Walter S. Melion

A treatise on Dutch art on par with Vasari's critical history of Italian art, Karel van Mander's Schilder-Boeck (or Book on Picturing) has long been recognized for its critical and historical influence--and yet, until now, no comprehensive account of the book's conception, aims, and impact has been available. In this in-depth analysis of the content and context of Van Mander's work, Walter S. Melion reveals the Schilder-Boeck's central importance to an understanding of northern Renaissance and Baroque art. By interpreting the terminology employed in the Schilder-Boeck, Melion establishes the text's relationship to past and contemporary art theory. Van Mander is seen here developing his critical categories and then applying them to Ancient, Italian, and Netherlandish artists in order to mark changes within a culture and to characterize excellence for each region. Thus Melion demonstrates how Van Mander revised both the structure and critical language of Vasari's Lives to refute the Italian's claims for the superiority of the Tuscan style, and to clarify northern artistic traditions and the concerns of Netherlandish artists. A much needed corrective to the view that Dutch art of the period was lacking in theory, Melion's work offers a compelling account of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theoretical and critical perspective and shows how this perspective suggests a rereading of northern art.

Karel Van Mander's Schilder-Boeck

Shaping the Netherlandish Canon

Ralph Dekoninck

Agnès Guiderdoni

Ut pictura meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500 -1700 examines the form, function, and meaning of pictorial images produced and/or circulated in the Low Countries, Germany, and northern France as templates for the meditative life and its spiritual exercises. Our epigraph - ut pictura meditatio (as is a picture, so is meditation) - connotes the ways in which pictures facilitated meditative prayer and, conversely, the extent to which such prayer was experienced visually. Our essayists are prominent scholars in the fields of art history, history, literary studies, philosophy, and religious studies, all of whom study the ways in which visual images served to structure the interior religious life of laity and clergy in the early modern period. The volume asks how and why images were used not only to initiate, sustain, and structure kinds and degrees of meditative and contemplative devotion, but also to figure the soul's cognitive operations, its negotiation between states of being, between interior and exterior sense, between corporeal and spiritual sight. Implicit in this questioning are further explorations of the nature and scope of the interplay among mental, visual, and verbal images, and the subject positions such images allowed the votary to represent and inhabit. These questions touch upon issues of identity, subjectivity, and figuration that should be of interest to historians of art, literature, religion, and society.

The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500-1700

Ut Pictura Meditatio

Roy R. Jeal

Vernon K. Robbins

A critical study for those interested in the intersection of art and biblical interpretation With a special focus on biblical texts and images, this book nurtures new developments in biblical studies and art history during the last two or three decades. Analysis and interpretation of specific works of art introduce guidelines for students and teachers who are interested in the relation of verbal presentation to visual production. The essays provide models for research in the humanities that move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries erected in previous centuries. In particular, the volume merges recent developments in rhetorical interpretation and cognitive studies with art historical visual exegesis. Readers will master the tools necessary for integrating multiple approaches both to biblical and artistic interpretation. Features Resources for understanding the relation of texts to artistic paintings and images Tools for integrating multiple approaches both to biblical and artistic interpretation Sixty images and fifteen illustrations

Walter S. Melion

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