Miniatures

La prima e sola edizione di un testo unico nel mondo dell' ippologia, le cui pregevolissime miniature d' arte sono state tratte da opere originali del pittore Carl Vernet, e in cui è riportata l' unica traduzione italiana mai più rifatta dell' opera equestre cardine del famoso écuyer francese François De La Guériniére.

Present day cinemas’ pursuit of perfection in digital visual effects has resulted in a perceptual alienation of the audience due to missing collaboration between artist and audience in the creation of the illusion. The digital’s ability to represent anything and everything, regardless of its perceived realism, reduces the viewer to a mere spectator and no longer an imaginative participant. The reintroduction of imperfect analog effects allows the viewer to contribute to the illusion rather than be pushed away by the perfectionist digital rendering that does not require
assistance. Both absence and imperfection are essential to selling the illusions of the cinematic landscape. This thesis project, the feature film Prairie Dog, is designed to address this digital disconnect in present day cinematic illusions by creating and experimenting in a variety of analog effects in combination with digital processing to illustrate the viability of analog incorporation in present day digital cinema.

Lumi di Sapienza Culla di civiltà tra le più antiche, crocevia e teatro di incessanti conflitti fra gli Stati più potenti nell'antichità, l'Armenia è nota come la terra del Monte Ararat, che la Sacra Scrittura designa come il luogo in cui si sarebbe posata l'arca di Noè al termine del Diluvio, luogo della rinascita del genere umano. Ma ancora, quale terra d'origine dei fiumi di cui la Genesi pone la sorgente comune nel Paradiso terrestre, si percepisce come luogo della sua localizzazione. La densità simbolica del territorio ha contribuito a rafforzare il senso di identità cristiana che ha caratterizzato il popolo armeno sin dalla conversione. Un'identità scolpita nella pietra delle sue croci e risplendente nelle miniature, straordinari contributi al linguaggio figurativo della koiné cristiana dei primi secoli.

La Roche-Guyon's castle (France) has been identified in six wonderful "miniatures" dating approximately 1425, probably drawn by the "Master of Falstolf" who worked for John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford, and John of Falstolf. These representations of the castle allow to reconstruct the 15th century castle in an amazing vision.

This book investigates a paradox of creative yet scripted play—how LEGO invites players to build ‘freely’ with and within its highly structured, ideologically-laden toy system. First, this book considers theories and methods for deconstructing LEGO as a medium of bricolage, the creative reassembly of already-significant elements. Then, it pieces together readings of numerous LEGO sets, advertisements, videogames, films, and other media that show how LEGO constructs five ideologies of play: construction play, dramatic play, digital play, transmedia play, and attachment play. From suburban traffic patterns to architectural croissants, from feminized mini-doll bodies to toys-to-life stories, from virtual construction to playful fan creations, this book explores how the LEGO medium conveys ideological messages—not by transmitting clear statements but by providing implicit instructions for how to reassemble meanings it had all along.
Note: If you are teaching any of this book in an undergraduate class and are interested in a virtual classroom visit, feel free to drop me a line.

The paper considers Neolithic anthropomorphic figurines and their connections to clothing, dress and costume, as represented and/or emphasized on them. It examines iconographic evidence for the use of dress and costume on various parts of the figurines’ bodies and compares it to other data, such as preserved elements of dress and costume in burial contexts. The author also considers the figurines’ associations and connection with textile tasks, the space where these tasks were performed, and the (female) performers involved. Finally, the author suggests possible directions of research concerning women’s involvement in both figurine and textile matters, both concrete and intangible.

An analysis and discussion of the various sources that served as inspiration for my visual art installation entitled The Disobedient Dollhouse. These sources include the literary fiction of the 19th-century Gothic novelists, gothic horror films, the Surrealists, and the grotesquery of Victorian art. Terms relating to the ‘Gothic’ aesthetic, namely ‘the abject’, ‘the grotesque’, and ‘the uncanny,’ are also explained and examined.

L’article analyse les miniatures de saint Jérôme dans le fonds des manuscrits réalisés sous l’abbatiat d’Étienne Harding, afin de saisir la manière dont ce Père de l’Église est appréhendé dans l’abbaye de Cîteaux. Jérôme s’avère être une figure de référence dans l’abbaye, où il était particulièrement apprécié en tant que traducteur de la Vulgate et comme promoteur du monachisme féminin. Étienne Harding en fait son modèle, allant probablement jusqu’à s’identifier avec lui. Les actions de Jérôme (traduction de la Bible, promotion du monachisme féminin) sont célébrées et rappelées par les images ; sa mémoire participe ainsi à la construction identitaire de la communauté monastique de Cîteaux, récemment formée. Les images de Jérôme ont pu enfin avoir comme but de donner davantage de poids à certaines actions d’Étienne Harding susceptibles de soulever des critiques, comme sa révision du texte biblique et la fondation de l’abbaye de moniales de Tart.

