Prof. Dr., Art History, University of Vienna & Université de Fribourg Address: Universität Wien, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Garnisongasse 13, Universitätscampus Hof 9, A-1090 Wien Université de Fribourg, Domaine Histoire de l'art et Archéologie, Avenue de l'Europe 20, CH-1700 Fribourg
in: Materialität und Medialität. Grundbedingungen einer anderen Ästhetik in der Vormoderne, hg. von Jan Stellmann und Daniela Wagner, Berlin und Boston, 2023
This paper examines the materiality and agency of late 16 th-century English portrait jewels from... more This paper examines the materiality and agency of late 16 th-century English portrait jewels from an image anthropological, material semantic, and gender specific perspective. Portrait jewels are particularly complex artifacts, both in terms of materiality and media, unfolding their very semantics and agency (power to act and initiative to act) only in the process of being handled-opening and closing, revealing and concealing, turning and transforming. In reference to the specific focus of this volume ('Different Aesthetics', the intersection of design and social practice), the question of agency is addressed on three levels: first, with regard to the material (as it is discussed in pre-modern writings on art); second, with regard to the containers, the technical construction and figurative design of those protective vessels, in which portrait miniatures were kept in the Renaissance; and third with regard to those persons that handled / produced these material artifacts. The agency is hereby located neither in the material nor in the artist or the viewers alone, but in the in between, i. e. in the relation and interaction that arises between (non-human) image objects and (human) subjects in the process of production or of handling / viewing the objects.
21: INQUIRIES INTO ART, HISTORY, AND THE VISUAL, 2021
The article examines the agentiality of (English) Renaissance armour, unfolded in its performativ... more The article examines the agentiality of (English) Renaissance armour, unfolded in its performative handling from an image-anthropological, gender-specific and material-semantic perspective. Armour is not only an instrument of protection and adornment for the (male) body, but can also be understood, specifically through the helmet, as a full-body mask, which both conceals and produces identities. The signs on this armour, this second skin, have a special significance, which, as Victor Stoichita has explained in regard to Alfred Gell, had the function – like tattoos on real skin (understood as symbolic armour) – of making the wearer doubly invulnerable. While Italian armour of the Renaissance was characterised by apotropaic figurations such as lions’ heads or the head of Medusa, English armour of the second half of the 16th century had ornamental elements etched into the steel. A particularly well preserved example of English armour is that of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (New York, Metropolitan Museum). The article examines the special signs on this armour and, taking into account Cumberland’s miniature portraits in lockable metal containers worn on the body, illuminates the charging of this artefact through operations of opening and closing, concealing and revealing. Against the background of the pronounced love cult at the court of Elizabeth I, Cumberland’s armour reveals itself not only as an instrument of male parade, but also as a gift of love (of the male body) to the queen, which is able to subvert and reconfigure traditional power relations in the complex network between the material artefact, the female ruler (at the same time adored lady) and the male favourite.
This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie-Suz... more This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie-Suzanne Giroust-Roslin (1767, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum), in which a male painter for once leaves the place at the easel to a painting woman. This complex multi-figure painting not only commemorates the couple’s friendship with the sitter, Henrik Villhelm Peill. Rather, it is conceived as a double image of love and advertisement – especially for her art. Further, with this painting Roslin takes a programmatic stand for his own concept of painting as much as for that of his wife. Criticized by Denis Diderot in 1765 for not painting but – like women at the toilet table – literally applying makeup, in this self-portrait with his painting wife Roslin undertakes a conspicuous narrowing of these (fundamentally different) activities. Roslin takes up the reproach of beautiful appearance and deception in order to let this criticism collapse in a second moment in the artistic concept of the artful deception of the eye – in a deceptively real painting, which – unlike women’s makeup – negates all difference between being and appearance. An in-depth analysis of the extraordinarily refined self-portrait of Madame Roslin with the laughing self-portrait of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour supports this interpretation. In a broader perspective this study is understood as a contribution to the investigation into the metaphorization of painting layers, picture surfaces, and forms of color application in pre-modern art and art criticism.
Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Issue "Wearing Images", ed. by Diane H. Bodart, 2018
This paper examines a group of artifacts that are paradigmatic for images worn on the body: the p... more This paper examines a group of artifacts that are paradigmatic for images worn on the body: the portrait jewel. In particular the article focuses on the envelopes in which English Renaissance portrait miniatures – like human bodies – were protected. Historical sources reveal very different materials: Besides paper, silk, ivory or velvet we find jeweled metal containers that made it possible to fix the portrait on one’s own body. The article analyzes how, both in images of an official and very intimate nature, these jeweled artifacts interact with the wearer’s body. It does so by focusing on the process of handling: Portrait jewels always demanded an act of opening and closing, of turning and folding, through which they ‘unfolded’ their specific semantics – and their very agency. How exactly these tiny items could model, transform and question binary relations of object and subject is finally shown with a ‘close reading’ of the Heneage Jewel, the most complex of these artifacts.
Exh.-Cat. Praised and Ridiculed. French Painting 1820-1880, ed. by Sandra Gianfreda, Kunsthaus Zürich, 10.11.2017-28.01.2018, Munich 2017, p. 44-55 (228-230) (engl. ed.)
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 80 (2017), S. 349-391, 2017
This article analyzes the painterly formation of pictorial subjects of embodiment and disembodime... more This article analyzes the painterly formation of pictorial subjects of embodiment and disembodiment since the early modern period. Starting with Gerhard Richter, Quattrocento painters, and Titian, it focuses on Rembrandt and his late group portrait "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman" (1656). The subject of this picture is a dissection of a man's brain - and hence the surgeons' search for the seat of the human soul and the motion of life. In the motif of the corpse, Rembrandt performs a radical operation with paint layers that historical sources described with the terms "doodverwe" and "lyffverwe" ("dead color" and "body color"). Rembrandt's pictorial formation is a distinctly complex answer to the soulless, lifeless corpse's state of being, which has been reduced to no more than an image. At the same time, the dead body is the place in which Rembrandt reflects the act of painting as a way of working with the tension of embodiment and disembodiment, of giving and taking life, with color.
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 78 (2015), S. 239-276., 2015
This article presents a new interpretation of Manet's picture of Eva Gonzalès in the act of paint... more This article presents a new interpretation of Manet's picture of Eva Gonzalès in the act of painting (London, National Gallery). The basis for this is the identification of the picture on the easel of Eva Gonzalès and of a second 'icon' of the Rococo, to which Manet refers to in his panel. In a broader perspective it is argued that this painting, produced for the Salon of 1870, has special significance not only in regard to Manet's transition from quoting from the Museum of the Old Masters to "a faux-Impressionist mode" (as Carol Armstrong describes Manet's late painting), but also in regard to the bigger topic of metaphorizing painting as "makeup", which turns out to be downright programmatic. The term "makeup" for painting is a metaphor that since early modern times pervades thinking about the possibilities and conditions of painting. It is through this term that the status of painting between the poles of surface and illusion has been paradigmatically reflected and negotiated.
in: Materialität und Medialität. Grundbedingungen einer anderen Ästhetik in der Vormoderne, hg. von Jan Stellmann und Daniela Wagner, Berlin und Boston, 2023
This paper examines the materiality and agency of late 16 th-century English portrait jewels from... more This paper examines the materiality and agency of late 16 th-century English portrait jewels from an image anthropological, material semantic, and gender specific perspective. Portrait jewels are particularly complex artifacts, both in terms of materiality and media, unfolding their very semantics and agency (power to act and initiative to act) only in the process of being handled-opening and closing, revealing and concealing, turning and transforming. In reference to the specific focus of this volume ('Different Aesthetics', the intersection of design and social practice), the question of agency is addressed on three levels: first, with regard to the material (as it is discussed in pre-modern writings on art); second, with regard to the containers, the technical construction and figurative design of those protective vessels, in which portrait miniatures were kept in the Renaissance; and third with regard to those persons that handled / produced these material artifacts. The agency is hereby located neither in the material nor in the artist or the viewers alone, but in the in between, i. e. in the relation and interaction that arises between (non-human) image objects and (human) subjects in the process of production or of handling / viewing the objects.
21: INQUIRIES INTO ART, HISTORY, AND THE VISUAL, 2021
The article examines the agentiality of (English) Renaissance armour, unfolded in its performativ... more The article examines the agentiality of (English) Renaissance armour, unfolded in its performative handling from an image-anthropological, gender-specific and material-semantic perspective. Armour is not only an instrument of protection and adornment for the (male) body, but can also be understood, specifically through the helmet, as a full-body mask, which both conceals and produces identities. The signs on this armour, this second skin, have a special significance, which, as Victor Stoichita has explained in regard to Alfred Gell, had the function – like tattoos on real skin (understood as symbolic armour) – of making the wearer doubly invulnerable. While Italian armour of the Renaissance was characterised by apotropaic figurations such as lions’ heads or the head of Medusa, English armour of the second half of the 16th century had ornamental elements etched into the steel. A particularly well preserved example of English armour is that of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (New York, Metropolitan Museum). The article examines the special signs on this armour and, taking into account Cumberland’s miniature portraits in lockable metal containers worn on the body, illuminates the charging of this artefact through operations of opening and closing, concealing and revealing. Against the background of the pronounced love cult at the court of Elizabeth I, Cumberland’s armour reveals itself not only as an instrument of male parade, but also as a gift of love (of the male body) to the queen, which is able to subvert and reconfigure traditional power relations in the complex network between the material artefact, the female ruler (at the same time adored lady) and the male favourite.
