Gossart’s Bodies and Empathy

Abstract

Jan Gossart is well-known for introducing the mythological nude into Netherlandish painting. Equally significant was his discovery of the body in motion, in contact with others. In stressing this contingent aspect of the human body, Gossart appealed to an unprecedented degree to the viewer's empathic response. Such pictorial empathy, occasionally documented in the early modern period, has been a mainstay of arthistorical writing and aesthetics since the later nineteenth century. More recently, it has been endorsed by newer neurological research. By reviewing these critical approaches, I hope to demonstrate a line of embodied response that spans the centuries from Gossart's career to the present that may help us come to terms with some idiosyncratic aspects of his images.rom Italy. Certainly the portrayal of the human body, especially the naked body, was central to Gossart's art, as it had not been to his earlier countrymen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]