georges de la tour and the enigma of the visible

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• Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible

In this Book

• Dalia Judovitz
• Published by: Fordham University Press

Not rediscovered until the twentieth century, the works of Georges de La Tour retain an aura of mystery. At first sight, his paintings suggest a veritable celebration of light and the visible world, but this is deceptive. The familiarity of visual experience blinds the beholder to a deeper understanding of the meanings associated with vision and the visible in the early modern period. By exploring the representations of light, vision, and the visible in La Tour’s works, this interdisciplinary study examines the nature of painting and its artistic, religious, and philosophical implications. In the wake of iconoclastic outbreaks and consequent Catholic call for the revitalization of religious imagery, La Tour paints familiar objects of visible reality that also serve as emblems of an invisible, spiritual reality. Like the books in his paintings, asking to be read, La Tour’s paintings ask not just to be seen as visual depictions but to be deciphered as instruments of insight. In figuring faith as spiritual passion and illumination, La Tour’s paintings test the bounds of the pictorial image, attempting to depict what painting cannot ultimately show: words, hearing, time, movement, changes of heart. La Tour’s emphasis on spiritual insight opens up broader artistic, philosophical, and conceptual reflections on the conditions of possibility of the pictorial medium. By scrutinizing what is seen and how, and by questioning the position of the beholder, his works revitalize critical discussion of the nature of painting and its engagements with the visible world.

Table of Contents

• Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
• pp. vii-viii
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• pp. xiii-xiv
• Introduction
• 1. The Enigma of the Visible
• 2. Spiritual Passion and the Betrayal of Painting
• 3. The Visible and the Legible
• 4. Flea Catching and the Vanity of Painting
• 5. Painting as Portal: “Birth” and “Death” of the Sacred Image
• pp. 105-110
• pp. 111-140
• Selected Bibliography
• pp. 141-152
• pp. 153-158
• Color plates

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Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible

• Dalia Judovitz

Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Copyright year: 2018
• Main content: 192
• Other: 29 Black & White and Color Illustrations
• Keywords: Baroque Aesthetics ; Catholic Reform ; Catholic Spirituality ; Georges de La Tour ; Light and Vision ; Meta-Painting ; Phenomenology of Vision ; Protestant Iconoclasm ; Religion and Visual Arts ; Sight and Insight ; Word and Image Interplay
• Published: November 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9780823277469

Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible

Dalia judovitz.

192 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2017

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On The Site

Georges de la tour and the enigma of the visible.

By: Dalia Judovitz

• ISBN: 9780823277445
• Published By: Fordham University Press
• Published: November 2017

