Christopher Nygren | University of Pittsburgh (original) (raw)

Papers by Christopher Nygren

Journal for Digital Art History, 2023

AI has become an increasingly prevalent tool for researchers working in Digital Art History. The ... more AI has become an increasingly prevalent tool for researchers working in Digital Art History. The promise of AI is great, but so are the ethical and intellectual issues it raises. Here we propose 10 axioms related to the use of AI in art historical research that scholars should consider when embarking on such projects, and we make some proposals for how these axioms might be integrated into disciplinary conversations.

PEARC '20: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, 2020

Art historians are interested in possible methods and visual criteria for determining the style a... more Art historians are interested in possible methods and visual criteria for determining the style and authorship of artworks. One approach, developed by Giovanni Morelli in the late nineteenth century, focused on abstracting, extracting and comparing details of recognizable human forms, although he never prescribed what exactly to look for. In this work, we asked what could a contemporary method like convolution networks contribute or reveal about such a humanistic method that is not fully determined, but that is also so clearly aligned with computation? Convolution networks have become very successful in object recognition because they learn general features to distinguish and classify large sets of objects. Thus, we wanted to explore what features are present in these networks that have some discriminatory power for distinguishing paintings. We input the digitized art into a large-scale convolutional network that was pre-trained for object recognition from naturalistic images. Because we do not have labels, we extracted activations from the network and ran K-means clustering. We contrasted and evaluated discriminatory power between shallow and deeper layers. We also compared predetermined features from standard computer vision techniques of edge detection. It turns out that the deep network individual feature maps are highly generic and do not easily map onto obvious authorship interpretations, but in the aggregate can have strong discriminating power that are intuitive. Although this does not directly test issues of attribution, the application can inform humanistic perspectives regarding what counts as features that make up visual elements of paintings.

Purity and Contamination in Early Modern Art and Architecture, 2021

Around 1530 artists began painting on stone. Early on artists mostly used slate, though toward th... more Around 1530 artists began painting on stone. Early on artists mostly used slate, though toward the end of the sixteenth century they began painting on various kinds of semi-precious stones like lapis lazuli. Such pictures were appreciated for how the pure lithic material was augmented by the painter. In the seventeenth century, artists (especially in Florence) began painting on a particular kind of sedimentary stone known as pietra d'Arno that subverts this aesthetic. Unlike semi-precious stones whose material splendor and purity lends itself to aesthetic appreciation, this stone is unrelentingly base: pietra d'Arno is essentially solidi ed mud. This essay investigates how artists used this sedimentary substrate to support ethical investigations of humankind's position as fallen beings in the created world.

Digital Humanities Quarterly , 2021

By bringing forward and interpreting the results from a collaborative research project that used ... more By bringing forward and interpreting the results from a collaborative research project that used contemporary computing techniques to investigate Giovanni Morelli’s nineteenth-century method for making stylistic attributions of old master paintings, this article examines how humanists make claims to knowledge and how this process may or may not be modellable or mechanizable within the context of classical, deterministic, digital computation. It begins with an explanation of the rationale behind choosing the Morellian practice of attribution, continues with a survey of another effort at computationally implementing Morelli’s method, and then presents our own computational techniques and results. The article concludes with what we have come to understand about the roles of responsibility, trust, and expertise in the social practice of art attribution, and the dangers in assuming that such human entailments are native to digital computers.

I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance History , 2019

Recently, miracle-working images have elicited great interest among scholars of Italian Renaissan... more Recently, miracle-working images have elicited great interest among scholars of Italian Renaissance art history because the marvelous acts attributed to them challenge the notion that pictures are "mere representations." Miracle-working images perform actions in the world, and they have frequently been discussed using formulations of "agency" that have been developed especially in anthropology and the social sciences. While it may be intuitive to describe miracle-working pictures as "agents" (or actants), most theories of agency are predicated on the material presence of the agent. This article examines more than 600 miraculous occurrences that attributed to five miracle-working images and uses these data to demonstrate clearly that miracles rarely occurred in the presence of image. This prompts a consideration the terminology that art historians use to analyze such events: is agency the best analytical framework for describing the kind of ontological entanglement that these pictures evince? If you do not have access to this volume through your library, please email me at cnygren@pitt.edu

