Bernardo And The Virgin

The year is 1980, and the Sandinistas are newly in power in Nicaragua. Bernardo Martínez, a modest, unassuming tailor in the town of Cuapa, witnesses an extraordinary thing: an otherworldly glow appears around the statue of the Virgin Mary in the church, and soon the Holy Virgin appears. Though a work of fiction, Bernardo and the Virgin is based on the real-life experiences of Bernardo Martínez. Silvio Sirias’s sweeping novel tells many stories, weaving together the true account of this humble, devout man with the moving and often humorous fictional tales of the people whom he influenced and inspired. It is also a stormy epic of Nicaragua through the long Somoza years and the Sandinista revolution.

War films have existed since the birth of cinema, typically gung-ho tales of macho derring-do. But war films are not always about bravado and bravery, they also detail the horrors of war, the sadness, the brotherhood of soldiers and comedy that can be found in the bleakest of situations, as well as the excitement of the battlefield. War Films explores defining movies of the genre in sections covering different wars as well as wars with other worlds. The book also offers links between the different films, historical and cinematic worth and profiles of key actors and directors. Among the films included are Saving Private Ryan, Dr Strangelove,Welcome to Sarajevo, The Dam Busters, Gallipoli, The Deer Hunter and Ran.

Siena, Florence and Padua were all major centres for the flowering of early Italian Renaissance art and civic culture. The three communities shared a common concern for the embelishment of their cities by means of painting, sculpture and architecture. The eleven papers in this volume re-examine and re-assess the artistic legacy of the three cities during the 14th century amd locate the various works of art considered within their broader cultural, social and religious contexts. Contributors include: D Norman (Patrons, politics and art) ; C Harrison (Giotto and the `rise of painting') ; C King (The arts of carving and casting) ; T Benton (The building trades and design methods) ; D Norman (Art and religion after the Black Death) ; C King (The trecento: New ideas, new evidence) .

An ebook exclusive, Moon Central America combines Moon's full-length guides to seven Central American countries into one comprehensive digital guide. Moon Central America includes the following country guides: Moon Belize Moon Costa Rica Moon El Salvador Moon Guatemala Moon Honduras & the Bay Islands Moon Nicaragua Moon Panama For each country, you'll find trustworthy advice from Moon's experienced travel authors. Professional photographer Al Argueta compiles the best places to take in Guatemala's awe-inspiring volcanoes, and adventure traveler Amy Robertson shares her list of Honduras's best places to get face-to-face with nature—from caves to cloud forests. If you're dreaming of a Central American trip of any length or mix of destinations, Moon Central America is the travel companion for you.

The rebirth of realistic representation in Italy around 1300 led to the materialization of a pictorial language, which dominated Western art until 1900, and it dominates global visual culture even today. Paralleling the development of mimesis, self-reflexive pictorial tendencies emerged as well. Images-within-images, visual commentaries of representations by representations, were essential to this trend. They facilitated the development of a critical pictorial attitude towards representation. This book offers the first comprehensive study of Italian meta-painting in the age of Giotto and sheds new light on the early modern and modern history of the phenomenon. By combining visual hermeneutics and iconography, it traces reflexivity in Italian mural and panel painting at the dawn of the Renaissance, and presents novel interpretations of several key works of Giotto di Bondone and the Lorenzetti brothers. The potential influence of the contemporary religious and social context on the program design is also examined situating the visual innovations within a broader historical horizon. The analysis of pictorial illusionism and reality effect together with the liturgical, narrative and typological role of images-within-images makes this work a pioneering contribution to visual studies and premodern Italian culture.

A Discerning Eye is an anthology of some of the finest and most lasting essays by a great critic-historian of Early Italian painting, Richard Offner. Its contents span the Florentine fourteenth century and thus compose a kind of portrait album of some of its most notable painters between the Gothic and Renaissance eras, from the Magdalen Master in the thirteenth century to Masaccio in the early fifteenth. Each essay contains insights that are as incisive, fresh, and evocative today as when they were first written. The essays are illustrated using Offner&’s original photographs supplemented by new or additional photographs when dictated by the material or when the reader might be better helped to see the relationship between Offner&’s analytical prose and a given image. This book reintroduces Offner and places him in the wider context of art-historical writing to reassess his work and underscore what his writings have to offer art historians working today. Three interpretive essays approach Offner from distinct but complementary perspectives: historiographical, philosophical, and biographical. Reassessments of such figures as Erwin Panofsky and Millard Meiss aid the ongoing debate about what art history is and how it ought to be practiced. The reader is asked to reconsider not merely the value but also the philosophical foundation of connoisseurship as a method of investigation and its compatibility with other methods.