Crime and Illusion
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Book Series
Studies in Baroque Art , vol. 12
The Fertile Ground of Painting: Seventeenth-Century Still Lifes and Nature Pieces
Karin Leonhard
- Pages: 304 p.
- Size:225 x 300 mm
- Illustrations:162 col., 5 maps b/w
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2021
- € 150,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-1-912554-06-5
- Hardback
- Available
Still Life painting thematizes the ability of Nature and Art to produce similarities and is therefore predestined for a theorization of mimetic strcutures of Art in general.
BIO
Karin Leonhard is professor of art history at the University of Konstanz.
Summary
17th-Century Netherlandish Still Life painting actively participated in the intellectual discourse of natural philosophy and the natural sciences, even though art history until recently described it, somewhat simplifying, as realistic-representative painting. We urgently need a rehabilitation of the notion of Mimesis. The author restarts the discussion, by putting more emphasis on the historical notions of Nature and Image. She examines how mimetic structures acquired a biotic reproductive capacity in the 17th century. Still Life painting thematizes the ability of Nature and Art to produce similarities and is therefore predestined for a theorization of mimetic strcutures of Art in general.
