M Bacci F Crivello and V Scepanovic Eds

Iconographica Library .
IM
MAGES
IN PREMODERN SOCIETIES
A DIALOGUE ABOUUT THE ST
TA
ATE OF THE FIELD
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 20 ANNIVERSAR
T
TH RY OF «ICONOGRAPHICA»
edited by
Michele Bacci, Fabrizioo Crivello, and Ve
Vesna Šćepanović
FIRENZE
SISMEL · EDIZ
ZIONI DEL GALLUZZO
ICONOGRAPHICA LIBRARY
1
ICONOGRAPHICA LIBRARY
Edited by the Chair of Medieval Art, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
EDITORS
Michele Bacci, Vesna Šćepanović,
Alexandre Varela Expósito
ADVISORY BOARD
Barbara Baert, Anne Dunlop, Ivan Foletti, Athanasios Semoglou
IMAGES IN PREMODERN SOCIETIES
A DIALOGUE ABOUT THE STATE OF THE FIELD
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY
OF «ICONOGRAPHICA»
edited by
Michele Bacci, Fabrizio Crivello, and Vesna Šćepanović
FIRENZE
SISMEL · EDIZIONI DEL GALLUZZO
2023
Published with the financial support
of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Fribourg
Iconographica. Studies in the History of Images

A Journal of the International Society for Medieval Latin Studies (SISMEL)
© 2023 SISMEL · EDIZIONI DEL GALLUZZO

via Montebello, 7 I-50123 Firenze
tel. +39.055.237.45.37 fax +39.055.239.92.93
[email protected] · [email protected]
www.sismel.it · www.mirabileweb.it
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-88-9290-264-0

DOI 10.36167/ICOL01PDF
© 2023 SISMEL · Edizioni del Galluzzo & the Authors
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Any use other than as authorized under this license

requires the written consent of the publisher.
INDEX
VII Editors’ Note, by Michele Bacci, Fabrizio Crivello, and Vesna Šćepanović
3 Herbert L. Kessler, Above Iconography

57 Hans Belting (†), Dante’s Encounter with Living “Shadows”
COMPENDIUM OF QUESTIONNAIRES
65 Luisa Elena Alcalá
72 Barbara Baert
81 Charles Barber
84 Claire Bosc-Tiessé
90 Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras González
100 Floriana Conte
107 Philippe Cordez
116 Vincent Debiais
121 Ralph Dekoninck
129 Anne Derbes
135 Jaś Elsner
141 Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo
149 Ivan Foletti
155 Beate Fricke
163 Thomas Kaffenberger
170 Yoshie Kojima
175 Aden Kumler
184 Oya Pancaroğlu
189 Pamela Patton
195 Sarit Shalev-Eyni
VI IMAGES IN PREMODERN SOCIETIES
202 Jean-Michel Spieser

210 Narcisse Santores Tchandeu
222 Maria Vassilaki
227 Annemarie Weyl Carr
233 Wu Hong
237 Photocredits
EDITORS’ NOTE
In the last thirty years, many books have been devoted to images and many new theo-
retical frameworks have been worked out to add an extra dimension to their understanding.
Therefore, it can be wondered to what extent another volume should be needed to
approach the different dynamics whereby images were used, perceived, approached, and
experienced in pre-modern societies. Admittedly, after the collective infatuation for images
in the wake of the so-called “iconic turn”, art historical research has largely turned toward
other topics, even if an impressive number of publications dealing with the interpretation
of visual forms is still being produced every year. Indeed, images lay at the core of the
research made throughout the world by scholars with expertise in art, visual studies, histo-
ry, anthropology, and many other fields of knowledge: depending on the approach, empha-
sis is laid on such factors as iconography, composition, style, materiality, context, function,
seriation, use, dissimilarities and similarities, placed-ness, or the involvement of figural
objects in social, religious, political, experiential, individual and collective, practices. Our
aim in this book is not so much to propose a new theory, but rather to explore the multiple
ways in which the image-notion is being used, approached, and understood in the everyday
work of visual researchers.
With this goal in mind, we asked several image-scholars from throughout the world, irre-
spective of their specialization, academic age, training, and cultural origins, to express their
ideas not so much as to the theory and ontology of images, but rather as to the ways in which
the image-notion has been negotiated and made use of in their own research work. A list of
sixteen questions was sent to the twenty-five scholars from different countries who accepted
our invitation: their answers are themselves a clear witness to a diversity of approaches that
cannot be simply traced back to major trends, fashions, and traditions of the art-historical
discipline, but should be understood as constructs of each scholar’s autonomous experience
in its dynamic interaction with the surrounding (cultural, political, academic) realities.
In addition to these interventions, the volume includes another two important texts.
Herbert Kessler’s dense essay offers not only a state of the art, but also envisages the future
perspectives of iconographic studies. In examining the shadow-notion in Dante’s Divine
Comedy, Hans Belting provides clues as to his own understanding of “images” and their role
in the art-historical discourse, thirty-two years after Bild und Kult and two decades after
Bild-Anthropologie. Hans left us on January 10th, 2023, to the regret of so many scholars
whose research activity owes so much to his thoughtful and ground-breaking works. We are
especially proud to honour his memory by publishing here one of his last contributions to
the art-historical discipline.
VIII IMAGES IN PREMODERN SOCIETIES
The book has also been conceived of as a tribute to the journal Iconographica, which, in
its twenty years of life and despite its limited means, never stopped promoting an unbiased,
interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural study of images in their multiple cultural, material, per-
formative, spatial, and visual dimensions. In addition, this volume inaugurates a new Sismel
series, which, drawing inspiration from the journal but expanding its perspectives, aims to
welcome innovative and unconventional studies on the multiple ways in which pre-modern
societies experienced, shaped, and conceptualised those complex, multifaceted and multi-
layered phenomena that, in the absence of a more precise expression, we are used to reducing
to the ambiguous category of ‘art’.
Warm thanks are due to all authors for their enthusiastic engagement in giving shape to
this odd and definitely idiosyncratic, but probably long-wished-for, book.
Michele Bacci
Fabrizio Crivello
Vesna Šćepanović
Herbert L. Kessler
ABOVE ICONOGRAPHY
For Walter S. Melion at seventy
“God is ‘above grammar’”

Erwin Panofsky, letter to the editor
of ARTnews, April 1961
When I was a graduate student at Princeton University, I sat in on Erwin Panofsky’s

