The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe (Visual Culture in Early Modernity) - Hardcover

Areford, David S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754667626 ISBN 13: 9780754667629

Publisher: Routledge, 2010

Synopsis

Structured around in-depth and interconnected case studies and driven by a methodology of material, contextual, and iconographic analysis, this book argues that early European single-sheet prints, in both the north and south, are best understood as highly accessible objects shaped and framed by individual viewers. Author David Areford offers a synthetic historical narrative of early prints that stresses their unusual material nature, as well as their accessibility to a variety of viewers, both lay and monastic. This volume represents a shift in the study of the early printed image, one that mirrors the widespread movement in art history away from issues of production, style, and the artist toward issues of reception, function, and the viewer. Areford's approach is intensely grounded in the object, especially the unacknowledged material complexity of the print as a portable, malleable, and accessible image that depended on a response that was not only visual but often physical, emotional, and psychological. Recognizing that early prints were not primarily designed for aesthetic appreciation, the author analyzes how their meanings stemmed from specific functions involving private devotion, protection, indulgences, the cult of saints, pilgrimage, exorcism, the art of memory, and anti-Semitic propaganda. Although the medium's first century was clearly transitional and experimental, Areford explores how its potential to impact viewers in new ways”both positive and negative”was quickly realized.

About this title

About the Author

David S. Areford is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. He is coeditor of Excavating the Medieval Image and coauthor of Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public.

Review

'... pursues the new directions in scholarship and generates an original, compelling, accessible, and thought-provoking contribution to the study of the visual world of the fifteenth century... the book contains some of the most satisfying art historical writing I have come across for a good while clear, evocative, and firmly engaged with the images... deserves a wide audience.' --Oxford Art Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0754667626
• ISBN 13: 9780754667629
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 346