Leonardo's Salvator Mundi and the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kemp ◽  
Robert B. Simon ◽  
Margaret Dalivalle
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Auction House ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Media Spectacle ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
Public Imagination

In Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi and the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts the ‘Three Salvateers’—Robert Simon, Martin Kemp and Margaret Dalivalle—give a first-hand account of the discovery of the lost Renaissance masterpiece; from its purchase for $1,175 in a New Orleans auction house in 2005, to the worldwide media spectacle of its sale to a Saudi prince for $450 million in 2017. A behind-the-scenes view of the painstaking processes of identification, consultation, scientific analysis, conservation, and archival research that underpinned the attribution of the painting to Leonardo, the book presents a consideration of the place of the painting in Leonardo’s body of work. Exploring the meaning of the painting in terms of Renaissance theology, it considers the identity of its original patron or intended recipient. Unravelling networks of early modern art dealers and collectors in Europe, it traces the emerging reception of Leonardo during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was in Enlightenment Britain that the idea of Leonardo as artist–scientist took hold of the public imagination. This book examines the ‘invention’ of Leonardo through the unique prism of the Stuart courts. The documented presence of three paintings of Christ attributed to Leonardo in the vicinity of the seventeenth-century British Royal Collection is both extraordinary and perplexing. Today, Leonardo’s five-hundred-year-old Salvator has not yet disclosed its secret history.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ceri Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
History Plays ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Prayer

Fiction is good at registering how speakers approach God in ways that are specific to their time and place. Literary critics have studied the dramatic qualities in the public prayer of the early modern liturgy; religious historians have taken a lead from lyric poetry when discussing the language of private prayer. This chapter crosses these lines of research to show how private prayer at the turn of the seventeenth century is explicitly dramatic. Shakespeare scholars focus on his plays’ oaths, prophecies, and curses. Yet private prayers in the folio versions of the history plays go beyond these genres, to structure the action on stage. They are, moreover, greater in number and substance than in the quarto versions, and are original, rather than being sourced from the liturgy, Bible, or chronicles.

scholarly journals ‘Colouring’ — Material Depiction in Flemish and Dutch Baroque Art Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-265
Author(s):  
Lisa Wiersma
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Surface Effects ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Human Flesh

Seventeenth-century painters were masters at painting objects and beings that seem tangible. Most elaborate was painting translucent materials like skins and pulp: human flesh and grapes, for instance, require various surface effects and suggest the presence of mass below the upper layers. Thus, the viewer is more or less convinced that a volume or object is present in an illusionary space. In Dutch, the word ‘stofuitdrukking’ is used: expression or indication of material, perhaps better understood as rendering of material. In English, ‘material depiction’ probably captures this painterly means best: it includes rendering of surface effects, while revealing the underlying substance, and it implies that weight and mass are suggested. Simple strokes of paint add up to materials and things that are convincingly percieved. At first glance, material depiction hardly seems a topic in early-modern art theory, yet 17th-century painters are virtually unequalled as regards this elaborate skill. Therefore, 17th-century written sources were studied to define how these might discuss material depiction, if not distinctly. This study concerns one of many questions regarding the incredible convincingness of 17th-century material depiction: besides wondering why the illusions work (Di Cicco et al., this issue) and how these were achieved (Wiersma, in press), the question should be asked why this convincingness was sought after. Was it mere display of ability and skill? And how was material depiction perceived, valued and enjoyed? First, contemporary terminology is determined: the seemingly generic term ‘colouring’ signified the application of convincing material depiction especially — which is not as self-evident as it sounds. Second, and extensively, the reader will find that convincing or appealing material depiction was considered a reference to religion and natural philosophy.

scholarly journals Nelly or Ellen? Revamping the first English actresses in contemporary popular culture

Sederi ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 213-228
Author(s):  
Laura Martínez-García
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Women ◽  
Public Imagination

The first British actresses have been the focus of extensive scholarly study, transposing the boundaries of academic life and irrupting in popular culture and becoming a part of the public imagination and folklore. This paper studies the perception we have inherited of “Pretty, Witty Nell,” probably the best-known actress of the Restoration, through the analysis of two novels—Priya Parmar’s Exit the Actress and Gillian Bagwell’s The Darling Strumpet—that reconstruct Gwyn’s life turning the “Protestant Whore” into a learned lady and a devoted mother. This revamping of her figure not only entails the erasure of the subversive potential of actresses’ break with the public-masculine/private-feminine dichotomy, but it also works as an attempt at neutralizing the threat that these “public” women pose to the gender roles that became normative in the seventeenth century and that are still seen as such nowadays.

