Description
Book SynopsisViewers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were encouraged to forge connections between their physical and affective states when they experienced works of art. They believed that their bodies served a critical function in coming to know and make sense of the world around them, and intimately engaged themselves with works of art and architecture on a daily basis. This book examines how viewers in Medicean Florence were self-consciously cultivated to enhance their sensory appreciation of works of art and creatively self-fashion through somaesthetics. Mobilized as a technology for the production of knowledge with and through their bodies, viewers contributed to the essential meaning of Renaissance art and, in the process, bound themselves to others. By investigating the framework and practice of somaesthetic experience of works by Benozzo Gozzoli, Donatello, Benedetto Buglioni, Giorgio Vasari, and others in fifteenth- and sixteenth century Florence, the book approaches the viewer as a powerful tool that was used by patrons to shape identity and power in the Renaissance.
Trade Review"
Somaesthetic Experience and the Viewer in Medicean Florence, Renaissance Art and Political Persuasion, 1459-1580 (2020), provides not only a very nuanced interpretation of the theme indicated in the title, but also has a detailed account of the various philosophers’ and Renaissance scholars’ concepts of embodiment as a valuable source for shedding new light on the Florentine Renaissance. [The author] shows how the body's epistemology and the embodied experience have gradually occupied an increasingly prominent place in Renaissance research."
- Else Marie Bukdahl,
The Journal of Somaesthetics vol. 7, no. 2 (2021)
"Seamlessly weaving together the social and political circumstances that fostered these dynamic interactions, Terry-Fritsch productively draws from the methodological approaches of ritual and performance studies to bring into focus a variety of viewing strategies employed by Florentine audiences in their daily engagement with art, convincingly demonstrating that the 'act of doing' was understood to be a 'way of knowing' (26)."
- Victoria H. Ehrlich,
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 2
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1 Activating the Renaissance Viewer: Art and Somaesthetic Experience
Somaesthetics and Political Persuasion
Patronage and the Construction of the Viewer in Medicean Florence
2 Mobilizing Visitors: Political Persuasion and the Somaesthetics of Belonging in the Chapel of the Magi
Sensory Activation and the Signaling of the Patron
Somaesthetic Emplacement in Immersive Artistic Programs
Staging Belonging in Bethlehem
3 Staging Gendered Authority: Donatello's Judith, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de'Medici's sacra storia, and the Somaesthetics of Justice
Medici Garden as a Theater in the Round
Somaesthetic Cultivation of Audience and Narrator
Collective Witnessing at the Scaffolds
4 Performing Virtual Pilgrimage: Somaesthetics and Holy Land Devotion at San Vivaldo
Materializing the Holy Land Experience
Somaesthetic Fashioning and Affective Devotion
Possessing the New Jerusalem
5 Playing the Printed Piazza: Giovanni de'Bardi's Discorso sopra il giouco del calcio fiorentino and Somaesthetic Discipline in Grand-Ducal Florence
The Florentine Piazza as Practiced Space of Calcio
Antiquity and Historical Realism in Bardi's Discorso
Battle Tactics, Vedute, and Somaesthetic Dominion
Ritual Display and Restraint in the Noble Game of Calcio
6 Epilogue: Renaissance Somaesthetics and the Digital Age
Index
