WHAT DID CHRIST LOOK LIKE? Nowhere does the Bible describe his physical features. Silence conceals his appearance. To supplement scripture, miraculously created images of him emerged early on and, alongside them, written records with purported eyewitness authority. Carried by legend through the centuries, these testimonials have, ironically, turned the Bible’s invisible man into the figure most frequently portrayed and widely recognized in all Christendom. One such witness is the so-called “Letter from Lentulus,” believed to have been sent by a contemporary of Christ in Judea to the Roman Senate, so they could know what the remarkable prophet looked like. That apocryphal missive, probably dating from eighthcentury Byzantium, came to enjoy enormous popularity in medieval and Renaissance Europe, preserved in countless manuscripts and print editions, both Latin and vernacular. To enhance the simple text, most often in prose, devout Christians adapted it into rhyme, an artistic expression of veneration. Among them was the
{"title":"Laura Battiferra’s “Letter from Lentulus” and the Likeness of Christ in Renaissance Italy","authors":"V. Kirkham","doi":"10.1086/705537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705537","url":null,"abstract":"WHAT DID CHRIST LOOK LIKE? Nowhere does the Bible describe his physical features. Silence conceals his appearance. To supplement scripture, miraculously created images of him emerged early on and, alongside them, written records with purported eyewitness authority. Carried by legend through the centuries, these testimonials have, ironically, turned the Bible’s invisible man into the figure most frequently portrayed and widely recognized in all Christendom. One such witness is the so-called “Letter from Lentulus,” believed to have been sent by a contemporary of Christ in Judea to the Roman Senate, so they could know what the remarkable prophet looked like. That apocryphal missive, probably dating from eighthcentury Byzantium, came to enjoy enormous popularity in medieval and Renaissance Europe, preserved in countless manuscripts and print editions, both Latin and vernacular. To enhance the simple text, most often in prose, devout Christians adapted it into rhyme, an artistic expression of veneration. Among them was the","PeriodicalId":42173,"journal":{"name":"I Tatti Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90997747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MIRACLE-WORKING IMAGES RAISE a unique set of theological, philosophical, and art historical issues that more traditional artworks do not. Of principal interest for this study is the question of agency: What agent(s) is (are) ultimately responsible for the miracles that have been attributed to a miracle-working image? The issue of agency has attained prominence among art historians in the last twenty years or so, especially following the publication of AlfredGell’s pioneering anthropological study, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. His breakthrough came by insisting that art ought to be studied “as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it.”AsGell noted, cult images have a central place in the discourse on agency, “since nowhere are images more obviously treated as human persons than in the context of worship.” Nevertheless, rigorously analyzing the chain of miraculous agency is difficult. As Gell writes, “it remains a controversial philosophical problem to distinguish between ‘actions’
{"title":"Metonymic Agency: Some Data on Presence and Absence in Italian Miracle Cults","authors":"Christopher J. Nygren","doi":"10.1086/705516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705516","url":null,"abstract":"MIRACLE-WORKING IMAGES RAISE a unique set of theological, philosophical, and art historical issues that more traditional artworks do not. Of principal interest for this study is the question of agency: What agent(s) is (are) ultimately responsible for the miracles that have been attributed to a miracle-working image? The issue of agency has attained prominence among art historians in the last twenty years or so, especially following the publication of AlfredGell’s pioneering anthropological study, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. His breakthrough came by insisting that art ought to be studied “as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it.”AsGell noted, cult images have a central place in the discourse on agency, “since nowhere are images more obviously treated as human persons than in the context of worship.” Nevertheless, rigorously analyzing the chain of miraculous agency is difficult. As Gell writes, “it remains a controversial philosophical problem to distinguish between ‘actions’","PeriodicalId":42173,"journal":{"name":"I Tatti Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85915481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TRUST PLAYS A FUNDAMENTAL ROLE IN HOW INDIVIDUALS , communities, and institutions interact. Crises of trust have always affected communities. Earlymodern Italy is no exception. Governments, communes, and duchies trusted condottieri and podestà among other professionals to protect them. Fede (faith, trust) was an essential social condition for trade. In 1732, Ergas and Silvera, two Sephardic traders based in Livorno, wrote to another Sephardic merchant in Venice that what mattered to them most was to be able to rely on a “trustworthy and diligent person” (persona de confianza y deligente). Ideally, fede or trust was also accompanied by fiducia—or expectation that contracts, agreements, and all manner of friendships would be honored. In turn, fiduciawas ideally sustained by trust and a series of more or less flexible forms of contract that would protect both individuals and property. Failure to demonstrate trustworthiness often resulted in loss of honor. This was the case in the fifteenth century for Lodovico and Gianfranco Strozzi, whose insolvency, in the words of their cousin Alessandra Strozzi, brought a stain on their lineage that “could last forever.” Scholarship has focused on early modern rituals of trust (oath, membership, handshake, or kiss), but we know less about how trustworthiness was signaled and received.
