Article
-
Women artists in the Middle Ages: constantly self-represented, consciously ignored
Sheila ADÁN LLEDÍN
Original title: Artistas en la Edad Media: constantemente autorrepresentadas, conscientemente ignoradas
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Artist, Illuminating, Middle Ages, Misogyny, Sculptress, Woman.
Women in the medieval society were taught good manners in taking care of their homes, their children, pregnancy, or marriage. However, not a few of them made it to get rid of it and become writers, mystics, medics, doctors, sculptors, painters, powerful queens, and even crusaders and war soldiers. Despite many of them being silenced, many others left the anonymity behind. Courageous women who never meant to be forgotten and will be remembered in this work. It’s key to consider that due to the patriarchal system, as well as the medieval misogyny, only a few women were able to study and learn to read and write. The ones who succeeded belonged to wealthy families with high social standards, or to the Church, like the abbesses. The Renaissance will bring more women testimonies, signatures, and self-portraits. However, there are many relevant female artists before this period, and this work will focus on them. The article goes through the different Middle Ages artistic periods: from the Early (5th-10th century) to the High (11th-13th century) and finally the Late Middle Ages (14th-15th century).
-
Medieval animals and gender configurations in the Colonial chronicles: discursive strategies and political order
Pedro Carlos Louzada FONSECA
Original title: Animais medievais e configurações de gênero na cronística colonial: estratégias discursivas e ordem política
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Colonial chronicles, Discursive strategies, Gender, Medieval animals, Political order, Wonderful and usefulness.
The representation of the natural reality of America epitomized in the chronicles of Colonial Brazil is permeated by a dichotomous posture situated between wonder and utility, whose teleological values can be perfectly verified in medieval references. Using the comparative method and favoring the study of cultural ideas, this article examines the plausibility of the presence of the medieval bestiary and the process or trope of the feminization of the colonial natural reality, configuring oscillations between the simple enjoyment of the wonderful and its practical usefulness. The terms of this dialectical formation are examined in this article seeking to identify its limits in the configuration of reality in the chronicles of Colonial Brazil. In this way, two pillars in the article are approached, namely, the symbolic tradition of the so-called bestiary books and the tropological tradition of the feminizing discourse of reality, both of an ideological and political nature. Therefore, a curious but explainable formation of values were strategically conceived to legitimize the European intentions in the possession of the American lands in colonial times.
-
Forms of defence of the social body before criminal agency, in 16th-century imagery creations
Maria Leonor García da CRUZ
Original title: Formas de defesa do corpo social perante arbítrios criminosos em criações imagéticas quinhentistas
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Andrea Alciato, Crime, Emblem, Music, Social order.
A very fashionable creation in modern Europe since the first edition of Andrea Alciato, the book of emblems, has been chosen as a historical source. The selection of the socio-political message and socio-economic discourse was made in emblems of different editions and spatial and time contexts that bring together inscriptio, pictura and subscriptio. It is valued a deepening of the explicit meanings in the motto and in the picture, when they exist, and we seek to unravel the hidden, not always completely decoded in the comments of the different editions. Hence, we choose to compare several versions of the same emblem, built in different contexts. Alciato’s political discourse necessarily reveals on many occasions social concerns, and they are the ones that lead us to clues about a discourse after all interdisciplinary, leading us to considerations sometimes of artistic nature or economic and financial management. Music and musical instruments become vehicles of concord and social concert, solidarity, resistance to crime and dissent that call into question social peace. The action of the prince or ruler, on the other hand, is considered in several perspectives: from a firm-hand ruler in defence of the common good to a tyrant, and to a defender of the good of the State not benefiting the victims of tax crimes. Alciato thus reveals strong controversies in the Renaissance.
-
Sacred and profane in Medieval: superposition or symbiosis? – The case of dedicated medieval religious institutions to non-religious purposes
Armando Alexandre dos SANTOS
Original title: Sagrado e profano no Medievo: superposição ou simbiose? – O caso das instituições religiosas medievais dedicadas a finalidades não religiosas
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Building bridges, Middle Ages, Military life, Religious orders, Rules of Religious Orders.
This article considers the interpenetration of the sacred and profane spheres in the Middle Ages, studying the case of some religious orders destined for temporal and profane purposes, such as the construction of bridges; it focuses, in a special way, on the theological foundation of these orders and the constitutive importance of the rules or statutes for their regular and official existence.
-
The Cançon de la Crosada (13th century) by William of Tudela. An English Translation (II-LXV)
Antonio CORTIJO OCAÑA
Original title: La Cançon de la Crosada (s. XIII) de Guillermo de Tudela. Traducción al inglés (II-LXV)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: History of the Albigensian Crusade, Inquisition, Persecution.
