40. Falling from Suspension: Chiaroscuro and the Unstable Body in Early Modern Images

This session examines “falling from suspension” in early modern images: the moment when a body that seems to rise, fly, or levitate is recalled by shadow, flesh, and weight. Recent work on descent, embodiment, and verticality has renewed attention to the body’s relation to earth, air, and sky. Yet the antinomy within suspension itself remains less explored. Suspension is not always a stable passage toward transcendence rather it may contain its own fall. Meanwhile the failure of ascent may open a renewed proximity to the ground.

The session asks how this instability becomes visible. What roles do chiaroscuro, posture, color, and unfinished form play in making falling perceptible? How do images of levitation, flight and fall challenge accounts of early modern bodies as substance? Rather than treating chiaroscuro as a secondary effect of modelling, the session considers it as an unstable boundary through which bodies pass between light and shadow, ascent and descent, vision and material weight.

Building on Horst Bredekamp’s work on Michelangelo, especially his argument of the connections between The Last Judgment, The Fall of Phaeton, The Rape of Ganymede, and Tityus, this session asks how suspension itself can be made to fall. We invite papers that investigate how chiaroscuro, bodily torsion, and other pictorial devices render forces perceptible as sensible forms.

Themes: Chiaroscuro; gravity; Michelangelo

Additional format comment: The session will take the form of a panel with a respondent and time reserved for discussion.

Lead Convenor: Minqian Pan, University of Fribourg (CH), Switzerland

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.