During the seventeenth century, a small group of wealthy Dutch wives commissioned and curated their own dollhouses as show-pieces which often included hundreds of miniature works of art by prominent local artists and craftsmen. Those that have survived not only to provide valuable insight into the decoration of houses, but also into the concerns, responsibilities, and collecting practices of women during the Golden Age of Dutch Exploration. Mirroring cabinets of curiosities, such dollhouses present colonialist and microcosmic aspirations as knowledge of the world expanded. The miniaturization of household objects fulfilled a possessive and connoisseurial desire that allowed women to own and control something all their own, best seen in three extant seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouses, all coincidentally owned by women named Petronella.

Neoclassical sculpture tends to have weighty, even colossal aspirations. This paper examines an innovative line ofsculptural porcelain produced by the Fürstenberg manufactory in Braunschweig between 1771-1808, and which participates in an opposing trend, towards miniaturization. These works, busts of classical sculptures, Roman emperors, German aristocrats, and a canon of contemporary artists and intellectuals, placed neoclassical taste on the dining table, thus posing questions about tactile and visual desires. Toothsome versions of neoclassical sculpture, they came into close proximity to the bodies of the consuming aristocracy or, their successors in the tasteful contact with Neoclassicism, the upper middle classes. Embodying as they do the major theorists of Classicism in Germany from Winckelmann to Herder and Lessing - the miniature busts are also examined in this essay as both fashionable and critical reconfigurations of those writers ' constructions of antique and modem bodies.

Codicologists, unlike art historians, consider illustrations in their formal and material relation to the text. Thus, we shall dwell on details that usually art historians leave aside, such as illustration position in relation to text columns, presence or absence of frames and how artists/illustrators express textual contents through graphic means. Therefore, we shall see:  illustration types depending on their size relative to the page  illustrations' function depending on their position in the page  illustrations' types depending on their position in the manuscript  narrative procedure types in manuscript illustrations  illustrations' frames and backgrounds  illustrations transmission and graphical apparatus evolution.

Robyn O'Neil produces epic works of art in the contemporary age with a mechanical pencil. Since 2002 she has created catastrophes on a miniature scale through a series of drawings of natural disasters and severe landscapes populated by a few majestically drawn animals and hundreds of small male figures dressed in identical black sweatsuits. in contrast to the clumsy and awkward tiny human figures, the animals, at home in the natural world are large and impressively beautiful.

High-ranking individuals institutionalizing force and sharing a collective ‘warriorhood’ identity are considered a major factor in the interpretation of Bronze Age social stratification. The innovative character of the sword as a weapon and marker of social rank was especially emphasized within this context. A change within this framework seems to have taken place during the Late European Bronze Age with the adoption of cremation burial and the reduction of grave goods. In northern Central Europe and Southern Scandinavia, this was accompanied by another local phenomenon: the functional weapon seems to have been substituted by a detailed miniature version within funerary contexts. Apparently, the symbolic meaning of the sword still played a role in the creation of identity. However, what remains to be discovered is whether the social pre-conditions which surrounded the inclusion of swords had changed or whether they were still operative on the previous scale.

REVISITING THE MINIATURES OF THE PROPHET BOOK DATED BACK TO 1489

Prophet Book dated to 1489 is the luxury Moscow manuscript decorated with 16 prophet «portraits», polychrome headpieces and initials. In the present paper the common attribution of the miniatures is reconsidered. The detailed characteristics of the special aspects of the painting are proposed in order to define the importance of the miniatures in the history of Moscow art of the late 15th century. The problems of so called “wash-drawing” technique and iconography of the prophets are discussed.
We follow a traditional division of the miniatures into 2 groups (so-called “wash-drawing” and “tempera” groups) and believe 16 illustrations of the Prophet book to be made by 7 painters. “Tempera” miniatures were represented by 4 painters. The first master has made images of Josiah and Joel, the second – Habakkuk, the third – Zechariah and Malachi, the forth – Daniel. Three painters participated in representation of the “wash-drawing” group. Images of Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Zephaniah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah were made by the fifth master. Portraits of Nahum and Haggai were painted by 2 masters.
“Wash-drawing” technique applied for 10 miniatures of the Prophet book is common in Moscow and Novgorod manuscripts of the late 15th c. It is indicative of the Palaeologan art reminiscence.
Full length image against the neutral background is one of the optional versions of the “author’s portrait” and speaks that Moscow painters knew well the Byzantine tradition. By contrast, prophets’ faces are similar to images in iconostasis Prophet tiers rather than to “portraits” in Byzantine manuscripts of the analogue structure.

