Réau confronta metódica y sistemáticamente los temas estudiados con textos teológicos, litúrgicos y legendarios, con documentos poéticos, históricos y socioeconómicos, y cataloga sus principales representaciones artísticas con una erudición inaudita que se expresa, sin embargo, a través de un lenguaje dominado por la claridad y la precisión expositivas. Resumen del índice: Introducción.- Primera parte: Ante legem: Dios y la creación.- El pecado y los castigos.- Los patriarcas y José.- Segunda parte: Sub lege: Moisés y Josué.- Los jueces y los reyes.- Los profetas de Israel.- Índice alfabético.
Pequeño manual que sirve de ayuda no sólo a los estudiosos del arte sacro, sino incluso a tantas gentes que están ávidas de conocer tan singular y preciada herencia con que contamos los que nos decimos creyentes.
The face of the divine feminine can be found everywhere in Mexico. One of the most striking features of Mexican religious life is the prevalence of images of the Virgin Mother of God. This is partly because the divine feminine played such a prominent role in pre-Hispanic Mexican religion. Goddess images were central to the devotional life of the Aztecs, especially peasants and those living in villages outside the central city of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City). In these rural communities fertility and fecundity, more than war rituals and sacrificial tribute, were the main focus of cultic activity. Both Aztec goddesses and the Christian Madonnas who replaced them were associated, and sometimes identified, with nature and the environment: the earth, water, trees and other sources of creativity and vitality. This book uncovers the myths and images of 22 Aztec Goddesses and 28 Christian Madonnas of Mexico. Their rich and symbolic meaning is revealed by placing them in the context of the religious worldviews in which they appear and by situating them within the devotional life of the faithful for whom they function as powerful mediators of divine grace and terror.
The Centre as Margin. Eccentric Perspectives on Art is a multi-authored volume of collected essays that answer the challenge of thinking Art History, and the Arts in a broader sense, from a liminal point of view. Its main goal is thus to discuss the margin from the centre - drawing on its concomitance within study themes and subjects, ontological and epistemological positions, or research methodologies themselves. Marginality, eccentricity, liminality, and superfluity are all part of a dynamic relationship between centre and margin(s) that will be approached and discussed, from the point of view of disciplines as different and as close as art history, philosophy, literature and design, from medieval to contemporary art. Resulting from recent research developed from the privileged viewpoint offered by the margin, this volume brings together the contributions of young researchers along with the work of career scholars. Likewise, it does not obey a traditional or a rigid diachronic structure, being rather organized in three major parts that organically articulate the different essays. Within each of these parts in which the book is divided, papers are sometimes organized according to their timeframes, providing the reader with an encompassing (though not encyclopedic) overview of the common ground over which the various artistic disciplines build their methodological, theoretical, and thematic centers and margins. The intended eccentricity of this volume – and the original essays herein presented – should provide researchers, scholars, students, artists, curators, and the general reader interested in art with a refreshing approach to its various scientific strands.
El autor analiza por orden alfabético (en tres volúmenes) la historia y la leyenda de cada uno de los santos, estudia su culto, beatificación, canonización, la traslación e invención de las reliquias, los lugares de veneración litúrgicos y populares, los patronazgos, etc., y define su tipología, sus características figurativas y sus atributos.
A Companion to Early Modern Lima introduces readers to the Spanish American city which became a vibrant urban center in the sixteenth-century world. As part of Brill's Companions to the Americas series, this volume presents current interdisciplinary research focused on the Peruvian viceregal capital. From ancient roots to its foundation by Pizarro, Lima was transformed into an imperial capital positioned between Atlantic and Pacific exchange networks. An international team of scholars examines issues ranging from literary history, politics, and religion to philosophy, historiography, and modes of intercontinental influence. The volume is divided into three sections: urban development and government, society, and culture. The essays collectively represent the scope of contemporary approaches, methodologies, and source materials pertinent to the study of sixteenth-century Lima, a city at the center of global interchange in the early modern world.
The Hebrew Bible and art reside at the core of this book, which analyzes the iconographic representation of several women of the Bible. The contributors consider the ways in which the biblical texts regarding these women had been read and understood throughout time and the means by which they were represented. Each study also explores the different values associated with these representations according to the problems, worries and concerns of each period. Drawing upon disciplines such as theology, philology or history of art, the essays within this volume provide a cross-sectional, plural and rich approach. In focusing upon iconographic representation, numerous visual cultures of the last millennium are explored, and special emphasis is placed upon several integral biblical women such as Bathsheba, Moses' mother, the Pharaoh's Daughter, Ruth, Naomi and Deborah, and their lasting influence upon Western art and culture. This book pursues an understanding of the history of the transmission and reception of the Bible in general, and of the women of the Old Testament in particular.
Immaculate Conceptions examines devotional writings, religious and literary texts, and visual art that feature the mystery of the immaculacy of the Virgin Mary in the culture of early modern Spain. The author’s analysis is motivated by the complexity and multivalent capacity of the doctrine and its icon at a time when the debates around Mary’s conception imbued all levels of religious and social life. She considers the many interests – political, doctrinal, artistic, and gender-driven – that intersect and compete in the exegesis and textual and visual representations of the Immaculate Conception. She argues that the Immaculate Conception of Mary proved to be a fertile conceptual and ideological field wherein the identities of the Spanish state, local communities, and individuals were negotiated, variously defined, and contested. The study’s broader aim is to delineate a speculative category, the religious imagination, defined as a spiritual, intellectual, or artistic pursuit in which the individual is committed to sacred truth yet articulates this truth through contingent, partial, and contextually determined theological propositions. The representational status of the image and its relationship to theories of physical sight and spiritual vision are central to the author’s formulation of this category.
