Redefining Eclecticism in Early Modern Bolognese Painting

Redefining Eclecticism in Early Modern Bolognese Painting. Ideology, Practice, and Criticism focuses on the unique nature of early modern Bolognese painting that found its expression in stylistic diversity. The flourishing of different stylistic approaches in the Mannerist paintings of the previous generation evolved, at the turn the seventeenth century, in the work of the Bolognese painters into an approach best described as eclecticism, characterized by the combination of two or more styles in a single work of art. Eclectism was a major innovation and major contribution to the history of art. But it then also became a critical term that suffered much negative press. The book therefore also traces the role of ecclecticism as a concept in the evolution of criticism and scholarship about the Bolognese school of painting over 250 years, showing how the dramatically vacillating attitudes towards this concept shaped the historical view of the Bolognese painters, ultimately having a tremendous dampening impact on our understanding of seventeenth-century art.

Daniel M. Unger teaches the History of Early Modern Art at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. His research focuses on seventeenth-century Bolognese and Roman painting. His recent book Redefining Eclecticism in Early Modern Bolognese Painting: Ideology, Practice, and Criticism was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2019.

List of Plates and Figures Preface Introduction Chapter One: Defining Eclecticism - Assimilated Eclecticism - Vasari's Raphael - Arbitrary Eclecticism - Non-Assimilated Eclecticism - A Definition Chapter Two: Ideology - Gabriele Paleotti's Discourse on Sacred Images - A Pictorial Manifest: Alliance between Disegno and Colore - Carlo Cesare Malvasia and the Assemblage of Styles Chapter Three: Practice - The Terrestrial and Celestial Realms - Portraits of Saints: St. Carlo Borromeo - Other Eclectic Paintings Chapter Four: Criticism - Winckelmann's Introduction of Eclecticism into Artistic Discourse - The Nineteenth-Century Juste milieu - The Dismissal of Eclecticism in the Twentieth Century, Conclusion: The Eclectic Approach Epilogue: Eclecticism in a Roman Chapel, Works Cited