About the Journal

Journal of the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art

The RIHA Journal was launched in 2010 by The International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art (RIHA). It is a peer-reviewed and open access e-journal devoted to the full range of the history of art and visual culture. The RIHA Journal especially welcomes papers on topics relevant from a supra-local perspective, articles that explore artistic interconnections or cultural exchanges, or engage with important theoretical questions that are apt to animate the discipline. As a collective endeavor, the RIHA Journal seeks to share knowledge and materials issued by scholars of all nationalities, and by doing so, to make a significant contribution to dissolving the boundaries between scholarly communities. Languages of publication are English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish.

Recently published:

RIHA Journal 0319
Anna Bortolozzi: "Transparent Paper as a Medium of Copying and Design in the Early Modern Architectural Workshop"
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2024.1.108191

Carl Hårleman (1700–1753) after François-Antoine Vassé, Hôtel de Toulouse, Paris, study for a chimney piece at the far end of the Galerie Dorée, upper part. Traces of graphite, pen and black ink, brush and grey wash on tracing paper, 345 × 555 mm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, NMH THC 7103 (photo: Cecilia Heisser / Nationalmuseum)

This article explores the use and function of the lucido technique in architectural workshops from the Renaissance through the late eighteenth century. By examining evidence from written sources and key drawing collections, the study compares the copying practices of architects with those of artists. The findings reveal that transparent paper was not appreciated as a copying medium in Europe’s architectural workshops until the mid-eighteenth century. When employed, transparent paper was primarily used for copying figure and ornamental drawings that were challenging to transfer using the pricking technique. The paper argues that the marginalization of transparent paper in architectural practice was possibly due to the coating process and the characteristics of the substances employed – vegetable oils and resins – which were incompatible with the working environment of architects. It was only with the commercialization of machine-made wove transparent paper in the early nineteenth century that architects and engineers began to systematically adopt this medium.

RIHA Journal 0320
Giuseppe Peterlini: "'Rappresentarsi tutto come enigma'. Giorgio de Chirico e la ritrattistica degli anni Dieci"
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2024.1.107791

Giorgio de Chirico, Portrait of Carlo Cirelli, 1915, oil on canvas, 77,5 × 64,1 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of C. K. Williams, II, 2014, 2008-111-1 (photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art; © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024)

Between 1910 and 1920, Giorgio de Chirico broke with the traditional conventions of painting in order to visualize Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of the meaninglessness of existence, appearance and the subjectivity of reality, without, however, abandoning figuration. According to de Chirico, the new art had to free itself from the anthropocentrism that had determined its course, to "see everything, even man, as a thing". The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and how the concept of the meaningless and the enigma of life are also thematised and expressed in de Chirico’s portraiture of the 1910s. The hypothesis is that the artist deliberately undermines the generally agreed principle of pictorial illusion. By thematizing the material support, he reveals its seemingly real appearance as fictitious and thus creates an irresolvable visible paradox, as in the Piazze d’Italia and the Metaphysical Interiors of the same period.