Renaissance Research Project
Visual Sources
What visual sources are available to historians of
the Italian Renaissance?
‘...the traditional notion of art is unhelpful. Any
visual source belonged to a wider category of
goods, one which included liturgical and household
furnishings, clothing, embroidery, maps, clocks,
scientific, and musical instruments – objects which
all contributed to a general sense of a
contemporary visual culture’. [Evelyn Welch, Art in
Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 1997), p. 133]
Corporate patronage (religious): the Church
(individual churches as well as religious orders);
confraternities
Michelangelo,
Last Judgment,
Sistine Chapel
(1535-1541)
Corporate patronage (secular): the government; guilds
Andrea Mantegna, Court Scene, Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale di Mantua (14651474)
Private patrons (families, brothers, husbands and
wives, individuals), status commissions
Benozzo Gozzoli, Capella dei Magi, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence (1459-1462)
Private Patrons, public commissions
Dome of the Florentine
Cathedral, designed by Filippo
Brunelleschi, commissioned
by Cosimo de’ Medici. Built
1420-1436.
The ‘Period Eye’
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenthcentury Italy, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1988), Chapter 2.
Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye. Vision in Early Modern
European Culture (Oxford, 2007)
Bob Scribner, ‘Ways of seeing in the age of Dürer’, in Dagmar
Eichberger and Charles Zika (eds), Dürer and his Culture
(Cambridge, 1998), pp. 93-117.
Visual Interests: The Intellectual Legacy of Michael
Baxandall (videos of a conference which discusses the 'period
eye')
What questions can we ask of visual sources?
Susan Hilligoss, Visual Communication: A Writer’s
Guide (London, 1999), pp. 32-35.
Rhetorical Purposes
• Where does the visual source appear? [Where was
the visual source located? Who had access to it?]
• What is the visual source’s purpose?
• Does it document a situation, event, or condition?
• Is it conceptual? If so, what is its point?
• Does it try to persuade the viewer?
• Is the visual source realistic, like a photograph or
more stylized, like a cartoon or caricature?
• If the visual source is realistic, do you detect any
types of distortion? Describe any features that may
be distorted.
Rhetorical Purposes
• How polished or “professional” is the visual source?
• What tone does the visual source project?
• How seriously are we to take this visual source?
Explain why.
• Who do you think are the intended viewers of the
visual source? What features or context suggest this
audience?
• Who do you think produced the visual source? Is
the artist/creator stated?
•What would you say your relationship is to the
producer or producers? Do you think they understand
you, as a viewer?
Overall Design
• What draws your eye first?
• What does the dominant part of the visual source
portray?
• What is in the centre of the visual source?
• What is shown in front and larger? What is behind
and smaller?
• What is shown in the upper half? the lower half?
• Are portions more blurred? Are there very distinct
parts in sharp focus?
Overall Design
• Is there “empty” space? What does the empty
space frame?
• Are some areas or shapes very large? Are others
very small?
• Describe the major shapes and lines created.
Consider what effect the shapes and lines create.
• Describe the overall arrangement of parts. Are they
ordered symmetrically or otherwise balanced against
each other?
People and visual sources
• Who is portrayed? Describe your inferences from
each feature of the person(s) - age, details of dress,
gender, ethnicity, class, posture and stance, portions
of the body shown, tilt of head, facial expression,
gesture of hands.
• What is the person looking at? Follow his/her gaze
or eyeline. Does he/she look toward something else
in the visual source? or out of the picture? What do
you make of the direction of the gaze?
People and visual sources
• If there are two or more people, what features
suggest their relationship to each other?
• If there are two or more people, does one seem
dominant? How is this expressed?
• From what angle are the people shown? Do you
seem to look down on them, as if they were below
the viewer? Look up at them? Look right at them?
People and visual sources
• Are people shown close up or far away? What
emotional effect does this have?
• What do you consider to be your relationship as
viewer to the person or people shown? Do you
empathize with them or not? Explain why.
Setting
• If the visual source has a distinct background,
describe it.
• How does it relate to the dominant focus of the
visual sources, especially people, if any?
• What time and place does the visual source
suggest? What is the effect of this setting?
• Is anything “out of place” in the visual source?
What do you make of the incongruity?
Symbols and Signs
• Are there items or features in the visual source that
might mean more than themselves? Consider
connotations and associations of particular objects or
features in the visual source. Relate them to the rest
of the visual source.
Colour
• Describe the colours, or absence of colour, in the
visual source.
• Where is colour applied?
• Is the colour realistic, in your view? If not, describe
why you think it is not.
• How does colour, or its absence, make you feel
about the visual source?
• What previous associations do you have with the
colours used? How do those affect your
understanding of the visual source?
Text
• If the visual source includes text, such as headlines,
labels, captions, or paragraphs of explanation, relate
the text to the visual source.
• In what ways does the text help you make sense of
the visual source? Does it answer questions about
the visual source, or only raise more questions?
Story
• Does the visual source tell a story?
•If so, what is the story being told? Consider the
people and objects in the visual source and their
relationships to each other, the viewer, the setting
and the text.
• Who can relate to this story? Who may not find it
believable or interesting?
• Who or what is excluded from the visual source?
Why?
• What attitudes - social, political, economic, cultural
- are suggested in this visual source? Who benefits
from the attitudes shown? Who does not?