Giorgione

Giorgione was a Venetian painter who was born at Castelfranco, some fifty kilometers from Venice, in 1473/74. His life ended tragically at the age of 36 on 17 September 1510, when he died of the plague. In contemporary documents his name is given in Venetian dialect as Zorzi da Castelfranco (George from Castelfranco), or as Zorzon (Big George), in recognition of the celebrity he enjoyed during his lifetime. Baldassare Castiglione, in his “Book of the Courtier,” in 1516, recognized Giorgione as one of the greatest artists of his age, along with Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna, Raphael, and Michelangelo. In 1548 the Venetian theorist Paolo Pino defined Giorgione as the painter of poetic brevity, as the inventor of new Venetian mode of creation. In 1550, in his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari endorsed this assessment and placed Giorgione as the artist who introduced the modern style of the High Renaissance to Venice. With the notable exception of some significant frescoes, only a few of which survive, and some devotional images, such as the important altarpiece in his birthplace, the Castelfranco Altarpiece, Giorgione is celebrated for creating cabinet paintings, such as The Tempest, The Three Philosophers, and the Dresden Sleeping Venus, for private patrons, which have proved to be more complex to interpret than many other works by Renaissance artists. It has also proven challenging to establish a corpus of works that may be securely attributed to him. In recent decades the scientific examination of paintings has provided new data about underdrawing, as well as the use of pigments, which may be revealing in defining new characteristics for attribution. The scientific analysis of underdrawing reveals many pentimenti or changes of mind when Giorgione was working out his compositions on canvas, adding additional complexity to iconographic explanations. Given these difficulties of interpretation and attribution, Giorgione has often been considered a mysterious and impossible artist to define. Following the article Anderson, et al. 2019 (cited under Earliest Sources: Documents), the bookends of Giorgione’s life are now known, unlike those for his mentor Giovani Bellini and his pupil Titian. There is a huge investment in the scholarship of Giorgione’s work, both emotional and intellectual, so that any discovery or interpretation related to him arouses passionate argument. The evidence is so thin and contested that anything new—especially of this significance—is immediately seized upon and pored over, as has occurred in the following case. A copy of Dante’s Commedia (Divine Comedy), printed in 1497, in the library of the University of Sydney contains a previously unpublished inscription giving Giorgione’s age at his death. The accompanying drawing in red chalk reveals Giorgione’s engagement with the intricate text of Dante’s Commedia, a discovery that opens up a new understanding for the complexity of Giorgione’s interpretation of religious subject matter. The discovery is a fitting beginning to a new evaluation of this extraordinary period in Venetian art.

Art and Archaeology of the Bronze Age in China

“China” here designates much but not all of China Proper or Inner China, terrain controlled during the Imperial era (221 bce to ce 1912) by historic dynastic states. Vast regions to the northeast, north, and west—Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet—are excluded even though they are now integral to the modern-day nation-state. Similarly, we slight areas of the south, for example the modern-day Lingnan and Yun-Gui macroregions, that only gradually were absorbed after the Bronze Age. In Chinese scholarship, “Bronze Age” (qingtong shidai青铜时代) serves as an alternate for the “Three Dynasties” (san dai三代) of traditional historiography: Xia (Hsia), Shang, and Zhou (Chou). Bracketing dates of c. 2000–221 bce are now widely used, the first an approximation, the latter firm. Bronze alloy, however, was just one ingredient of material cultures of the Three Dynasties. Other features include the appearance of states, social stratification, urbanization, warfare, and the appearance of iron (the Iron Age), in addition to achievements in literature, music, and philosophy during the latter centuries, a kind of “Classical Age.” Today, “arts” may encompass many forms of crafting materials for a variety of purposes and audiences. This bibliography specifically addresses architecture, bronze, jade, lacquer, and silk as well as music, pictorial representation, and writing. A term from the Bronze Age—“Six Arts” (or “skills,” liu yi六艺)—defined expertise for an elite male as ritual, music, archery, chariot driving, writing, and calculation. While the overlap between the ancient and modern categories is at best partial, these concepts do intersect in terms of makers and consumers and in social and religious purposes. The elite’s luxury lifestyle was sustained by the “arts.” Ritual required bronze vessels, and the requisite music was performed on instruments of bronze, stone, lacquer, etc. Chariots were outfitted with bronze; writing and picturing employed silk. This bibliography emphasizes Chinese archaeology, both as a discipline and as a realm of knowledge that have burgeoned since the late 20th century. Archaeology creates fresh evidence, which then becomes the stuff of excavation reports, investigative scholarship, exhibitions and museum displays, and reference works. Only some of this bounty can be cited here, and readers are directed to Oxford Bibliographies for Chinese Studies (e.g., Chinese Architecture, Calligraphy, Ceramics, Paleography, Ancient Chinese Religion) for further advice. This essay is limited to publications from 1980 and, when possible, favors English-language sources.

