Secular Charity, Sacred Poverty: Picturing the Poor in Renaissance Venice

Abstract

The poor were depicted with increasing frequency and prominence in Venetian art of the sixteenth century. This new level of visualization within the fictive space of representation indirectly reflects contemporary attempts to exclude poveri and other undesirables from the actual space of the city. Increased state involvement in poor relief stimulated a new iconography of secular charity featuring almsgiving by patrician officials, presented in an hierarchical manner that pointedly departs from the more communal depictions in paintings commissioned by the city's non‐noble scuole. But it was in religious painting for the city's churches and monasteries that the visual imagery of poverty was most dramatically improved, with reference both to sacred and devotional texts stressing poverty as a sacred value and to formal models from antique and High Renaissance art. The povero increasingly appeared as an idealized human archetype whose suffering and humility associated him directly with Christ. The article concludes by arguing that the symbolization of the poor as significant sacred actors in visual art was an aspect of their repression and exclusion in the social domain.

Escuchar el cuerpo: una aproximación iconográfica a la representación del cuidado, de la tradición pictórica cristiana al cine y la esfera pública contemporáneos

“…Como consecuencia de ello, así como del nuevo contexto humanístico, los grandes temas en relación con la enfermedad son el gesto de corte y la intervención quirúrgica -ya anunciada en obras como La extracción de la piedra de la locura (1475-1480), de El Bosco-, así como el efecto escenográfico de la taumaturgia. Los cuidados, los pobres, pasan a un segundo término (Nichols, 2007;Kaminska, 2019). Allí donde la "pequeña forma" aviñetada de la narrativa medieval admitía un bajo sostenido capaz de retratar los cuidados, la reinvención que los artistas del Renacimiento hicieron de los motivos de la mitología grecolatina, lo que Aby Warburg denominó el "renacimiento del paganismo antiguo" (2005) supuso una priorización de la figura del médico, o del milagro por encima de la figura de la enfermera, la monja o la cuidadora.…”

Extracting A Social Type From Divan Poetry: The Example Of The Geda

“…Because of this, the city of Herat is often compared to Florence(Uslu, 1998). 20 Nichols' work of 2007 reflects the beggar's relation with the city, rich, and the church in sixteenth-century Venice(Nichols, 2007). This work shows us the sociological history of an overlooked part of the public behind the "mythical" rich and glorious image of the city.…”