Noise Reduction at the Fan Outlet

The paper deals with numerical flow simulation in the fan outlet of a large painting shop. The received results of pressure fluctuations in numerical models are evaluated using both frequency analysis of pressure fluctuations and measuring and evaluation of a really operating system. From the conclusion there is defined the hypothesis of noise origin and more, it is proposed a more suitable design of the system without creation of pressure fluctuations. The system is ready for implementation.

Affectionate sister, most faithful friend

In May of 1630, the exiled Queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth Stuart, sent a large painting to her brother, King Charles I of England. The work, a now-lost family portrait known since 1966 as Seladon and Astraea, was completed by the Dutch artist Gerrit van Honthorst. That this painting took Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral romance L’Astrée as its source material has been proposed since the 1960s. This article argues for L’Astrée as an important part of Elizabeth and her husband’s self-identity in exile, and for Honthorst’s painting as a vital and overlooked token of friendship between both Elizabeth and her husband and Elizabeth and her brother. Drawing on early modern and ancient theorizations of friendship, kinship, and marriage as well as Elizabeth, Charles, and her husband Frederick’s letters, this article places Honthorst’s painting at the center of a complex network of reciprocal affection, political machinations, and court culture in the seventeenth century.

Museum Moving to Inpatients: Le Louvre à l’Hôpital

Anxiety and depressive symptoms are common in hospitalized patients. Arts and cultural programs were reported to enhance their quality of life. The Le Louvre à l’hôpital study presents a new approach in which the museum moves to the hospital by displaying and discussing artworks with patients interactively. Over one year, four large statues were disposed in the hospital gardens, 30 reprints of large painting were exhibited in the hospital hall, dining rooms, and circulations areas. A total of 83 small-group guided art discussions (90 min) were organized, which 451 patients attended. The 200 small-size reproductions of paintings placed in the patients’ rooms were chosen based on their individual preferences. Decreased anxiety after the art sessions was reported by 160 of 201 patients (79.6%). Out of 451 patients, 406 (90%) said the art program had met their expectations, and 372 (82.4%) wished to continue the experience with caregivers (162 paramedics trained for art activity during 66 workshops). In conclusion, moving the museum to the hospital constitutes a valuable way to provide art activities for inpatients in large numbers, which may reduce hospital-related anxiety in many instances.

Figures of mounted warrior saints in medieval Crete. The representation of the equestrian Saint George “Thalassoperatis” at Diavaide in Heraklion

In the church of Saint George Sfakiotis, built on the outskirts of the settlement Diavaide in the Perfecture of Heraklion in Crete, narrative interest is focused on the large painting with the mounted figures of the military saints George and Demetrios. Saint George is shown together with the young pillion rider, whereas the element of water on the lower part of the scene establishes a connection between the episode of the slave?s release and a rarer variant according to which the liberator saint crosses the sea (?thalassoperatis?, trans. he who crosses the sea). The iconographic and stylistic analysis of the representation of Saint George as well that of Saint Demetrios at Diaviade reflects the artistic environment of the Eastern Mediterranean, possibly that of Cyprus, where images of equestrian military saints form part of the tradition of the island.

Inscription and Castration in Picasso's The Painter and His Model, 1927

In the spring of 1927, Picasso produced a large painting known as The Painter and His Model, now in Tehran. Perhaps because of its current location, the work has, until recently, gone largely unremarked in the literature on the artist. Nonetheless, it stands as his most arresting single canv as of the late 1920s—perhaps the strangest period of the artist's production—and indeed as one of the supreme achievements of his career. In ways we have yet to grasp fully, the late ′20s marked a crucial turning point for Picasso: a moment of crisis, which seemed to require a tot al reexamination of his means. Over the course of 1927 in part icular, his work took on a troubled, almost desperate air as Picasso reengaged wit h Cubism's most difficult lessons, and const ant ly courted—at times even willed—aesthet ic failure. At no t ime had the art ist worked against himself with such intensit y, or with such bewildering results.

Johannes Vermeer en de jezuïeten te Delft

This article offers an addition and partial correction to the recent and pioneering research by John Michael Montias on Johannes Vermeer and his milieu. Isaac van der Mije (1602-1656) from Delft, educated as a painter before he became a Jesuit, may very well have been Vermeer's teacher, in view of his closeness to the artist and his family. There is no hard evidence that Vermeer became a Catholic at the occasion of his marriage to Catharina Bolnes in 1653, but it is known that Roeland de Pottere (1584-1675), the Jesuit who performed the marriage, was a rather strict opponent of mixed marriages. The Jesuits in Delft can be considered to have been the patrons who commissioned Vermeer's large painting Allegory of faith (about 1671-1674). Like Jesuits elsewhere in the Republic they will have selected a local painter for their catechetical didactic paintings. Finally two relatives of Vermeer are presented, who were benefactors of the Jesuits.