Steinformen. Materialität - Qualität – Imitation, 2019

Toward the middle of the sixteenth century numerous Italian artists began applying pigments onto ... more Toward the middle of the sixteenth century numerous Italian artists began applying pigments onto slabs of stone. The curious substitution of stone for canvas within the production of large easel paintings has few parallels in the history of Western art or global art more generally. The discovery of this new mode of painting was reported in a 1530 letter from Vittorio Soranzo to Pietro Bembo, in which he described how Sebastiano del Piombo had developed it: "You should know that our Sebastiano Venetiano has found the secret to using the most beautiful oil pigments to paint on marble, which will make painting nothing less than eternal. As soon as the colors are dried they are united to the marble in such a way that they are almost petrified; he has tested it in every way, and it is durable. He made an image of Christ and showed it to me." 1 Although Sebastiano's first painting on stone does not survive, numerous pictures on stone by Sebastiano have come down to us. 2 It is commonly assumed that Sebastiano developed this method in response to the Sack of Rome in 1527, when many of his paintings had been burned, slashed, or chopped up by mercenary troops under the command of Charles V. He sought to make pictures that were permanent, that would resist the natural order of decay. Vasari made this point even more explicit in his life of Sebastiano: "This painter then introduced a new method of painting on stone, which pleased people greatly, for it appeared that by this means pictures could be made eternal, and such that neither 1 "Dovete sapere che Sebastianello nostro Venetiano ha trovato un segreto di pingere in marmo a olio bellissimo il quale farà la pittura poco meno che eterna. I colori subito che sono asciutti si uniscono col marmo di maniera che quasi impetriscono, et ha fatto ogni prova et è durevole. Ne ha fatto una imagine di Christo et halla a mostrato a N. Sig." Michael Hirst: Sebastiano del Piombo, Oxford

Sustained dialogue and collaborative work between art historians and technologists have a great d... more Sustained dialogue and collaborative work between art historians and technologists have a great deal to offer both fields of inquiry. In this paper, we propose that effective collaborations in Digital Art History require more than just a humanist and a technologist to succeed. Indeed, we find that there are four different roles that need to be filled: Humanist, Technologist, Data Steward, and Catalyst. Our approach is predicated on a few foundational convictions. First, we believe that art historians and technologists occupy distinct problem spaces. As we will outline, although these realms are distinct they are not of necessity in opposition to one another. Second, we bring to the fore essential questions about the status and function of data that must be addressed by the collaborators: what sort of data are being used? What counts as effective and compelling analysis of this data? Third, we recognize that there are certain structural impediments to collaboration, such as different reward structures and motivations. Finally, we assert that each of the participants must have a deep commitment to their particular engagement with the project, which requires sustained effort and the maintenance of disciplinary respect. We firmly believe that the most effective of these projects will not be based on technological solutionism, but rather will be founded in the most humanistic of tools: empathy and respect.

“Almost Eternal”: Paintings on Stone and Material Innovation in Early Modern Europe, 2018

In pre-modernity, similitude was a powerful concept not limited to the realm of visual resemblanc... more In pre-modernity, similitude was a powerful concept not limited to the realm of visual resemblance. For the Latin West, this division was already embedded in the story of mankind's creation, where the deity specified that mankind should be made " in our image and likeness " (imaginem et similitudinem). As Augustine makes clear (De trinitate 7.12), to be fashioned in God's image invokes a relationship of resemblance, but the relationship of similitude is more complicated. Similitude speaks of " a certain proximity between things distant from each other, not proximity of place but of a sort of imitation. " Similitude, then, is relational. An object can express an ontological affinity to some other thing without necessarily being in a visually mimetic relationship to that thing. This malleable understanding of similitude was not exclusive to theology. Indeed, it underwrites the Renaissance debate over painting and sculpture, now commonly called the paragone. While modern scholarship has focused on claims regarding the nobility or difficulty of each medium, the stakes of that debate were much higher: at issue was the referential capacity of art itself, art's ability to produce objects that exceeded mere representation. Authors on opposite sides of the debate, like Benedetto Varchi and Speroni Sperone, agreed that, as three-dimensional objects, sculptures shared a deep similitude, an " essential identity, " with the bodies they represent. Paintings lack this " essential identity " with the target of representation. Addressing a portrait of Giulia Gonzaga painted on stone, Varchi dismissed the suggestion that executing a painting on stone bridges the gap between the painted image and its worldly referent. This essay will demonstrate that a notion of deep similitude in excess of visual resemblance often underwrote artists' adaptation of a stone support. Focusing on Cavaliere d'Arpino's Perseus and Andromeda and Jacques Stella's Jacob's Dream, this essay will suggest that the presentational ambition of paintings on stone has too often been overlooked. By enlisting stone as an actant in their economy of (re)presentation, these pictures strove to attain an essential identity with their target of representation. Only by recuperating a pre-modern understanding of the vibrancy of matter can scholars fully appreciate the presentational ambition of paintings on stone. Painting on stone allowed artist to realign resemblance and similitude in a manner that is both unexpected and visually seductive. If you do not have access to this volume through your library, please email me at cnygren@pitt.edu