Renaissance Art and Architecture in Spain

Considering all the historical periods of art in Spain, the Renaissance may be one of the most difficult periods to be defined. This is partly due to the intrinsic difficulty of the universal concept and, especially, to its application to the Spanish context. This is why, up to recent times, European art historiography had not even considered its existence. Fortunately, this situation has changed since the mid-20th century due to the new perspectives from abroad, a profound renewal of our own historiography (more accentuated since the 1970s), and the restoration of Spanish democracy. While the traditional Spanish historiography, characterized by a positivist approach, had focused on biographical aspects and descriptive analyses of works through studies based on geographical areas, the new historiography is more interested in understanding works in their contexts, that is, to perceive them as images coordinated with the cultural, social, and political environments in which they originate. This objective has been achieved through the accelerated translation of representative books and authors proposing innovative methodologies for the history of art in Europe and the Americas since the mid-20th century and the new approaches promoted by foreign historians on the Renaissance in the Iberian Peninsula. This dual situation stimulated local historiography, resulting in a review of traditional historiography and questioning old assumptions conceived in both Spain and other countries. Although the real existence of the Renaissance in Spain has been amply discussed and denied by some experts for a long time, we cannot negate that reality. This issue should be addressed with due attention, highlighting its particularities, and avoiding any derogatory interpretation given when compared with Italy. This new perspective reflects the personality of the Spanish Renaissance and its contributory value to culture in the early modern period, especially its impact on the Americas. Although considered a “peripheral” nation when compared with the Italian “focal” point, Spain offers significant and original differences in certain aspects that are considered essential for the definition of Renaissance such as its intimate connection with humanism or the canonical observation of the language of antiquity. The Spanish Renaissance is characterized by the survival of Gothic and Moorish forms and taste, and periodization, which was adopted later than in Italy, since the classicist language did not consolidate until the cinquecento and lasted until well into the seicento. Finally, the Catholic values of the Spanish monarchy contributed to the religious influence that permeated Renaissance art.

