Art Bulletin

Art Bulletin

March 2008, Volume XC Number 1
Articles
Constructing the Guru: Ritual Authority and Architectural Space in Medieval India
TAMARA I. SEARS
7
At the central Indian site of Chandrehe stands a rare example of a monumental stone monastery, built in 973 by a sect of Shiva-worshiping ascetics known as the Mattamayuras. Its complex architectural program suggests that it was carefully designed to evoke the soteriological and ritual world of medieval Hindu monasteries, about which very little other evidence exists. Reinforcing the authority of the monastic community's leader, the guru, and constructing him as a divinized being for popular devotion, the building points to the importance of royally sponsored ascetics at pilgrimage sites located at the peripheries of dynastic states.
Meaningful Mingling: Classicizing Imagery and Islamicizing Script in a Byzantine Bowl
ALICIA WALKER
32
Greco-Roman themes are a defining feature of middle Byzantine secular art, but scholars note frequent slippage between medieval representations and their classical models. A well-known glass vessel further complicates Byzantium's relation to ancient precedents by combining classicizing iconography with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions. Reconsideration of middle Byzantine attitudes toward Greco-Roman and Islamic traditions suggests magic, specifically divination, as a point of intersection among these cultural groups, with the vessel drawing from distinct iconographic and inscriptional sources to enhance its divinatory function. The object's aesthetic eclecticism is best understood as a meaningful mingling and creative reinterpretation of its models.


The Republic at Work: S. Marco's Reliefs of the Venetian Trades
MARK ROSEN
54
Traditionally discussed in terms of their unusual iconography and forward-looking style, the thirteenth-century reliefs at S. Marco in Venice depicting artisans and shopkeepers carry a fraught social meaning when considered in light of contemporary Venetian labor legislation. They were sculpted at a moment when Venetian patricians acted to limit sharply the working class's role in the government. As products of the patronage of the city's nobles, these images, which at first glance appear to valorize and dignify the artisan class, on closer examination reveal fissures expressing the patrons' increasing fear of the collective strength of the Venetian popolo.


Attributing Influence: The Problem of Female Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Florence
STEFANIE SOLUM
76
Lack of written documentation on female patrons in fifteenth-century Florence has long obstructed scholars' understanding of women's influence on visual culture during this art historically crucial period. The problem is best addressed by turning to the objects themselves. The attribution, on stylistic grounds, of the illuminated frontispiece of an unstudied manuscript from Florence's Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale underpins a larger argument that Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici engaged in a collaborative commission with one of the most innovative and sought-after illuminators of the time, Francesco d'Antonio del Chierico, and the date of this codex suggests her surprisingly extensive influence on the visual arts.


Regionalist Radio: Thomas Hart Benton on Art for Your Sake
LEO G. MAZOW
101
On January 6, 1940, the popular radio program Art for Your Sake aired an elaborate dramatization of Thomas Hart Benton's art and life over stations on the NBC network. Considered alongside NBC documents and selected paintings by the artist, the dramatization--in which the artist likely participated--presents in a new, critical light questions posed by Regionalism, pointing as well to that artistic movement's often overlooked mission of the mass distribution of cultural products. For radio and Regionalism alike, constructing a national identity was only one part of the agenda; reaching that nation was equally important.


Book Reviews
Marian H. Feldman, Diplomacy by Design: Luxury Arts and an "International Style" in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE
OMUR HARMANSAH
123


Meyer Schapiro, Romanesque Architectural Sculpture: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
THOMAS DALE
126


Ernst J. Grube and Jeremy Johns, The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina
OLEG GRABAR
130


Rebecca Zurier, Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School
MICHAEL LOBEL
132


Caroline A. Jones, Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg's Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses
JOHN O'BRIAN
134


Recent Books in the Arts
138


Reviews Online
150
The Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for 2007 has been awarded to Fabio Barry for "Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages," which appeared in the December 2007 issue. The Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize was established in 1957 for the encouragement of beginning scholars of any nationality in art historical studies. It is awarded annually, or at the discretion of the officers of the College Art Association, for an article published in The Art Bulletin by a scholar who is under the age of thirty-five or within ten years of receiving the doctorate at the time the article was accepted for publication, and judged by a jury to be of sound scholarship, original content, and distinguished presentation.

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