Chvála ciceronství - Umělecká díla mezi pohádkou a vědou – Slavíček Lubomír (2011)

This collection explores the tradition of “ciceronism” in eighteenth-century Italy, especially Rome, where learned and eloquent guides accompanied aristocratic visitors and introduced them directly before works of art to their aesthetic qualities and emotional experience. The tradition remains alive in modern art history through the work of scholars such as M. Baxandall, F. Haskell and D. Arasse, who have presented well-known and repeatedly viewed works in a new light and in new contexts. Their dialogues with artworks, viewers and readers recall the social and entertaining ways of mediating art that were common before nineteenth-century historicism and scientific positivism. In the Czech context, a return to ciceronism—careful looking at a work of art and dialogical interaction with it—is associated with Jiří Kroupa, a professor at the Brno Seminar of Art History, whose jubilee this volume commemorates. Twenty-four contemporary Czech and international art historians offer studies interpreting a particular work or group of works through their own distinctive “ciceronian” dialogues. Some works are very well known, while others are almost unknown; their interpreters seek to present, explain and make them accessible in ways different from those used before. These dialogues aim not only to contribute to a better understanding and experience of art, but also to provide readers with what Jiří Kroupa calls “the entertaining joy of looking.”