Turquerie

Turquerie (often anglicized as “Turkery”) is a growing subject of interest within the humanities. It emerged in the 1990s at the crossroads of major trajectories of 18th-century studies, in line with the rise of visual studies and global art history. Originally it was largely a French school of thought. Turquerie, a French word, does not appear in the OED, unlike chinoiserie (also a French word). Le Littré defines it after Molière as a “Turkish-like behavior,” and the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française as an “artistic or literary composition [produced in Europe] whose theme or picturesque details are borrowed from Turkish culture and oriental forms.” This heterogeneous body of forms, images, material culture, and attitudes has attracted compelling scholarship in the last twenty-five years grounded in a wider history of the shifting relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Early definitions of turquerie do not provide an exhaustive time frame. The earliest study by French diplomat Auguste Boppe, published in 1911 (see Boppe 1989 [cited under Surveys and Overviews]), focused primarily on the 18th century, the era of reciprocal diplomatic relations between France and the Ottoman Empire. Boppe was writing as a diplomat himself in Istanbul while the Ottoman Empire was still ongoing (albeit just). This is important to note because the subsequent scholarship, burdened by hindsight, often associates the rise in turquerie with the weakening and eventual demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Boppe’s study provided a comprehensive taxonomy of the European gaze upon the Orient in the 18th century. Actual traveling artists and armchair orientalists formed the corpus of his paintings, filled with Turkish iconography, including images of Istanbul, turbaned figures, ladies of the harem etc. His emphasis on the 18th century also organically linked turquerie to the Enlightenment, thus foregrounding the topography of subsequent scholarship exploring European expansion, travel, diplomacy, and liberty in ideas and self-fashioning as well as of technological discoveries, which went hand in hand with an interest in, and a discursive instrumentalization of, the “Other.” This approach is both challenged and advocated by subsequent studies. Some scholars variously mark the beginning of turquerie with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to draw attention to the longue durée historicity of Ottoman-European relations. Others, focusing on intensification of trade and mobility, date its origins to around the period of the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. While little consensus may exist as to when it all began, most art historical studies are still deeply indebted to Boppe’s writings. Yet, where to place the chronological curser has been important for questioning the role of France as the sole inventor of turquerie or for stressing the importance of including architecture and ephemera, such as pamphlets, popular entertainment, and warfare material, into its histories. These approaches effectively pluralized the subject of turqueries. Building on Boppe’s inaugural vision, the field of turquerie expanded beyond national and disciplinarian boundaries fueled by post-structuralism, new historicism, and cultural studies. Edward Said’s pioneering concept of orientalism (1978) reanimated the study of turquerie centered on issues of cross-cultural encounters and identity politics. On a thematic level the literature has been remarkably consistent on its main motifs: the harem, the despot, the turban, the tulip, the sofa etc. A move has been under way recently to open up this visual repertoire to the intrinsic fluidity of cultures and the dialectics of self and other.

Visigoths

The history of the Visigoths constitutes an important period of transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Through a fractured and troublesome process of settlement, political-religious stabilization, and territorial rule, the Visigoths established one of the most influential and developed European kingdoms toward the latter part of their reign. Like the other so-called Barbarian peoples, they oscillated between perpetuation of the omnipresent Roman culture that they had replaced and their own original contributions (Guzmán Armario 2005, cited under General Overviews). Their legislation, form of government, and institutions reached maturity in the 7th century, a point at which they achieved both religious unity and complete territorial rule of the Iberian Peninsula. Numismatic testimony allows us to verify this gradual process of attaining a unique identity. In some cases, they pursued the Roman legacy to an intense degree. We know, for example, that the land-owning aristocracy maintained the latifundium system with the use of slaves or free farmers. From the point of view of the administration of justice, the essential text was the Visigothic Code, or Liber Iudiciorum, which came into effect in the middle of the 7th century and was an adaption of older materials (Pérez-Prendes y Muñoz-Arraco 2004, cited under Institutions) that evolved throughout the second half of the century and constituted a key component in the transformation of medieval Spanish kingdoms. The numerous models issued by the successive councils produced effective social coordination. Because the monarchy was beset by a lack of continuity and problems of succession, during their final days the Visigoths instituted a new procedure for monarchic legitimation: anointment (beginning in at least 672 with Wamba), which became the highest expression of the monarchy, established by the divine grace that crystallized a theocratic power. Its efficacy as a tool of legitimation is evidenced by the fact that it was adopted a century later by the Carolingian monarchy. The continuation of the Roman substrate is also evident in ecclesiastical organization, in which the shelter of an energetic Christianity allowed for a reorganization of spaces in favor of the figure of the bishop (Ripoll and Gurt 2000, cited under Urbanism). The so-called episcopal groups were promoted as visual platforms of the religious and civil power held by the bishops held, who were also promoted as the defenders of urban spaces. Centers for devotion to martyrs were also built outside the cities; these were true centers of social cohesion that actively revitalized suburban areas. The era also witnessed the foundation of important urban centers, some of which stand out for their palatial character: Reccopolis, an initiative of King Leovigild, as a genuine exercise of power emulating the Roman and Byzantine Empires (e.g., Adrianopole, Constantinople, and Nicaea) (Olmo Enciso 2000, cited under Urbanism). Historians traditionally, although not unanimously, have associated Reccopolis with the site of the Cerro de la Oliva (in Zorita de los Canes, Guadalajara, near Madrid). Outside the cities, several rural monastic settlements stand out for their role as nuclei of interaction and cohesion between the important landowners and the Hispano-Roman farming population (Castellanos García 1999, cited under Monasticism). Beyond the phenomenon of the hermitage, which already existed in the 5th century, the period saw the establishment of various monastic rules, yet given our scarce archaeological knowledge, we are far from understanding the ways in which these religious establishments were planned (Campos Ruiz and Roca Meliá 1971, cited under Monasticism). The Visigoths’ revitalization of Roman culture, which took place gradually until the beginning of the 7th century following the Empire’s collapse in the late 5th century, is often ignored; however, on the basis of early writers such as Isidore of Seville, Eugenius of Toledo, Braulio of Zaragoza, Julian of Toledo, and Ildefonsus of Toledo, some authors have begun to talk about a Roman “renaissance” (Díaz y Díaz 1976, cited under Education and Culture). The 7th century in Spain therefore denotes a period of growth that would come to an end with the fall of the kingdom in the early 8th century. Nonetheless, the study of the ecclesiastical architecture that has survived into the current era does not offer any clear conclusions, in part due to the debate surrounding the chronology of many of these structures. Moreover, it has been even more difficult to trace a comprehensive chronology of typologies and, with it, to detect possible liturgical variations based on changing contexts. The standstill in the scholarly debate between “Visigothists” and “Mozarabists” concerning the interpretation of these architectural structures compels us to trust in the progressive results of urban architecture (Ripoll 2012, cited under Architecture and Archaeology). We can conclude by affirming that the Visigothic period signifies a moment of utmost importance, not only for the transfer of a large part of the rich Roman legacy, but also for the subsequent creation of medieval mentalities based on the historical mythification of the period. These would also progressively be drawn into a debate over the national identity of Spain, starting with the beginning of the modern age (Geary 2002, cited under General Overviews), and often at the expense of our knowledge of the rich Andalusi legacy that followed it.

