Masterclass Frances Gage: Imagination in medicine and the arts

The idea of ‘imagination’ is central to the humanities and indispensable in the medical- and health sciences. Everyone knows that the imagination can make you sick and vice versa, that it can make you feel better. Psychosomatics is full of examples of how ideas can cause psychological and bodily distress, while at the same time creative – and imaginative! – techniques from the humanities, such as writing, music, drawing, and painting, can help the healing process. On another level, imaging techniques have been central to medical learning, diagnostic techniques and medical research and the interpretation of test- and research results often depends on our visual and imaginative thinking. This is the case in premodern anatomical work as well as in the latest MRI technology.

The masterclass ‘Imagination in medicine and the arts’ is inspired by the work of art historian Frances Gage (Buffalo State University), who will also give a public keynote lecture at the end of the Class. In her groundbreaking book Painting as Medicine in Early Modern Rome (Pennsylvania, 2008), she has shown that paintings were understood to have profound effects on the minds, imaginations, and bodies of viewers. This interpretation of the value of paintings and the motivations for buying them, challenges the idea that art was mainly because of economic or status-based reasons. Instead, paintings were believed to have profound health effects and conducive to civic and moral behaviour. The title of Gage’s lecture is: Picturing La Vecchia: Time, Gender and Aging in the Early Modern Imagination.

Indicative programme
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee / Tea
11.00 – 12.30 Short lectures Keizer and Knoeff on (1) the early modern visual representation of air for health; and (2) early modern medical theories on psychosomatics that explain how paintings could make you feel better.
12.30 – 13.15 Lunch
13.15 – 14.45 Discussion of a chapter from Gage’s work
14.45 – 15.30 Group works on the assignment
15.30 – 16.00 Coffee / Tea
16.00 – 17.30 Keynote lecture

For more information on the full programme, learning aims and assessment of the masterclass, please visit this website.