scholarly journals The Intersection of Visual Science and Art in Renaissance Italy

Perception ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (12) ◽  
pp. 1265-1282
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Tyler

In the time of the Renaissance, a major aspect of vision science was understanding how spatial information projected to the viewpoint of the observer, that is, visual perspective, which is one of the primary cues to depth perception. Perspective representation was thus an early form of virtual reality. Although accurate perspective representation was developed earlier in the 15th century, the first analytic perspective scheme was developed by Piero della Francesca, whose chef d’oeuvre is in the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo, in which the present lecture took place. The focus of the lecture was to evaluate some of the contributions of Piero della Francesca and his 15th-century contemporaries to the visual science, art and symbolism of his era, and its significance for the perception of depth structure from two-dimensional images.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 464
Author(s):  
Marie Clausén

My paper analyses the 15th-century seven-sacraments font at the medieval church of St Peter and St Paul at Salle in Norfolk (England). The church guides and gazetteers that describe the font, and the church in which it is situated, owe both their style and content to Art History, focusing as they do on their material and aesthetic dimensions. The guides also tend towards isolating the various elements of the font, and these in turn from the rest of the architectural elements, fittings and furniture of the church, as if they could be meaningfully experienced or interpreted as discrete entities, in isolation from one another. While none of the font descriptions can be faulted for being inaccurate, they can, as a result of these tendencies, be held insufficient, and not quite to the purpose. My analysis of the font, by means of Heidegger’s concept of Dwelling, does not separate the font either from the rest of the church, nor from other fonts, but acknowledges that it comes to be, and be seen as, what it is only when considered as standing in ‘myriad referential relations’ to other things, as well as to ourselves. This perspective has enabled me to draw out what it is about the font at Salle that can be experienced as not merely beautiful or interesting, but also as meaningful to those—believers and non-believers alike—who encounter it. By reconsidering the proper mode of perceiving and engaging with the font, we may spare it from being commodified, from becoming a unit in the standing reserve of cultural heritage, and in so doing, we, too, may be momentarily freed from our false identities as units of production and agents of consumption. The medieval fonts and churches of Norfolk are, I argue, not valuable as a result of their putative antiquarian qualities, but invaluable in their extending to us a possibility of dwelling—as mortals—on the earth—under the sky—before the divinities.


Author(s):  
Alexey B. Mazurov ◽  
Alexander V. Rodionov

The article considers theoretical development of the problem of the origin and provenance in the 15th — the first quarter of the 19th century of the famous Old Russian book monument — the Zaraysk Gospel. Although it has repeatedly attracted the attention of archaeographers, textologists, paleographers, linguists and art historians, this article is the first experience of studying these issues. Created in 1401 in Moscow, the Gospel, which is parchment manuscript, was purchased in 1825 by K.F. Kalaidovich for Count N.P. Rumyantsev from the Zaraysk merchant K.I. Averin, that determined its name by the place of discovery. The scribe book of Zaraysk in 1625 in the altar of the Pyatnitsky chapel of the St. Nikolas wooden church (“which’s on the square”) in the city’s Posad, recorded the description of the manuscript Gospel, corresponding by a number of features to the Zaraysk Gospel. The connection of the codex with the St. Nicholas church is indirectly confirmed by the drawing of the church placed on one of its pages (f. 156 ver.) with the remains of inscription mentioning St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. This allows concluding that the manuscript in the 17th century was in the book collection of the temple. In the 17th century, the ancient St. Nicholas church was re-consecrated to the Epiphany, and the sacristy was moved to the stone St. Nicholas cathedral in Zaraysk. It is most likely that in the first quarter of the 19th century, the merchant K.I. Averin purchased the Gospel from the members of the cathedral’s clergy. The article analyzes the context of the early contributions of the 15th century “to the Miraculous Icon of St. Nikolas of Zaraysk”, one of which, most likely, was the parchment Zaraysk Gospel. The authors assume that this contribution is related to the chronicle events of 1401 or 1408. The study is significant in terms of the theoretical development of methods for identifying ancient manuscripts and their origin.


Author(s):  
Mark Collard ◽  
John Lawson ◽  
Nicholas Holmes ◽  
Derek Hall ◽  
George Haggarty ◽  
...  

