Case study from the Getty’s digital art history team shows how modeling and machine learning are shedding light on the history of the art market.

Mat-building is a low-rise, high-density construction which characterizes European architecture of the 1960s and 1970s. The term is coined by Alison Smithson and its paradigm is the Free University in Berlin by Candilis, Josic, and Woods. Based on a strong internal order and indeterminacy in form, mat-buildings’ design is a combinatory method. I…[Read more]

La enorme complejidad de jurisdicciones medievales determina la existencia de una diversidad de diferentes modalidades de nominación de los escribanos públicos. Nuestro objetivo es analizar el caso concreto del notariado de Langreo, núcleo urbano asturiano que en el periodo bajomedieval perteneció a la jurisdicción compartida entre dos inst…[Read more]

Here is just some of what we are given to understand John Chamberlain’s art as being like: car wrecks and dancers, artichokes and mummies and giant phalluses, drapery, a football player, ornaments for an immense Christmas tree and monstrous jungle-gyms, a sucked egg, and Titans beside themselves with rage. Next, a long list of the art-historical m…[Read more]

Knowledge founded on perception always stays flexible. Imposed intellectual interpretations remain rigid, eliminating discrepancies if sensations vary from that which is expected. When viewing art, as with everyday existence in the world, a willingness to just perceive means learning, again and again, what one did not know before, even though…[Read more]

Donald Judd’s 1964 essay ‘Specific Objects’ probably remains his most well-known. In it, he described new artworks characterized by, among other features, ‘a quality as a whole’ instead of conventional ‘part-by-part structure,’ the ‘use of three dimensions’ and ‘real space’ as opposed to depiction, ‘new materials [that] aren’t obviously art,’ and…[Read more]

Why do we play games—with and upon each other as well as ourselves? When are winners also losers, and vice-versa? How and to what end do we stretch the spaces of play? What happens when players go ‘out of bounds,’ or when games go ‘too far’? Moreover, what happens when we push the parameters of inquiry: when we play with traditional narrative…[Read more]

This essay analyzes Zorns Lemma (1962–1970), a film made by American artist Hollis Frampton (1936–1984). Noting Frampton’s use of Robert Grosseteste’s thirteenth-century treatise De luce [‘On Light’] as a key aspect of the film’s soundtrack, the essay argues that Grosseteste’s investigations of light as a medium played a key role in Frampton’s t…[Read more]

Two Pietàs in different media, the first by French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) and the second by Swedish composer Lisa Streich (1985-), permit an examination of the Pietà trope itself by laying open a range of its symbolic aspects. Bouguereau’s Pietà (1876) is discussed in terms of the grief and joy that are both presen…[Read more]

Through an engagement with theory from the fields of art history, anthropology, and sociology, this article examines the archival existence of medieval manuscripts and facilitates an understanding of archival practice and its effects on user experience from the perspective of the researcher, rather than from that of the archivist or information…[Read more]

Through a discussion of the materiality of photographic documents and the inherent qualities of digital objects, this article examines the viability of digitization as a method of archival photographic preservation. By exploring notions of surrogacy, originality, and aura, the author presents and deconstructs the popular argument that digital…[Read more]

Occasionally, the handlers of the past chose to leave marks more permanent than the everyday wear and tear. The deliberate traces left by past user(s) demand further inquiry, beseeching us to investigate more closely the relationship between our experiences of manuscripts today, and those responses of past readers who have left an indelible mark…[Read more]

The present paper is a continuation of research on terminology used in the Renaissance to identify and describe altarpieces. It treats Venetian painted altarpieces from c. 1350 to c. 1500 and follows last year’s study of Florentine and central Italian altarpieces. It focuses on multi-panel works, some of which survive intact, while most have b…[Read more]

In the original arrangement of the since-dismembered tomb, the costly life-size bronze panel of Roccabonella seated in his study faced the life-size bronze panel of the Virgin and Child adored by St. Francis and St. Peter; the two panels and their arrangement present Roccabonella’s erudition as well as his devotion to the holy figures depicted i…[Read more]

This article traces the gradual development of allegorical portraiture in Mughal Art under emperor Jahangir (1569–1627), by analyzing Mughal artists’ gradual adaptation of the European genres of portraiture and allegory through their encounter with European prints.

Im Œuvre des Architekten Hans Scharoun lässt sich ab den 1930er-Jahren eine besondere und spezifische Art der Fotografie ausmachen. Hinter diesen Fotografien liegt dabei weit mehr – zum Teil Brisantes – verborgen als ihnen beim ersten Anblick anzusehen wäre. Anhand der Häuser Mattern und Moll werden diese Fotografien im vorliegenden Text untersu…[Read more]

Review of Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence by Carl Brandon Strehlke

Review of Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal by Gabrielle Langdon

Chapter in Witwenschaft in der frühen Neuzeit: fürstliche und adlige Witwen zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung

Chapter 8 in The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation