Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience - Hardcover

Dale, Thomas E. A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 027108345X ISBN 13: 9780271083452

Verlag: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendancy of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture were considered both superstitious and idolatrous. In Pygmalion’s Power, Thomas E. A. Dale argues that the reintroduction of architectural sculpture after a hiatus of some seven hundred years arose with the particular goal of engaging the senses in a Christian religious experience.

Since the term “Romanesque” was coined in the nineteenth century, the reintroduction of stone sculpture around the mid-eleventh century has been explained as a revivalist phenomenon, one predicated on the desire to claim the authority of ancient Rome. In this study, Dale proposes an alternative theory. Covering a broad range of sculpture types―including autonomous cult statuary in wood and metal, funerary sculpture, architectural sculpture, and portraiture―Dale shows how the revitalized art form was part of a broader shift in emphasis toward spiritual embodiment and affective piety during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Adding fresh insight to scholarship on the Romanesque, Pygmalion’s Power borrows from trends in cultural anthropology to demonstrate the power and potential of these sculptures to produce emotional effects that made them an important sensory part of the religious culture of the era.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thomas E. A. Dale is Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pennsylvania State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• ISBN 10: 027108345X
• ISBN 13: 9780271083452
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar