The profuse Gothic ornament of the early sixteenth century has often been judged typical of Gothic decline, in accordance with the long‐standing dictates of modernism. Yet ornament offered a means of refurbishing this traditional mode, which was then being challenged by alternative Italian practice. In central Europe especially, architects inscribed conspicuous geometrical patterns on the interior of their churches – on elegantly figured vaults and on the balustrades to galleries and ecclesiastical furnishings. Framed and isolated for regard, these were pictures of geometry that could be received as utterances in that ideal mathematical language of divine conception and creation. Furthermore, designers often arranged geometrical shapes in sequences that invited a narrative reading, imbuing the forms with a sense of direction and purpose. Late Gothic ornament thus provided a commentary on religious authority and mediated the experience of sacred structures.
is well-known for introducing the mythological nude into Netherlandish painting. Equally significant was his discovery of the body in motion, in contact with others. In stressing this contingent aspect of the human body, Gossart appealed to an unprecedented degree to the viewer's empathic response. Such pictorial empathy, occasionally documented in the early modern period, has been a mainstay of arthistorical writing and aesthetics since the later nineteenth century. More recently, it has been endorsed by newer neurological research. By reviewing these critical approaches, I hope to demonstrate a line of embodied response that spans the centuries from Gossart's career to the present that may help us come to terms with some idiosyncratic aspects of his images.rom Italy. Certainly the portrayal of the human body, especially the naked body, was central to Gossart's art, as it had not been to his earlier countrymen.
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