Renaissance dress, cultures of making, and the period eye

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from University of Chicago Press via https://doi.org/10.1086/68819

The construction of identity through visual intertextuality in a Bohemian early modern travelogue

Cultural historians have long been concerned with visual sources. Their research has centred on ways of reading images and how they can most accurately be interpreted. This article focuses on an alternative aspect of these visual sources: on how images were made and used. It analyses how the identity of a Bohemian Catholic, Bed?ich z Donín, is constructed by his use of images in a travelogue based on his pilgrimage in the early 17th century. Highlighting the process of ‘visual intertextuality’, it claims that the ways in which Donín adopts and adapts visual images reveals his association with various affinity groups. The distinction between ‘actual’ and ‘habitual’ intertextuality is applied to the analysis of this historical source and shows how competing voices are present in the images. This article is an example of how historians can use the methodologies of semioticians to benefit their research

Gems and counterfeited gems in early modern Antwerp : from workshops to collections

This paper discusses counterfeited pearls as exemplary of ‘process appreciation’ in early modern Antwerp. It employs this concept to account for the interest in artisanal processes in relation to the use and manipulation of gems and the production of imitation gems. The (tactile) production processes employed by artists and artisans were in this period elevated to a higher status and now more appreciated than ever – what I like to coin ‘process appreciation’. And although similar developments took place in other artisanal arenas, the manipulation of precious stones is a particularly strong case in point. This paper investigates how process appreciation may be used to explain the interest in counterfeited gems in Antwerp, but also in the wider interest in gems as collectables and in the manipulation of real gems in the workshops of artisans. It discusses knowledge of and appreciation for gems in early modern Antwerp in different forms: from gems and tools in collections, to recipe books and counterfeited gems. Moreover, process appreciation is confirmed by particular visual sources that depict artisanal processes, which, in turn, became part of collections. It is argued that these different ways in which gems were appreciated were inextricably linked. This paper deals mainly with the appreciators, i.e. collectors (consumers) and/or theorists. In Antwerp, however, some artisans were themselves collectors. In their double role, they are particularly interesting as process appreciators. Collectors were and are appreciators par excellence and the type of objects they collected as well as the discourses surrounding those objects, are telling examples of process appreciation

Diversity of aerobic methanotrophic bacteria in a permafrost active layer soil of the Lena Delta, Siberia

With this study, we present first data on the diversity of aerobic methanotrophic bacteria (MOB) in an Arctic permafrost active layer soil of the Lena Delta, Siberia. Applying denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and cloning of 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) and pmoA gene fragments of active layer samples, we found a general restriction of the methanotrophic diversity to sequences closely related to the genera Methylobacter and Methylosarcina, both type I MOB. In contrast, we revealed a distinct species-level diversity. Based on phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene, two new clusters of MOB specific for the permafrost active layer soil of this study were found. In total, 8 out of 13 operational taxonomic units detected belong to these clusters. Members of these clusters were closely related to Methylobacter psychrophilus and Methylobacter tundripaludum, both isolated from Arctic environments. A dominance of MOB closely related to M. psychrophilus and M. tundripaludum was confirmed by an additional pmoA gene analysis. We used diversity indices such as the Shannon diversity index or the Chao1 richness estimator in order to compare the MOB community near the surface and near the permafrost table. We determined a similar diversity of the MOB community in both depths and suggest that it is not influenced by the extreme physical and geochemical gradients in the active layer