"Lucio Fontana's Spatial Sensations: the Crucifixions as a Tactile Experience of Concetto Spaziale" (original) (raw)
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In The Shadow of the Cross - Decoding the Crucifixion Experience
2023
Going beyond the Renaissance depiction of crucifixion, this document corrects misconceptions surrounding Christ's Passion Week, revealing the intricacies of His ordeal. It unveils ancient parallels and types that predate the concept of crucifixion, showcasing God's meticulous involvement in every detail, down to the choice of the cross's wood. Brace yourself for a revelation of divine craftsmanship, shedding light on the profound depth of the Lord's suffering.
This essay explores aspects of the biographies and oeuvres of Mattheus Greuter and Philippe Thomassin to undertake an inflected case study of Catholic Counter-Reformation cross-cultural sublimation of the violent physical suffering of actual martyrdom (also called red martyrdom, bloody martyrdom, or martyrdom unto blood) into nonviolent spiritual martyrdom (or white martyrdom, lifelong martyrdom, martyrdom by desire, or martyrdom in intention) by means of somato-sensorial practices of image-making and viewing. Nonviolent spiritual martyrdom was neither new nor exclusive to the Catholic Counter Reformation.10 Rather, white martyrdom was rooted in the Gospels, expounded in patristic writings, and boasted a robust late medieval heritage. In plotting the paradox of early modern martyrdom against the contemporaneous culture of the convert(ing) imprint, I attend to how the incised line of northern-trained engravers, prized in Italy by 1600 for technical virtuosity and curvilinear aesthetic qualities, acquired new symbolic meanings in discourse surrounding conversion and sensual suffering internal to Catholicism following the Council of Trent (1545–63).
The History and Philosophy of Depicting a Violently Crucified Christ
Violence in Art: Essays in Aesthetics and Philosophy, 2022
The purpose of this essay is to detail precisely how (historically) and why (philosophically) crucifixion art became an aesthetically appropriate form of piety. The thesis of this chapter is that crucifixion art serves a didactic function both theologically (to inspire belief in and imitation of Christ’s self-sacrifice) and doxologically (to inspire cultic devotion to God). As a case of “moral beauty,” crucifixion art represents philosophical notions of the ultimate Good, which allows onlookers to personally witness and then appropriate that ultimate Good into their own being.
“Attunement to the Damned of the Conques Tympanum.” Gesta 50, no. 1 (2011): 1-17.
The celebrated tympanum ofSainte-Foy at Conques, carved during first half of the twelfth century, features figures of the condemned with staid gestures and placid facial expressions, despite the horrific tortures they endure at the hands of demons. Absent are body movements widely associated with grief and terror, such as hair pulling and swooning, that were used in other contemporaneous Last Judgments. This lack of expressivity can be related to medieval understandings of suffering that were impressive, in which the body chiefly served as a transmitter of pain to the soul. Some eschatolo gists, for example, contended that bodies in hell would be so passive that they would not even be able to move in reaction to tortures. What is more, Bernard of Angers described many cases in which St. Foy inflicted paralysis on her enemies. Viewed from this perspective, the lack of physical reactions among many of the condemned figures at Conques signals the terrifying loss of bodily control that awaited sinners in hell.
Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal, 2012
Despite its relevance to modern discussions, the scholarly treatment of torture in art is relatively infrequent. This project explores, through the visual evidence of artistic works, the implications of Renaissance philosophies surrounding the human body in the context of pain and particularly the physical suffering endured during torture. By examining varying techniques of representing the human form across an array of artistic media, this article strives to illuminate the struggle between the rise of scientific naturalism and prevailing currents of spiritual dualism when considering the question of the body in torment. In highlighting the artist as narrator of Renaissance society’s moral, spiritual, and political tropes, this research sheds additional light on Renaissance humanity’s understanding of itself in the intensified instances of physical suffering at the hands of the state. In analyzing images of torture in light of Renaissance understandings of the body, this article seeks to contribute a more contextual perspective on these types of representations to the ongoing academic dialogue.
