Okay, I jumped the gun a bit last week and I thought I concluded
the blog for this semester. Well, I was wrong; so, one week left of the blog
and because it is almost impossible to pick up from last week, I am going to go
back this week and discuss a book review over the Sienese Painting after the Black
Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art Market. The primary
reason I am choosing to go over this review as it offers more insight on the
effects of the Black Plague through a scholarly outlook.
One of the main differences in my research
of the effect of the Black Death on illustrated manuscripts compared to what
Steinhoff wrote in Sienese
Painting after the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art
Market is the focus on religion.
Susan Stuard asserts in her review of the book that "Steinhoff
acknowledges that the "golden age" of Sienese painting arrived early
in the century and continues through the last decades of the century. In this
later era she finds an extremely sophisticated and self-conscious sponsorship
of art intended to promote both religious and civic agendas."[1]
I have argued about the change in civic agendas as well as the change in how society viewed death and deathways in the 13th-14th centuries. Religion was never an aspect that I focused on primarily due to the fact that the manuscripts rarely reflected anything to do with the Church.
I have argued about the change in civic agendas as well as the change in how society viewed death and deathways in the 13th-14th centuries. Religion was never an aspect that I focused on primarily due to the fact that the manuscripts rarely reflected anything to do with the Church.
Steinhoff and I do agree though on the change in depiction. Stuard concludes, “Steinhoff regards Bulgarini and other painters who survived into this era as striving for a synthesis of the diverse visual and thematic traditions that they inherited. Moreover, the author sees both pluralism and the attempts at synthesis as positive and artistically creative.”[2]
The evidence that I have presented throughout the semester focuses
on the very same ideas. Illustrated manuscripts before the plague focused less
on pluralistic ideology and more on simplicity. What I left out and what I find
important though is the emphasis on religion; I have mentioned in some of my
previous posts about how everyone including clergy was affected by the plague
and it changed the way people felt about the social hierarchy. Steinhoff
refutes my beliefs and argues that people still used religion as their guiding
principal and it is reflected through illustrated manuscripts, in particular,
the Sienese.
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