Maria Theresia

Verfassungsbilder: Text und Körper in der Ikonographie des demokratischen Verfassungsstaats

“…Im Falle Napoleons bildet die große Standuhr im Hintergrund ein cartesianisches Schlüsselsymbol und verweist auf die Perfektion mechanischer Kräfteverhältnisse, die den Staat zur rationalen Maschine aufwertet. 37 Napoleon kann in diesem Sinn sehr viel mehr als Verkörperung dieser politischen Maschine gesehen werden als sein visuelles Gegenstück de Gaulle -aber auch hier ist zumindest ex post eine Spiegelung des Leviathans wahrnehmbar. Die Symbolik der Souveränität im nuklearen Zeitalter des 20.…”

Tracing the Heroic Through Gender

“…This figure of thought still had consequences in casting the operatic hero in 1737, when contralto Vittoria Tesi-Tramontini took on the role of young Achilles in Domenico Sarro's version of Metastasio's Achille in Sciro. Tesi, who was renowned for portrayals of heroes 38 and older heroines, 39 celebrated one of the biggest triumphs of her career in this role, which vocally could just as well have been taken on by a castrato. It is however possible that the plot, which hinges on Achill wearing women's clothes for most of the opera, made the casting of a female singer a conscious, gender-related choice.…”

“…42 While Achille in Sciro discusses heroic male behavior in opposition to femininity in the figure of its lead character, it still illustrates the relatively similar treatment that hero and heroine in the form of the prima coppia receive in opera seria. Achill's love interest, Deidamia, is composed for a slightly higher tessitura, but the vocal idiom is the same: the heroic is not gendered through a different vocal 38 range. Ornamentation and legato line are equally allotted to both, and the dramaturgical, rhetoric, and affective situating is likewise the same, as is the shared repertoire of aria types.…”

“…These denigrating descriptions of soldiers may adhere to the reality of the Thirty Years' War as their visual predecessors -the prints of the French engraver Jacques Callot, which were well known and highly adored in Florence (Image 3) -were likely familiar to Lippi. 38 By conflating grotesque depictions of beggars with his ideas of the fallacy of military bravery, Lippi satirizes the low level of ethical behavior for which the mercenaries of the Thirty Years' War were known. 39 Lippi's soldiers decidedly lack military ethics and heroism: military bravery is easily capsized by hunger, which -as Lippi states in Canto IX -is more powerful than love or heroism.…”

Early Modern Diplomatic History

“…Early modern diplomatic ceremonial was essential to the expression of diplomatic hierarchies. 51 Building upon Barbara Stollberg-Rillinger's notion of symbolic communication, 52 recent studies have collectively demonstrated that polities used ceremony and ritual to negotiate international hierarchies and stake their claims to a favourable place in the international order. 53 Disputes over precedence could become a means by which powers jostled for position in lieu of open war.…”