Leseprobe

63 what these spaces share is their creation of a situation that changes the way objects work. Drawn together here as case studies of ‘framed’ or ‘displayed’ objects, these religious spaces are also intended more generally as three examples to think with, that is, three examples through which to engage with the broader methodological imperatives of this book. How can frames and displays change the meaning of objects? And beyond even that, how can these external conditions give inanimate things active and performative roles, allowing them to enact ideas and create experiences for, and with, their beholders? 1 Pentecost in the Refectory Jean Restout’s Pentecost (Fig. 1) was painted in 1732 for the refectory of the Abbey of Saint- Denis. Long since removed from its original setting, the Pentecost hangs today in the Lou- vre, where—magnificent as the grand format painting remains—it is difficult for any museum-goer to grasp its full effect. On one hand, this is due to later physical alterations, the canvas having been cut down and reshaped; but on the other hand, it is because the object has been unwittingly broken by its display—broken in the sense that it no longer ‘works’ like it once did. 2 Now displayed at eye-level on a museumwall, hanging opposite windows that plunge it into raking light in the afternoon sun, Restout’s dramatic illusion- ism is lost and with it the simulated phenomenological encounter that it once promised. For its ‘engaged spectators’ (to borrow John Shearman’s term), those residents of the Abbey of Saint-Denis for whom the artwork was originally intended, Restout’s painting Figure 1: Jean Restout, Pentecost , 1732, oil on canvas, 465×778 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre.