The Revelatory Qualities of Style

Abstract

The cover image of “Thinking through Style” positions the reader/viewer on the gallery of the Doge’s Palace, looking through the Venetian Gothic arcade to the island of San Giorgio. Our reading of the distant church of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its classical temple façade and its much later neoclassical bell tower, is enhanced by the act of looking through the elegant trefoil-cusped apertures. This carefully chosen image directs us to the originating impulse of this collection of essays: the notion that the processes of thinking, reflecting, reasoning, and interpreting are engendered, animated, and elaborated with the aid of, or in consequence of, style.