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Visions of Heaven Martin Kemp

Visions of Heaven By Martin Kemp

Visions of Heaven by Martin Kemp


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Summary

This major new study by internationally renowned scholar Martin Kemp is the first book to consider the impact of Dante's vision of divine light on visual artists of the Renaissance and Baroque.

Visions of Heaven Summary

Visions of Heaven: Dante and the Art of Divine Light by Martin Kemp

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the greatest European writers, whose untrammelled imaginative capacity was matched by a remarkable knowledge of the science of his era. His poems also paint compelling visual images. In Visions of Heaven, renowned scholar Martin Kemp investigates Dante's characterisation of divine light and its implications for the visual artists who were the inheritors of Dante's vision. The whole book may be regarded as a new paragone (comparison), the debate that began in the Renaissance about which of the arts is superior. Dante's ravishing accounts of divine light set painters the severest challenge, which it took them centuries to meet.

A major theme running through Dante's Divine Comedy, particularly in its third book, the Paradiso, centres on Dante's acts of seeing. On earth his visual perceptions are conducted according to optical rules, while in heaven the poet's human senses are overwhelmed by light of divine origin, which does not obey his rules of mathematical optics. The repeated blinding of Dante by excessive light sets the tone for artists' striving to portray unseeable brightness.

Raphael shows himself to be the greatest master of spiritual radiance, while Correggio works his radiant magic in his dome illusions in Parma Cathedral. When Gaulli evokes the glories of the name of Jesus in the huge vault of the Jesuit Church in Rome he does so with an ineffable light that explodes though encircling clusters of glowing angels, whose pink bodies are bleached by the extreme luminosity of the light source.

Published to coincide with the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, this hugely original book combines a close reading of Dante's poetry with analysis of early optics and the art of the Renaissance and Baroque to create a fascinating, wide-ranging and visually exciting study.

Visions of Heaven Reviews

'Dante's descriptions are vividly visual, with a rare ability to evoke transcendence and spirituality. In considering Dante's influence on Renaissance and baroque artists, Kemp eloquently interrogates poetry and an analysis of mediaeval optics...Visions of Heaven is an inspiring read. The quality of reproduction in this context enables the experience of the reader to include the breathtaking power of a work such as, Christ and the saints in Heaven, (detail) of Fra Angelico, The Last Judgment.' - Studio International

'Martin Kemp's Visions of Heaven is doubly worth celebrating, for it offers a wonderfully original and stimulating account of Italian Renaissance art by approaching it from a new perspective' - Literary Review

About Martin Kemp

Martin Kemp is Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University. He has written and broadcast extensively on imagery in art and science, from the Renaissance to the present day.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; List of Illustrations; Introduction: A New Paragone; 1 Divine Light, Christian and Islamic: The Optical Dimensions; 2 Dante's Dazzle; 3 Illuminated and Illustrated; 4 Dantesque Dramas, from Giotto to Titian; 5 Dantesque Dramas, from Correggio to Rubens; 6 Paradise Performed, from the Renaissance to the Baroque; 7 Limits of the Knowable; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Additional information

NGR9781848224674
9781848224674
1848224672
Visions of Heaven: Dante and the Art of Divine Light by Martin Kemp
New
Hardback
Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
2021-03-25
240
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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Customer Reviews - Visions of Heaven