Book contents
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction Making and Unmaking Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Part I Surface Effects: Color, Luster, and Animation
- Part II Sculptural Bodies: Created, Destroyed, and Re-Enchanted
- Part III Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
- Part IV Sculpture as Performance
- Part V Sculpture in the Expanded Field
- Part VI Sculpture and History
- Chapter 17 Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia
- Chapter 18 Virgil’s Forge
- Chapter 19 Quattrocento Perspectives on the Historical Value of Sculpture
- Index
- References
Chapter 18 - Virgil’s Forge
The Afterlife of a Sculptural Legend in Aragonese Naples
from Part VI - Sculpture and History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2020
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction Making and Unmaking Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Part I Surface Effects: Color, Luster, and Animation
- Part II Sculptural Bodies: Created, Destroyed, and Re-Enchanted
- Part III Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
- Part IV Sculpture as Performance
- Part V Sculpture in the Expanded Field
- Part VI Sculpture and History
- Chapter 17 Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia
- Chapter 18 Virgil’s Forge
- Chapter 19 Quattrocento Perspectives on the Historical Value of Sculpture
- Index
- References
Summary
Historians of fifteenth-century sculpture traditionally distinguish works that are portable from those that are site-specific, and in general this distinction is warranted. After all, an artist who made a medal, a plaquette, or a statuette – all genres that became newly fashionable in the Quattrocento – did so with full knowledge that the object he made would be held, carried, or circulated. Scaled down and operating freely from any one spatial context, these artifacts often anticipated the vast distances they would span – as diplomatic gifts, for example – and even the diverse audiences they might reach: in their subject matter, for instance, which, being predominantly mythological, had the attraction of being universal. Site-specific works meanwhile, especially those of a monumental sort, were different. Made for a fixed location and often integrated into an architectural fabric, these objects were subject to institutional constraints and typically addressed a local, or localized, audience.
- Type
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- Information
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy , pp. 388 - 415Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020