editor’s introduction
by Rachel Kline and Kaylee Kelley
The discipline of art history has often struggled to reanimate what, for many of us, are three-dimensional objects stripped of their original context within the white walls of the modern museum. In the field of Renaissance art history, Michael Baxandall attempted to revive the temporally specific viewer with his concept of the “period eye,” which he theorized as the ways in which visual experience is culturally relative.1 However, the full range of sensory engagements beyond the visual was still missing from this approach. More recently, in her study of Isabella d’Este’s collection— an exemplar assemblage of art and artifacts curated by one of the most influential female patrons of the Renaissance— Geraldine A. Johnson has expanded on the concept of the “period eye” by considering the embodied experience of a historically specific viewer who “would have engaged works of art with all the senses, rather than by vision alone.”2 She argues that the tactile elements central to many of Isabella’s small-scale sculptural objects would have appealed to the Marchioness and her courtly entourage, thus emphasizing the sensorial phenomenon of art consumption during the Renaissance.
Reimagining the other types of sensory responses an image might evoke challenges the perception that early modern painting becomes static once it has been ripped from its original time and place. Portrait of a Lady at her Toilette (fig. 1) is one such feast for the senses, offering a visual parallel for period engagement with material culture at the court of Fontainebleau. During the sixteenth century, the court of King Henry II of France attracted an international group of court artists and especially Italian painters, who brought with them an interest in the sensual allure of painting. In the developing discourse of Italian painting, images of the nude female body became a metaphor for the beauty of painting itself, which the viewer was invited to experience and even possess in the case of certain elite patrons.
In her analysis of a similar image of a nude woman at her toilette woven into a tapestry, Laura Weigert accounts for the multi-sensory engagement of this iconographic type and demonstrates how “the scene evokes a multiplicity of sensual pleasures that diffuses a single focus on this body.”3 The beholder is encouraged to consider the silken texture of the sitter’s diaphanous negligée and the sound of courtly music playing from the next room in tandem with the surface of the image itself. When ocular-centric modes of viewing are put aside, one is able to conjure the aroma of the fallen rose petals, the cool clink of the string of pearls, and perhaps even smell the drifting scent of incense or the perfume worn by the seated lady. The nude woman’s elongated fingers pinch the gemstone pendant around her neck and delicately hold a jeweled ring; these gestures formally suggest the tactility central to the painting’s appeal. When we intentionally read images through a sensorial lens, we can gain insight into Renaissance life at the court of Fontainebleau. In considering the full range of sensorial stimuli present in a work of art, we are not met with a mirror onto court life but rather an opportunity to imagine the experiences of the period viewer and sitter.
This issue of SEQUITUR expands this line of thinking to consider the allure and agency of works of art through inquiries into the embodied experiences of artists, patrons, beholders, and collectors. Such a reading of Portrait of a Lady at her Toilette exemplifies the generative potential of looking beyond the canvas to consider the multi-sensorial phenomenon of viewing. Materiality, sound, fragrance, and spectacle are evoked by this issue’s authors, culminating in a body of research which reconsiders what might fall under the purview of art historians as scholars primarily concerned with the visual realm.
In this issue, Sunmin Cha explores the profound visual and sensory dimensions of Albert van Ouwater’s The Raising of Lazarus (c. 1460–1475), a rare surviving work by the Haarlem painter. Cha’s analysis reveals how Ouwater’s painting functions as a dual spectacle—while the viewer marvels at the artist’s technical skill and narrative clarity, the figures within the scene themselves witness the miraculous restoration of life likened to the ritual of the Eucharist. Through an examination of an incense burner from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Madison Clyburn investigates the historical significance of scent in the everyday lives of sixteenth-century Paduans. Clyburn reveals how the stimulating, therapeutic effects of scent shaped the sensory fabric of a city bustling with students, pilgrims, disease, and fragrant imports.
Shifting the focus from sensory engagement to timekeeping, Mya Rose Bailey’s research spotlight offers a poignant examination of how clocks and timepieces at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation distorted and shaped the lived experiences of enslaved laborers. Bailey demonstrates how the sense of sound shaped the lives of enslaved people, thereby seeking to shed light on the silenced bodies whose experiences are often obscured within the extensive historical archive.
In her visual essay, Elise Racine explores the dynamic interactions between digital and physical realms. With an emphasis on knowledge-sharing through the lens of sensory interaction, her work—inspired by the materiality of traditional book art in tandem with digitally accessed work—aspires to redefine our engagement with knowledge as an embodied, sensory act.
R.J. Maupin’s thoughtful review of Sensorium: Stories of Glass and Fragrance, curated by Julie Bellemare at the Corning Museum of Glass in Upstate New York, underscores the power of scent in shaping historical narratives. Maupin highlights the immersive approach to the exhibit which invites visitors to smell fragrances infused with spices traded by Dutch merchants, while also encouraging reflection on how sensory engagement influences production processes. Angelina Diamante reviews Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums, a comprehensive five-month-long survey of Spiritualism at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Considered in this review are the twentieth-century performances of magic and seances, and the ways in which reality and spectacle harmonized with the senses to achieve resolution with contemporary audiences.
Together, these contributions offer a rich exploration of the sensory dimensions of art and history, demonstrating how our engagement with the world around us shapes both perception and artistic creation.
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Rachel Kline is a fifth-year PhD candidate studying the art of the Italian Renaissance. Rachel’s research interests include the representation of the female nude in fifteenth-century Italy and the decoration of Florentine marriage chests. Rachel has held positions at the Penn Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Kaylee Kelley is a doctoral student focusing on art of the early modern period. Her research centers on Renaissance tapestries created across Italy, Flanders, and England with an emphasis on their literary sources and curation. She has held positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Medici Archive Project.
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1. Michael Baxandall, Painting & Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford University Press, 1972), 29–108.
2. Geraldine Johnson, “In the Hand of the Beholder: Isabella d’Este and the Sensual Allure of Sculpture,” in Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice, eds. Alice E. Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker (Ashgate Press, 2012), 183.
3. Laura Weigert, “Chambres D’amour: Tapestries of Love and the Texturing of Space,” Oxford Art Journal 31, no. 3 (2008): 319.