iconography seminar. It must have been 1964. During one rambling, seemingly endless,
student report, Panofsky, like others in the room, had trouble staying wake. When the
presenter realized that his long recitations of texts were losing the audience, he asked
whether he should read the entire passage from the Book of Kings pertinent to his icono-
graphic argument or just summarize it. Noticing that the master had dozed off, he
rephrased his query in a louder voice: “Dr. Panofsky, should I read the Bible?” Jolted
awake, the esteemed professor replied: “Of course, the Bible is an excellent iconographic
source!” Known for his quick wit, Panofsky was clearly being self-parodic. He knew well
that any text, Sacred Scripture in particular, could engender distinctly different visual ex-
pressions even within a single cultural environment; and he was aware that many “illus-
trations” actually preceded the texts they accompany. Iconography was only a first step in
a process of interpretation he called “iconology.”
The Princeton episode reveals aspects of the iconographic method worth considering
sixty years later. At the moment when online versions of such essential tools as Migne’s
Patrologia Latina, Ducange’s Glossaries mediæ et infimæ latinitatis, and the Corpus Chris-
tianorum enable the shattering of texts into single words independent of the ideas they
were composed to express and Artstor, the Index of Christian Art, and numerous other
image databases array depictions by subject, the constructing of art’s basic iconographic
contexts is relatively easy to accomplish. More even than in Panofsky’s day, iconography
therefore risks deciphering art outside time, intellectual place, context, and reception, a
problem his “corrective principles” based on forms, historical conditions, and world views
were drawn up to solve. For those reasons and others, many scholars now dismiss “icono-
4 HERBERT L. KESSLER
graphy” and also “iconology” as fundamentally reductive, maintaining that the methods
ignore such conditions of art as matter and manufacture, scale, situation, reception, per-
formance, and ambience.1 Most important, these critics contend, the venerable methods
neutralize the experience of art in the present. Attention to textual and pictorial sources
deployed to recover a work’s imagined original moment ignores medieval art’s continu-
ing affect, beauty, and aura.
Iconography too had a history, of course, both during the Middle Ages and in mod-
ern research.2 In Byzantium, the Iconoclastic controversy was determinative (ca. 726-
843);3 and the Turkocratia later led to codification and retrospective re-interpretations.
In the Latin West, papal reaction against eastern Iconoclasm was significant; the Grego-
rian Reform (ca. 1050-1200) was influential; and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) be-
came a turning point.4 Although Renaissance art’s self-reflexivity is usually taken to
mark a fundamental break, medieval iconography persisted well into the early modern
period.5 Nineteenth-century historicism and the emergence of scientific art history dur-
ing the twentieth century engendered a golden age of iconographic study. Prompted by
developments in modern art, pictorial semiotics’ stress on art’s capacity to communicate
independent of textual referents, phenomenology’s interest in the production of experi-
ences not just meaning, and object studies’ concern with materiality, movement, and ex-
change, the conceptions of how medieval art operates and what its proper domain should
be are questioned.
This brief Introduction can hardly cover every aspect of iconography’s current status.
It seeks only to renew the claim that iconography remains the primary methodological
tool for the study of medieval art because medieval art was fundamentally a system for
making visual God’s presentations that were believed also to be manifested in text,
sacraments, and even nature. Whereas some scholarship might accomplish little more
than to identify the written and pictorial underpinnings of complex works of art, most
recent studies accommodate the field’s new interests and techniques,6 including the im-
plications of textual fluidity and reception, the ways matter inflects subjects, the pro-
duction of meaning through objects’ function and movement, and the diverse roles that
exchange, ornament, abstraction, and artistic license play. Medieval art is never mere il-
lustration; but dismissing its complex intermingling with textual and pictorial “sources”
bypasses its essence. To make that point, this essay returns over and again to a few se-
lected works of different periods, origins, media, and character to examine how the in-
terplay of words and images constructed meaning(s).7 Among other topics, it considers
the relationship of images to texts that were themselves unstable and contained visual al-
lusions, the nagging questions of models and copying, and the ways that hybrids of let-
ters, written and spoken words, diagrams, and pictures, worked together to fashion vi-
sual experiences. It also underscores how medieval art’s poetic structures engaged
Christ’s incarnation, the perfect wedding of matter and spirit that was orthodox Chris-
tianity’s foundation and aesthetics, and how, at the same time, they proved inadequate
to the central mystery of the Trinity. The Introduction examines the synergies of arti-
sans, concepteurs, and beholders as well, and the impossibility of either a truly apophatic
Christian art or a rigid code of interpretation. Classic studies and recent publications are
ABOVE ICONOGRAPHY 5
privileged in the references, the former to afford proper recognition of past scholars and
the latter to facilitate access to current discussions.
Spreading the Peacock’s Tail
Unlike Jews who transcribed the words of Torah according to rituals that ensured
copies’ accuracy and whose Talmud sought to excavate from holy writ God’s intended
meaning, Christians worked to disclose what Bede called the “multifarie et multis figu-
rarum modis eadem Christi et ecclesiæ mysteria repetuntur.”8 Augustine had understood the
process of interpretation as a fragmenting of scripture and the blending of something new
from its pieces.9 Cassiodorus compared reading Psalms to a “beautiful peacock which is
adorned with round eyes and a rich and lovely variety of colors.”10
Texts themselves were not stable, not even the Bible. The foundation of Christian mis-
sion, first to Jews and then pagans, sacred scriptures were continuously received by cul-
tures with their own diverse written or non-literary traditions and artistic (or aniconic)
legacies. Most writings were revised, translated, edited, occasionally emended, para-
phrased, glossed, fragmented and reassembled in florilegia, quoted in new contexts, spo-
ken (and misspoken), performed, rewritten, and misunderstood. Guyart-des-Moulins’
fourteenth-century Bible historiale assimilated a millennium of commentary that in-
evitably generated iconography quite distant from the Vulgate.11 Even seemingly in-
significant variations introduced during the processes of reception and recirculating some-
times had great consequences. Based on the Latin suffix que attached to filio in the Nicene
Creed, for instance, the debate about the procession of the Holy Spirit led ultimately to
schism between the Orthodox and Latin churches. Minor differences mattered for
iconography too. The horns that became standard features of Moses’ physiognomy are
probably the best known example. Derived primarily from Jerome’s translation of Ex.
34.29-30, the earliest surviving witness in the twelfth-century Ælfric Hexateuch in Lon-
don accompanies the vernacular rendering gehyrned (on the folio’s recto) and may be re-
lated to commentaries on Moses’ glorification in liturgical drama and the Old English
poem Exodus (British Library, Cotton Ms. Claudius B.iv, fol. 105v; Fig. 1).12 Within a
picture cycle that is overall rather traditional and may, in fact, have derived from a pic-
tured Vulgate appropriated, at least implicitly, to authorize the vernacular translation, the
iconographic interpolation gained particular potency.13
Prefaces and other paratexts also suggested iconographies.14 In the case of the Ælfric
Hexateuch, St. Paul’s mode of reading the “Old Testament” as prophecy of the “New”
(condensed in Jerome’s widely-circulated Bible preface Frater Ambrosius) inspired the il-
lustrator to portray Moses shielding his radiant face behind a purple curtain draped on a
pole: “The Law is spiritual; it needs to be unveiled so that it can be understood and its
face revealed, and we may contemplate God’s glory.” Commentaries were themselves fit-
ted with pictures. Beatus of Liebana’s eighth-century Commentaria in Apocalypsin was
more frequently illustrated during the early Middle Ages than the scripture itself and, in
the new textual context, with greater panache.15 Poetic paraphrases and hymns intensi-
fied scriptures’ “rich and lovely variety.” The fifth/sixth-century Akathist Hymn (translat-
ed into Latin in the eighth century) offered myriad visual metaphors for the Virgin.16 The
mid-twelfth-century German Arnsteiner Mariengebet assembled Old Testament passages
traditionally interpreted as prophecies and introduced them into a peon to the Virgin’s
virtues.17 Alfonso el Sabio’s Cantigas de Santa Maria comprehended Gautier de Coincy’s
La Vie et Miracles de Notre Dame and gave it a new authorial voice; many illustrations of
the four-volume Cantigas manuscript in Madrid and Florence portray the King himself,
like a troubadour, singing the hymns.18
Art, in its turn, entered literature. In the Timaeus, Plato likened Venus’ double ap-
pearance in the morning and at sunset to an acanthus coil, a motif ubiquitous in Hel-
lenistic art.19 A millennium later, the ninth-century transcriber of Calcidius’ fourth-cen-
tury Latin translation figured the planet’s orbit “velut sinuosum acanthi volumen” as three
interlocking spirals (Lyon, Bib. mun., MS 324, fol. 44r; Fig. 2).20 The classical ornament
had also been used to set off the ending of one text from the beginning of the next and
so would have been intelligible to contemporary readers as simultaneously an illustration
and a functional reading device.
Scripture is also replete with references to crafted objects, the brazen serpent Moses
raised in the desert, the golden calf, the tabernacle fashioned by Bezalel with its sacred
contents, including the Ark of the Covenant containing the tablets of the Law and looked
upon by cherubim, Solomon’s Temple, as well the things used to torture and kill Christ,
most notably the cross. These acquired special importance as scripture was read and
reread, integrated into performances, and entered art. Perhaps not surprising, Karaite Jews
in Palestine or Egypt, who maintained a strict adherence to the law God delivered to
Moses on Mt. Sinai, adorned a Pentateuch in 929 with only the things God had autho-
rized the artisans Bezalel and Oliab to make (Ex. 31.1-6) (St. Petersburg, National Li-
brary, Firk. Hebr. II B 17, fol. IVr; Fig. 3).21 The desert tabernacle with its outer court-
yard featuring the menorah and other sacred objects described in Exodus 25.18 seems to
be entirely literal, so too the with the Ark of the Covenant containing the
Ten Commandments hovered over by leaf-like cherubim. Even the Karaite originalists,
however, turned to contemporary artistic traditions to realize the scriptural descriptions.
The gate into the outer courtyard is a horseshoe arch and the vessels recall Abbasid met-
alwork; the pediment is a grill of acanthus coils that applies the ubiquitous convention for
suggesting ascent toward the Ineffable. Conversely, the tabernacle/temple in the ninth-
century Greek Psalter on Mt. Athos (Pantokrator Monastery, MS 61, fol. 165r; Fig. 4),
which may, in fact, have been based on a Jewish model, gives prominence to the curtain
blocking the entranceway to reflect the importance the Gospels gave the temple veil’s
rending in the crucifixion narrative and the Epistle to the Hebrew’s use of it as a metaphor
of Christ who “entered, not that sanctuary made by men’s hands but heaven itself ... to
bear the burden of men’s sins and will appear a second time, sin done away, to bring sal-
vation to those who are watching for him” (Hb 9.1-28).22
Like their pagan predecessors, medieval authors composed ekphraseis that re-contex-
tualized art, both real and imagined, and transmitted interpretations.23 Photios, the pa-
triarch of Constantinople, expounded art’s cognitive value in the homily he delivered at
ABOVE ICONOGRAPHY 7
the time the mosaic was installed in the apse of Hagia Sophia after Iconoclasm (867).24
Baudri of Bourgeuil described a room decorated for Adela with a zodiac on the ceiling, a
mappa mundi on the floor, and narratives on the walls that traced sacred and secular his-
tory from the Creation of the world to the conquest of England (based probably on the
Bayeux embroidery).25 Other types of descriptions, including such traveler’s accounts as
Gerald of Wales’, which describes the various sacred images he saw in Rome, and Nico-
laus Maniacutius’ Historia imaginis Salvatoris, which incorporates reports by Eusebius and
other sources, passed on valuable information about art imbricated in inherited texts.26
Churchmen glossed pictures in their sermons and served as ad hoc tour guides. Hugh,
bishop of Lincoln, pointed to a Last Judgment as an inducement for confession;27 the
thirteenth-century Dominican Friar, Stephen of Bourbon, adduced usurers’ punishment
against sin.28 Homiletics, including vernacular sermons, are sources for and also witness-
es to medieval iconography.29
Picture captions were circulated in compendia that were fluid rather than program-
matic. Manuel Philes composed Greek epigrams, of which some were compiled in such
collections as the Anthologia Palatina.30 Poems by Prudentius, Paulinus of Nola, Venan-
tius Fortunatus, Alcuin, Ekkehard IV of Sankt Gallen, Baudri of Bourgueil and Hildebert
of Lavardin, Peter Damian, the anonymous author of the Pictor in Carmine, and others
rendered the meaning of pictures comprehensible and were themselves assembled and re-
assembled ad hoc.31
An extensive literature, including Maniacutius’ Historia, described miraculous “births”
of sacred images.32 The tenth-century Narratio de imagine Edessena (itself a composite of
apocrypha responding to evolving attitudes toward images during the early Byzantine
centuries) constructed a biography for the mandylion, an ἀχειροποίητoν that re-enacted the
Savior’s own powers by toppling idols, performing miracles, and converting pagans. Af-
ter the miraculous image gained importance during Iconoclasm, it was incorporated into
the Byzantine liturgy and came to be illustrated in manuscripts of the Narratio and on
icons. The composite legend was figured on the fourteenth-century frame of the impor-
tant replica in Genoa (San Bartolomeo degli Armeni; Fig. 5),33 which authorizes the Holy
Face it frames by picturing how the leprous King Abgar dispatched his servant Ananias
with a letter imploring Christ to come to Edessa cure him. Unable to comply, the Savior
offered instead to send a portrait; but Ananias could not capture his radiance so Christ
washed his face and, when he dried it, an image appeared on the towel (mandil). The
“mandyion” in turn, re-enacted Christ’s own miraculous powers, on the way back to
