Picturing Death: 1200–1600 explores the visual culture of mortality over the course of four centuries that witnessed a remarkable flourishing of imagery focused on the themes of death, dying, and the afterlife. In doing so, this volume sheds light on issues that unite two periods—the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—that are often understood as diametrically opposed. The studies collected here cover a broad visual terrain, from tomb sculpture to painted altarpieces, from manuscripts to printed books, and from minute carved objects to large-scale architecture. Taken together, they present a picture of the ways that images have helped humans understand their own mortality, and have incorporated the deceased into the communities of the living.
Author(s): Stephen Perkinson, Noa Turel (eds.)
Series: Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 321. Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 50
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 474
City: Leiden
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction • Stephen Perkinson and Noa Turel
Part 1: Housing the Dead
1 Looking beyond the Face: Tomb Effigies and the Medieval Commemoration of the Dead • Robert Marcoux
2 Portraiture, Projection, Perfection: The Multiple Effigies of Enrico Scrovegni • Henrike Christiane Lange
3 Plorans ploravit in nocte: The Birth of the Figure of the Pleurant in Tomb Sculpture • Xavier Dectot
4 Gendering Prayer in Trecento Florence: Tomb Paintings in Santa Croce and San Remigio • Judith Steinhoff
5 Two-Story Charnel-House Chapels and the Space of Death in the Medieval City • Katherine M. Boivin
Part 2: Mortal Anxieties and Living Paradoxes
6 The Living Dead and the Joy of the Crucifixion • Brigit G. Ferguson
7 The Speaking Tomb: Ventriloquizing the Voices of the Dead • Jessica Barker
8 Feeding Worms: The Theological Paradox of the Decaying Body and Its Depictions in the Context of Prayer and Devotion • Johanna Scheel
9 Not Quite Dead: Imaging the Miracle of Infant Resuscitation • Fredrika H. Jacobs
Part 3: The Macabre, Instrumentalized
10 Dissecting for the King: Guido da Vigevano and the Anatomy of Death • Peter Bovenmyer
11 Covert Apotheoses: Archbishop Henry Chichele’s Tomb and the Vocational Logic of Early Transis • Noa Turel
12 Into Print: Early Illustrated Books and the Reframing of the Danse Macabre • Maja Dujakovic
13 Death Commodified: Macabre Imagery on Luxury Objects, c. 1500 • Stephen Perkinson
Part 4: Departure and Persistence
14 Coemeterium Schola: The Emblematic Imagery of Death in Jan David’s Veridicus Christianus • Walter S. Melion
15 A Protestant Reconceptualization of Images of Death and the Afterlife in Stephen Bateman’s A Christall Glasse • Mary V. Silcox
16 Shifting Role Models within the Society of Jesus: The Abandonment of Grisly Martyrdom Images c. 1600 • Alison C. Fleming
Bibliography
Index