This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie-Suz... more This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie-Suzanne Giroust-Roslin (1767, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum), in which a male painter for once leaves the place at the easel to a painting woman. This complex multi-figure painting not only commemorates the couple’s friendship with the sitter, Henrik Villhelm Peill. Rather, it is conceived as a double image of love and advertisement – especially for her art. Further, with this painting Roslin takes a programmatic stand for his own concept of painting as much as for that of his wife. Criticized by Denis Diderot in 1765 for not painting but – like women at the toilet table – literally applying makeup, in this self-portrait with his painting wife Roslin undertakes a conspicuous narrowing of these (fundamentally different) activities. Roslin takes up the reproach of beautiful appearance and deception in order to let this criticism collapse in a second moment in the artistic concept of the artful deception of the eye – in a deceptively real painting, which – unlike women’s makeup – negates all difference between being and appearance. An in-depth analysis of the extraordinarily refined self-portrait of Madame Roslin with the laughing self-portrait of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour supports this interpretation. In a broader perspective this study is understood as a contribution to the investigation into the metaphorization of painting layers, picture surfaces, and forms of color application in pre-modern art and art criticism.
Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Issue "Wearing Images", ed. by Diane H. Bodart, 2018
This paper examines a group of artifacts that are paradigmatic for images worn on the body: the p... more This paper examines a group of artifacts that are paradigmatic for images worn on the body: the portrait jewel. In particular the article focuses on the envelopes in which English Renaissance portrait miniatures – like human bodies – were protected. Historical sources reveal very different materials: Besides paper, silk, ivory or velvet we find jeweled metal containers that made it possible to fix the portrait on one’s own body. The article analyzes how, both in images of an official and very intimate nature, these jeweled artifacts interact with the wearer’s body. It does so by focusing on the process of handling: Portrait jewels always demanded an act of opening and closing, of turning and folding, through which they ‘unfolded’ their specific semantics – and their very agency. How exactly these tiny items could model, transform and question binary relations of object and subject is finally shown with a ‘close reading’ of the Heneage Jewel, the most complex of these artifacts.
Exh.-Cat. Praised and Ridiculed. French Painting 1820-1880, ed. by Sandra Gianfreda, Kunsthaus Zürich, 10.11.2017-28.01.2018, Munich 2017, p. 44-55 (228-230) (engl. ed.)
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 80 (2017), S. 349-391, 2017
This article analyzes the painterly formation of pictorial subjects of embodiment and disembodime... more This article analyzes the painterly formation of pictorial subjects of embodiment and disembodiment since the early modern period. Starting with Gerhard Richter, Quattrocento painters, and Titian, it focuses on Rembrandt and his late group portrait "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman" (1656). The subject of this picture is a dissection of a man's brain - and hence the surgeons' search for the seat of the human soul and the motion of life. In the motif of the corpse, Rembrandt performs a radical operation with paint layers that historical sources described with the terms "doodverwe" and "lyffverwe" ("dead color" and "body color"). Rembrandt's pictorial formation is a distinctly complex answer to the soulless, lifeless corpse's state of being, which has been reduced to no more than an image. At the same time, the dead body is the place in which Rembrandt reflects the act of painting as a way of working with the tension of embodiment and disembodiment, of giving and taking life, with color.
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 78 (2015), S. 239-276., 2015
This article presents a new interpretation of Manet's picture of Eva Gonzalès in the act of paint... more This article presents a new interpretation of Manet's picture of Eva Gonzalès in the act of painting (London, National Gallery). The basis for this is the identification of the picture on the easel of Eva Gonzalès and of a second 'icon' of the Rococo, to which Manet refers to in his panel. In a broader perspective it is argued that this painting, produced for the Salon of 1870, has special significance not only in regard to Manet's transition from quoting from the Museum of the Old Masters to "a faux-Impressionist mode" (as Carol Armstrong describes Manet's late painting), but also in regard to the bigger topic of metaphorizing painting as "makeup", which turns out to be downright programmatic. The term "makeup" for painting is a metaphor that since early modern times pervades thinking about the possibilities and conditions of painting. It is through this term that the status of painting between the poles of surface and illusion has been paradigmatically reflected and negotiated.
