Aus Mangel an Licht

Was the post-antique depiction of cast shadows really a Florentine innovation of the 1420s, as Giorgio Vasari and subsequent scholarship have led us to believe? In this study, Gerd Mathias Micheluzzi undertakes the first comprehensive examination of this question, combining art-historical inquiry with an interdisciplinary approach. Through detailed analyses of Early Christian mosaics, medieval knowledge traditions, and Italian illuminated manuscripts, wall and panel paintings from the 14th and early 15th centuries, he demonstrates that the cast shadow occupied a more substantial role in pre-Renaissance visual culture than has hitherto been acknowledged. His study uncovers a rich history of visual experimentation, in which developments were intertwined yet neither constant nor teleologically directed towards the imitation of nature. - First systematic study of the cast shadow in Italian painting, literature, and natural philosophy of the Middle Ages - Revises a long-standing topos in art history

Gerd Mathias Micheluzzi studied art history at the Universities of Graz and Vienna, serving as a research associate at the latter from 2016 to 2019. His dissertation was awarded the Elise Reimarus Prize of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg in 2023. Research fellowships have taken him to the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (Max-Planck-Institute). From 2020 he was a research associate at the University of Hamburg, and since 2021 he has been a member of the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies "Imaginaria of Force". His research focuses on medieval and early modern Italian art, with particular interest in the intersections of art, art theory, and the (proto-)sciences. His current project examines "Aesthetics of Unfolding", while he also contributes to the DFG project on the new translation and commentary of Leonardo da Vinci's Libro di Pittura (part V of the Codex Urbinas 1270).