Gossart’s Bodies and Empathy

Jan Gossart,  Hercules and Deianira,  1517, University of Birmingham (England), Barber Institute of Arts

Jan Gossart is well-known for introducing the mythological nude into Netherlandish painting.  Equally significant was his discovery of the body in motion, in contact with others.  In stressing this contingent aspect of the human body, Gossart appealed to an unprecedented degree to the viewer’s empathic response.   Such pictorial empathy, occasionally documented in the early modern period, has been a mainstay of art historical writing and aesthetics since the later nineteenth century.  More recently, it has been endorsed by newer neurological research.  By reviewing these critical approaches, I hope to demonstrate a line of embodied response that spans the centuries from Gossart’s career to the present that may help us come to terms with some idiosyncratic aspects of his images.

DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.1

Acknowledgements

I offer this essay in gratitude to Egbert Haverkamp Begemann for his guidance as a teacher and his continuing friendship.

Jan Gossart,  Hercules and Deianira,  1517,  University of Birmingham (England), Barber Institute of Arts
Fig. 1 Jan Gossart, Hercules and Deianira, 1517, oil on oak panel, 37 x 27 cm. University of Birmingham (England), Barber Institute of Arts, inv. no. 46.10 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart,  Hermaphroditus and Salmacis,  ca. 1517,  Museum Boymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Fig. 2 Jan Gossart, Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, ca. 1517, oil on oak panel, 33 x 22 cm. Museum Boymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. 2451 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve,  ca. 1520–25,  Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Fig. 3 Jan Gossart. Adam and Eve, ca. 1520–25, pen in brown ink and black chalk, 27 x 38 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt, inv. no. 1789 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart,  Adam and Eve,  ca. 1515,   Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Fig. 4 Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve, ca. 1515, black and red chalk, 62 x 47 cm. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, inv. no. 48.425 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart,  Adam and Eve,  ca. 1525–30,  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 5 Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve, ca. 1525–30, oil on oak panel, 172 x 116 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 661 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hugo van der Goes,  Adam and Eve,  ca. 1470,  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Fig. 6 Hugo van der Goes, Adam and Eve, ca. 1470, oil on oak panel, 32 x 22 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. 5822 a (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck Bouts,  The Justice of Emperor Otto: The Execution of th,  ca. 1475,   Musées des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Fig. 7 Dirck Bouts, The Justice of Emperor Otto: The Execution of the Innocent Count, ca. 1475, oil on oak panel, 324 x 182 cm. Musées des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. no. 1447 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hugo van der Goes,  Adoration of the Shepherds,  ca. 1480,  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 8 Hugo van der Goes, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1480, oil on oak panel, 97 x 245 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1622a (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hugo van der Goes,  Adoration of the Shepherds, detail,  ca. 1480,  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 9 Detail of Hugo van der Goes, Adoration of the Shepherds (fig. 8). [side-by-side viewer]
Unknown, Fol. 102v, from Giovanni Boccaccio, Cento novella,
Fig. 10 Fol. 102v (woodcut, 8 x 10.5 cm) from Giovanni Boccaccio, Cento novella: Das seind die hundert neüen fabelen oder historien [Decameron]. (Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1490) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
  1. 1. Ludovico Guicciardini, Descrittione di M. Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti I Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore (Antwerp: Willem Silvius, 1567), 98; Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari, pittore, ed. Gaetano Milanese (1568; Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1878–85), 7:584; Karel van Mander, Het schilder-boeck (1604; facsimile, Utrecht: Davaco, 1969), 225 verso.

  2. 2. His large and well-known Neptune and Amphitrite (or Neptune and Zeelandia) is only the tip of the iceberg. We know from inventories that Gossart decorated the palaces of his noble patrons with other paintings of nude women and men. See Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 375–77, no. 98. On Gossart’s erotic imagery, see Stephanie Schrader, “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite and the Body of the Patron,” in Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008): 40–57; Schrader, “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes and the Shaping of Philip of Burgundy’s Erotic Identity,” in Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 57–68; Eric Jan Sluiter, “Emulating Sensuous Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt,” Simiolus 27 (1999): 4–45. For an interpretation of Gossart’s Neptune and Amphitrite as a register of the humanist activities at the court of Philip of Burgundy and of pride in Zeeland, see Marisa Bass, “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite Reconsidered,” Simiolus 35 (2011): 61–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

  3. 3. On notions of embodiment and art, see Ann-Sophie Lehmann and Herman Roodenburg, “Introduction,” in Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008), 7–13; Herman Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), esp. 1–29.

  4. 4. Ariane Mensger, Jan Gossaert: Die niederländische Kunst zu Beginn der Neuzeit (Berlin: Riemer, 2002), 112.

  5. 5. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 17–18.

  6. 6. Deianira holds a cloak that she believes will insure her lover’s fidelity, unaware that the centaur Nessus has poisoned the garment.

  7. 7. In Rome and Florence Gossart would have had access to Italian mythological pictures–although these were not then as numerous as they later became. The Fleming was clearly attracted to ancient Roman sculptures; his drawing of the famous Thorn-puller demonstrates an interest in the complex poses represented in Roman statuary that were no doubt of considerable importance in expanding his understanding of the body’s potential. Back in the Netherlands, Gossart would meet the Venetian Jacopo de’ Barbari (ca. 1460/70–ca. 1516), a fellow artist at the court of Philip of Burgundy whose prints of mythological nudes would naturally have attracted Gossart’s interest. See Mensger, Jan Gossaert, 73–90; Schrader, “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite.”

  8. 8. Gossart’s early depiction of Adam and Eve now in the Thyssen Collection, for instance, is a close derivation of Dürer’s famous engraving of the subject from 1504. The prints of Hans Baldung (1484/85–1545)–especially those of the Fall–also offered potential inspiration for Gossart’s contemplation of the body and its potential. See Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 114–16, 117n1, 134–35, 308.

  9. 9. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 224–26, no. 32.

  10. 10. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s much damaged Nude Figures in an Interior, painted on the back of a portrait now in Berlin, prefigures something of Gossart’s aggressive pose. The naked man braces his nude female companion with his legs while grasping her breast with his left hand. Simone Ferrari related the picture to Flemish works like the lost painting by Jan van Eyck showing a nude woman emerging from the bath, but this Netherlandish precedent, known from copies, has nothing of the physical interaction seen in de’ Barbari’s picture of 1500–1502. See Simone Ferrari, Jacopo de’ Barbari: Un protagonist del Rinascimento tra Venezia e Dürer (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006), 89–91.

