literal images can rightfully be related to each other as done liberally in iconographic studies that deal with exegetical issues. In the present study I would like to take the analysis of the relationship between the literal and literary image one step further. Metaphors of the divine in the Hebrew Psalter can be categorized in domains of main metaphors and their corresponding sub-metaphors. Deities as depicted in ANE iconography also exhibit certain sets of attributes which in turn classify them as the respective deity. A comparison of the HeavenlyWarrior metaphor in theHebrew Psalter together with its corresponding sub-metaphors, and iconographic depictions of the Storm- and Warrior-god Ba'al with their respective sets of attributes will try to answer the question as to how complex the level of interaction between the literary and the literal image can be established.