In recent years two new finds of miniature weapons and tools have been made on the Iron Age site of Uppåkra. Because of this it is my intention to present an alternative interpretation that might perhaps supplement earlier studies of these objects. The idea came to me while reading about the Iron Age woman being adopted into her husband 's family in connection with the wedding and the rituals linked with this practice. For example, there is an account of how the man gives his future wife a set of weapons as well as a fully equipped warhorse in some Gerrnanic tribes in the first century AD. It is my conviction that the custom was rationalized over time and the costly full-size weapons, of no practical use for the woman, were replaced with the miniatures. This would explain why they are exclusively found in women's graves, since they would constitute status symbols associated with the female significance as a wife.

მსოფლიო ცივილიზაციის ისტორია უამრავ საიდუმლოსა და იდუმალებას მალავს და შვიდი ბეჭდით დაფარული ერთ-ერთი ასეთი იდუმალება - კელტური ხალხების ისტორია წარმოადგენს. თუმცა ამ ცივილიზაციამ ძვირფასი მემკვიდრეობა დაგვიტოვა, რომელიც თანამედროვე ევროპული კულტურის ერთ-ერთი საფუძველი გახდა.

Mémoire de maîtrise soutenu à l’Université Paris IV – Sorbonne, sous la direction des professeurs Anne Prache et Daniel Russo, 1995 : "Tentures de trônes, rideaux et draps d’honneur, dans les représentations mariales, en France et en Italie, aux XIIIe, XIVe et début du XVe siècles."
Mémoire de Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (D.E.A.) soutenu à l’Université Paris IV – Sorbonne, sous la direction des professeurs Anne Prache, Daniel Russo et de Dominique Iogna-Prat, 1996 : "Le drap d’honneur, attribut marial dans l’iconographie chrétienne, XIIIe – XVe siècles."

Figurines with a human shape have been created in almost every culture all throughout human history. In this thesis one such group of figurines is under investigation, Viking age female figurines. These figurines are most often interpreted as representations of the Valkyries – shieldmaidens of the god Odin – or as the goddess Fröja. Interpretations made through comparative studies with the medieval written sources. However, these interpretations always privileges some attributes of the figurines over others, creating simplified and general interpretations. The purpose of this thesis is to (re)interpret the figurines beyond the concept of representation, and instead focus on what the figurines, through their various attributes (size, motive, material), do and how they influence human actions. This is realized through the creation of a catalogue of all currently known female figurines from the Viking age (53 pieces), a correspondence analysis and through the use of symmetrical archaeology and embodiment theory. The result shows that the most important attributes of the figurines is their physical bodies, through which they can interact with the world, trigger emotions, hold memory, become animated and be part of the performative practice of upholding individual identity as well as upholding both the social- and cosmological worlds.

Theorizing ontology can provoke difference to emerge in archaeology if cases are taken as enabling recursive effects on our concepts rather than as faithful descriptions of past ontologies. In this paper, miniaturized ceramic pots in funerary contexts of first millennium AD northwest Argentina are taken as a case of that nature. Such pots have conventionally been understood as responding to the body scale of those with whom they are buried (often children). That is, the body is small, so the pot is small. We have a rich repertoire of archaeological approaches to miniaturization, notably in the work of Douglas Bailey, among others. There are untapped theoretical resources, however, that might provide insight into the practice from an ontologically alter perspective. I draw on indigenous Amazonian theories to suggest that miniatures were ‘spirit traps,’ acting to ensnare desire-ridden spirits who were tempted to leave the body. Significantly, however, that interpretation rests upon alternative ontologies of scale, representation, and materials. The recursive effect, then, is to use the case to challenge archaeology’s conventional concepts. What is interesting, ultimately, is not the reconstruction of a past ontology, which is problematic for all sorts of reasons, but the conceptual work of producing difference.

