Illuminating Book Culture

Location

Rotunda / Garden of the Sea

Session Type

Poster

Start Date

2-5-2017 2:45 PM

End Date

2-5-2017 3:25 PM

Keywords

Renaissance, Art, Book culture, Book history, Database, Metadata, Taxonomy, Religious Art

Abstract

One does not have to search far to find a book in a work of Renaissance art. Books are featured in paintings, sculptures, illuminations, reliefs and prints, and in contexts both sacred and secular. Unlike other objects that have received their iconographical due, books have not yet been commented upon in detail in the scholarly iconographical literature of art history.

Operating in a border zone between art history and the history of the book, the BASIRA Project hopes to detect patterns not yet explored by assembling a searchable database of works of Renaissance art that depict books. We are gathering images that were created in Europe between 1400 and 1600. By tagging and describing details of the artworks and their book images, we plan to create a tool that could be used to discern patterns of book iconography across time. One question of particular interest is whether—and, if so, how–images of books changed after the arrival of moveable type and mechanical printing. Once the book was no longer an edition of one, did it feature less prominently in works of art, and what does that tell us? How might social responses and adaptations revealed in art of the Renaissance apply to the present?

This display presents the taxonomy developed for the BASIRA Project and seeks input on the categories being tagged—on the metadata used—that would amplify the utility of the database for future scholarly use. The companion poster presents images across time from three distinct categories of art and describes some of the thematic progressions identified in this early phase of research.

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May 2nd, 2:45 PM May 2nd, 3:25 PM

Illuminating Book Culture

Rotunda / Garden of the Sea

One does not have to search far to find a book in a work of Renaissance art. Books are featured in paintings, sculptures, illuminations, reliefs and prints, and in contexts both sacred and secular. Unlike other objects that have received their iconographical due, books have not yet been commented upon in detail in the scholarly iconographical literature of art history.

Operating in a border zone between art history and the history of the book, the BASIRA Project hopes to detect patterns not yet explored by assembling a searchable database of works of Renaissance art that depict books. We are gathering images that were created in Europe between 1400 and 1600. By tagging and describing details of the artworks and their book images, we plan to create a tool that could be used to discern patterns of book iconography across time. One question of particular interest is whether—and, if so, how–images of books changed after the arrival of moveable type and mechanical printing. Once the book was no longer an edition of one, did it feature less prominently in works of art, and what does that tell us? How might social responses and adaptations revealed in art of the Renaissance apply to the present?

This display presents the taxonomy developed for the BASIRA Project and seeks input on the categories being tagged—on the metadata used—that would amplify the utility of the database for future scholarly use. The companion poster presents images across time from three distinct categories of art and describes some of the thematic progressions identified in this early phase of research.