Art and Art History

The armed conflict that began in Syria in 2011 rapidly precipitated a massive humanitarian catastrophe. In 2014 the crisis escalated and became regional in scope with the take-over of Mosul by ISIS, followed by the group’s rapid territorial gains in northern Iraq and Syria. In Syria alone, combat has reached every region, with nearly a third of the population internally displaced and more than four million refugees. Syrians and Iraqis are struggling with an erosion of identity and a lack of control over their lives, and these feelings are further compounded by the destruction of their cultural heritage as a result of the ongoing conflict. Thousands of cultural properties have been affected by combat- related incidents, theft, and intentional destruction. This paper examines the conflict’s impact on cultural property by discussing the activities and outcomes of the Cultural Heritage Initiatives (CHI) project, supported in part by the award of a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Department of State and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). ASOR CHI documents the impact of the war on cultural heritage, implements stabilization projects now, and plans more comprehensive preservation actions for the future. Ultimately CHI seeks to develop best practices for cultural property protection.

ASOR CHI activities include gathering and archiving evidence of cultural property crimes and information about the condition of cultural heritage from online media, satellite imagery, and in-country sources. Working collaboratively with other groups and agencies, ASOR CHI has compiled lists of heritage resources to create an inventory and map of heritage assets in both countries. This information is used to complete on-site and remote condition assessments to analyze patterns of damage and assess preservation needs. These assessments have been crucial for prioritizing on-the- ground activities for completed and ongoing stabilization efforts.

This overview of the CHI program demonstrates the effectiveness of responses that engage local stakeholders and underscores the challenges of protecting cultural heritage during modern armed conflicts that often involve complex and shifting arrays of conventional forces, non-state actor, proxy forces, and terrorist organizations.

When Giorgio Vasari wrote in the 1568 edition of the Lives that Michelangelo had surpassed the ancients, art, and nature itself, he codified a familiar characterization that had already been current in critical commentaries and published letters for decades. Michelangelo was of course the hero of Vasari's history, and it was therefore inevitable that in his construction of the progressive perfection of art, Michelangelo represented an exemplar of inimitable perfection.

This essay examines the relationship between sixteenth-century critical texts that define the stylistic accomplishments of Renaissance painters and the evidence of the paintings themselves. Central to this relationship was the synthesis of past and present in the formation of a new style, where ancient visual models and theoretical principles were creatively blended with modern cultural ideals within an atmosphere of political and religious change. Two historical frescoes by the Florentine painter, Franceso Salviati (1510–1563) are discussed in detail along with selected passages from the texts of Giorgio Vasari, Franceso Bocchi, Antonfrancesco Doni, Ludovico Domenichi, and Giovan Battista Armenini, among others.

In his dedicatory preface to the emperor Titus (AD 77), Pliny described his goals in writing the Natural History with capacious reflection: My subject is a barren one-the world of nature, or in other words life.. .. Moreover, the path is not a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there is not one person to be found among us who has made the same venture, nor yet one among the Greeks who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject.. .. It is a difficult task to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, brilliance to the commonplace , light to the obscure, attraction to the stale, credibility to the doubtful, but nature to all things and all her properties to nature.