RESEARCH FIVE TOPICS
Research each topic by finding at least two sources. You many use Wikipedia and other
encyclopedic sources, but not exclusively. The questions are suggestions for research and
you do not have to answer them all.
1) DESCRIPTION: Write a topic sentence stating the title of the artwork. Then tell me
what you see. If there are human figures what are they doing? How are they posed? What
are they wearing? What are the expressions on their faces? Tell me about the non-human
figures. Include relative sizes, positions and colors used as you describe each figure.
2) THE ARTIST or THE CULTURE: Tell me about the artist who created this artwork.
Where did he or she live? Where did he study? What themes are common in his work? If
the artist is not named, tell me about the people in the time and place it was created.
What were the people like? Where did they live and how did they live? Who were the
rulers and what building was done during the time when the artwork was made?
3) THE STYLE: Every artwork has a general classification or type. For example, works
like The Hope Athena are Classical style, because they were made in ancient Rome.
Works like Hagar and the Angel are Baroque style because they have elements popular in
the 17th century. Discover the style of the artwork you have chosen. Tell me what the
basic elements of the style are, and how the work of art embodies those elements. Give
specific examples, and show how the artist was a proponent of that style.
4) THE SUBJECT: What mythological story does the artwork tell? Who are the
characters in it, and what are they doing? Find original sources for the myth or story, and
explain their importance to the culture that created them. Always include quotes from
related literature to support your narrative.
5) THEME: What is the main idea the artwork brings to mind? Tell me why the theme is
important to human life. Explain how the theme is present in your own life.
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Student’s Name
Teacher’s Name
Course Name and Number (Humanities 115 - 1977)
Due Date
Title of Your Essay
Double-space the entire essay. The margins must be one inch right and left and an
inch and a half top and bottom. They are usually preset in MS Word. Use 12-point Times
New Roman font. Do not use any other fonts or font sizes. In the header, write your last
name in the upper right followed by the page number.
Center your title above the first paragraph. Capitalize the first word. Capitalize the
first letter of words except articles, which are words like a, an, the, and prepositions like
on, in, of. Do not write the title in quotation marks, italics, all capital letters or in a
different font or size. If you include the title of the artwork, write that in italics.
Begin each paragraph by pressing the tab key. Do not add an empty space
between the title and the first paragraph. Do not add an empty space between each
paragraph. Do not include a cover page. Staple the essay in the upper left corner and hand
it in. E-mail your paper to me as an MS Word document.
If you use the words of another writer, you must present those words as a
quotation. In this research paper, you may not quote more than one sentence each
paragraph. Include open quotation marks at the start of the quote, punctuate the end of the
quote with a period or comma and include close quotation marks after the punctuation.
All quotes must be cited. The source must be a classical author or specific authority. No
quotes from Wikipedia or other general sources.
CREATING CITATIONS
Please use narrative citations for the research paper. A citation is a way of telling me
where you found the information you used to build your argument. Narrative citations are
included as part of the story you are telling. They can be anywhere in a paragraph, not
just at the end.
Source names are always written in italics. Sources include ancient myths, books and
websites. Websites like Wikipedia or Ancient History Encyclopedia have millions of
articles. Include the article title in quotation marks.
1) If you create a citation from a work where the author is known, for example, from the
book World Mythology by Donna Rosenberg, present your citation like this:
According to World Mythology by Donna Rosenberg, Osiris was the god of
fertility and ruler of the underworld.
A citation like the one above should be used if you are using information from one of the
essays written by Donna Rosenberg in the textbook, or if you are quoting Rosenberg.
2) If you cite one of the myths in World Mythology, you must include the title of the
ancient source, like this:
According to The Epic of Gilgamesh in World Mythology by Donna Rosenberg,
Enkidu challenges King Gilgamesh to one-on-one combat.
After the first time you write out the entire citation for World Mythology by Donna
Rosenberg, you can then use a parenthetical:
Similarly, in Osiris, Isis and Horus of Egyptian mythology, Horus challenges his
uncle Set to one-on-one combat (Rosenberg 20).
3) On the Internet, the website is the source. Write the website name in italics. Write the
title of the article in quotation marks. If the author’s name is available, include that, too.
According to “Perseus” by Mark Cartwright at The Ancient History Encyclopedia,
the goddess Athena favored the hero Perseus.
If the author’s name is not available, use the article title and the website name.
According to “Perseus” on the website Wikipedia, Perseus was rewarded with a
golden bridle, which he used to tame the winged horse Pegasus.
Never include any part of a web address. Do not include the prefix “http://www” or the
URL, which is “dot com” or “dot org.”
4) The museum card is a publication. The information can be used, but must be cited. Use
the title of the artwork as the article title written in quotes. The museum is the source.
