Experiencing the spiritual: Viewership and narrative painting in the early seicento

The intense spirit of reform in Post-Tridentine Rome affected many aspects of the visual arts, including the ways in which artists approached religious commissions. In the realm of private collecting and patronage, early Baroque artists employed new narrative strategies to convey well-known biblical stories. Adapting some of the narrative methods of Renaissance artists such as Titian and Savoldo, Caravaggio and his followers experimented with the depiction of biblical stories, often conveying several separate events within a single story into one carefully crafted moment. These narrative strategies were aimed at a sophisticated and erudite audience in order to engage them and offer a deeper spiritual experience. Through compositional and narratological techniques, Catholic Reformation painters constructed narratives that created a role for the viewer within the religious narrative, so that he might experience the familiar story in a new way and elucidate the import of the subject for his own spirituality. This thesis examines four paintings by naturalist artists in the collections of Benedetto and Vincenzo Giustiniani. With painters creating specific roles for the viewer, the depicted narratives in effect remain incomplete until the viewer discerns her place within it and thus finalizes the painting.