Comparative Analysis Between the Main 3D Scanning Techniques: Photogrammetry, Terrestrial Laser Scanner, and Structured Light Scanner in Religious Imagery: The Case of The Holy Christ of the Blood

In recent years, three-dimensional (3D) scanning has become the main tool for recording, documenting, and preserving cultural heritage in the long term. It has become the “document” most in demand today by historians, curators, and art restorers to carry out their work based on a “digital twin,” that is, a totally reliable and accurate model of the object in question. Thanks to 3D scanning, we can preserve reliable models in digital format of the real state of our heritage, some of which are currently destroyed. The first step is to digitize our heritage with the highest possible quality and precision. To do this, it will be necessary to identify the most appropriate technique. In this article, we will show some of the main digitization techniques currently used in sculpture heritage and the workflows associated with them to obtain high-quality models. Finally, a complete comparative analysis will be made to show their main advantages and disadvantages.

Engraving and Religious Imagery in the Modern Age: Between Verisimilitude and the Suggestion of Non-Existent Realities. Analysis of Some Cases Elaborated in Spain

The didactic importance of the religious image can be appreciated in the use of engraving and its power to disseminate, especially in the urban society of the Modern Age, in connection with the printed book. Such images will use their evocative power to suggest, based on observable realities, a reality that never existed, but which is convenient to create: The image will be able to construct this reality and convince observers of its undoubted existence. Some examples elaborated in Spain will be analyzed, as well as their inventors or the engravers who followed the instructions of the previous ones.

The Leningrad School of Neo-Modernism

Leningrad was the centre of a boom in samizdat poetry in the 1970s and home to poets such as Viktor Krivulin, Elena Shvarts, Oleg Okhapkin, Aleksandr Mironov, Sergei Stratanovskii, and their older contemporary, Leonid Aronzon. Their work is now recognized as one of the key currents in Russian postmodernism. This article surveys the points that unite the poets of this current, with particular emphasis on their intertextual relationship with Modernist poets, the understanding of the role of the poet, the significance of religious imagery, and the unofficial seminars and journals that fostered and promoted the extraordinary literary creativity of Leningrad’s unofficial culture.

Poems in Interreligious Dialogue: Searching for God in the Poetry of Ku Sang and Thomas Merton

<p>Twentieth-century poets Ku Sang and Thomas Merton, two Catholic poets from Korea and America, respectively, were both aware of a space between themselves and God. Their poetry reveals attempts to go and find him. Because their searches for God entailed an interreligious nexus, insofar as their poetry blended Buddhist and Christian religious imagery, I utilise a comparative method, drawn from the field of Comparative Theology, which juxtaposes religious texts from differing faith traditions; I place Zen Buddhist kōans side-by-side with the Christian poems, each poem understood as representing a way to seek God. Moreover, I provide close readings of each poem and kōan, with critical commentary on the poems and interpretation of any new meaning revealed by the juxtaposition of texts. As a result of my examination, I propose that exploration of how these poets expressed their own understanding of God’s whereabouts, achieved by contact with poetic experience at the naked level of the poem, yields insight both into the two men’s unique contributions to broader knowledge of poets searching for God and how they were transformed for the sake of searching at all.</p>

Iconography and Roman Religion

Roman iconography depicts religious practices, divine figures, mortal worshippers, and beliefs about the gods. Religious imagery reflects the importance of religion in Roman conceptions of the past, the fashioning of self-identity, and discursive practices. Representations of sacred spaces and occasions often emphasize their topographic arrangement within landscapes, giving religious imagery a strong sense of place. Inside sanctuaries, decorative imagery is augmented by iconography that facilitates ritual activity, illustrates cult-specific details, and shapes the experience of visitors. Religious iconography also highlights the contested natures of artifacts as well as the ways images enacted and reacted to social tensions. Although legal experts attempted to categorize the sacrality of images and artifacts, thoughts about an image’s status were mutable and rooted in personal experience and local factors. Many sacred images possessed agentive and talismanic properties, and manifested divine powers and presence.

