Photo Art Project ‘Female Multi-Component Associative Image ‘Fern Blossom’. Part 1

The author’s idea. What the phenomenon of ‘Fern blossom’ is, whereas according to scientific data, the fern does not bloom and does not form inflorescences. Fern flower in the East Slavic mythology has the character of a magical plant that gives a person magical power. With the help of the fern flower, the owner of it could understand the language of animals and trees, see hidden precious treasures under the ground, heal people from various diseases, predict the future and more. It is believed that the fern blossom can be found only on Ivan Kupala night. This holiday is traditional in Ukraine and is named after the Christian Saint John the Baptist, but originates in the distant past from the pagan faith.

Jeszcze o losach "Ewangeliarza ze Skewry"

Some More Insight into the Fate of the "Skevra Evangeliary" The colophons of the Armenian manuscripts from Crimea that were recently published by Tatevik E. Sargsyan make it possible to put forward a thesis that the 12th-century evangeliary created in Skevra (Cilician Armenia), which is now held in the National Library in Warsaw, was kept in Crimea during the 15th century. At the time it belonged to Simeon, a monk from the hermitage of St. Gregory the Illuminator, next to Saint John the Baptist Church in Otuz, and was later sold in 1422 to its next owner known under the name of Khutlupek. There are no other records of this book prior to those found in Lwów (Lviv) in 1592. Its history before that year remains unknown.

“Madonna of Demidovs” and “Madonna of Stroganovs”: to the Question of the Sociocultural Space Forming

This work demonstrates results of study of museum and exhibition activity, which forming modern sociоcultural space at the examples of Renaissance and Mannerism art works from the Stroganovs and the Demidovs collections. The members of these families of Ural and Siberian industrialists, patrons of arts and philanthropists possessed the richest collections of world-class art works. Authors pay attention on such work as “Madonna del Popolo”, also known as “The Holy Family”. Now this masterpiece is stored in the Nizhny Tagil Municipal Museum of Fine Arts. Academician Igor Grabar, who saved it from destroy, considered that this artwork belongs to the authorship of Raphael Santi. The second masterpiece “The Holy Family with Infant Saint John the Baptist” by Agnolo Bronzino now is in the Pushkin State Art Museum (Moscow). Each painter in its own way have revealed the images of the Holy Family, especially Madonna and Infant Christ. Raphael did it in the traditions of the High Renaissance and Bronzino followed the best achievements of Mannerism. These paintings are especially important and valuable because Italian painter, architect and writer Giorgio Vasari, known as the founder of art history as branch of science, have paid his attention on them. The researchers give characteristics to members of the Stroganovs and the Demidovs families on the context of the stated problem. The President of the Academy of Arts and the Director of the Imperial Public Library, the Count A. S. Stroganov bought for his collection the “Holy Family with Infant Saint John the Baptist” by Agnolo Bronzino. The owner of Nizhny Tagil factories N. N. Demidov, who also was a Russian envoy to the Duchy Tuscany (Florence), is connected with inclusion of “Madonna” by Raphael in his art collection. In the study the materials of Grabar’s monograph are analyzed, the results of author’s own scientific research and the detailed section on the Demidovs’ Madonna attribution are given. There are used cultural research and art criticism methods of analysis, for instance, with attraction of “Madonna Doni” by Michelangelo. The acquisition and transfer to Russia of this unique incarnations of the “Holy family” enriched the historical and cultural space not only of the owners and people close to the families, but also of the wider social circles, because these paintings were becoming an integral part of museum and exhibition activities. As a modern example authors analyze the exhibition “Madonna by Raphael from Nizhny Tagil”, where the samples from the collection of the Demidovs, Ural and Sibirian magnates, in the Hall of Arts of the South Ural State University were presented. It is established that, using them, the university academic exhibition has fulfilled the important task of the complex formation of cultural identity of students in the interaction of its regional, national and supranational (universal) aspects

Tanz als Krankheit, Tanz als Therapie. Die Formierung eines religiös-medizinischen Konzepts (15. und 16. Jahrhundert)

Abstract‘Dancing mania’ has often been understood as an expression of purportedly ‘typical medieval’ mass hysteria. Yet evidence suggests that a better interpretation would be to see it as a disease, the idea of which was shaped by patterns tracing back to antique cosmology. During the later Middle Ages, this concept became reality as a form of suffering primarily determined by spiritual forces (e.g. the might of Saint John the Baptist) which typically struck only individuals or small groups in narrowly defined regions. This article closely examines a key shift in the semiotic setting of how this disease was interpreted: During the 15th and early 16th centuries, it became medicalised and desacralized. Evidence of this development can be found in isolated instances of ‘dancing mania’ in towns of the Rhine and Moselle area which at first glance would appear to be of little significance. As a medical concept, ‘dancing mania’ would survive the Reformation, and as a concept of primarily medical understanding it would later be re-integrated into the renewed Catholic culture of the late 16th and 17th centuries.

The Retable of the Main Altar from the Parish Church of Saint John the Baptist in Łekno (German: Bast), Dating from 1588

The triptych from Łekno was painted in 1588 and commissioned by one of the five sons of Duke Philip I of Wolgast of the Griffin dynasty. The painter, who signed the work with the initials CS (and may perhaps be identified as Christoff Schreiber), used graphic patterns in the composition of biblical scenes and included crypto-portraits of Griffin rulers in the depictions of the Last Supper and Crucifixion. After Anna of Stettin married Ulrich III of Mecklenburg, another (also unknown) artist repainted the face of one of the apostles into a high-quality portrait of the duke of Mecklenburg.