Nazi Looting of Art

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were not only the most systematic mass murderers in history, they were also history’s greatest thieves. Beginning with the duress sales of Jewish property starting in 1933 and escalating to expropriation as part of emigration in Austria to outright seizure in conquered nations during World War II, the Nazis carried out a plundering program that extended to millions of cultural objects. The Allied response began during the war: after concerned academics (such as the Harvard Defense Group) alerted military and civilian leaders to the dangers to Europe’s cultural patrimony, the United States created the Roberts Commission to study the issue, which in turn led to the creation of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, where officers accompanied the invading armies and tried to mitigate the damage from combat, as well as track the looted works. The Monuments officers undertook a massive, international restitution effort, but could not complete the task: there is still much “unfinished business” from this era. The literature on Nazi plundering and Allied restitution is rich and varied: from the vivid accounts of the Monuments officers to the technical and occasionally arcane scholarly interventions (e.g., how to interpret labels on the backs of paintings). The opening of archives and the continued discovery of Nazi-looted works in museums and private collections has served as an impetus for continued research, and an international effort promises to yield further discoveries. This article is divided into twenty-two sections, with the entries in chronological order. It bears mentioning that there are four sections where the historiography is particularly rich: (1) plunder and restitution in France, (2) the literature on “degenerate art,” (3) Nazi-looted art and the law, and (4) anthologies. The first is likely due to the cultural riches of France, as well as the accessibility of archives. The scholarship on “degenerate art” took off in the late 1980s, with the observance of the fifty-year anniversary of the Aktion in 1987, and the public revelation of the Gurlitt cache in 2013 contributed to this impetus (Hildebrand Gurlitt had been one of the four official dealers of the purged art). Due to the emergence of myriad restitution cases starting in the early 2000s, the legal aspects of looting and recovery have attracted intense scholarly interest. And the international nature of the research, which has involved scholars from both North America and Europe, has led to many conferences, which in turn yielded a rich array of anthologies.

