TY  - CHAP
A1  - Margolis, Oren
T1  - The book half open : humanist friendship in Holbein's portrait of Hermann von Wedigh III
T2  - Openness in Medieval Europe / ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum ; Cultural Inquiry ; 23
N2  - A small, blind-tooled volume sits on a table covered in green baize: one clasp is open, the other is closed; and a slip of paper emerges from it reading 'Veritas odium parit' ('truth breeds hatred'). This detail occurs in the foreground of a portrait by Hans Holbein of a young man identified as the Cologne patrician Hermann von Wedigh III (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). A study of the physical features of the book and of the history of the brief text - actually an ancient and then Erasmian adage - leads to a new interpretation of the painting in the context of humanist friendship. The book is seen to be a multivalent simile for the work of art authored by the artist as well as for the sitter himself, raising questions about the implications for these of a medium that can be opened and closed. The half-open condition of the book is understood to reflect the complementary pressures of openness and closedness, accessibility and intimacy, that characterized the Renaissance republic of letters.
KW  - Holbein, Hans
KW  - Buch <Motiv>
KW  - Terentius Afer, Publius
KW  - Andria
KW  - Rezeption
KW  - Erasmus, Desiderius
KW  - Adagia
KW  - Freundschaft
KW  - Humanismus
KW  - Books in paintings
KW  - Classical reception
KW  - Northern Renaissance
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/68719
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-687193
UR  - https://press.ici-berlin.org/doi/10.37050/ci-23/margolis_the-book-half-open.pdf
SN  - 978-3-96558-029-9
SN  - 978-3-96558-030-5
SN  - 2627-731X
SP  - 290
EP  - 310
PB  - ICI Press
CY  - Berlin
ER  -