Professor Geraldine A. Johnson: List of publications

Showing 1 to 41 of 41 publications
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The Sound of Marble: The Materiality and Immateriality of Italian Renaissance Art

Book

“in consequence of their whiteness”: Photographing marble sculpture from Talbot to today

2018
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Chapter
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Radical Marble: Architectural Innovation from Antiquity to the Present
© 2018 J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo. Marble. Heavy, hard, sometimes smooth, sometimes rough. Or, as the battered Concise Oxford Dictionary sitting on my desk puts it: “Limestone in crystalline (also, in granular) state & capable of taking polish, used in sculpture & architecture.”1Unlike my timeworn lexicon, however, an actual piece of marble is not at hand as I write this chapter. Instead, dense, solid marble - more specifically, marble sculpture - is conjured up immaterially through memories, words, and reproductive images. It is this latter mode of engaging the medium that will be the focus of the present chapter, which will explore the role played by photography in the interpretation of marble sculpture, as well as marble sculpture’s impact on the history of photography, from the work of the pioneering photographer William Henry Fox Talbot to that of the Pictorialist Edward Steichen and contemporary artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, and Marc Quinn.2.

Photographing Sculpture, Sculpting Photography

2017
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Chapter
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Photography and Sculpture: The Art Object in Reproduction
Sculpture, Photography, History of Photography, History of Art

"The Life of Objects": Sculpture as Subject and Object of the Camera's Lens

2017
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Chapter
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Instant Presence. Representing Art in Photography

Review of Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art, by Adrian W.B. Randolph

2017
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Journal article
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Burlington Magazine

Journal of Art Historiography Special Issue

2017
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Other
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Journal of Art Historiography

Review of The Sculptural Photograph in the Nineteenth Century (special issue of History of Photography), edited by Patrizia Di Bello

2015
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Journal article
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Sculpture Journal

The Sculptural Photograph in the Nineteenth Century

2015
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Journal article
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SCULPTURE JOURNAL

A Taxonomy of Touch: Tactile Encounters in Renaissance Italy

2014
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Chapter
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Sculpture and Touch
Since the Renaissance, at least, the medium of sculpture has been associated explicitly with the sense of touch. Sculptors, philosophers and art historians have all linked the two, often in strikingly different ways. In spite of this long running interest in touch and tactility, it is vision and visuality which have tended to dominate art historical research in recent decades. This book introduces a new impetus to the discussion of the relationship between touch and sculpture by setting up a dialogue between art historians and individuals with fresh insights who are working in disciplines beyond art history. The collection brings together a rich and diverse set of approaches, with essays tackling subjects from prehistoric figurines to the work of contemporary artists, from pre-modern ideas about the physiology of touch to tactile interaction in the museum environment, and from the phenomenology of touch in recent philosophy to the experimental findings of scientific study. It is the first volume on this subject to take such a broad approach and, as such, seeks to set the agenda for future research and collaboration in this area.

Beyond the Visual: The Multi-Sensory Reception and Display of Renaissance Sculpture

2014
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Chapter
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The Challenge of the Object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts: 33rd congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, Nuremberg, 15th - 20th July 2012

'(Un)richtige Aufnahme': Renaissance Sculpture and the Visual Historiography of Art History

2013
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Journal article
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Art History: journal of the Association of Art Historians

Heinrich Wölfflin, How One Should Photograph Sculpture: A Translation of his Articles of 1896-7 and 1915

2013
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Journal article
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Art History: journal of the Association of Art Historians

In the Hand of the Beholder: Isabella d'Este and the Sensual Allure of Sculpture

2012
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Chapter
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Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice
Employing a wide range of approaches from various disciplines, contributors to this volume explore the diverse ways in which European art and cultural practice from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries confronted, interpreted, represented and evoked the realm of the sensual. Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice investigates how the faculties of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell were made to perform in a range of guises in early modern cultural practice: as agents of indulgence and pleasure, as bearers of information on material reality, as mediators between the mind and the outer world, and even as intercessors between humans and the divine. The volume examines not only aspects of the arts of painting and sculpture but also extends into other spheres: philosophy, music and poetry, gardens, food, relics and rituals. Collectively, the essays gathered here form a survey of key debates and practices attached to the theme of the senses in Renaissance and Baroque art and cultural practice.

