Arcing the Horizon. The Curvature, the Celestial Spheres and the Picture Plane

Fricke, Beate (25 October 2016). Arcing the Horizon. The Curvature, the Celestial Spheres and the Picture Plane (Unpublished). In: Vortragsreihe/Lecture series Department of History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A.. Baltimore. 25.10.2016.

The representation of a curved marine horizon populated by a series of receding ships as the background of a crucifixion scene on an altarpiece made around 1460 at the Upper Rhine display its painter’s familiarity with the widely read Sphera written around 1230 by Sacrobosco. The consideration of the broader cultural and historical context for the altarpiece’s unusual use of this background reveals the experimentation that painters and illuminators of encyclopedic manuscripts undertook in the second half of the fifteenth century in how to depict the spherical cosmos within a largely square pictorial format. The Northern Alpine painter’s use of color perspective and close observation of nature is considered here in relation to ideas about the shape of he earth and the heavenly spheres that circulated his day.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Speech)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Art History > Ancient and Medieval Art History
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Art History

UniBE Contributor:

Fricke, Beate

Subjects:

700 Arts
000 Computer science, knowledge & systems
700 Arts > 750 Painting
900 History
900 History > 940 History of Europe

Funders:

[UNSPECIFIED] Department of History of Art, Johns Hopkins

Language:

English

Submitter:

Beate Fricke

Date Deposited:

19 Dec 2019 12:51

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:34

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/137108

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