Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250-1350): Reality and Reflexivity
- Submitting institution
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University of Plymouth
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 14
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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-
- Publisher
- Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
- ISBN
- 9781472427052
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This single-author monograph is the result of ten years of empirical work on the depictions of artworks in Italian painting around 1300. Vast majority of the monuments were visited during the research process and some details were photographed or published for the first time. Italian photo libraries (Assisi, Rome, Florence, Siena, Padua, Perugia) were consulted for restoration documents, and Index of Christian Art archival collection in Princeton for iconographic antecedents. For several case studies, the visual findings are complemented with the reading of hitherto unexplored primary sources leading to further discoveries about the historical context.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This single-author monograph is the result of ten years of empirical research on the depictions of artworks (statues, reliefs, mosaics, frescoes and panels) in Italian painting around 1300. I examine the emergence of realistic representation, which dominated European art until 1900 (and dominates global visual culture even today). The book demonstrates that reflexive and critical pictorial attitudes can already be detected in this period. In this sense, it constitutes a groundbreaking contribution to the research of medieval and early modern painting and offers an original and revisionist rereading of modern art defined by the self-aware genius.
The seven chapters adopt the combined methodology of social art history, semiotics and iconography. I analyze early depictions of image-making and idolatry and reconstruct the beginnings of illusionism and trompe-l'oeil. In the core case studies I focus on the transformation of the image into a complex medium, which allows the creation of multiple representational levels by frames, sketches, monochrome details and references to sculpture. I propose that in several high-profile commissions the details enrich the overall religious or political message of the work, which underlines the centrality of this pictorial practice at the dawn of the Renaissance. Besides the pioneering synthesis of these tendencies, the monograph presents novel iconographic findings in the works of several key artist (Giotto di Bondone, Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi, and the Lorenzetti brothers).
The manuscript of the book won the ICMA-Samuel H. Kress Book Award in 2013. It has been widely reviewed (among others by Donal Cooper, Alexa Sand, Victor M. Schmidt, Beth Mulvaney and Anna Degler) and included in several undergraduate and postgraduate syllabi across the globe.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