Edessa toppling idols and converting pagans, reproducing itself on a clay tablet
(keramion), guiding a ship to port, defeating demons, and ultimately curing Abgar (who
converted). Art and literature were collaborators.
A similar account had St. Luke failing adequately to record the Savior’s appearance be-
fore Christ disappeared at the Ascension and needing an angel’s assistance to complete the
work; and the “Acheropita” became Rome’s paladin.34 The Latin Cura sanitatis Tiberii fol-
lowed a course parallel to the Narratio’s but, punning vera icona, it featured St. Veronica
(Berenike, the Gospels’ woman with the issue of blood). The text, too, evolved over the
course of centuries in response to diverse artistic and literary pressures.35 An eighth/ninth-
century version known as the Vindicta Salvatoris came to be translated in the thirteenth
century as La Vengeance de Nostre-Seigneur which, in turn, reintroduced passages of scrip-
ture and survives in a recension comprising more than fifty manuscripts. This means that
when Jacquemart de Hesdin included St. Veronica displaying the Veronica in a depiction
of Christ Carrying the Cross around the turn of the fifteenth century (Paris, Musée du
Louvre; Fig. 6),36 he not only tapped the Bible for such details as the “daughters of
Jerusalem” (Luke 23.28) and incorporated a replica of the Veronica by then in general cir-
culation, but also drew on diverse texts that had recycled and elaborated the various writ-
ten accounts. Among them, the Mystère de Semur, a Passion play that emphasized Jewish
alleged complicity in Christ’s death and made Judas a chief protagonist,37 explains
Jacquemart’s pictorial focus on two Jewish priests and Caiaphas’ dramatic counting ges-
ture near the center, as well as the theatrical staging. Composite texts, pictures, and per-
formance all together constitute a complex visual culture.38
To fashion images even for relatively simple subjects, illustrators had latitude to
choose which textual sources and pictorial realizations to engage. Only a few years after
the Lyon Calcidius was transcribed and illustrated, for instance, a different French scribe
pictured the same passage not as an acanthus coil but as a Zodiac within which Venus’s
orbit is tracked by a single tightening curve (Valenciennes, Bib. mun., MS 293, fol.
62r).39 The alternative diagrams draw on different artistic traditions to comment on the
same text, the one on the planet’s track the other on Plato’s simile. Each, in turn, was
replicated in later manuscripts. To determine whether one or the other Carolingian ver-
sion is an ad hoc variant and if they convey differences in the Calcidian archetype or even
in the transmission of Plato’s Greek original,40 some art historians might construct “pic-
ture recensions” based on stemmata of the kind philologists use to comprehend text vari-
ations. The method (codified by another Princeton iconographer, Kurt Weitzmann) has
now largely been abandoned because it attends more to hypothetical lost models than ac-
tual works of art and subverts (anachronistic) notions of artistic creativity. It nonetheless
remains useful for pinpointing digressions and interpolations within established tradi-
tions, especially in such manuscripts with illustrations closely tied to relatively stable texts
(and interpretations) as Terence’s comedies, the Physiologus, Beatus’ In apocalypsin and
Hrabanus Maurus’ De laudibus Sanctae Crucis. It is a productive tool, for instance, for
thinking about the relationship of the tenth-century Vatican Joshua Rotulus (BAV, Pal.
gr. 431) to the five surviving Middle Byzantine illustrated Octateuch manuscripts and
their pre-Iconoclastic models.41
By diminishing the significance of individual variations in a search for hypothetical
Urtypen, the so-called “Weitzmann method” undercuts its own value as an instrument for
diagnosing significant innovations.42 A short tract on the Eucharist written at Corbie ca.
845 and assigned to Eldefonsus of Spain, for instance, has come down in two illustrated
versions both nearly contemporary with the original text (Paris, BnF, MS. lat. 2855; fol.
63v; Fig. 7 and Vatican, BAV, Cod. lat. 1341, fol. 187v; Fig. 8).43 The principal illustra-
tions adhere closely to the adjacent description of the circular Host, including the milling
dots that render the author’s characterization of Eucharistic wafers as “the celestial king’s
money” that surpasses coins of earthly rulers.44 Each rendering, however, also digresses
ABOVE ICONOGRAPHY 9
from Eldefonsus’ precise specifications. The Paris diagram includes four not “quinque
punctae” on the obverse (intended to stand for Christ and the four evangelists) and two,
not “trio”, on the reverse – an inexplicable deviation given the explanation that the row
of dots “Trinitas est.”45 Made at Corbie itself, the Vatican version is reliable in these de-
tails; but it, too, includes divergences, most notably “VITA” at the base of the cross rather
than the text’s (and Paris version’s) “VIA.” As Eldefonsus explained, via stands for
Christ’s feet, lux, pax, gloria, and vita symbolize life within his breast, and veritas his head
in heaven. According to picture-criticism’s privileging of textual fidelity, both schemata
should therefore be considered defective versions of a lost and unflawed original that
needs to be “reconstructed.” Doing so is surely worthwhile, but so is considering the de-
viations to be intentional assertions that even signs and diagrams are insufficient to con-
vey Christ’s invisible presence in the Host and the Trinity’s incomprehensibility. They
might be a kind of blurring of the text/picture relationship. Eldefonsus was, after all, tran-
scribing what had been conveyed to him in a “revelation” comparable to Ezekiel’s, that
he cites, of the living creatures and wheels within wheels (Ez. 10). Visions are another
form of word/image compacting,46 deployed especially for the fugitive themes of Hilde-
gard of Bingen’s Scivias, for instance,47 and the Rothschild Canticles in New Haven Con-
necticut (Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 404).48 The “errors” in the Eldefonsus
manuscripts would, then, be a form of dissimulation.
“Copying” was always rereading. Variants therefore merit particular attention. Even
before they were recast as Marian figurae, illustrations in the related Hrabanus
manuscripts, for example, betrayed subtle stylistic adjustments and iconographic reinter-
pretations, and also actual mistakes.49 When ninth-century illustrations accompanying
the Gallicanum translation of David’s psalms in the Utrecht Psalter (Universiteitsbiblio-
theek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32; fol. 1v; Fig. 9) were reproduced at Canterbury
during the sixth decade of the twelfth century in a volume containing all three of Jerome’s
translations and Old English and Anglo-Saxon versions (as well various commentaries),
the text-picture relationship changed, de facto, and the imagery was interpreted (Cam-
bridge, Trinity College, MS R. 17.1).50 The Carolingian imagery had, itself, been assem-
bled from diverse components that were so successfully integrated in a coherent classical
style and embellished with ancient staffage that some scholars have taken it to be a fac-
simile of a lost Late Antique model.51 The “Beatus vir,” for instance, sits lost in thought
before a classical edicule opposite an enthroned ancient ruler in a landscape irrigated by a
convincing river god personification. A deeper Jewish origin has even been suggested
based on details traceable to midrashic texts.52 Iconographic source-hunting notwith-
standing, Carolingian theology permeates the Utrecht illustrations;53 and the successive
replicas display a thick texture of subsequent exegetic and pictorial glossing. The inspired
author of the ninth-century “original” for example, becomes Christ between two angels
in the Cambridge version and enthroned in the late twelfth-century copy in Paris (BnF,
MS lat. 8846, fol. 5v; Fig. 10); the anonymous men personifying the just and impious are
converted into the Savior pointing toward the true path confronting a twisting man tug-
ging at his serpentine cloak, whose seductive beauty reflects a shift in rhetoric set out in
Matthew of Vendôme’s discussion of antithesis in the Ars versificatoria.54 In turn, details
from the illustration of the Apostolic Creed in the Utrecht manuscript (fol. 90r) were re-
assembled in new compositions, of which some retained allusions of the original icono-
graphic context.55
The diagrams of inner experience in Heinrich Seuse’s (Suso) Exemplar follow a pattern
similar to that of more venerable iconographies, differing slightly but tellingly from one
another in the surviving manuscripts.56 The earliest, produced within a decade of Seuse’s
original composition, renders the soul’s penultimate destination in the form of a triptych
and the apophatic Trinity beyond as three concentric silver disks enclosing an empty cir-
cle (Strasbourg, Bib. nat. et unit., Cod. 2929, fol. 82r; Fig. 11). Its mid-fifteenth-century
counterpart in Einsiedeln pictures a Crucifixion on the triptych and the Trinity as alter-
nating red and gold rings (Stiftsbibliothek, MS 710[322], fol. 106r). And a 1473 version
in Wolfenbüttel converts the triptych into a chapel-like building, its door flung open to
reveal a silver lattice screen blocking entranceway to a blue celestial sphere (Herzog Au-
gust Bibliothek, MS. 78-5, fol. 121v). Seuse himself may have experimented with ways to
render the climactic nexus of material props and unfathomable concepts; copyists mapped
their own versions onto those.
The paradigm of medieval copying ever since J. J. Tikkanen argued they were derived
from the fifth-century Greek Genesis in London (BL, Cod. Cotton B. VI),57 the thir-
teenth-century mosaics in the atrium of San Marco in Venice are now being interpreted
less as facsimiles of the nearly-totally destroyed manuscript and more within the physical
and cultural contexts in which the venerable imagery was transferred, supplemented, and
reinterpreted (Fig. 12).58 A (now reconstructed) mosaic of the Virgin and Child above the
Porta da Mar leading into the vestibule cued the vast Old Testament series as a typology.
However accurate the nearly 100 borrowed narratives from the Late Antique Genesis may
be, those viewing them would have processed the Paradise and the expulsion’s immediate
aftermath through the accompanying inscription’s claim: “The fall of humankind came
through the mouth of a woman. /The worthy Mother of God is the World’s redeemer.”59
In its turn, the reconfigured Byzantine iconography was decontextualized in a French
Histoire universelle (Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 2576), and also quarried for motifs in commer-
cially-produced beakers.60 If someone recognized the origin of the camel excerpted from
the scene of the Brethren Selling Joseph to the Ishmaelite merchants on one of the glasses,
she or he might have understood it as a reference to Venice’s mercantile ties to the east-
ern Mediterranean (which included importing sand and ash imports to make the glass).61
Most users would have read the “ship of the desert” simply as an exhortation to drink up
when one can.
Like Plato’s reference to acanthus in the Timeaus, medieval texts also incorporated pic-
torial allusions. A Maiestas Domini ghosts the symbolic Christ and names of the four
Evangelists on the Eldefonsus Host, simultaneously asserting Christ’s physical invisibility
in the wafer and engaging his presence in the viewer’s mind.62 When a contemporary
Spanish bishop, Prudentius of Troyes, embedded references to images in his Sermo de vita
et morte gloriosae virginis Maurae, his readers would easily have recognized the depictions
of the Virgin and Child, Crucifixion, and the Lord enthroned in Majesty before which
the woman prayed and, in so doing, appreciate the claim fully that the corporeal eye was
ABOVE ICONOGRAPHY 11
insufficient to discern God until each of the renderings on “dry wood” emitted a sound
that reinforced the “wonderful mysteries of our faith in the minds of the faithful.”63 Hon-
orius Augustodunensis’ Speculum ecclesiae, composed at Canterbury, includes a parallel
between Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and Christ guiding his people to eter-
nal life, which the author would have known from the windows Archbishop Anselm had
installed in the cathedral’s choir (preserved in late twelfth-century replicas; Fig. 13).64 In
his De altera vita, Luc of Tuy cited the “non contort[us]” Volto Santo of Lucca as a proof-
text against the iconography of the twisting three-nail Crucifixion that had become pop-
ular in his day.65 He could do so because the Passio imaginis conferred special authority
on the Luccan crucifix, assigning it to Nicodemus, whom Christ himself had converted
and who afterwards witnessed the Crucifixion and helped to bury the Savior.66
Art commented on accompanying texts and images in some of the same ways glosses
written directly into the margins of manuscripts did. The depiction of David, the Psalm’s
author, and Moses’ artisan Bezalel in the Pantokrator Psalter precisely at the phrase ἔργα
χειρῶν ἀνθρώπων (Ps. 115.4) presents powerful visual proof against any literal reading of
the scripture: “Their idols are silver and gold made by the hands of men” of the sort that
Iconoclasts had mustered against Christian art.67 The Savior portrayed at the start of the
Paris Psalter leaves no doubt that the Psalms that follow are prophecies of Christ. Moses’s
horned headdress in the Aelfric Hexateuch suggests pharaonic imagery that evokes the
story’s Egyptian venue and hence its historicity even though it was conceived through the
diverse Anglo-Saxon heritage which included Roman art in which the priests of Isis wear
similar headgear.68 The purple curtain the Prophet uses to shield his face faces the other
direction; suspended from a gold cross, it assimilates the vexillum from ancient represen-
tations of victory mapped onto the tabernacle curtain to realize Paul’s declaration in 2
Corinthians 3.13 that followers of Christ “are not like Moses, who would put a veil over
his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.”69 Such
overlaying of exegetic features directly onto text illustrations typified medieval iconogra-
phy from the beginning.70 Negotiating the tension between Old Testament words and
the New Testament’s spiritual realization, it bears a whiff of negativity there that may ac-
count for why the horns appeared for the first time almost half a millennium after
Jerome’s Vulgate (mis)translation.71
Composites of actual objects (spolia) constructed iconographies. Stones and pieces of
wood gathered from sites in the Holy Land, all properly labelled, are formed as a cross in
sacred soil from Golgotha inside a seventh-century box from the Sancta Sanctorum at the
Lateran in Rome (Museo Vaticano; Fig.14).72 A Hellenistic cameo representing the en-
throned Zeus supporting his eagle substitutes for John and his (eagle) symbol at the top
of a fourteenth-century gold cross in Gerona Cathedral,73 simultaneously marking Chris-
tianity’s triumph over pagan gods and the Evangelist’s ascent into the ether.74 Spolia on
a reliquary in Basel compose the assembly’s meaning asserted in the couplet the figure
proffers (Fig. 15):
+ David * rex * manu * fortis * aspectu *desiderabilis * ecce