Poems in Interreligious Dialogue: Searching for God in the Poetry of Ku Sang and Thomas Merton

<p>Twentieth-century poets Ku Sang and Thomas Merton, two Catholic poets from Korea and America, respectively, were both aware of a space between themselves and God. Their poetry reveals attempts to go and find him. Because their searches for God entailed an interreligious nexus, insofar as their poetry blended Buddhist and Christian religious imagery, I utilise a comparative method, drawn from the field of Comparative Theology, which juxtaposes religious texts from differing faith traditions; I place Zen Buddhist kōans side-by-side with the Christian poems, each poem understood as representing a way to seek God. Moreover, I provide close readings of each poem and kōan, with critical commentary on the poems and interpretation of any new meaning revealed by the juxtaposition of texts. As a result of my examination, I propose that exploration of how these poets expressed their own understanding of God’s whereabouts, achieved by contact with poetic experience at the naked level of the poem, yields insight both into the two men’s unique contributions to broader knowledge of poets searching for God and how they were transformed for the sake of searching at all.</p>

The Global Religious Imagery of the Cult of Duc Cao Ðài

"In 1926, in Tây Ninh province, about 100 km away from present day Ho Chi Minh City, a new spiritual movement was born, aiming at the symbolic unification of all the world’s major religions into one. Its hierarchical structure resembles Roman Catholicism while on the other hand integrating elements from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. Besides worshipping the prophetic figures of the world major religions (Jesus Christ, Buddha and Mohammed), the Cao Đài claim to have communicated in spiritist séances with secular western and eastern literary, historical and political figures such as William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jeanne D’Arc, Sun Yat Sen, Vladimir Lenin and the Vietnamese poet and prophet Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, worshipping some of these (but not all) as saints. Within the present article, I aim at analyzing the syncretic religious imagery of the Cao Đài and discuss the manner in which they construct their religious narrative as well as worldview."

Italy, the Crusader States, and Cyprus

The Roman and Byzantine heritage provided a background for art in Italy from the time of Justinian until the Renaissance. Mosaics in Norman Palermo and medieval Venice served as hallmarks of polities striving to advertise their imperial pedigrees, while reliquaries and diplomatic gifts adorned in the Byzantine techniques of enamel and encrustation offered a link with venerated traditions. Later stylistic borrowings from Byzantium (known as maniera greca) marked Italian religious imagery. Byzantine art was also a major source in Crusader art as well as in Cyprus, which was a Byzantine province with close ties to Constantinople. In the Holy Land and medieval Greece the Byzantine past remained active in both architecture—secular and religious—as well as in painting.

The Light of the Word

Chapter 1 introduces the context in which Doré’s biblical imagery emerged by focusing on the status of the Bible in the visual culture of nineteenth-century France, with particular emphasis on book illustration. Relying on photographic documentation of Doré’s original drawings, this chapter begins the process of articulating Doré’s visual language and its relationship to preceding attempts at comprehensive Bible illustration projects. The distinction between “biblical” and “religious” imagery is significant in setting the stage for the Doré Bible, as it was initially produced for French Catholic audiences, a contingent for whom direct engagement with the Bible was historically discouraged or even forbidden. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, biblical illustration in the first half of the nineteenth century reveals the continued centrality of the Bible to artistic and public life in the wake of religious and intellectual upheavals.

Religious Content in Anime “Enen no Shouboutai”

As more and more religious content appears in anime, the actual meaning of its use in anime may be different. This phenomenon is known as religious cosmetics introduced by Jolyon Baraka Thomas. Religious cosmetics introduces the term religious vocabulary and religious imagery. This study focuses on analyzing religious vocabulary, and aims to prove whether the Shinto religious vocabularies that appears in the anime Enen no Shouboutai season 1 (2019) are religious cosmetics. The method used in this study is qualitative descriptive. The use of words in the anime Enen no Shouboutaiseason 1 will be compared with the meaning of the vocabulary from the Shinto religious dictionary compiled by Brian Bocking. The results showed that there are eighteen data of religious vocabularies that appear in anime Enen no Shouboutai season 1, which can be divided into five categories, namely (1) ‘amaterasu’, (2) ‘kami’, (3) ‘matsuri’, (4) ‘oni’, and (5) ‘sake’. However, among those five categories appeared throughout the series, four were found as Shinto religious vocabularies which used as religious cosmetics while one category (3) ‘matsuri’ was not used as religious cosmetics. The reason is because the meaning and the use of the word is getting wider, not only used in Shinto related topics, but also in daily life generally.