Moving Pictures and Renaissance Art History

584 Pages·2021·5.932 MB·English

by  Patricia Emison

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IN TRANSITION
Moving Pictures and
Renaissance Ar t Histor y
patricia emison
Moving Pictures and Renaissance Art History

Moving Pictures and
Renaissance Art History
Patricia Emison
Amsterdam University Press
With thanks to libraries and librarians, especially Interlibrary Loan and the National
Emergency Library of spring 2020. To the readers, Dr. Ben Thomas and an anonymous one,
for their insights, corrections, and generosity—many thanks. Thanks also to David Feldman,
generally knowledgeable, insightful, and curious, and to the late Dr. Thomas Elsaesser,
editor of the series to which this belongs. I gave a first talk on these matters at the Medieval-
Renaissance Forum at Yale University in 2007: thanks to all those who have listened and
responded over the years, not least both of my parents, whose various reminiscences grace
the text.
Appreciation also to the Dean of Liberal Arts and to the Center for the Humanities,
University of New Hampshire, for a publication subvention.
My apologies for the errors and insufficiencies I have failed to recognize.
Cover illustration, front: Spoof of School of Athens, featuring Fred and Ginger in place of Plato
and Aristotle, and Agnès Varda and Charlie Chaplin in place of Heraclitus and Diogenes.
By Chloë Feldman Emison. Back: Cabiria (Giulietta Masina), with Ivan (Alberto Sordi) and
others at fountain by Giacomo della Porta, 1589, in the Piazza di Campitelli, Lo sceicco bianco,
Organizzazione Film Internazionale, 1952, screenshot; and two angels in final scene of Cabin
in the Sky, posed in the manner of Raphael’s angels in the Sistine Madonna (though in reversed
order; images spliced), MGM, 1943, screenshots. (The hand of Ethel Waters appears at left.)
Cover design: Kok Korpershoek
Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout
isbn 978 94 6372 403 6
e-isbn 978 90 4855 162 0
doi 10.5117/9789463724036
nur 670
© P. Emison / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2021
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations
reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is
advised to contact the publisher.

Israhel van Meckenem, Self-Portrait with wife, Ida, c. 1490, engraving, 13 x 17.5 cm, Rosenwald
Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Godfrey and Irene (William Powell and Carole Lombard), My Man Godfrey, Universal, Gregory La
Cava, 1936, screenshot.
To my father, John C. Emison, in honor of his hundredth year, a member
of the first generation to grow up with movies, as I was with television
and my children, Chloë and Linnea, with personal computers.
Films are more ebullient than phosphorous
and more captivating than love.1
1 Antonin Artaud, in Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology, Robert Knopf, ed. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 390.
Table of Contents
Foreword 11
Prologue 17
1. The New and the Old in the Art of Cinema 41
2. The Machine Aesthetic 169
3. Competing with Text 293
4. After Eve 409
Epilogue 479
Bibliography 513
List of Films 537
Index 559