* stirps [*] mea * et * sal[vator] * mu[n]di * qua[m] * divinit[us] * p[ro]p[he]thavi
The amalgam of an Augustan Medusa head, twelfth-century cameo, and thirteenth-

century figure of the Virgin and Child, bonded by six Old Testament prophets in translu-
cent enamel when the object was fashioned in the early fourteenth century,75 structure
Christ’s lineage from Judah to David through Mary. Inspired by Augustine’s Contra Faus-
tum, allusions to Genesis, the Song of Songs, major and minor Prophets, and the Book
of Revelation, as well as the Tree of Jesse, the very ingredients enact the transformation
from one theological condition to another.
Like the phylacteries David displays on the reliquary, texts, interpretations, signs, and
images ran along parallel tracks that continuously crisscrossed one another. When mod-
ern iconographers fragment texts and pictorial sources to expose the “lovely colors of a
peacock” and then reassemble them in new coherent readings, they actually mimic me-
dieval processes.76
A Twisting Acanthus Coil
Deferring to Horace, Venantius Fortunatus had stressed crisscrossing already in the

sixth century when he introduced his carmina figurata by asking why, if a painter or a poet
“intermingles whatever he wants, should not their two practices be intermingled, so that
a single web be set up, simultaneously a poem and a painting?”77 The interweaving of
word and image in medieval art was prompted not primarily by the classical ut pictura poe-
sis, however, but by scripture. John’s prologue starts “In the beginning was the Word”
(Jn.1.1) and Christ declared: “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end”
(Rev. 1.8). Christians developed nomina sacra that Jews had invented to avoid rendering
God’s name, the tetragrammaton ( ) for instance, for the opposite effect of iconizing
and personizing writing in ornamented and historiated letters and monograms to estab-
lish a relationship to its prototype.78 They found iconographic significance even in letter
shapes. Isidore of Seville understood the T as the “figure of the cross of the Lord,” the X
which “until the time of Augustus did not come into existence,” and the Y “a symbol of
human life ... the branching into two begins with adolescence.”79 And he parsed the
meaning of the “mystical letters” which “by moving towards each other the A rolls all the
way back to Ω, and Ω bends back to A, so the Lord might show in himself both the move-
ment of the beginning to the end, and the movement of the end to the beginning.” Lu-
dic figuring of letters persisted throughout the Middle Ages.
In contrast to ancient practice, Christians also enlarged initials to organize texts visu-
ally in the codex form of book they preferred. From modest experiments in ornamenting
initial letters and using them as kinetic lead-ins to the words that follow (as in the [sym-
bolic?] red T at the start of the penultimate line of the Pantokrator Psalter page and the
A and I on the Eldefonsus pages), words came to be implicated with visual ornamenta-
tion. The twelfth-century French theologian John Beleth, for instance, explained how let-
ter forms, geometric shapes, and images are iconographically inextricable from one an-
other in the intersecting V and D of Vere Dignum in Sacramentary manuscripts that, since
the eighth century, had been configured as the Calcidian form generated by “bending [the
chi] around to make two interconnected circles”:
This is not without deeper meaning. The Delta, enclosed on all sides, signifies the divine na-
ture, which has neither beginning or end; V stands for Christ’s human nature, which originated in
the Virgin but is without end. The hyphen in the middle, which links the two parts, is the cross,
signifying the tie between mankind and God.80
A Bible produced during the first third of the twelfth century for Kuno, abbot of
Weingarten, develops the earlier tradition of kinetic initials by deploying the I of Gene-
sis to frame the page and guide the reader visually into the text’s body through letters of
decreasing size N PRINCIPIO CREAVIT D[EU]S C[A]ELU[M] ET TERRA[M] (London, British
Library, MS Add 14791, fol. 6r; Fig.16).81 Mapping Platonic notions of origins onto the
biblical account,82 the straight line intersected by an X is Calcidius’ “neither matter nor
body” that forms the letter chi halfway down; and the oculus at the top sprouts acanthus
tendrils, silva (matter) from which, in both the ancient and Christian ontologies, the
world came into being. Wrapped around the Creator’s hands (one pointing heavenward
and the other downward toward the world being brought into being),83 the acanthus op-
erates iconographically, quite as a tenth-century gloss on Martianus Capella has Venus’
coil do, “the end and the beginning, the end of the murkiness of the air here below, the
beginning one of pure ether.”84 The hexameron is pictured underneath; and, beneath the
tetragonus mundi formed by the X, scenes of humankind’s fall lead to the expulsion from
Eden amid disordered acanthus. While the acanthus gloss begins “ambifarium” like most
works of medieval art, the Kuno Bible frontispiece confounds the binary oppositions of
word and image, Old Testament and New, ancient science and biblical truth, geometry
and vegetal growths, matter and spirit. In a dynamic of falling and reuniting, it descends
from Word-Made-Flesh to human sin and then rises back again to Him.85
Christianity’s emblem par excellence, the cross effected the transition between word,
sign, and image by turning the history of Christ’s passion into a mark of salvation and a
quasi picture.86 It is the focus of the lid of the Sancta Sanctorum box (Fig.17), where the
cross engages simultaneously the themes of travel and therapy underlying medieval pil-
grimage that is also embodied in the wood box’s rounded nautical sides. Punctuated at
the four corners with IC and XC (Jesus Christ) and Α and Ω, the lid presents the instru-
ment of Christ’s Passion as a tree with branches lopped off and surfaces streaked with gold
planted on a mound of earth and surrounded by a deep blue aureole crossed by flashes of
light. Like similar depictions on flasks (ampullae) that pilgrims used to transport oil from
Golgotha inscribed “oil of the wood of the tree of life which guides on earth and on
sea,”87 the rough-hewn cross evokes the tree at the center of Eden (depicted with the four
rivers of Paradise on the Kuno Bible initial for example and flanking the central portal of
San Marco), the aureole conjuring up a billowing sail held in place by the mast-cross.88
The condensed image on the Palestinian relics box also recalls monograms associated with
rulers since Late Antiquity and, hence, reinforces Christ’s kingship.89
No monogram was more important than the Chrismon fashioned from the IC XC ep-
ithet that, in a powerful visual elision of letter sign and figure, captured the essence of the
“Word-Made-Flesh.”90 Constantine had adopted the Chrismon as his talisman and his
court poet Optatian constructed a carmen figuratum around it, which Venantius Fortu-
natus and Hrabanus Maurus later expanded. Paulinus of Nola (a friend of St. Augustine)
decoded complex ideas in the Chrismon’s geometry, vegetal forms, and words, including
the letter T, a ship’s mast and royal scepter, the world divided into four regions with sky
above and depths below, and Christ’s victory over Hell and ascent to the Father in heav-
en (Carmen 19).91 The late twelfth-century tympanum of San Miguel de Estella engaged
some of the allusions (Fig.18).92 Embossed within a circle on the square book Christ dis-
plays (the two perfect geometric shapes), the cross stem is transected with an X, supports
the alpha and omega, and is wrapped by the terminal S. The quasi-pictorial device si-
multaneously asserts the Incarnate God’s presence and absence, his identification as the
Logos, his two natures and eternity, and his redeeming death, emblematizing medieval
iconography’s fundamental elision of the differences between word, sign, and image.
The Chrismon is a kind of diagram of the type used since antiquity to organize infor-
mation and to render arguments comprehensible, in this case, how the mystery of Christ’s
two natures inheres in his epigram. Diagrams were a major component of medieval
iconography.93 For example, the so-called Tree of Porphyry that “DIA[LEC]T[I]CA
D[OMI]NA” grasps in her right hand on a frontispiece in the mid-twelfth-century
manuscript of Boethius’ translation of Porphyrius’ Isagoge to Aristotle’s Categories repre-
sents how Substance generates the Body, then the Animate Body, followed in order by
the Living Creature and finally the Rational Soul (Darmstadt, Hessisches Universitäts-
und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, fol. 1v; Fig. 19).94 The espaliered plant harvests vegetal
energy in offshoots sprouting from each category, ending in the pairing of man and God,
while the orderly arrangement contrasts with the knotted sharp-tongued serpent in Di-
alectica’s left hand serpent (which in a typical crisscrossing reverts to Martianus Capella,
one of the textual sources). Through an allusion to Gospel frontispieces, the personifica-
tion’s cross-crown and footstool and the four authors in the corners (Plato and Aristotle
above, Socrates and Adam of Petit-Pont below) figure Dialectica as the basis of logic.
The geometric armature that holds the glass in place at Canterbury is also a kind of dia-
gram,95 the middle column branching into genera and species. Albeit freeform, Seuse’s
schema is, too, with its (Mittelhochdeutsch) words and images tethered together by a red
thread of the sort that Ariadne famously used to navigate the labyrinth.96 Emerging from
a circle symbolizing the soul of the large figure at the bottom left (most likely Seuse’s dis-
ciple Elsbeth Stagel), the fil rouge tracks a series of choices – toward Stagel asleep on a
choir stall in the left corner envisioning in her mind’s eye the spiritual ascent or to the
persona praying the rosary at the right (the new device promoted by the Dominicans).
The thread skirts the flirting man and woman in the right corner who are about to be
mowed down by death (inspired by the descending devil who drops the fruit he used to
tempt the first couple); as the caption reports, “worldly love ends in grief”.97 Dream and
silent prayer begin the spiritual liberation that continues through the crucifix the nun
holds (recalling images of the suffering Mary at the Crucifixion at the base of the cross).98
The diagram then plots a course upward through to the Son and Father in Heaven and
the Trinity, where the path forks, descending on the right to a praying angel and praying
man inspiring Stagel and ricocheting toward the Trinitarian abstraction in upper left, first
passing through apophatic declarations and triptych.
Like the Lateran and Basel reliquaries and Canterbury glass, not to mention the illus-
trated manuscripts, Seuse’s diagram is filled with writing. Words are ubiquitous in and
near medieval art; indeed, they are an essential element of iconography. Some, like the
PHARAO REX EGIPTI, are simply identifying, intended to preclude confusion of the
kind the iconoclastic Theodulf of Orleans famously proffered of Venus and Virgin
Mary.99 Others interact effectively with the pictures and other words. Death (TOT) is la-
belled in the Seuse diagram while the other figures are intentionally ambivalent to rein-
force the notion of incrementally lost individuality as one approaches the fathomless De-
ity.100 Tiny circles embroidered above Christ’s cross nimbus on a twelfth-century silk
panel in Halberstadt (Cathedral, Fig. 20) include the nomina sacra IC and XC not only
to identify the protagonist (who would be easily recognized by context and cross halo) but
also to confirm the portrait’s authenticity as a true likeness. The passage from Matthew
26.26: ΛAΒΕΤΕ ΦAΓΕΤΕ, ΤΟΥΤΌ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΤΟ ΣωΜAΜΟΥ asserts the historicity of the
pictured Communion of the Apostles.101 The monotony of saints’ portraits required
names, monograms, or attributes to secure identity, at the same time making the point
that holy figures are all personae Christi. St. John in Jacquemart’s painting bears Christ’s
features and the women Mary’s to subsume them into sanctity.102 At Sta. Prassede in
Rome where “the bones of many saints are buried under these walls;” as on the cathedral
façade at Amiens and elsewhere, population is itself iconographic, constituting the Heav-
enly City.103
Some words functioned more as title labels do in post-medieval art, not only to iden-
tify and authorize depicted subjects, but also to tie together seemingly disparate elements.
The inscription that separates the Pantocrator (flanked by the IC XC) from the Nativity
in the south transept of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, for instance, figures the way in
which the one generates the other (Fig. 21). Christ displays a codex inscribed with the
Greek text of John 8.12: “I am the light of the world. The person who follows me will not
walk around in the darkness, but on the contrary, he will have for himself the light of life.”
The words get filtered through a Latin titulus: STELLA PARIT SOLEM/ ROSA FLO-
REM/ FORMA DECOREM,104 with the divine light entering the world as a flower-like
star that takes form in the Christ Child embraced by his mother below. The sun (Christ)
in the mosaic generates the star, the rose (Mary) the flower (Jesus), and the art the beau-
tiful representation of the totality.
Inscriptions were often visually encoded. Variations not only in language but also in
letters’ character, sizes, grounds, and color played pictorial roles in what have been called
“iconotexts” or “epiconography.”105 Following the practice that Venantius Fortunatus
described in which the carmen cancellatum is distinguished from the larger inscribed ma-
trix, Eldefonsus’ Paris codex renders the words and signs bearing on the incarnate God in
vermilion, the lesser names in brown ink (another difference from the “better” Vatican
copy). Especially during the Gregorian Reform period, words were visually differentiated
to stratify the rhetorical levels of accompanying themes. The key-hole shaped wood pan-
el from San Gregorio Nazianzeno in Rome, commissioned by the nun Benedicta and the
Benedictine abbess Constantia during the papacy of Leo IX, deploys hexametric tituli to
help organize a vast depiction of the Last Judgment, a subject with no single biblical ref-
erent (Pinacoteca Vaticana; Fig. 22).106 Texts inscribed on black and red bands section
the enormous cosmic circle comprehending dozens of figures into celestial, sacred, mun-
dane, transitional, and affective realms. One figure alone transgresses the textual strata,
the sacrificial Christ at the altar whose head parts the VENITE from VOBIS of Matthew
25.34 to offer entryway to heaven not only through his sacraments but also his person.107
The very inclusion of texts in pictures manifests the belief that Christ himself had su-
perseded Hebrew scripture. A couplet accompanying the cross in the acanthus-filled apse
of San Clemente in Rome make the point explicit: “That which the law makes to be arid,
the cross makes to flourish.”108 Words and pictures in medieval art are indeed like vines,
generating iconography, splitting and grafting, exchanging significances, and waxing with
a vigor of their own. A gilt-copper flabellum of ca. 1160-80 in Kremsmünster (Benedic-
tine monastery; Fig. 23) juxtaposes depictions of Christ’s resurrection and ascension in a
lattice of acanthus that comprehends a lion suscitating his cubs and eagles flying to the
sun and diving for fish, elucidated with pairs of ascending and descending lines of
verse.109 The Resurrection on the left is framed by MYSTICVS ECCE LEO SVRGIT
BARATRO POPVLATO (Here the mystical lion rises from the abyss that he destroyed)
and QUID VEL LEO CATULUS SIGNENT VIX EXPRIMET ULLUS (What both the
lion and the cub symbolize can hardly be portrayed). According to the bestiary, lions are
born dead and after three days the father breathes life into their faces; the cub is pictured
with open mouth and still-unpupilled eyes while an already-enlivened sibling looks on.
The Ascension on the right matches HIC VOLVCRUM MERSVM SAPIAS SVP[ER]
ETHRA VERSVM (Know that the flying creature has here returned above the aether)
with HIC AQVILE GESTVS IH[S]V TYPVS EST MANIFESTVS (The movement of
the eagle here is Jesus’ prefiguration). Eagles were noted for the acute vision that enabled
them to fly close to the sun to discern fish beneath the sea.110 Other iconographic associ-
ations complicate the movement established by the tituli and symbolism. The cub’s cave
and eagle’s plunge beneath the water conjure up not only the elements but also a third
episode in Christ’s post-Passion life, the Descent into Hell. The two creatures are also
evangelist symbols.111 Cued by the acanthus scrolls, the imagery opens up myriad inter-
pretive paths rather than a linear “program.”112
Beautiful Notions
Rhyming MANIFESTUS with MYSTICUS in images as in words, the Kremsmünster

flabellum is more poetry than history or theology. It mirrors Anselm of Canterbury’s
likening of scriptural exegesis to “beautiful notions . . . to be viewed like pictures,” and
continuing at the start of his widely-read Cur deus homo:113
For it was appropriate that, just as death entered the human race through a man’s disobedience,
so life should be restored through a man’s obedience; and that, just as the sin which was the cause
of our damnation originated from a woman, similarly the originator of our justification and salva-
tion should be born of a woman. Also that the devil, who defeated the man whom he beguiled
through the taste of a tree, should himself similarly be defeated by a man through tree-induced suf-
fering which he, the devil, inflicted.114
Hugh of St. Victor, too, saw typologies as pleasing and playful,115 and hoped that be-
cause “in an image the mystical understanding is painted, and through accessible simili-
tudes, of those things that are understood spiritually, a clear demonstration is figured,” a
“greater beauty that would replace the desire for temporal goods.”116 Honorius Augusto-
dunensis went so far as to maintain that the four Doctors of the Church were painters and
that the job of living theologians was to renew their work.117 Windows from Arnstein that
correlate with the Mariengebet portray the Premonstratensian brother Gerlach who paint-
ed them holding a brush as a scribe would a quill (Münster, Landesmuseum; Fig. 24).118
“Ut littera monstret quod manus explicuit” was how Paulinus of Nola characterized
the picture captions in his church of St. Felix; and so it is noteworthy that many tituli are
poetic,119 deploying metaphor, symbolism, personification, allegory, parataxis, and nar-
rative and rhyming, e.g. terram with aethram or the stringing “colligere,” “trahere,”
“regere,” “pungere,” to explicate and activate the accompanying imagery.120 Hildebert of
Lavardin embedded Augustine’s argument about fragmenting Hebrew scripture into a
couplet intended for a depiction of Christ’s appearance at Emmaus (Luke 24.30-31):
To break the bread is to explain Scriptures. For then Christ is known, opened through the spir-
itual sense.121
He also expanded the veil trope (integrated into the Ælfric Hexateuch) into a reflec-
tion on exegetic art itself:
While God speaks [on the smoking mountain], the masses remain below. Moses is the teacher
of everyone, the unlearned masses are ignorant, the smoke is the unintelligible parable, the moun-
tain is Scripture. God makes known the mysteries in smoke. The unindoctrinated stay afar, grasp-
ing only external things; the learned approach, examining the interior things.122
Poetic form, itself, attracted special attention.123 Among the dense descriptive captions
in the atrium of San Marco in Venice, two Leonine couplets single out Abel as Christ’s
persona and Joseph as a type of the doge.124
At Estella, a couplet articulates the point conveyed visually through the Chrismon,
namely, that Christ is the perfect amalgam of human and divine. Running from bottom
to top along the left of the quatrefoil aureole, the first verse reads: “It is neither God nor
man that I discern in the present figure;” descending at the right: “But God and man that
the sacred image signifies.”125 Composed perhaps by Baudri of Bourgueil, the verses were
widely circulated in texts and art, accompanying various iconographies including the Cru-
cifixion and Deposition, Christ in Majesty, and even Moses’ epiphany on Mount Horeb.
One transcription even strings the couplet out as a diagram of contraries, starting with the
opposition of nec and sed and terminating in imago (Vatican, BAV, Cod. Reg. lat. 1578,
fol. 45v). In an earnest search to nail down medieval art’s meaning, modern iconographers
too often lose its poetic blossoming.126
So-called “emblematic narratives” facilitated the pairing of narrative histories, with the
second continuing the first but modifying it as in a couplet. The opening of the Song of
Songs illuminated at Reichenau ca. 1000 is a good example (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek,
Msc. Bibl. 22, fols. 4v-5r; Fig. 25).127 Starting at the center of the left page with half-
naked men approaching Peter who baptizes one of them, a procession of kings, clerics,
and saints winds along a serpentine path at the top of which Ecclesia offers a chalice while
pointing to the crucified Christ (the actual body). The flow continues on the facing page
but now through a vision of the celestial Deity within the opening O of the text that fol-
lows, serving as a mandorla for an ecstatic vision. Isolated eleventh-century narratives in
the lower church of San Clemente and the thirteenth-century frescoes in the Sancta Sanc-
torum rearrange historical order of the events depicted on a monumental scale to create
allegorical readings through their physical placement.128 The Psalter made for King Louis
IX (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 10525) assembles a range of pictorial sources and added captions
that guide the reader in a step-by-step fashion.129
An illustration facing Song 60 in the Cantigas de Santa Maria made for Louis’ cousin
Alfonso X creates Anselm’s “beautiful notions” through elaborate antitheses of gardens
and buildings, chastity and sins, open and closed doors, book and image (Escorial, Real
Biblioteca, MS T-I-1, fol. 88v; Fig. 26).130 As already on Bernward of Hildesheim’s
eleventh-century bronze doors and Anselm’s exegetical example, the frontispiece sets the
fall of Adam and Eve in parallel with the Incarnation and life of Christ,131 chiming the
Annunciation with the Fall just as Gabriel’s “Ave” above rhymes with “Eva.” In the one,
God is enthroned above the clouds while his messenger emerges from the flesh-like vel-
lum (his wings barely discernible). In the other, Eve offers Adam a piece of forbidden fruit
within a lush Paradise of date palms, vines, and fruit trees, even as she reaches for anoth-
er from the serpent’s maw. Then, engaging the circularity of troubadour songs,132 the
sword-bearing angel casting the couple out of the gates of Eden morphs into Maria-Ec-
clesia dressed in the same blue cloak trimmed in gold returning everyman to Paradise
though a nearly identical portal. The moral is drawn at the bottom where great doors rest
atop paired compass-drawn rainbows framing the celestial blue heaven. Echoing her sin-
ful act above, Eve tugs at the pulls while Adam, mirroring the nostalgic glance back to
Paradise, turns away. Humankind’s perfect naked flesh almost disappears into the un-
painted parchment, the woman’s labia miming the closed gate from which the man averts
his gaze.133 At the right, Gabriel reappears as in the Annunciation, but here addressing
crowned Maria-Ecclesia who unlatches the heavenly gates and opens them a crack for the
devout reader who, however, nevertheless remains unable to penetrate the dark shad-
ow.134 Opening the volume of the Cantigas de Santa Maria thus coordinates with Eccle-
sia’s opening the porta coeli for the reader singing Mary’s praises in the songs on the fac-
ing folio.135 In Paris about the same time, Peter of Limoges summed up the poetic trope:
“As often as the life’s vain pomp delights you, as often as you see some worldly conceit,
ascend to paradise in your mind.”136
Poets may have worked hand-in-hand with artisans or themselves have practiced both
forms of artistic expression. The verses on the Canterbury windows, like the imagery, were
apparently composed under Anselm’s supervision, recorded, and then reused after the
1174 fire.137 Ten lines of original poetry are so closely connected to the visual layout and
understanding of the imagery on an enormous Byzantine diptych in Chambéry (Cathe-
dral Treasury), which pairs the Virgin and Child with the Ascension and the Transfigu-
ration with the Crucifixion to figure Christ’s dual nature, that they must have been com-
posed together with the iconography.138 Verses written by Audradus Modicus assert that
the dedication portrait in the First Bible of Charles the Bald (in which the monk appears)
“actually shows how the noble warrior/ Vivian with the company now presents this book”
(Paris, BnF, MS lat. 1, fols. 422v-423r);139 but, in a classic instance of poetic dissem-
blance, they subvert the overt pictorial record. The couplet running along the base of the
mosaic of Sta. Maria in Trastevere reveals the message of the appropriated images in lan-
guage and syntax associated with Bruno of Segni (Fig. 27).140
Like the internal rhymed Leonine verses favored in works of art, iconographic struc-
tures were seldom binary. The tertium comparationis is transcendent beauty, as Hildebert
boasted of his picture tituli, they “sparkle with majesty and in some of the interpretations,
shine and glow like gold.”141
Iconographic Cargo
Pictorial notions depended on conventionality, that is, on recognizable semantic units