The Art of Touch in Early Modern Italy

2011
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Chapter
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Art and the Senses
This book provides an introduction to the study of the senses and the arts. It contains over thirty chapters written by artists/practitioners, including, musicians, visual artists, a "sculptor for the blind", a celebrity chef, a choreographer, designers, and architects. It also includes chapters by leading neuroscientists and psychologists who study the senses, as well as chapters from scholars from the humanities, including, art history, anthropology, and cultural studies.
Art

Using the Photographic Archive: On the Life (and Death) of Images

2011
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Chapter
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Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History

Reza Aramesh: "Them Who Dwell on the Earth"

2011
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Book
Exhibition catalogue of sculptor and photograph Reza Aramesh's work.
Sculpture, Photography, Reza Aramesh

Touch, Tactility, and the Reception of Sculpture in Early Modern Italy

2008
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Chapter
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A Companion to Art Theory

'All concrete shapes dissolve in light': Photographing Sculpture from Rodin to Brancusi

2006
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Journal article
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Sculpture Journal

Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction

2005
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Book
Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction provides a broad cultural-historical context for some of the Renaissance's most famous artists and works of art, introducing both famous and lesser-known artists, patrons and works of art within the cultural and historical context of Renaissance Europe. Botticelli, Holbein, Leonardo, Dürer, and Michelangelo are familiar names, but who were these artists, why did they produce such memorable images, and how would their original beholders have viewed these objects? Was the Renaissance only about great masters and masterpieces, or were ‘mistresses’ also involved, such as women artists and patrons? And what about the ‘minor’-pieces that Renaissance men and women would have encountered in homes, churches and civic spaces?
Art

Pictures fit for a Queen: Peter Paul Rubens and the Marie de' Medici Cycle

2005
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Chapter
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Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism
'Reclaiming Feminine Agency' identifies female agency as a central theme of recent feminist scholarship & offers 23 essays on artists & issues from the Renaissance to the present, written in the 1990s & after.
Art

"An Almost Immaterial Substance": Photography and the Dematerialisation of Sculpture

2004
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Chapter
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Immaterial: Brancusi, Gabo, Moholy-Nagy

Beautiful Brides and Model Mothers: The Devotional and Talismanic Functions of Early Modern Marian Reliefs

2002
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Chapter
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The Material Culture of Sex, Procreation and Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe
This interdisciplinary anthology takes as its starting point the belief that, as the material grounds of lived experience, material culture provides an avenue of historical access to women's lives, extending beyond the reaches of textual evidence. Studies here range from utilitarian tools used in Late Roman abortion to sacred, magical or ritual objects associated with sex, procreation, and marriage in the Renaissance. Together the essays demonstrate the complex relationship between language and object, and explore the ways in which objects become forms of communication in their own right, transmitting both rather specific messages and more generalized social and cultural values.

Michelangelo, Canon Formation and Fortune Telling in Fanti's "Triompho di Fortuna"

2001
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Chapter
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Coming About: A Festschrift for John Shearman
Sometimes a teacher leaves an indelible imprint on the minds of his students. Professor John Shearman, of Harvard, Princeton and the Courtauld Institute at the University of London, has been just such a teacher. In this limited edition collection are 60 essays by scholars, distinguished in their own right, former students of the celebrated mentor of art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque.

Activating the Effigy: Donatello's Pecci Tomb in Siena Cathedral

2000
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Chapter
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Memory and the Medieval Tomb
Reverent memorial for the dead was the inspiration for the production of a significant category of artworks during the Middle Ages - artworks aimed as much at the laity as at the clergy, and intended to maintain, symbolically, the presence ...
Art

The Lion on the Piazza: Patrician Politics and Public Statuary in Central Florence

2000
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Chapter
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Secular Sculpture, 1300-1550

Family Values: Sculpture and the Family in Fifteenth-Century Florence

2000
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Chapter
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Art, Memory, and Family in Early Renaissance Florence
Art, Memory and Family in Renaissance Florence examines the relationship between the production of objects and the production of memory and history in fifteenth-century Florence. Recent studies of Florence by cultural, social, political and economic historians have resulted in a considerable knowledge of family life in this period and the significance of family, kin and locality in the social and political life of the city. Investigating the means and modes of formulating and recording those relationships, the essays gathered together in this study consider the interconnections between society, art and collective memory.

Activating the Effigy: Donatello's Pecci Tomb in Siena Cathedral

2000
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Journal article
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Art Bulletin
Donatello's floor tomb for Bishop Giovanni Pecci is analyzed in light of its contemporary beholders and the rituals associated with death and postmortem commemoration. The tomb, originally in front of Siena Cathedral's high altar, depicts in illusionistic low relief Pecci's body laid on a bier. The illusionism is best appreciated by a viewer standing at the foot of the tomb. This suggests that the intended beholder of Donatello's design was a priest officiating at the high altar. Metaphorically, such a viewer would have reenacted Pecci's funeral service or, equally appropriately, would have evoked an intercessory mass of the dead.
Donatello, Pecci Tomb, Siena Cathedral

Introduction: Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension

1999
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Chapter
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Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension
This title examines the complex ways that sculpture and photography have intersected, historically, aesthetically, and theoretically. Exploring the important role that images of sculpture have played in the history of photography, this volume also considers the impact that photography has had on the creation and interpretation of sculpture. The essays consider a wide range of topics, including the use of photography by Rodin, Brancusi, David Smith, and various Minimalist sculptors; the manipulation of photographs of sculpture for aesthetic and political purposes; the relationship between sculpture, photography, and gender in the late nineteenth century, as well as in the work of Hesse and Mapplethorpe; and the redefinition of the boundaries between sculpture and photography by artists such as Joseph Beuys and Jeff Wall. Using a variety of approaches, this volume also considers photography as a means of representing three-dimensional works of art.