信任在个人、社区和机构的互动中起着重要作用。信任危机总是会影响社区。近代早期的意大利也不例外。各国政府、公社和公国都信任雇佣兵和警察以及其他专业人员来保护他们。Fede(信仰,信任)是贸易必不可少的社会条件。1732年,利沃诺的两名西班牙裔商人埃尔加斯(Ergas)和西尔维拉(Silvera)写信给威尼斯的另一名西班牙裔商人,说对他们来说最重要的是能够依靠一个“值得信赖和勤奋的人”(persona de confianza y deligente)。理想情况下,忠诚或信任也伴随着信任——或者期望契约、协议和所有形式的友谊都会得到尊重。反过来,信托理想地通过信任和一系列或多或少灵活的合同形式来维持,这些合同形式将保护个人和财产。不能表现出可信赖性往往会导致名誉的丧失。这就是15世纪洛多维科和詹弗兰科·斯特罗齐的情况,用他们的堂兄亚历山德拉·斯特罗齐的话来说,他们的破产给他们的血统带来了“可能永远”的污点。学者们关注的是早期现代的信任仪式(宣誓、入会、握手或亲吻),但我们对信任是如何发出信号和接受的知之甚少。
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THIS SHORT ESSAY advocates boundary crossing as one direction for the future of Italian Renaissance art history, largely because it is an approach that emerges from engaging with phenomena that transgress traditional parameters of the field. These may be materials, formats, or people that cross geographical boundaries, unsettling familiar ground and inciting us to move in new directions. They may be global or transcultural things that challenge existing analytical frameworks. They may be practices or forms that refuse conventional historical periodization, categories, or terms of reference. As an approach, boundary crossing entails being receptive to unexpected forms of solicitation and to unpredictable paths and detours—to being open to what we do not know. That we learn from how the world looks back at us, as Michel de Montaigne observes above, has been demonstrated by the proliferation of studies and exhibitions on early modern art, global exchanges, and mobility that have provoked many of us to rethink familiar terrain. Since it is the case study that gives rise to
这篇短文主张将边界跨越作为意大利文艺复兴时期艺术史未来的一个方向,主要是因为它是一种从参与超越该领域传统参数的现象中出现的方法。这些可能是材料,格式,或跨越地理边界的人,扰乱熟悉的环境,激励我们向新的方向前进。它们可能是全球性的或跨文化的,挑战现有的分析框架。它们可能是拒绝传统的历史分期、类别或职权范围的实践或形式。作为一种方法,跨越边界需要接受意想不到的请求形式和不可预测的路径和弯路——对我们不知道的东西持开放态度。正如米歇尔·德·蒙田(Michel de Montaigne)在上面所观察到的那样,我们从世界如何看待我们中学习,这一点已经通过早期现代艺术、全球交流和流动性的研究和展览的激增得到了证明,这些研究和展览促使我们中的许多人重新思考熟悉的领域。因为是案例研究导致了
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IN SUMMER 2002 , when the International Musicological Society (IMS) gathered for its quinquennial meeting in Leuven, I was still a relatively junior scholar, with only a few grants and publications to my name. My presentation, “When Is a Madrigal Not a Madrigal?,” focused on challenging the status of the musical score, which for over a century had been the primary tool for the study, analysis, and performance of Renaissance music. After one set of afternoon sessions, I was thrilled to find myself walking next to Jessie Ann Owens, who generously engaged me in conversation (here I paraphrase): “I’m so glad,” she said, “that you have decided to devote yourself to The What.” “What?” I replied, confused. “The What,” she repeated. “It used to be that every musicologist wanted to study Renaissance music. Now, when someone asks what music I work on, I say, ‘The Renaissance,’ and they say, ‘The What?’” Nearly seventeen years later, and at the time of writing, the medieval and Renaissance musicology community is preparing for its annual meeting (affectionately known as MedRen), which this year is hosted by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. Over four days there will be 283 papers with six parallel sessions in each time block, two workshops, ten lecture recitals, one roundtable, an exhibition, and a concert. Reconstructions of lost instruments will be played; new manuscript discoveries will be announced; music from Iceland to Iberia to Georgia will be discussed; critiques will be anchored in feminist musicology, film theory, and disability studies; traditional analysis and historical inquiry will sit alongside sessions on digital humanities. At vibrant events such as these, Renaissance musicology does not seem like a field under threat—in almost every way, it feels as if it is growing