Anyone who has ever stood before one of Georges de La Tour’s paintings—in the flesh as it were—will be aware of just how exquisitely captivating they are, and yet, how indescribable, how difficult to articulate in words their enigmatic delight and allure. It is to this task of uncovering the inner workings of these elusive paintings that Dalia Judovitz has acquitted herself in what can only be described as a long overdue  tour de force . Sadly, academic art history often downplays the spiritual dimension of a painter’s life and work, implying that biblical or religious content and its painterly treatment is the demand of the commissioning patron and not reflective of the inner life of the artist. As Judovitz notes in  Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible , there are few famous artists of this early modern period about whose life and circumstances so little is known as is the case with Georges de La Tour (1593–1652). However, with consummate skill, Judovitz opens for her readers—through a thorough analysis of a selection of his paintings—a vista into the spiritual imagination of this mysterious artist about whom so little biographical information has yet been found. Judovitz addresses a lacuna in contemporary art historical writing: in the specific case of La Tour, the spirituality inherent in a work of art and how it is manifest in the medium of paint-on-canvas and made apparent in visual representation. Drawing on her own foundations in French philosophy and aesthetics, Judovitz presents an inquiry into the visual representation of spirituality. For example, there is nothing prosaic about her treatment of the symbolic value of light, a quality with which La Tour’s work is suffused. The search for an academic discourse with which to discuss the visual representation of spirituality in two-dimensional artwork is at the forefront in Spirituality Studies. Judovitz makes a significant contribution to this field with her superb interdisciplinary study, deploying the many academic skills and resources at her disposal, lending her sensitive insights both depth and discipline. Having been rediscovered approximately a century ago by art historian Herman Voss, La Tour’s star is now in the ascendant. Compared with his notable contemporaries, there is a dearth of writing about this artist, making Judovitz’s gaze upon and inquiry of these artworks an original and profound addition to the literature on La Tour. Hopefully, others will follow her example and bring similar resources and sensitivity to the analysis of works by other artists. Excluding the introduction and epilogue, there are five chapters in this book, each dealing with one or two paintings and a theme—such as betrayal—with chapter 2 devoted to the character of St. Peter. Light, sight, mirrors, and reflections occupy the first chapter’s meditations on paintings of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalen. Chapter 3 delves into the symbolic role of the book, the Word, and the representation of reading with particular reference to  St. Jerome Reading and The Education of the Virgin . Featured on the book’s cover,  The Flea Catcher  is the focus of chapter 4. Judovitz illumines for the reader “how this puzzling painting negotiates the transfiguration of ordinary reality into spirit through its treatment of the mundane content” (82). Chapter 5 considers the use of light and shadow, primarily in the paintings  Newborn Child, The Adoration of the Shepherds ,  and  St. Sebastian Tended by Irene   (x2). The spiritual contents of the paintings are well conceived and placed within the theological context of the Catholic Reform of the 17th century. My only critique of the book is that the scriptural texts might have received further treatment. They are well noted, but often interesting intertextualities are alluded to without being fully developed. However, for the reader unfamiliar with the biblical narratives, resonances, and inspirations behind these paintings, Judovitz offers a superb introduction to how they have been received by the artist. She has done a service to those who work at the intersection of theology, biblical studies, and the visual arts and are interested in pursuing research into La Tour’s paintings, drawing attention to the many, often subtle, biblical allusions within his art. This is a very readable book that requests of its readers that they linger over sentences as one might pause in front of the painting or sit on a nearby bench and stay with it a while. Judovitz’s treatment of the paintings analyzed are beautifully written theological reflections and repay a close and savoring reading. There are also twenty-five full-color reproductions, along with four black and white detail close-ups, so the artwork being discussed is conveniently close at hand at all times. Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible   should be well-stocked and displayed in every art gallery and museum shop where a Georges de La Tour painting is to be found. It will be of use to all those with a specific interest in La Tour’s art and, more generally, in theology, spirituality, and the visual arts. I found myself searching for a major La Tour exhibition and apparently there is one this spring in Milan. I can think of no better preparation for such an event than reading this truly delightful book. Amanda Dillon is Adjunct Professor at the Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin. Amanda Dillon Date Of Review: February 4, 2019

Dalia Judovitz  is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of French at Emory University. Her books include Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes, The Culture of the Body, and more recently, works on Duchamp and modernist aesthetics.

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Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible

by Dalia Judovitz

Fordham University Press

Celebrated due to the aura of mystery attached to his rediscovered works in the twentieth century, Georges de La Tour’s paintings continue to be an object of scholarly interest and public fascination. Exploring the representations of light, vision and the visible in his works, this interdisciplinary study raises seminal questions regarding the nature of painting and its artistic, theological, and conceptual implications. If the visible presents an enigma in La Tour’s pictorial works, this is because familiar objects of visible reality serve as emblems of an invisible, spiritual reality. La Tour’s pursuit of likeness between image and the natural world bears the influence of the Catholic Reform’s call for the revitalization of religious imagery in the wake of Protestant iconoclastic outbreaks. Like the books shown in his paintings which are asking to be read, La Tour’s paintings are examined not just as visual depictions but also as instruments of insight, which ask to be deciphered ...

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Bibliography of the research collection of Jonathan Koestlé-Cate

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Ralf van Bühren

Excerpt ‒ Full text in: The Oxford Handbook of Divine Revelation, edited by Balázs M. Mezei, Francesca Aran Murphy and Kenneth Oakes, 622-640. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021

ABSTRACT. This chapter deals with visual artworks as media of divine revelation. Since the third century, Christianity as a religion of revelation is using images to transmit knowledge of God and His action in history. These pictures rate among the oldest communication media of revelation. Apse mosaics of late antique churches served anagogical purposes leading beyond the pictorial work to transcendent realities. Placed intentionally above the altar, Christ’s sacramental presence was given a visual form through his pictorial presence. In the Middle Ages, the perception of images could represent the beginning of anagogical ascent towards the transcendent divine. In the Renaissance occurred a rhetorical shift. Gazes and pointing gestures of the figures in a perspectival space draw the viewer’s attention to the stage-like performance of the divine. The Baroque rhetoric of visionary revelations deployed theatrical and illusionistic features. In contemporary history, the issue of revelation in art became frequently controversial because the concord between artistic self-expression and the Judeo-Christian understanding of revelation was no longer a given. Many vanguard artists shaped their work as aesthetical expression of their spiritual ideas (Kandinsky, Newman). At present, the individual responses to divine revelation continue (Lüpertz, Pawson).