Sculpture, Photography and the Politics of Public Space: Serra's "Tilted Arc" and Lin's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial

1999
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Chapter
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Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension
This title examines the complex ways that sculpture and photography have intersected, historically, aesthetically, and theoretically. Exploring the important role that images of sculpture have played in the history of photography, this volume also considers the impact that photography has had on the creation and interpretation of sculpture. The essays consider a wide range of topics, including the use of photography by Rodin, Brancusi, David Smith, and various Minimalist sculptors; the manipulation of photographs of sculpture for aesthetic and political purposes; the relationship between sculpture, photography, and gender in the late nineteenth century, as well as in the work of Hesse and Mapplethorpe; and the redefinition of the boundaries between sculpture and photography by artists such as Joseph Beuys and Jeff Wall. Using a variety of approaches, this volume also considers photography as a means of representing three-dimensional works of art.

Approaching the altar: Donatello's sculpture in the Santo

1999
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Journal article
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Renaissance Quarterly
Donatello designed a lavish high altar for the Santo (S. Antonio) in Padua in the 1440s. This article considers how the interests and concerns of the altar's original beholders may have affected its design and reception. Specifically, pilgrims drawn to the Santo by Saint Anthony's tomb probably would have been impressed by the altar's general magnificence; elite Paduan citizens may have been most interested in the civic associations of the statues displayed on the altar; and the Santo's Conventual Franciscan friars may well have interpreted the Antonine narrative reliefs and the altar's overall splendor in light of their growing rivalry with Observant Franciscans.

Marie de Médicis: mariée, mère, méduse

1999
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Chapter
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"Royaume de fémynie": Pouvoirs, contraintes, espaces de liberté des femmes, de la Renaissance à la Fronde

Idol or Ideal? The Power and Potency of Female Public Sculpture

1998
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Chapter
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Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy

Introduction: Women and the Visual Arts

1998
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Chapter
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Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy
This volume considers pictured and picturing women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy as the subjects, creators, patrons, and viewers of art.
Art

Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy

1998
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Book
This 1997 volume considers pictured and picturing women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy as the subjects, creators, patrons and viewers of art. Art itself is broadly defined to include not only painting, sculpture and architecture, but also popular prints and domestic objects. Women's experiences and needs (as perceived by women themselves and as defined by men on their behalf) are seen as important determinants in the production and consumption of visual culture. How the real and ideal lives of women - nuns, brides, mothers, widows, artists, saints, sinners - are reflected in, and to some extent shaped by, works of art is also explored. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this collection seeks to examine the art histories of women in Italy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
Art

Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension

1998
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Book
The essays consider a wide range of topics, including the use of photography by Rodin, Brancusi, David Smith, and various Minimalist sculptors; the manipulation of photographs of sculpture for aesthetic and political purposes; the ...
Art

Art or Artefact? Madonna and Child Reliefs in the Early Renaissance

1997
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Chapter
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The Sculpted Object, 1400-1700
The Sculpted Object 1400-1700 features twelve essay's which consider a variety of the roles played by sculpture during the Renaissance period and into that of the Baroque. Based on the papers given at the 1995 Association of Art Historians' conference session of the same name, the collection investigates how sculpture was employed by artists of the time, both as an expressive medium in its own right and in relation to other artistic media. Through examination of a broad range of artistic objects, the contributors evoke the varied nature and utilization of sculpture in the period. Their diverse approaches incorporate analysis and interpretation of individual art works, and the assessment of contracts, letters and accounts.

Imagining Images of Powerful Women: Maria de' Medici's Patronage of Art and Architecture

1997
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Chapter
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Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors and Connoisseurs
This anthology reflects a larger impulse to recover women's involvement in the creation of an aesthetic culture from the late medieval through the early modern periods. By asking how the perspectives and experiences of female patrons contributed to the invention of particular styles or iconographies, or how they shaped taste, or what kind of impact they had on demand, these twelve original essays introduce significant new information about specific women patrons while raising theoretical issues for patronage studies more generally.
Maria de' Medici, Rubens

The original placement of Donatello's bronze Crucifix in the Santo in Padua

1997
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Journal article
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Burlington Magazine

Photographing Etruscan Sculpture

1996
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Chapter
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Marco Delogu: RItratti Etruschi

The Very Impress of the Object’: Photographing Sculpture from Fox Talbot to the Present Day

1995
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Book

Pictures fit for a Queen: Peter Paul Rubens and the Marie de' Medici Cycle

1993
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Journal article
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Art History: journal of the Association of Art Historians
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