„compassio“, Leidenschaft, Ekstase

Expressions and gestures of mourning for the loved one have been a theme of religious art from early on. In the Middle Ages, after the discovery of the suffering Christ (“Christus patiens”), they are shown in numerous depictions of the crucifixion, especially in those of the taking down of the cross. Since the 13th century, the attitude of “compassion”, which commemorates Christ’s act of redemption and, according to theological interpretation, thereby brings about one’s own salvation, has promoted empathy with the other. After the theme had been increasingly treated aesthetically in painting, non-religious models of mourning also appeared in poetry from the 16th century onwards, whose actions were oriented towards the respective epoch-specific image of man (passion, ecstasy). The article analyses relevant poetic and musical works.

Conversos, Moriscos, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections on Jewish Exceptionalism

Sacrilegious attitudes toward the Eucharistic host are one of the most commonplace accusations leveled against Jews in premodern Europe. Usually treated in Jewish historiography as an expression of anti-Judaism or antisemitism, they are considered a hallmark of Jewish powerlessness and persecution. In medieval and early modern Spain, however, Jews and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants) were not the only proclaimed enemies of the Eucharist. Reports about avoidance, rejection, criticism, and even ridicule and profanation of the consecrated host were similarly leveled against Muslims and moriscos (Muslim converts to Christianity). This essay seeks to assess the parallels and connections between the two groups through a comparative examination of accusations of sacrilegious behavior towards the host. The first part of the essay analyzes religious art, legal compendia, and inquisitorial trials records from the tribunals of Toledo and Cuenca in order to show some evident homologies between the two groups. The second part of the essay focuses on the analysis of the works of Jaime Bleda and Pedro Aznar y Cardona, two apologists of the expulsion of the moriscos, and draws direct connections between Jewish and morisco sacrilege. By exploring the similarities and differences between accusations against conversos and moriscos, this essay aims to offer a broader reflection on Jewish exceptionalism.

Monasteries, Holy Monks, Tridentine Saints: Port Cities of Seville and Valencia

Religious art in Valencia and Seville reflected the international character of these port cities, attracting a diverse patronage base as well as some of the most talented artists in Spain. The city of Valencia turned east toward the Mediterranean and the movement of artists and artworks around the sea reflected its political, economic, and cultural importance in the region. Seville was the administrative center for Spain’s American colonies and its influence spread across the Atlantic. The international scope of these ports meant that their artistic culture played a defining role in Counter-Reformation Spain. This article addresses several interrelated themes in the religious art of Valencia and Seville. The thematic threads explored here include the international character of these cities and their outward focus on the Mediterranean and the Americas, the role of secular and ecclesiastical art patrons in commissions of painting and sculpture, artistic solutions for the representation of complex imagery and the requirements of Counter-Reformation art, and the accommodation of artists to new tastes in art that reflected a changing political and economic climate. The extraordinary wealth of religious art produced in these two cities can be seen as a manifestation of a central tenet of the Catholic Church in Spain—the power of imagery to inspire, teach, delight, and admonish. Artists and patrons collaborated to forge and perpetuate a veritable industry of image-making that served political ends, addressed social concerns, and highlighted the piety and devotion of each city’s inhabitants in the 17th century.

The Artistic and Religious Canon in the Christian and Muslim Traditions

The article presents a comparative analysis of the musical component of the artistic and religious canon in the orthodox direction of Christianity (Orthodoxy) and Islam. The author considers the concept of canon in a broad sense as a special type of holistic artistic-style system. In a narrow sense, it is considered as an artistic method with its own specific musical and ritual code. The musical beginning is an integral component of a religious cult and, consequently, of the liturgical canon in the Muslim and Christian traditions. Studying music as an artistic component of a particular religious tradition is one of the most popular trends in modern musicology.Religious art is canonical regardless of the ideological differences between religious systems. A canon as an integral art system is characterized by a number of patterns that manifest themselves at all levels of its structure, thus acting as a norm of tradition and, at the same time, as a way of preserving and transmitting this norm, and this transmission is of a variable type. In the article, the term “canon” is understood in the context of the culturological concepts of canon revealed in the works of V.V. Bychkov, A.F. Losev, Yu.M. Lotman, Yu.N. Plakhov, P.A. Florensky. The canon is understood as an artistic method, on the one hand, and as a special artistic and stylistic system (a set of rules that exist virtually), on the other.The article clarifies the theoretical ideas about the canon as a carrier of the norm of tradition in relation to the field of art.

