Search

The Black Death in 1348 was followed by a period of ongoing skirmishes between the city-states of Florence and Siena, marked by active territorial expansion, mercenary raids, and larger wars. Subject towns were profoundly affected by this turmoil and came under the alternating influence and control of the two dominant cities. In the face of this unrest, one way for inhabitants of subject towns – including Lucignano, San Gimignano, Montepulciano, and Cortona – to manifest both local identity and political allegiance was to commission artworks. Of the paintings made for these contested sites from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, a number include depictions of the town for which the image was made, held by a patron saint. These city models offer a valuable lens on a marginalized area, providing insight into how subject towns were conceptualized and understood by patrons, artists, and viewers. Saintly advocacy and protection are frequently invoked in relation to recent or ongoing political upheaval, emphasizing civic and sacred loyalties or affiliations. The depiction of towns as models held by saints also echoes the actual transactional changes of ownership that frequently occurred, reflecting the multifaceted power dynamics between artist and patron, or between dominant city and subject town. Furthermore, the prevalence of such city models in paintings commissioned from Sienese artists suggests a particular Sienese “border mentality,” or an awareness of the intersections of identity that result from existing on shifting cultural and political borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the contribution of the British art historian and critic Roger Fry to the study of Italian painting of the Renaissance, his role in the noble community of that time, work on the search for works for large museums (special attention is paid to his relations with the Metropolitan Museum and its patron J.P. Morgan) and attribution problems. The study notes the evolution of Fry's views, going from interests in Italian art to the works of modern masters and the creation of a theory of “significant form”.

The paper both connects and disassociates the work of Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg. There are two interrelated undertakings. The first involves the relationship between philosophy and art history and thus how art history figures within the philosophical. The second pertains to the status of the image. Part of the argument to be advanced is that an engagement with philosophical approach to art history yields a concern with the image in which it is the image's material presence that proves decisive. Indeed, it is by insisting on the object's materiality that it then becomes possible to locate the effective presence of the gesture as integral to the work of art. The contention is that gesture is the intersection of art's material presence and the concerns of meaning. The paper us develop via an engagement with works by Edgar Degas and Luca Signorelli.

The paper both connects and disassociates the work of Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg. There are two interrelated undertakings. The first involves the relationship between philosophy and art history and thus how art history figures within the philosophical. The second pertains to the status of the image. Part of the argument to be advanced is that an engagement with philosophical approach to art history yields a concern with the image in which it is the image's material presence that proves decisive. Indeed, it is by insisting on the object's materiality that it then becomes possible to locate the effective presence of the gesture as integral to the work of art. The contention is that gesture is the intersection of art's material presence and the concerns of meaning. The paper us develop via an engagement with works by Edgar Degas and Luca Signorelli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]