Inhaltszusammenfassung

In 1618, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) completed their monumental set of paintings on The Five Senses, now at the Museo del Prado. These paintings bring together an unparalleled wealth of every conceivable kind of motif carrying sensual implications. The Sense of Touch is set in a ruinous, cave-like structure filled with a surreal array of very different objects and figures associated with that sense. In addition to a multitude of weapons and armours hig...In 1618, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) completed their monumental set of paintings on The Five Senses, now at the Museo del Prado. These paintings bring together an unparalleled wealth of every conceivable kind of motif carrying sensual implications. The Sense of Touch is set in a ruinous, cave-like structure filled with a surreal array of very different objects and figures associated with that sense. In addition to a multitude of weapons and armours highlighting the sentient body’s vulnerability and its need for protection, one can also see a forge, pieces of wrought-iron work and various surgical instruments. While human beings and animals toiling under heavy loads in the distance to the left call to mind the experience of physical hardship, the foreground is taken up by the central pair of Venus and Cupid. Optically enhanced by a red tapestry, mother and son are presented naked in a close embrace culminating in a tender kiss – a sensual erotic counterpoint to the laborious and painful experiences mediated by the sense of touch. Remarkably, the two protagonists are themselves framed by paintings: a vision of hell and a battle scene together with a scene from the Passion and a surgical operation. As a “mise en abyme”, these paintings-within-a-painting reaffirm the fact that other senses, such as the sense of touch, can be called into play and become the stuff of experience, even though paintings primarily engage the sense of sight. In its close juxtaposition of pleasurable and painful tactile experiences the painting appraises the relevant “haptic subjects” of early modern painting. Interest in a plurisensitive experience of pictures has undergone a remarkable renaissance in recent years. The foundation for this was laid in groundbreaking debates about the artistic realisation of sensual experience involving, among others, Louise Vinge, Carl Nordenfalk, Hartmut Böhme, Sylvia Ferino Pagden, Robert Jütte and Hans Körner. The question of the pictorial evocation of the sense of touch may nevertheless justify an attempt to sketch a history of the visual representation of tactile experience, with a specific focus on renderings of pleasure and pain as the two extremes of sensory perception. Rubens and Brueghel the Elder offer a poignant triad of motifs within the strictly confined space of their painting: Christ’s history of suffering, the experience of ordinary pain and physical pleasure.» weiterlesen» einklappen

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DDC Sachgruppe:
Malerei