Renaissance art history
More general subjects:
Images of Saint Anne in the Ionian Islands (Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
The article examines the preservation of the Byzantine iconographic tradition alongside the growing influence of Western style in images of Saint Anne on three Greek Ionian Islands after the establishment of Venetian rule: Corfu (1386) Zante (1482) and Kefalonia (1500). A new political religious and social context characterized the production of art on these three islands during their occupation by the Republic of Venice. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 when icon painters sought refuge in Venetian-held Crete and the later flight to the Ionian Islands (which were also Venetian possessions) after the sack of Crete in 1699 the Ionian Islands played a decisive role in the development of post-Byzantine art and later modern Greek painting.
In mente Dei, in gremio Annae. The Source and the Receptacle of Marian Immaculacy in Sixteenth-Century Piacenza
Starting from the notion of Maria ante saecula which implies the Virgin’s presence in God’s mind before the world and humanity the paper will firstly analyse the place of Mary’s soul before and during the Creation. This aspect will be studied through the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception painted by Malosso for the Church of San Francesco in Piacenza. Then it will examine the debate surrounding the controversial transmission of the original stain from Saint Anne to Mary to the point of considering the Virgin’s purification after her birth. These considerations will lead to tackling an ambiguous altarpiece by Pordenone where at first sight the spectator could confuse Saint Anne with the Virgin.
The Anna Selbdritt and the Cult of the Three Maries. An Early Fourteenth-Century Wall Painting in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary
This study concentrates upon a little-known late medieval wall painting depicting the Holy Kinship. The fresco is located in the parish church in Csaroda a village in north-eastern Hungary and was painted in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Scholarship dedicated to the iconography of Saint Anne and the Holy Kinship focuses on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries because of the late medieval blossoming of devotion towards the Virgin’s mother and Christ’s extended family. Studies of earlier centuries mostly take into account manuscripts. The case of the Holy Kinship in Csaroda proves that the state of research regarding the iconography of Anne and the Holy Kinship has little relevance for explaining images that were produced beyond the confines of upper-class patronage. The ascending cult of Saint Anne and her three daughters in fourteenth-century France offers examples that bear the closest resemblance to the Csaroda fresco. Illustrated manuscripts of John of Venette’s L’Histoire des trois Maries albeit produced later than the mural in Hungary provide the closest visual parallels. However the use and dissemination of manuscripts is different from the function and reception context that can be assigned to a wall painting and my aim is to investigate possible circulation and reuse of this motif in the case of the wall painting in Csaroda.
Moving with Saint Anne. Representations of Anna Selbdritt between Central Europe and the Tyrolean Region
The cult of Saint Anne was at its peak between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries particularly in German-speaking countries including the historical Tyrol. This essay focuses on the influence of images from the German-speaking area on the arrival and the establishment of the cult of Saint Anne in the Tyrolean area and outlines through an iconographic analysis the fortune and decline of the cult of the Mother of Mary in the historical Tyrol.
Representations of Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Exploring Iconographic Flexibility and Permeability
Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries the cult of the Virgin Mary underwent significant changes a shift clearly revealed by an increase in artistic representations of Mary as well as a flourishing devotional literature in her honour written in both Latin and the vernacular. One aspect of this change was a broader attention to Mary’s genealogical line and in particular to her relationship with St Anne. The result was not only a renewed focus on the vita Annae but also a significant overlap in how these two women were represented juxtaposed and perceived.
This volume traces the often significant iconographic flexibility in terms of both how the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne were presented and perceived and what can be termed a permeability between visual representations of the two saints. Focusing on the multiple readings layers of meaning and the visual interplay between the vita Mariae and the vita Annae the chapters gathered here explore the overlap and influence between different iconographic motifs and how these were used to advance political religious and social ideologies at the time of their creation as well as exploring representations across a range of different media from sculptures and frescoes to panel paintings and manuscript illuminations.
‘Worthy Vestment for the Sovereign Priest’. Matriarchal Priesthood, Marian Allegory, and the Amiens Confraternity of Notre-Dame de Puy
This essay examines the oldest extant panel painting from Amiens cathedral’s Marian poetry confraternity of Puy Notre-Dame. Known as the Priesthood of the Virgin the panel depicts Mary dressed as an Old Testament high priest investing her son with the Levitical lineage that she in turn received from her mother. The painting uses typology allegory liturgy and the hagiography of Saint Anne to create a ‘visual poem’ that was meant to inspire one of the confraternity’s annual chant royal competitions. As such the panel elucidates the palinod verse written by the confraternity master and that featured as the refrain in the contestants’ compositions. This palinod appears on a banderole near the confraternity master who kneels in the lower right corner of the painting: ‘Worthy vestment for the sovereign priest.’