According to “Hagar and the Angel” at LACMA, the painting Hagar and the
Angel was created in 1650 by the artist Francesco Maffei.
5) When repeating a source’s information word for word, you must cite the source and
use quotation marks. The quote must support something of your own narrative, and
cannot be from a general source like Wikipedia.
You can quote a classical author:
When Achilles hears that Hector has killed his friend Patroclus, he decides to
return to the fighting even though a prophecy has said he will die. Achilles blames
himself for Patroclus’s death, saying, “I now realize at what great price I sat
uselessly by my ships,” according to The Iliad of Homer (Rosenberg 143).
Or, you can quote a specific authority whose credentials can be verified, as long as the
quote supports something you have explained in your own words:
The Greeks wrote many stories of gods and heroes, and their myths have been
copied by many cultures. Mark Cartwright, in “Iliad” at Ancient History
Encyclopedia, says, “The Iliad is universally acclaimed as a truly great story.”
NO QUOTES FROM WIKIPEDIA OR OTHER GENERAL SOURCES.
YOU CAN QUOTE ARTICLES WHERE THE AUTHOR’S NAME IS LISTED,
OR A CLASSICAL SOURCE LIKE HOMER’S THE ILIAD.
6) The bible is a collection of books, and each of book is considered a source. Always use
the King James Version when citing or quoting the bible. Do not include “the bible” or
“King James Version” in your citation, because it is accepted that you are using the KJV.
Write the title of the bible book out fully the first time you use it. Always include the
chapter and verse numbers:
According to The Book of Genesis 2:18, God created a woman as an help meet for
Adam.
After you write the book title out completely the first time, you can shorten it every time
after that:
The woman was tempted to disobey God by a serpent. When Eve tells the serpent
they are forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge the serpent says, “For God
doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as gods…” (Genesis 3:5)
WORKS CITED PAGE
Include a list of works cited, also called a bibliography
1) It must be on a separate page, after your final paragraph on theme.
2) Works cited must be in alphabetical order, based on the author’s last name if it is
available.
3) If there is no author’s name, use the article title followed by the source name. On the
Internet, the source name is the website where you found the information and the article
title is the name of the page where the information is located.
4) If there is more than one author’s name, use the first name listed followed by et. al. It
is an abbreviation for a Latin phrase that means “and the rest.”
5) Follow the title with the edition number or version number
6) Follow the title or edition number with the publisher’s name
7) The last thing is the copyright date or publication date
The bible is cited by the version first, which for this paper will always be The King James
Version. The book name follows and chapter number. Verse numbers are not included
here, only in the narrative citation.
Classical sources list the author’s name first, the title of the work, the translator, then the
publisher and publication date (if available).
Source names, website names and book titles are always written in italics and the only
things written in italics.
EXAMPLES
“Aphrodite Loves 2” Theoi Greek Mythology
“King David” New Advent – The Catholic Encyclopedia Kevin Knight, Editor, 2017
King James Version, the Bible, The Book of Matthew Chapter 17 Biblegateway
Ovid, The Metamorphosis, Book 6, Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, et. al. The Internet
Classics Archive
P. Wootton, et. al. “Carving Imperial Reliefs at Rome,” The Art of Making in Antiquity
Rosenberg, Donna World Mythology 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill 1999
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Ralph Tropf
Professor John Doe
Humanities 115
May 04, 2017
George de la Tour’s The Magdalene with the Smoking Flame
One of the most hauntingly beautiful works on permanent exhibition at LACMA
is George de la Tour’s The Magdalene with the Smoking Flame. In this early Baroque
masterpiece, the artist captures the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene in a contemplative
moment. No gospel passage corresponds with the scene the artist imagines in the
painting, but the youth of the figure and symbols included indicate a moment after the
crucifixion in which a companion of Jesus reflects on His death and resurrection.
The painting features a woman reminiscent of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa: in her early
twenties, she has a high forehead and dark hair that falls to her waist. Like Mona Lisa,
she has no eyebrows; it may have been a fashion of the Renaissance for women to shave
them, according to “Beauty Through the Ages – The Renaissance” by Charlotte
Kutchinsky at Beauty Biz. The resemblance ends there, for Mona Lisa is chaste and
Magdalene quietly voluptuous. Most of her face is angled away from the viewer. Her
chin rests on her left hand as she stares at a burning liquid in a clear glass vessel on the
table before her. She wears a white shirt with puffy sleeves that falls sensuously down her
arm baring one shoulder, her creamy skin exposed. Her skirt, a provocative rust red, falls
to just above her knees revealing naked calves and bare feet. In comfortable isolation, she
does not concern herself with modesty. Magdalene’s belly is swollen, perhaps in
pregnancy. There is no biblical reference to Mary Magdalene having any kind of sexual
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relationship with Jesus, but De la Tour intriguingly provokes the question centuries
before Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. The rope-like belt across her belly enticingly
indicates restraint.
