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Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini's terrorised nudes, Proserpina (1621–1622) and Daphne (1623–1625), each have a single ornament: a braid. Emerging from masses of hair, their braids twist and unravel, wind and bind. As seemingly ordinary signifiers of femininity, they have gone unremarked, yet they are hermeneutically dense. In their form, braids evoke the relationship between surface and depth that defines sculptural creation. Their channelled fluidity is a challenge to the firmness of stone, one that evokes early modern ideas of the natural origins of marble and the discourse of the paragone. Teased from women's hair, braids invoke issues of desire, violence and decorum. Bernini's braids attest to a sensual understanding of the matter of marble that is frequently elided in favour of a dematerialised or spiritualised vision of the sculptor. This essay examines Bernini's braids as a performance of mastery over marble that does not lose sight of its significance as stone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note deals with two panels of the west wall of the Dura synagogue, the details of which were interpreted by some scholars as probably connected to depictions of goddesses. Close investigation of these details, however, does not substantiate this view. The images, both in themselves and as parts of a larger composition, need not be interpreted as displaying conscious allusions to pagan female divinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, the author published a book titledThe Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India(Duke University Press) in which she demonstrated how the deified body of Mother India and the geo-body of India – as iconised by the outline map – are put to work over the course of the long twentieth century by India's ‘barefoot cartographers’ to transform the nation-space into a sacred pastoral landscape worth living and dying for. In this article, Ramaswamy takes up for consideration ten contrary watercolors also featuring the map of India that make up Atul Dodiya’s seriesTearscape(2001), Dodiya lives and works in Mumbai. Produced at the beginning of a new century, these works evacuate the glorious goddess from her occupation of the map of India, and populate it instead with abject figures that disenchant, even desecrate, the national geo-body. What is dared in transforming thus the map of the nation from a repository of pastoral plenitude into the dystopian address of the (female) abject? And to what end does Dodiya undertake such a risky maneuver, fifty years after the nation's geo-body was created out of the conflagration that was the Partition of India? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the Goddess Art feminist artist Mary Beth Edelson took in the 1970s. It mentions photographs Edelson took during Wiccan private performance rituals in 1973 at Outer Banks, North Carolina and her changing a photograph taken during the rituals, using it as a template to paint or draw various Goddess-based attributes found in non-Christian faiths. It talks about the relegation of body-focused art like Edelson's body-as-Goddess art as essentialism and criticism of her work.

This article examines the narrative illustrations of a female deity called Cao E (Maiden Cao), a work produced in eastern Zhejiang during the post-Taiping era. It focuses on the artistic composition and the cultural implications of this iconography. Using both textual sources and pictorial materials, this study investigates how this pictorial hagiography served as a forum through which a state-sanctioned local cult was visualized and perceived by a heterogeneous audience including itinerant officials, local elites, and illiterate commoners. The mixed audience had different understandings and expectations of Maiden Cao and her visual representation, among which gender-related issues were contested. The present study reveals a dynamic picture of how a seemingly orthodox work sponsored by local officials and elites could be sabotaged because of local people's expectations of Maiden Cao, and her gender identity in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Portrait Gallery, London, recently acquired a previously unknown portrait of Elizabeth I. This exquisite miniature of ca. 1590 shows the queen with Juno, Pallas, and Venus. Adapting the myth of the Judgment of Paris, it asserts that Elizabeth exceeds the three goddesses in majesty, wisdom, and beauty, and unites their qualities to create peace. In this essay, Helen Hackett elucidates this important new image through comparisons with analogues from literature and from Elizabethan portraiture. The enduring popularity of the Three Goddesses theme throughout Elizabeth's reign is attributable to its adaptability to changing political circumstances. INSET: Professor of English, University College London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discurre sobre la representación de figuras femeninas, incluyendo diosas, en los textiles de los grupos indígenas de América Central, particularmente de México. La autora comenta sobre las características comunes de las patrones del tejido y describe el uso de diosas como Mayahuel, Tlazoltéotl y Ixchel en su fabricación.

