Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, romantic artworks challenged the authority of the human body as a source of reliable scientific knowledge, leading to a crisis concerning the body. This volume reorients conventional accounts of romanticism and its artworks, and proposes a new model for understanding them.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 205 pages
\n Publication date: 04 November 2021
\n Publisher: Cambridge University Press
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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a profound shift occurred in the way that cultural practices of art and science interacted, challenging the authority of the human body as a source of reliable scientific knowledge. This intriguing work delves into the realm of Henry Fuseli, Anne-Louis Girodet, and Philippe de Loutherbourg, highlighting their significant contributions to this discourse. Through a meticulous examination of their artistic creations, the author argues that romantic artworks played a pivotal role in a widespread crisis concerning the body's reliability as a source of scientific facts.

This volume offers a fresh perspective on romanticism and its most renowned artworks, reorienting our understanding of these cultural movements. Moreover, it presents a novel model for the types of questions that we can ask about these artworks, shedding light on their complexities and nuances.

The author's exploration of rare sources and new archival material is particularly noteworthy, as it sheds light on the intricate ways in which artists drew upon contemporary sciences and inverted them, undermining the founding empiricist principles upon which these sciences were built. This intricate interplay between art and science not only challenged the authority of the human body but also had far-reaching implications for the broader cultural landscape of the time.

The result of this study is an alternative history of romantic visual culture that is deeply intertwined with controversies surrounding electricity, mesmerism, physiognomy, and other popular sciences. By examining these topics in the context of romanticism, the author offers a fresh perspective on the complexities and contradictions of the period, challenging our preconceived notions and prompting us to reevaluate our understanding of art and science in the past.

In conclusion, this thought-provoking work provides a valuable contribution to the field of art history, offering a fresh perspective on the relationship between art and science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through its meticulous analysis of artistic creations and the use of rare sources and archival material, the author challenges our assumptions about the body's authority as a source of scientific knowledge and presents a new model for understanding romanticism and its most important artworks.

\n Weight: 548g\n
Dimension: 159 x 236 x 21 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781316519028\n \n