Timothy Revell erhält den Bader-Preis für Kunstgeschichte für sein Dissertationsprojekt The Art of Rubens and the Poetics of Comedy
Peter Paul Rubens is best known as a painter but also as a diplomat, courtier, collector, and architect. But what about comedian? Despite the many amusing moments in Rubens’s oeuvre there has been hitherto no full-scale examination of Rubens’s use of comedy. Perhaps this is because Rubens often embedded his use of comedy within images of drama and pathos. One only has to think of the dramatic scene of Boreas Abducting Orithyia, who blisters through a cold sky with a helpless Orithyia, followed by giggling putti conducting what seems to be the very first representation of a snowball fight. This dissertation seeks to show that it is precisely in the midst of such drama that laughter was most useful and effective on the beholder.
However, Rubens’s use of the comedy must be examined with a multi-layered perspective, one that aims at reconstructing different horizons of comedy. Rubens’s antiquarian tendencies and knowledge of ancient texts were not only used for iconographic purposes but also to imbue meaning and efficacy. The stoic tenet espoused by Seneca of laughing at malignancy led Rubens, as this dissertation will show, to use certain images for active stoic convalescence; that is, to induce laughter as a form of medicinal healing. But Seneca also warns against the overuse of comedy. Thus we often see, as mentioned above, the comedic as ‘side act’ in Rubens’s larger images of dramatic poignancy. Other classical sources, including Horace, advocate for the intermingling of tragedy and comedy, which, when combined, potently increase the efficacy on the beholder.
Aristotelian poetics indicates deviation from societal norms and behaviors but Quintilian adds that folly may indeed be comedic but it can be sharpened by wit. Rubens often wittily reworked classical sources in this way. This would have simultaneously evinced Rubens’s courtly knowledge of comedy which leads, as texts on courtly behavior denote, to joy. This presents an increasingly multifaceted use of comedy’s ability to triumph over worldly tribulations. All this is achieved through Rubens’s visual use of different comedic markers such as costumes, gestures, juxtaposition and incongruity. Clearly, Rubens’s comedy was not mere drollery but a highly cultivated skill.
The main ambition of this dissertation is thus to give credence to Rubens the comedic painter, and to form comedy as central component in Rubens’s work through which the efficacy of these images on the beholder was a prevailing force.
Timothy Revell hat 2018 das Masterstudium History of Art and Visual Culture am Linacre College, University of Oxford, abgeschlossen, wo er das John Bamborough MSc Scholarship erhielt. An der Queen´s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, machte er 2017 den Abschluss (Bachelor of Arts Honours) im Fach Kunstgeschichte mit der Medal for Art History. 2015-2016 war Timothy Revell Baden-Württemberg Stipendiat an der Universität Heidelberg.
Seit September 2018 ist Timothy Revell Mitarbeiter als Kunstvermittler und Historiker am Roche Court Educational Trust, Wiltshire, England.
Timothy Revell führt sein Dissertationsprojekt am Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Wien durch, wo er seit dem Jahr 2020 Renaissance und Barockkunst studiert; seine Dissertationsbetreuer ist Prof. Sebastian Schütze.