An examination of the altarpieces originally executed for the choir of Santo Spirito in Florence and addresses the commanding influence of the church's Augustinian Hermit friars on their composition, ...iconography, and purpose.
The concept of the medieval city is fixed in the modern imagination, conjuring visions of fortified walls, towering churches, and winding streets. In Riemenschneider in Rothenburg , Katherine M. ...Boivin investigates how medieval urban planning and artistic programming worked together to form dynamic environments, demonstrating the agency of objects, styles, and spaces in mapping the late medieval city.
Using altarpieces by the famed medieval artist Tilman Riemenschneider as touchstones for her argument, Boivin explores how artwork in Germany’s preeminent medieval city, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, deliberately propagated civic ideals. She argues that the numerous artistic pieces commissioned by the city’s elected council over the course of two centuries built upon one another, creating a cohesive structural network that attracted religious pilgrims and furthered the theological ideals of the parish church. By contextualizing some of Rothenburg’s most significant architectural and artistic works, such as St. James’s Church and Riemenschneider’s Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, Boivin shows how the city government employed these works to establish a local aesthetic that awed visitors, raising Rothenburg’s profile and putting it on the pilgrimage map of Europe.
Carefully documented and convincingly argued, this book sheds important new light on the history of one of Germany’s major tourist destinations. It will be of considerable interest to medieval art historians and scholars working in the fields of cultural and urban history.
•New insights on two 15th century altarpieces, major artworks of the MNAC (National Museum of Catalan Art, Barcelona) highlighting alterations of azurite paint and revealing the paintings’ original ...appearance.•Characterization of the painters’ palette and technique thanks to distribution maps of pigments obtained from VNIR and SWIR hyperspectral data treatment.•State of the art binder identification via SWIR hyperspectral imaging – mapping pf egg yolk vs oil.
Visible and near infrared hyperspectral imaging have allowed unprecedented analyses of two major works of art of the National Museum of Catalan Art (MNAC), 15th century Gothic altarpieces: (1) Madonna of the ‘Consellers’ (Lluís Dalmau, 1443–1445) 1, an impressive piece of Catalan painting, inspired by J. van Eyck and (2) Princess Eudoxia exorcised in front of St. Stephen's tomb (Vergós Group, 1495–1500) part of the altarpiece of Sant Esteve de Granollers.
Visible and near infrared (VNIR) hyperspectral imaging was used to highlight the artist's handling of materials in achieving light and shadow effects in the red draperies. The refinement in the modelling could be observed thanks to the distribution images of the red pigments. Short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral imaging revealed blackened azurite on visually altered areas of the two paintings. It is possible to map the presence of azurite below the altered layer and obtain a better understanding of the earlier appearance of the paintings. It was moreover possible to identify and map the binders used in both works of art: the use of oil in Dalmau's painting, as the earliest Catalan oil painting, is confirmed here whereas in the Vergós's painting both egg and oil may have been used in separate areas.
This essay seeks to shift our perspective when addressing the question of the impact of the Council of Trent on art. Rather than focusing on the artistic treatises that emerged in the wake of the ...council, it turns to a different type of text: the records from visitations, regular church inspections that functioned as an important tool of Catholic reform. This analysis looks at apostolic visitation records in the Vatican archives between 1564 and 1630 to show how ecclesiastical visitors chiefly judged image decorum—and the definition of images themselves—according to function instead of form, giving priority to issues related to ritual use, such as conservation, consecration, and location. The functional definition of terms such as altarpiece and icona in the visitation records also reminds us to carefully consider the art historical vocabulary used in scholarship today.
Das Buch liefert neue Perspektiven auf Schlüsselwerke der spanischen Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit und analysiert diese unter der Prämisse transkultureller Aneignungsprozesse.Pedro Berruguete gilt als der ...erste Renaissancemaler Kastiliens. Nach einem Aufenthalt am Hof des Herzogs von Urbino schafft er in Spanien überwiegend Gemälde, die in riesige Altarretabel integriert werden. Diese Bildwände unterscheiden sich aufgrund ihrer Monumentalität und ihrer ausdifferenzierten Bildstruktur fundamental von Altarbildern in anderen Regionen Europas. Um die vielfältigen Dimensionen transkultureller Aneignungsprozesse erfassen zu können, werden die Altarretabel erstmals auf das Zusammenwirken von Form und Inhalt hin untersucht.
Netherlandish carved altarpieces have attracted much new scholarly attention over the last decades. The objective of this article is first to provide a comprehensive historiography of the existing ...body of research, and second to outline the main research trends from the late nineteenth century until now. Even though Sweden still houses no less than thirty-eight late medieval Netherlandish carved altarpieces, about ten retable fragments, and two wooden Malines statuettes,and much has already been written on the pieces preserved there, an extensive description of this research field is currently lacking. The third aim of this paper is to fill the remaining gap by providing an extensive status quaestionis of the research on Netherlandish carved altarpieces in Sweden.
Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300-1550 is the first to reclaim satire as a central component of Catholic altarpieces, devotional art, and veneration, moving beyond humor's relegation ...to the medieval margins or to the profane arts alone. The book challenges humor's perception as a mere teaching tool for the laity and the antithesis of 'high' veneration and theology, a divide perpetuated by Counter-Reformation thought and the inheritance of Mikhail Bakhtin (Rabelais and His World, 1965). It reveals how humor, laughter, and material culture played a critical role in establishing St. Joseph as an exemplar in western Europe as early as the thirteenth century. Its goal is to open a new line of interpretation in medieval and early modern cultural studies, by revealing the functions of humor in sacred scenes, the role of laughter as veneration, and the importance of play for pre-Reformation religious experiences.
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