Piranesi\u27s Imitation of the Classics

SCHOLARS HAVE sometimes defined classicism as a debate between copying and representation. Speaking of the French artist Nicolas Poussin, art historian Richard T. Neer claimed: Copying is the death of art, because a Copy is not really a picture in Poussin\u27s understanding of the term: lacking idealization or elevation, it is just the replication of Nature. 1 For Poussin, the most deplorable example of this kind of copying is printmaking, considered here as the unthinking production of the original. 2 Poussin contrasts this to painting, which he claims has a literary and intellectual quality

Blending in Gravitational Microlensing Experiments: Source Confusion And Related Systematics

Gravitational microlensing surveys target very dense stellar fields in the local group. As a consequence the microlensed source stars are often blended with nearby unresolved stars. The presence of `blending' is a cause of major uncertainty when determining the lensing properties of events towards the Galactic centre. After demonstrating empirical cases of blending we utilize Monte Carlo simulations to probe the effects of blending. We generate artificial microlensing events using an HST luminosity function convolved to typical ground-based seeing, adopting a range of values for the stellar density and seeing. We find that a significant fraction of bright events are blended, contrary to the oft-quoted assumption that bright events should be free from blending. We probe the effect that this erroneous assumption has on both the observed event timescale distribution and the optical depth, using realistic detection criteria relevent to the different surveys. Importantly, under this assumption the latter quantity appears to be reasonably unaffected across our adopted values for seeing and density. The timescale distribution is however biased towards smaller values, even for the least dense fields. The dominant source of blending is from lensing of faint source stars, rather than lensing of bright source stars blended with nearby fainter stars. We also explore other issues, such as the centroid motion of blended events and the phenomena of `negative' blending. Furthermore, we breifly note that blending can affect the determination of the centre of the red clump giant region from an observed luminosity function. This has implications for a variety of studies, e.g. mapping extinction towards the bulge and attempts to constrain the parameters of the Galactic bar through red clump giant number counts. (Abridged)Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures. MNRAS (in press

Detectability of Orbital Motion in Stellar Binary and Planetary Microlenses

A standard binary microlensing event lightcurve allows just two parameters of the lensing system to be measured: the mass ratio of the companion to its host, and the projected separation of the components in units of the Einstein radius. However, other exotic effects can provide more information about the lensing system. Orbital motion in the lens is one such effect, which if detected, can be used to constrain the physical properties of the lens. To determine the fraction of binary lens lightcurves affected by orbital motion (the detection efficiency) we simulate lightcurves of orbiting binary star and star-planet (planetary) lenses and simulate the continuous, high-cadence photometric monitoring that will be conducted by the next generation of microlensing surveys that are beginning to enter operation. The effect of orbital motion is measured by fitting simulated lightcurve data with standard static binary microlensing models; lightcurves that are poorly fit by these models are considered to be detections of orbital motion. We correct for systematic false positive detections by also fitting the lightcurves of static binary lenses. For a continuous monitoring survey without intensive follow-up of high magnification events, we find the orbital motion detection efficiency for planetary events with caustic crossings to be 0.061+-0.010, consistent with observational results, and 0.0130+-0.0055 for events without caustic crossings (smooth events). Similarly for stellar binaries, the orbital motion detection efficiency is 0.098+-0.011 for events with caustic crossings and is 0.048+-0.006 for smooth events. These result in combined (caustic crossing and smooth) orbital motion detection efficiencies of 0.029+-0.005 for planetary lenses and 0.070+-0.006 for stellar binary lenses. We also investigate how various microlensing parameters affect the orbital motion detectability. [Abridged]Comment: 21 pages, 22 figures, 5 table

Piranesi's Imitation of the Classics

SCHOLARS HAVE sometimes defined classicism as a debate between copying and representation. Speaking of the French artist Nicolas Poussin, art historian Richard T. Neer claimed: "Copying is the death of art, because a Copy is not really a picture in Poussin's understanding of the term: lacking idealization or elevation, it is just the replication of Nature."1 For Poussin, the "most deplorable" example of this kind of copying is printmaking, considered here as the unthinking production of the original. 2 Poussin contrasts this to painting, which he claims has a literary and intellectual quality.This book chapter is published as Nemiroff, J.M. Piranesi's Imitation of the Classics in Classicisms, edited by Larry F. Norman and Anne Leonard, 2017. Posted with permission.</p

Historiographic and Iconographic Crypto-Narratives in Lope de Vega’s El niño inocente de la Guardia

When considering the representation of Judaism in the comedias of Lope de Vega, one play often cited is El niño inocente de la Guardia given the perceptible Anti-Semitism pervading the work. I suggest in this article that critics have ignored two crucial elements when studying the play as a whole and its treatment of Jews in particular: first, how Toledo is represented as the ideal Christian city and second how this representation impacts both Old Christians and conversos. Toward this end, I propose that in El niño inocente de la Guardia the conflict between Judaism and Christianity transforms from being a purely historiographical and exegetical debate in the first act to an iconographic one in Acts II and III. To prove these arguments, I examine how certain characters Judaize or perform Judaism on stage. In the process of Judaizing, certain “crypto-narratives,” or readings only perceptible to certain spectators depending on their religious frame of reference can be seen. By looking at the plays of Lope de Vega through this lens, this study introduces a new methodology with which we can examine how Judaism and Christianity as performed phenomena in Early Modern Spain.This article is published as Nemiroff, J.; Historiographic and Iconographic Crypto-Narratives in Lope de Vega’s El niño inocente de la Guardia (1598-1603), eHumanista/Conversos. 2017(5); 329-351. Posted with permission.</p