Over the last hundred years or so art history has developed into an increasingly promiscuous fiel... more Over the last hundred years or so art history has developed into an increasingly promiscuous field of inquiry. In that time art historians have sought to enrich the formal analysis of their objects of study with the context provided by social history, semiotics, anthropology, post-colonial studies, or any other paradigm of inquiry that offers a fresh perspective on how people have engaged with images. Perhaps surprisingly, these divergent modes of practicing art history have led to a rigorous application of language. Following Michael Baxandall's analysis of how Renaissance merchants leaned on the terminology they used to describe such varied tasks as barrel gauging and dancing to discuss works of art, art historians have become increasingly aware of the fundamental tension that binds pictures to the words used to describe them. Image, picture, icon, medium, body, calligraphy-these terms (and many others) are part of the disciplinary jargon, and though art historians may occasionally disagree about the nuances of these terms, there is a general consensus regarding their connotations within the field. These are the terms used to develop a critical explanation or interpretation of pictures and objects, to engage these objects exegetically, as it were.

Despite the numerous methodological parallels that unite art history and biblical exegesis, these two disciplines have struggled to engage one another in meaningful dialogue. Art historians pillage exegetical sources in order to crack the code of obscure biblical subjects, while exegetes invoke images as illustrations of textual praxis. The emergence of rhetography as a mode of biblical exegesis concerned with the imagistic quality of the text offers a unique occasion to reflect upon the considerable overlap between these two distinct disciplines. Both are fundamentally concerned with the problem of images, but they approach this issue from different angles. Art history began with pictures and objects and has come only recently to understand how the squishiness of the term " image " can be put to use in describing a host of non-material images that were nevertheless theorized in historical sources as though they were manufactured pictures. Similarly, biblical exegesis began with textual analysis and has only recently awakened to the power of rhetorical images evoked through parables, ekphrasis, and evocative language (enargeia). Yet while rhetography and art history seemingly converge on a unified concern for " the image, " they often employ this and other critical terms – like vision, visuality, and representation, to name only a few – in ways that reflect a specific disciplinary agenda. By calling attention to the overlapping terminology used by art historians and retographers, this intervention will examine on the one hand how the disciplines might illuminate one another and on the other where inquiry begins to uncomfortably push beyond the limits of interdisciplinarity.

If you do not have access to this volume through your library, please email me at cnygren@pitt.edu

Titian's Ecce Homo (Museo del Prado, Madrid) stands out for many reasons. First, the painting was... more Titian's Ecce Homo (Museo del Prado, Madrid) stands out for many reasons. First, the painting was a gift, so it reflects Titian's volition rather than the will of a patron. Second, the material that Titian elected to use demands attention: Ecce Homo is painted on slate. It is the only painting that Titian ever painted on slate, yet modern scholarship has largely ignored Titian's unique artistic material. The painter heightened the affective immediacy of Christian devotion by underlining the associations between the spiritual content of his image and the physical characteristics of its material substrate.

Titian painted Christ with the Coin for Alfonso d'Este around 1516. The painting served as the co... more Titian painted Christ with the Coin for Alfonso d'Este around 1516. The painting served as the cover piece for a collection of ancient coins and has been read as a commentary on politics and taxation. Instead, this article reveals how the painting reconfigured Alfonso's interaction with ancient coins, transforming the everyday activity of the collector into an occasion of spiritual reformation. Reading numismatic antiquarianism against the exegetical tradition that accrued around the Gospel pericope (Matthew 22:21) reveals the painting as the nexus of two regimes of virtue — one Christian, one classical — both of which turn upon coins as manifold objects.

In the 1568 edition of his Lives, Giorgio Vasari attributed a miracle-working icon to Titian. The... more In the 1568 edition of his Lives, Giorgio Vasari attributed a miracle-working icon to Titian. The magnitude of this claim has not been appreciated. Titian’s final painting, the Pietà (Galleria dell’Accademia), cannot be understood outside of this heritage of miraculous efficacy. In it Titian capitalized on the anxieties that attended his reputation as the producer of a miraculous image. While recalling this earlier moment in Titian’s career, his final painting layers references to miraculous agency by including votive objects associated with miracles; appropriating the history of the painting’s intended site; and citing a little known miracle-working image, the Madonna della Navicella.

This essay focuses on the interplay between the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Italian art of the ... more This essay focuses on the interplay between the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Italian art of the early sixteenth century. While the Hypnerotomachia exerted some influence on artists of the subsequent generation, the nature of that influence will be reevaluated in light of the functions that poetic favole accrued around the turn of the sixteenth century. Opening with an examination of two paintings by Antonio Allegri da Correggio that are often seen as illustrative of the impact that the Hypnerotomachia had on Italian art, this essay will subsequently open up distance between the pictures and their purported source text. Focusing attention on Correggio’s complex engagement with the Hypnerotomachia affords new insights into the intricacy of the text itself, its relationship with antiquity, and how the tension between these two elements helped shape the anomalous status the Hypnerotomachia occupies today. The peculiar antiquarian approach that the Hypnerotomachia takes toward the study of language, architecture, and artifacts was quite common throughout the fifteenth century, but it quickly fell out of favor in the sixteenth century. The article concludes by suggesting that art historians begin thinking of the Hypnerotomachia as the extended manifesto of a model of engaged beholdership that held currency in Northern Italy around 1500 rather than as a source for iconography and new subjects. Viewed in this light, Colonna’s text yields important insights into the alluring qualities of artists like Mantegna and Antico, who shared with the Hypnerotomachia an abiding interest in interrogating antiquity as one of the animating forces underwriting their artistic project.