Recusants and the Rosary: A Seventeenth-Century Chapel in Aberdeen

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-218
Author(s):  
Fern Insh
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Reformation

Provost Skene’s House, Aberdeen, is home to a painted ceiling depicting scenes from the lives of both Christ and the Virgin. This decoration has intrigued scholars and visitors alike for around sixty years since it was renovated and unveiled to the public in the early 1950s. The ceiling, painted in the seventeenth century, has suffered a considerable amount of damage. Unfortunately, half of the original decorative scheme has been lost. In addition to this, panels that do survive have been modified slightly during restoration. This article examines some of the early-modern continental prints used as sources by the original painters in order to determine that they were Scottish, and not travelling artists from the Low Countries. It also reconstructs the majority of the historic layout of the ceiling, by examining pre-restoration photographs of lost details in conjunction with further early-modern print sources. The article will attempt to identify some of the images which have been lost from the ceiling and argue that the original cycle of images depicted The Mysteries of the Rosary. It will also examine how the painted ceiling, created in the aftermath of the Reformation, survived both the effects of anti-Catholic legislation in Scotland and time. Finally, the relationships between the patron and his local recusant community are discussed in conjunction with the significance of the deliberate inclusion of the IHS monogram within the ceiling’s design.

scholarly journals Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: The Problem Of Social Reform and Marriage

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Farhana Wazir Khan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
The Public ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City

The article focuses on Shakespeare’s play: Measure for Measure, with the aim of bringing to light the central problem of the play which is that of social reform and marriage in an early modern European society. It is a play that has been located against the background of seventeenth century society of London where it was first performed. However, it is symbolically set in the city of Vienna. Feminist and Historicist critics have been cited in the article in an interpretation of the play which requires a consideration of the role of women and their status in the playworld. The issues of private and public marriages, and the ambiguity governing the laws on marriage, form the complex problem raised in the play. It is the contention of the article that Shakespeare emphasized the need to regulate the legal system with a view to promote greater representation and voice to women who were victimized by the corrupt legal institutions, both religious and official. Thus, the article suggests that the developments in the position of women, and the questions as to whether they were married or single, were the subject of public concern and debate in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. Marriage was, therefore, felt to be the most crucial issue in this regard and the aim of the dramatists and literary writers was to popularize the difficulties faced by women with a view to raising the consciousness of the public.

Handling Sin in Seventeenth-Century Ukraine: the Sacrament of Confession between Community and Individuals

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-488
Author(s):  
Maria Grazia Bartolini
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere

SummaryMy paper has two aims: first to examine the place of early modern Ruthenian sacramental confession within the disciplining of attitudes enforced by the modern state and church upon the conduct of daily life. Second, to explore its contribution to the creation of a new relationship between the private sphere of conscience and the public sphere of politics and laws. In this study, I turn to homilies, sacramental treatises, and confessional manuals to reconstruct a “genealogy of confession” that takes into account both its disciplinary function as a means of preventing transgression and its role in stimulating the birth of an independent normative sphere for conscience.

Baroco: The Logic of English Baroque Poetics

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-259
Author(s):  
Robert Hudson Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Metaphysical Poetry ◽  
Medieval Logic ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Temple

Abstract As many scholars, including the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, continue to cite false etymologies of the baroque, this article returns to a Scholastic syllogism called baroco to demonstrate the relevance of medieval logic to the history of aesthetics. The syllogism is connected to early modern art forms that Enlightenment critics considered excessively complicated or absurdly confusing. Focusing on the emergence of baroque logic in Neo-Latin rhetoric and English poetics, this article traces the development of increasingly outlandish rhetorical practices of copia during the sixteenth century that led to similarly far-fetched poetic practices during the seventeenth century. John Stockwood’s Progymnasma scholasticum (1597) is read alongside Richard Crashaw’s Epigrammatum sacrorum liber (1634) and Steps to the Temple (1646) to reveal the effects of Erasmian rhetorical exercises on English educational practices and the production of English baroque poetry. In the end, the article demonstrates the conceptual unity of the baroque by showing the consistency between critiques of baroco, critiques of English metaphysical poetry, and critiques of baroque art during the Enlightenment.

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