Her right hand rests on a human skull in her lap. The symbolism of the skull is
subtly evident: death looms in this woman’s life. It may be the recent death of Jesus or
the inevitable death of every person. Death was a constant concern in the artist’s day.
According to The Dead and Living in Paris and London 1500-1670 by Vanessa Harding,
the Bubonic Plague, which had killed 70% of the population of Europe in the fourteenth
century, had recently resurfaced in provincial France where de la Tour created the
painting. The fear of the plague’s devastation would have been on the artist’s mind. Also,
in the year the painting was begun, a fire had destroyed the artist’s early works, according
to “Biography of Georges de la Tour” at The National Gallery of Art website. The
Magdalene with the Smoking Flame was his first attempt to rebuild his legacy. The skull
represents the ephemeral nature of both art and life; ars may be longa but the artist’s
personal canon had been made brevis.
Other items include a wooden cross lying lengthwise on the table, beside the
candle. It is painted using the foreshortening technique, in which linear perspective is
used to make an object appear to be thrusting toward the viewer. Two leather-bound
books lie atop the cross. The most intriguing element other than the woman is the
“smoking flame” of the title. A wick burns suspended in fluid, a kind of open-topped oil
lamp. The bright yellow flame has dark fumes rising ominously. It is the only
illumination in the painting. This is an example of the “night scene,” a style that would
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soon become popular among Northern painters, especially Rembrandt and Gerrit Von
Honthorst, whose The Mocking of Christ is also on display at LACMA.
Georges de la Tour spent his entire career in the province of Lorraine, France near
the German border, according to “Biography of Georges de la Tour” at The National
Gallery of Art website. Never having studied in Rome or Florence, de la Tour’s work
bears a distinctly northern influence. There is no hint of the muscular figures of
Michelangelo or the wrenching humanism of Donatello’s Penitent Magdalene. While not
rigidly Gothic, de la Tour’s painting exhibits the style’s morose quality. The strongest
influence on de la Tour, as with many painters of his day, was his contemporary
Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio.
According to “What is Baroque?” at Art in the Picture, Caravaggio pioneered the
Baroque style with several radical elements: he chose to portray highly dramatic
moments from biblical sources, placed the main figure of his paintings off-center leaving
the canvas with a great deal of negative space, created sharp contrasts of light and dark, a
technique known as tenebrism, and invented the aforementioned foreshortening. Many of
these elements are evident in The Magdalene with the Smoking Flame. The candle
brightly illuminates Magdalene’s face, chest and lap while the rest of her body is in deep
shadow. There is little outside the circle of light creating the feeling of isolation within a
vast, negative space. The cross is presented foreshortened. A young woman staring at a
candle might not be considered “dramatic” compared to Caravaggio’s The Crucifixion of
St. Peter. In Caravaggio’s work, a muscular Peter, nailed to a beam, strains to see the
workmen who place the cross headfirst into the earth. Still, The Magdalene has a quiet
intensity that remains dramatic in its own right.
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For his subject de la Tour imagines a scene not found in the bible. Mary
Magdalene appears, briefly but significantly, in each of the four Gospels. In the 27th
chapter of The Book of Matthew, Magdalene is present at the crucifixion. With her is
another Mary identified as the mother of James, Joses and others, who is possibly Jesus’s
mother. In Matthew 28, the two Marys approach Jesus’s tomb to witness an earthquake
and the appearance of an angel, “His countenance was like lightening, his raiment white
as snow,” according to Matthew 28:3. The angel informs them that Jesus has risen from
the dead and instructs them to inform the disciples.
She plays a similar role in The Book of Mark, where she and another woman
approach the grave bearing “sweet spices,” mostly likely for an anointing ceremony, and
instead of an angel they meet a “young man” sitting in the tomb. Mark adds an intriguing
detail: returning later alone, Magdalene sees the risen Jesus who appears first to her
rather than to his disciples. Mark identifies Magdalene as a woman “out of whom he had
cast seven devils,” according to Mark 16:9. The Book of Luke repeats the identification of
Magdalene as a bedeviled woman, in chapter 8 verse 2. He also reports that the two
Marys witness two men who “stand by them in shining raiments,” in Luke 24:4.
The Book of John has the most provocative version of the story. Magdalene is
present at the crucifixion along Mary, this time clearly identified as Jesus’s mother in
John 19:25. In Chapter 20, Magdalene approaches the tomb alone, finds it open and runs
to inform the disciples. Returning with them, she sees two men in bright raiments that the
disciples are apparently unable to perceive. Turning, she sees Jesus himself but fails to
recognize him. In John 20:15 he asks, “Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest
thou?” Magdalene speaks to him, the first person to do so after the crucifixion, asking if
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he has taken the body. He calls her by name, she recognizes him and calls him “Rabbi.”
