Visual Representations of Violence
Lecture Powerpoint
Please click hereLink opens in a new window.
Seminar Questions
- How far did the representation of early modern violence vary in different visual genres?
- To what extent did the visual representation of violence vary across Europe and over time?
- How were visual representations of violence perceived in the early modern period?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of visual sources for the understanding of violence in early modern Europe?
Required Reading
- All students should select and research one image depicting violence which was produced in Europe between c. 1450 and c. 1750. You can find images using these databases:
- [Searchable by subject and date. Try searching for terms such as battle, crucifixion, murder, rape, execution, etc.]
- [Searchable by subject and date. Try searching for terms such as battle, crucifixion, murder, rape, execution, etc.]
- NB For guidance on analyzing images, click hereLink opens in a new window.
- All students should read both of the following items:
- Hornstein, Katie, '', Bulletin of the University of Michigan Museums of Art and Archaeology 16 (2005)
- Zika, Charles, 'Visualising Violence in Reformation Europe', in Robert J. Antony, Stuart Carroll, and Caroline Dodds Pennock, eds, (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 634-59.
E-Resources
- See also the e-resources for the other seminars.
Further Reading
Bale, Anthony, Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London, 2010)
Battistini, Matilde, Symbols and Allegories in Art, trans. Stephen Sartarelli (Los Angeles, 2005)
Baxandall, Michael, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1988) [Especially the chapter on 'The Period Eye']
Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London, 2001)
Cuneo, Pia, ed., (Leiden, 2002)
Daiman, Marina, 'Peter Paul Rubens: Broker of Peace, Painter of Violence', in Jonathan Davies (ed.), (Farnham, 2013), pp. 151-181.
Decker, John R., and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives (eds), Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (Farnham, 2014)
Egmond, Florike, and Robert Zwijnenberg, eds, (Aldershot, 2003)
Gallonio, Antonio, (Rome, 1591) [Look at the images]
Graham, Heather, and Lauren G. Kilroy-Ewbank, eds, Visualizing Sensuous Suffering and Affective Pain in Early Modern Europe and the Spanish Americas (Leiden, 2018)
Groebner, Valentin, Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages, trans. Pamela Selwyn (New York. 2004)
Hale, J.R., (New Haven, 1990)
H盲rter, Karl, '', European Journal of Criminology 11/2 (2013), 142-68
Jordanova, Ludmilla, 'Approaching Visual Materials', in Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (eds), Research Methods for History (Edinburgh, 2011), pp. 30-47
Kirch, Miriam Hall, 'Death on the Danube', in Jonathan Davies (ed.), (Farnham, 2013), pp. 61-81.
Kunzle, David, (Berkeley, 1973)
Kunzle, David, From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550-1672 (Leiden, 2002)
Merback, Mitchell B., The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London, 2001)
Mills, Robert, Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (London, 2005)
Puttfarken, Thomas, (New Haven, 2005)
Roeck, Bernd, 鈥楾he Atrocities of War in Early Modern Art鈥�, in Joseph Canning, Hartmut Lehmann and Jay Winter (eds), Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times (Farnham, 2004), pp. 129-40.
Terry-Fritsch, Allie, and Erin Felicia Labbie, eds, Beholding Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2012)
Wade, Mara R. (ed.), (Amsterdam, 2013)
Wolfthal, Diane, '', The Art Bulletin 59/2 (1977), 222-33.