that enabled familiar iconographies to function even in refashioned contexts. Much as
Plato and Calcidius could assume that their readers would conjure up acanthus coils, me-
dieval iconographers too took advantage of familiarity with iconography, the way Pru-
dentius of Troyes did in his sermon, just as later, Peter Comestor could suppose that the
readers of his Historia Scholastica were iconographically as well as textually literate when
he explained the presence of the ox and ass at the Nativity.142 Likewise, the Canterbury
glass was painted when the central themes would have been identifiable by those with
even rudimentary religious training who, prompted by the inscriptions and perhaps spec-
ulating with their comrades might then puzzle out the subsidiary iconographies.143 The
Kremsmünster fan drew on bestiary illustrations for its symbolic animals, bridging “sci-
entific” lore to theological precepts.144
As it continues to be today, iconography was a subject for discussion. When Peter
Damian responded to Desiderius of Montecassino’s 1069 query about why Paul and not
Peter was traditionally shown on Christ’s right in representations of the Traditio legis, he
cited depictions of the theme sanctioned by Constantine and Pope Sylvester, assuming
that the learned protagonist of the Gregorian Reform’s return to the origins of the Church
understood venerable artistic traditions as well as Hebrew etymology, Paul’s rapture (2
Corinthians), and various Church doctrines.145 Pictorial heritage carried authority, as in
the classical ingredients of the Utrecht Psalter and the epic vision of the end of time con-
structed in the Vatican Last Judgment panel, not only from scripture and written com-
mentary, but also from ancient, Byzantine, and earlier Roman images.146 Atop the rect-
angular “predella” in which the promise of Paradise is paired with the (greater) threat of
Hell, the all-encompassing cosmic orb tracks the ascent from earth to heaven, beginning
with the buried dead and animals disgorging accidental victims (including a resuscitating
lion in a cave). Bare-breasted personifications derived from classical art lift two naked
souls upward toward the “innocents under the altar” (Rev. 6.9-11) flanked by Mary the
intercessor and Stephen protomartyr and, at left and right, the good thief, Dismas fol-
lowed by Paul and other saints and the three acts of mercy.147 Engaging Isaiah 66.1 and
Acts 7.49, the apostles’ footstools form the orb’s horizontal diameter, like God’s scabel-
lum (Mt. 22) dividing earth from heaven and breached by an altar marked with the
tetragonus mundi on which the instruments of the Passion are displayed. The Church on
earth provides a way to the triumphant cosmic ruler holding an enormous cross staff and
an orb inscribed “ego vici mundum” (Jn. 16.33). By doubling the figure of Christ, first as
the suffering man behind the altar and then as the heavenly almighty, the image engages
the sometimes contentious issue of his dual nature.
Many iconographies followed geographic channels, some carrying significance. The
major events of Christ’s infancy, Passion, and post-Resurrection on the Sancta Sancto-
rum box were constructed from images associated with the Holy Land, widely distribut-
ed on the flasks, tokens, and encolpia that pilgrims picked up and brought home (Fig.
28).148 These included such topographical markers as the grotto of the cave where Mary
gave birth (among them the little relic niche) and the edicule beneath the dome of the
Holy Sepulcher church that Constantine had allegedly constructed on the site where his
mother had found the True Cross.149 Mutatis mutandis, the distinct Holy Land iconog-
raphy is perpetuated in the Palermo mosaic where Mary lies on a mattress within the
framing cave and directs attention to the Child atop a stone manger with the ox and ass
looking on from behind and the flower-like star in a blue orb above. Joseph seated in the
foreground with his head resting on his hand puzzles over the event’s meaning. In far off
Canterbury, Mary seated on cushioned throne with the downward-curving back and
holding Christ on her lap, who blesses and presents a globe, is flanked by symmetrical
trios of magi and shepherds derived ultimately from a composition at the Church of the
Nativity that circulated on ampullae and was then perpetuated on ivories and other me-
dia and is also preserved in French stained glass.150 Holy Land traditions were revived
during the Crusader period and again transmitted abroad. A mosaic depicting the In-
credulity of St. Thomas from the 1160s in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,151 for
example, bears a striking resemblance to its counterpart in San Marco in Venice and,
even more, to the depiction of the event at the top of the left panel of the late thirteenth-
century diptych of Andrew III of Hungary manufactured in Venice (Bern, Historisches
Museum, Fig. 29).152
Constantinople and Rome also generated distinctive traditions. The Halberstadt em-
broideries’ symmetrical juxtaposition of Christ offering the chalice and Christ offering the
paten to the Apostles can be traced back to the Rossano Gospels and sixth-century Byzan-
tine silver plates.153 Icons venerated in Constantinople, particularly portraits of Christ and
the Virgin, were particularly conservative and distinctive, the idea being that each replica
preserved the essence of the sacred archetype, but also depictions of the liturgical feasts
and other iconographies. The Pentecost mosaic at in the Basilian (Greek rite) church of
San Nilo at Grottaferrata overlooking Rome (Fig. 30) depends on Byzantine conventions,
albeit transmitted through South Italy; a nearly identical grouping of the enthroned apos-
tles, led by Peter and Andrew and receiving the Holy Spirit as rays emitted from a starry
blue arc is preserved at Monreale and the traditional composition also appears in minia-
ture on the Andrew III diptych.
Rome advanced particular imagery and disseminated programmatic schemes. Imitat-
ing the Holy Land, it produced ampullae and also replicas of the Veronica stenciled onto
pieces of parchment which pilgrims carried throughout Europe. Copying Roman works
conveyed papal authority, de facto. To decorate his church at Wearmouth Jarrow
(Northumbria), Bede, for instance, brought “imagines ... de concordia veteris et novi Tes-
tamenti” from Rome to manifest an allegiance to the papacy; the Greek word for pictures
as ζωγραφíα in his account seems directed specifically toward emerging Byzantine icono-
clasm.154 Eleventh-century ceiling paintings in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe evoke the basil-
icas of Old St. Peter’s and Old St. Paul’s in their unfolding of the Old Testament story
from Genesis through the Sinai exodus.155 The Traditio legis painted in the twelfth-cen-
tury apse of Chapelle des moines at Berzé-la-Ville inserted Cluniac interests into Roman
authority.156 When the Abbess Sybil of Montreuil-les-Dames asked her brother Jacques
Pantaléon to send her the “Sancta Veronicam, seu veram ipsius imaginem et simili-
tudinem,” however, he provided her with a mid-thirteenth-century east European
mandylion instead (still preserved in Laon).157 Jacquemart’s reliance on works by Pietro
Lorenzetti and Simone Martini roots his inclusion of St. Veronica with her cloth in the
Italian milieu of the Veronica’s veneration in St. Peter’s. The Acheropita and Avvocata
icons attributed to Luke were paired with one another on numerous copies, some as pa-
pal gifts that made their way as far as Mughal India.158 The Avvocata marries the Achero-
pita in the Santa Maria in Trastevere apse.
The Vatican Last Judgment panel is explicitly Roman. Heavenly Jerusalem’s gemmed
walls derive from Sta. Prassede’s triumphal arch; Christ is depicted in the guise of the Lat-
eran icon;159 and, portrayed in three-quarters in the third register with hands raised in in-
tercession, Mary is the Avvocata.160 Moreover, a second Roman Mary icon is quoted at
the bottom left, as well, the Virgin flanked by the sisters Praxedes and Pudentiana (as pic-
tured in an eighth-century painting in Sta. Susanna and the ninth-century apse mosaic in
Sta. Prassede), offering the two female benefactors visual entrance to the entire ensem-
ble.161 The pictorial quotations figure the City itself as the Heavenly Jerusalem.162 The as-
sembling of local images to assert Rome’s centrality was repeated in the “Aula Gotica”
which, in addition to a Zodiac and constellations based on an Aratea, labors of the
months, and personifications, includes such local antiquities as a seascape with erotes and
a lion mauling a deer.163
Conventionality intensified the significance of minor changes and asserted new sig-
nificance, for example, which apostle had pride of place in depictions of the Traditio legis,
at Pentecost, or in the Last Judgment. Whether the dove of the Holy Spirit is enclosed
within the rays emanating from the Creator in the First Day of Creation (as in the Cap-
pella Palatina in Palermo) or hurling downward in the “replica” at Monreale is a small de-
viation albeit with Trinitarian meaning and, hence, implications for the different audi-
ences.164 On the Darmstadt Isagoge frontispiece, Dialectica’s fashionable Parisian dress
with hanging sleeves and narrow-waisted pleated long skirt inserts the ancient arguments
into contemporary debates by Adam of Balsham and others on the Petit-Pont.
A seventh/eighth-century fresco in the apse of the monastic church at Deir el-Surian
south of Alexandria in Egypt’s western desert builds a local pictorial topography into the
standard formula (perhaps imported from Syria) of Gabriel appearing to Mary (Fig.
31).165 While God’s messenger “speaks” Greek, the prophets display typological passages
inscribed in Bahairic Coptic. Among the four Old Testament figures, Moses is featured
and the epiphany to him on Mt. Horeb that traditionally symbolized Mary’s virginity: “I
saw the bush while fire was blazing in it without being consumed” (Ex. 3.2). The shrine
referred to by pilgrims on the spot of Moses’ epiphany may be recognized as the fortress
filled with trees in the background; and the column of fire that guided the Prophet and
ancient Israelites from the land of the pharaohs occupies the center. Both the Burning
Bush (as in the Arnstein windows) and Column of Fire (as in the Canterbury glass) were
Marian metaphors in the Akathist Hymn; nonetheless, they would have had a clear local
resonance.166 Moreover, the particular form of the censer atop the column seems to teth-
er the painting to Egyptian liturgical practice.167 Egypt was a point of exchange between
Asia and Europe before, and again after, the disruption of art production during the sev-
enth- and eighth-century Islamic conquests by iconoclasm in territories controlled by
Byzantines. The contemporary ivories from the so-called Grado throne were influential in
eleventh-century Salerno and other parts of Italy.168 Vice versa; across the Red Sea at St.
Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai, the red ermine-trimmed hat worn by one of the magi
on an iconostasis beam identifies the wise man as a Frank; and the almond eyes, droop-
ing moustache, and exotic bowler characterize one of his companions as a Mongol (Fig.
32). Certainly a response to the Mongol presence in the Holy Land when the beam was
painted, the variations within the set iconography are in this case not a parochial variant
but an ecumenical gesture.169
When the roof of San Nilo at Grottaferrata was raised in the thirteenth century to let
windows into the clerestory, a new iconographer transformed the center of the existing
Pentecost mosaic into a demonstration of the Nicene Creed by introducing a Trinity
from a Byzantine illustration of the Creed (Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. suppl. gr. 52) and adding
Isaiah at the left displaying the Trisagion (Is. 6.1-3).170 The revision was intelligent and
concerted; according to tradition, the Creed had been proclaimed at Pentecost.171 The
painter seems to have chosen a Greek model precisely to root his conception in the Byzan-
tine world, but he was careful to tip the Trinitarian iconography toward Rome on the
controversial filioque doctrine by cleverly adjusting it. Whereas the source image encloses
the three persons of the Triune God within one another like Russian nesting dolls, the
fresco has the dove overlap the Father and be overlapped by him, making the Father and
Christ the source of radiation for the Pentecost in accord with Western theology. Substi-
tuting a Crucifixion for the veiled triptych of the Strasbourg Seuse diagram, and pictur-
ing the cross-disc at its summit actually piercing the outermost Trinitarian sphere, the
Einsiedeln copy asserts a claim that the Sacraments, not just the mind’s eye, can transgress
the celestial boundary.
Mingling and blurring diverse traditions had purpose. The tabernacle of apparently
Jewish origin in the Pantokrator Psalter with its aniconic implements “made by hand” si-
multaneously refutes John the Grammarian’s assertion that any crafted object violates
scriptural prohibitions and advances Christian “ἀχειροποίητα” promoted after Icono-
clasm. The illustrator of the First Bible of Charles the Bald was surely attracted by the
fifth-century Vatican Vergil’s classical style (BAV, MS 3225) when he incorporated ele-
ments from it into his biblical narratives, but he also understood the significance of trans-
lating the Golden Age pagan iconography into Christian biblical subjects.172 The Nor-
man King Roger II conspicuously integrated Byzantine, Roman, North European, and Is-
lamic conventions to create a global environment in his Cappella Palatina in Palermo.
Based generally on the Bible, Augustine’s De civitate Dei, various commentaries, and litur-
gical enactments, the tympanum of La Madeleine at Vézelay depends on no single pro-
grammatic text. The layered references to the Pentecost, Ascension, and Last Judgment
framed by bands of cosmological signs, calendrical symbols, and exotic figures is at heart
an ad hoc assembly from Early Christian monuments and more recent Rome art that as-
serts the church’s place in pilgrimage and the crusader agenda.173
Iconography was (mostly) very precise. Before any detail is dismissed as conventional,
irrelevant, whimsical, or erroneous, it merits full scrutiny and investigation.
The same is true of changes and erasures. Christ with short curly red hair (known as
the “semitic type”) was replaced after Iconoclasm with the more Zeus-like bearded alter-
native;174 and in the sixth-century Rabbula Gospels, it was actually overpainted (Flo-
rence, Bib. Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Plut. 1.56).175 An illuminator in ninth-century
Tours censored the Binitarian creator he came upon in a fifth-century Italian Pentateuch
by painting over one of the persons to make it conform to Trinitarian doctrine (Paris,
BnF, MS Nouv. acq. Lat. 2334, fol. 1v; Fig. 33).176 In a self-referential act without a trace
of irony, an unknown iconophilic reader of the pro-image Pantocrator Psalter miniature
not only rubbed away the pictured pagan idol but also obliterated John the Grammari-
an’s portrait beside it.177 Stained-glass windows were successively restored and, at various
stages, adjusted to later conceptions.178
While some iconographies were banished, others died natural deaths and were super-
seded by new creations. Hrabanus Maurus noted that when paintings fade, they are no
longer faithful transmitters of the truth.179 The Traditio legis, popular in early medieval
art ceded to subjects that attended to Trinitarian and Eucharistic matters. The so-called
“Throne of Mercy” was pieced together in the twelfth century in order, as Sicard of Cre-
mona explained, “the majesty of the Father and the cross of the crucifix are portrayed so
that it is almost as if we see present the one we are calling to, and the passion that is de-
picted imprints itself on the eyes of the heart.”180 A fifteenth-century tabernacle (re-
painted in the sixteenth century) at Sankt Olof in Sweden represents the iconography in
which the Crucifix nearest the viewer evokes a compassionate response and a dove bridges
the figure to the Heavenly King (Fig. 34).181 The newly-devised Mass of St. Gregory pro-
vided a narrative for the complex conceptual relationship about outer vision and inner
spirit in the sacraments.182 The Deposition from the Cross, Entombment, Man of Sor-
rows, Harrowing of Hell, arma Christi, Tree of Jesse, scutum fidei, Francis Receiving the
Stigmata, “Sunday Christ”, and other themes were constructed from existing subjects to
articulate new theological interests. Personal iconographies were developed in the same
way, most notably by Hildegard of Bingen as in the Rupertsberg Scivias manuscript of ca.
