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The paper is dedicated to the earliest formative stages of Annunciation imagery. Although it was widely spread in the Middle Ages, only a few examples of the scene survive from the early Christian period. Judging by the existing material evidence, it can be argued that the image of the Annunciation acquired recognizable and fully-fledged form only in the fifth century. Early examples reveal distinct formative stages of the iconography and the gradual introduction of additional features, enriching the content and visual rendering of this highly significant visual theme. This paper analyzes the influence of Apocrypha, as well as of the early theological tradition, on the development of the Annunciation scene and reveals the importance of this material to the study of the cult of the Mother of God.

Like all previously published volumes of his lectures, the content of The Government of the Living defies brief summary. It shows us Foucault in 1980 mapping out a major new phase in his work in terms that complicate our existing understanding of his unfinished project. My review looks in turn at the two parts of the course: an unusually lengthy discussion of method and heuristics, followed by a tightly focused study of early Christian regimes of truth. I suggest that the complex opening theoretical reflections in these lectures go well beyond mapping the course of the immediately following historical analysis. They need to be seen in coordination with other conceptual innovations introduced over the following years, putting a task that Foucault calls here a "history of the power of truth" on his agenda alongside, and in integral connection with the previously defined tasks of a history of governmentality and a history of the subject. A newly published discussion in Berkeley later in 1980 adds crucial context to these Paris lectures, spelling out the linkage of structures of subjectivation to governability and of penitential ascetics to pastoral power. Taken together, the later books and lectures can now be seen to establish a framework of what I suggest we can call "alethic" or "aletheological" analysis, analysing and mapping across the span of Western history the modes of engagement of life and truth, with a view to enabling a renewed analysis of the political present.

D.V. Aynalov (1862—1939), a Russian Byzantinist, art critic and historian of Russian art, during his years at Kazan University (1890—1903) studied the issues of ancient Christian culture. For the first time, the article involves Aynalov's newly studied iconographic heritage, which allows describing the creative laboratory of the Byzantinist and his original method of analyzing monuments. The author finds that the development of a new research methodology was facilitated by the expansion of the empirical base, which, in addition to apocryphal texts, included Aynalov's own drawings, and photographs of monuments made by order of the scientist. In the article, D.V. Aynalov's lectures on "Ancient Christian Art" are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, allowing to reveal the argumentation of the scientist's main idea about the connection between the late Antique style and early Christian art. Aynalov made two important discoveries in the history of Christian art. The first discovery was that, using the example of the mosaics of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Aynalov managed to identify an important moment in the transformation of the image of the Virgin Mary into the image of the royal Virgin. The second discovery was the transformation of the symbolic image of Christ in the form of a lamb into the image in the form of a man, using the example of the mosaics of Albenga. The implementation of a comprehensive interpretation of Aynalov's iconographic heritage in the context of his ideas allows us to understand the scientist's system of evidence and reveal his original concept of the development of Christian art in the West and East. His research made a significant contribution to the new concept of the universal history of art, in which a special place belonged to Byzantium, and later to ancient Russian art. Aynalov's works contributed a great deal to the development of the scientific base on Christian art, art history and Byzantine studies in Kazan. The republication of D.V. Aynalov's legacy of the Kazan period is of interest for both modern Byzantine studies and the history of cultural studies.

The allegorical painting by Frans Floris (Louvre collection) was given a number of names, including 'Allegory of the Trinity'. There are some unconventional elements in the composition of the 'Adoration of the Trinity', including the wings flanking the cross, and a hen with her chicks underneath it. Several quotations from both the Old and the New Testaments are used to clarify the message of the painting. In this article an attempt is made to review the significance of the image of a bird spreading its wings over its nestlings. Old and New Testament traditions, both textual and iconographic, will be reviewed. Recent analysis by Edward W. Wouk will be complemented with several texts and relating to the Holy Mother in the Franciscan tradition. These images and texts come from late medieval miscellanies of "exempla", and are believed by Wouk to be inspired by the poem 'Gallina' by Alardus of Amsterdam and for the conception of Floris' painting of the Trinity