Arbor Anna fructuosa. Apropos of an Image of Saint Anne and the Fruits of Redemption
This essay examines a small anonymous wooden sculpture produced in the eighteenth century in north-eastern Brazil. Of rare iconography the sculpture depicts a Selbdritt in which Saint Anne offers a bowl of apples to the Child while the group is framed by a laden apple tree. The overt emphasis placed on the tree and the offering of fruits encouraged the search for its formal prototypes and their meaning. Thus I present the apples and the apple tree (and other trees and fruits) in Marian and Saint Anne iconography and compare this visual material with an extensive literary corpus that encompasses biblical text Christological-Mariological literature liturgical hymns paraenetics and folk songs highlighting its occurrences in the Lusophone world. Finally after briefly specifying the sociocultural context of eighteenth-century Brazilian artistic production I conclude that the sculpture can be understood as a late repository of the multiple debates that permeated the construction of Mary and Anne characters as a support for what constitutes the very essence of Christianity — and of which the apples and the apple tree are the figurative synthesis: the path of humanity from the fall from grace to redemption.
The Pregnancies of Mary-Anne in Fifteenth- to Sixteenth-Century Franco-Flemish Manuscript Illuminations. Between Iconographic Appropriation and Iconographic Development
This chapter discusses the pregnancy representations of the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne. More precisely it focuses on the iconographic permeability and flexibility between the two hagiographic figures in what mostly concerns manuscript illuminations. In this sense manuscript illuminations showing a pregnant Saint Anne are related to Marian representations as in the Annunciation the Throne of Wisdom etc. The chapter tackles mostly Franco-Flemish source material however these sources suggest a much larger area of dissemination for such pregnancy representations dominated not only by the cult of Saint Anne but also by commercial networks (Flemish/Spanish). Furthermore pregnancy representations permeate other holy motherhoods from apocryphal stories — those of Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas.
The Panel of the Virgin and Saint Anne from the Church of the Archangels in Iprari. Iconographic and Ideological Aspects
The chapter deals with the eleventh-century iconic images of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne depicted on the eastern part of a south wall in the Church of the Archangels in Iprari ad 1096 (Upper Svaneti north-west Georgia). The topography of the panel and its iconographic context underline its specific role in the decorative programme of this church. The murals of Iprari are the earliest work of ‘King’s Painter Tevdore’ who painted three churches in Svaneti between ad 1096 and ad 1130. The title of Tevdore mentioned in the dedicatory inscription reveals his links with the royal court. I argue that the inclusion of the panel of the Virgin and Saint Anne in a small church dedicated to the archangels with a limited number of images together with religious context has an important political meaning.
The Museum of Renaissance Music
A History in 100 Exhibits
This book collates 100 exhibits with accompanying essays as an imaginary museum dedicated to the musical cultures of Renaissance Europe at home and in its global horizons. It is a history through artefacts-materials tools instruments art objects images texts and spaces-and their witness to the priorities and activities of people in the past as they addressed their world through music. The result is a history by collage revealing overlapping musical practices and meanings-not only those of the elite but reflecting the everyday cacophony of a diverse culture and its musics. Through the lens of its exhibits this museum surveys music’s central role in culture and lived experience in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe offering interest and insights well beyond the strictly musicological field.
Ars Habsburgica
New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Art
Starting from a political reality which is at the same time artistic and cultural the book Ars Hasburgica aims to review the still so common historiographical conception of the Renaissance that conceives this period from a geographically Italocentric artistically classicist and politically centered the idea of "national" arts and schools.
But Renaissance is a more global and complex phenomenon. What this book aims to offer is an idea of the art of that period that considers the role played by the Habsburg dynasty and its various courts in this period trying to verify whether by applying other historiographic models and having the art of the Casa de Austria as a focus traditional ideas can continue to be maintained well into the twenty-first century. We refer to the so-called "Vasari paradigm" on which art history of the sixteenth century has largely been built over the last centuries. It is also intended to structure concepts about the art of the period not so much around nationalist considerations and identities of the arts but to raise these issues throughout ideas such as that of the court as a political artistic and cultural sphere in the wake of the classical studies by Norbert Elias Amedeo Quondam or Carlo Ossola.
Women in Arts, Architecture and Literature: Heritage, Legacy and Digital Perspectives
Proceedings of the First Annual International Women in the Arts Conference Rome, 20–22 October 2021
In the last few decades the study of women in the arts has largely increased in terms of scholars involved in research and investigation with the reception of the outcomes especially acknowledged by museums which are dedicating part of their mission to organizing exhibitions and/or acquiring the works of women. The Annual International Women in Arts Conference seeks to advance contemporary discussions on how female creativity has helped shape European culture in its heterogeneity since the Middle Ages. This volume collects the proceedings of the first conference organised in Rome in October 2021. It focuses on the role of women in literature art and architecture. Throughout history these domains were often seen as very masculine. Yet there have been many women who have made their mark as writers illuminators artists and architects or have played a decisive role as patrons and supporters in these arts. This collection of essays aims to bring these women to the fore and sheds a new light on the heritage and legacy of women in the creative arts and architecture from the Middle Ages until the 20th century.
