Le corps précipité: Chute et châtiment dans l’art européen de la première modernité (XVe-XVIIe siècle) [9783689243456]

Overview

During the Renaissance, Lucifer and other rebel angels, as well as Phaethon and the Giants of Greek mythology cast down from heaven, increasingly adorned books, palaces and churches. Drawing parallels between works from Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands that have never been compared in art history, Angèle Tence focuses on the connection between fall and punishment. She examines how these “Sturzfiguren” (E. Maurer), shaped by religious tensions in Europe, produced a political or theological discourse nourished the poetic imagination of artists. Moreover, the making of falling figures was a real challenge. How did painters manage to convey the immediacy of the fall, its impact on viewers? The book sheds light on both the iconological and aesthetic implications of the falling body in Early Modern art.

• First cultural history of the fall in European art
• Drawings, engravings, paintings and dome frescoes
• New insight into works by Giulio Romano, Michelangelo, Cornelis van Haarlem and Peter Paul Rubens