The report describes the results of excavations in 1981, ahead of development within the South Choir Aisle of St Giles' Cathedral, and subsequent archaeological investigations within the kirk in the 1980s and 1990s. Three main phases of activity from the 12th to the mid-16th centuries were identified, with only limited evidence for the post-Reformation period. Fragmentary evidence of earlier structural remains was recorded below extensive landscaping of the natural steep slope, in the form of a substantial clay platform constructed for the 12th-century church. The remains of a substantial ditch in the upper surface of this platform are identified as the boundary ditch of the early ecclesiastical enclosure. A total of 113 in situ burials were excavated; the earliest of these formed part of the external graveyard around the early church. In the late 14th century the church was extended to the south and east over this graveyard, and further burials and structural evidence relating to the development of the kirk until the 16th century were excavated, including evidence for substantive reconstruction of the east end of the church in the mid-15th century. Evidence for medieval slat-bottomed coffins of pine and spruce was recovered, and two iron objects, which may be ferrules from pilgrims' staffs or batons, were found in 13th/14th-century burials.


Author(s):  
Radivoj Radic

In the Middle Ages, people had an ambivalent relationship to the beauty products: some were fully supportive of the attempts to beautify oneself, while the others, first and foremost the representatives of the church, frowned upon this notion. This feature represents a show?case of the advice and recipes for beautification from two medical collections created in the late Middle Ages. These are the Byzantine medical treatise (dating from 11th to 14th century) and the collection of Serbian medieval medicine, the so-called Hodoch Code (dating from the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century). The treatise is focusing more on the practical advice than theoretical knowledge, and its greatest part is dedicated to pharmacology. Hodoch Code (Hodoski zbornik) is in fact a therapeutic collection, and it consists of diverse medical texts. These collections contain the advice how to make one?s face white, hair black or blond, but most certainly rich in volume, as well as recipes for treating facial lines, warts, freckles, cracked lips or bad breath.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Leonid G. Panin

The author’s earlier linguistic and textual analysis of collections containing readings on particularly revered memorable dates and the lives of the most revered saints revealed the manuscript Festal Menaion and Chrysostom from the collection of Tikhonravov No. 185 (from the collection of the Russian State Library) as containing unique information about the Church Slavonic language of the 15th century. This time, as traditionally considered, is a clear indicator of the second South Slavic influence, but evidence of this influence (according to the collection) was not in the Word on the Council of the archangel Michael and Gabriel, the author of which was Clement of Ohrid. There were obvious colloquial elements, but the colloquial (common) facts of the Russian language are especially clearly recorded in another monument of this collection – in the Torment of Paraskeva Friday. In this article, this text is analyzed in comparison with the texts presented in the Great Menaion Reader of the SVT. St. Demetrius of Rostov and in the collection of the 15th century from the Collection of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. The author defines the broad and narrow contexts of the study. The first is connected with the Church Slavonic problems (language, writing), the second with the 15th century, the time when the so-called ‘second South Slavic influence’ was fully manifested. Church Slavonic itself is not a scientific term, although it emerged from a scientific tradition. We can define what the Russian language is by referring to ethnic and geographical boundaries, cultural and spiritual traditions, historical certainty, and keeping in mind, which is very important for the language, its ‘functional side’. It is impossible to evaluate the Church Slavonic language from these positions. Russian is a language that has developed different principles of development, and in relation to the Russian language, the Church Slavonic language appears to be as much an independent unit (a separate scientific ‘subject’) as the dialect language, which was the subject of lively discussions in its time, or the Russian spoken language, which occupies a strong position in the niche of the Russian language to this day. The Church Slavonic language is ultimately the desired object of Slavistic research, and the way to determine its structure and functional status lies through the analysis of specific written sources. The conclusions about the ‘colloquial’ (‘simple’, perhaps common) Church Slavonic language of the Torment of Paraskeva Friday according to the list of Thn-185 are quite obvious, the language of the monument according to this list destroys the myth of the so-called ‘second South Slavic influence’. The analysis allows us to take a new look at what we call the Church Slavonic language, to understand that the Church Slavonic language is still an unidentified linguistic object, rather than a philological one, because this language cannot be separated from the text. The text is the environment in which it exists. Linguistics has adopted the tools of linguistic analysis, which since ancient times served philological purposes, it is already presented in the ΤνΝη γραμματική of Dionysius of Thrace, but it did not serve to describe and understand language as such, the main task of grammatics was considered to be the evaluation of the work, “what is the best of all that grammar does”. This helps in the qualification of what is written in the Church Slavonic language: it should not only contain the traditional forms and vocabulary of this language (also with the traditional permissibility of innovations), but also have a functional correlation, correspond to the sphere of existence of Church Slavonic texts.


