The Bounded Field: Landscape Models and Microcosms
The groundbreaking 2014 exhibition, Silent Partners: Artist & Mannequin from Function to Fetish, brought renewed attention to the subject of the lay figure in Western art. The proposed panel will complement this and other recent scholarly contributions on artists’ models by considering how landscapes, rather than figures, were represented, miniaturized, and mocked-up in workshop settings. According to Johann Neudörffer, the late-medieval sculptor Veit Stoss likely relied upon a topographical relief of mountains and rivers when carving scenery, and in the eighteenth century, the painter Thomas Gainsborough famously constructed a table-top landscape consisting of “cork and coal,” “sand and clay,” “bushes of mosses,” and “distant woods of broccoli.” As these cases suggest, the purview for the session will be broad, comprising examples drawn from a range of geographies and time periods. The ontological uncertainty of the model—tool? work of art? both?—will also inform a wider discussion of why there are so few independent landscapes in the Western sculptural tradition. Topics explored may include naturalia and artificialia; the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm; dioramas and natural history; seriality; divisions of labor; and problems of scale. Finally, papers are also welcome on the subject of miniaturized landscapes not as models per se, but rather as they appear in the bases or backgrounds of finished sculpture.
Field of Study:
Western and Central Europe
Early Modern (1450-1800)
Survey
Sculpture
Landscape
Chair:
Ruth Ezra,Harvard University - rezra@fas.harvard.edu