Italian Art Research Articles

The Lady with an Ermine – Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani: Research into Leonardo da Vinci’s painting materials and techniques

The Lady with an Ermine is one of the greatest masterpieces by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci from around 1489-1490, depicting Cecilia Gallerani, most likely at the time when she was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. This painting belongs to a group of four portraits of women painted by Leonardo along with the Mona Lisa, Ginevra de' Benci and La Belle Ferronnière. It was acquired by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski around 1800 in Italy. In 2012, a group of conservators and scientists from the National Museum in Krakow in collaboration with experts from various institutions in Poland and abroad conducted the sixth research campaign on the painting focusing on its technological aspects. Various techniques were applied to study the materials and methods employed by Leonardo, including technical photography, X-radiography, micro X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Physico-chemical analyses allowed to identify characteristic pigments employed by Leonardo da Vinci such as vermilion, iron-based earth pigments, lead-tin yellow, lead white, and ultramarine. The background was overpainted in black, most likely before its sale, in the 18th century. The original background most likely consists of an underlayer layer showing slight grey tone modulations obtained using iron oxide or hydroxide mineral earths. The absence of copper-based pigments in the background does not validate the hypothesis of an existing painting hidden under the black repainted zone. A dominance of lead white in brighter parts of the painting was noted, while tonal transitions were achieved using thin layers of an iron-based glaze in the sfumato technique.

Modernization of Thai Fine Art and Its Reflection in Thai National Monuments 1930s- 1940s

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of the modernization of art in Thailand on the reflection of the construction of the Thai national monument range in the 1930s to 1940s. The method used in this research is qualitative, with data sources coming from direct observation, interviews, and scientific documents. The result of this research shows that, the influx of western influence in Thailand indirectly influenced the modernization of the country's art culture. One of the triggers was the number of national academics who were sent to Europe to study, and returned to Thailand with a new artistic ideology. In addition, the influence of Italian artist Silpa Bhirashi also contributed to the modernization of Thai fine art. As it is known, he is one of the curriculum designers in Thai fine art schools and Silpakorn University. On the other hand in the political world, the modernization of Thai fine art was also influenced by the political policies of Marshall Phibunsongkhram who used art as a propaganda tool to unify the ideology of all Thai people.

“Looking Glass:” Reflections on Mirrors and Transparency as Devices for Representation in Visual Arts

Today the locution “looking glass” survives almost exclusively thanks to the extraordinary success of Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass. This expression underlines the ambiguity between the glass surface intended as a device through which we can see the world or as an actual object to be “looked at.” Apparently, the early Renaissance perspective window, thanks to the mildness of the Mediterranean climate, did not need any panes. And certainly, even when glass panes are there, they are usually not reproduced in painting. The glass main virtue is its transparency, which makes it almost invisible. Something similar happens with other “glasses” specifically made to look through them: the drinking glass and the lens. Glass panes appear to sight only when different practical needs come into play, as in perspective drawing machines, or when its transparency is contradicted by a precise action that compromises or denies it: when panes are broken, as in this enigmatic portrait of early XIX c., or voluntarily covered, like for a blackout, as in Duchamp’s Fresh Widow. Looking through the glass, looking at the image reflected in the mirror and, finally, looking at the glass itself, as a device for presenting and representing spaces, are three recurring attitudes in the work of Italian artists of the late 20th century, like Lucio Fontana and Luciano Fabro.

Museumskommunikation: Kulturspezifischer Wissenstransfer durch Audioguides

This paper presents a pilot study of audioguides concerning paintings from museums in Italy, Germany and Denmark. The study combines an analysis of speech actions based on categories from the theory of Funktionale Pragmatik with a frame-oriented analysis of knowledge relevant for understanding the audioguide texts, which can be assessed from the formulation choices made by the authors. The focus of the paper is on building a descriptive and analytical tool to identify characteristics of German, Danish and Italian art audioguides. The aim of the study is to establish first results to be substantiated in future work also concerning the receiver modelling (Hörer:innen-Modellierung) in the investigated audioguides and furthermore to see whether intercultural differences are visible in the texts. The study shows that the same speech actions are present in audioguides from different cultures, but that they occur in different proportions according to the specific culture. Along similar lines, it was possible to create a consistent coding system concerning types of knowledge conveyed in the audioguides that enables us to assess and compare the results of analysing the texts. This analysis, too, indicates intercultural differences.