2002年夏天,当国际音乐学学会(IMS)在鲁汶召开五年一度的会议时,我还是一个资历较浅的学者,只有几笔奖金和几篇论文。我的演讲题目是《牧歌何时不是牧歌?》,专注于挑战乐谱的地位,一个多世纪以来,乐谱一直是研究、分析和表演文艺复兴音乐的主要工具。在一组下午的课程结束后,我兴奋地发现自己走在杰西·安·欧文斯(Jessie Ann Owens)旁边,她慷慨地与我交谈(这里我转述一下):“我很高兴,”她说,“你决定投身于The What。””“什么?”我困惑地回答。“什么,”她重复道。“过去,每个音乐学家都想研究文艺复兴时期的音乐。现在,当有人问我创作什么音乐时,我说,‘文艺复兴’,他们说,‘什么?’”将近17年后,在撰写本文时,中世纪和文艺复兴时期的音乐学团体正在筹备其年度会议(被亲切地称为MedRen),今年的会议由巴塞尔的巴塞尔音乐学院(Schola Cantorum Basiliensis)主办。在四天的时间里,将有283篇论文,每个时间段有六个平行的会议,两个研讨会,十个讲座独奏会,一个圆桌会议,一个展览和一个音乐会。将演奏遗失乐器的复原作品;新的手稿发现将被公布;从冰岛到伊比利亚再到格鲁吉亚的音乐将被讨论;评论将以女性主义音乐学、电影理论和残疾研究为基础;传统的分析和历史调查将与数字人文学科一起进行。在这些充满活力的活动中,文艺复兴时期的音乐学似乎并不像一个受到威胁的领域——几乎从各个方面来看,它似乎都在成长
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GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS) , Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), data sets, assets, outputs, sound files: these are terms of art for the information renaissance of our time. Towhat extent are the digital humanities (DH) inspiring research and teaching about the renaissance that concerns readers of I Tatti Studies? My trajectory as a scholar took a digital swerve around 2012, when I found myself wishing for online visualizations of archival documents that were central to my research: how could I work with then-director of the Archivio di Stato of Mantua Daniela Ferrari both to conserve and to make more widely available the thousands of precious and fragile letters in the correspondence files of Isabella d’Este Gonzaga (1474–1539), marchesa of Mantua? How many other participants, with what kinds of expertise, would we need, with what financial resources, to realize this goal?Most importantly, what new research would be enabled by increasing access to the Gonzaga archive? What followed from these questions has not been my metamorphosis into a computer programmer or software developer but rather an ever-expanding set of relations with coproducers whose skills complement and supplement my own. What began as a preservation and access project about manuscript letters has evolved into a multiauthored, multimedia, online environment for study of the Italian Renaissance that is part public humanities, part specialized research tool, and always in evolution. IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive now embraces an international team of scholars from Italy, the United States, Scotland, and Australia and features highresolution images of some 28,000 pieces of correspondence; an expanding set of music projects, including documentary films; a bibliography; and art historical materials (realized or in production) in projects ranging from databases, to visual and economic analyses, to a 3D, immersive model of Isabella’s famous studiolo. Some
地理信息系统(GIS)、增强现实(AR)、虚拟现实(VR)、数据集、资产、输出、声音文件:这些都是我们这个时代信息复兴的艺术术语。数字人文学科(DH)在多大程度上启发了《塔蒂研究》读者对文艺复兴的研究和教学?我的学者生涯在2012年前后发生了一次数字化的转变,当时我发现自己希望将档案文件在线可视化,这对我的研究至关重要:我如何才能与曼图亚国家档案馆时任主任达妮埃拉·法拉利(Daniela Ferrari)合作,保护曼图亚公爵夫人伊莎贝拉·德埃斯特·冈萨加(Isabella d 'Este Gonzaga, 1474-1539)的通信文件中数千封珍贵而脆弱的信件,并让它们更广泛地传播?为了实现这个目标,我们需要多少其他参与者,需要什么样的专业知识,需要什么样的财政资源?最重要的是,通过增加对冈萨加档案的访问,将使哪些新的研究成为可能?这些问题并没有让我转变成一名计算机程序员或软件开发人员,而是让我与合作制作人的关系不断扩大,他们的技能与我的技能互补。最初是一个关于手稿信件的保存和访问项目,已经发展成为一个多作者、多媒体、在线的意大利文艺复兴研究环境,一部分是公共人文学科,一部分是专业研究工具,而且一直在发展。想法:伊莎贝拉·德埃斯特档案馆现在拥有一个由来自意大利、美国、苏格兰和澳大利亚的学者组成的国际团队,拥有大约28,000份信件的高分辨率图像;不断扩大的音乐项目,包括纪录片;参考书目;和艺术历史材料(已实现或正在生产)的项目,从数据库到视觉和经济分析,再到伊莎贝拉著名工作室的3D沉浸式模型。一些
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BOCCACCIO FAMOUSLY BEGINS the Decameron’s preface “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” (It is a matter of humanity to show compassion for those who suffer) and goes on to claim that he intends the book as a work of consolation for young ladies, confined to their rooms and afflicted with lovesickness. The content of the opening aphorism is somewhat conventional, but Boccaccio’s placement of it at the very start of the Decameron raises important questions about the collection’s purpose. Is the narrative’s putative objective only to distract its figuratively female readers while their lovesickness wanes of its own accord, or is it also to instill compassion—for women in love and for people in
