Art and Design Commons^™

Masks: A New Face For The Theatre, Alexi Michael Siegel

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

This study seeks to reimagine and reinvigorate modern theatre’s relationship with mask work through text-based historical research and practice-based artistic research. It focuses on three ancient mask traditions: pre- and early Hellenistic Greek theatre, Japanese Noh theatre, and Nigerian Egungun masquerades. Research on these mask traditions and recent masked productions informed the development and staging of a masked performance of Charles Mee’s Life is a Dream. The production featured sections for each of the ancient masking styles and a final section that explored masks in a contemporary theatrical style. As a whole, this creative project pulls masks out of …

Re-Playing Maimonides’ Codes: Designing Games To Teach Religious Legal Systems, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Lost & Found is a game series, created at the Initiative for

Religion, Culture, and Policy at the Rochester Institute of

Technology MAGIC Center.1 The series teaches medieval

religious legal systems. This article uses the first two games

of the series as a case study to explore a particular set of

processes to conceive, design, and develop games for learning.

It includes the background leading to the author's work

in games and teaching religion, and the specific context for

the Lost & Found series. It discusses the rationale behind

working to teach religious legal systems more broadly, then

discuss the …

Sub Lege To Sub Gratia: An Iconographic Study Of Van Eyck’S Annunciation, Christopher J. Condon

Student Publications

When the Archangel Gabriel descended from heaven to inform the Virgin Mary of her status as God’s chosen vehicle for the birth of Jesus Christ, she was immediately filled with a sense of apprehension. Gabriel’s words, “...invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum [you have found favor with God],” reassured the Virgin that she would face no harm, and the scene of the Annunciation (what this moment has come to be called) has forever been immortalized in Christian belief as a watershed moment in the New Testament. While many Byzantine icons of the Medieval period sought to depict this snapshot in time …

An Iconographical Analysis Of The Madonna And Child With Saints In The Enclosed Garden, Paige L. Deschapelles

Student Publications

The Madonna and Child with Saints in the Enclosed Garden, created approximately between the 1440s and 1460s, is a perfect representation of the highly iconographical images produced during the Renaissance. Although it continues to remain unknown as to who the specific artist responsible for this painting is, it has been attributed to either Robert Campin or one of his many followers. Nevertheless, the depiction of the Virgin Mary holding baby Christ on her lap is heightened as the scene takes place within an enclosed garden, otherwise known as hortus conclusus. Throughout the image itself, one is able to understand how …

Assur Is King Of Persia: Illustrations Of The Book Of Esther In Some Nineteenth-Century Sources, Steven W. Holloway

Steven W Holloway

The marriage of archaeological referencing and picture Bibles in the nineteenth century resulted in an astonishing variety of guises worn by the court of Ahasuerus in Esther. Following the exhibition of Neo-Assyrian sculpture in the British Museum and the wide circulation of such images in various John Murray publications, British illustrators like Henry Anelay defaulted to Assyrian models for kings and rulers in the Old Testament, including the principal actors in Esther, even though authentic Achaemenid Persian art had been available for illustrative pastiche for decades. This curious adoptive choice echoed British national pride in its splendid British Museum collection …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

The Significance Of Cloth In The Narrative Of The Life Of Christ As Represented In Dieric Bouts' "Life Of Christ Altarpiece", Mary-Margaret Mcleod Pilling

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the materialistic importance of cloth in the life of Jesus Christ and relates it to the disassembled Life of Christ Altarpiece painted by the Renaissance artist Dieric Bouts. References to cloth in the scriptural accounts of Christ’s life support the claim that there is deep theological significance to fabric. The medium of each of the paintings that comprised the altarpiece is a flax linen canvas, which, combined with the references to cloth throughout the compositions, parallels these references to cloth in the scriptures. The entire artwork serves as a metaphor for the Eucharist resting on linen on …

Sebald Beham And The Augsburg Printer Niclas Vom Sand: New Documents On Printing And Frankfurt Before 1550, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

This essay makes known two unpublished documents from the last years of the life of Sebald Beham (1500 Nuremberg–1550 Frankfurt) and uses them as a means to explore Beham’s relationship to printing, the town of Frankfurt, and the Augsburg printer Niclas vom Sand, who remains an unwritten part of the history of the period. The essay is organized as an autobiographical retrospective by an older man forced in prior decades to move from Nuremberg and seek employment and a new life elsewhere. The end of the essay evaluates the documents and aspects of them.

Prosocial Religion And Games: Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

In a time when religious legal systems are discussed without an understanding of history or context, it is more important than ever to help widen the understanding and discourse about the prosocial aspects of religious legal systems throughout history. The Lost & Found (www.lostandfoundthegame.com) game series, targeted for an audience of teens through twentysomethings in formal, learning environments, is designed to teach the prosocial aspects of medieval religious systems—specifically collaboration, cooperation, and the balancing of communal and individual/family needs. Set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the 12th century, the first two games in the series address laws in Moses Maimonides’ …

The "Whys" Of The Grand Cameo: A Holistic Approach To Understanding The Piece, Its Origins And Its Context, Constantine Prince Sidamon-Eristoff

MA Theses

The Grand Cameo for France is the largest cameo surviving from antiquity. Scholars have debated who is portrayed on the stone and what its scene means for centuries, often, although not always, limiting their interpretations to this narrow area and typically only discussing other causes in passing. This pattern can and should be broken, allowing the stone to be what all objects truly are: windows to the lives that that objects have lived, just as all physical things are; evidence of an experience part of the world went though, whose meanings have and continue to be part of a wider …