Art Practices in Modern Culture

The purpose of the article is to analyse modern creative practices in interaction with cultural values. The research methodology includes scientific methods: analytical, structural-functional, generalising; comparative analysis techniques to reveal the specifics of modern creative practices from the perspective of the formation of cultural values. The scientific novelty of the work is based on the analysis of modern artistic practices. Conclusions. It is noted that creative practices influence the educational process with the preservation, reproduction, and formation of cultural values. Artistic practices are a complex communicative process, a connection between a person’s worldview and the environment, means of expressiveness of the arts and everyday life and customs. The versatility of modern creativity is noted with the involvement of synthesised projects, which have more opportunities to attract recipients. The complexity in the relationships between personality education and the formation of cultural values is noted. It is supported by the facts of a change in ideals in modern creativity, reaching the dialectical level of the art of negation, art showing different sides of human existence. Project of the Czech National Ballet with the organisation «Consent» – the ballet “A Streetcar Named Desires” with the problem of violence, changing approaches to education according to the dominance of ethical norms and values of certain groups of youth: respect for oneself, the world around us, loved ones, partners and friends; treating another person as oneself. Ballet by D. Neumeier based on the psychological drama by W. Tennessee “A Streetcar Named Desire” as an example of modern creativity in understanding violence and trauma from it. The modern discourse of art about norms and rules, socio-political relations and cultural values is examined using the examples of the original sculpture by D. Czerny “ Sycophancy” (2003, Prague); artistic project of the Italian theatre troupe “Malatheatre” on the occasion of the celebration of the 452nd anniversary of the birth of the Italian artist Caravaggio in the Church of San Michele Arcangelo. All examples are paralleled by memory studies by psychologists: J. Miller, J. Santa, C. Jung. It is noted that art practices help young people understand cultural values with the accents of the present. Keywords: artistic practices in modern culture, cultural values, art history, musicology, baroque music, ballet, psychology of perception.

A lay association as a client

Research into the Italian Liturgical Movement emphasised the pedagogical commitment of lay associations, rather than architectural innovation they eventually promoted. The case study presented here discusses a little-known case of ambitious architectural patronage promoted in 1952-53 by the main Italian lay association: the Italian Youth of Catholic Action (Gioventù di Azione Cattolica, GiAC). The winning design by architect Enzo Magnani, the first president of the Catholic Union of Italian Artists (UCAI), was rejected directly by Pius XII, probably as an indirect consequence of the worsening of the political fracture between the GiAC and the main branches of the Azione Cattolica, oriented towards explicit support for conservative and clericalist political positions, rather than ecclesial engagment and liturgical afflatus. The archives of Azione Cattolica Italiana (preserved by ISACEM in Rome) and some private archives allow a first reconstruction of the matter, which had been completely erased from the asssociation’s official history, and probably broke any possible link between associative patronage and liturgical architecture during the decades that followed.

Two unusual iconography: the Mocking of Christ and the Miracle of the Dress of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in an early fourteenth-century Majorcan altarpiece

The subject of this essay is the Passion Panel, a large painted panel from the early 14th century originally destined for the convent of Poor Clares of Palma de Mallorca. Historiography has always emphasised its Byzantinism and has often established its figurative origin in Central Italian art. Through an examination of the iconography of the Mocking of Christ present in one of its twenty-four scenes (in which a dancer with long sleeves, an ‘acrobat’ and musicians who mock him have a special significance) is highlighted the rarity of this codification in relation to Western pictorial productions. Instead, its attested presence in Macedonian wall painted cycles would make it possible to trace a hypothesis through which the author of the altarpiece could be classified as a Byzantine painter. Moreover, the identification of the third scene of the predella as the episode of the miracle of the dress of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, beyond highlighting this apparent iconographic unicum, makes possible to give more solidity to the hypotheses that see this work as the result of an Angevin commission

Hieronymus Odam, engraved gems and antiquarianism

This article is designed to recover and reconstruct the antiquarian, collecting, and documentary activities of Italian artist Hieronymus Odam (c. 1681–1740) in respect of engraved gems. Odam is primarily recognized as a painter, while his contribution to the development of antiquarianism and collecting of antiquities remains virtually unknown. Odam’s speciality was intaglios and cameos. The recently discovered drawings of gems in the Princes Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin, and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, as well as archival sources—Odam’s correspondence and two dactyliothecae (those of Pier Leone Ghezzi and James Tassie)—prove that he possessed a considerable number of engraved gems and was one of the experts in this particular field. But above all, Odam documented thousands of engraved gems, notably for Philipp von Stosch, in a very accurate and innovative way, straying from the traditional antiquarian approach. The co-operation between Odam and Stosch resulted in illustrations that were designed to show techniques of engraving and styles of the ancient masters, qualities that had not previously been addressed by antiquarians. In Odam’s and Stosch’s approach gems were treated as sources of evidence rather than as images useful for illustrating passages from ancient literature. Odam is a fine example illustrating the transformation of antiquarianism in the first half of the 18th century.