1165 lost during the second World War but known in a twentieth-century copy (Wies-
baden, Landesbibliothek, fol.14r; Fig. 35). Hildegard assembled recognizable elements
from this world and art – fire, sun, moon and stars, personifications of winds – to con-
struct a macrocosmic egg superimposed on the rectangular grounds representing earth
and aether and bursting the conventional frame to convey her vision of the splendor of
the “omnipotent God, incomprehensible in his majesty and inestimable in His myster-
ies.”183 Iconography could also be private and particular, as in the case of the Prayerbook
of Charles the Bald (Munich, Residence, Schatzkammer) or the late-twelfth-century
Weingarten leaf in Chicago (Art Institute).184
Innovations engendered attempts to legislate images, by the Cistercians, for instance,
including the Bishop of Olomuc who destroyed depictions of Francis’ stigmatization and
was in turn condemned by Pope Gregory IX for his act.185 Even Luc of Tuy, who op-
posed iconographic experimentation, correctly understood its underlying causes:
Since the aim of religious art is to arouse the emotions of the spectator, the artist must have lib-
erty to compose his works, so as to assure to them the greatest effectiveness. The representation
should not always be forced into traditional patterns. In order to avoid the dullness of accustomed
formulas, the artist needs to devise unusual motifs and to invent new ideas as they seem appropri-
ate to him with respect to the location of the work of art and to his period, even if they contradict
the literal truth and only serve to deepen the love for Christ through the emotion they arouse.186
Such reasoning notwithstanding, Ralph Baldock, the Bishop of London banned the
making and display of Y-shaped versions.187
Incarnography
The Virgin Mary embodied iconography. Writing in the ninth century, Christian of
Stavelot had argued that before he entered flesh, God had manifested himself only
through such ephemeral things as sound, dreams, and clouds.188 Merging God’s word
with matter when Gabriel spoke to her, Mary was, like art itself, an intermediary be-
tween humankind and the Divine. She was the subject in myriad works.189 Bonaventure,
extending the exegesis of Anselm of Canterbury and others, summed up Mary’s impor-
tance as a fully human but sinless “new Eve” who, through art, offered entrance to a new
Paradise:
Since through sin the rational creature had clouded his eye of contemplation, it is most cour-
teous that the eternal and invisible be made visible that he might lead us home. Therefore, con-
sidering the light of mechanical art with respect to the production of the work, we will witness the
incarnation and generation of the Word, that is divinity and humanity and the health of all the
faithful.190
A poem attributed to Peter Riga conceived God as a celestial painter who had depict-
ed the Virgin “inside and out,” and had angels complete the polishing.191
The Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, and Adoration were central themes of iconog-
raphy from the beginning; and Mary was also featured in pictures of the Crucifixion, such
related subjects as the carrying of the cross and, following pious tradition if not scripture,
in depictions of the Ascension.192 The Virgin is present in four of the five events pictured
on the Sancta Sanctorum box lid, for example (the same as Christ). As her importance in-
tensified over centuries, moreover, Mary was raised in both writings and art to a position
virtually equal to her Son’s.193 Debates about images, especially during the Iconoclastic
controversy, elevated the “forma Dei;” and, by the turn of the eighth century, the Virgin
herself had come to occupy a place in the iconography of heavenly ascent.194 She, too,
was a particular subject of iconographic expansion, for example, in the Tree of Jesse,
Madonna of Humility, Pietà, Mater Dolorosa, Dormition, Vierge ouvrante, and Corona-
tion.195 Berthold of Nuremberg refigured Hrabanus’ carmina figurata in her honor.196
The Virgin was identified with the bride in the Song of Songs,197 and hence with Eccle-
sia, as in the apse mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome which shows her display-
ing a verse from the scripture seated on the same throne with Christ, who embraces his
sponsa,198 At Chartres cathedral, Christ crowns Mary, his cothronus.199
Mary was intercessor. St. Maura, for instance, prayed first in front of a Virgin and
Child at Troyes before moving to the Crucified and then to God. She is literally the avvo-
cata beneath the altar of the Vatican Last Judgment and in many devotional pictures be-
cause Mary’s inspirited body, like Christ’s, served as a channel from the world of matter
to heaven. An ivory knob from a twelfth-century bishop’s crook in Lyon (Musée des
Beaux-Arts) figures Mary with the Christ Child borne by angels inscribed: “O star, moth-
er of the sun, direct the favor of your Son to the worshippers” as the buffer between God
in Majesty on one side and the faithful.200 Beleth gave Mary almost equal consideration
with Christ in his analysis of the Vere Dignum initial. Tethering Mary to Venus, the
Cantigas praised her as the morning star that heralds the arrival of the sun and extends the
idea: “Because of our sinful nature, we would never have seen the face of God, who is our
light and day, without you (Mary) who is our dawn”. A twelfth/thirteenth-century Span-
ish tract known as the Advocaciones de la Virgen likened her to the constellations, the clas-
sic exemplars of beauty and heavenly images; and Juan Gil de Zamora wrote: “When you
conceived a Sun of Justice, as the moon also illuminated by beneficent action of the bril-
liant sun.”201 Mary holding Christ in front of the Medusa’s face on the Basel reliquary
functions like Perseus’ mirror, deflecting earthly temptations, including David’s lust al-
luded to in the titulus.
Metaphoric likening of the Virgin to diverse things in the world in the Akathist
Hymn, Mariengebet, and other texts enabled intermedial iconography.202 A widely-cir-
culated poem on the Annunciation compared the Virgin to rivers of honey, gold, roses,
dawn, clouds obscuring the sun, and a rainbow. Mary is pure white ivory, the mirror of
Paradise, the fountain of grace, the door of heaven, a port in a storm.203 According to an
eleventh-century homily in the Vatican (BAV, Fondo S. Maria 122), the apostles com-
missioned the (early seventh-century) Madonna di San Sisto in Rome precisely to pre-
serve the Virgin’s beauty.204 Juan Gil de Zamora maintained that “when [Mary] reached
her adolescence she was clothed in such a beautiful appearance that she attracted God
Himself and turned the divinity back to her eyes.”205 The so-called “crypt” of the Epipha-
nius at San Vincenzo al Volturno of 824-42 realized the trope by portraying the Virgin
garbed in exceptionally rich attire and decked out with a crown, prominent earrings, and
garments bejeweled with fictive and inserted gems.206 Pairing of pulchrum and sepul-
chrum in the Annunciation above the abbot’s tomb, Mary serves as a “limen” between
heaven and earth.207
Most important, the Incarnation through Mary established the fundamental justifica-
tion of art as the demonstration and recapitulation of Christ’s two natures. The chrono-
logical narrative arranged along the central spine in the Canterbury windows (beginning
at the top with the magi traveling to Bethlehem) affirms the belief that the Gospels nar-
rative is true history that needs no allegorizing, with Jewish typologies and pagan idolatry
sprouting from it like branches of the Tree of Porphyry.208 Equally pertinent, Mary per-
sonified Christian art’s status against heresies that disputed Christ’s dual natures.209 Ex-
tending Gregory the Great’s classic defense of art that images can teach illiterates, Gerard
of Cambrai adduced images of Mary at the Synod of Arras in 1025 to argue (against some
kind of Manichaeism) that art enabled movement from what he termed carnal mortality
to life in heaven, thereby redeeming Eve’s sin.210 Baudri of Bourgueil may have written
the “nec Deus” titulus in response to heresy; and, in one version, he appended “true man
and true God, notwithstanding both are one” to the core assertion that sacred images sig-
nify both God and man. A twelfth-century gloss asserts that the same couplet serves
against the “opinio Judaeorum, hereticos et Saracenorum contra Christianos, quia Chris-
tiani habent imagines in ecclesis.”211 Durandus felt the need to preface the nec Deus, nec
homo couplet with a caveat: “Adore not the image itself but that which it signifies: It is
not rightly a God who can be touched, only a hand-worked stone object”.212 Incorporat-
ing Aristotelean ideas into an expanded defense of images, Thomas Aquinas maintained,
among other things, that the devout could distinguish the physical object from the “ra-
tional creature” represented on it and, therefore, could be led to venerate not the repre-
sentation but God himself.213
Light passing through glass offered the perfect metaphor for the mystery of incarna-
tion and Mary’s purity. One of the earliest examples of stained-glass, a medium that
would dominate art of the high Middle Ages, pictures Christ as A and Ω and “LUX”.214
The medium seemed especially well-suited to capture Mary’s chastity as in Arnsteiner
Mariengebet:
When you bore the child,
you were in all ways
clean and pure
from congress with men.
Whoever thinks that impossible,
should consider glass, which is similar to you:
the light of the sun shines directly through the glass,
it is intact and clean as it was before.215
Citing such confirmatory Old Testament typologies as Moses at the Burning Bush and
Aaron’s flowering rod in the Tabernacle (still preserved in the Arnstein windows), the
poem’s lyrics extend the trope also to the entire heavenly court where angels, prophets,
apostles, and saints sing the Virgin’s praise in God’s presence. The Pictor in Carmine ex-
panded the vitreous allegory with distichs to be inscribed on paintings: Sol vitream mas-
sam penetrat non fragmina passam/ Nec matris fractus pudor est a numine tactus and Cum
per id intratur, non sole vitrum violatur/ Nec defloratur virgo dum prole beatur.216 The Can-
terbury glass incorporates the metaphor and articulates it with subtlety. Above the iconic
Virgin and Child being adored, the aniconic column of fire leads the Jews to the Promised
land, a star directs the pantheistic magi to Bethlehem, and the “Light of the World” un-
furling a golden scroll, in person, redirects those converted to the faith from idol-worship
to the life-giving sacraments.217 Stained-glass’ otherworldly beauty risked the distracting
vanity such windows were intended to ward off,218 which Bernard of Clairvaux feared
such art would engender. That, in part, explains why, whether or not they were legible,
epithets and histories were deemed fundamental in windows.
First Corinthians 13.12 incorporated an allegory based on another analogue of art, the
mirror:219 “What is a dark manner and what is a mirror in which the image is seen until
the thing itself can be seen? The dark manner is Sacred Scripture, the image in the mirror
is the faith in your heart.”220 Sicard of Cremona had the author, St. Paul, in mind, who
had risen to the third heaven and contemplated the Light when he described “window
glass, through which the rays of the sun reach us, is the mind of the Teacher who looks
at the heavenly things through an obscure mirror, or through which obscure mirror the
true Sun enters into us.”221 Jacques de Vitry applied Paul’s mirror metaphor to images,
forms, examples, and enigmas of creation put forth like images in a mirror to lead the
mind toward knowledge and ignite passion to love God lead from the material to the spir-
itual.222 In his Massa Marittima altarpiece, Ambrogio Lorenzetti ingeniously introduced
the personification of Fides holding a silvered mirror painted with a Janus-like head on
which a dove perches to assert that the mystery of the Triune God is understood only
through faith and in a reflection (Fig. 36).
Bruno of Segni made clear that beauty was not enough; as in the Incarnation itself,
materialization also mattered:
Whatever is figured in either Testament, all this is figured in an ornament . . . it does not suffice
to see only its beauty; they ought to ask about each aspect of it, why those colors, why the gold,
why those stones, what does the rest signify?223
Although orthodox image theory held that the specific matter in which images were
realized was not important, materials nonetheless inflected iconographies.224 Not only
does the gold studded with precious stones and pearls on the Andrew III diptych attract
the eye, but it also evokes the “omnis lapis pretiosus” that Ezekiel inventoried (Ez. 28.13-
14) which the Book of Revelation recapitulated.225 And the checkerboard of red marble,
portraits of saints, and New Testament narratives construct a micro-heavenly Jerusalem
like the transitional precinct pictured at the lower left of the Vatican Last Judgment. The
black cameos depicting the Crucifixion and Ascension, moreover, pair Christ’s human
and divine natures,226 the lack of color and relief technique themselves affecting a transi-
tion from painting to sculptural presence that conveys the subjects’ intermediacy and con-
structs the central mystery of faith as apophatic.227
Moreover, materials are not always separable from iconography. When the illumina-
tors of the Karaite Bible rendered the tabernacle implements in gold, they were inserting
themselves into the lineage of the biblical artificers Bezalel and Oliab. The gold back-
ground of the recto in the Bamberg Song of Songs is an element of the vision. Dressed so
lavishly that her body disappears beneath an armor of ornament that dissolves into the
mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Mary becomes the Church itself and, hence, a per-
sonification of Ecclesia. The silver disc at the end of Seuse’s mental itinerary not only re-
flects the reader’s image but also engages her/his physical and spiritual effort to maintain
its luster.228
Painted on crystal-covered vellum, the narratives on the Andrew III diptych engaged
a trope that understood the material of scripture to be Christ’s flesh and its embellish-
ments his spirit.229 The colophon of the Godescalc Lectionary (Paris, Bib. nat., Ms. nouv.
acq. lat. 1203), richly adorned between 781 and 783 and long studied as the earliest ex-
tant witness to Charlemagne’s revival of art, asserts that the golden letters are to be un-
derstood as the shimmering eternal life provided by Christ’s sacrifice symbolized by the
red-dyed parchment.230 Mechthild von Magdeburg went further still, seeing Trinitarian
meaning in the very body of the manuscript–its parchment, physical words, and meaning
symbolizing the Son, Father, and Holy Ghost respectively.231 The painter of Cantiga 60
staged the Annunciation against blank vellum. Wood had particular iconographic signifi-
cance because of its origin in the Tree of Life and the cross.232 The gold and white streaks
atop the cross pictured on the Sancta Sanctorum box express the belief that Christ’s sac-
rifice restored the desiccated Edenic tree (St. Maura’s “dry wood”) and made it flourish
again;233 the fusion of the blue with the brown encaustic of Golgotha realizes the doctrine
of incarnation.234 Other materials were given meaning, too. In an elaborate materialist
iconography, the dedication titulus of the Halberstadt embroidery compares its own ma-
terials to the tale of the harlot who wiped Christ’s feet at the house of Simon (Lk. 7.36-
50), the pearls standing in for the woman’s tears and the gold for her ointment, invoking
the hope that the art will provide the patron, too, with remission of sin.235 Bernard of
Clairvaux had called Christ himself a “marvelous mixture” of flesh and spirit; and juxta-
posing and mixing of materials was also iconographic, with words constructing meaning-
ful “webs of intertwined interdependencies.”236 For Hildebert and others, electrum, the
amalgam of gold and silver symbolized “Christe Jesu ... Deus est et homo”;237 the silver
and gold halos at Palermo may realize the same iconographic trope.
The overall success of the incarnational justification had negative consequences for the
iconography of Christianity’s greatest mystery, the Trinity.238 To the extent that images
realized in matter figured the incarnate Son, they failed adequately to convey the Father’s
nature and the Holy Spirit’s and, even more important, the relationship between the three
persons. In the context of the Cathar heresy, Luc of Tuy attacked (triandric) depictions
of the Trinity; and Durand of Saint Pourçain continued to insist that art could only rep-
resent the incarnate person.239 Despite numerous experiments, no standard iconography

