Publisher's Synopsis
The author discusses the Mantuan fresco's key position in the iconographic 'Nachleben' of the Kairos/Occasio figure, and the way the theme was accustomed in the Quattrocento and the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The ancient Greeks had a name for the joy as well as the sorrow of an occasion that suddenly presents itself, but disappears just as swiftly: kairos, or in Latin occasio. Using the Mantua grisaille as starting point and leading motif, Barbara Baert guides us in her own intriguing way through the history of the representation of this figure in art. How did the archaic Greek Kairos model survive in the Quattrocento? Which appearances did Kairos take on along the way and how can we explain his mutations? The author shows us how the semantic and rhetorical expansion of the concept kairos/occasio brought about gender switches and conflations with other personifications of time and fate. Grasping the lock of hair
