Elucidating Opposites

A religious diptych provided medieval people with opportunities to access the transcendental and to engage in meditation on spiritual routes to salvation. The binary format of the diptych lent itself to pairings of images that could include oppositions or iconographic contradictions. By manipulating...

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Détails bibliographiques
Publié dans:Religion and the arts
Auteur principal: Cunningham, Dawn (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Brill 2017
Dans: Religion and the arts
Année: 2017, Volume: 21, Numéro: 3, Pages: 309-334
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Giotto, di Bondone 1266-1337 / Diptyque / Vertu / Vice
RelBib Classification:CE Art chrétien
Sujets non-standardisés:B Diptych Giotto virtues vices opposites crucifixion Mary personification
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Résumé:A religious diptych provided medieval people with opportunities to access the transcendental and to engage in meditation on spiritual routes to salvation. The binary format of the diptych lent itself to pairings of images that could include oppositions or iconographic contradictions. By manipulating these pairings, artists and patrons could enhance the complexity of the theological messages as well as of the relationship between art and user. Like many Gothic diptychs from Italy, an early-fourteenth-century example by Giotto is comprised of a Crucifixion and a vision of Mary’s heavenly court. The celestial group around the Virgin and child includes seven prominent personifications of the virtues. By properly identifying these moral qualities through comparisons with Giotto’s other works and by examining the oppositions they possibly addressed, we can elucidate some of the spiritual concerns of the original patron(s) who paid for and engaged with this diptych.
ISSN:1568-5292
Contient:In: Religion and the arts
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02103001