Volume 81, Issue 3

A unique golden cross with an embossed depiction of Christ crucified and filigree border was discovered without specific context at multicultural site 1 in Zagórzyce, Kazimierza Wielka District (PL). This artifact is a most impressive example of Early Medieval box-like cross-shaped pendants – unequivocally associated with Christian symbolism – and should be considered to have been a personal reliquary container. The box-like reliquary crosses that most closely parallel the find from Zagórzyce come from discoveries generally dated to the eleventh century. The Zagórzyce reliquary probably comes from a similar period, as it uses an archaic form of Greek cross with slightly flared-out arms, which is found among pendants dated to the tenth century or earlier. It was probably produced at the end of the tenth or in the eleventh century in an area west of Poland, perhaps in the Holy Roman Empire.

The article discusses the use of images from two Parisian books of hours on a Sinhalese ivory casket of the sixteenth century, which today is kept at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin. Comparing the Berlin casket to a group of similar Sinhalese ivory boxes, the article argues for its being a gift of the declining Sinhalese dynasty of Kōṭṭe that was made for the Portuguese house of Aviz. Furthermore, the analysis of the alterations and recombination of the European models in this context allows a better understanding of the box as a product of cross-cultural negotiation. Merging both European and Sinhalese artistic traditions, the casket presents a creative expression of a Sinhalese-Christian identity that, while being in the process of forming itself, also addresses the contradictions between missionary promises of salvation and colonial violence.

In seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, ascetics are a rare and remarkable subject, even more so when they are Hindu ascetics. The drawing of a yogi created by Rembrandt’s contemporary Willem Schellinks (1623– 1678) is unique for this reason. This article investigates the various possible sources of Schellinks’ drawing – an eyewitness report, the many travel accounts on South Asia, Indian miniatures, or the like – and discusses its place between the European tradition of exoticism and the iconography of saints, as well as its position in Schellinks’ own oeuvre. Far from resorting to exotic stereotypes, Schellinks enlarged the canon of Dutch painting by combining observed foreign objects with established exotic motifs.

Although the Veronese revival is the formative phenomenon of Venetian painting in the eighteenth century, the causes for this circumstance are not entirely clear. The love of splendor is considered to be a significant motif that can be easily misinterpreted as shallow. The fundamental element of the Veronese revival is magnificenza , which also recognizes splendor, luxury, and imagination as aesthetic qualities in the art and literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries while presenting them in a complex reciprocal relationship whose aim is meraviglia , the amazement of the viewer. Fantasia plays the central role in Algarotti’s, Muratori’s, Vico’s, Maffei’s, and Conti’s theories as well as in Sebastiano Ricci’s and Giambattista Tiepolo’s artistic practices. This quality is as important for the patron as it is for the artist whose work is supposed to stimulate the fantasia of the audience.

By exploring the relation between the transcendental functions and the empirical and historical implications of the notion of »ornament« in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the power of judgement , this article argues that Kant tried to establish the concept of ornament as a link between the pure formality of the aesthetic judgement and concrete empirical instances of beauty. Following a discussion of Kant’s emphasis on »exemplarity« and an analysis of his choice of examples of beauty, the article explores the conflict between Kant’s notion of the human body as an »ideal of beauty« and his famous disapproval of ornamental lines in the faces of Maori people. Finally, it considers the modes of representation of leading Maori, their garments, and their facial tā moko in the late nineteenth-century portraits of Gottfried Lindauer and Samuel E. Stuart, and advocates a dual reading of these portraits as both conforming to and contradicting the Kantian model of human beauty.

The ruined Cistercian church of Vaucelles is known only by a few preserved fragments and a plan of the choir reproduced by Villard of Honnecourt. Historical sources provide three key dates: 1190 (start of construction), 1215 (entry into the new church), 1235 (date of the dedication). From the nineteenth century until now, it was considered that the foundations were laid in 1190 and that the construction started on the west side of the church. In 1216, the nave would have been completed, and the choir would have been built between 1216 and 1235. Consultation of the historical sources and examination of the historiographic record changes this established chronology of the site. In fact, the construction proceeded from east to west. The choir reproduced in 1216 or shortly before by Villard de Honnecourt presents the building as it then appeared, with the eastern part of the building totally completed.