Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300–1650

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Allie Terry-Fritsch
Anne Askew
art and social control
Assaf Pinkus
Bale's Images
Capital Punishment
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Claes Jansz
Criminal Body
Dear Lord Jesus Christ
Decius Mus
early
Early Modern Catholic
early modern punishment
effigies
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eq_bestseller
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eq_isMigrated=2
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European devotional imagery
Flavia Domitilla
golden
Heather Madar
Jan Mostaert
Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt
John R. Decker
Kelley Magill
late
Late Medieval
Lattre Examinacyon
legend
Martyrdom Cycle
martyrdom iconography
Maureen Warren
medieval
Mitzi Kirkland-Ives
modern
Natalia Khomenko
News Prints
Ottoman Atrocities
Ottoman Dress
Prince Maurits
punishment
Punishment Effigies
religious violence studies
Renzo Baldasso
representations of bodily suffering
Sapor II
Sebald Beham
Soetkin Vanhauwaert
Sponge
tjeenk
Van Oldenbarnevelt
Vice Versa
visual culture analysis
willink
Young Man

Product details

  • ISBN 9781138307414
  • Weight: 520g
  • Dimensions: 174 x 246mm
  • Publication Date: 16 Jun 2017
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Bodies mangled, limbs broken, skin flayed, blood spilled: from paintings to prints to small sculptures, the art of the late Middle Ages and early modern period gave rise to disturbing scenes of violence. Many of these torture scenes recall Christ’s Passion and its aftermath, but the martyrdoms of saints, stories of justice visited on the wicked, and broadsheet reports of the atrocities of war provided fertile ground for scenes of the body’s desecration. Contributors to this volume interpret pain, suffering, and the desecration of the human form not simply as the passing fancies of a cadre of proto-sadists, but also as serving larger social functions within European society. Taking advantage of the frameworks established by scholars such as Samuel Edgerton, Mitchell Merback, and Elaine Scarry (to name but a few), Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 provides an intriguing set of lenses through which to view such imagery and locate it within its wider social, political, and devotional contexts. Though the art works discussed are centuries old, the topics of the essays resonate today as twenty-first-century Western society is still absorbed in thorny debates about the ethics and consequences of the use of force, coercion (including torture), and execution, and about whether it is ever fully acceptable to write social norms on the bodies of those who will not conform.
John R. Decker is Associate Professor of Art History at Georgia State University, USA, and author of The Technology of Salvation and the Art of Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Ashgate, 2009). Mitzi Kirkland-Ives is Associate Professor of Art and Design at Missouri State University, USA.