Author(s):  
James R. Banker

The reputation of the Italian Renaissance painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca (hereafter Piero) has risen dramatically from near oblivion in the Early Modern period to the present when he is judged as nearly equal to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, especially in regard to technical excellence and writing. In his paintings and his treatises Piero achieved the fullest expression of Quattrocento perspective, which he had derived from his capacious understanding of Greek geometry. Born into a family of artisans-shopkeepers of leather in the Tuscan town of Borgo San Sepolcro (today Sansepolcro) c. 1412, Piero began with several small projects in his native town in the 1430s. He served in Florence as an assistant to Domenico Veneziano in 1439 where he came in contact with the achievements of Masaccio, Donatello, Brunelleschi, and other artists in Florence, though he never became strictly a Florentine painter. He sojourned throughout central Italy in the 1440s and 1450s, receiving commissions in Ferrara, Ancona, Rimini, Arezzo, Rome, and Sansepolcro. After his two sojourns in Rome in the 1450s, Piero became increasingly interested in the representation of classical values and especially Roman architecture and in learning Greek geometry. In the decade of the 1470s he was often in the court of Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino, accepting commissions from the ruler and consulting manuscripts in his library. In the history of mathematics, he is now recognized as an indispensable participant in the revival of Greek geometry and as one of the few individuals in 15th-century Europe with extensive knowledge of both Euclid and Archimedes. In the last three decades of his life (d. 1492) Piero wrote treatises on commercial mathematics and geometry (Trattato d’abaco), perspective in painting (De prospectiva pingendi), and a reflection on several classical procedures and problems in Greek geometry (Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus), as well as copying the Opera of Archimedes.


Author(s):  
Joachim Whaley

Martin Luther was a subject of the Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire. His emergence as a reformer was made possible by the sponsorship he received in Wittenberg. He owed his survival to the protection afforded him by the Elector when Emperor Charles V outlawed him and ordered that the papal ban of excommunication be enforced in the empire. The audience to which Luther appealed was the general population of German Christians, both lay and ecclesiastical, who wanted a reform of the church and the reduction of the pope’s influence over it. That his appeal resonated so widely and so profoundly had much to do with a combination of crises that had developed in the empire from the 15th century. That his reform proposals resulted in the formation of a new church owed everything to the political structures of the empire. These facilitated the suppression of radical challenges to Luther’s position. They also thwarted every effort Charles V made over several decades to ensure that the empire remained Catholic. Lutheranism became entwined with the idea of German liberty; as a result, its survival was secured in the constitution of the empire, first in 1555 and then in 1648.


Author(s):  
Simon Yarrow

The cult of saints crossed global horizons as part of the spread of Roman Catholicism that began in the late 15th century with the maritime expeditions of Catholic Portugal and Spain. ‘Globalizing sanctity’ explains that the most successful seedbed of sainthood was the Americas, where the Church received most patronage when it operated as a colonial government ideological arm, working to pacify and economically exploit the Amerindian natives. Why did the indigenous people adopt their Christian oppressors’ religion and what part did saints play? A fundamental feature of Catholic world mission was syncretism, mixing elements of two sets of religious belief and meaning through the adaptation of symbols and practices culturally accommodating to both.


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Barrett

This article presents a new approach to interactive spatial sonification of multidimensional data as a tool for spatial sound synthesis, for composing temporal–spatial musical materials, and as an auditory display for scientists to analyze multidimensional data sets in time and space. The approach applies parameter-mapping sonification and is currently implemented in an application called Cheddar, which was programmed in Max/MSP. Cheddar sonifies data in real time, where the user can modify a wide variety of temporal, spatial, and sonic parameters during the listening process, and thus more easily uncover patterns and processes in the data than when applying non-real-time, noninteractive techniques. The design draws on existing literature concerning perception and acoustics, and it applies the author's practical experience in acousmatic composition, spectromorphology, and sound semantics, while addressing accuracy, flexibility, and ease of use. Although previous sonification applications have addressed some degree of real-time control and spatialization, this approach integrates space and sound in an interactive framework. Spatial information is sonified in high-order 3-D ambisonics, where the user can interactively move the virtual listening position to reveal details easily missed from fixed or noninteractive spatial views. Sounds used as input to the sonification take advantage of the rich spectra and extramusical attributes of acoustic sources, which, although previously theorized, are investigated here in a practical context thoroughly tested alongside acoustic and psychoacoustic considerations. Furthermore, when using Cheddar, no specialized knowledge of programming, acoustics, or psychoacoustics is required. These approaches position Cheddar at the junction between science and art. With one application serving both disciplines, the patterns and processes of science are more fluently appropriated into music or sound art, and vice versa for scientific research, science public outreach, and education.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document