Reflections of the Hidden Duchess and the Moon King: The Tabula Scalata and the Engaged Beholder in Sixteenth-Century Italy
2019, 29
Radboud University Nijmegen
Data publikacji
Model publikowania
Rodzaj licencji
Dziedzina
Dyscyplina
Język publikacji
Pliki do pobrania
PDF 506 KB
Liczba wyświetleń:540
Liczba pobrań:114
Cytowania Crossref:0
Wynik Altmetric:0
Abstrakt
A tabula scalata consists of triangular slats painted on two sides and attached to a panel, creating a “double image”. Sometimes, a mirror was placed at straight angles of the upper frame, allowing the beholder to see both painted sides at the same time – but only when standing in the right position. This contribution analyses how these scarcely studied devices relied on the beholder’s active participation to convey intertwined layers of artistic, scientific, political, and poetic meanings. To do so, it discusses two sixteenth-century case studies. The first is a lost painting created in French royal court circles around 1550 and subsequently making its way to Rome as a diplomatic gift. The device combined a portrait of Henry II of France, a moon symbol, and a puzzle-ridden poem to convey interrelated political and poetic meanings. The second painting is Ludovico Buti’s Portrait of Charles III of Lorraine and Christina de’ Medici. It was commissioned by the Medici, and originally hung in a room filled with maps and geographical devices. This article considers three aspects central to the paintings’ reception: motion, sensory perception, and ideology. Operating in an intellectual culture fuelled by curiosity and designed to evoke wonder, these devices aimed to prolong the beholders’ attention by establishing thresholds within the artistic experience. As such, they straddled the vague boundaries between painting, scientific instrument, and poem to stimulate the beholders’ senses and involve them in an interactive game of meaning-making.
Bibliografia
Bakhtin, M., Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iwolsky, Bloomington, 1984.
Exh. Cat. Baltimore 2016, A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe, ed. M. Bagnoli, New Haven, London, 2016.
Baltrušatis, J., Anamorphic Art, Cambridge, 1977.
Banks, K., "Space and Light: Ficinian Neoplatoism and Jacques Peletier Du Mans's Amour des Amours", Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 2007, 69, no. 1, pp. 83-101.
Banks, K., Cosmos and Image in the Renaissance: French Love Lyric and Natural-Philosophical Poetry, London, 2008.
Benedict, B. M., Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry, Chicago, London, 2001.
Bettini, M., Apiaria universae philosphiae mathematicae, Bologna, 1642.
Beyer, A., Cassegrain G. eds., Mouvement. Bewegung: Über die dynamischen Potenziale der Kunst, Berlin, 2015.
Blick, S., Gelfand, L. D. eds., Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Leiden, Boston, 2011.
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004215139
Bocchi, F., Le Bellezze della città di Fiorenza, Florence, 1591, trans. T. Frangenberg, R. Williams, Turnhout, 2006.
Butter, S., "The Uses and Abuses of Gifts in the World of Ferdinando de' Medici (1549-1609)", I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 2007, 11, pp. 243-354.
https://doi.org/10.2307/20111827
Castello, D. R., (A)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the early Picaresque, West Lafayette, 2001.
Chadwick, W., Women, Art and Society, London, 1990.
Clark, L., Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges, Cambridge, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108681155
Classen, C., Howes, D., Synnott, A., Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, London, 1994.
Classen, C., The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, Champaign, 2012.
https://doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252034930.001.0001
Classen, C., Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures, London, 1993.
Copenhaver B., Schmitt, C., Renaissance Philosophy, Oxford, New York, 1992.
Crawford, K., The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance, Cambridge, 2010.
Danti, I., Vignola, G. B., Le due regole della prospettiva pratica di M. Iacomo Barozzi da Vignola con i comitarii del R. P. M. Ignazio Danti dell'ordine de Predicatori matematico dello studio di Bologna, Rome, 1583.
Evans, R., Marr, A. eds., Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, Aldershot, Burlington, VT, 2006.
Findlen, P., Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994.
https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520917781
Fiorani, F., "Danti Edits Vignola: The Formation of a Modern Classic on Perspective", in: The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished, ed. L. Massey, New Haven, London, 2003, pp. 127-160.
Fioriani, F., The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography and Politics in Renaissance Italy, New Haven, London, 2005.
Galilei, G., Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, 1615.
Ganz, D., Neuner, S. eds., Mobile Eyes. Peripatetisches Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne, Munich, 2013.
https://doi.org/10.30965/9783846756225
Ganz, D., Rimmele, M. eds., Klappeffekte: Faltbare Bildträger in der Vormoderne, Berlin, 2016.
Hedrick, T. L., Ergin, N., "A Shared Culture of Heavenly Fragrance: A Comparison of Late Byzantine and Ottoman Incense Burners and Censing Practices in Religious Contexts", Dunbarton Oaks Papers, 2015, 69, pp. 331-354.
Heikamp, D., "L'antica sistemazione degli strumenti scientifici nelle collezioni Fiorentine", Antichità Viva, 1970, 9, no. 6, pp. 1-25.
