A Polemical Iconography: the Magi from Orient
Patricia Grau-Dieckmann
Original title: Una Iconografía polémica: los Magos de Oriente
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
Keywords: Art, Epiphany, Iconography, Magic, Three Wise Men, Worship.
"… there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem" briefly informs Mathews Gospel about these illustrious visitors that - following a star - arrive from the east to worship Baby Jesus. He further tells that they fell on their knees and "presented him with gifts - gold, incense and myrrh". Later apocryphal tales and popular narratives beautify and adorn the legends about these mysterious characters. Very early does art reflect the iconography of the worship of the magi, known as "Epiphany". This scene will mutate through time and will develop into the sumptuous representation of the royal characters that became the Three Wise Men. Early Christian art may offer a key to the understanding of whom they were, what were they looking for and what were the reasons that justify the importance of the scene of the Epiphany within the frame of this new religion - Christianism - that tried to expand among the gentiles.
Apocryphal storie's influence on Medieval Art
Patricia Grau-Dieckmann
Original title: Influencia de las historias apócrifas en el Arte
Published in Mirabilia 1
Keywords: Apocryphal Gospels, Art, Canonical Gospels, Flight to Egypt, Iconography, Legends..
Christian art depicts scenes on the life cycles of Virgin Mary and Jesus that, even though they are familiar to our eyes, entail an iconographic content that does not strictly reflect the accounts of the Canonical Gospels. These scenes, although conceived in the Church's own bosom, are based on legends, apocryphal stories and oral traditions. Within this context we will consider works produced from the 5th to the 15th century and will analyze the way in which the Apocryphal Gospels and some orally transmitted traditional legends have conditioned the iconography of the Holy Family's Flight to Egypt.
Ascensio in Deum per vestigia et in vestigiis. The St. Bonaventure’s immanent Aesthetics and its possible reflections in the iconography of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: Ascensio in Deum per vestigia et in vestigiis. La Estética inmanente de San Buenaventura y sus posibles reflejos en la iconografía de la Basílica de San Francisco en Asís
Published in Monastic and Scholastic Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Aesthetics, Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Created world, God, Iconography, Medieval Philosophy, St. Bonaventure, Vestige.
In his Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259), St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) discusses the six degrees (with a seventh of ecstatic enjoyment) by which man can and should ascend from the created world to contemplate God. In this paper we will analyze only the first two grades of this Itinerarium, which constitute both of them what we might call the “immanent aesthetic” of St. Bonaventure. Highlighting then two of the central theses of this “immanent aesthetic”, we shall try to show the possible reflections that these theses may have had in the iconography of some frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.
Benedicta in mulieribus. The Virgin Mary as a paradigm of women in the patristic tradition and its possible reflection in Spanish Gothic painting
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: Benedicta in mulieribus. La Virgen María como paradigma de la mujer en la tradición patrística y su posible reflejo en la pintura gótica española
Published in Mulier aut Femina. Idealism or reality of women in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Iconography, Mariology, Paradigm, Patristics, Spanish Gothic painting., Theology, Women.
From the first centuries of the Christian era the Virgin Mary became in respect of the believers a sublime and inimitable model of human, moral and spiritual virtues. This fact has been staged by researchers on Marian iconography as a self-evident axiom, which need not be explained or justified documentarily. Going against this uncritical stance, this paper aims to explain, through a lot of theological and patristic citations, three fundamental aspects or attributes, in which, among many others, the paradigmatic character of Mary becomes real: her supereminence in comparison with the other women, her supereminence in comparison with the other creatures, including angels and saints, and her intercession before God on behalf of human beings. We complement our study by a comparative analysis through which we attempt to relate these patristic and theological sources with some Spanish Gothic paintings in which the three mentioned aspects of the analyzed Marian doctrine could be reflected in some way.
Christian iconography: The Great Power of God and its iconographic development in the Canary Islands. Art, History and Tradition
Clementina CALERO RUIZ, Domingo SOLA ANTEQUERA
Original title: Iconografía cristiana: El Gran Poder de Dios y su desarrollo iconográfico en Canarias. Arte, Historia y Tradición
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Art and Tradition, Exvotes and Miracles, Great Power of God, Iconography, Promises.
The Great Power of God is an iconography based on that wounded and pensive one called Humility and Patience Christ. This representation changed to another triumphant and glorious one throughout the 18th Century. This iconography was adopted in the Canary Islands, especially in the Tenerife town of Puerto de la Cruz, after the arriving of a statue with that advocation at the very beginning of that century. In 1754 an engraving of this sacred icon was done. Several paintings derive from it helping to spread its miraculous fame outside the Islands, even reaching Latin American territories.
Graphic derision in Ancient Egypt
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: Lúdica y burla gráfica en el Antiguo Egipto
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Art, Caricature, Egypt, Graphic derision, Iconography.