In stile italiano

Abstract This paper surveys cover versions of Italian hits in Spanish and German. Using autoethnographic methods, it offers a retrospective examination of the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America and Germany, reflecting on the influence of Italian artists on the Latin American and German Schlager music scenes.

‘WE WOULD TAKE THE SCREEN BY STORM’: FEMALE ANTIQUARIAN AGENCY AND THE CAPTURE OF ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PAINTING C 1830–50

This paper explores the work of Harriet Gunn (1806–69) who began making drawings of rood screens c 1830. With the help of her sisters Hannah and Mary Anne, Harriet produced approximately 250 drawings, a remarkable number considering that rood screens received very little attention at this period. This substantial body of work merits analysis not least because it constitutes the first serious attempt to visually document Norfolk’s painted rood screens and provides an opportunity to shed light on an overlooked episode of female antiquarian activity. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, this paper confirms the active role Harriet and her sisters played in recording, discovering and enhancing the understanding of English medieval painting in the mid-nineteenth century. It also considers the influence of Harriet’s father, Dawson Turner FSA (1775–1858), in encouraging a new appreciation of the art historical value of painted rood screens. Turner’s objectives are situated within the wider cultural context of emerging tastes for early Italian art and new developments in art historiography seen in the 1820s and 1830s. Harriet’s sophisticated understanding of rood screens is therefore interpreted as a response to the intellectual milieu in which she was immersed. The paper concludes by exploring how her work, and the knowledge it promoted, was disseminated through the cultural machinery of archaeological societies in the mid-1840s through printed publications, exhibition and display.

Diving into colours: A multi-analytical approach to a 16th century drawing by Gherardo Cibo

This paper gives account the first physical-chemical investigation of a drawing by Gherardo Cibo, one of the most autonomous and original Italian artists of the 16th century. A dilettante botanist, chemist, and draughtsman, Cibo developed the new visual practice of colour landscape drawing and left a series of notes devoted colour making theory and practices. In this study, one of Cibo’s most refined coloured landscapes on paper was analysed with a multi-technique approach involving several non-destructive analyses, such as preliminary macroscopic and microscopic observations, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), μ-Raman, and µ-Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopies. The analysis evidenced the presence of a preparatory layer made of lead white and a colour palette composed of both inorganic and natural organic pigments. Anglesite was identified in different colours, suggesting a generalized alteration process of the artwork associated to lead pigments, while the identification of lead chromate in some of the brown shades can be interpreted as a later retouching. Finally, some organic compounds were identified: Arabic gum, connected to the iron gall ink; collagen, probably adopted as a binder for some pigments; a fatty acid substance, possibly a wax; and a paint varnish mastic, most likely a surface finishing/pigment fixing or a late preservation treatment/retouching. These results, combined with historical and artistic information, allow a new understanding of the artist’s drawing practices and techniques.

From illustrating poems to creating a picture book: Creative collaborations with Italian author Anna Travagliati, Italian artist Serena Della Bona and US translator and editor Bristin Scalzo Jones

In this article, author Anna Travagliati explores her creative collaborations with artist Serena Della Bona and translator and editor Bristin Scalzo Jones, in the form of summaries of two projects: Presagi | Omens: A Collection of Illustrated Poetry in Italian and in English (2021), whose English translation was carried out by Jones, and their latest project, the picture book La Cavaliera e la Notturna | The Knightess and the Nocturne, an original story which reinterprets the familiar fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. A large part of the article consists of interviews conducted by the author with Serena Della Bona and Bristin Scalzo Jones, who detail their respective backgrounds, interests, professional practices and their views on collaboration and on creating picture books for a young adult and adult readership. These interviews centre feminist collaboration in both content and form, in so far as they allow this article to push back against masculine individualistic conceptions of authorship by providing a polyphony of female voices, spoken in their own words. The article is accompanied by two appendices which provide examples from both Omens and The Knightess and the Nocturne.

