The Islamic Design Module in Latin America

The Islamic Design Module in Latin America PDF

Author: John F. Moffitt

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2004-07-15

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780786418060

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This study analyzes the distinctive look of Hispanic architecture. Its triangulate format, originated in Islamic Spain, was based on workshop techniques once used by journeyman designers and simple artisans. Spain was the only European transatlantic colonial power to have once been occupied by Islamic overlords. Spain's conquistadors took their traditional building methods to Latin America. Formal analyses of the facades of various Latin American churches reveal them to reiterate procedures worked out in Andalusia by Islamic builders in the ninth and tenth centuries. Though widely separated by time and place, both share a proportionate system determining abstract ratios; in both cases, this regulating format was derived from manipulations of the Pythagorean triangles. This "trazado regulador" is only expressed in ratios, with no numbers, and is illustrated here with 85 visual examples including measured drawings of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval European prototypes. Grounded in historical and physical data, the research is partially drawn from four practical builders' manuals: two seventeenth-century Spanish ones and two Mexican ones from ca. 1640 and 1800. In an appendix, Viollet-le-Duc (a major nineteenth-century architect) explains architectural proportionality and the design function of the Pythagorean Triangle.

Framing Iberia

Framing Iberia PDF

Author: David Wacks

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007-04-24

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9004158286

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Drawing on current critical theory, Framing Iberia relocates the Castilian classics El Conde Lucanor and El Libro de buen amor within a medieval Iberian literary tradition that includes works in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Romance. Winner of the 2009 La corónica International Book Award for scholarship in Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World (2 vols.)

Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World (2 vols.) PDF

Author: Susan Sinclair

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-04-03

Total Pages: 1508

ISBN-13: 9047412079

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Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

Painterly Perspective and Piety

Painterly Perspective and Piety PDF

Author: John F. Moffitt

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0786452269

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While the Renaissance is generally perceived to be a secular movement, the majority of large artworks executed in 15th century Italy were from ecclesiastical commissions. Because of the nature of primarily basilica-plan churches, a parishioner's view was directed by the diminishing parallel lines formed by the walls of the structure. Appearing to converge upon a mutual point, this resulted in an artistic phenomenon known as the vanishing point. As applied to ecclesiastical artwork, the Catholic Vanishing Point (CVP) was deliberately situated upon or aligned with a given object--such as the Eucharist wafer or Host, the head of Christ or the womb of the Virgin Mary--possessing great symbolic significance in Roman liturgy. Masaccio's fresco painting of the Trinity (circa 1427) in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, analyzed in physical and symbolic detail, provides the first illustration of a consistently employed linear perspective within an ecclesiastical setting. Leonardo's Last Supper, Venaziano's St. Lucy Altarpiece, and Tome's Transparente illustrate the continuation of this use of liturgical perspective.

Saint James the Greater in History, Art and Culture

Saint James the Greater in History, Art and Culture PDF

Author: William Farina

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-03-19

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1476632812

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Among the 12 disciples of Jesus, perhaps none has inspired more magnificent art--as well as political upheaval--than Saint James the Greater. Portrayed in the New Testament as part of Jesus' inner circle, he was the first apostle to be martyred. Eight centuries later, Saint James, or Santiago, became the de facto patron saint of Spain, believed to be a supernatural warrior who led the victorious Christian armies during the Iberian Reconquista. After 1492, the Santiago cult found its way to the New World, where it continued to exert influence. Today, he remains the patron saint of pilgrims to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela. His legacy has bequeathed a magnificent tradition of Western art over nearly two millennia.

Caravaggio in Context

Caravaggio in Context PDF

Author: John F. Moffitt

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-02-18

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 147660987X

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) has long been recognized as one of the great innovators in the history of art. Through detailed analysis of paintings from his early Roman period, 1594-1602, this study now situates his art firmly within both its humanistic and its scientific context. Here, both his revolutionary painterly techniques--pronounced naturalism and dramatic chiaroscuro--and his novel subject matter--still-life compositions and genre scenes--are finally put into their proper cultural and contemporary environment. This environment included the contemporary rise of empirical scientific observation, a procedure--like Caravaggio's naturalism--committed to a close study of the phenomenal world. It also included the interests of his erudite, aristocratic patrons, influential Romans whose tastes reflected the Renaissance commitment to humanistic studies, emblematic literature and classical lore. The historical evidence entered into the record here includes both contemporary writings addressing the instructive purposes of art and the ancient literary sources commonly manipulated in Caravaggio's time that sanctioned a socially realistic art. The overall result of this investigation is characterize the work of the painter as an expression of "learned naturalism."

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe PDF

Author: John F. Moffitt

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-07-25

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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According to legend, on December 8, 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared to the newly Christianized Juan Diego on the Mexican hill of Tepeyacac. As proof of her divine visit, she miraculously imprinted her image upon his mantle. That image, known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, has become a symbol of national consciousness in Mexico and a talisman for Mexican Americans. Yet its notable features include obviously European artistic techniques. How is it that Renaissance styles are employed in a 16th century Mexican icon supposedly not made by human hands? Looking beyond the divine explanation for the Lady's existence, author John Moffitt uses historical and artistic detective work to determine the work's earthly origin. Originally published in Spanish, this volume provides an in-depth study of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It places the work within the context of art history as well as local contemporary events. The mundane origin of the painting is fully traced and investigated as well as the proliferation of the legend which led to the eventual canonization of Juan Diego as the first native Mexican saint. Appendices provide crucial related Spanish-language texts by Miguel Sanchez (1648) and Luis Laso de la Vega (1649, originally published in Nahuatl). Numerous illustrations are included.

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