Overview

John Shearman makes the plea for a more engaged reading of art works of the Italian Renaissance, one that will recognize the presuppositions of Renaissance artists about their viewers. His book is the first attempt to construct a history of those Renaissance paintings and sculptures that are by design completed outside themselves in or by the spectator, that embrace the spectator into their narrative plot or aesthetic functioning, and that reposition the spectator imaginatively or in time and space. He takes the lead from texts and artists of the period, for these artists reveal themselves as spectators. Among modern historiographical techniques, Reception Theory is closest to the author's method, but Shearman's concern is mostly with anterior relationships with the viewer--that is, relationships conceived and constructed as part of the work's design, making, and positioning.Shearman proposes unconventional ways in which works of art may be distinguished one from another, and in which spectators may be distinguished, too, and enlarges the accepted field of artistic invention. Furthermore, His argument reflects on the Renaissance itself. What is created in this period tends to be regarded as conventional, or inherent in the nature of painting and sculpture: he maintains that this is a careless, disengaged view that has overlooked the process of discovery by immensely inventive and visually intelllectual artists.John Shearman is William Door Boardman Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard University. Among his works are Mannerism (Hardmondsworth/Penguin), Raphael's Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (Phaidon), The Early Italian Paintings in teh Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge). and Funzione e Illusione (il Saggiatore).The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1988Bollingen Series XXXV: 37Originally Publsihed in 1992The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Winner of the Charles Rufus Morey Award, College Art Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1993 In guiding our concentrated attention to the action that unfolds in [a group of paintings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Pontormo, and others that represent the Entombment], the author has taught us to make the relevant connections and thus to see these deeply moving works with fresh eyes. ---E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books Shearman's six lectures contribute significantly to current debates about the interpretation of images, particularly in relation to their reception by the spectators. ---Martin Kemp, Times Literary Supplement As the author of a brilliant work on Mannerism, in which literature and music were employed to explain characteristic forms, Shearman is eminently qualified for his task. [He] weaves a brilliant account of poetry and painting immortalising the sitter. ---Bruce Boucher, The Times [Shearman's] argument that the observer, in the artist's mind, was as carefully placed, posed and arranged as the content of the work is sustained by considerable intelligence and scholarship. ---Robin Blake, Independent on Sunday

Author Information

John Shearman (19312003) was the Charles Adams University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and the author of many books, including Raphael in Early Modern Sources, 14831602; The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen; and Mannerism.

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