In this study we will illustrate the Manuscript 2197, held at the University Library of Bologna. A Splendid Unicum for its Miniatures. Avicenna and the Canon of Medicine. Abu ‘Ali HusaynIbn Sina, known in the West as vicenna, was born in 980 C.E.(370 of the Egira) at Afshana, near Bukhara, an important caravan centre in Central Asia, then ruled by the Samanids(819-1005). Although of Iranian culture (the language they spoke was Persian), the inhabitants of these lands, converted to Islam starting from the eighth century e.v., were an integral part of the vast Muslim world that at that time extended from the Atlantic at the borders of China. Consequently, the language of culture and science in Bukhara was also Arabic, and it is precisely in this language that Avicenna wrote almost all of his works composed during his travels to Islamic lands until his death in 1037 in Hamadan.

Cet article traite de l’itinéraire d’un qalugiujaq, un couteau miniature ayant appartenu au célèbre chamane Qimuksiraaq. L’objet a été trouvé dans un fonds d’archives des Sœurs grises de Nicolet, et récemment restitué à un descendant de ce chamane. Les auteurs soulignent l’agencéité de ces objets miniatures capables de créer des connexions dans le temps ou dans l’espace. Ici, le pouvoir transformationnel de la miniature à l’étude demeure visiblement intact en dépit de plusieurs décennies de christianisation. Au-delà de mesures dites d’indigénisation, ce constat devrait conduire les musées à plus d’ouverture et de prudence dans la gestion de leurs collections d’objets miniatures.

This article discusses the itinerary of a qalugiujaq, a miniature knife that belonged to the famous shaman Qimuksiraaq. The object was found in the archives of the Grey Nuns of Nicolet and recently returned to a descendant of the renowned shaman. The authors discuss miniatures as agencies that have a capacity to make connections in time or space. In this particular case the transformational power of the miniature remained intact despite decades of Christianity. Beyond measures of indigenization, this observation should lead museums to be more open and careful in the management of their collections of miniature objects.

Este artículo trata del itinerario de un qalugiujaq, un cuchillo miniatura que perteneció al célebre chaman Qimuksiraaq. El objeto fue encontrado en el fondo del archivo de las Hermanas grises de Nicolet, y restituido recientemente a un descendiente de ese chaman. Los autores subrayan la agenceidad de esos objetos miniaturas capaces de crear conexiones en el tiempo y el espacio. Aquí, el poder transformacional de la miniatura estudiada permaneció visiblemente intacto a pesar de varias decenas de cristianización. Más allá de las medidas de la supuesta indigenización, esta constatación deberá llevar a los museos hacia una mayor apertura y prudencia en la gestión de sus colecciones de objetos miniaturas.

In this study a number of 189 miniature vessels from the Neolithic settlement of Şoimuş – La Avicola (Ferma 2), Hundoara County, are presented. The vessels are analysed from the point of view of their technology, typology and context in order to establish, if possible, the role they played in the Neolithic communities. The rescue excavation from Şoimuş – La Avicola (Ferma 2), on the route of A1 Motorway, provided well preserved contexts (pits, pit-houses, dwellings, ditches) for the items analysed in this study. Also, it is worth mentioning that our batch of 189 miniature vessels is one of the largest of this kind from the Romanian Neolithic.

Cet article met en évidence d'étroites relations formelles entre les plaquettes narratives du buste-reliquaire de saint Servais (Maastricht) et un certain nombre de miniatures produites à Paris vers 1400. Cette pièce d'orfèvrerie ne serait pas mosane, comme on le prétend depuis le XIXe siècle, mais plutôt une commande passée auprès d'un orfèvre établi à Paris. Cette oeuvre concrétise les solidarités professionnelles entre ces métiers.

Abstract:
This paper presents research on the ritual function of miniature textiles in Pre-Columbia Andean cultures and their continued use in the present. I attempt to discern the symbolic and ritual functions that are suggested by the contexts in which miniature textiles appear. The following theoretical interpretations are proposed. First, that a causal connection between microcosm and macrocosm underlines the creation and ritual manipulation of miniatures. Second, because of the implied human presence that clothing evokes, the ability of clothing to function as a metaphor for the human body, I suggest that offering of woven clothing, both miniature and full-scale, may have been symbolic substitutions for actual human sacrifice. Finally, I argue that the intrinsic value and ritual efficacy of miniatures may have been enhanced rather than diminished when compared to their full-scale correlates.