Perfection
Subtitle: the essence of art and architecture in early modern Europe
By: edited by Lorenzo Periocolo and Elisabeth Oy-Marra
Publisher: Brepols
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Turnhout
Language: eng
Number of pages: 335
ISBN-13: 9782503579795
Copyright date: 2019
Subjects: European Art; European Architecture; Modern Architecture
Description: Whether a painting, a sculpture, or a building, works of art in early modern Europe must achieve the highest degree of perfection. If in the Middle Ages perfection is mostly perceived as a technical quality inherent in craftsmanship, a quality that can be judged according to often unspoken criteria agreed upon by the members of a guild from the fifteenth century onwards perfection comes to incorporate a set of rhetorical and literary qualities originally extraneous to art making. Furthermore, perfection becomes a transcendent quality: something that cannot be measured only in terms of craftsmanship. In the Baroque period, perfection turns into obsession as a result of the emergence of historical models of artistic evolution in which perfection is already historically embodied in the first place, Vasari's investiture of Michelangelo as a universal canon for painting, sculpture, and architecture. This book aims to define, analyze, and reassess the concept of perfection in the arts and architecture of early modern Europe. What is perfection? What makes a work of art unique, emblematic, or irreplaceable? Does perfection necessarily relate to individuality? Is the perfect work connate with or independent from its author? Can perfection be reproduced or represented? How do artists react to perfection? How do post-Vasarian models of art history come to terms with perfection? To what extent perfection in early modern Europe is the matter of rhetoric, literary theories, theology, and even scientific observation?
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.