This work makes a plea for a more engaged reading of art works of the Italian Renaissance, one that will recognize the presuppositions of Renaissance artists about their viewers. The book constructs a history of Renaissance paintings and sculptures that are by design completed outside themselves in or by the spectator, that embrace the spectator into their narrative plot or aesthetic functioning, and that reposition the spectator imaginatively or in time and space. Winner of the Charles Rufus Morey Award for One of "Choice's" Outstanding Academic Books of 1993.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
That the mathematically founded naturalism of Renaissance art assumed the presence of an observer and thus allowed for the engaged participation of the spectator is not a new idea. Never before, however, has the multifaceted implications of this "transitive" complicity received such a thorough and insightful consideration. In a series of brilliant essays, Shearman explores methods through which the artists involved the viewer. Altarpieces and dome paintings are shown to exploit the potential of spatial continuity and the spectator's point of view to encourage a vivid psychological and spiritual engagement. Portraiture's well-established communicative intercourse emerges from a context of contemporary literary concerns. Perhaps most provocative is the examination of the artists' expectation that the implied viewer will participate in creating an aesthetic gestalt out of expressively selected elements and that he can be assumed to comprehend the allusive emulations that so often mark the era's art. A requisite addition to serious collections.
- Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
- Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
In guiding our concentrated attention to the action that unfolds in [a group of paintings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Pontormo, and others that represent the Entombment], the author has taught us to make the relevant connections and thus to see these deeply moving works with fresh eyes. -- E. H. Gombrich, The New York Review of Books
Shearman's six lectures contribute significantly to current debates about the interpretation of images, particularly in relation to their reception by the spectators. -- Martin Kemp, The Times Literary Supplement
As the author of a brilliant work on Mannerism, in which literature and music were employed to explain characteristic forms, Shearman is eminently qualified for his task. [He] weaves a brilliant account of poetry and painting immortalising the sitter. -- Bruce Boucher, The Times
. . . the author has taught us to make the relevant connections and thus to see these deeply moving works with fresh eyes. -- E. H. Gombrich, The New York Review of Books
[Shearman's] argument that the observer, in the artist's mind, was as carefully placed, posed and arranged as the content of the work is sustained by considerable intelligence and scholarship. -- Robin Blake, Independent on Sunday --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Shearman's six lectures contribute significantly to current debates about the interpretation of images, particularly in relation to their reception by the spectators. -- Martin Kemp, The Times Literary Supplement
As the author of a brilliant work on Mannerism, in which literature and music were employed to explain characteristic forms, Shearman is eminently qualified for his task. [He] weaves a brilliant account of poetry and painting immortalising the sitter. -- Bruce Boucher, The Times
. . . the author has taught us to make the relevant connections and thus to see these deeply moving works with fresh eyes. -- E. H. Gombrich, The New York Review of Books
[Shearman's] argument that the observer, in the artist's mind, was as carefully placed, posed and arranged as the content of the work is sustained by considerable intelligence and scholarship. -- Robin Blake, Independent on Sunday --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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