The visionary experience of Renaissance art

Abstract

Abstract Although the general tendency of Italian Renaissance art is towards the imitation of nature, the religious art of the period is primarily visionary-it renders exalted, idealized images of the heavenly realm and aspires to induce in the beholder the worshipful, devoted contemplation of divine things. This art illustrates or embodies visions, whether of images of saints gazing heavenward in ecstasy or heavenly buildings of remarkable luminosity and geometric perfection; it also encourages the worshiper to enter the spirit of the very vision that he beholds in illusion. Heavenly works of art from the period are so numerous, however, so conventional, and therefore so familiar, that we easily lose sight of their visionary intentions, and we overlook the question of how such works might have originally been experienced.