Category: Academic
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The Arnolfini Portrait and the Limits of Interpretation
Written by: Tristan Craig. Hung in the fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting room of the National Gallery, Jan van Eyck’s 1434 Arnolfini Portrait has been a source of intrigue, mystery and vastly differing readings since its purchase by the gallery in 1842.
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Homosexuality in Renaissance Florence: The Ambiguities of Neoplatonic Thought
Written by: Jamie Gemmell. Renaissance Italy is popularly portrayed as a realm of carnal debauchery. One only needs to watch Tom Fontana’s Borgia (2011-2014) to understand common conceptions of Renaissance Italy as a realm of brutal acts, orgies, and affairs. Yet, is there any truth to these depictions?
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Impending Collapse: Holy War and the Fall of Jerusalem in 1187
Written by: Jack Bennett. October 2, 1187. On the anniversary of Muhammad’s ‘Night Journey’ from Jerusalem to Heaven, Saladin made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Following victory at the Battle of Hattin in July, Muslim forces had swept throughout the Crusader States, systematically recapturing Latin Christian settlements, and dismantling the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. This piece…
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La Llorona: Folklore, Spirits, Colonialism, and Power
Written by: Lewis Twiby. One of the most iconic images of Latin American and Chicano folklore is that of La Llorona – The Weeping Woman. In stories she haunts waterways, weeping and crying ‘Mis hijos’ (My Children), and if you hear her wails, she will drown you. In contemporary Latin American and Chicano society she…
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Seneca Revisited
Written by: Justin Biggi. Content Warning: This post contains graphic discussions of violence, gore, and self-harm. I believe that an ulterior dimension can be added to how we read Seneca’s use of violence if we read it through the lens of modern-day horror theory.
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The Woman with Lapis Lazuli in Her Teeth: Exploring the Female Scribes of Medieval Europe
Written by: Tristan Craig. A 2014 analysis of the remains of a woman, exhumed from the burial site adjacent to a former medieval monastery in Dalheim, Germany, found brilliant blue particles embedded in her dental calculus. Raman spectroscopic analysis revealed these pigments to be lapis lazuli: an immensely valuable commodity in the Middle Ages and…
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Magnificent Manipulation: How the Medici Politicised Public Art
Written by: Joshua Al-Najar. In Renaissance Florence, public spaces served as the physical manifestation of the government’s agenda. Often this took the form of art, as regimes sought to disseminate a set of ideals via public works. This communicative discourse could be wrought with problems, as the creation of artworks did not necessarily translate to…
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‘Tipu’s Tiger’ and the Importance of Visual Language
Written by: Laila Ghaffar. In the narrative of the British colonisation of India, it would be very easy to understand the Indians as passive and helpless in the face of rapid British expansion. After all, history is written by the winners. However, one look at ‘Tipu’s Tiger’ and an entirely different story is conveyed.
Retrospect Journal 