  11. 11. On Gossart’s depictions of Adam and Eve, see Mensger, Jan Gossaert, 136–47.

  12. 12. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 314–15, no. 67.

  13. 13. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 316–18, no. 68.

  14. 14. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 120–22, no. 3.

  15. 15. On bodily memory and learned gesture and movement, see Paul Connerton, “Bodily Practices,” How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72–104, esp. 72.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628061

  16. 16. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), esp. 51–56, 67–79.

  17. 17. Klaus Demus, Friderike Klauner, and Karl Schütz, Flämische Malerei von Jan van Eyck bis Pieter Bruegel D. Ä., Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: Katalog der Gemäldegalerie (Vienna: Herold, 1981), 189–92.

  18. 18. Desiderius Erasmus,On Good Manners for Boys / De civilitate morum puerilium, trans. Brian McGregor, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 25, Literary and Educational Writings 3, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 277–78; Mark Franko, The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography (c. 1416–1589) (Birmingham, Ala.: Summa, 1986), 44–48; Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body, 27.

  19. 19. Hans Belting, “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Winter 2005): 311–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/430962

  20. 20. Anton Francesco Doni, Disegno del Doni, partito in piu ragionamenti, ne quali si tratta della scoltura et pittura . . . (Venice: Gabriel Giolito dei Ferrarii, 1549), 36–36v: “O che mirabili essempi ci sono dell’arte statuaria; come ci mostra anchora la mirabile inuentione di Laocoonte: che posto che l’huomo l’habbia ueduto infinite uolte, hoggi di piu si commoue a misericordia del miserabil dolore, che mostra il padre de suoi figliuoli per uedergli diuorare de serpenti, uolgendosi am bidue uerso il lor padre a’domandare aiuto con gesti tanto uinti dal dolore intollerabile; che per allegri che sieno gl’huomini, subito che ueggon tale inve[n]tione si tur bonotanto che par loro da serpenti esser morsi ne medesimi luoghi; & sono sforzati a contorcersi, & muouersi a pietà di quelle statue, come se fossero uiue, a i quali mirabili subietti la pittura non s’appressò gia mai.” (Oh what wonderful examples they are of statuary art. How they also show us the wonderful invention of Laocoon! Although one may have seen it many many times, today one is more moved to pity at the pitiable sorrow that the father exhibits for his children as he sees them being devoured by serpents and both turning towards their father to ask for help with gestures so overcome by unbearable pain, that no matter how happy men may be, as soon as they see this invention they are so upset that they think they themselves have been bitten by snakes in the same places and they can’t help but writhe and be moved to pity those statues asthough they were alive. Painting has never equalled such marvellous subjects).I am grateful to Philip Sohm for this reference and to Olga Pugliese for help with its translation.

  21. 21. Ludovic Lalanne, ed., “Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Journal du voyage du cavalier Bernin en France,” Gazette des beaux-arts (1885): 87 (entry for August 9, 1665): “la partie d’en haut est tournée d’un côté et celle d’en bas d’un autre, et de telle sorte que la nature ne peut faire cette contorsion.’ Disant cela, il s’est voulu mettre dans la meme posture, e n’a jamais pu s’y tenir.” (‘The upper part is turned one way and the lower part another, and this contortion cannot be made by nature.’ Saying this [Bernini] tried to assume the same pose but was unable to hold it.) I am grateful to Philip Sohm for this reference.

  22. 22. Giovanni Boccaccio, Cento novella: Das seind die hundert neüen fabelen oder historien so die gessaget seind worden zü einer pestile(n)czischen zeiten [Decameron], trans. Heinrich Schlüsselfelder (Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1490), fol. 102v–103r (third day, fourth story).

  23. 23. David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 5 (2007): 200–201; Ulrich Heinen, “Huygens, Rubens and Medusa: Reflecting the Passions in Paintings, with Some Considerations of Neuroscience in Art History,” in The Passions in the Arts of the Early Modern Netherlands, ed., Stephanie S. Dickey and Herman Roodenburg, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010), 151–76; R. Adolphs et al., “A Role for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Recognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-dimensional Lesion Mapping,” Journal of Neuroscience 20 (2000): 2683–90; Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1994); Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999); Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2003); David Freedberg, “Empathy, Motion and Emotion,” in Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen: Emotionen in Nahsicht, ed. K. Herding and A. Krause Wahl (Berlin: Driesen, 2007), 17–51. On the erotic in in early modern imagery, see Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

  24. 24. Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy, 197-203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

  25. 25. Christian Keysers et al., “A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation during the Observation and Experience of Touch,” Neuron 42, no. 2 (2004): 335–46, esp. 336. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00156-4

  26. 26. J. H. Sjoerd, et al., “Differential Involvement of Somatosensory and Interoceptive Cortices during the Observation of Affective Touch,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, no. 7 (2011): 1808–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21551

  27. 27. Kaspar Meyer et al., “Seeing Touch Is Correlated with Content-Specific Activity in Primary Somatosensory Cortex, Cerebral Cortex 21, no. 9 (2011): 2113–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq289

  28. 28. Vittorio Gallese et al., “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex,” Brain 119 (1996): 593–609; G. Buccino et al, “Action Observation Activates Premotor and Parietal Areas in a Somatotopic Manner: An fMRI Study,” European Journal of Neuroscience 1 (2001): 400–404.

