Search

Venetian patrician portraits of the late fifteenth century document deeply ingrained expectations of that class. Largely static and impassive, the subjects of independent portraits appear as slight variations on a theme, rather than as studies of individuals. In contrast, Titian's (Tiziano Vecellio, ca. 1488–1576) early portraits seem to represent a significant departure from tradition and reveal the artist's commitment to portraying personality, as well as physiognomy. In this article, I suggest that Titian's success was due in part to his knowledge of and sensitivity to the social constraints of late fifteenth-century Venetian culture. In turn, this allowed him to consciously accommodate traditional expectations of his patrician clientele while incrementally introducing the modern portrait. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article aims to present several 19th century lady portraits of the high aristocracy (wives and daughters, relatives of ruling princes) in national dress, adapted for court, with their specific characters. This in the local context of pre and post unification of Moldavia and Wallachia (1859) and Romania's independence (1878). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii şi cercetări de istoria artei. Seria Artă plastică is the property of G. Oprescu Institute of Art History of the Romanian Academy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Conversation pieces-small-scale, informal group portraits of family or friends-were produced in large numbers in England from 1730 onward. This article examines the Georgian conversation piece in terms of a social and economic analysis of the patrons' backgrounds and investigates why twentieth-century scholars misconstrued the social significance of those pictures. While certain aspects of the genre, particularly its small scale, seem to embody the values of the middle class, a systematic study of the early English conversation piece reveals that this type of portrait was principally commissioned by the elite of Georgian society to document their elevated status. The interpretation of the conversation piece as an art of the middle class was largely due to the research trend in history of a rising middle class popular in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paintings The concert on the Oriental court (1786) and The lute concert (ca. 1786) by Johann Josef Karl Henrici (1737-1823) - both at the Akademija za Glasbo in Ljubljana - depict musical life in European aristocratic society of the second half of the eighteenth century and in their details are tuned up on exoticism. The first painting presents the allegory of music, while the second can be understood as the allegory of hearing or the allegory of five senses. In the Dornava mansion, which used to be owned by Austrian aristocrats and today is considered to be one of the most exceptional mansions in Slovenia, on the painted wall canvas are preserved Chinoiseries from about 1750, which belong among the most distinguished European examples of this genre. Represented scenes are produced after seventeenth-century fantastic and grotesque engravings (one source was the series Balli di Sfesania by Jacques Callot from ca. 1622), in the details comparable to Chinoiseries produced for the European market of the second half of the eighteenth century. Among motifs of the Italian comedia dell'arte and scenes of imaginary life in China, are depicted two figures, one playing a stylized lyre and the other a bowed string instrument. The instruments seem to be European, but their fantastic shapes make it obvious that their symbolism overcomes strictly musical meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles 17th-century Belgian painter Anthony van Dyck and also provides a commentary on his painting "Susanna Fourment and Her Daughter" reprinted in the issue. Biographical information is provided before the author details how "Susanna Fourment and Her Daughter" symbolizes the aristocratic community of Antwerp, Belgium and how the stormy landscape may be a reflection of Fourment's personality.

This essay engages with current debates on the character of objects as material artefacts, focusing on a genre that can be reappraised especially fruitfully from such a perspective: the small-format portrait medallion. The first part sets out how lockable portrait medallions were ‘wandering things’, artefacts of transcultural networks, and possessed ‘agency’ (to use Alfred Gell’s term). The second part is devoted to analyzing an example from England around the year 1600 by Nicholas Hilliard, the so-called Gresley Jewel, against the backdrop of European slavery at that time. It vividly exemplifies, it is argued, the active semanticization of skin colour, and in doing so repositions white, aristocratic identities. To what extent, the study centrally asks, have portrait medallions like this not only helped to establish the hegemonic pretensions of white aristocratic identity but also to undermine them as well? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]