Japanese Literati Painting and Calligraphy

Literati painting in Japan is generally referred to as Bunjinga (literati painting; Ch. Wen ren hua) or Nanga (Southern School painting; Ch. nan zong hua), both terms borrowed from China. Wen ren hua refers to the status of artists who belonged to the scholar-gentleman class. Nan zong hua was coined by the Chinese painter and theorist Dong Qichang (b. 1555–d. 1636), who used it to describe art by literati, ostensibly amateurs, whose paintings were indebted to their mastery of calligraphy, expressed their inner feelings, and sought to capture the spiritual essence of their subjects. He deemed Nan zong hua superior to that of another so-called “school” of painters he invented, the “northern school,” professionals whose work he declared to be superficial and decorative. In relation to Japanese literati painters, however, this distinction between the southern and northern schools is largely irrelevant. The diverse and very large group of artists defined as literati painters were variously amateurs and professionals who worked in styles inspired by a wide range of Chinese pictorial approaches, which the Japanese learned from imported woodblock-printed painting books, actual paintings, and Chinese and Korean artists and calligraphers who visited or emigrated to Japan, including professional painters, Confucian scholars, and Chan (Zen) Buddhist monks. Some Japanese literati painters were samurai, others commoners. Their commonality is a dedication to and deep knowledge of Sinophile literati culture—particularly Chinese poetry—and their use of Chinese literati painting subjects, especially ink landscapes and themes, such as bamboo, in response to the market demands of Japanese consumers fascinated by Chinese culture. Many also brushed polished and colorful bird-and-flower paintings modeled after the work of Chinese professional painters, and their art was also impacted by native styles then in vogue and by naturalistic rendering drawn from exposure to imported Western art. Some literati artists earned their living as Confucian scholars or writers and painted as an avocation; others worked as professional painters, presiding over independent ateliers with legions of disciples. Although the literati painting movement began in the Kyoto region, it was quickly embraced by artists throughout the country who often traveled and shared ideas. The first writings on the subject date to the early 20th century, but the heyday of scholarship occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, and resulted, in the West, in a large number of dissertations, with the majority dating from the late 1970s through early 1990s. Those that were subsequently revised as published monographs have been omitted from this bibliography.

Artemisia Gentileschi

In the expanding scholarship on Artemisia Gentileschi (b. 1593–d. c. 1654), accounts of her accomplishments and success have long tangled with considerations of her gender and biography. Most early modern women artists had artist fathers and acquired the requisite skills at home. In a Roman art world permeated with Caravaggism, Orazio Gentileschi, widowed when Artemisia was twelve, taught his daughter. In 1610, aged seventeen, she signed and dated a poignant narrative featuring a prominent female nude, Susanna and the Elders (Pommersfelden, Schloss Weissenstein). This accomplished work, to which Orazio may have contributed, presaged what would become her trademark: dramatic narratives featuring female protagonists, some nude. The next year her father’s associate, Agostino Tassi—who claimed that Orazio had him teach Artemisia perspective—deflowered her and, with expectations of marriage, their intimacy continued. In 17th-century Roman law, rape of a virgin was not a crime of violence, but an offense against family honor. Tassi was already married so Orazio initiated prosecution. After a trial in 1612, he was sentenced and Artemisia married Pierantonio Stiattesi. As Sofonisba Anguissola’s father had praised her to potential patrons, so Orazio promoted his daughter’s talent, writing Christine of Lorraine, dowager Grand Duchess of Tuscany that nineteen-year-old Artemisia “had no peer.” Her honor recovered—essential to any future career—Artemisia and her husband moved to Florence, where she developed into an independent painter. She created her best-known work, the startlingly graphic Judith Decapitating Holofernes (Florence: Uffizi); forged patronage connections; and gained membership in the Florentine Academy. She bore five children, only one of whom survived childhood, and maintained a workshop, even while a single mother, using credit to purchase supplies and hire helpers. New evidence, including personal letters revealing her powers of verbal expression, has further illuminated her Roman and Florentine periods, and greatly expanded our knowledge of her professional maturation in Venice, London, and especially Naples, where she spent twenty years. She offered paintings and wrote letters to potential clients, sometimes asserting her artistic authority. Spanish, Italian, and English royalty; nobility; and connoisseurs commissioned and collected her work. Artemisia cleared a series of gender-based hurdles. Although women’s artistic ability was thought to suit them for less mentally taxing genres like still life or portraiture, Artemisia achieved professional success in narrative painting. She was the first woman to achieve a stature fully commensurate with her male counterparts. Her story of surviving rape and the public exposure of the trial, alongside scholars’ assertions that her paintings articulate a protofeminist viewpoint, have made her a modern feminist icon.

