Review of Symposium: ‘Fallacies of Naturalism and the Renaissance’
Published in the AAH Bulletin, October 2006
In early April, the Department of Art History at the University of Essex hosted a two day symposium entitled ‘Fallacies of Naturalism and the Renaissance’, part of an AHRC funded project, ‘The Moral Nature of the Image during the Renaissance’, which aims to challenge the notion that visuality in this period increasingly assumed a morally uncommitted eye. The event brought together postgraduate and recent doctoral graduates to share and develop ideas in a forum that allowed us to meet colleagues as well as discover afresh what really interested us in our common and different research interests.
In the Project Director’s opening remarks, Professor Thomas Puttfarken outlined the often overlooked purpose of art during the Renaissance: to delight and teach viewers through impressing moral images upon their souls. Many of the first day’s presentations returned to the debate amongst humanist scholars highlighted by Puttfarken on whether the force for moral good lay in realistic paintings or people.
In a paper on Fiammenghino’s Procession with the Holy Nail, K. D. Grasby (UEA) considered how paintings in Milan’s cathedral figured correct viewing for worshippers; Dr David Packwood (Warwick) traced how landscape forms in Poussin’s Flight into Egypt directed the gaze and imparted moral messages; whilst Elena Lazzarini (Pisa) discussed how male and female nudes in Florence and Venice figured civic identity and virtue. Conversely, Scott Nethersole (Courtauld) considered how knowledgeable viewers were encouraged to use their rational abilities to grasp the moral of bestial imagery at Palazzo Scala. Dr Opher Mansour (Courtauld) developed this approach to consider how Agucchi rejected the idea of a passive viewer and fostered a disciplined eye to resist the charms of erotic painting. I argued that elite viewers used claims of status to negotiate paintings’ effects by analysing an anecdote about viewing Cigoli’s Sacrifice of Isaac. Dr Kate Dunton (Essex) challenged the binary of where the force for moral good lay by tracing how the connected motifs of wounds, wombs and tombs in cinquecento paintings affected viewers whilst in turn being re-worked by the viewer’s ability to place them in a rich web of meaning.
Two papers on the second day returned to Italy to take up the relationship between programmes of painting and moral theories. Steven Stowell (Oxford) considered how Vasari’s definition of allegory, physically manifest in the Palazzo Signoria’s decoration, helped to confirm this building’s moral foundations; whilst Dr Lisa Wade (Essex), considered how the carefully composed images of the Last Judgement in quattrocento churches allowed viewers to appreciate the divine order of God.
Three papers on Northern Europe provided the focus for the second day, tracing how the tensions between morality and viewing unfolded elsewhere. Christian Nielsen (Essex) introduced us to the use of realism to transcend everyday life in early Netherlandish painting, relating it to the meditative practices of Geert Grote. Dr Deborah Povey (Essex) remained with this subject to consider how the representation of mirrored surfaces acted as a site of reflection and interiority, only later acquiring the negative connotations of vanity. Finally, Yvonne Owens (UCL) gave a fascinating, and frightening, paper on Hans Baldung Grien’s depictions of witches where his representations of female anatomy naturalized the extreme misogyny that underlay the witch craze.
The programme’s loose chronological and geographical division had the advantage of allowing us to consider related themes that derived from similar social, historical and cultural forms of morality and visuality. Over the two days, a picture emerged of their sheer diversity. The last paper of the symposium, given by Dr Peter Stephan (Freiberg) on the baroque imagery in Harlan’s 1942 film Der Grosse König, was a useful reminder of how moral responses interpellated by early modern forms have continued to be invoked by the visual arts, an approach that will help to situate diachronically the recent interest in the baroque aesthetic shown in philosophy and art.
There are plans to publish the proceedings and for a follow up symposium. Interested readers may like to consult the webpage for the project: /arthistory/MNIDR/ where future activities and outcomes of the project will be advertised.
Dr Phillippa Plock, University of Leeds.