The Italian Renaissance, the Flemish Primitives, the Dutch Golden Age: the great achievements of premodern European painting are connected by a shared visual language. Hand gestures are everywhere in that language. We encounter them in religious art, family portraits, and civic group portraits alike. What do these gestures have to tell us?
Previous scholarship has proposed a variety of interpretations. Ingenious and illuminating though they are, these explanations miss a crucial point. Portraits featuring hand gestures can be read as signatures. They draw the viewer’s attention to the makers and commissioners of the artworks in which they appear. Once this insight is gained, no museum visit will ever be the same again.
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