Description
Book SynopsisBaroque depictions of violence are often dismissed as ‘over the top’ and ‘excessive’. Their material richness and exciting visual complexity, together with the visceral engagement they demand from beholders, are usually explained in literature as reflecting the presumed violence of early modern society. This book explores the intersection between materiality, excess, and violence in seventeenth-century paintings through a close analysis of some of the most iconic works of the period. Baroque paintings expose or reference their materiality by insisting on various physical changes wrought through violence. This study approaches violence as the work of materiality, which has the potential to analogously stage pictorial surfaces as corporeal surfaces, where paint becomes flayed flesh, canvas threads ruptured skin, and red paint spilt blood.
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Images
An Introduction
Chapter One. Wound: On Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
Chapter Two. Touch: On Giovanni Lanfranco’s Saint Peter Healing Saint Agatha
Chapter Three. Skin: On Jusepe de Ribera’s Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew
Chapter Four. Flesh: On Georges de la Tour’s Penitent Saint Jerome
Chapter Five. Blood: On Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes
Chapter Six. Death: On Francisco de Zurbarán’s Martyrdom of Saint Serapion
Conclusion
General Bibliography
Index
