ABSTRACT
This brief essay examines the multisensory aspects of the painterly technique of sfumato, first through an analysis of Corregio’s interpretation of the myth of Jupiter and Io, then in the broader context of Renaissance approaches to the representation of space. While scholarship has emphasized the optical character of sfumato, aerial and linear perspective, the last part of this essay replaces these approaches in the context of the immersive character of Renaissance arts and suggests parallels with the dissolution of boundaries between art and audience characteristic of modern and contemporary art.
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François Quiviger
François Quiviger is a fellow of the Warburg Institute (University of London) where he studied and worked as curator of digital resources, researcher, teacher and librarian from 1983 to 2016. His research centres on early modern European cultural history and focuses on ideas and beliefs about images, perception, imagination and nature. He has published on Renaissance academies, art theory and festive culture, and written biographies of Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci. His book The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art (London, Reaktion 2010) analyses representations of non-visual sensations in early modern art and their relation to ancient and modern theories of cognition. He is currently preparing a biography of the French artist philosopher Bernard Palissy (1510–1590).