Hersant, Y., "Giochi di specchi: La macchina convertitrice di Ludovico Buti", in: Il ritratto, ed. A. Castoldi, Milan, 2004, pp. 55-65B.
Hills, P., The Renaissance Image Unveiled: From Madonna to Venus. The Watson Gordon Lecture 2009, Edinburgh, 2010.
Howes, D., Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, Oxford, 2005.
Howes, D., The Varieties of Sensory Experience, Toronto, 1991.
Hunt, J. L., Sharp, J., "The Mathematics of the Channel Anamorphosis", Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 2009, 3, no. 1., pp. 19-31.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17513470902869337
Jacobs, L., Opening Doors: Reinterpreting the Early Netherlandish Triptych, University Park, 2012.
Jacobs, L., Thresholds and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385-1530), London, New York, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315107998
Kieffer, F., "Ferdinand I de Médicis (1587-1609) et le don d'oeuvres d'art: etiquette et representation", Seizième siècle, 2017, 13, pp. 141-162.
Kircher, A., Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, Rome, 1645-1646.
Kirkbride, R., Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico de Montefeltro, New York, 2008.
Lassels, R., The Voyage of Italy, Paris, 1670.
Leyssen, S., Rathgeber, P. eds., Bilder animierter Bewegung/Images of Animate Movement, Munich, 2013.
https://doi.org/10.30965/9783846756249
Lomazzo, G.P., Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura, Milan, 1590.
Melchior-Bonnet, S., The Mirror: A History, New York,London, 2001.
Niceron, J. F., La perspective curieuse, Paris, 1638.
Nygren, C., "Titian's Christ with the Coin: Recovering the Spiritual Currency of Numismatics in Renaissance Ferrara", Renaissance Quarterly 69, 2016, 2, pp. 449-488.
https://doi.org/10.1086/687607
Pico della Mirandola, G., Oration on the Dignity of Man, ed. and trans. F. Borgherini, M. Papio, M. Riva, Cambridge, 2012.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139059565
Proctor, A., "A Family Network: The Danti Brothers at Work for the Medici in Late Renaissance Florence", in: Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary M. Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, eds. M. Bourne, A. V. Coonin, Ramsey, 2016, pp. 41-50.
Quiviger, F., The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art, London, 2010.
Randolph, A. W. B., Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-century Art, New Haven, London, 2014.
Robert-Nicoud, V., The World Upside-Down in 16th Century French Literature and Visual Culture, Leiden, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004381827
de Rosa, A., "Jean François Niceron: Perspective and artificial magic", FME Transaction, 2017, 45, pp. 215-226.
https://doi.org/10.5937/fmet1702215D
Rosen, M., The Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context, Cambridge, 2015.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107589254
Rutherglen, S., "Painting at the Threshold: Pictures for Doors in Renaissance Venice", The Art. Bulletin, 2016, 98, no. 4, pp. 438-465.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2016.1178532
Sanger, A. E., Walker, S. T. K. eds., Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice, Farnham, Burlington, 2012.
Scherer, D.C., Anamorphosis and the Hermeneutics of Perspective from Leonardo to Hans Holbein the Younger: 1490-1533, Cambridge MA, 2000.
Schott, G., Magia universalis natura et artis, Bamberg, 1674-1677.
Shearman, J., Only Connect - Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton, 1992.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691200774
Simons, P., "The Visual Dynamics of (Un)Veiling in Early Modern Culture", in: Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe, eds. T. McCall, S. Roberts, G. Fiorenza, Kirksville, MO, 2013, pp. 24-53.
Squellati Brizio, P., "Natura Sollecitata" in: Bizzarrie di pietre dipinte dale collezioni dei Medici, eds. M. Chiarini, C. Acidini Luchinat, Milan, 2000, pp. 32-38.
Stafford, M., Terpak, F., Devices of Wonders: From the world in a box to images on a screen, Los Angeles, 2001.
Strunck, C., "Concettismo and the Aesthetics of Display: the Interior Decoration of Roman Galleries and Quadrerie", in: Display of Art in the Roman Palace 1550-1750, ed. G. Feigenbaum, Los Angeles, 2014, pp. 217-228.
Turpin, A., "The New World collections of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and their role in the creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio", in: Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, eds. R. Evans, A. Marr, Aldershot, Burlington, VT, 2006, pp. 63-86.
Vasari, G., Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, 1568, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1878-1885.
Volpi, C., "The Display of Knowledge: Studioli, Camerini, and Libraries", in: Display of Art in the Roman Palace 1550-1750, ed. G. Feigenbaum, Los Angeles, 2014, pp. 250-264.
Waddell, M. A., Jesuit Science and the End of Nature's Secrets, Farnham, Burlington, 2015.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315590417
Zanieri, S., "Un giocco ottico di Ludovico Buti al Museo di Storia della Scienza a Firenze", Nuncius, 2000, 15, no. 2, pp. 665-670.
https://doi.org/10.1163/182539100X00083
Zermon Davis, N., The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, Madison, WI, London, 2000.