Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible

Not rediscovered until the twentieth century, the works of Georges de La Tour retain an aura of mystery. At first sight, his paintings suggest a veritable celebration of light and the visible world, but this is deceptive. The familiarity of visual experience blinds the beholder to a deeper understanding of the meanings associated with vision and the visible in the early modern period. By exploring the representations of light, vision, and the visible in La Tour’s works, this interdisciplinary study examines the nature of painting and its artistic, religious, and philosophical implications. In the wake of iconoclastic outbreaks and consequent Catholic call for the revitalization of religious imagery, La Tour paints familiar objects of visible reality that also serve as emblems of an invisible, spiritual reality. Like the books in his paintings, asking to be read, La Tour’s paintings ask not just to be seen as visual depictions but to be deciphered as instruments of insight. In figuring faith as spiritual passion and illumination, La Tour’s paintings test the bounds of the pictorial image, attempting to depict what painting cannot ultimately show: words, hearing, time, movement, changes of heart. La Tour’s emphasis on spiritual insight opens up broader artistic, philosophical, and conceptual reflections on the conditions of possibility of the pictorial medium. By scrutinizing what is seen and how, and by questioning the position of the beholder, his works revitalize critical discussion of the nature of painting and its engagements with the visible world. Additional ISBNs0823277437, 0823277445, 9780823277438, 9780823277445Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible is written by Dalia Judovitz and published by Fordham University Press. ISBNs for Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible are 9780823277469, 0823277461 and the print ISBNs are 9780823277438, 0823277437. Additional ISBNs include 0823277437, 0823277445, 9780823277438, 9780823277445.