Abstract
At first glance an essay on fifteenth-century group portraiture may seem quite removed from the central issues discussed in this volume. Yet, as we shall see, there is much to learn about communal justice and cultural democracy from looking at these paintings. Group portraits do not merely mark the identity of those represented. Nor do they simply show members of a community in opposition to foreigners. On the contrary, these paintings actively promote communal solidarity among the persons portrayed and call viewers to preserve the purity and sanctity of community from the dangers of dirt and filth.
The life that values responsibility sees every response made as a settlement not responsible enough, that has to be subjected to still further demands.
Alphonso Lingis
God writes straight with crooked lines.
Traditional Portuguese proverb
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Notes
S. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 2–3.
Cf. J. Delumeau, Le Peche et La Peur (1983), trans. E. Nicholson as Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
C. Harbison, The Last Judgment in Sixteenth-Century Northern Europe (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), pp. 51–64;
and S. Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution in the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 22–47.
A. Riegl, Das holländische Gruppenporträt (1902), ed. K. Swaboda (Vienna, 1931) p. 2, quoted and trans, in M. Iversen, Aloïs Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), p. 100.
A. Riegl, Das holländische Gruppenporträt (1902), ed. K. Swaboda (Vienna: Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1931), vol. 1, pp. 7–25. For a partial translation of this section of the text, see ‘Selection from Das holländische Gruppenporträt’, trans. S. Kayser in Modern Perspectives in Western Art: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Writings on the Visual Arts, ed. W. E. Kleinbauer (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), pp. 124–38.
Cf. M. Podro, Critical Historians of Art (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 71–97;
M. Iversen, Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 93–123;
and M. Olin, Forms of Representation in Aloïs Riegl’s Theory of Art (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), pp. 155–69. Riegl’s term Kunstwollen is commonly translated as ‘will to form’ or as ‘artistic volition’.
E. H. Gombrich, ‘On Physiognomic Perception’, Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 45–55.
E. H. Gombrich, ‘In Search of a Cultural History’, Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1979), p. 46.
A. Riegl, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1902), 2nd edn. (Vienna, 1927), pp. 31–5. Cf. M. Podro, Critical Historians of Art, pp. 71–81; and M. Olin, Forms of Representation in Aloïs Riegl’s Theory of Art, pp. 129–53.
E. H. Gombrich, ‘In Search of a Cultural History’, pp. 28–44; and ZZ Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 17–22.
For more on justice by fire, see R. Barlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
J. Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1985), pp. 148–9.
Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, trans. W. G. Ryan as The Golden Legend, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 334.
St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, trans. M. Dodds as The City of God (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 188–9.
M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London and New York: Routledge Press, 1966), p. 7.
E. Said, Orientalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978) p. 60;
and M. Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 129–94.
Julian the Apostate, Contra Galilaeos, trans. W. C. Wright as ‘Against the Galilaeans’, The Works of Emperor Julian, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 372–7, 414–19.
P. Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 92.
P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 103–52.
T. van Bueren, Macht en onderhorigheid binnen de Ridderlijke Orde van Sint Jan. De Commandeursportretten uit het Sint Jansklooster te Haarlem (Haarlem: Schuyt en Co Uitgevers, 1991), pp. 43–7.
Jacobus Lydius, ’t Verhogde Nederland (1668), quoted and trans. S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), p. 51.
M. Blanchot, L’escriture du désastre (1980), trans. A. Smock as The Writing of the Disaster (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).
Cf. J. D. Caputo, Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 27–30.
A. Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994).
Cf. H. K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge Press, 1994);
R. Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 79–105; and Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, ed. J. D. Caputo (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), pp. 106–94.
E. Levinas, Le Dire et la Dire, p. 48, quoted and trans, in T. de Boer, ‘Beyond Being: Ontology and Eschatology in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas’, Philosophia Reformata, 38 (1973), p. 25.
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Luttikhuizen, H.M. (2000). Putting a Face on Justice: Group Portraiture in Early Netherlandish Painting. In: Zuidervaart, L., Luttikhuizen, H.M. (eds) The Arts, Community and Cultural Democracy. Cross-Currents in Religion and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62374-7_13
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