Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice

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.

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.

Alice Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker.