Susanna Berger – författare

A fascinating account of the use and meaning of visual and spatial distortions in seventeenth-century art and architectureDuring the Catholic Reformation, patrons, artists, architects, and viewers, especially in Rome, were strongly drawn to visual and spatial distortions or “deformations”—works of art and architecture that were designed to be visually incomprehensible, at least initially. From Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome to the attention-grabbing prospettiva in the city’s Palazzo Spada and the anamorphoses that define the corridors and walls of Minim and Jesuit buildings, The Deformation explores what this intriguing phenomenon reveals about contemporary religious belief, optics, and the natural sciences, as well as wider questions about attention and discernment.Failing to conform to an established ideal, deformations required a “reformation” to achieve that ideal. Anamorphic deformations, for example, could only be reformed into clarity when viewed from a particular angle or through a special mirror. Susanna Berger examines how deformations were experienced by beholders, and how they were embraced or opposed by critics. The book shows how deformations and related works—whether altar tabernacles, ephemeral religious architecture, churches, monumental sundials, colonnades with accelerated perspective, illusionistic frescoes, turned ivories, or painted anamorphoses—focused observers’ attention on theological mysteries and the social power and sophistication of patrons. The book’s rich illustrations include two gatefolds and some anamorphic images that can be seen without distortion by using an included reflective insert as a mirror.Looking at writings as well as visual works in multiple artistic media not typically considered in relation to each other, The Deformation offers a new interpretation of deformation that highlights the delay between perception and discernment.

The first book to explore the role of images in philosophical thought and teaching in the early modern period Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, The Art of Philosophy shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction. From frontispieces of books to monumental prints created by philosophers in collaboration with renowned artists, Susanna Berger examines visual representations of philosophy and overturns prevailing assumptions about the limited function of the visual in European intellectual history. Rather than merely illustrating already existing philosophical concepts, visual images generated new knowledge for both Aristotelian thinkers and anti-Aristotelians, such as Descartes and Hobbes. Printmaking and drawing played a decisive role in discoveries that led to a move away from the authority of Aristotle in the seventeenth century.Berger interprets visual art from printed books, student lecture notebooks, alba amicorum (friendship albums), broadsides, and paintings, and examines the work of such artists as Pietro Testa, Leonard Gaultier, Abraham Bosse, Durer, and Rembrandt. In particular, she focuses on the rise and decline of the "plural image," a genre that was popular among early modern philosophers. Plural images brought multiple images together on the same page, often in order to visualize systems of logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, or moral philosophy. Featuring previously unpublished prints and drawings from the early modern period and lavish gatefolds, The Art of Philosophy reveals the essential connections between visual commentary and philosophical thought.

Firstly, it seeks to bring text-based scholars in the history of philosophy together with social and cultural historians to examine the interaction between tradition and innovation in the early modern classroom, the site where traditional views of the world were transmitted to the generation that was to give birth to modern philosophy and science.