Holy Children and Liminality in Early Modern Art

Holy Children and Liminality in Early Modern Art PDF Author: Chiara Franceschini
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503586984
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Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Instilled with intrinsic emotional connotations and a distinctive aesthetic ambiguity, images of children possess diachronic, transcultural and anthropological relevance. The reinvention and the adaptations of the ?normative image? of the ancient "putto" in the Renaissance triggered the multiform transmigration, adaptation and uses of images of children in early modern Europe. So did Christianity?s attachment to a divine child, which catalyzed the reception and visual dissemination of images of children in various forms. 00While social historians have explored the changes in status and perception of childhood during the early modern period, an extensive exploration of the visual relevance of this theme in sacred imagery has yet to emerge from art historical studies. What are the aesthetic values, the emotional effects and the cultural significance of these ubiquitous and frequently liminal images? 0The proposed volume aims to offer an innovative exploration of the visualization and materiality of infancy in early modern sacred contexts in different medias, by looking at the relationship between form and meaning from a cross-cultural perspective. 0This is a collection of 9 essays that brings together well-known experts and fresh voices to approaches these questions through case studies. Issues addressed include the functions of images of infants and "putti" in baptismal context, visual and spatial interactions between images of children, migrations of images of infants from the sacred to the prophane sphere, and their associations with interreligious violence.