A Reexamination of El Greco’s View and Plan of Toledo as a Question of Sources and Patronage

El Greco’s View and Plan of Toledo (c. 1610, Museo del Greco, Toledo) explores multiple ways of representing space by juxtaposing a sweeping view of the city of Toledo with a trompe l’oeil map of the city’s streets. Recent scholarship has shown that that El Greco probably copied the map from a plan of Toledo in the Atlas de El Escorial (1538-45), a royal commission that would have been the first complete atlas of Spain. Significantly, this atlas was likely available to the owner and probable patron of View and Plan of Toledo, the scholar and map collector Pedro Salazar de Mendoza. Although art historians have often seen View and Plan of Toledo as an expression of El Greco’s singular, “self-conscious” skill as a painter and draughtsman, I argue the painting should be read as an intellectual collaboration between the artist and Salazar. In the painting, El Greco gave pictorial form to Toledan geography, theology, history and law, themes that are likewise reflected in Pedro Salazar’s writings and post-mortem inventories. I draw from various seventeenth-century images and texts, including El Greco’s body of work, the work of Cretan icon painters, maps and books from Salazar’s collection, and texts and treatises circulating in the seventeenth century to re-orient contemporary scholarship on the painting and re-illuminate this enigmatic cityscape

Resurrecting a Graeco-Egyptian Purple: Reverse Engineering an Ancient Pigment of Scientific and Cultural Significance

In ancient Graeco­Roman Egypt, funerary portraits painted in the encaustic style often indicated the deceased individual’s socioeconomic status through depicted adornments and clothing. For example, purple clavi ­ such as the clavus in “32.6 The Bearded Man” ­ used their color to distinguish higher social castes from the common population. Traditionally, high­quality purple dye was painstakingly extracted from the Murex sea snail; however, this expensive colorant’s use primarily as a dye rather than a pigment motivated the development of less costly organic dyes for lake pigment production. We explored the processing of several dye precursors accessible to Graeco­Egyptians of antiquity (kermes, lichen, indigo, madder and alkanet roots ­ which can all be color­shifted to purple by a variety of metal and alkali salts) in order to characterize the production of the purple used in “The Bearded Man.” Spectroscopic techniques such as raman, absorption, fluorescence, and XRD offer comparative chemical, physical, and optical analyses of the dyes and pigments that result from the various precursors and the addition of metal and alkali salts. Pigments produced experimentally are compared with a sample from “The Bearded Man” in order to better correlate the processing materials and methods available in ancient Graeco­Roman Egypt

Resurrecting “Poor Man’s Purple”: A Transdisciplinary Study of Color-Shifted Pigments Used in an Encaustic Fayum Mummy Portrait of Ancient Egypt

During the Coptic period in Fayum Egypt, encaustic (i.e. wax) mummy portraits were painted onto wooden panels or linen and attached to the mummy trappings of the deceased. One such portrait, “32.6: The Bearded Man” (c. 170-180 AD), features an unidentified Roman-Egyptian displaying a purple clavi. The trace swath of purple in the portrait provides evidence as to the origins of the painting and the identity of the man. Nanoscale analysis of the pigment suggests a red organic material was color shifted using a metal salt to produce a “poor man’s purple” as opposed to the expensive murex purple traditionally reserved for the elite. It is the goal of this project to reverse engineer the pigment using organic material and metal salts available to the Roman-Egyptians in order to fabricate a purple pigment possessing a similar chemical composition to that within the portrait. Analytical comparisons of the original pigment to our synthesized specimens will allow the identification of the original materials used. Ultimately, our aim is to have an in depth understanding of materials and processes used to create the purple clavi, thereby providing further detail as to the provenience of “The Bearded Man” Fayum portrait

The Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman: Methods of Authentication for the First Issue

Authentic first issue copies of the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, now known as the Idaho Statesman, from July 26th, 1864 are rare - and many reproductions exist. In 2015, an alleged copy of this issue was donated to the Boise State University Special Collections and Archives. Optical microscopy, however, revealed it to be printed on a sulfite wood-pulp paper that only entered mass production in in the United States after 1882. The newspaper is in fact a reproduction that supplemented the July 26th, 1890 issue of the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman. X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy of this paper and its ink revealed the presence of Ti, Fe, Ca, Cu and Zn. The copy of the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman first issue held at the Idaho State Archives in Boise, which was thought to be authentic, is in fact a different reproduction from June 14th, 1930. An authentic copy is, however, held at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Through this research it is now possible to establish which copies of the first issue of the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman are authentic and therefore not only of relative monetary value but also of value to the cultural heritage of the State of Idaho and its residents

To Be or No B2: A Rare Cause of Stridor and Weakness in a Toddler

We present a case of a young child with a rare metabolic disorder whose clinical presentation resembled that of autoimmune myasthenia gravis. The differential diagnosis was expanded when autoantibody testing was negative and the patient did not respond to standard immunomodulatory therapies. Rapid whole genome sequencing identified 2 rare variants of uncertain significance in the SLC52A3 gene shown to be in compound heterozygous state after parental testing. Biallelic mutations in SLC52A3 are associated with Riboflavin Transporter Deficiency, which in its untreated form, results in progressive neurodegeneration and death. Supplementation with oral riboflavin has been shown to limit disease progression and improve symptoms in some patients. When the diagnosis is suspected, patients should be started on supplementation immediately while awaiting results from genetic studies