Hendrick Goltzius (Netherlands, 1558-1617), The Adoration of Shepherds (c. 1599). Engraving and drypoint, state ii/iv, Gift of Richard C. Bull, 2012.22.1.
1media/2012.22.1_BMC_f_2_thumb.jpg2020-06-26T13:51:19+00:00Esme Readdd6ffc8b12ade875e94a3b39793298d8e4cb3bde252Goltzius, known for his highly finished Mannerist prints, is unlikely to have left this engraving incomplete intentionally. Yet the print is enhanced by what is left to the imagination. Joseph, Mary, and two shepherds enclose the luminous space where the cradled baby Jesus would have emerged. The wonder in their expressions perhaps mirrors the viewer's own joyful experience of looking at the print. The candle in Joseph’s outstretched hand seems to beckon the viewer forward, inviting us not only to bear witness to the event, but to generate in our mind the missing child—the true subject of the print.plain2020-07-14T19:49:22+00:0020120510083735-040020120510083735-0400Katie Perry7ff19bc04f332601a8fb41e63ea172fc306bf99b
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.