Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and Sixteenth Century Dutch Semiotics

"In 1559, Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s depiction of {7f2015}Netherlandish Proverbs‖ illustrated his profound understanding of the Dutch love for proverbs, their contemporary values, and appreciation for moral lessons in art forms. Depicting gestures and poses that represented proverbial phrases enabled Bruegel‘s leap from didactic labels employed by other artists to his inscription-free success of {7f2015}Netherlandish Proverbs.‖ My examination reveals that Bruegel‘s employment of gestural imagery, indicating rhetorical phrases or proverbs, was reinforced by a history of scholarly curatorship for written proverb collections, humanist interest in proverbs, and use of Dutch vernacular to bolster protonational pride"

Sights for Sounds: The Roles of Illuminated Initials in Italian Music Manuscripts

The scholarship on illuminated initials is substantial, yet there is a significant absence of information when discussing the initials found in music manuscripts specifically. In this paper, I endeavor to supplement the current scholarship by focusing my research on music manuscripts produced in Italy between 1250 and 1500 A.D. in order to provide examples of the relationships between image, music, and text in the context of use. I use mainly iconographic research methods, though a considerable amount of background information is reliant on the research of other authors in the field of medieval philosophy and theology. Through my research I have concluded that the use of illuminated initials in medieval Italian music manuscripts enhances the function of the manuscript by providing another layer of understanding which audience members could use to aid them in their meditation, prayer, and in the performance of the music.