Description
ReVisioning examines the application of art-historical methods of investigation to the study of Christianity and art. As art history has become more interdisciplinary, discussions of religion in art and visual culture more generally have emerged. The contents of this book represents the first critical examination of scholarly methodologies applied to the study of Christian subjects, themes, and contexts in art. ReVisioning contains original work from a range of scholars, each of whom addresses the question “How have particular methods of art history been applied, and to what effect?” with regard to a well-known work of art or body of work. The study moves from the third century to the present, providing extensive treatment and analysis of the history of Christianity and art.
About the Author
James Romaine is Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art History at Nyack College, Nyack, NY. He is also the President of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA). His recent scholarship includes Art as Spiritual Perception: A Festschrift for Dr. E. John Walford (2012), and contributing to the exhibition catalogue, Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History (2009).
Linda Stratford is Associate Professor at Asbury University, Wilmore, KY. She is a board member of ASCHA and has produced a number of publications and presentations that draw upon cross-disciplinary training in art history and aesthetics, including a manuscript in progress, “Artists into Frenchmen”, a study of art and identity in modern France.
Contents
List of Color Plates
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Expanding the Discourse on Christianity in the History of Art
James Romaine
Methodological Issues from the Fields of Art History, Visual Culture, and Theology
Linda Stratford
Part I: Methodological Issues of Iconography in Early Christian and Medieval Art
Iconographic Structure: Recognizing the Resurrected Jesus on the Vatican Jonah Sarcophagus
Llinda Møskeland Fuchs
Icon as Theology: The Byzantine Virgin of Predestination
Matthew J. Milliner
Marginalia or Eschatological Iconography?: Providence and Plenitude in the Imagery of Abundance at Orvieto Cathedral
Rachel Hostetter Smith
Iconography of Sign: A Semiotic Reading of the Arma Christi
Heather Madar
Hybridizing Iconography: The Miraculous Mass of St. Gregory Featherwork from the Colegio de San José de los Naturales in Mexico City
Elena Fitzpatrick Sifford
Part II: Methodological Issues of Reading Theology in Renaissance and Baroque Art
Reading Hermeneutic Space: Pictorial and Spiritual Transformation in the Brancacci Chapel
Chloë Reddaway
Reading Theological Place: Joachim Patinir’s Saint Jerome in the Desert as Devotional Pilgrimage
Matthew Sweet Vanderpoel
Reading Theological Context: A Marian Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Roman Pietà
Elizabeth Lev
Reading Visual Rhetoric: Strategies of Piety and Propaganda in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Passional Christi und Antichristi
Bobbi Dykema
Reading Devotion: Counter-Reformation Iconography and Meaning in Gregorio Fernández’s Cristo yacente of El Pardo
Ilenia Colón Mendoza
Part III: Methodological Issues of Historical-Religious Context in Nineteenth-, Twentieth-, and Twenty-first Century Art
Historicism and Scenes of “The Passion” in Nineteenth-Century French Romantic Painting
Joyce C. Polistena
Consuming Christ: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Biblical Paintings and Nineteenth-Century American Commerce
Kristin A. Schwain
Figuring Redemption: Christianity and Modernity in Max Beckmann’s Resurrections
Amy K. Hamlin
Embodiment as Sacrament: Francis Bacon’s Postwar Horror
Rina Arya
Media, Mimesis, and Sacrifice: Paul Pfeiffer’s Contemporary Christological Lens
Isabelle Loring Wallace
Contributors
Subject Index
Endorsements and Reviews
Romaine and Stratford’s collection raises the question of how methodologies of art history – formulated within the secular context of modern academe – have failed and succeeded at understanding the Christian content of works of art. The question becomes urgent when the artworks under examination are also from the modern period and thus suffer from the doubling of denial of Christian content, but the collection is also enriched by material from earlier periods of art.
Natasha Seaman, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI
ReVisioning sustains intellectual sophistication while it revises, reconsiders, and reimagines the rich threads in the fabric of critical Christianity. These thoughtful essays venture courageously into the space within academe too often dismissed, suppressed, or maligned – that is to say, the space of the sacred. ReVisioning is a courageous and long-overdue stake in the ground.
Ronald R. Bernier, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston, MA