Projecting the Indeterminate and Enigmatic: The Painting of Marco Tirelli

AbstractCurator Antonella Soldaini describes the work of Italian artist Marco Tirelli. His enigmatic spatial speculations force us to abandon our usual optical protocols of assessing art, instead bidding us to enter a space of indeterminacy. Our unfamiliarity with the material presence in the work is conducted by the artist's mastery of light, shadow and penumbra, producing a sense of mystery and infinity.

S. Alpers. <i>The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century</i>

The review deals with the Russian publication of the 1980s’ bestselling study of art history, whose author polemises with Michel Foucault by invoking Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, and Jan Komenský. The core premise of Alpers’ book is a thesis about the decidedly describing rather than narrating character of the Northern Renaissance as opposed to the Italian model. In its reliance on the ‘optical’ method in order to create images (using a lens, a microscope, or a camera obscura), as opposed to the use of perspective by Italian artists, Dutch painters are not merely engaged in copying nature but instead depict the state of mind, ‘the storage of visual images.’ They also abolish the priority of the verbal over the visual described as ut pictura poesis. Among other topics, the author pays tribute to Rembrandt. She argues that his uniqueness comes from the fact that he dismisses both the lofty Catholic miracle of the incarnated Word and the humble Dutch faith in the world’s outer shell, and thus rejects not only the Dutch art of describing but also the Italian idea of narrative painting.

Traditional and modern pigments in Gino Severini's Swiss murals

AbstractBetween 1924 and 1947, Gino Severini decorated five churches in the Romand region of Switzerland with monumental religious wall paintings. This mural art played an important role in the Italian artist's career despite being mostly unknown and not easily found. The painting methods and materials of these modern Swiss murals were characterized by combining historical and archival research with onsite visual and scientific examination. Most pigments were identified with noninvasive methods integrating mapping techniques (i.e., technical photography and digital microscopy) with point analysis (x‐ray fluorescence and reflection FT‐IR spectroscopy). The results of these portable techniques were completed with SEM‐EDS, μFT‐IR FPA imaging, and μRaman analyses on micro‐samples which provided stratigraphic and compositional information to complement the noninvasive results. Overall, the data obtained show that Severini used both traditional pigments (e.g., Sangiovanni white and ochres/earths of various color) and modern ones, such as cadmium‐based pigments, with different painting techniques (e.g., zinc white was applied exclusively a secco). Apart from cerulean blue (cobalt stannate) and Naples yellow (lead antimonate) found only in two locations, the same set of pigments was documented in all of Severini's Swiss murals. The characterization of the artist's palette is important to understand the technical painting process followed by Severini, his interest on new painting materials available on the market and, at the same time, loyalty towards traditional painting methods, such as painting a fresco.

Disegno vero e disegno finto: truth and drawing in the 1970s

Filippo Bosco considers the work of Enzo Cucchi, Giulio Paolini and Francesco Clemente and other Italian artists practising in the 1970s, who, in various ways, critiqued drawing’s historical association with sincerity and truth.

COMPOSITION“KING ROGER” KAROL SHIMANOVSKY IN PRESENTING IDEAS BLESSING OF THE FAITH

The idea of worshiping Orthodoxy may have long hindered the recognition of the work in Poland itself, where Catholic religion became a component of national emblematics, although it premiered in Poland at the Warsaw Bolshoi Theater in 1926. But in the reference literature it is noted that “much greater success than in Warsaw was “King Roger” in musical Prague (1932) and later in Palermo in Sicily in 1949, where he was staged at the local Teatro Massimo with the participation of the famous Italian artists, in a re-enactment of Bronislaw Horowicz and under the direction of Mieczyslaw Mezheevsky”. And further the author of the same essay in the “Guide to the Opera” J. Kanski noted: “King Roger is an unusual opera. Unusual was already conceived in the imagination of the composer and masterfully realized by Yaroslav Ivashkevich the concept of libretto, which made the place of the action medieval Sicily, interweaving the atmosphere of austere asceticism of the then Christianity with the colorful and mysterious world of Arabic and Byzantine culture, in the figure of the Pastor, who later transformed into the Greek god Dionysus)”. Later on, Kanysky states a whole list of “oddities” that distanced this work from the general public – and the first in that list is “the strangeness of the music itself”, in which the opera-ballet and cantat-oratorial typological components exhibit a high level of artistry, has direct analogues neither in Polish nor in the world as a whole. J. Kansky’s sentence is as follows: what remains of Shimanovsky’s “work is beautiful and lonely”. Such a summary clearly ignores the Eastern and Central European analogies, since the impulse for K. Shimanovsky’s “Dionysian mysteriousness” can be traced back to O. Borodin’s “Polovtsian Ecstatic” the glorification of “severe asceticism” in “St. Francis of Assisi” by O. Messian, whose spiritual ideas were nourished by the Hesychastic energy of the prayerful ecstasy of the mysteriousness of O. Scriabin. However the recognition of K. Shimanovsky really only took place at the beginning of the third millennium, and the Christian background of the Scriabin ecstatic, which was vigorously discussed in the Odesa press in the 1910’s, along with the mysterious samples of the “Drama of the Spirit” by V. Rebikov – was not extended in the 1920’s – 1930’s, when only the folkloristic national-demonstration innovations of the composer were appreciated. In S. Gelman’s preface to the publication of the score of this work by K. Shimanovsky we find some reflections on its genre meaning, from which it is clear that “King Roger” does not represent a pure operatic discovery, but rather constitutes the border of opera and musical drama, marked, however, equally by elements of oratorial, and even features of the mysterious spectacle. This commentary sees the Wagnerian influence, without noticing at the same time the Eastern European origins of K. Shimanovsky’s score and the outspoken scribbling of the composition born in the Ukrainian South. In general, the work has the features of stage oratory, as we find it in the version of I. Stravinsky’s works, and later by K. Orff.

Contemporary Italian Women Artists of African Descent: A Transnational and Intersectional Approach to their Lives and Works

ABSTRACT This article considers the life and work of Afrodescendant Italian artists Iris Peynado, Nadia Kibout and Nadia Ali. Through my interviews with them and a critical analysis of their films, I underline the cultural value of their achievements and emphasize the discriminations that black women face in contemporary society and in the cinema industry. Racial, class and gender biases often are subjects of their filmmaking, and offer a critical site to reflect on the need for further social and political change. Their collective experience is seen in light of a transnational spatial and temporal continuity between black Italians and the diasporic communities around the world. A variety of nuanced cultural expressions makes it inaccurate to consider Italian Afrodescendant artists as a monolithic group of women having a single identity. In spite of societal biases, they are powerfully emerging as filmmakers, actresses, and activists. They contribute to our understanding that a true postcolonial approach requires a more fluid and flexible consideration of Italian identity as a transnational and multi-faceted expression of a fertile intersection of people of diverse genders, races, and religions.

Axis Occupation and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus: Artistic Production under Fascism (1941–1942)

During the first two years of the Occupation of Greece by the Axis powers (1941–1942), the Odeon of Herodes Atticus had a symbolic place within fascist ideology. Legislative reform and a cultural revival of the ancient monument played a crucial role in the artistic expression of the occupying forces. Productions of Greek companies were tightly controlled by the Italian and German authorities, and fascist military personnel attended many of them. At the same time, German and Italian artists collaborated with Greek productions, staged their own events, and broadcast them to their homeland through radio transmission. It was, however, the German film Fronttheater (1942) that epitomized the fascist appropriation of the Roman Odeon as a monumental site of spectacle where war and fiction were inextricably interwoven. The film exhibited how the occupying powers enforced and exercised their cultural authority in Athens. In this regard, the fascist myth of ancestral rebirth transformed civic spaces into sites of spectacular politics.

Preserving the Ephemeral: A Micro-Invasive Study on a Set of Polyurethane Scenic Objects from the 1960s and 1970s.

Among the innovative materials used by 20th-century artists, polyurethane (PUR) has been shown to be highly unstable, and therefore artworks made of it are now in need of careful conservation strategies. This study presents a multi-analytical investigation of PUR foam scenic objects originally made between the 1960s and 1970s during the Italian Arte Viva movement. The main components in the foam and additives were characterized through micro attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy (μ-ATR-FTIR) and pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). Painted samples were further investigated through μ-FTIR and Raman spectroscopy to define binders and pigments. The use of μ-ATR-FTIR in combination with evolved gas analysis-mass spectrometry (EGA-MS) allowed the variable conditions of the artworks to be assessed and attained some insights into the chemical processes responsible for aging. At the same time, morphological changes due to the degradation phenomena were recorded through optical (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The detailed characterization of the PUR foam and painting materials was helpful in attaining some insights into harmful environmental parameters for the artworks, thus informing preventive conservation.