Theatricality in Early Modern Art and Architecture

Caroline van Eck is Professor of Architectural History and Theory at Leiden University, where she directs a project on art, agency and living presence funded by the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research. Recent publications include British Architectural Theor: An Anthology of Texts 1550–1750 (2003) and Classical Rhetoric and the Arts in Early Modern Europe (2007).

Stijn Bussels is Research Fellow at the School of Art History at Leiden University and lecturer in Theatre Studies, Art and Society at the University of Groningen. He is the author of The Antwerp Entry of 1549: Rhetoric, Performance and Power in the Early Modern Netherlands (2010).

Notes on Contributors.

1. The Visual Arts and the Theatre in Early Modern Europe (Caroline Van Eck and Stijn Bussels).

2. 8216;Theatricality in Tapestries and Mystery Plays and its Afterlife in Painting (Laura Weigert).

3. Making the Most of Theatre and Painting: The Power of Tableaux Vivants in Joyous Entries from the Southern Netherlands (1458 1635) (Stijn Bussels).

4. Parrhasios and the Stage Curtain: Theatre, Metapainting and the Idea of Representation in the Seventeenth Century (Emmanuelle Hénin).

5. In Front of the Work of Art: The Question of Pictorial Theatricality in Italian Art, 1400 1700 (Marc Bayard).

6. Staging Bianca Capello: Painting and Theatricality in Sixteenth–Century Venice (Elsje van Kessel).

7. The Performing Venue: The Visual Play of Italian Courtly Theatres in the Sixteenth Century (Lex Hermans).

8. Dancing Statues and the Myth of Venice: Ancient Sculpture on the Opera Stage (Wendy Heller).

9. How to Become a Picture: Theatricality as Strategy in Seventeenth–Century Dutch Portraits (Hanneke Grootenboer).

10. Staging Ruins: Paestum and Theatricality (Sigrid de Jong).

11. Oprar sempre come in teatro: The Rome of Alexander VII as the Theatre of Papal Self–Representation (Maarten Delbeke).

12. Ut pictura hortus/ut theatrum hortus: Theatricality and French Picturesque Garden Theory (1771 95) (Bram Van Oostveldt).

13. What do I See? The Order of Looking in Lessing′s Emilia Galotti (Kati Röttger).

Index.

Interactions between the visual arts and the theatre are not simply a matter of exchanges of media or genres. They affect the way a play, painting or statue is viewed, the media, genres and arts involved, and the characters on stage or represented in painting or sculpture. These interactions raise questions about the ways genres are distinguished and defined, and ultimately the relation between representation and presence.

This book offers the first systematic investigation of exchanges between the arts, architecture and the theatre, and not just an overview of the influence of the theatre on the arts, and vice versa. The authors take as their starting point a study of the implications of the use of four elements that define early modern theatre: the scenario, the actor, the theatrical space, and the audience. In doing so, the authors open up new ways of analyzing theatricality both in the arts, architecture and the theatre. They also present many new, hitherto unknown instances of the interaction between the arts, and provide these interactions with a theoretical and historiographical context.