Workshops and Conferences by Christopher Nygren

Computers cannot see, at least not in any way that is recognizably human, and therefore cannot pa... more Computers cannot see, at least not in any way that is recognizably human, and therefore cannot participate in aesthetic discourse.

Our workshop, which will take place on November 13, 2015, takes this provocative stance as an axiomatic point of departure. But rather than praise or blame either humans or computers for this disjuncture, we are interested in exploring the consequences of this position. Can we find a way to pivot from the language of anthropomorphism, as in “computers cannot do what humans do,” in order to provide a better description of the interface between human vision and technologically-aided modes of perception? How might interrogating the deep history of works of art produced computationally, and yet prior to the digital age, provide insight into the current state of the question? By scrutinizing the intersections and misalignments between a number of different fields that have privileged visual perception (both human and computer), this workshop confronts the challenge of how digital technologies can aid in the study visual and material culture.

While computers cannot “see,” there are things that they can perceive better than humans, just as there are many things that humans perceive better than computers. Recognizing these simple facts might become generative of a new mode of scholarship that unites different disciplines invested in visual perception. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and computer science, this workshop will draw attention to the limits of computing aesthetics. Pointing out limits, we believe, is essentially providing challenges and opportunities for the creation of new knowledge.

Thus, we are interested in signaling a few things:

How might digital technologies help humanists better understand the human-created, visible world, especially in the realm of value judgements;
How might humanists help computer scientists better understand potential uses for digitally-aided modes of visual perception, and;
What new questions can emerge when scholars in the humanities unite with computer scientists to bring human vision into productive tension with computational power?

This workshop will take place from 9am to 5pm in the 3rd floor Collaboration Space in the School of Information Sciences (135 N. Bellefield Avenue) at the University of Pittsburgh. In the morning session, which will take place from 9am-noon, four scholars actively engaged in the question of the role of the digital computer in the world of the humanities will offer four personal viewpoints on these essential questions arising from the point of view of their own research:

Thomas Lombardi,Computing and Information Studies, Washington and Jefferson College
Benjamin C. Tilghman, Art History, Lawrence University
Alison Langmead, School of Information Sciences and History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
Christopher Nygren, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
Adriana Kovashka, Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh

The afternoon session will take the form of a faceted conversation between the participants, including the presenters, in order to delve more deeply into the three main questions posed above. Those staying for both sessions will be treated to lunch at noon.

book reviews by Christopher Nygren

Books by Christopher Nygren

Titian's Icons Tradition, Charisma, and Devotion in Renaissance Italy , 2020

http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08503-6.html An erudite study of Titian' s small-... more http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08503-6.html

An erudite study of Titian' s small-format paintings of biblical subjects. Through a careful analysis of this group of paintings, and with particular attention to the early modern conflicts between the traditions of devotional images and theorizations of art, Nygren' s book revises our understanding of Titian' s position in the history of early modern sacred art."-Jodi Cranston, author of Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice Titian, one of the most successful painters of the Italian Renaissance, was credited by his contemporaries with painting a miracle-working image, the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross. Taking this unusual circumstance as a point of departure, Christopher J. Nygren revisits the scope and impact of Titian' s life' s work. Nygren shows how, motivated by his status as the creator of a miracle-working object, Titian played an active and essential role in reorienting the long tradition of Christian icons over the course of the sixteenth century. Drawing attention to Titian' s unique status as a painter whose work was viewed as a conduit of divine grace, Nygren shows clearly how the artist appropriated , deployed, and reconfigured Christian icon painting. Specifically, he tracks how Titian continually readjusted his art to fit the shifting contours of religious and political reformations, and how these changes shaped Titian' s conception of what made a devotionally efficacious image. The strategies that were successful in, say, 1516 were discarded by the 1540s, when his approach to icon painting underwent a radical revision. Therefore, this book not only tracks the career of one of the most important artists in the tradition of Western painting but also brings to light new information about how divergent agendas of religious, political, and artistic reform interacted over the long arc of the sixteenth century. Original and erudite, this book represents an important reassessment of Titan' s approach to devotional subject matter. It will appeal to students and specialists as well as art aficionados interested in Titian and in religious painting.