The Art Bulletin

The diverse integration of family references into the visual program of ninth-century Buddhist caves at Mogao, Dunhuang, marks a turning point in the construction of religious space in medieval China. The examination of Mogao Cave 231 demonstrates the intersection of figural, epigraphic, and decorative references to family patronage, including ancestor portraits, commemorative inscriptions, and depictions of domestic furniture, found throughout the caves. These open multiple perspectives onto the function of cave temples as a hybrid space that bridges the representation of image, object, and architecture as well as the relation between ancestral commemoration and Buddhist devotion.

Although the famous Portrait of Luca Pacioli and Disciple is a favorite illustration in surveys of Renaissance history and the history of science and mathematics, little is known about it. A detailed analysis of its contents and cultural context reveals that rather than a simple double portrait, the painting celebrated the achievements of mathematical humanists and their education program. The analytic skills that they championed were based on the visual language of Euclidean geometry. Not surprisingly, the diagrams of the Elements as printed by Erhard Ratdolt (Venice, 1482) are the focus of the picture and its complex iconography.