{"title":"Decameron 5.8: From Compassion to Compliancy","authors":"Olivia Holmes","doi":"10.1086/702646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/702646","url":null,"abstract":"BOCCACCIO FAMOUSLY BEGINS the Decameron’s preface “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” (It is a matter of humanity to show compassion for those who suffer) and goes on to claim that he intends the book as a work of consolation for young ladies, confined to their rooms and afflicted with lovesickness. The content of the opening aphorism is somewhat conventional, but Boccaccio’s placement of it at the very start of the Decameron raises important questions about the collection’s purpose. Is the narrative’s putative objective only to distract its figuratively female readers while their lovesickness wanes of its own accord, or is it also to instill compassion—for women in love and for people in","PeriodicalId":42173,"journal":{"name":"I Tatti Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91278298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP of an apocalyptic pandemic that extirpates all certainty, order, and kindness from the city of Florence, the Decameron is a work that is self-consciously novel. It is a massive undertaking unprecedented in its form: a frame narrative in modern Italian prose, deploying systematically multiple narrators and levels of narration, both stringently regular and in its micropatterns deliberately asymmetrical. It is equally unprecedented in its themes: the purpose and functioning of imaginative fiction, the (gendered) role of appetite in human behavior, the drivers and outcomes of behavioral choices examined in a rigorously immanent context. Beginnings are always important; every work carries its content on its forehead, as Giovanni Boccaccio said of his tales’ rubriche, positioning its readers and shaping their expectations and experience of it. Of this immense production, even more than most, the opening sequence offers a road map to its readers. First and foremost, the proem announces that compassion is the engine that powers this innovative project. Compassion is a complex value in any society, particularly in one infused as much with a capitalist as with a Christian ethos. TheDecameron sets out to explore the spiritual and social dimensions of compassion, although through neither a philosophical or theological analysis nor a didactic series of transparently exemplary models reflecting and rewarding “good” behaviors and indicting and punishing “bad” ones. Boccaccio both invokes and revises the didactic exemplum, whose simplicity limits its utility for him; his strategy here, as in all his literary fictions, is not to clarify but to nuance—not to spoon-feed but to challenge his readers. This ap-
{"title":"Compassion in the Decameron: The Opening Sequence","authors":"F. R. Psaki","doi":"10.1086/702645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/702645","url":null,"abstract":"SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP of an apocalyptic pandemic that extirpates all certainty, order, and kindness from the city of Florence, the Decameron is a work that is self-consciously novel. It is a massive undertaking unprecedented in its form: a frame narrative in modern Italian prose, deploying systematically multiple narrators and levels of narration, both stringently regular and in its micropatterns deliberately asymmetrical. It is equally unprecedented in its themes: the purpose and functioning of imaginative fiction, the (gendered) role of appetite in human behavior, the drivers and outcomes of behavioral choices examined in a rigorously immanent context. Beginnings are always important; every work carries its content on its forehead, as Giovanni Boccaccio said of his tales’ rubriche, positioning its readers and shaping their expectations and experience of it. Of this immense production, even more than most, the opening sequence offers a road map to its readers. First and foremost, the proem announces that compassion is the engine that powers this innovative project. Compassion is a complex value in any