Abstract: Raman micro-spectroscopy has been used for the identification of the pigments used by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599–1650), considered one of the greatest painters in art history. The set of cross-sectional samples studied belongs to paintings of the Museo del Prado collection and correspond to the three known periods of the artist's activity. We have obtained information on the chemical composition and crystal structure of the pigments used for various colours. The results are consistent with previous elemental composition determined by other analytical methods.

Highlights: •Clinical skills are applied to Art Masterpieces using the painter’s record.•Diagnostic algorithm with differential diagnosis for clinical situations is proposed.•This approach should increase capability to recognise them.•Consequently, this could be useful to find syndrome signs and obtain a diagnosis.

Abstract: This research extends a method previously applied to music and philosophy (Vilson Vieira et al., 2012), representing the evolution of art as a time-series where relations like dialectics are measured quantitatively. For that, a corpus of paintings of 12 well-known artists from baroque and modern art is analyzed. A set of 99 features is extracted and the features which most contributed to the classification of painters are selected. The projection space obtained provides the basis to the analysis of measurements. These quantitative measures underlie revealing observations about the evolution of painting styles, specially when compared with other humanity fields already analyzed: while music evolved along a master–apprentice tradition (high dialectics) and philosophy by opposition, painting presents another pattern: constant increasing skewness, low opposition between members of the same movement and opposition peaks in the transition between movements. Differences between baroque and modern movements are also observed in the projected “painting space”: while baroque paintings are presented as an overlapped cluster, the modern paintings present minor overlapping and are disposed more widely in the projection than the baroque counterparts. This finding suggests that baroque painters shared aesthetics while modern painters tend to “break rules” and develop their own style.

Abstract: This essay suggests that the minimal 1966 exchange between Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault in Lacan’s seminar actually stood in for a much fuller debate about modernity, psychoanalysis and art than its brevity would indicate. Using their contrasting interpretations of Velázquez’s painting, Las Meninas, as its fulcrum, “The Other Side of the Canvas” discovers a Lacanian critique of Foucault’s history of modernity, circa The Order of Things. The effort here is to insert the interpretation of Velázquez into the context of both Lacan’s “Science and Truth” (originally the first session of the 1966 seminar) and Foucault’s recently published book. Our interpretation develops above all from Lacan’s contrast between the definition of a painting as a “window” and Foucault’s implicit understanding of it as a kind of “mirror”—a distinction in which Lacan discovers his seminal concept of “object a.” Pursuing the understanding of object a as the “surface” of the perspectival window allows us to understand why Lacan expands the discussion of Velázquez both into an understanding of twentieth-century paintings (Magritte, Balthus) and an implicit interpretation of the difference between philosophical and psychoanalytic approaches to science and history.

Abstract: In the past few years, a number of scholars trained in computer vision, pattern recognition, image processing, computer graphics, and art history have developed rigorous computer methods for addressing an increasing number of problems in the history of art. In some cases, these computer methods are more accurate than even highly trained connoisseurs, art historians and artists. Computer graphics models of artists’ studios and subjects allow scholars to explore ‘‘what if’’ scenarios and determine artists’ studio praxis. Rigorous computer ray-tracing software sheds light on claims that some artists employed optical tools. Computer methods will not replace tradition art historical methods of connoisseurship but enhance and extend them. As such, for these computer methods to be useful to the art community, they must continue to be refined through application to a variety of significant art historical problems.

How do we interpret paintings which concern biblical texts? In a recent publication, the artist Jane Boyd and biblical critic Philip Esler offer a fresh set of answers to this question. Focusing on one painting by Diego Velázquez, Jane Boyd elaborates upon the critical context of this artist’s environment and how it effected a certain conceptual development which in the context of today’s viewer also provokes the question, ‘Where is the mirror?’

This study locates Velázquez's Supper at Emmaus (c. 1617/18) within early seventeenth‐century debates on the Christian conversion of Seville's African slaves. Through a careful analysis of writings by Sevillian clerics, the essay argues that Velázquez gave pictorial form to discourse on African spiritual ‘illumination’ and developing theories of skin colour. Treatises by Seville's ecclesiastics also provide crucial insight into the original, elite audience for whom Velázquez surely constructed his African subject. In Supper at Emmaus, Velázquez presented his male beholder with one possession encompassed within another: a female slave in a painting by Seville's most promising young artist.

Abstract: Nowadays, lacunarity is a well-accepted concept to complement fractality studies of complex sets. Lacunarity features are used to assess the largeness of gaps or holes of complex signals and images. As it stands, the lacunarity analysis used is an index averaging the behavior of small- and large-size structures in a given set. The aim of this work is to propose a generalized lacunarity concept on the basis of generalized moments. In this form, the lacunarity index, depending on a discrimination parameter, is oriented to quantify lacunarity associated with objects of different size. Textbook and real images are used to illustrate the ability of the generalized lacunarity index for displaying interesting features of real complex sets.

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Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore the visual representation of dignity, through the particular example of the seventeenth century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. Velázquez works at a point in Western history when modern conceptions of dignity are beginning to be formed. It is argued that Velázquez' portraits of royalty and aristocracy articulate a tension between a feudal conception of majesty and a modern conception of the dignity of merit. On this level, modern conceptions of dignity of merit are understood in terms of a struggle to excel in particular activities, and thus to overcome the risk of failure. More radically, Velázquez' portraits of dwarfs and the mentally disabled are argued to be expressive of dignity, not by finding a positive representation of the sitter's dignity, or to find scales of activities by which they can be positively assessed, but rather by grounding their dignity, negatively, in a protest against indignity and humiliation. Drawing on Honneth's analysis of dignity in terms of a theory of recognition, it is argued that the indignity of the court dwarf lies in the fracturing of their communication with the rest of society. The task of repairing that fractured communication is achieved, not by representing a dignified ideal, but rather by drawing attention to the prejudices that serve to exclude the humiliated from full participation in society. In conclusion, it is suggested that the conceptualisation and representation of the elderly today finds effective exemplars in Velázquez' portraits of court dwarfs, rather than in his portraits of the elderly.