Publications by Steven F . H . Stowell
Rethinking Renaissance Drawings Essays in Honour of David McTavish, 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance , 2015
Papers by Steven F . H . Stowell
A comparative history of literatures in European languages, Nov 9, 2017
Renaissance and Reformation, Nov 19, 2012
Renaissance and Reformation
Research on miracle-working images has shown that devotees attributed their power to the authenti... more Research on miracle-working images has shown that devotees attributed their power to the authentic likeness of the holy people these images possessed. An authentic likenss of Christ, for instance, possessed his seemingly infinite agency. Using the miraculous painting of the Annunciation at the Santissima (SS.) Annunziata in Florence as a case study, this article questions whether an image’s agency was indeed limitless. Based on an examination of various hagiographical writings on the shrine written during the Counter-Reformation period, in particular Angelo Lottini’s Scelta d’alcuni miracoli e grazie della Santissima Nunziata di Firenze, this article proposes that certain miracles were connected with the image’s origins. In light of James Frazer’s theory of sympathetic magic, and Alfred Gell’s more recent theory of art and agency, this article argues that these post-Tridentine writings define the Annunziata image’s agency by the circumstances of its origins, which made it especially...
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance, 2014
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance, 2014
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance, 2014
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance, 2014
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance, 2014
Leon Battista Alberti's 'De pictura' and the Christian Tradition of the Liberal Arts An Image For... more Leon Battista Alberti's 'De pictura' and the Christian Tradition of the Liberal Arts An Image Formed in the Mind and an Imitation of Nature Chapters two and three of this book analyze how Renaissance authors describe the artist's creative process in terms that recall spiritual practice. Renaissance authors suggest that the artist must maintain an intellectual discipline that bears similarity to the discipline of prayer and meditation; even in artistic study, the artist's activity must retain a spiritual cast. This argument may not be surprising in itself; art historians familiar, for instance, with Cennino Cennini's handbook on painting will recall that the author invokes Christ and the Virgin before beginning work,1 and in Vasari's vita of the beatified painter Fra Angelico, the aretine biographer notes that the friar always prayed before painting.2 However, art historians have not, so far as I am aware, noted the more subtle ways in which this practice is codified in some of the most important writings on art from the early Renaissance, which are the foci of chapters two and three of this book: Leon Battista Alberti's De pictura and Leonardo da Vinci's writings on painting. If miraculous properties were attributed to some images, as shown in chapter one, I argue that the works of mortal artists had affective powers by virtue of being designed in the minds of artists before being formed in matter, thus carrying some of the spiritual qualities of the artist's mind. By looking at the artist's intellectual practice in Alberti and Leonardo through the lens of spiritual literature, we can observe how both writers draw upon this literary tradition in order to frame the artist's work as a reflection of the piety of their soul. One of the central issues at stake in discussions of the artist's intellectual practice is their attitude toward the study of nature, which entails how the artist relates themself to the material world. The naturalistic techniques that
Uploads
Publications by Steven F . H . Stowell
Papers by Steven F . H . Stowell