Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Editor: Sandra Cardarelli, Emily Jane Anderson and John Richards
Date Of Publication: Mar 2012
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3628-9
Isbn: 1-4438-3628-1
This book provides a fully contextualised overview on aspects of visual culture, and how this was the product of patronage, politics, and religion in some European countries between the 13th and 17th centuries. The research that is showcased here offers new perspectives on the conception, production and reception of artworks as a means of projecting core values, ideals, and traditions of individuals, groups, and communities. This volume features contributions from established scholars and new researchers in the field, and examines how art contributed to the construction of identities by means of new archival research and a thorough interdisciplinary approach. The authors suggest that the use of conventions in style and iconography allowed the local and wider community to take part in rituals and devotional practices where these works were widely recognized symbols. However, alongside established traditions, new, ad-hoc developments in style and iconography were devised to suit individual requirements, and these are fully discussed in relevant case-studies. This book also contributes to a new understanding of the interaction between artists, patrons, and viewers in Medieval and Renaissance times.

Sandra Cardarelli graduated with a PhD in History of Art at the University of Aberdeen funded by the AHRC. She has contributed papers and published on the artistic output of the diocese of Grosseto, in Southern Tuscany, in the fifteenth century. Her major interests are in late Medieval and Renaissance Sienese visual culture, parish research, and cultural history.

Emily Jane Anderson is currently completing her doctoral research at the University of Glasgow on “Vitale da Bologna and his Followers: the Eastern European Vitaleschi”. She is the recipient of scholarships and grants from the AHRC and the University of Glasgow. She has presented papers and published on Bolognese trecento art and New Kingdom Egyptian Sculpture.

John Richards is Senior Lecturer and Head of History of Art at the University of Glasgow. He has published on Trecento Italian art, and has contributed to Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Apollo, Church Monuments, and The Sculpture Journal. His interests lie in North Italian art between c. 1300 and c. 1450, and particularly on the work of Altichiero and his contemporaries, as well as on patronage in Verona and Padua.

“Art and Identity offers a thought-provoking study of ways in which art contributed to the construction of a variety of identities in Europe between the mid thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on recent and innovative research by both established and early career scholars, it provides an illuminating demonstration of the complexity inherent in the process of defining the many different and overlapping identities within medieval and renaissance society and reveals the multiple uses to which art was put in order to convey, embody and affirm these. In so doing, it exemplifies the value of an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, paying proper attention to the relevance of the specific political, social and religious contexts in which, and for which, particular works of art were made. A further strength of this collection is that it encompasses a variety of artistic media and addresses works of art produced not only in Italy – long recognised as a major centre of art production – but also in other parts of northern and central Europe. The essays in Art and Identity can be warmly recommended to historians, art historians, and the general reader with an interest in the art, social practices and rituals of medieval and renaissance society.”

– Diana Norman, Professor Emeritus of Art History, The Open University, UK

“This very well-organised collection brings together some exciting new work on questions of artistic and cultural identity between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The essay contributions, based on an excellent postgraduate conference held at the University of Aberdeen in the summer of 2008, build a varied and rich picture of the role of visual art in the formation of cultural identity in a period of great change and diversity. The organisation of the essays into three sections dealing successively with questions of political and family identity, individual and communal patronage and finally specific issues of iconography and style, gives the collection a broad thematic unity, even as individual contributions [throw] new light on a wide range of specific topics and images. Another kind of unity is provided by the contextual methodology employed by all the contributors, which insistently places the visual image at the heart of the cultural process of identity formation. The volume will form a welcome addition to the burgeoning art historical literature examining the central and formative role of art in the formation of cultural identity in what was a key period in European history.”

– Dr Tom Nichols, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art, University of Aberdeen

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