medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Jim
Have you tried Panofsky? I think he may deal with it in Renaissance and
Renascences in Western Art and also in his Perspective as Symbolic Form.
best
Catherine
on 16/11/02 10:10 AM, [log in to unmask] at [log in to unmask]
wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>> Can anyone direct me to comments in the Middle Ages or Renaissance about
>> the theological or spiritual implications of perspective in graphic
>> arts? Did anyone articulate the relative virtue (or vice) of "painting as
>> illusion" as a way of representing sacred themes, or communicating
>> theological or spiritual content? Is there any scholarship on the
>> theological or spiritual implications of this stylistic change?
>
> This is a very difficult question. The earliest written text that
> mentions perspective is Leon Battista Alberti's Della Pittura of 1434
> or 1435, and he was not concerned with the theological implications
> of perspective so much as the "fame" of artists, particularly in a
> specifically humanist comparison with classical artists. This tends
> to be the tenor of the modern literature on mathematically exact
> perspective, as well, e.g. Martin Kemp's The Science of Art (Yale,
> 1990), particularly in respect to painting practice in Italy. The
> almost contemporary but less theoretically oriented developments in
> the depiction of pictorial space in Flemish painting practice,
> however, have been treated in a very different way by art historians.
> It has much more closely been considered in relation to contemporary
> devotional concerns, e.g. Craig Harbison, "Visions and Meditations in
> Early Flemish Painting," Simiolus, 15 (1986), 87-118; David Carrier,
> "Naturalism and Allegory in Flemish Painting," Journal of Aesthetics
> and Art Criticism, 45 (1987), 237-49; James Marrow, "Symbol and
> Meaning in Northern Renaissance Art of the Late Middle Ages and the
> Early Renaissance," Simiolus, 16 (1986), 150-69. Also relevant to
> this approach is Gerhart B. Ladner, "Medieval and Modern
> Understanding of Symbolism: A Comparison," Speculum, 54 (1979),
> 223-56. Where, in my view, the discipline of art history still has a
> long way to go on this issue is in reconciling these two very
> different historiographical strands. In general, the rise of a more
> visually oriented mode of representation can be seen to arise in
> European art from the end of the 12th century, and although its
> development is neither continuous nor always of primary concern, it
> can be generally compared with the rise of Aristotelian natural
> science, and in this, the theologians on the list would be better
> able of making specific connections between Aristotelianism and
> theology. I have tried to address some of these issues in a recent
> article, "contrefais al vif: Nature, Ideas and Representation in the
> Lion Drawings of Villard de Honnecourt," Word & Image, 17 (2001),
> 360-78, but it is not likely to satisfy the theological aspect of
> your enquiry. One documented incident that I mention in the article,
> however, might be of related interest, although it involves sculpture
> rather than the graphic arts. The chronicle of the Cistercian abbey
> at Meaux mentions Abbot Hugh (1339-49) having a new crucifix made,
> and the sculptor "had a naked man before him to look at, that he
> might learn from his shapely form and carve the crucifix all the
> fairer". Abbot Hugh considered that such particularized truth to
> nature would increase devotion, particularly, as he says, on the part
> of women! The devotional -- and gendered -- attitudes evident here
> seem to have been more on the minds of late medievals in this regard
> (when they thought about it at all) than any specifically theological
> implications, but that is a pretty off-the-cuff estimation.
> Hope this helps.
> Cheers,
> Jim Bugslag
>
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