Carla M Bino , Corinna Ricasoli

Michael Tweed

Marta Olesik

2021, Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture

Andrew Benjamin

2002, Portrait of the Artist as a Landscape: An Inquiry into Self-Reflexion, Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA, 2002

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1 The Enigma of the Visible

• Published: November 2017
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This chapter begins with an analysis of La Tour’s allegorical paintings of blind hurdy-gurdy musicians in order to explore the deceptive, even blinding, character of ordinary vision. These renderings of music making and audition (whose invisibility defies vision and challenges the representational purview of painting) are examined in reference to his portrayals of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalene. Figuring the attainment of spiritual insight rather than sight, these devotional works attest to a contemplative mode of seeing illuminated by the biblical Word. They challenge the viewer by attempting to depict what painting cannot ultimately show: namely, spoken words, audition, the passage of time, and spiritual passions reflecting changes of heart.

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Not rediscovered until the twentieth century, the works of Georges de La Tour retain an aura of mystery. At first sight, his paintings suggest a veritable celebration of light and the visible world, but this is deceptive. The familiarity of visual experience blinds the beholder to a deeper understanding of the meanings associated with vision and the visible in the early modern period. By exploring the representations of light, vision, and the visible in La Tour’s works, this interdisciplinary study examines the nature of painting and its artistic, religious, and philosophical implications. In the wake of iconoclastic outbreaks and consequent Catholic call for the revitalization of religious imagery, La Tour paints familiar objects of visible reality that also serve as emblems of an invisible, spiritual reality. Like the books in his paintings, asking to be read, La Tour’s paintings ask not just to be seen as visual depictions but to be deciphered as instruments of insight. In figuring faith as spiritual passion and illumination, La Tour’s paintings test the bounds of the pictorial image, attempting to depict what painting cannot ultimately show: words, hearing, time, movement, changes of heart. La Tour’s emphasis on spiritual insight opens up broader artistic, philosophical, and conceptual reflections on the conditions of possibility of the pictorial medium. By scrutinizing what is seen and how, and by questioning the position of the beholder, his works revitalize critical discussion of the nature of painting and its engagements with the visible world.

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Title: Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the ...

Publisher: Fordham University Press

Publication Date: 2017

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Not rediscovered until the twentieth century, the works of Georges de La Tour retain an aura of mystery. At first sight, his paintings suggest a veritable celebration of light and the visible world, but this is deceptive. The familiarity of visual experience blinds the beholder to a deeper understanding of the meanings associated with vision and the visible in the early modern period.

By exploring the representations of light, vision, and the visible in La Tour’s works, this interdisciplinary study examines the nature of painting and its artistic, religious, and philosophical implications. In the wake of iconoclastic outbreaks and consequent Catholic call for the revitalization of religious imagery, La Tour paints familiar objects of visible reality that also serve as emblems of an invisible, spiritual reality. Like the books in his paintings, asking to be read, La Tour’s paintings ask not just to be seen as visual depictions but to be deciphered as instruments of insight. In figuring faith as spiritual passion and illumination, La Tour’s paintings test the bounds of the pictorial image, attempting to depict what painting cannot ultimately show: words, hearing, time, movement, changes of heart.

La Tour’s emphasis on spiritual insight opens up broader artistic, philosophical, and conceptual reflections on the conditions of possibility of the pictorial medium. By scrutinizing what is seen and how, and by questioning the position of the beholder, his works revitalize critical discussion of the nature of painting and its engagements with the visible world.

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Georges de La Tour and the enigma of the visible

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• Illustrations Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Enigma of the Visible
• 2 Spiritual Passion and the Betrayal of Painting
• 3 The Visible and the Legible
• 4 Flea Catching and the Vanity of Painting
• 5 Painting as Portal: "Birth" and "Death" of the Sacred Image
• Selected Bibliography.
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