Overview

In Gardens of Love and the Limits of Morality in Early Netherlandish Art, Andrea Pearson charts the moralization of human bodies in late medieval and early modern visual culture, through paintings by Jan van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch, devotional prints and illustrated books, and the celebrated enclosed gardens of Mechelen among other works. Drawing on new archival evidence and innovative visual analysis to reframe familiar religious discourses, she demonstrates that depicted topographies advanced and sometimes resisted bodily critiques expressed in scripture, conduct literature, and even legislation. Governing many of these redemptive greenscapes were the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, archetypes of purity whose spiritual authority was impossible to ignore, yet whose mysteries posed innumerable moral challenges. The study reveals that bodily status was the fundamental problem of human salvation, in which artists, patrons, and viewers alike had an interpretive stake.

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9789004392953

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Reviews

The rich variety of images (canonical and obscure), as well as the impressive bibliography she [Andrea Pearson] has assembled, provide excellent resources for students and scholars alike. - John R. Decker, Pratt Institute, in: Historians of Netherlandish Art, August 2019

The rich variety of images (canonical and obscure), as well as the impressive bibliography she [Andrea Pearson] has assembled, provide excellent resources for students and scholars alike. John R. Decker, Pratt Institute. In: Historians of Netherlandish Art, August 2019.

Author Information

Andrea Pearson, Ph.D., has published extensively on women, gender, and sexuality in the early modern Low Countries. She is an associate professor of art history at American University in Washington, D.C.

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