Monumental Sounds   Art and Listening before Dante (Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 55)

An examination of interactions between sight and hearing in Italian church decoration from 1260-1320. Giotto and other artists used naturalism to activate worshipers' spiritual listening, a source of anxiety for authorities in this "age of vision." In Monumental Sounds, Matthew G. Shoaf examines interactions between sight and hearing in spectacular church decoration in Italy between 1260 and 1320. In this'age of vision,'authorities'concerns about whether and how worshipers listened to sacred speech spurred Giotto and other artists to reconfigure sacred stories to activate listening and ultimately bypass phenomenal experience for attitudes of inner receptivity. New naturalistic styles served that work, prompting viewers to give voice to depicted speech and guiding them toward spiritually fruitful auditory discipline. This study reimagines narrative pictures as site-specific extensions of a cultural system that made listening a meaningful practice. Close reading of religious texts, poetry, and art historiography augments Shoaf's novel approach to pictorial naturalism and art's multisensorial dimensions. This book has received the Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award from the Newberry Library. The award supports the publication of outstanding works of scholarship that cover European civilization before 1700 in the areas of music, theater, French or Italian literature, or cultural studies. "In Monumental Sounds, Matthew G. Shoaf examines interactions between sight and hearing in spectacular church decoration in Italy between 1260-1320. In this "age of vision," authorities' concerns about whether and how worshipers listened to sacred speech spurred Giotto and other artists to reconfigure sacred stories to activate listening and ultimately bypass phenomenal experience for attitudes of inner receptivity. New naturalistic styles served that work, prompting viewers to give voice to depicted speech and guiding them toward spiritually fruitful auditory discipline. This study reimagines narrative pictures as site-specific extensions of a cultural system that made listening a meaningful practice. Close reading of religious texts, poetry, and art historiography augments Shoaf's novel approach to pictorial naturalism and art's multisensorial dimensions"-- Provided by publisher In "Monumental sounds", Matthew G. Shoaf examines interactions between sight and hearing in spectacular church decoration in Italy between 1260 and 1320. In this "age of vision," authorities' concerns about whether and how worshipers listened to sacred speech spurred Giotto and other artists to reconfigure sacred stories to activate listening and ultimately bypass phenomenal experience for attitudes of inner receptivity. New naturalistic styles served that work, prompting viewers to give voice to depicted speech and guiding them toward spiritually fruitful auditory discipline. This study reimagines narrative pictures as site-specific extensions of a cultural system that made listening a meaningful practice. Close reading of religious texts, poetry, and art historiography augments Shoaf's novel approach to pictorial naturalism and art's multisensorial dimensions Contents Acknowledgments Illustrations Introduction An Unheard Art 1 Knowing Hearing 2 Hearing Eclipsed 3 Shapers of Ears 4 Monumental Sounds Chapter 1 Listening Up 1 Aural Sensitivities 2 Lost Hearing 3 Great Listeners Chapter 2 The Ear, Estranged 1 Seeing Listening 2 Ear Blindness 3 Stasis and Significance Chapter 3 A Feast for the Ears 1 Giotto’s The Wedding Feast at Cana 2 Scale of Listening 3 Rebirth through the Ear 4 Aural Ambitions Chapter 4 Sound Restoration 1 Nicola Pisano’s Pulpit in Pisa 2 Raising Voices 3 Silenced Skeptic 4 Antique Resonance 5 Muted Clergy 6 Sculptural Ephpheta! Chapter 5 Higher Fidelity 1 The Isaac Frescoes in Assisi 2 Return of the Repressed Sense 3 Aural Ancestry 4 Hidden by Sight 5 Auditory Interests Conclusion Humbling Sight Bibliography Index of Modern Authors Index of Early Sources Index of Subjects