Jesus then admonishes her not to touch him. She informs the disciples of what she has
seen and heard, and then vanishes from the biblical account.
Nowhere is Magdalene identified as a prostitute, a profession popularly attributed
to her. Some claim her to be “the woman taken in adultery” whom Jesus rescues in The
Book of John Chapter 8, but there is no biblical credence to this claim. Magdalene’s
origin and identity, save as a companion of Jesus, will forever remain a mystery.
Magdalene’s significance in Christianity is simple but profound: as the first to witness the
risen Jesus, she is proof of the importance of women in Christian life. If a woman once
possessed by “seven devils” can achieve redemption, all women can.
George de la Tour’s The Magdalene with the Smoking Flame remains mysterious
as well. There is no image in the painting to identify her as the biblical Mary Magdalene,
only the title. Perhaps the flame represents a figure in “shining raiment,” or perhaps the
eternal love promised by the life and resurrection of Jesus. De la Tour intriguingly offers
the swollen belly and the skull as additional questions that remain unanswered.
Magdalene herself, facing away from the viewer, casually attired and unaware of our
presence, quietly maintains the mystery.
ARTIST/CULTURE
The artwork I have chosen is Lot and his Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi. This piece of
art was created in 1622. Orazio Gentileschi was a painter from Italy. Born in Tuscany,
he started his career in Rome, painting in a mannerist style, much of his job of painting
the figures in other artists ' ornamental arrangements. The tale of Lot and his daughters
is one of the most shocking episodes in the Bible. As recounted in Genesis 19, the story
begins with the visit of two angels to the wicked city of Sodom.
In February 1639, Gentileschi died in London, then was buried in the Queen's Chapel at
Somerset House. The article I used to find this information is "Human Drama and
Psychological Insight: Rubens's Lot and His Daughters" on The Met. Here is the link:
Link
HISTORY
The artwork I have selected is Lots and His Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi.
Gentileschi was born in Pisa, Italy 1562 and deceased in London, England 1639.
Gentileschi came under the influence of Caravaggio in the first years of the 17th
century, in Rome. The birth of Gentileschi in Italy from 1545 to 1563 was one of the
most important ecumenical conferences of the Roman Catholic Church, now recognized
as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Revival period that started
in reaction to the Protestant Reformation. Gentileschi's painting style is Baroque,
affected by the Baroque era from around 1600 to 1750, which took place during the
Gentileschi period. The Baroque era began in Rome, Italy, which is crucial to
Gentileschi's career because he lived in Rome around this time, so it was very crucial to
his art job. A few years before the artist's birth in 1577, his dad, Jan, was in the midst of
a sex scandal that troubled European politics and almost cost him his life. Jan Rubens
fell in love with his employer, who ultimately gave birth to his daughter, serving as the
lawyer to the Princess of Orange, whose husband was the leader of the Netherlands
revolt. The article’s I used to find this information on is called "Human Drama and
Psychological Insight: Rubens's Lot and His Daughters" on The Met and “Orazio
Gentileschi” on Encyclopaedia Britannica. H
ere are the links: Link (Links to an external
site.) Link (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)
STYLE
The artwork I chose is called Lot and His Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi. This
artwork's style is Baroque. Baroque has exaggerated detail and this exaggerated detail
is used to produce drama. The paintings of the Baroque period are also very appealing
to the emotions of its audience. This painting, in particular, is full of emotion and
dramatic detail because they believed they were alone in keeping the human race alive.
The article I used to find this information is "The Baroque Period" by Lumen. Here is the
link:Link
SUBJECT
The artwork I have chosen is Lot and his Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi. The subject
is more biblical and it has to do with the story of lot and his two daughters. The city,
Sodom, was burning and they all thought they would be alone in the reproduction of the
human race. Therefore, they seduced their father and had his children. It’s in the Bible,
Genesis 19. I found this information on the article “Lot and His Daughters” on Getty.edu.
Here is the link: Link (Links to an external site.)
THEME
The theme in Lot and his Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi is erotic. Lot's daughters
seem to be absorbed by an event that takes place beyond the boundaries of the
painting. God's annihilation of Sodom's city, burning away. Believing that they survive
alone to perpetuate the human race, the girls plucked alcohol from their dad to help
their incestuous seduction of him. In Europe of the seventeenth century, depictions of
Lot and his daughters were common because they offered a just background in which to
demonstrate a cultural tabou. The topic is often viewed as a pure pretext for performers
to interact with an sexual motif, but in this picture, the lack of nudity or palpable
sensuality indicates otherwise the motives of Gentileschi. I found this information on the
article “Lot and His Daughters” on Getty.edu. Here is the link:Link
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