In his Carta del navegar pittoresco, the Venetian painter and writer Marco Boschini gives lavish praise to the sculptures of Alessandro Algardi, arguing that »these are statues made of flesh, and not of marble or if they are marble, it is made flesh«. 1 Made flesh -incarnada is the term he uses -hints here at Christ's incarnation (»the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us«). 2 Boschini's praise, then, not only implies the life of Algardi's figures, but also their physical, tangible presence. Indeed, it has been particularly the tangible nature of the resurrected Christ, that has played such an important role in the Christian tradition. For Saint Augustine, to name a particularly striking example, the truth of Christ's incarnation is intrinsically bound up with the sense of touch: »It was true flesh«, he writes, »that Truth brought back to life; true flesh that Truth showed to the disciples after the resurrection; the scars of true flesh that Truth presented to the hands of those who would touch him.« 3 Read in this context, Boschini's terminology implies a moment of magical transformation. Stone becomes true flesh under the sculptor's chisel, a flesh that is available »to the hands of those who would touch.« Although we can downplay Boschini's statement, and such statements in general, as belonging to the literary conventions of praise, here I will argue that particularly because of this conventional character it deserves our attention. As Sebastian Schütze, among others, has pointed out, such ekphrastic conventions »have structured the early modern eye with Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 13.02.17 16:27 162 VAN GAStel an astonishing normative power and persistence«. 4 The beholder's gaze was conditioned by a discourse replete with such conventions, inciting a very real sensitivity to the fleshlike and tactile qualities of contemporary sculpture. This paper will explore some of the aspects of this discourse and relate them to the kinds of responses the image may elicit, trying to elaborate further on the interaction between beholder and object by introducing some more recent ideas from philosophy and psychology. 5 A justification for such a seemingly anachronistic approach may be found in the changing approach to art in the seventeenth century itself, where the artist's inquiry into the facts of nature had become secondary to the rhetorical means of his art; that is to say, art was first and foremost conceived to elicit a response in the beholder. Sculpture stands out here as an art that is particularly prone to responses involving the sense of touch; whereas the lively figures of the painter are always over there, part of a different world on the other side of the picture plane, the sculpted figure is present, tangible, and shares the space of the beholder. 7 Moreover, I will argue that the vivaciousness of sculpted flesh is inherently ambiguous in the way it moves the beholder, an ambiguity that has everything to do with the complicated nature of our sense of touch.
Open Arts Journal, 2015
This essay examines the ways in which renaissance pilgrims cultivated their bodies and minds to enhance aesthetic and devotional experience at the Sacro Monte di Varallo, a late fifteenth-century simulation of the Holy Land located in northern Italy. Built by a team of architects, painters and sculptors at the behest of Franciscan friars, the Holy Land at Varallo presented to the pilgrim a series of interactive spaces housed in independent architectural units, each containing life-sized wooden or terracotta sculptures of Biblical figures adorned with real hair, clothes and shoes, and situated in frescoed narratival environments. Pilgrims were led to each architectural site along a fixed path and encountered the Biblical scenes in a strict sequence that was narrated by a Franciscan friar. If the pilgrim engaged in proper performances of body-mindfulness, the site served as a pilgrimage destination that was equally enriching as “the real thing,” that is, Jerusalem itself. This essay questions how the active cultivation of the pilgrim’s body and mind contributed to a heightened somaesthetic encounter within the multi-media interactive chapels at the site and argues that the mindful manipulation of the body functioned as what the performance studies theorist Diana Taylor has called a “vital act of transfer.” That is, it transmitted carefully crafted knowledge of the past and the self through reiterated acts that impacted in significant ways the identity formation of the spectator-participant, as well as the community of spectators who surrounded them. By considering the historical experience of the site, this essay ultimately provides an alternative explanation for artistic style at Varallo, which, as argued here, must be understood through the somaesthetics of the artistic program’s original viewers. The physical performance of viewing at Varallo accentuated awareness in all sensory receptors to activate the prosthetic body and mind of pilgrims, who were physically challenged while simultaneously mentally engaged as they made their way through the steep and winding landscape of the site. Invited to enter into the architectural environments and to touch, smell, taste and hear, in addition to view the holy simulacra, both male and female pilgrims recorded the powerful affective bonds produced through such active bodily cultivation and spiritual stimulation. Thus, in many ways, the somaesthetic strategies employed at Varallo enabled pilgrims to move beyond traditional gendered notions of the performance of the body in devotional contexts and to assume the role of both a Biblical personage (or multiples thereof) and a contemporary pilgrim to the Holy Land.
Embodying Devotion: Multisensory Encounters with Donatello's Crucifix in S. Croce
Geraldine A. Johnson, "Embodying Devotion: Multisensory Encounters with Donatello's Crucifix in S. Croce," Renaissance Quarterly, 73 (2020): 1179-1234., 2020
The reception of art is often described in ocularcentric terms, but all five senses could engage devotional objects in late medieval and early modern Europe. This article explores this phenomenon by considering a wooden crucifix with movable arms made by Donatello for the Franciscan church of S. Croce in Florence in the early fifteenth century. It makes new suggestions about the work's original location, its possible patrons, and its functions and reception, especially during the rituals associated with Good Friday. It also reflects on the challenges scholars face when taking a multisensory approach to premodern visual and material culture.