society, particularly in one infused as much with a capitalist as with a Christian ethos. TheDecameron sets out to explore the spiritual and social dimensions of compassion, although through neither a philosophical or theological analysis nor a didactic series of transparently exemplary models reflecting and rewarding “good” behaviors and indicting and punishing “bad” ones. Boccaccio both invokes and revises the didactic exemplum, whose simplicity limits its utility for him; his strategy here, as in all his literary fictions, is not to clarify but to nuance—not to spoon-feed but to challenge his readers. This ap-","PeriodicalId":42173,"journal":{"name":"I Tatti Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79768389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT A LITTLE DISCOVERY . In Florence’s Archivio di Stato, folded between lists of publications and postage prices, are some one hundred documents belonging to a forgotten Medici project for recording all the measurements of the world. A week before the end of July 1683, the chancellery of Grand Duke Cosimo III (r. 1670–1723) sent letters to some of his agents across Europe, asking them to provide the dimensions of standards in use in their areas of operation. It also solicited up-to-date information on currencies, even if the replies indicate that this second request only inquired about the names of units of accounts and their divisions. Those responses got stacked together, bound to the drafts (minute) of Cosimo’s letters, and inserted in a towering miscellanea of receipts and wish lists. The result—what I call the “ribbon files”—is as curious as was the decision to keep all the letters together. Florentine archivists usually place each missive in the folder of the respective sender. They sometimes even divide them into different years. The current arrangement instead points to a different objective: to keep those documents together even after the endeavor was eventually abandoned.
这篇文章是关于一个小发现。在佛罗伦萨的国家档案馆(Archivio di Stato)中,折叠在出版物和邮费清单之间的是大约100份文件,这些文件属于一个被遗忘的美第奇家族的项目,该项目记录了世界上所有的测量数据。1683年7月底前一周,大公科西莫三世(1670-1723年在位)的总督府致信他在欧洲各地的一些代理人,要求他们提供在他们的业务领域使用的标准尺寸。它还要求提供关于货币的最新资料,尽管答复表明,第二次要求只询问帐户单位及其分部的名称。这些回复被堆在一起,装订在科西莫信件的草稿(每分钟)上,插在一堆堆积如山的收据和愿望清单中。其结果——我称之为“带状文件”——就像把所有信件放在一起的决定一样令人好奇。佛罗伦萨的档案保管员通常把每一封信件放在各自寄件人的文件夹里。他们有时甚至把它们分成不同的年份。目前的安排指向了一个不同的目标:即使在最终放弃努力之后,也要将这些文件保存在一起。
{"title":"The Ribbon Files: The Medici Project to Chart the Measurements of the Entire World","authors":"Emanuele Lugli","doi":"10.1086/702665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/702665","url":null,"abstract":"THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT A LITTLE DISCOVERY . In Florence’s Archivio di Stato, folded between lists of publications and postage prices, are some one hundred documents belonging to a forgotten Medici project for recording all the measurements of the world. A week before the end of July 1683, the chancellery of Grand Duke Cosimo III (r. 1670–1723) sent letters to some of his agents across Europe, asking them to provide the dimensions of standards in use in their areas of operation. It also solicited up-to-date information on currencies, even if the replies indicate that this second request only inquired about the names of units of accounts and their divisions. Those responses got stacked together, bound to the drafts (minute) of Cosimo’s letters, and inserted in a towering miscellanea of receipts and wish lists. The result—what I call the “ribbon files”—is as curious as was the decision to keep all the letters together. Florentine archivists usually place each missive in the folder of the respective sender. They sometimes even divide them into different years. The current arrangement instead points to a different objective: to keep those documents together even after the endeavor was eventually abandoned.","PeriodicalId":42173,"journal":{"name":"I Tatti Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86248858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}