Culture
The Voracious Oath
This fascinating print is modeled on Jacques–Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii. In that famous painting, the artist sought to exemplify patriotic virtue by showing an austere father making his sons swear to defend Roman honor.
A Second Jean d'Arc
To those who considered Marat insincere and dangerous in his unrelenting populism, the true martyr was Charlotte Corday, who had come to Paris from Caen—a city then serving as a base for the federalist insurgency—apparently with the express intent of killing Marat.
Assassination of J. P. Marat
An arrested Corday is hustled out of the door, while the inquest begins. The expired Marat, ghastly pale, looks much more realistic than in the David rendition of his death. Also, the bath in the shape of a boot, which differs from most images, is apparently accurate.
Opening of the Club of the Revolution: Circus Act
This engraving depicts a revolutionary club as a circus act complete with dancing dogs and clowns, all celebrating "the law and the King." This image might have been visual propaganda on behalf of clubs, suggesting that they could bring different people together under a big tent, in support of th
Gope, Ancestor or Spirit Boards
The object in the photograph is a gope, or spirit board (also called kwoi or hohao). This example is from Papua New Guinea near the Wapo Creek on the Gulf of Papua.
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa
In 1928, Martha Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on field work she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa.
Disciplining Children in the Codex Mendoza
Aztec children were valued creations. Language used in rituals compared infants to precious stones and feathers, flakes of stone, ornaments, or sprouts of plants.
Native American Children and Toys
Theodore de Bry included this colorful engraving in his publication of Hariot's, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). It was based on a watercolor by John White (fig. 2) painted five or six years earlier.
Mencius and his Mother: A Lesson Drawn from Weaving
This illustration depicts a scene from the Traditions of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan) of Liu Xiang (ca. 77-6 BCE), one of China's first didactic texts on feminine morality. The text to this story is provided below the illustration. The story recounts the upbringing of Mencius (ca.
The Boy Prodigy: Xiang Tuo
These two images from the Later Han dynasty (2nd century CE) depict the most famous child in early Chinese literature, Xiang Tuo (pronounced She-Ang Too-o).