Neither here nor elsewhere: displacement devices in representing the supernatural

How might the supernatural be represented in those religious paintings that imply continuity between the virtual space of painting and the real space of the beholder? Such an implied continuity might be thought to threaten a necessary distance demanded of religious works. This paper examines how a number of Italian paintings employ strategies for representing the supernatural through displacement devices that open up a 'gap' within perception - an inviolable space that is implied as being outside of normal spatiotemporal relations. The contention is that these distancing devices are dependent upon an imagined spatial proximity that is established but then broken. They exploit inherent ambiguities as to where a painting is relative to its beholder, through the withholding of perspectival distance and positional cues for a discrete section of the work.

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