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Gothic as a genre has become more amorphous and difficult to contain. This book brings together for the first time many of the multifarious visual motifs and media associated with Gothic together with areas that have never received serious study or mention in this regard before. It draws attention to an array of dark artefacts such as Goth and Gothic jewellery, dolls, posters and food, which, though part of popular mass marketing, have often been marginalised and largely omitted from the mainstream of Gothic Studies publishing. The book moves from the earliest Gothic architecture to décor and visual aspects of theatrical design, masquerade and dance. It focuses on paintings in two historical spans from Jan Van Eyck to Henry Fuseli and from Goya to H. R. Giger to consider Clovis Trouille's works influenced by horror films and Vincent Castiglia's paintings in blood. Gothic engravings, motifs of spectral portraits, posters and signs are covered. The book then uses early visual devices like Eidophusikon and the long-lived entertainment of peepshows to introduce a discussion of projection technologies like magic lanterns and, subsequently, film and TV. Gothic photography from Daguerreotypes onwards; and Gothic font, scripts and calligraphy are then discussed. Finally, the book presents a survey of the development of newer Gothic media, such as video gaming, virtual reality (VR) games and survival horror apps.
.1 ). ‘Gothic’ was subsequently a designation employed originally by Renaissance artists to refer to Medieval architecture. I begin my consideration of Gothic art and architecture starting in France in the early twelfth century and continue my discussion with the work of Carlo Crivelli and Jan Van Eyck, painters of the Late Gothic period in art. As Fred Botting writes, politicians in Britain from the mid
context for maps and cartography. Bartolomeo Facio, the fifteenth-century Italian writer and humanist, saw a map made by Jan Van Eyck for Philip the Good, now lost and known only through his description from around 1456: There is a circular representation of the world painted by him for Philip, prince of the Belgians, and it is thought that in our own time no one has made a more perfect work. It is not only possible to see the location of various places and continents on it, but to measure the distance between them.5 Elizabeth Dhanens argued that Van Eyck’s map was
similar set of concerns. Finally, it should be emphasised that ekphrastic poems should be able to work independently of the image concerned, which is not usually printed alongside the poem. Sometimes the image will be a familiar one, like The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, used in Paul Durcan’s ‘The Arnolfini Marriage’ (discussed later), which many readers will be aware of in their mind’s eye as they read the poem. But the ekphrastic object is just as likely to be (say) a photograph which has never been published before, though it may be used as the cover of the
the sixth-century Ravenna mosaics, or an illumination of around 1290 in a Book of Hours. 21 From the sixth century onwards, each Holy Woman generally holds a spice container, with thuribles more common in the iconography until the tenth century, and apothecary pots increasingly dominant thereafter – as in the great altarpieces of Duccio (Maestà, c. 1310) or Jan van Eyck (Ghent altarpiece, c. 1423). 22 This iconographic formula varied little for many centuries, and
MS 72516: Anne Dormer to Elizabeth Trumbull, 10 September c . 1687. 56 BL, Trumbull, Add MS 72516: Anne Dormer to Elizabeth Trumbull, 22 June c . 1687. 57 See, for example, Linda Siedel’s exploration of Jan van Eyck’s fifteenth-century altarpiece
. One of the most impressive paintings of the Late Gothic is Jan Van Eyck’s Annunciation and the visitant angel’s jewels and be-gemmed crown are key details of the scene. Van Eyck was able to make the stones of the necklace gleam and dazzle by painting glaze over highlights, an effect that is only emphasised by the shade of the chapel interior. The growing popularity of this type of adornment in the
for control links in his mind to the personal power he associates with the production of famous art: ‘Robert could see himself in the mirror as if he were the artist who had created all before him, both the room and the room reflected’ (Madden, 1986 : 135). However, the artwork to which he here defensively relates his present position in Theresa’s home – Jan van
shared by the townsmen of the Low Countries among whom they lived. 5 In music, one can no longer speak of a court style entirely distinct from that of the city, at least in Bruges. 6 Jan van Eyck was a court painter in receipt of an annual pension, but he also worked for Flemish poorters (or privileged burghers), perhaps most famously alderman Joos Vijd and his wife Lisbette Borluut from
theatrical performance could thus be put to the service of a multi-nodal political grouping designed to integrate, case by case, each of the duke's territories. The genealogical image outlived ephemeral festivities to be displayed in a more lasting form over the doors of municipal buildings. Consider, for example, the statuettes retracing the genealogy of the counts of Flanders installed on the facade of Bruges town hall and painted in polychrome by Jan van Eyck – a procedure which we find again in Brussels