Images, signes et paroles dans l’Occident médiéval
Cet ouvrage rassemble dix contributions qui proposent des perspectives originales pour l’analyse conjointe des modes d’expression figurée de l'Occident médiéval. Menées tant par des « historiens de l’art » que par des « historiens » elles abordent la question de l’image-objet des signes alphabétiques et iconiques du lieu peint de la liturgie et de la prédication. Documents d’archives exégèse biblique sermons et récits hagiographiques sont exploités de manière fine et exhaustive pour rendre compte au plus près du contexte d’exécution des œuvres qu’elles soient inconnues ou célèbres. Ce sont alors les angles d’approches adoptés comme l’anthropologie des images ou les études transgenre mais aussi les relations complexes entre art architecture et rites qui enrichissent ici l’exploration et d’objets de culte - les lipsanothèques catalanes les linges de l’autel ou les ex-voto - et de panneaux peints - comme la Flagellation du Christ de Piero della Francesca - et des cycles de peintures décorant la Tour Ferrande à Pernes-les-Fontaines San Pellegrino à Bominaco et cinq chapelles de la Ligurie et du Piémont.
Reinventing Alexander
Myth, Legend, History in Renaissance Italian Art
In this book Claudia Daniotti provides the first comprehensive study of the representation of Alexander the Great in Renaissance Italian art exploring a fundamental turning point in the tradition: the transition from the medieval imagery of Alexander as a legendary fairy-tale hero to the new historically grounded portrait of him as an example of moral virtue and military prowess.
During the Middle Ages Alexander was turned into a fabled creature and fearless explorer whose Flight to Heaven and other marvellous adventures were tirelessly recounted and illustrated enjoying huge popularity. With the humanist recovery of the ancient historical texts and the changing taste and expectations of the wider wealthier and more diverse public of the courts and cities of the Italian peninsula the fabulous aura that had surrounded Alexander for centuries evaporated. He was recast as the moral exemplum and valorous military commander spoken of by the newly available ancient historians and became the protagonist of an unprecedently vast iconographic repertoire established in the course of the sixteenth century.
By discussing a body of artworks from 1160s to 1560s spanning several media (from illuminated manuscripts and frescoes to sculptural reliefs wedding chests and tapestries) and researching this material in constant dialogue with the literary tradition this book offers a reassessment of the whole visual tradition of Alexander in Renaissance Italy making sense of a figurative repertoire often perceived as fragmentary and disparate and casting new light on an overall still neglected chapter in the tradition of the myth of Alexander.
La beauté de l’homme
Esthétique et métaphysique, de l’Antiquité à l’âge humaniste et classique
Contrairement à la grandeur ou la dignité la question de la beauté de l’homme n’a guère retenu l’attention des commentateurs. Trop souvent réduite à la seule beauté corporelle elle est jugée secondaire relevant de l’histoire sociale des apparences ou de l’esthétique. À l’inverse le propos de cet ouvrage est de montrer que la beauté joue un rôle essentiel dans la dignification de l’homme en s’appuyant sur les deux grandes traditions qui ont modelé l’idéal de perfection humaine jusqu’à l’âge classique : d’une part le culte antique de la beauté revivifié au Moyen Âge par la « Renaissance du xiie siècle » et magnifié à l’âge humaniste avec le développement des arts plastiques ; d’autre part la tradition chrétienne dans laquelle l’homme créé à l’image et selon la ressemblance de Dieu (Gn 1 26) porte en lui une étincelle de la divine Beauté.
Ainsi entend-on réfléchir moins à la beauté elle-même qu’au sens de la beauté par un dialogue entre théologie philosophie littérature et théorie de l’art. Se révèle alors toute la complexité de la question marquée par une tension constante entre recherche de l’idéal et paradoxes beauté plastique et beauté vivante beauté corporelle et beauté spirituelle kalokagathie et théorie silénique de l’opposition entre extérieur et intérieur beauté visuelle et beauté musicale beauté de l’homme et beauté de Dieu.
Solus homo nudus, solum animal sapiens
Théories humanistes du nu (xv e-xvi e siècles)
La définition du nu comme genre artistique pose problème depuis qu’a été critiquée la distinction posée par Kenneth Clark entre Nu et nudité (The Nude 1956). Si les Anciens n’ont pas laissé de théorie du nu les humanistes ont fourni une abondance de préceptes lui reconnaissant la validité d’un concept esthétique. Cet ouvrage présente une première synthèse des théories du nu dans les traités d’art de la Renaissance et montre comment artistes et théoriciens ont inventé le nu à partir de trois sciences - les mathématiques la médecine et la philosophie morale - en renouvelant les doctrines antiques de la symétrie de l’anatomie et de la physiognomonie.
Sacred Images and Normativity: Contested Forms in Early Modern Art
Early modern objects images and artworks often served as nodes of discussion and contestation. If images were sometimes contested by external and often competing agencies (religious and secular authorities image theoreticians inquisitions or single individuals) artists and objects were often just as likely to impose their own rules and standards through the continuation or contestation of established visual traditions styles iconographies materialities reproductions and reframings.
Centering on the capacity of the image as agent - either in actual legal processes or more generally in the creation of new visual standards - this volume provides a first exploration of image normativity by means of a series of case studies that focus in different ways on the intersections between the limits of the sacred image and the power of art between 1450 and 1650.
The fourteen contributors to this volume discuss the status of images and objects in trials; contested portraits objects and iconographies; the limits to representations of ering; the tensions between theology and art; and the significance of copies and adaptations that establish as well as contest visual norms from Europe and beyond.