Unknown artist, Figures in a Landscape

The Altar of the Holy Cross is situated in the Capuchin Church in Bratislava, on the northern wall in a niche. It was built during the reconstruction of the church in 1735 and its donor was Count Karol Zichy (Ziči). It is a composite of architectural, sculptural and painting works from an unknown artist (artists). The main motif displays the “Adoration of the Cross”. In the middle is an oil painting of the crucified Christ that shows representatives from the social layers of that time. On left there are clergy (bishop, abbot, monks and nuns), and on the right secular people (king, duke, noblemen and others). The symbolic message concentrates on Christ´s redemptive sacrifice for all people. This article deals with the symbolical, iconological and artistical issues of this altar painting.

At the beginning of the 21st century, there were sensational discoveries in two palaces located in Ciechanowice and Struga in Silesia (Poland). During their renovations, Renaissance fresco cycles of portraits of emperors from the Roman, medieval, and early modern times appeared under the layer of plaster in the representative dining rooms (27 in the palace in Struga and about 50 in the palace in Ciechanowice). They were painted in the 1580s (in Ciechanowice, the date is 1588) by the same unknown artist. This article is the first to attempt to establish the most important facts related to the creation of both fresco cycles. The frescoes were founded by representatives of influential Silesian Protestant nobility: Heinrich von Reichenbach (Ciechanowice) and Abraham von Czettritz und Neuhaus (Struga). Both nobles attended the funeral of Emperor Maximilian II, which took place in Prague in 1577. This is where they purchased a work by the Dutch printmaker, painter, and numismatist, Hubert Goltzius, Lebendige Bilder Gar Nach Aller Keysern […] (published in Antwerp in 1557), whose specially prepared copy had been solemnly presented to Emperor Maximilian II in 1562. The book contains 133 monochrome woodcut illustrations with portraits of emperors in circular frames by the Dutch artist Joss van Gietleughen, which—together with accompanying inscriptions—were used as models for fresco paintings in both Silesian palaces. The foundation of the cycles of portraits of the emperors of the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in the representative halls of the palaces in Ciechanowice and Struda, which ended with a joint representation of Emperor Maximilian II and the King of Spain, Philip II Habsburg, was a way to show the gratitude of both prominent and wealthy Protestant nobles towards Emperor Maximilian II. During his reign, imperial power was the source and guarantee of religious freedoms for Protestants in Silesia. It is significant that both cycles left out the person of emperor regnant, Rudolf II, who soon after assuming the imperial throne abandoned his father’s tolerant policy towards Protestants. Although the author of both series of frescoes was probably a local painter, they are a unique artistic realization not only in Silesia but also in the whole of Central Europe, and they can only be compared to the popular Renaissance portrait galleries of “famous men” (uomini famosi).

Around 1901, the Viennese graphic artist Bertold Löffler created a bookplate for Sigmund Freud. The history of this bookplate's creation was hitherto unclear. The present article explores the circumstances of the bookplate's creation and the context of this interesting connection between the well-established scientist and the young, unknown artist: the contact was negotiated by Löffler's colleague, Carl Maria Schwerdtner, whose brother Hugo was a student of Freud and commissioned the bookplate as a gift from Freud's students.

The frontispiece plate of Mr. H. G. Rawlinson's recent work, Intercourse between India and the Western-World (Cambridge, 1916), gives a very fine reproduction of two bas-reliefs, placed one above the other, from the famous Javanese stūpa of Boro-budur. The most conspicuous object shown in the lower panel is a sailing vessel, which the unknown artist has rendered with remarkable skill and vigour, whilst the remaining portion of it exhibits some six men (apparently belonging to the vessel in question) being hospitably received by another party of people whose quaint-shaped dwelling is visible in the background. The author, evidently with reference to this scene, has felt at liberty to label the illustration “A Hindu Ship arriving at Java”.

Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance

Primitive Passion

Investigation of smalt in cross-sections of 17th century paintings using elemental mapping by laser ablation ICP-MS

It would be appropriate to begin with a photograph of a miniature bronze statue of an ancient Roman who is believed to represent one of the dwarfed gladiators assembled by the emperor Domitian almost two thousand years ago. The skill of the unknown artist clearly defined the clinical features of an achondroplastic dwarf as they have been presented by Professor Maroteaux. Had we an opportunity to examine this individual radiographically, we should have found him to have short and relatively thick tubular bones in all limbs. The femur would not be much longer than the tibia. This feature and similar proportions in the bones of the upper limb (Fig. 1) are responsible for the diagnostically important rhizomelic limb shortening that characterizes achondroplasia. The tuberosities to which muscles are attached are unusually prominent, and together with relatively large articulating ends of the bones exaggerate the discrepancy between length and width of the shafts.

Relatively young, Sebastian Brant was painted in profile by an unknown artist. The oil painting located today in Karlsruhe is maybe the only realistic Brant portrait and might be a work from Hans Baldung. It was used in 1587 as model for the woodcut of the Icones edited by Nicolaus Reusner. Most of the Brant iconography depends on this woodcut. It bears little resemblance to the copper engraving made in 1631 by Jacob van der Heyden at the expense of "J.J.B.", which allegedly represents the satirist. His great-great-grandson Johann Jacob Brand could be the purchaser. The anonymous old man drawn in 1520 or 1521 by Albrecht Dürer is probably not Sebastian Brant, as generally suspected, but rather a Dutchman from the circle around the court painter Bernard von Orley. Besides these portraits, the Ship of Fools and other prints from Brant contain woodcuts with stereotypical self-portrayals.

Psychiatrists have identified what is believed to be one of the earliest paintings of someone with Down's syndrome. The 1515 Flemish painting (detail right), by an unknown artist, considerably predates John Langdon Down's first description of the condition in 1866. It shows an angel (next to Mary) and possibly one other figure, …

Under examination are two Temptations of Saint Anthony on stone: one painted on ruin marble by Jacob van Swanenburgh, the other on oriental alabaster by an unknown Flemish artist. I explore the optical properties of the pictorial surface, the ontology of representation, and the impact of the stone support on visual perception. The unique surface qualities of the paintings are considered to function as subiconographic elements closely related to the pictorial subject. I argue that the use of stone as support is largely motivated by both the pictorial subject and religious practices related to it.

H. C. Richter–John Gould's unknown bird artist

This article discusses the life and imprisonment of the largely unknown middle-class artist and British suffrage activist Katie Gliddon and analyzes her extensive prison diary, secretly written and drawn in her copy of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley at London's Holloway Prison in March and April 1912. By creating a platform for the voices of ‘ordinary’ prisoners and by opening up a space for a transgressive gaze between suffragettes, ‘ordinary’ prisoners and female officers, Gliddon's writings allow us to complicate our understanding of cross-class relations within the women's suffrage campaign and in women's prisons more generally speaking.

Ramavarma Appan Thampuran’s unsuccessful attempt to make a film in Malayalam from his novel Bhootarayar (1929) has left behind sketches of scenes and characters by himself and an unknown local artist, now preserved at the Appan Thampuran Library of the Kerala Sahitya Academy. They illustrate Thampuran’s bid to depict an imagined past and compose an ethnohistory of communities, and are significant for the history of visual arts and cinema in the region. The sketches evoke studio and photo-graphic portraiture, visual typologies and the cinematic close-up, and seem to negotiate the complex exchange between linguistic narrative, cinematic spectacle, and imaginary histories.

Adriaen van Berghen was active as a printer from 1500 until about 1540, first at Antwerp, after 1536 at various places in the northern Netherlands. The works which he published were for the most part of a religious nature: from 1522 onwards his reformed and more particularly Lutheran inclinations become increasingly evident. On account of his convictions he found himself in trouble with the courts on more than one occasion; and it was for the same reason that he was banished from Antwerp in 1536 and six years later condemned to death and beheaded. He was a close friend of Henrick Eckert van Homberch — after whose death, incidentally, he became guardian to Van Homberch’s children — and it looks as though they occasionally collaborated on jobs; it is certain that on more than one occasion they exchanged woodcuts. In 1509 both men published editions of Der zielen troost, and the two editions are very similar in many respects. That by Adriaen van Berghen distinguishes itself by, among other things, a beautiful woodcut on the title-page, the work of an unknown but talented artist: God looks down from Heaven onto the Virgin and Christ, who, surrounded by pious women and men, are giving of their milk and blood which is caught by an angel and poured out again for the comfort of the souls in purgatory.