Subject as Aporia in Early Modern Art

In early modern societies throughout Europe, artistic production is bound by numerous rules and conventions, which inform technical procedures, determine formats and configurations of works of art, and regulate their contents: what is usually defined as subject or subject-matter. Not only are painte [...]
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In early modern societies throughout Europe, artistic production is bound by numerous rules and conventions, which inform technical procedures, determine formats and configurations of works of art, and regulate their contents: what is usually defined as subject or subject-matter. Not only are painters, sculptors, printers supposed to 'translate' a subject into image, but in doing so they frequently resort to encoded visual signs and schemes: framing, disposition of figures, attributes, placing and timing of the episode, gestures and expression, even lighting and coloring are instinctively associated with figurative themes. Through such conventions, art historians are able to identify subjects in early modern artistic works, even if artists modified or developed them by adding new elements, suppressing former ones, or blending together codes and conventions from different iconographic traditions. Yet, in certain cases, subjects seem so indefinite, so indecipherable that scholars have come to the conclusion that some works lack subject altogether. This volume focuses on such cases, in which subjects potentially or actually constitute visual aporias.Contributors analyze borderline visual cases in which subjects are 'smudged' either due to the convergence of discordant elements or - more frequently - to a dearth, insufficiency or ambivalence of iconographic components. Scholars show how uncertainty in the definition of the subject or interchangeability of iconographies can emerge from the early steps of the creative process, in sketches and drawings in which overlaps, shifts or interferences of iconographic conventions suggest that artists perceived figurative themes and codes as susceptible to elaboration and camouflage.