Graffiti

Graffiti can be seen as one of the most original art forms of mankind, with origins, according to some scholars, dating back as far as 40,000 years. Probably the best known examples of early graffiti can be found in the caves of Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain. The word “graffiti” was first used by archaeologists and antiquaries around the year 1850 to describe scratched inscriptions found at ancient archaeological sites. Indeed, the word graffiti derives from the Italian word graffito (translated as “something scratched”). These early examples of graffiti help to shed light on ancient societies, while contemporary graffiti is considered to be a reflection of urban life. This article focuses on the modern forms of graffiti, with its several subgenres, as well as exploring the way we understand the term “graffiti” as it is used today. Many practitioners have an artistic approach toward graffiti, though some may approach it in a manner that could be construed as vandalism. The modern practice of graffiti in public spaces emerged around 1965–1966 in Philadelphia and New York, although other forms of unsolicited art in public spaces existed in Europe and Arabic countries around the same time. Toward the end of the 1980s, the publications Spraycan Art and Subway Art helped to popularize graffiti all over the world. The rise of the internet also played a major role in bringing this art form into every corner of the world. Today, graffiti can be found almost everywhere, having quickly become a global movement that shares common philosophies, techniques, and roots. There is now a substantial body of popular publications devoted to the subject of graffiti or street art, as it is sometimes classified, though most scholars differentiate the two categories. Many of these publications, as the topic suggests, are illustrated books, focusing on particular artists, different styles of graffiti, and historic backgrounds. Other sources go beyond the visual aspects, including extended texts with commentary, interviews, and quotes from the artists themselves. Each book functions as a sort of time-capsule, because graffiti is ever-evolving, not to mention ephemeral, as many of the works shown in these books do not exist anymore. Scientific research on the social, cultural, psychological, or criminal aspects of graffiti are mainly carried out as dissertations or scientific treatises. Some of these commentaries are presented in this article. Graffiti, as an art, contains various forms of expression and is constantly evolving to accommodate new styles, techniques, and approaches. So too must the scholarship in this field, as illustrated by the sampling of sources included here.

Activist and Socially Engaged Art

The terms “activist” or “socially engaged” art (used interchangeably throughout this article) refer to artistic practices that are integrated with, or responsive to, forms of political protest and resistance. This typically entails some connection to a social or political movement, community, or group that is seeking to challenge an authoritarian regime or contest hegemonic forms of domination, often associated with differences of class, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. The form taken by activist art can range from relatively abbreviated performative gestures to extended engagements with institutional power structures, to modes of symbolic or discursive production circulating in the public sphere (murals, graphic art, etc.). In each case, however, we can observe a reciprocal relationship between artistic production and mechanisms of social and political transformation oriented toward human emancipation. Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries there were significant interconnections between the concept of an activist art practice and the modern avant-garde. I’ll provide a brief outline of some of these navigational points in the section Historical Studies. It’s not possible, however, to provide a comprehensive account of sources across this broader historical range. For the purposes of this article, I will focus primarily on work since the 1960s, when we can observe the initial expression of a recognizably contemporary set of referents for activist or engaged art practice. Even within this limited time frame, the range of possible material far exceeds the space necessary to acknowledge relevant sources. Activist art practices, by their very nature, tend to overlap with, and ramify into, a range of adjacent forms of cultural production. We can find meaningful connections to activist theater (Augusto Boal), radical pedagogy (Paolo Freire), the Art and Labor movement, the traditions of community and street art, digital activism, tactical media, activist filmmaking, and urban murals, among many other relevant sources. Moreover, there are distinctive manifestations of activist or engaged art in every region of the globe. Argentine activist practice has its own unique traditions and concerns, as does art produced in Eastern Europe, South Africa, India, Japan, and Mexico. Rather than attempting to fully address each of these areas, I will offer a series of chronological divisions that chart some of the shifts that have occurred in the production of activist art since the mid-20th century.