Translating the Sacred: Piety, Politics and the Changing Image of the Holy House of Loreto
xi, 93 p. : ill. A print copy of this title is available through the UO Libraries under the call numbers: AAA NB1793.I82 L674 2008
Giambattista Tiepolo's Ceiling for S. Maria di Nazareth in Venice: Legend, Traditions, and Devotions
Tiepolo's most grandiose painting based on a religious theme is the Translation of the Virgin's Holy House (Fig. 1). Executed between 1743 and 1745 for the Discalced Carmelites in Venice in their church of S. Maria di Nazareth, commonly called the Chiesa degli Scalzi,1 Tie-polo's work is also the last great illusionistic ceiling painting in Italian art. Although Gino Fogolari and George Knox have published the documents and drawings for the Scalzi commission,2 the opulence of Tie-polo's Translation, its relationship to the tradition of Holy House imagery, and its iconographic program have yet to be understood. This study of the complex fresco will demonstrate that the Translation is a statement of Carmelite history and traditions and a celebration of devotions to the Marian cult at the Basilica of Loreto.
Live birth in the Devonian period
The extinct placoderm fishes were the dominant group of vertebrates throughout the Middle Palaeozoic era, yet controversy about their relationships within the gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates) is partly due to different interpretations of their reproductive biology. Here we document the oldest record of a live-bearing vertebrate in a new ptyctodontid placoderm, Materpiscis attenboroughi gen. et sp. nov., from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation of Australia (approximately 380 million years ago). The new specimen, remarkably preserved in three dimensions, contains a single, intra-uterine embryo connected by a permineralized umbilical cord. An amorphous crystalline mass near the umbilical cord possibly represents the recrystallized yolk sac. Another ptyctodont from the Gogo Formation, Austroptyctodus gardineri, also shows three small embryos inside it in the same position. Ptyctodontids have already provided the oldest definite evidence for vertebrate copulation, and the new specimens confirm that some placoderms had a remarkably advanced reproductive biology, comparable to that of some modern sharks and rays. The new discovery points to internal fertilization and viviparity in vertebrates as originating earliest within placoderms.