Saint Agnes of Bohemia: A Thirteenth-Century Iconoclast and the Enduring Legacy of Her Convent as a Sacred Space for Religious Art

Refusing to accept her expected role of becoming an item of negotiation in an arranged marriage to strengthen a political alliance, Agnes of Bohemia (1211–1282), daughter of King Přemysl Otakar I of Bohemia and Queen Constance of Hungary, chose to use her royal dowry to finance construction of the first hospital, convent, monastery, and church in Prague committed to the teachings of Saint Francis. Her youth was influenced by nuns providing her education, by a strong familial precedent in the support of churches and convents, and by religious contemporaries. Joining the fledging Franciscan movement, this remarkably well-educated and deeply committed woman entered as abbess of the convent in 1234, dedicating her life to poverty without endowment, devotion, and service to the sick and poor. Agnes was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1874 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1989. Her legacy remains in Prague today with the Gothic convent she constructed now serving as a premiere museum devoted to the Medieval and Renaissance religious art of Prague and Central Europe. Thus, the original goal of building a sacred space for sisters in order to foster spiritual mediation has now been redirected to provide the public the opportunity to become immersed in ecclesiastical reflection viewing the works of artists such as Master Theodoric, the Master of Vyšší Brod, the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, and others.

When Walls Could Talk

How can visual texts, closed books, and painted images work together in Buddhist temples to reinforce one another and act upon viewers? The fourteenth-century murals at the Tibetan temple of Shalu integrate pictures with long passages of Tibetan texts and select inscriptions that explain the powers of seeing paintings. The murals combine and mix media—books, paintings, cloth—into expressive wholes that ultimately argue that walls are in fact much more than walls. The paintings find ways to make the temple's book collections more accessible. Here we find a public art effort that weaves together a compelling argument for why religious texts and religious art both “work” for and on their audiences. Shalu was a grandly expanded temple showing off its resources and its connections in a broader cosmopolitan sphere of production and exchange. Its walls were designed to weave media together, finding ways to celebrate and explain larger and newer corporate productions (book projects, larger monasteries). An intentional play of materiality (clay, cloth, book) emphasized by the inscriptions and performed in the pictorial compositions assists in the imaginative act of directly seeing deities, while also playing with the awareness that acts of imagination entail the play of just-like/seeing-as. Since neither clay nor cloth nor word on their own are adequate vessels for representing an enlightened being, here they collaborate with each other and with viewers in the imaginative act, promising that the deity, like the teachings, can be directly experienced.

Ukrainian Icons Theotokos Mother of Mercy (New Iconographic Interpretation of Traditional Plot)

Baroque trends, which have been extended in the Ukrainian religious art of the late 17th – early 18th centuries, contributed to the expansion of its thematic composition, stylistic changes and the emergence of new iconographic plots. The icons Theotokos Mother of Mercy, or the Cossack Intercession, as they are also called, are a clear example of the renewal of themes in Ukrainian religious art during the Baroque period. This iconographic version of the Intercession, apparently, is borrowed from Western European painting; it is correlated with the compositional type of the image of the Intercession of the Theotokos – Madonna della Misericordia – popular in Italian art. It is supposed, that the image of the Blessed Virgin, covering the parish with the mantle, has been inspired by the vision of the Cistercian monk, theologian and writer Caesar of Geisterbach, who describes it in his Dialogus Miraculorum (1221). Formation of the iconography Madonna della Misericordia in Western European art has started in the 13th century. The Virgin usually stands on the early images. The Christians staying under the protection of the Virgin Mary are depicted on their knees and in a much smaller scale. The icons Madonna della Misericordia have been often ordered by specific groups of believers, such as fraternities, professional guilds, monasteries and abbeys. The theme of the Intercession of Theotokos of the iconographic version Theotokos Mother of Mercy has taken a special place in the Ukrainian iconography of the Baroque period. The image of the Patroness, blessing and covering the faithful with her mantle, has attracted Ukrainian masters with the realism and majesty of the compositional plan. The popularity and rapid dissemination of this iconographic variety of the Intercession have been caused also by the fact that it presents individualized images of people from different layers of the that time society with special penetration. Contemplating the icons of the Intercession in the temples, the believers have seen obviously a powerful and merciful patroness in the image of the Mother of God. Ukrainian icons Theotokos Mother of Mercy of the 17th – early 18th centuries are filled with the search for a new artistic expressiveness, reveal the nature of the transition period and the peculiarities of the process of formation of a new stylistic system of sacred painting.

