Description
The spiritual turmoil of the sixteenth century had a profound impact on religious life throughout Italy. Art and architecture were directly implicated in the seismic historical events of the age, as the Catholic Church countered Protestant iconoclasm through the embrace of sacred images as decreed by the Council of Trent in 1563. In this volume, Marie-Louise Lillywhite considers the impact of religious reform on the devotional art and architecture of sixteenth-century Venice. Interrogating early modern censorship, artistic liberty, notions of decorum tied to depictions of the body, and the role of sacred images in the shaping of local identity, she shows how Venice, a crossroads city exposed to a rich gamut of religious and artistic currents, serves as a fascinating case study through which to explore these themes. Her study reconstructs the conditions that enabled artistic invention to prevail and how artists became interpreters of spiritual values.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I: 1. The appeal of the subversive: art and heresy (1520–1544); 2. Nakedness and the lascivious: the boundaries of decorum before and after the Council of Trent; 3. The limits of enforcement: artistic censorship in Venice; 4. A reform in quantity: patriarch Lorenzo Priuli's visitation; Part II: 5. The body of Christ; 6. Sanctity; 7. The afterlife; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index