  29. 29. K. Carlsson et al., “Tickling Expectations: Neural Processing in Anticipation of a Sensory Stimulus,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (2000): 691–703, esp. 692; Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy,” 200; M. A. Umiltà et al., “‘I know what you are doing’: A Neurophysiological Study,” Neuron 31 (2001): 155–65; M. Iacoboni et al., “Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System,” PLOS Biology 3 (2005): 529–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089892900562318 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00337-3

  30. 30. A. C. Pierno et al., “Neurofunctional Modulation of Brain Regions by the Observation of Pointing and Grasping Actions,Cerebral Cortex 19, no. 2 (2009): 367–74. See also G. Rizzolatti et al., “Localization of Grasp Representation in Humans by PET: 1. Observation versus Execution,” Experimental Brain Research 111 (1996): 246–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00227301

  31. 31. Pierno, “Neurofunctional Modulation,” 367. See also H. Sakata et al., “Neural Mechanisms of Visual Guidance of Hand Action in the Parietal Cortex of the Monkey,” Cerebral Cortex 5 (1995): 429–38; A. Murata et al., “Selectivity for the Shape, Size and Orientation of Objects in the Hand-manipulation-related Neurons in the Anterior Intraparietal (AIP) Area of the Macaque,”Journal of Neurophysiology 83 (2000): 2580–601. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/5.5.429

  32. 32. Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy,” 200. For a neuroscientific discussion of Rubens’s Peasant Dance in Madrid, see David Freedberg, “Antropologia e storia dell’arte: La fine delle discipline?,” Richerche di Storia dell’Arte 94 (2008): 5–18. I thank Herman Roodenburg for this reference.

  33. 33. See, for example, Whitney Davis, “Neurovisuality,” Nonsite.org, accessed June 16, 2013, http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/neurovisuality.Davis reviews neural-perceptual and neuroaesthetic research in terms of what he terms “visuality,” relating it to earlier constructions ofSeeformen (or ways of seeing, as Heinrich Wölfflin called them). On philosophical reservations about neurological models of consciousness, see John R. Searle, “The Mystery of Consciousness Continues,” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011, which is a review of Antonio Damasio’s Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010). On criticism of neuroaesthetics for making naïve assumptions about the “meaning” of works of art–specifically a confusion of “meaning” with effects and causes–see Jennifer Ashton, “Two Problems with a Neuroaesthetic Theory of Interpretation,” Nonsite.org, accessed June 26, 2013, http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/two-problems-with-a-neuroaesthetic-theory-of-interpretation#foot_src_2.

  34. 34. Herman Roodenburg, “The Visceral Pleasures of Looking: On Iconology, Anthropology and the Neurosciences,” in New Perspectives in Iconology: Visual Studies and Anthropology, ed. B. Baert, A.-S. Lehmann, and J. van der Akkerveken (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012), 211–29, esp. 215; G. Rizzolatti, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions and Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  35. 35. John Onians, Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007).

  36. 36. Davis, “Neurovisuality.” On the biological evolution of the brain, see Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Ronald De Sousa, “Is Art an Adaptation? Prospects for an Evolutionary Perspective on Beauty,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 109–18. See also the entire issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001), dedicated to a “Symposium: The Historicity of the Eye.” http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2004.00144.x

  37. 37. B. Calvo-Merino et al., “Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers,” Cerebral Cortex 15, no. 8 (August 2005): 1243–49; Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (May 2012): 193–220. Herman Roodenburg, “A New Historical Anthropology? A Plea to Take a Fresh Look at Practice Theory,” H-Soz-u-Kult, accessed May 28, 2013, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/id=1826&type=diskussionen. I thank Herman Roodenburg for these references. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhi007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x

  38. 38. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, “Introduction,” in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa Monica, Calif.: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 1–85; Juliet Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” Art Bulletin 88 (2006): 139–57; Robert Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik (Leipzig: Credener, 1873); Theodor Lipps, Raumästhetik und geometrisch-optische Täuschungen (Leipzig: Barth, 1897); Vischer, “Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung, und Organempfindungen,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 1 (1903): 185–204.

  39. 39. Johannes Volkelt, Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Aesthetik (Leipzig: Dufft, 1876), 57; Helen Bridge, “Empathy theory and Heinrich Wölfflin: A Reconsideration,” Journal of European Studies 41 (2011): 7. A number of these German aestheticians and art historians, like Heinrich Wölfflin and August Schmarsow, however, focused on empathic response to architecture rather than to the figural arts. See August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung(Leipzig: Karl W. Kiersemann, 1894), 10–11; Mallgrave and Iconomou, Empathy, Form, and Space, 286; Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” 141–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047244110391033

  40. 40. Amelia Jones, “Foreword,” in Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, ed. Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012), 13; Henri Bergson,Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. I. Pogson (1889; London: George Allen and Co., 1913), 18.

  41. 41. See Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices.

  42. 42. Victoria Gray, “Rethinking Stillness: Empathetic Experiences of Stillness in Performance and Sculpture,” in Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, 199–218.

  43. 43. Jones, “Foreword,” 12.

  44. 44. Extravagant! A Forgotten Chapter of Antwerp Painting 1500–1530, exh. cat. (Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2006), 56–58, no. 18.

  45. 45. An excited and contorted portrayal of the body would return with artists such as Jacob de Backer (ca. 1555–ca. 1585), Bartholomeus Spranger (1546–1611), and Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), who were newly inspired by central Italian Mannerism.

Adolphs, R., et al. “A Role for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Recognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-Dimensional Lesion Mapping” Journal of Neuroscience 20 (2000): 2683–90.

Ainsworth, Maryan W., ed. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Ashton, Jennifer. “Two Problems with a Neuroaesthetic Theory of Interpretation.” Nonsite.org. Accessed June 26, 2013. http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/two-problems-with-a-neuroaesthetic-theory-of-interpretation.

Bass, Marisa. “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite Reconsidered.” Simiolus 35 (2011): 61–83.

Belting, Hans. “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology.” Critical Inquiry 31 (Winter 2005): 302–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/430962

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. 2nd ed. Translated by F. I. Pogson. London: George Allen and Co., 1913.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Cento novella: Das seind die hundert neüen fabelen oder historien so die gessaget seind worden zü einer pestile(n)czischen zeiten [Decameron]. Translated by Heinrich Schlüsselfelder. Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1490.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Bridge, Helen. “Empathy theory and Heinrich Wölfflin: A Reconsideration.” Journal of European Studies 41 (2011): 3–22.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047244110391033

Buccino, G., et al. “Action Observation Activates Premotor and Parietal Areas in a Somatotopic Manner: An fMRI Study.” European Journal of Neuroscience 1 (2001): 400–404.

Calvo-Merino, B, et al. “Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers.” Cerebral Cortex 15, no. 8 (August, 2005): 1243–49.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhi007

Carlsson, K., et al. “Tickling Expectations: Neural Processing in Anticipation of a Sensory Stimulus.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (2000): 691–703.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089892900562318

Ludovic Lalanne, ed. “Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Journal du voyage du cavalier Bernin en France.” Gazette des beaux-arts (1885).

Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628061

Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1994.

_________. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

_________. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, Fla: Harcourt, 2003.

_________. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010).

Davis, Whitney. “Neurovisuality.” Nonsite.org. Accessed June 16, 2013. http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/neurovisuality.

Demus, Klaus, Friderike Klauner, and Karl Schütz. Flämische Malerei von Jan van Eyck bis Pieter Bruegel D. Ä.  Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: Katalog der Gemäldegalerie. Vienna: Herold, 1981.

De Sousa, Ronald. “Is Art an Adaptation? Prospects for an Evolutionary Perspective on Beauty.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 109–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2004.00144.x

Donald, Merlin. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Doni, Anton Francesco. Disegno del Doni, partito in piu ragionamenti, ne quali si tratta della scoltura et pittura . . . Venice: Gabriel Giolito dei Ferrarii, 1549.

Erasmus, Desiderius. On Good Manners for Boys / De civilitate morum puerilium. Translated by Brian McGregor. In Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 25, 277–78. Literary and Educational Writings 3. Edited by J. K. Sowards. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.

Extravagant! A Forgotten Chapter of Antwerp Painting 1500–1530. Exh. cat. Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2006.

Ferrari, Simone. Jacopo de’ Barbari: Un protagonist del Rinascimento tra Venezia e Dürer. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006.

Franko, Mark. The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography(c. 1416–1589). Birmingham, Ala.: Summa, 1986.

Freedberg, David. “Empathy, Motion and Emotion.” In Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen: Emotionen in Nahsicht, edited by K. Herding and A. Krause Wahl, 17–51. Berlin: Driesen, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

________. “Antropologia e storia dell’arte: la fine delle discipline?” Richerche di Storia dell’Arte 94 (2008): 5–18.

Freedberg, David, and Vittorio Gallese. “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 5 (2007): 197–203.

Gallese, Vittorio, et al. “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex.” Brain 119 (1996): 593–609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/119.2.593

Gray, Victoria. “Rethinking Stillness: Empathetic Experiences of Stillness in Performance and Sculpture.” In Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, edited by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, 199–218. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012.

Guicciardini, Ludovico. Descrittione di M. Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti I Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore. Antwerp: Willem Silvius, 1567.

Heinen, Ulrich. “Huygens, Rubens and Medusa: Reflecting the Passions in Paintings, with Some Considerations of Neuroscience in Art History.” In The Passions in the Arts of the Early Modern Netherlands, edited by Stephanie S. Dickey and Herman Roodenburg, 151–176. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010).

Iacoboni, M., et al. “Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System.” PLOS Biology 3 (2005): 529–35.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079

Jones, Amelia. “Foreword.” In Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, edited by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, 1–24. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012.

Keysers, Christian, et al. “A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation during the Observation and Experience of Touch.” Neuron 42, no. 2 (2004): 335–46.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00156-4

Koss, Juliet. “On the Limits of Empathy.” Art Bulletin 88 (2006): 139–57.

Lehmann, Ann-Sophie, and Herman Roodenburg. “Introduction.” In Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, 7–13. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008).

Lipps, Theodor. Raumästhetik und geometrisch-optische Täuschungen. Leipzig: Barth, 1897.

Mallgrave, Harry Francis, and Eleftherios Ikonomou. “Introduction.” In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, 1–85. Santa Monica, Calif.: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994.

Mensger, Ariane. Jan Gossaert: Die niederländische Kunst zu Beginn der Neuzeit. Berlin: Riemer, 2002.

Meyer, Kaspar, et al. “Seeing Touch Is Correlated with Content-Specific Activity in Primary Somatosensory Cortex.” Cerebral Cortex 21, no. 9 (2011): 2113–21.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq289

Murata, A., et al. “Selectivity for the Shape, Size and Orientation of Objects in the Hand-Manipulation-Related Neurons in the Anterior Intraparietal (Aip) Area of the Macaque.” Journal of Neurophysiology 83 (2000): 2580–2601.

Onians, John. Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.

Pierno, A. C., et al. “Neurofunctional Modulation of Brain Regions by the Observation of Pointing and Grasping Actions.Cerebral Cortex 19, no. 2 (2009): 367–74.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn089

Rizzolatti,G., et al. “Localization of Grasp Representation in Humans by PET: 1. Observation versus Execution.” Experimental Brain Research 111 (1996): 246–52.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00227301

________. Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Roodenburg, Herman. The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle: Waanders, 2004.

________. “A New Historical Anthropology? A Plea to Take a Fresh Look at Practice Theory.” H-Soz-u-Kult. Accessed May 28, 2013. http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/id=1826&type=diskussionen.

________. “The Visceral Pleasures of Looking: On Iconology, Anthropology and the Neurosciences.” In New Perspectives in Iconology: Visual Studies and Anthropology, edited by B. Baert, A.-S. Lehmann, and J. van der Akkerveken, 211–29. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012.

Sakata, H., et al. “Neural Mechanisms of Visual Guidance of Hand Action in the Parietal Cortex of the Monkey.” Cerebral Cortex 5 (1995): 429–38.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/5.5.429

Scheer, Monique. “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion.” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (May 2012): 193–220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x

Schmarsow, August. Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung. Leipzig: Karl W. Kiersemann, 1894.

Schrader, Stephanie. “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite and the Body of the Patron.” In Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, 40–57. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008),

________.  “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes and the Shaping of Philip of Burgundy’s Erotic Identity.” In Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, edited by Maryan W. Ainsworth, 57–68. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Searle, John R. “The Mystery of Consciousness Continues [review of Antonio Damasio’s Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010)].” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011.

Sjoerd, J. H., et al. “Differential Involvement of Somatosensory and Interoceptive Cortices during the Observation of Affective Touch.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, no. 7 (2011): 1808–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21551

Sluiter, Eric Jan. “Emulating Sensuous Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt.” Simiolus 27 (1999): 4–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Umiltà, M. A., et al. “‘I know what you are doing’: A Neurophysiological Study.” Neuron 31 (2001): 155–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00337-3

Van Mander, Karel. Het schilder-boeck. 1604. Facsimile, Utrecht: Davaco, 1969.

Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari, pittore, edited by Gaetano Milanese. 9 vols. 1568. Reprint, Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1878–85.

Vischer, Robert. Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik. Leipzig: Credener, 1873.

________. “Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung, und Organempfindungen.” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 1 (1903): 185–204.

Volkelt, Johannes. Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Aesthetik.Leipzig: Dufft, 1876.

List of Illustrations

Jan Gossart,  Hercules and Deianira,  1517,  University of Birmingham (England), Barber Institute of Arts
Fig. 1 Jan Gossart, Hercules and Deianira, 1517, oil on oak panel, 37 x 27 cm. University of Birmingham (England), Barber Institute of Arts, inv. no. 46.10 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart,  Hermaphroditus and Salmacis,  ca. 1517,  Museum Boymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Fig. 2 Jan Gossart, Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, ca. 1517, oil on oak panel, 33 x 22 cm. Museum Boymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. 2451 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve,  ca. 1520–25,  Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Fig. 3 Jan Gossart. Adam and Eve, ca. 1520–25, pen in brown ink and black chalk, 27 x 38 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt, inv. no. 1789 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart,  Adam and Eve,  ca. 1515,   Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Fig. 4 Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve, ca. 1515, black and red chalk, 62 x 47 cm. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, inv. no. 48.425 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan Gossart,  Adam and Eve,  ca. 1525–30,  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 5 Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve, ca. 1525–30, oil on oak panel, 172 x 116 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 661 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hugo van der Goes,  Adam and Eve,  ca. 1470,  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Fig. 6 Hugo van der Goes, Adam and Eve, ca. 1470, oil on oak panel, 32 x 22 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. 5822 a (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck Bouts,  The Justice of Emperor Otto: The Execution of th,  ca. 1475,   Musées des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Fig. 7 Dirck Bouts, The Justice of Emperor Otto: The Execution of the Innocent Count, ca. 1475, oil on oak panel, 324 x 182 cm. Musées des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. no. 1447 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hugo van der Goes,  Adoration of the Shepherds,  ca. 1480,  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 8 Hugo van der Goes, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1480, oil on oak panel, 97 x 245 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1622a (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hugo van der Goes,  Adoration of the Shepherds, detail,  ca. 1480,  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 9 Detail of Hugo van der Goes, Adoration of the Shepherds (fig. 8). [side-by-side viewer]
Unknown, Fol. 102v, from Giovanni Boccaccio, Cento novella,
Fig. 10 Fol. 102v (woodcut, 8 x 10.5 cm) from Giovanni Boccaccio, Cento novella: Das seind die hundert neüen fabelen oder historien [Decameron]. (Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1490) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Footnotes

  1. 1. Ludovico Guicciardini, Descrittione di M. Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti I Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore (Antwerp: Willem Silvius, 1567), 98; Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari, pittore, ed. Gaetano Milanese (1568; Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1878–85), 7:584; Karel van Mander, Het schilder-boeck (1604; facsimile, Utrecht: Davaco, 1969), 225 verso.

  2. 2. His large and well-known Neptune and Amphitrite (or Neptune and Zeelandia) is only the tip of the iceberg. We know from inventories that Gossart decorated the palaces of his noble patrons with other paintings of nude women and men. See Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 375–77, no. 98. On Gossart’s erotic imagery, see Stephanie Schrader, “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite and the Body of the Patron,” in Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008): 40–57; Schrader, “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes and the Shaping of Philip of Burgundy’s Erotic Identity,” in Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 57–68; Eric Jan Sluiter, “Emulating Sensuous Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt,” Simiolus 27 (1999): 4–45. For an interpretation of Gossart’s Neptune and Amphitrite as a register of the humanist activities at the court of Philip of Burgundy and of pride in Zeeland, see Marisa Bass, “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite Reconsidered,” Simiolus 35 (2011): 61–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

  3. 3. On notions of embodiment and art, see Ann-Sophie Lehmann and Herman Roodenburg, “Introduction,” in Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008), 7–13; Herman Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), esp. 1–29.

  4. 4. Ariane Mensger, Jan Gossaert: Die niederländische Kunst zu Beginn der Neuzeit (Berlin: Riemer, 2002), 112.

  5. 5. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 17–18.

  6. 6. Deianira holds a cloak that she believes will insure her lover’s fidelity, unaware that the centaur Nessus has poisoned the garment.

  7. 7. In Rome and Florence Gossart would have had access to Italian mythological pictures–although these were not then as numerous as they later became. The Fleming was clearly attracted to ancient Roman sculptures; his drawing of the famous Thorn-puller demonstrates an interest in the complex poses represented in Roman statuary that were no doubt of considerable importance in expanding his understanding of the body’s potential. Back in the Netherlands, Gossart would meet the Venetian Jacopo de’ Barbari (ca. 1460/70–ca. 1516), a fellow artist at the court of Philip of Burgundy whose prints of mythological nudes would naturally have attracted Gossart’s interest. See Mensger, Jan Gossaert, 73–90; Schrader, “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite.”

  8. 8. Gossart’s early depiction of Adam and Eve now in the Thyssen Collection, for instance, is a close derivation of Dürer’s famous engraving of the subject from 1504. The prints of Hans Baldung (1484/85–1545)–especially those of the Fall–also offered potential inspiration for Gossart’s contemplation of the body and its potential. See Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 114–16, 117n1, 134–35, 308.

  9. 9. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 224–26, no. 32.

  10. 10. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s much damaged Nude Figures in an Interior, painted on the back of a portrait now in Berlin, prefigures something of Gossart’s aggressive pose. The naked man braces his nude female companion with his legs while grasping her breast with his left hand. Simone Ferrari related the picture to Flemish works like the lost painting by Jan van Eyck showing a nude woman emerging from the bath, but this Netherlandish precedent, known from copies, has nothing of the physical interaction seen in de’ Barbari’s picture of 1500–1502. See Simone Ferrari, Jacopo de’ Barbari: Un protagonist del Rinascimento tra Venezia e Dürer (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006), 89–91.

  11. 11. On Gossart’s depictions of Adam and Eve, see Mensger, Jan Gossaert, 136–47.

  12. 12. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 314–15, no. 67.

  13. 13. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 316–18, no. 68.

  14. 14. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 120–22, no. 3.

  15. 15. On bodily memory and learned gesture and movement, see Paul Connerton, “Bodily Practices,” How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72–104, esp. 72.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628061

  16. 16. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), esp. 51–56, 67–79.

  17. 17. Klaus Demus, Friderike Klauner, and Karl Schütz, Flämische Malerei von Jan van Eyck bis Pieter Bruegel D. Ä., Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: Katalog der Gemäldegalerie (Vienna: Herold, 1981), 189–92.

  18. 18. Desiderius Erasmus,On Good Manners for Boys / De civilitate morum puerilium, trans. Brian McGregor, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 25, Literary and Educational Writings 3, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 277–78; Mark Franko, The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography (c. 1416–1589) (Birmingham, Ala.: Summa, 1986), 44–48; Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body, 27.

  19. 19. Hans Belting, “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Winter 2005): 311–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/430962

  20. 20. Anton Francesco Doni, Disegno del Doni, partito in piu ragionamenti, ne quali si tratta della scoltura et pittura . . . (Venice: Gabriel Giolito dei Ferrarii, 1549), 36–36v: “O che mirabili essempi ci sono dell’arte statuaria; come ci mostra anchora la mirabile inuentione di Laocoonte: che posto che l’huomo l’habbia ueduto infinite uolte, hoggi di piu si commoue a misericordia del miserabil dolore, che mostra il padre de suoi figliuoli per uedergli diuorare de serpenti, uolgendosi am bidue uerso il lor padre a’domandare aiuto con gesti tanto uinti dal dolore intollerabile; che per allegri che sieno gl’huomini, subito che ueggon tale inve[n]tione si tur bonotanto che par loro da serpenti esser morsi ne medesimi luoghi; & sono sforzati a contorcersi, & muouersi a pietà di quelle statue, come se fossero uiue, a i quali mirabili subietti la pittura non s’appressò gia mai.” (Oh what wonderful examples they are of statuary art. How they also show us the wonderful invention of Laocoon! Although one may have seen it many many times, today one is more moved to pity at the pitiable sorrow that the father exhibits for his children as he sees them being devoured by serpents and both turning towards their father to ask for help with gestures so overcome by unbearable pain, that no matter how happy men may be, as soon as they see this invention they are so upset that they think they themselves have been bitten by snakes in the same places and they can’t help but writhe and be moved to pity those statues asthough they were alive. Painting has never equalled such marvellous subjects).I am grateful to Philip Sohm for this reference and to Olga Pugliese for help with its translation.

  21. 21. Ludovic Lalanne, ed., “Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Journal du voyage du cavalier Bernin en France,” Gazette des beaux-arts (1885): 87 (entry for August 9, 1665): “la partie d’en haut est tournée d’un côté et celle d’en bas d’un autre, et de telle sorte que la nature ne peut faire cette contorsion.’ Disant cela, il s’est voulu mettre dans la meme posture, e n’a jamais pu s’y tenir.” (‘The upper part is turned one way and the lower part another, and this contortion cannot be made by nature.’ Saying this [Bernini] tried to assume the same pose but was unable to hold it.) I am grateful to Philip Sohm for this reference.

  22. 22. Giovanni Boccaccio, Cento novella: Das seind die hundert neüen fabelen oder historien so die gessaget seind worden zü einer pestile(n)czischen zeiten [Decameron], trans. Heinrich Schlüsselfelder (Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1490), fol. 102v–103r (third day, fourth story).

  23. 23. David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 5 (2007): 200–201; Ulrich Heinen, “Huygens, Rubens and Medusa: Reflecting the Passions in Paintings, with Some Considerations of Neuroscience in Art History,” in The Passions in the Arts of the Early Modern Netherlands, ed., Stephanie S. Dickey and Herman Roodenburg, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010), 151–76; R. Adolphs et al., “A Role for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Recognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-dimensional Lesion Mapping,” Journal of Neuroscience 20 (2000): 2683–90; Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1994); Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999); Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2003); David Freedberg, “Empathy, Motion and Emotion,” in Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen: Emotionen in Nahsicht, ed. K. Herding and A. Krause Wahl (Berlin: Driesen, 2007), 17–51. On the erotic in in early modern imagery, see Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

  24. 24. Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy, 197-203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

  25. 25. Christian Keysers et al., “A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation during the Observation and Experience of Touch,” Neuron 42, no. 2 (2004): 335–46, esp. 336. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00156-4

  26. 26. J. H. Sjoerd, et al., “Differential Involvement of Somatosensory and Interoceptive Cortices during the Observation of Affective Touch,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, no. 7 (2011): 1808–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21551

  27. 27. Kaspar Meyer et al., “Seeing Touch Is Correlated with Content-Specific Activity in Primary Somatosensory Cortex, Cerebral Cortex 21, no. 9 (2011): 2113–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq289

  28. 28. Vittorio Gallese et al., “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex,” Brain 119 (1996): 593–609; G. Buccino et al, “Action Observation Activates Premotor and Parietal Areas in a Somatotopic Manner: An fMRI Study,” European Journal of Neuroscience 1 (2001): 400–404.

  29. 29. K. Carlsson et al., “Tickling Expectations: Neural Processing in Anticipation of a Sensory Stimulus,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (2000): 691–703, esp. 692; Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy,” 200; M. A. Umiltà et al., “‘I know what you are doing’: A Neurophysiological Study,” Neuron 31 (2001): 155–65; M. Iacoboni et al., “Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System,” PLOS Biology 3 (2005): 529–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089892900562318 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00337-3

  30. 30. A. C. Pierno et al., “Neurofunctional Modulation of Brain Regions by the Observation of Pointing and Grasping Actions,Cerebral Cortex 19, no. 2 (2009): 367–74. See also G. Rizzolatti et al., “Localization of Grasp Representation in Humans by PET: 1. Observation versus Execution,” Experimental Brain Research 111 (1996): 246–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00227301

  31. 31. Pierno, “Neurofunctional Modulation,” 367. See also H. Sakata et al., “Neural Mechanisms of Visual Guidance of Hand Action in the Parietal Cortex of the Monkey,” Cerebral Cortex 5 (1995): 429–38; A. Murata et al., “Selectivity for the Shape, Size and Orientation of Objects in the Hand-manipulation-related Neurons in the Anterior Intraparietal (AIP) Area of the Macaque,”Journal of Neurophysiology 83 (2000): 2580–601. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/5.5.429

  32. 32. Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy,” 200. For a neuroscientific discussion of Rubens’s Peasant Dance in Madrid, see David Freedberg, “Antropologia e storia dell’arte: La fine delle discipline?,” Richerche di Storia dell’Arte 94 (2008): 5–18. I thank Herman Roodenburg for this reference.

  33. 33. See, for example, Whitney Davis, “Neurovisuality,” Nonsite.org, accessed June 16, 2013, http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/neurovisuality.Davis reviews neural-perceptual and neuroaesthetic research in terms of what he terms “visuality,” relating it to earlier constructions ofSeeformen (or ways of seeing, as Heinrich Wölfflin called them). On philosophical reservations about neurological models of consciousness, see John R. Searle, “The Mystery of Consciousness Continues,” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011, which is a review of Antonio Damasio’s Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010). On criticism of neuroaesthetics for making naïve assumptions about the “meaning” of works of art–specifically a confusion of “meaning” with effects and causes–see Jennifer Ashton, “Two Problems with a Neuroaesthetic Theory of Interpretation,” Nonsite.org, accessed June 26, 2013, http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/two-problems-with-a-neuroaesthetic-theory-of-interpretation#foot_src_2.

  34. 34. Herman Roodenburg, “The Visceral Pleasures of Looking: On Iconology, Anthropology and the Neurosciences,” in New Perspectives in Iconology: Visual Studies and Anthropology, ed. B. Baert, A.-S. Lehmann, and J. van der Akkerveken (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012), 211–29, esp. 215; G. Rizzolatti, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions and Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  35. 35. John Onians, Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007).

  36. 36. Davis, “Neurovisuality.” On the biological evolution of the brain, see Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Ronald De Sousa, “Is Art an Adaptation? Prospects for an Evolutionary Perspective on Beauty,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 109–18. See also the entire issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001), dedicated to a “Symposium: The Historicity of the Eye.” http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2004.00144.x

  37. 37. B. Calvo-Merino et al., “Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers,” Cerebral Cortex 15, no. 8 (August 2005): 1243–49; Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (May 2012): 193–220. Herman Roodenburg, “A New Historical Anthropology? A Plea to Take a Fresh Look at Practice Theory,” H-Soz-u-Kult, accessed May 28, 2013, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/id=1826&type=diskussionen. I thank Herman Roodenburg for these references. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhi007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x

  38. 38. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, “Introduction,” in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa Monica, Calif.: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 1–85; Juliet Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” Art Bulletin 88 (2006): 139–57; Robert Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik (Leipzig: Credener, 1873); Theodor Lipps, Raumästhetik und geometrisch-optische Täuschungen (Leipzig: Barth, 1897); Vischer, “Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung, und Organempfindungen,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 1 (1903): 185–204.

  39. 39. Johannes Volkelt, Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Aesthetik (Leipzig: Dufft, 1876), 57; Helen Bridge, “Empathy theory and Heinrich Wölfflin: A Reconsideration,” Journal of European Studies 41 (2011): 7. A number of these German aestheticians and art historians, like Heinrich Wölfflin and August Schmarsow, however, focused on empathic response to architecture rather than to the figural arts. See August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung(Leipzig: Karl W. Kiersemann, 1894), 10–11; Mallgrave and Iconomou, Empathy, Form, and Space, 286; Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” 141–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047244110391033

  40. 40. Amelia Jones, “Foreword,” in Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, ed. Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012), 13; Henri Bergson,Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. I. Pogson (1889; London: George Allen and Co., 1913), 18.

  41. 41. See Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices.

  42. 42. Victoria Gray, “Rethinking Stillness: Empathetic Experiences of Stillness in Performance and Sculpture,” in Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, 199–218.

  43. 43. Jones, “Foreword,” 12.

  44. 44. Extravagant! A Forgotten Chapter of Antwerp Painting 1500–1530, exh. cat. (Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2006), 56–58, no. 18.

  45. 45. An excited and contorted portrayal of the body would return with artists such as Jacob de Backer (ca. 1555–ca. 1585), Bartholomeus Spranger (1546–1611), and Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), who were newly inspired by central Italian Mannerism.

Bibliography

Adolphs, R., et al. “A Role for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Recognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-Dimensional Lesion Mapping” Journal of Neuroscience 20 (2000): 2683–90.

Ainsworth, Maryan W., ed. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Ashton, Jennifer. “Two Problems with a Neuroaesthetic Theory of Interpretation.” Nonsite.org. Accessed June 26, 2013. http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/two-problems-with-a-neuroaesthetic-theory-of-interpretation.

Bass, Marisa. “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite Reconsidered.” Simiolus 35 (2011): 61–83.

Belting, Hans. “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology.” Critical Inquiry 31 (Winter 2005): 302–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/430962

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. 2nd ed. Translated by F. I. Pogson. London: George Allen and Co., 1913.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Cento novella: Das seind die hundert neüen fabelen oder historien so die gessaget seind worden zü einer pestile(n)czischen zeiten [Decameron]. Translated by Heinrich Schlüsselfelder. Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1490.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Bridge, Helen. “Empathy theory and Heinrich Wölfflin: A Reconsideration.” Journal of European Studies 41 (2011): 3–22.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047244110391033

Buccino, G., et al. “Action Observation Activates Premotor and Parietal Areas in a Somatotopic Manner: An fMRI Study.” European Journal of Neuroscience 1 (2001): 400–404.

Calvo-Merino, B, et al. “Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers.” Cerebral Cortex 15, no. 8 (August, 2005): 1243–49.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhi007

Carlsson, K., et al. “Tickling Expectations: Neural Processing in Anticipation of a Sensory Stimulus.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (2000): 691–703.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089892900562318

Ludovic Lalanne, ed. “Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Journal du voyage du cavalier Bernin en France.” Gazette des beaux-arts (1885).

Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628061

Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1994.

_________. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

_________. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, Fla: Harcourt, 2003.

_________. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010).

Davis, Whitney. “Neurovisuality.” Nonsite.org. Accessed June 16, 2013. http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/neurovisuality.

Demus, Klaus, Friderike Klauner, and Karl Schütz. Flämische Malerei von Jan van Eyck bis Pieter Bruegel D. Ä.  Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: Katalog der Gemäldegalerie. Vienna: Herold, 1981.

De Sousa, Ronald. “Is Art an Adaptation? Prospects for an Evolutionary Perspective on Beauty.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 109–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2004.00144.x

Donald, Merlin. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Doni, Anton Francesco. Disegno del Doni, partito in piu ragionamenti, ne quali si tratta della scoltura et pittura . . . Venice: Gabriel Giolito dei Ferrarii, 1549.

Erasmus, Desiderius. On Good Manners for Boys / De civilitate morum puerilium. Translated by Brian McGregor. In Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 25, 277–78. Literary and Educational Writings 3. Edited by J. K. Sowards. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.

Extravagant! A Forgotten Chapter of Antwerp Painting 1500–1530. Exh. cat. Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2006.

Ferrari, Simone. Jacopo de’ Barbari: Un protagonist del Rinascimento tra Venezia e Dürer. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006.

Franko, Mark. The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography(c. 1416–1589). Birmingham, Ala.: Summa, 1986.

Freedberg, David. “Empathy, Motion and Emotion.” In Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen: Emotionen in Nahsicht, edited by K. Herding and A. Krause Wahl, 17–51. Berlin: Driesen, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

________. “Antropologia e storia dell’arte: la fine delle discipline?” Richerche di Storia dell’Arte 94 (2008): 5–18.

Freedberg, David, and Vittorio Gallese. “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 5 (2007): 197–203.

Gallese, Vittorio, et al. “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex.” Brain 119 (1996): 593–609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/119.2.593

Gray, Victoria. “Rethinking Stillness: Empathetic Experiences of Stillness in Performance and Sculpture.” In Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, edited by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, 199–218. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012.

Guicciardini, Ludovico. Descrittione di M. Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti I Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore. Antwerp: Willem Silvius, 1567.

Heinen, Ulrich. “Huygens, Rubens and Medusa: Reflecting the Passions in Paintings, with Some Considerations of Neuroscience in Art History.” In The Passions in the Arts of the Early Modern Netherlands, edited by Stephanie S. Dickey and Herman Roodenburg, 151–176. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010).

Iacoboni, M., et al. “Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System.” PLOS Biology 3 (2005): 529–35.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079

Jones, Amelia. “Foreword.” In Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, edited by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, 1–24. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012.

Keysers, Christian, et al. “A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation during the Observation and Experience of Touch.” Neuron 42, no. 2 (2004): 335–46.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00156-4

Koss, Juliet. “On the Limits of Empathy.” Art Bulletin 88 (2006): 139–57.

Lehmann, Ann-Sophie, and Herman Roodenburg. “Introduction.” In Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, 7–13. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008).

Lipps, Theodor. Raumästhetik und geometrisch-optische Täuschungen. Leipzig: Barth, 1897.

Mallgrave, Harry Francis, and Eleftherios Ikonomou. “Introduction.” In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, 1–85. Santa Monica, Calif.: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994.

Mensger, Ariane. Jan Gossaert: Die niederländische Kunst zu Beginn der Neuzeit. Berlin: Riemer, 2002.

Meyer, Kaspar, et al. “Seeing Touch Is Correlated with Content-Specific Activity in Primary Somatosensory Cortex.” Cerebral Cortex 21, no. 9 (2011): 2113–21.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq289

Murata, A., et al. “Selectivity for the Shape, Size and Orientation of Objects in the Hand-Manipulation-Related Neurons in the Anterior Intraparietal (Aip) Area of the Macaque.” Journal of Neurophysiology 83 (2000): 2580–2601.

Onians, John. Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.

Pierno, A. C., et al. “Neurofunctional Modulation of Brain Regions by the Observation of Pointing and Grasping Actions.Cerebral Cortex 19, no. 2 (2009): 367–74.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn089

Rizzolatti,G., et al. “Localization of Grasp Representation in Humans by PET: 1. Observation versus Execution.” Experimental Brain Research 111 (1996): 246–52.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00227301

________. Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Roodenburg, Herman. The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle: Waanders, 2004.

________. “A New Historical Anthropology? A Plea to Take a Fresh Look at Practice Theory.” H-Soz-u-Kult. Accessed May 28, 2013. http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/id=1826&type=diskussionen.

________. “The Visceral Pleasures of Looking: On Iconology, Anthropology and the Neurosciences.” In New Perspectives in Iconology: Visual Studies and Anthropology, edited by B. Baert, A.-S. Lehmann, and J. van der Akkerveken, 211–29. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012.

Sakata, H., et al. “Neural Mechanisms of Visual Guidance of Hand Action in the Parietal Cortex of the Monkey.” Cerebral Cortex 5 (1995): 429–38.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/5.5.429

Scheer, Monique. “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion.” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (May 2012): 193–220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x

Schmarsow, August. Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung. Leipzig: Karl W. Kiersemann, 1894.

Schrader, Stephanie. “Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite and the Body of the Patron.” In Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, 40–57. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008),

________.  “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes and the Shaping of Philip of Burgundy’s Erotic Identity.” In Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, edited by Maryan W. Ainsworth, 57–68. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Searle, John R. “The Mystery of Consciousness Continues [review of Antonio Damasio’s Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010)].” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011.

Sjoerd, J. H., et al. “Differential Involvement of Somatosensory and Interoceptive Cortices during the Observation of Affective Touch.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, no. 7 (2011): 1808–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21551

Sluiter, Eric Jan. “Emulating Sensuous Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt.” Simiolus 27 (1999): 4–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Umiltà, M. A., et al. “‘I know what you are doing’: A Neurophysiological Study.” Neuron 31 (2001): 155–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00337-3

Van Mander, Karel. Het schilder-boeck. 1604. Facsimile, Utrecht: Davaco, 1969.

Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari, pittore, edited by Gaetano Milanese. 9 vols. 1568. Reprint, Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1878–85.

Vischer, Robert. Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik. Leipzig: Credener, 1873.

________. “Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung, und Organempfindungen.” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 1 (1903): 185–204.

Volkelt, Johannes. Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Aesthetik.Leipzig: Dufft, 1876.

Imprint

Review: Peer Review (Double Blind)
DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.1
License:
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation:
Ethan Matt Kavaler, "Gossart’s Bodies and Empathy," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 5:2 (Summer 2013) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.1