Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western Thought

ISBN-13: 9780415927437 / Angielski / Miękka / 2001 / 288 str.

Moshe Barasch

Opis

A study of how Western culture has imagined what it is like to be blind, especially as it is represented in that most visual of arts, painting. Art historian Moshe Barasch here draws upon not only the span of art history from antiquity to the 18th century but also the classical and biblical traditions that underpin so much of artistic representation: Blind Homer, the healing of the blind, blind musicians, blindness as a punishment, blindness as a special mark.

Spis treści

Introduction; I. Antiquity; Attitudes of the Bible; Classical Antiquity: Causes of blindness; Blindness and guilt; The blind seer; Ate; II.The Blind in the Early Christian World; The healing of the blind; Blindness and revelation: the story of Paul; A concluding observation; III. The Middle Ages; The Antichrist; Allegorical blindness; The blind beggar; The blind and his guide; IV. The Renaissance and its Sequel; The blind beggar; Metaphorical blindness; The revival of the blind seer; Early secularization of the blind; The blind beggar in the seventeenth century; V. The Disenchantment of Blindness: Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles

O autorze

Moshe Barasch is Jack Cotton Professor of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of many books on art history and the theory of art. A winner of the Israel Prize in 1996, he was recently elected corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.