Full Description
Fear of death and disease preoccupied the European consciousness throughout the early modern era, becoming most acute at times of plague and epidemics. In these times of heightened anxieties, images of saints and protectors served to reassure the faithful of their religious protection against infection. Modes of visual engagement and devotional subject matter were coupled in new ways to reinforce the emotive impact of art works and to reaffirm the perceived reality of the afterlife. In this context, a visual language of mystical devotion, which overcame the limits of the body and even eroticised its suffering, could serve the needs of the desolate and the pained. In this series of essays focused on spiritual sensibilities in Renaissance art and its legacies, authors present original ideas about the themes of death, disease, and mystical experience, based primarily on the study of objects and their documented historical contexts. Methodologically wide-ranging in approach, the resulting volume provides novel insights into the interplay between suffering and art making in the Western world.
Contents
Introduction: Manipulating the Sacred - Jennifer Milam and Michael Hill
1. Mary as Model for Trecento Mourning - Judith Steinhoff, University of Houston
2. "Pacem meam do vobis": Earthly Suffering and Celestial Redemption in the Trecento Fresco Program by Vitale da Bologna at Pomposa Abbey - Catherine Blake, independent scholar
3. Dying to be Born Again: Death in the Florentine "Sacre Rappresentazioni" - Nerida Newbigin, University of Sydney
4. The Visual Transformations of St Anthony the Abbot: From Protector of the Sick to Victor over Sexual Desire - Charles Zika, University of Melbourne
5. Giovanni Cariani's "Woman Reclining in a Landscape": The Erotic Subverted - Carolyn Smyth, John Cabot University, Rome
6. Touching Visions: Female Mystics Interacting with the Christ Child and with Mary - Patricia Simons, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
7. Queering Mysticism and the Lactating Virgin: The "Madonna delle Grazie with Souls in Purgatory" and its Audience of Nuns - Christina Neilson, Oberlin College
8. Securing Heavenly Protection in Apocalyptic Times: A Series of Fresco Votives in the Oratory of San Giovanni Battista in Urbino. - Di Haskell, independent scholar
9. The Long Goodbye: Resurrecting Rome's Apostolic Past in "The Final Embrace of Saints Peter and Paul" - Barbara Wisch, State University of New York, College at Cortland
10. The Beautiful Death of the Count of Orgaz: Andrés Núñez, El Greco, and the Making of a Counter Reformation Saint - Karen McCluskey, University of Notre Dame, Sydney
11. A Vessel to be Filled: Caravaggio's "Conversion of St. Paul" in Santa Maria del Popolo - Michael Hill, National Art School, Sydney
12. Lo Strascino's "Lamento" and the Visual Culture of the French Pox around 1500 - John Gagne, University of Sydney
13. Whiz King: Urination as Divination in Prints for Louis XIV - Mark de Vitis, University of Sydney
14. David's "Saint Roch": Plague Painting in the Age of Enlightenment - Jennifer Milam, University of Newcastle
15. Blake's Petworth House "Last Judgment" and Female Anatomy - Anthony Apesos, Lesley University
16. Cocteau's London Elegy: Re-purposed Renaissance Imagery in a Twentieth-Century Crucifixion - Stephen Holford, independent scholar
Index
