A perspective illusion or a view from the clouds? Detail of an Early 16th-Century miniature painting produced in Tabriz (Iran)

A Persian painting (910H/1505) from a manuscript of Nizami’s Khamsa preserved in the Keir Collection portrays the mi'raj of Muḥammad among many angels in a blue sky; the Ka'ba is depicted in the lower foreground while the desert surrounds almost the entire image. In the upper part of the sky ten half-bust angels look out from an oculus among the clouds. This image clearly recalls coeval European painting, and in particular the oculus painted by Andrea Mantegna on the vault of the Camera Picta or “Camera degli Sposi” in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. Nevertheless, the unusual and contextual introduction of a parallel and inverse perspective enables the oculus of the Keir Collection miniature to take on an appearance and consequent meaning different from the Western ones

Kufic ornamental motifs in the wall paintings of six churches in Southern Italy

The churches we are concerned with here are in South eastern Italy where, more than in other parts of Southern Italy (with the exception of Calabria),the Byzantine presence and Byzantine influence were obviously strong. Islam arrived on the Apulian coast from the 11th to 13th century was often mediated by Byzantium: this is verifiable in techniques, iconographies and styles. One case in particular concerns the epigraphic characters of Islamic derivation which abound in many media and, specifically, in architectural decoration: in other words, stone, stucco, mosaic, painting and so on. But, if the Byzantine mediation is evident, it is very important to observe that the labour is always local. We will look at six churches. They do not constitute a «catalogue», but offer a good «sample» of pseudo-kufic of the 13th century. First of all, I wish to present the map of the six churches with frescoes. Four of them are in Apulia: Gravina (province of Bari), Massafra (province of Taranto), Squinzano (on the road between Lecce and Brindisi) and Otranto (both provinces of Lecce). The other two are in the present day Lucania (or Basilicata): Matera and the former town of Anglona, near Tursi (province of Matera). Furthermore, I wish to specify that three of them (those in Massafra, Gravina and Matera) are rock churches, small chapels hewn out of the rock, without doors

The iconographic transformation of the “tail of the dragon of the eclipse” into the “hunting cheetah”

Medieval Islamic iconography includes many depictions in which the tail of Sagittarius takes the form of the “dragon of the eclipse”. The current paper examines the gradual transformation of this imagery into that of a quadruped, eventually detached from the body of Sagittarius, and placed on the centaur’s back in the characteristic position of the seated “hunting cheetah”, as can also be seen in images of the chase assisted by this feline

A brief note on the Yemenite chahar taq mausoleums. The case of Baraqish

The chahartaq, a type of building frequently used as a mausoleum in Iran during the Islamic era, has an undeniable Iranian pre-Islamic origin, but its architectural form, together with its function as a mausoleum, crossed the Iranian border and was attested in Yemen too. The 17th-century chahar taq mausoleum at Baraqish seem to be a specific choice, probably of a Shi'i matrix

A small intruder. A Medieval marble winged lion from Ravello

An image of a 12th century marble winged lion was provocatively included among the slides accompanying a lecture by the author at a recent conference at the American Academy in Rome to illustrate Umberto Scerrato’s work on Islamic archaeology and art history in Italy. The lion, in fact, was never published by Scerrato, but it and a winged bull, both once featuring as ornaments on the “Moresque Fountain” in Ravello (originally from a medieval building most likely from Ravello itself), are the subject of this brief article. They are of undeniable Islamic taste

Aberration in qualitative multilevel designs

Generalized Word Length Pattern (GWLP) is an important and widely-used tool for comparing fractional factorial designs. We consider qualitative factors, and we code their levels using the roots of the unity. We write the GWLP of a fraction ${\mathcal F}$ using the polynomial indicator function, whose coefficients encode many properties of the fraction. We show that the coefficient of a simple or interaction term can be written using the counts of its levels. This apparently simple remark leads to major consequence, including a convolution formula for the counts. We also show that the mean aberration of a term over the permutation of its levels provides a connection with the variance of the level counts. Moreover, using mean aberrations for symmetric $s^m$ designs with $s$ prime, we derive a new formula for computing the GWLP of ${\mathcal F}$. It is computationally easy, does not use complex numbers and also provides a clear way to interpret the GWLP. As case studies, we consider non-isomorphic orthogonal arrays that have the same GWLP. The different distributions of the mean aberrations suggest that they could be used as a further tool to discriminate between fractions.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

Italy ix. Persian art collections

La prima collezione storica di manufatti islamici (anche iranici) risale al Rinascimento e all'opera di collezionista di Piero de' Medici. Questa collezione confluì in parte nelle collezioni dei Granduchi di Toscana e oggi è presso il Museo Nazionale del Bargello a Firenze. Altre collezioni storiche risalgono sino all'Ottocento e oggi sono presso musei italiani e/o europei. Altre collezioni sono costituite da reperti provenienti da scavi archeologici che, in base ad accordi con le autorità preposte, consentivano, sino alla fine degli anni Cinquanta del secolo scorso, di esportare manufatti dal luogo di ritrovamento. Si ricorda la Collezione del Museo d'Arte Orientale (Roma) che custodisce, fra gli altri, importanti marmi e altri materiali sia di decorazione architettonica sia di cultura materiale provenienti dagli scavi della Missione Archeologica Italiana a Ghazni (Afghanistan)

Formal and informal external linkages and firms' innovative strategies: A cross-country comparison

Firms increasingly rely upon external actors for their innovation process. Interaction with these actors may occur formally (i.e. through a collaboration agreement) or informally (i.e. external actors acts as sources of knowledge). This paper analyses the reasons why firms consider it to be important to develop formal and informal external linkages in the innovation process by looking at the role played by firms’ innovative strategies and by taking into account that a complementarity or substitutive relationship might exist between formal and informal linkages. Data come from the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3), where we have access to firm level micro-data from Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK.External knowledge sources, Innovation strategy, Formal cooperation, Multinomial Probit.

Formal and informal external linkages and firms' innovative strategies. A cross-country comparison

Firms increasingly rely upon external actors for their innovation process. Interaction with these actors may occur formally (i.e. through a collaboration agreement) or informally (i.e. external actors acts as sources of knowledge). This paper analyses the reasons why firms consider it to be important to develop formal and informal external linkages in the innovation process by looking at the role played by firms' innovative strategies and by taking into account that a complementarity or substitutive relationship might exist between formal and informal linkages. Data come from the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3), where we have access to firm level micro-data from Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK.External knowledge sources, Innovation strategy, Formal cooperation, Multinomial Probit