Charles Amand-Durand (French, 1831-1905), after Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669); Jan Cornelis Sylvius (1882, after 1646 print). Heliogravure from newly engraved copperplate, X.332
1media/X.332_BMC_f_2_thumb.jpg2020-06-26T14:04:54+00:00Esme Readdd6ffc8b12ade875e94a3b39793298d8e4cb3bde252This posthumous portrait of the Dutch preacher Jan Cornelius Sylvius (1564-1638) employs a trompe l’oeil (or trick the eye) effect in the subject's right hand, which appears to penetrate the picture plane. His oratory gesture beckons to the viewer—perhaps with a choleric exhortation or sanguine moral guidance. The Latin inscription encircling and below the subject describes his exemplary Christian life. This eulogy is not merely a moralizing device, but perhaps another gesture inviting the viewer’s emulation of the deceased figure.plain2020-07-14T19:49:47+00:00Katie Perry7ff19bc04f332601a8fb41e63ea172fc306bf99b
1media/2012.15.1_BMC_f_2.jpg2020-06-22T13:31:48+00:00Checklist of the Exhibition49structured_gallery2020-08-03T17:05:19+00:00
1media/DSC_0734 copy.jpg2020-07-10T17:18:08+00:00Imagine Temperaments21structured_gallery2020-08-03T15:43:00+00:00 In the early modern period, the beginnings of empirical science competed with Platonic distrust of the senses. Could the senses be trusted? Where do the things seen in the mind’s eye come from? Thomas Hobbes considered imagination (phantasia) to be a particularly dangerous faculty of the mind for its ability to cloud reason and deceive the sense of sight (Leviathan, 1651). He feared an imagination ungoverned by reason, which plunged the mind into darkness and left it vulnerable to witchcraft and the Devil. As both Robert Burton (The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621) and Timothy Bright (Treatise of Melancholy, 1586) earlier cautioned, the melancholic temperament was especially vulnerable to the “monstrous fictions” of imagination.
Even earlier, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Cennino Cennini (c.1360–before 1427) recognized the generative potential of the imagination’s chimerical images. “Painting...,” Cennini wrote, "calls for imagination ... in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the shadow of natural objects, and to fix them with the hand, presenting to plain sight what does not really exist.” The works in this section represent the outcomes of artistic imagination, yet they require the viewer to complete their interpretation. These prints beckon the mind to “discover things not seen”: to experience beauty, sadness, and rage; to interpret meaning; to finish an image for the artist, and even to envision our own.