In this paradigm shifting study, developed through close textual readings and sensitive analysis of artworks, Clare Lapraik Guest re-evaluates the central role of ornament in pre-modern art and literature. Moving from art and thought in antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, she examines the understandings of ornament arising from the Platonic, Aristotelian and Sophistic traditions, and the tensions which emerged from these varied meanings. The book views the Renaissance as a decisive point in the story of ornament, when its subsequent identification with style and historicism are established. It asserts ornament as a fundamental, not an accessory element in art and presents its restoration to theoretical dignity as essential to historical scholarship and aesthetic reflection.
Author(s): Clare Lapraik Guest
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 245. Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 10
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 708
City: Leiden
Acknowledgements ix
List of Illustrations x
Abbreviations xvi
Introduction 1
PART 1. Ancient Prolegomena
1. Kosmos 21
2. Rhetoric and Illusion 67
3. Cosmic Decor 120
PART 2. Fragment and Design
4. Architecture and the City 173
5. Garland and Mosaic in Literary Humanism 200
6. Topics and Style 233
7. Ornament and 'Disegno', Colour and Perspective 281
8. The City Recovered, Triumph and Time 342
9. The Emblematic Continuum 405
10. 'Spolia' and Ornamental Design 442
11. The 'Grottesche' Part 1. Fragment to Field 494
12. The 'Grottesche' Part 2. Signs, Topography and the Dream of Painting 536
Conclusion 592
Bibliography of Works Cited 599
Index of Names 655
Index of Places 671
Subject Index 675
