The Moral Nature of the Image During the Renaissance
Project Outline
This is a three year joint research project funded by the AHRC that will run from February 2005 to February 2008. We are located in the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex. The original project director was Professor Thomas Puttfarken. Since Thomas Puttfarken's sudden death in October 2006 his friend and long-time colleague Prof. Jules Lubbock has stepped in as Director. Dr Kate Dunton, continues to be the Principal Research Officer and Dr Donna Roberts the Part-time Researcher and Administrative Officer.
The initial aim of the project was to challenge the view that the development of naturalism and perspective in the renaissance period increasingly eroded the moral bond between the image and the viewer. It was our contention that we still had much to understand in terms of the specifically moral and ethical obligations of the viewer towards the image, particularly in the context of the highly complex visual culture of the Italian Renaissance. It was clear from the theories of art and perception of the time that there continued to be a shared belief in the moral basis of sight and seeing and this raised a number of questions that went beyond an iconographic survey of moral themes and asked instead how the visual encounter with the image might have been, in and of itself, a moral (or immoral) act. As the research has developed a fascinating picture has emerged of an art that far from offering itself passively to the viewer's dominating gaze, actively engaged the spectator in a complex game of resistance and capitulation to its physical and rhetorical powers, a game won or lost according to the moral prowess of the viewer.
Our research to date has focussed on the continuing development of specifically Christian visual practices throughout the Renaissance and early modern period and on the influence of Aristotelian models of moral perception on 16th century Italian art theory and practice.