The History of the Albigensian Crusade is one of the most intriguing medieval Provençal texts. It represents the beginning of a persecuting society. We provide a translation.
-
Apotropaic Middle Ages laughter: Visions of the Sacred Obscene in Classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: La risa apotropaica medieval: visiones de lo obsceno sagrado de la Grecia Clásica
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Apotropaic, Classical Greece, Evil eye, Middle Ages, Romanesque, Sacred obscene.
In classical Greece, the images of the apotropaic –protector against evil eye, satanic spirits or misfortune–, together with their magical and sacred aspects, combined the grotesque, the obscene and the laughable. This article delves into the analysis of this surprising conjunction in the symbolic visualizations of that culture, pointed out by some authors as belonging to the “sacred”. It also analyzes them as a possible origin of the images of explicit obscenity of the carvings on the exteriors of many buildings of the European Middle Ages, such as the spinaries, sheelas, double-tailed mermaids, moons, gargoyles, caganers, etc.
-
Schemata, Motif and Topics in Theme and Variations in Sonata K305 for Piano and Violin in A Major by W. A. Mozart (1756-1791)
Aline Mendonça PEREIRA; Ernesto HARTMANN
Original title: Schemata, Motivo e Tópicas no Tema e Variações da Sonata K305 para Piano e Violino em Lá Maior de W. A. Mozart (1756-1791)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Compositional Procedures, Mozart’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in A Major K305, Schemata, Theme and Variations, Topics.
The present work investigates in the second movement of Mozart's Sonata for Piano and Violin in A Major K305 (1778) – Tema con Variazioni – the compositional and expressive procedures employed by the composer. To this end, it reviews the literature on the Theme with Variations (Zamacois, Stein, Schoenberg and Scliar) concepts of Topic, Style, and Schemata (Ratner, Hatten, Sutcliffe, Day-O’Connell) proposing an analysis of the movement grounded on these concepts. The results are discussed in the light of the analysis and it is concluded that, even using the non-amplifying Variation or Fantasy model; preserving formal structures due to the Schemata repeatedly employed; and presenting themselves within the script described by Ratner (from his study of contemporary treatises), the diversity of styles and topics present ensure unity of the movement as expected of a part of a larger work without abstaining the contrast that is widely explored by the vast repertoire of composer of the constitutive elements of each style.
-
Music and dance in the paintings of Nicolas-Antoine Taunay (1755-1830)
Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: Música e dança nas pinturas de Nicolas-Antoine Taunay (1755-1830)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Dance, Modern Painting, Music, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay.
The French painter, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, lived in a confused time. It witnessed one of the most important political upheavals the world has ever seen, the French Revolution. Even though he was in the “eye of that hurricane”, his painting pleased both the monarchy and the republicans. An example of this are the landscape paintings in which he referred to an iconography linked to dance and music, more specifically, to the roda and to fête galante. This work, therefore, intends to demonstrate how modern landscape painting, normally dissociated from a political content, is also a symbolic expression of power while referring to classical and melancholic themes.
-
La quale fu cantata molto bene – The performances of Alessandro Striggios’ monumental 40-part compositions in Munich 1567/68
Bernhard RAINER
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: 16th c. instrumentation, 40-part compositions, Alessandro Striggio, Cantorey, Ecce beatam lucem, Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno, Transposition.
In the 1560s Alessandro Striggio composed monumental works such as his Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno à 40 and a 40-voice motet, both of which can be proven to have been performed in Munich in 1567 and 1568. Analysis of the performing forces of Munich’s Cantorey of this time concludes not only that the instrumental participation of these performances must have been significant, but also that the works were transposed downward. Furthermore, a hypothesis is proposed that the Munich performance of an untitled 40-voice motet in 1568 involved Striggio’s Ecce beatam lucem à 40, which itself may constitute a contrafactum of Ecco si beato giorno, a madrigal that circulated in copies during the decade.
-
Between sins and virtues. A look at the feminine condition in medieval daily life through sacred and secular songs
Antonio Celso RIBEIRO
Original title: Entre Pecados e Virtudes. Um olhar sobre a condição feminina no cotidiano medieval a partir de cantigas sacras e seculares
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Eroticism, Female condition, Joglarezas – Soldadeiras, Middle Ages, Social class, Ŷawari.
The present work intends to briefly analyze the role of the medieval woman from her social class whether she is a well-born woman, or a slave, God fearing or mistress of her needs and desires, lover or loved one, courtesan, intelectual and artist and their interest-relationships with eroticism. Therefore, we will briefly discuss on these roles and their implications for society at the time, especially for the joglarezas/soldadeiras and ŷawari – slave-singers specially trained within Arab-Muslim culture, outlining the boundaries between public and private spaces and between the sacred and the profane.