International Dialogue on Preservation of The Cultural Heritage of Russia (Surgut, 2021)

On May 4, 2021, an international scientific and practical conference Preservation of the cultural heritage of Russia was held in Surgut. Masters and young scientists from Russia, the USA, Northern Ireland, Spain, Italy, Estonia and Moldova took part in the conference to gain new experience and share findings of their research on the topic. The main theme stated in the name of the conference determined its theoretical and practical focus. The conference comprised two major sections — Topical issues of preserving Russian culture and Implementation of projects for the preservation of Russian cultural heritage in Russia and abroad. N. K. Murnova opened the plenary meeting with a talk about Doctor of History Tatiana Vyacheslavovna Tobolina and her contribution to the study of Russian emigration of the 20th century. Orthodox Archpriest G. A. Zavershinskiy presented his books on history and religion. One of the key ideas of his report is that the common dichotomy of East and West is no longer viable and should be rejected in favor of antinomy and analogy of cognition. K. A. Frolova representing the Department of international relations of the Orthodox Church spoke about the problem of anti-Russia prejudice and integrity of Russian culture. Delegates representing MGIMO University (Moscow, Russia) presented their reports on periodicals published by Russian emigrants, identity as a general phenomenon, local museums preserving memories of unique events in regional history. Doctor of Philosophy V. S. Glagolev turned to the dimentiality of seeing beauty depending on historical and cultural peculiarities. N. L. Krylov from the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Science devoted his report to the role of women in the conservation of Russian language and traditions in Northern African countries: Russian-speaking women living in Africa manage to assimilate in their countries of residence and nevertheless preserve their Russian identity. Moreover, they take an active part in social and religious local organizations. The conference gave a platform for many other exciting reports on tourism, museology, religious art and education. It was a special joy to hear a talk by T. D. Dzenlyuk, a fourth-generation Russian emigrant, about the work of an Orthodox church in Miami, USA, and the lifestyle of Russian emigrants there. The conference was rich in fascinating reports on diverse topics and ended with a folk concert.

The Colors of the Ineffable—Jerzy Nowosielski’s Monumental Works as a Contemporary Search for Sacred Space

The subject of this work is the monumental art of Jerzy Nowosielski (1923–2011), one of the most outstanding contemporary Polish painters, who combined modernity with the orthodox icon aesthetics. This work discusses the monumental realizations of Nowosielski, especially the architectural polychromes made by the artist in Catholic and Orthodox churches in Poland in the years 1950–1999. The aim of the inquiry is to present his work theoretically and place it in a broader artistic context. The research shows that Nowosielski’s monumental works results from a strongly defined artistic concept aimed at ‘mystagogy of space’. Nowosielski’s work is an original synthesis of the modernist avant-garde and traditional canons of religious art. The analysis of the problem was carried out in two areas: (1) analysis of the artist’s theoretical statements; (2) analysis of the artistic form with particular emphasis on the color aspect, based on the example of selected churches in Wesoła, Tychy, and Biały Bór. The work uses comparative references to the ideas of Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and Le Corbusier.

Indian Art Education and Contemporary Art Practices

Arts education is a distinct academic discipline in India, with governmental and private institutions offering specialised training in the arts.Religious paradigms such as the Hindu Ashram and Muslim madrasas, Buddhist monastery etc., were used to build ancient Indian educational systemsuntil the British instituted schools following their system of preparatory schools under the Cambridge system to promote service to the British Empire. As a result, Indian perceptions of literacy and education, as well as the culture of learning, have shiftedincluding, in the context of the arts, the concepts of differences between art and craft, the social relationship between master craftsperson and artisan, public art and individual art, religious art and secular art, and so on. Art in India, as in the rest of the world, has undergone numerous changes that have resulted in what we see today, a unique amalgamation of sensibilities from the west as well as from across Asia. In the twenty-first century, a new era in India begun.The country's cultural diversity adds to the multi-dimensional approach, which is a direct approach and a direct contribution of various religious beliefs, languages, and the still prevalent rural culture congregating with the rapidly growing urban culture.The country's diversity, like its art, is an experience in and of itself that is difficult to comprehend.This is the core and crux of the new modern India and its emerging art. The paper will discuss about the contemporary art practices in India with reference to its practising artists.