Renaissance Love. Eros, Passion, and Friendship in Italian Art around 1500, hg. gem. m. Jeanette Kohl und Adrian Randolph (=Italienische Forschungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, Reihe I Mandorli; 19), Berlin 2014, S. 45-66.
to: Renaissance Love. Eros, Passion, and Friendship in Italian Art around 1500, co-ed. with Jeanette Kohl and Adrian Randolph, Berlin 2014, pp. 7-20., 2014
Love is not blind. On the contrary, love is highly visual and the visual arts above all others ha... more Love is not blind. On the contrary, love is highly visual and the visual arts above all others have the capacity to enflame its passion – an idea that goes back to Leonardo da Vinci. This volume, ‘Renaissance Love: Eros, Passion, and Friendship in Italian art around 1500′, presents the view of internationally renowned specialists in a collection of studies devoted to the intermeshing of art, love, and attraction. The essays not only provide valuable insights into contemporary research on the subject, but also afford new and surprising perspectives on Italian Renaissance art; in their scholarly approach to the topic they are a long-overdue contribution to the interdisciplinary discourse on love in Italian culture around 1500. Featured authors: Hans Aurenhammer, Stephen J. Campbell, Elisa de Halleux, Giancarlo Fiorenza, Jeanette Kohl, Marianne Koos, Alessandro Nova, Christopher J. Nygren, Jill Pederson, Ulrich Pfisterer and Adrian W.B. Randolph.
Werner Busch, Oliver Jehle, Bernhard Maaz, Sabina Slanina (Hg.), Ähnlichkeit und Entstellung. Entgrenzungstendenzen des Porträts, Berlin 2010, S. 15-34, 2010
This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie- Su... more This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie- Suzanne Giroust-Roslin (1767, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum), in which a male painter for once leaves the place at the easel to a painting woman. This complex multi-figure painting not only commemorates the couple’s friendship with the sitter, Henrik Villhelm Peill. Rather, it is conceived as a double image of love and advertisement – especially for her art. Further, with this painting Roslin takes a programmatic stand for his own concept of painting as much as for that of his wife: Criticized by Denis Diderot in 1765 for not painting but – like women at the toilet table – literally applying makeup, in this selfportrait with his painting wife Roslin undertakes a conspicuous narrowing of these (so different) activities. Roslin takes up the reproach of beautiful appearance and deception in order to let this criticism collapse in a second moment in the artistic concept of the artful deception of ...
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– especially for her art. Further, with this painting Roslin takes a programmatic stand for his own concept of painting as much as for that
of his wife. Criticized by Denis Diderot in 1765 for not painting but – like women at the toilet table – literally applying makeup, in this self-portrait with his painting wife Roslin undertakes a conspicuous narrowing of these (fundamentally different) activities. Roslin takes up the reproach of beautiful appearance and deception in order to let this criticism collapse in a second moment in the artistic concept of the artful deception of the eye – in a deceptively real painting, which – unlike women’s makeup – negates
all difference between being and appearance. An in-depth analysis of the extraordinarily refined self-portrait of Madame Roslin with the laughing self-portrait of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour supports this interpretation. In a broader perspective this study is understood as a contribution to the investigation into the metaphorization of painting layers, picture surfaces, and forms of color application in pre-modern art and art criticism.
Keynotes: Portrait-jewel; miniatures; interaction; handling; Renaissance
– especially for her art. Further, with this painting Roslin takes a programmatic stand for his own concept of painting as much as for that
of his wife. Criticized by Denis Diderot in 1765 for not painting but – like women at the toilet table – literally applying makeup, in this self-portrait with his painting wife Roslin undertakes a conspicuous narrowing of these (fundamentally different) activities. Roslin takes up the reproach of beautiful appearance and deception in order to let this criticism collapse in a second moment in the artistic concept of the artful deception of the eye – in a deceptively real painting, which – unlike women’s makeup – negates
all difference between being and appearance. An in-depth analysis of the extraordinarily refined self-portrait of Madame Roslin with the laughing self-portrait of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour supports this interpretation. In a broader perspective this study is understood as a contribution to the investigation into the metaphorization of painting layers, picture surfaces, and forms of color application in pre-modern art and art criticism.
Keynotes: Portrait-jewel; miniatures; interaction; handling; Renaissance