Vision, cognition, and self-reflection in Rogier van der Weyden's Bladelin triptych

• Autores: Bret Louis Rothstein
• Localización: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, ISSN 0044-2992, Vol. 64, Nº. 1, 2001, págs. 37-55
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The writer discusses vision as a broad, sometimes contradictory, conceptual category in Roger van der Weyden's 15th-century Bladelin triptych in Berlin. The painting's narrative of visible revelation—four annunciations are depicted—establishes paired hierachies of showing and seeing that range from the literal (visual experience) to the metaphorical (direct contact with the divine). The composition is designed to engage the viewer as a fellow witness. The writer suggests that this parallelism of viewer and subject matter renders the act of looking self-reflexive and thus locates the viewer within the very hierarchy he observes.