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In the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, at the height of the cult of the Virgin Mary, a rare and rich conflux of past and present events, both authentic and legendary, catapulted Orvieto into the spotlight as a political, religious, and intellectual center. First papal conflict with the encroaching Holy Roman Emperor and Cathar heresy were […]
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What modes of scientific knowledge can images of architecture embody? An etching that Strasbourg artist Wendel Dietterlin the Elder released in the second, 1594 instalment of his serially published Architectura treatise [Fig. 1] suggests some answers to this question. The etching portrays what at first appears to be a fantastic portal, formed from wood with […]
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As the diminutive early Christian saint Giustina teeters between life and death in Paolo Veronese’s painting depicting her martyrdom, her gaze sets itself upon one of the most spectacular scenes of the heavens painted in all of the Renaissance. A massive altarpiece, the largest of the painter’s career, in it the skies have opened to […]
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The “art world” comprises a complex, diverse set of people and institutions – an international, interdependent complex of artists, collectors, museum professionals, dealers, and auctioneers, with a large supporting cast of art historians, archaeologists, critics, experts, bronze founders, fine art printers, suppliers of artists’ materials, city planning commissions, corporate sponsors, governmental sources of funding, tax […]
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What is a painting? An application of coloured pigments to a flat surface, be it a wall, a canvas, or a panel. My book poses this question in historical perspective, to ask: what was a Renaissance painting understood to be? The answer is that a painting, defined as representation, was understood as a mirror-image of […]
Read MoreGiotto’s Arena Chapel and the Triumph of Humility takes its lead from three features of the famous monument that each engage the question of time, material, and immateriality: 1. the painted, faux marble panels that line the interior of the chapel, 2. the faded polychrome relief figures of the virtues and vices in the lowest […]
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The HBO series Game of Thrones is perhaps the most recent expression of the general view that the Middle Ages were rape-prone. Humiliation and exploitation of female (and male) characters repeatedly come together with direct sexual violence, which is only partially reframed through a series of revenge-sequences in the last season. The cinematic quality of […]
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The Renaissance theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti imagined houses as living beings: when they are happy they welcome you to their ‘bosom’, the central hall; when they are badly sited they feel humiliated, ‘enjoying no dignity’ and ‘taking no pleasure’. Gendered as feminine, the building loves to ‘gaze out’ at her surrounding landscape, ‘both […]
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