Ang Li
Art Museum of China Academy of Art
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1800-7081
Abstract This article examines how the changing viewing angle affects the fluidity of meaning-making in two of Michelangelo’s most famous sculptures, the Rome Pietà and the Bruges Madonna. Using the evidence of both print and photographic reproductions, this article argues that Michelangelo’s Rome Pietà as well as the Bruges Madonna would invite the beholder to walk around the statues and view them from diverse viewpoints, which consequently would reveal diverse but interconnected thematic dimensions of the Christian iconography. By focusing on these two well-known sculptures, this article aims to suggest more generally that it is a neglected but important fact that around 1500 artworks produced in Italy would often invite a multiplicity of viewing and interpretive angles, rather than a fixed and immobile viewing point, as established by Alberti’s linear perspective.
Keywords Italian Renaissance art, Michelangelo, Leonardo, viewing point, meaning, viewer/beholder
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The Edgar Wind Journal 8: 85-119, 2025
DOI: 10.53245/EWJ-000042
Copyright: © 2025 A. Li. This is an open access, peer-reviewed article published by Bernardino Branca