Can painting evoke an experience of the sublime, understood in the terms adopted by Kant in the _Critique of the Power of Judgment_? I will present three considerations that imply that painting cannot evoke the Kantian sublime. I will then point out some problems related to each consideration. I will explain how some paintings can evoke an experience of the sublime, even when painting is understood in terms of the eighteenth-century European context. In this way, I intend to show the (...) real possibility of the Kantian sublime as a reaction to pictorial art. (shrink)

The introduction of the essay shows the impossibility of considering both China and Europe as univocal cultural identities schematically opposed. Starting from this, the main goal of the article is to put into comparison the specific artistic experience of Chinese and European painting. The historical moment taken into account includes some examples from European painting between the late Middle Ages and the Nineteenth Century as well as some from Chinese painting between the Ming and Qing era. From this comparison, the (...) article aims to highlight some elements of discontinuity between European ontology of art and Chinese pictorial conception. Western portrait is considered as an expression of the individual character of its creator, as well as of the subject represented and of the collective character of the historical era in which it is conceived. On the contrary, Chinese landscape painting is considered as a manifestation of the “emptiness” of the author’s “non-self” and, at the same time, as an expression of the dynamic processes of nature exceeding both the limits of the subject and those of the historical context. While in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, both the works of art and the handwork details condense the epochal taste (kunstwollen) and the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist), in China the historical and artistic processes are part of the process of Dao and express the flow of the supra-historical energy of qi. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 315-322.

Observations on Two Mural Paintings from Early Medieval Rome. Fresco of St Agatha and an Unknown Painting with a Bust of the Saint Little is known about the two fragments of early medieval Roman paintings with female saints considered here. One was first exhibited in 2016; the other remained totally obscure until it came onto the antiquarian art market 2019. The goal of this study is to provide context for these two pieces by attempting to reconstruct their original art historical (...) environment. The study also aims, through archival and documentary research, to offer plausible dates by means of stylistic comparisons (e.g., frescoes in Santa Maria Antiqua, in the Catacombs of Generosa, in the narthex of Santa Sabina etc.) and to explore the fragments’ possible original provenance. For the painting with the bust of St Agatha, the study proposes a date around the late seventh-early eighth centuries; for the other, the first half of the eighth century. For both paintings, a Roman context is assumed. (shrink)

La pittura islamica e in particolare l’illustrazione dei manoscritti, opere a circolazione limitata e prevalentemente privata, ha avuto una notevole diffusione godendo del patrocinio delle corti. Alcune pitture, soprattutto quelle che illustrano l’Ascensione celeste del profeta Muhammad, ma anche le Storie dei Profeti, pitture datate al XIV e XV secolo, rappresentano l’uno e gli altri col volto scoperto. Solo relativamente tardi, in particolare nel mondo iranico, ma anche presso gli ottomani o i Moghul dell’India, il volto del Profeta diventa (...) una convenzione iconografica. Un versetto coranico afferma che Dio parla all’uomo o per Rivelazione o dietro a un velame. Per questo nell’iconografia della pittura islamica si constata che il Profeta o altri personaggi possono figurare con il volto coperto da un velo. Questo segno di rispetto, col tempo, si trasformerà in parola e il sembiante del Profeta sarà reso calligraficamente. Islamic painting and particularly miniature painting illustrating manuscripts, books restricted to few people and for personal use, had a considerable circulation thanks to the patronage of courts. Some paintings, chiefly those illustrating the heavenly Ascent of the prophet Muhammad, but also Histories of Prophets, paintings dated to the XIV and XV century, show him and the others barefaced. Only fairly later, particularly in the iranian world, but also among Ottomans or the Moghuls of India, the face of the Prophet becomes an iconographic convention. According to a Koranic verse God speaks to man either through Revelation of behind a veil. For this reason in the iconography of islamic painting the Prophet or other people may appear with the face covered by a veil. This sign of respect, in the course of time, changed and the countenance of the Prophet was rendered in words, that is calligraphically. (shrink)

본 연구는 데 키리코의 ‘형이상학적 회화(Pittura Metafisica)’에 나타난 니체의 철학적 인간상에 관한 고찰이다. 초현실주의의 선구자인 데 키리코는 니체의 철학을 기반으로 현실과 비현실이 뒤섞인 ‘형이상학적 회화’를 창조한다. 니체의 디오니소스적 정신과 영원회귀, 위버멘쉬는 은유의 방식을 통해 데 키리코 특유의 회화적 형식으로 재탄생한다.BR 데 키리코의 형이상학적 회화의 방식이란 눈에 보이는 표면적 세계 이면에 존재하는 수수께끼와 미스터리를 품은 세계의 발견이자 재현이다. 데 키리코에게 회화의 진리란 이성과 관습을 통한 기억으로부터 멀어지는 방식을 통해 성취될 수 있다. 이것은 원근법의 파괴, 데페이즈망 기법, 마네킹의 형상, 건축적 주제의 (...) 반복 등의 형식을 통해 달성된다. 이는 바로 니체의 철학적 인간상, 즉 영원회귀와 디오니소스적 인간인 위버멘쉬를 함의한 회화적 외침이다. 하나의 진리는 존재하지 않으며 모순적이고 비합리적 상황에 대한 긍정과 자기극복을 형이상학적 회화 속에 함축하고자한 데 키리코의 의지는 바로 힘에의 의지를 포함한다. 니체와 데 키리코의 방식은 논리적 인식에 맞서 진실로 ‘인간이란 무엇인가?’ 진정 ‘삶이란 무엇인가?’라는 인간학적, 존재론적 물음에 대한 성찰이다. (shrink)

Dolce's Dialogo della pittura first appeared in Venice in 1557 and consists of a three-part dialogue between two Venetians, Aretino and Fabrini, on the particular merits of works of art and artists, including Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello.

‘Metaphysical painting’ (‘pittura metafisica’) is a paradoxical term: extrasensory sensuousness, as it were. Painting is the representation of visible surfaces; metaphysics rejects surfaces, as deceptive, in favour of the deeper essence. But Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) who coined the term ‘pittura metafisica’ in 1919 was a follower of the anti-essentialist Nietzsche. ‘Metaphysics’, then, is not about discovering the essence of things but about shaping their appearances, their ‘physique’. This is an intriguing concept and the corollary to a subtle (...) artistic oeuvre. (shrink)