This article explores the implications of a neglected aspect of that letter to the owner of the Primavera in which Marsilio Ficino pictures the human soul as mirroring the cosmos. The lunar metaphor adopted for the ratio mobilis, middle term of the soul, is found to be an integral feature of his ontology, developed primarily in relation to Aristotelian cosmology. As template for the metaphor, the division of perceptible reality into supralunary and sublunary contrasting halves can be seen to govern the imagery of the Primavera, the contrasting halves of which are centred on a figure with a lunar amulet and inescapable overall resemblance to a lunar deity described in a recently printed and highly popular classical work. Botticelli's painting embodies a metaphysical image of the cosmos reflected in the soul, as outlined in the letter, with the planetary deity Luna as the middle term of both, mediating between the celestial and terrestrial realms of the one and - as ratio- the intellectual and sensual realms of the other. The genre of the Primavera has been obscured. It is a great Quattrocento imago mundi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article the authors offer observations on the Códice de Teotenantzin (Codex Teotenantzin), an artwork that documents bas-reliefs carved on the cliffs of the Basin of Mexico, from the eighteenth century. Particular focus is given to the codex's depiction of a goddess named Teotenantzin, which translates to mother of the gods. The author suggests that codex was created by an artist trained in European painting traditions. Details relating to the artistic technique used on the codex are also discussed.

In this paper I examine the representation of the feminine archetype in Diego Rivera's murals, considering not just his learned use of traditional allegorical symbols, but also, his personal experiences, in particular those in regard to filial love, maternity/paternity, and his very complex amorous relationships with some outstanding women of his time, which in a more or less conscious way, the artist intertwined with extraordinary lyrical imagination in his ample and complex iconographic programs. I conclude that for Rivera, muralism was not only an instrument of political action, such as it is normally recognized by specialized literature, but also, an opportunity to elaborate personal themes, in which paradoxically he reaches a greater degree of universality and transcendence that the one which characterizes his history paintings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the portrayal of the goddess Venus in French paintings at the Salon of 1863 in Paris, France. Spotlight on `La Naissance de Venus' by Alexandre Cabanel and `La Perle et la vague' by Paul Baudry; Critical questioning of the status of these paintings; Relative genius or decadence of French painting as it could be identified in the treatment of the nude in high art.

The article analyzes the classical literary sources of Sandro Botticelli's painting entitled "Primavera," in which the first and second verses are related to the entire composition, while the third source explained two figures on the extreme right of the painting and fourth on the three graces. A missing figure found by an ode of which Aby Warburg noticed in the painting was Iuventas, one of Venus's companions. Warburg suggested that Botticelli replaced Iuventas with the goddess of spring. It is asserted that in varied interpretations which aimed to provide literary sources of the painting have all in common the absence of Iuventas from the company of Venus.

The article discusses the goddess Tyche as represented in sculptures and artifacts of Caesarea Maritama. Details of how Tyche is portrayed, the many items that usually come with the Tyche representation and what Tyche symbolizes are discussed. A few of the actual Tyche statues are also described in detail and suggestions on what they mean are offered.

The article features "Venus Plucking the Wings of Cupid," an 18th-century white porcelain sculptural figure and relief made by Massimiliano Soldani, which has been acquired by the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan. The sculpture is made of the early white-glazed hard-paste Doccia porcelain. A mythological episode recounted by Apuleius in "The Golden Ass" is depicted in this piece of sculpture. Venus is shown pulling the feathers from Cupid's wings as punishment for falling in love with the mortal beauty Psyche.

This article focuses on Flora, the Roman goddess of gardens and flowers, and her depiction in the painting "Flora," by Francesco Melzi. Flora was married to Zephyrus, the west wind, and represents Earth and spring. The portrait is believed to have been begun by Melzi's teacher Leonardo da Vinci between 1500 and 1507 and completed by Melzi after 1517. The speculation that the model for Flora was Mona Lisa Gioconda, the model for da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," is discussed. The article also describes Melzi's relationship with da Vinci, as well as his life and other works.

The article ponders on how artists would choose to depict the art librarian of the nineteen nineties. It cites the symbols employed by Robert Campin in his painting, Merode Altarpiece, to express the importance of Mary and Joseph in Christian thought. It suggests that artists might picture art librarians as a goddess or hamster.