Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice: (Visual Culture in Early Modernity)

Employing a wide range of approaches from various disciplines, contributors to this volume explore the diverse ways in which European art and cultural practice from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries confronted, interpreted, represented and evoked the realm of the sensual. Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice investigates how the faculties of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell were made to perform in a range of guises in early modern cultural practice: as agents of indulgence and pleasure, as bearers of information on material reality, as mediators between the mind and the outer world, and even as intercessors between humans and the divine. The volume examines not only aspects of the arts of painting and sculpture but also extends into other spheres: philosophy, music and poetry, gardens, food, relics and rituals. Collectively, the essays gathered here form a survey of key debates and practices attached to the theme of the senses in Renaissance and Baroque art and cultural practice.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Introduction: making sense of the senses, Alice E. Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker; Part I Contemplating the Senses: The trouble with odours in Petrarch's De Remediis, Alessandro Arcangeli; Natural magic, artificial music and birds at Francesco I de'Medici's Pratolino, Suzanne B. Butters; Sight, science, and the still-life paintings of Juan Sánchez Cotán, Mindy Nancarrow. Part II Sustaining Body and Soul: Sensing death: the danse macabre in early modern Europe, Sophie Oosterwijk; Peeling the onion: experiencing the senses in Bronzino's burlesque poem La cipolla, Robert W. Gaston; Appetites: food, eating and the senses in 16th-century Italy, Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker; The Villa Pamphilj on the Janiculum hill: the garden, the senses and good health in 17th-century Rome, Susan Russell. Part III Sensual Encounters: Thematizing vision in the Renaissance: the noli me tangere as a metaphor for art making, Lisa M. Rafanelli; Touching looks: masculinizing the maternal-feminine in Poussin's Tancred and Erminia, Phillippa Plock; In the hand of the beholder: Isabella d'Este and the sensual allure of sculpture, Geraldine A. Johnson; Sensuality, sacred remains, and devotion in Baroque Rome, Alice E. Sanger; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Alice Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker. Alice E. Sanger, Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker, Alessandro Arcangeli, Suzanne B. Butters, Mindy Nancarrow, Sophie Oosterwijk, Robert W. Gaston, Susan Russell, Lisa M. Rafanelli, Phillippa Plock, Geraldine A. Johnson.

Review :
'Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice offers important new insights into the complementary relation between vision and the other corporeal senses. The authors bring their expertise to bear on the "collaborative functions" amongst the five senses and on the ways such mutual functions were conceived, represented, and experienced in the literary and pictorial arts.' Walter S. Melion, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History, Emory University; Foreign Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 'The volume succeeds rather well in presenting various interrelationships between vision and her sister senses as they are intended to affect the person viewing, listening, tasting, touching, or smelling. And it is a pleasure to read.' Renaissance Quarterly 'A strength of the collection is its attentiveness to the non-visual senses; the willingness to consider the varied and reciprocal roles that hearing, touch, smell, and taste play in early modern art is fresh and revealing.' Journal of the Northern Renaissance 'Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice is an important contribution to sensory studies and the history of art. All of the essays adroitly capture the essence and quiddity of the arts discussed and beautifully convey how this sensate reading can have larger implications for repositioning the plastic arts as synesthetic.' Sixteenth Century Journal