Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzing the literature on art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, The Spiritual Language of Art explores the complex relationship between visual art and spiritual experiences during the Italian Renaissance. Though scholarly research on these writings has predominantly focused on the influence of classical literature, this study reveals that Renaissance authors consistently discussed art using terms, concepts and metaphors derived from spiritual literature. By examining these texts in the light of medieval sources, greater insight is gained on the spiritual nature of the artist’s process and the reception of art. Offering a close re-readings of many important writers (Alberti, Leonardo, Vasari, etc.), this study deepens our understanding of attitudes toward art and spirituality in the Italian Renaissance.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter One Art and Compunction: Francesco Bocchi’s Mystical Experience of Art Compunction in Renaissance Literature on Art Compunction and Popular Devotion at the Santissima Annunziata in Florence Francesco Bocchi’s Ekphrasis, Catharsis and Compunction Purging and Nourishing Chapter Two Leon Battista Alberti’s ‘De pictura’ and the Christian Tradition of the Liberal Arts An Image Formed in the Mind and an Imitation of Nature The Liberal Arts in Alberti and the Christian Tradition Study and Composition: Painting as a Form of Meditation A Part and a Whole: Alberti’s Beauty Chapter Three The Word of God and the Book of the World in the Writings of Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo as a Reader of Spiritual Literature Tears and Laughter in Leonardo The World is a Book Judgment and Love: Ogni Dipintore Dipinge Se In One Instant Alone Chapter Four: Part One Imagining the Souls of Holy People Lifting the Veil of the Body The Soul of a Work of Art: The Agency of Sacred Art The Sweetness of Honey: Painted Flesh, Veils and Interiority Perfection of Body and Soul: The Souls of Artists and of Paintings Chapter Four: Part Two The Impossibility of Picturing Virtue: The Face as a Natural Sign The ‘Costume’ of Virtue, Seeing Beneath the Veil and Francesco Bocchi Chapter Five Invention and Amplification: Imagining Sacred History Gabriele Paleotti’s Theory of Sacred Art and Contemplative Ascent How Images are Like Scripture and Like Sermons in Paleotti’s ‘Discorso’ Rhetoric, Reading and Remembering in Pictorial Invention The Circumstances of Sacred History From History of Allegory in Sacred Art Chapter Six Vasari’s City of God: Spirituality, Art and Architecture in Vasari’s ‘Lives’ and ‘Ragionamenti’ Spirituality in Vasari’s Literary Context The Stones of Memory in the Palazzo Vecchio The Architecture of Allegory in Vasari and Hugh of St. Victor The Time of Allegory and the Space of History Conclusion Bibliography Index