The hieratic image of the Egypt of the pharaoh’s art has its counterpart in a series of playful works and mocking graphic realizations that discover the transgressive side of this influential civilization. This research analyzes the meaning of images with parodies, caricatures and satirical figures as well as highlight the worship of some divinities of the playful and informal, which provide a counterpoint to the severe and strict culture of the Nile. It aims, in short, to be a reflective note on the sense of humour since ancient times.
Humorous Discourses on Classical Greek Pottery
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: Discursos humorísticos de la cerámica griega clásica
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Classical Greece, Conceptual wit, Iconography, Visual insight.
The figurative pottery of classical Greece developed some visual discourses recognizable in the current Western humorous graphics. An important legacy of these significant images, of a high-quality technical workmanship and artistic expressiveness, has reached our times. This paper shows and analyses some examples of that visual world and its communicative methodology. The festive, the comic and, above all, the conceptually witty, has been the criteria followed for their selection.
Paradise (c. 1551-1554) as royal scenery: approach to La Gloria, by Titian, in the historical-biographical context of Charles V
Carlos Jesús SOSA RUBIO
Original title: El Paraíso (c. 1551-1554) como escenografía regia: aproximación a La Gloria, de Tiziano, en el contexto histórico-biográfico de Carlos V
Published in Returning to Eden
Keywords: Arianism, Charles V, Eschatology, Iconography, Propaganda, Religious Conflicts, Titian.
La Gloria, also called Il Paradiso by Tiziano Vecellio, its author, is perhaps the greatest pictorial creation that the Venetian created during his last years of service to Emperor Charles V. Although it has been defined as a work where the coexistence of the theological, eschatological and dynastic factors reaches the character of a paradigm, and even though its greatness goes beyond the format, there are still numerous doubts that hang around it, fundamentally related to the motif represented, the identity of quite a few characters and the reasons that led to their commission. This research compiles and expands some of the assessments made throughout the history of the canvas, trying to shed a light on doubtful aspects and, along with the religious and private motivations as the driving force of its commission, also allude to those of ideological roots, given the context of religious wars and turbulence of faith in which Titian executed his creation.
St. Bonaventure’s aesthetic ideas as possible doctrinal source of Trecento Italian iconography
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: Ideas estéticas de San Buenaventura como posible fuente doctrinal de la iconografía del Trecento italiano
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: Aesthetics, Iconography, Italian painting, Mariology, Patristics. Medieval Philosophy, St. Bonaventure, Trecento.
This paper attempts to highlight the influence that the primary Aesthetics designed by St. Bonaventure could have had on some paintings of the Italian Trecento. Therefore, the work is divided into two parts essentially linked. Firstly it analyzes in detail the first two levels (of the six proposed by the saint. plus a seventh of pure ecstasy), by which man can and must ascend from the world to contemplate God: on those two initial levels, linked to the sensory knowledge, man uses his sensitivity to appreciate the material things of this created world as footprints and traces of their Creator. In the second part several paintings by Giotto, Simnone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Agnolo Gaddi and Taddeo Gaddi are analyzed, in order to see if one can perceive in them some influence of the initial phase of the Aesthetics of Bonaventure, that implies a remarkable enhancement of the physical world and the senses by which we perceive it with full cognitive validity.
The Death of the Virgin Mary (1295) in the Macedonian church of the Panagia Peribleptos in Ohrid. Iconographic interpretation from the prospective of three apocryphal writings
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: La muerte de la Virgen María (1295) en la iglesia macedonia de la Panagia Peribleptos de Ohrid. Interpretación iconográfica a la luz de tres escritos apócrifos
Published in Relations between History and Literature in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Byzantine painting, Iconography, Koimesis, Medieval Art, apocryphal literature.
Painted in 1295 by the Greek painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, the fresco of the Virgin’s Death (Koimesis) in the church of Panagia Peribleptos in Ohrid, Macedonia, highlights the main events described by the apocryphal stories on the death, the burial, the resurrection and the assumption of Mary, reinterpreted by the theologians and the hymns’ writers. This mural painting integrates in a diachronic development the scenes of the Virgin’s farewell to her friends, the coming of the apostles on clouds, the death, the funeral and the burial of Mary, including the episode on the attempt of desecration, the punishment and the conversion of a Jew named Jephonias, as well as the Virgin’s assumption, a subject performed for the first time in art. This article tries to explain and to illustrate the iconographic elements contained in this mural painting, analyzing them from the perspective of three apocryphal texts on the Mary’s death and assumption. Through such analysis we would highlight the direct and essential influence of certain Literature (apocryphal) in the creation of certain History, understood at the same time as History of Art (iconography) and History of Religions (dogmatic).