ever emerged that satisfied the desire to imagine the three while subsuming them to
monotheistic tenets. Eldefonsus rendered it on the Host’s reverse with PAT[ER] FILIVS
SP[IRITUS] S[ANCTUS] written between two horizontal bars and large dots between
ALT[ISSIMUS] D[EU]S and OM[NI]P[OTEN[S] D[OMI]N[U]S, as three points of a
triangle, and as three circles within a circle.240 About the same time, tellingly, the correc-
tor of the Ashburnham Pentateuch obliterated the second agent of creation using amor-
phous pink daubs of paint that, as elsewhere in Carolingian art, figure the blending of
body and spirit, and so may have been an experiment in representing the Trinity.241
Something of the same effect is created by the clouds that fill the upper part of the
TRINITAS VNVS ET VERVS D[EU]S PATER ET S[P]I[RTU]S S[AN]C[TU]S (writ-
ten in intricately interwoven letters) in the Benedictional of Ælthelwold, animating the
crowned and cross-nimbed God with the Holy Spirit’s energy (London, BL, Add. MS.
49598, fol. 70r).242 Petrus Alfonsi merged the triangle, circle, and tetragrammaton which
then engendered the scutum fidei.243 Seuse likened his concentric silver rings around a
blank vellum circle marked by a dot to ripples generated by a pebble in a pond.244
Objects, too, actively engaged iconography. Ordained by scripture, even the tablets of
the Law containing the prohibition of images and most of all, the cross on which Christ
died were cited to justify medieval art. Tellingly, Paulinus of Nola began his interpreta-
tion of the Chrismon’s iconographic fluidity with a fixed thing that a thief “unfastened
from its hanging hook and carried away from the holy basilica with defiled hand.” Venan-
tius Fortunatus explicitly countered Ovid’s cautionary tale of Arachne’s web by referring
to the priestly garments described in Exodus 38.23. In the Pantokrator Psalter, the taber-
nacle and its precious contents directly refute any literal reading of the adjacent words of
Hebrew scripture of the sort iconoclasts against Christian icons (and the Karaites em-
braced); and the prominent purple curtain framed like an icon serves as a trope of Chris-
tian art’s capacity to penetrate the Sancta Sanctorum closed off to the Israelites. Bruno of
Segni adduced Aaron’s breastplate as powerful argument for interpreting Christian art:
as you seek in both Testaments a double understanding. It does not suffice to understand it ac-
cording to the letter alone. Jews see this rationale but they do not understand what is signified by
it ... These are living stones, which revolve above the earth; which arranged in the breastplate of
the High Priest teach silently, and preach. For they preach not by speaking out loud but by signi-
fying. We must always bear them on our chests, with which our heart is taught and protected.245
Actually portrayed in glass the north transept of Chartres, the breastplate made the re-
lationship between gems and stained glass visual; and carved on a console in the choir of
St. Remi in Reims, it provided a type for the New Testament fulfillment in the stained
glass Crucifixion above.246 The Brazen Serpent Moses raised in the desert to test the Is-
raelite’s faith was adduced in John’s Gospel and became a powerful Old Testament type
of the Crucifix, even its material hybridity.247 At Arras, Gerard argued that “appropriate-
ly, a bronze serpent is suspended on wood; in the serpent is death, in bronze eternity is
signified, as in the Lord, clearly death is in his humanity and eternity in his divinity.”248
Actual objects inserted into larger works operated iconographically too. Wood panels held
in place by iron hooks in the frescoed Crucifixion and Last Judgment in San Giovanni a
Porta Latina distinguish levels of sanctity, so do the (lost) icons on the apsidal arch of San
Pietro in Valle near Ferentillo and Giotto’s panel in the Arena Chapel in Padua depicting
Christ sending Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, a material expression of the principle of
iconography that becomes fulfilled in the frescoes.249
Such ordained crafters as Bezalel and Solomon, Luke, Nicodemus, and Veronica im-
bued manufacturing with special meaning.250 As a consequence, making art was consid-
ered a redemptive activity.251 Calcidius’ detailed instructions of how to construct a spiral
using a compass notwithstanding, the transformation of the essential geometric shape into
a quasi-organic form is rendered freelance in the Carolingian manuscripts, the ink traces
on vellum enacting the process by which spirit enters matter through the artisan’s hand.
Vice versa, it might return the reader to pure form.252 One inscription on the Vatican
Last Judgment panel declares that the painters who literally transformed dust into a vi-
sion of heaven shall themselves “at the trumpets’ blast … rise from the dust of the earth.”
When Gerald of Wales considered the miraculously refined ornament in an illuminated
manuscript that must have resembled the Book of Kells, he could only imagine that the
scribe had copied it from drawings an angel had showed him and had needed a saint’s in-
tervention “to open both [his] bodily and mental eyes to see the [models] more keenly
and understand the more subtly, and direct [his] hand to draw correctly.”253 The inter-
play in this text is notable, between harmony and variety, erasure and focus, surface and
penetration, discrete numbers and infinity.
Paulinus had uncovered meaning in the intricate process of transforming the Chi rho
into a monogram:
Both letters with the three strokes achieve their separate shapes in a threefold way, the creation
of a single Mind but triple Powers. ... The symbol used in Latin calculation for ten is written by
the Greeks as the letter chi, and the rho splits it. The top of the rho also forms a sigma, for it curves
back on the upright and forms a complete circle. Then the upright when bent makes a Greek iota.
The same stroke when drawn back with a short spear point makes a tau. In this way the six letters
which fashion the name higher than all names are gathered in one symbol, the monogram being
fashioned by three strokes. The one symbol renders six letters at once. With its three strokes the
one symbol shows that the Lord is both three and one, and God is in Christ whom the harmony
of the threefold Mind willed to take a body and be born for us. There is further symbolism in the
fact that the twin strokes bend back their summits symmetrically as though they are separate, and
below they rest on similar supports set apart; yet they are joined fast together with a central link,
as they gaze on identical but separated extremities.
In much the same fashion, the stitching of precious metal threads on the Halberstadt
Host cloth not only constitutes an exchange of spirit and matter but also symbolizes art’s
status as an imitation of God’s act that created prelapsarian beauty.254 The refined ren-
dering of Eden’s plants on the Cantigas frontispiece asserts the same claim. When Jacque-
mart introduced the Veronica into the narrative of Christ Carrying the Cross, he was his-
toricizing the miraculously made image and identifying his own crafting with “scriptural”
precedents.
Artistic talent also being a gift from God, crafting’s transformative power is explicitly
figured on the baptismal font at St. Bridget in the eponymous Bridekirk (outside Cock-
ermouth) made in the 1140s (Fig. 37).255 Adjacent to depictions of the Tree of Life and
Christ’s salutary baptism and opposite a depiction of Adam and Eve expelled from Eden
(on the sides), the relief facing those entering the church features the mason/carver
Richard holding a mallet and chisel (its point of contact a spiral) fashioning an enormous
acanthus scroll, inscribed in runes and Roman book hand: “Richard wrought me and
carefully brought me to this splendor.” The tool overlaps the coil in such a way that the
curl Richard chisels up with his first hammer blow is simultaneously the sculpture and
the planetary plant it represents.256 As on the font in which Christ is bathed in the Paler-
mo Nativity,257 the acanthus symbolizes spiritual regeneration here, setting up an ana-
logue to the redemption baptism itself offers the sinners. Iconography and function re-
inforce one another.
Placement constructed objects’ meaning as well.258 The Crossing of the Red Sea and
desert tabernacle copied in the eleventh century from the Ashburnham Pentateuch to
above the exit from the church of Saint Julien at Tours converted the historical narratives
into a reminder to the faithful leaving that they, too, are wanderers in a spiritual desert.
Whether the Vatican Last Judgment panel was originally positioned on the counterfaçade
of San Gregorio Nazianzeno (as in a version of its iconography at Ceri)259 or suspended
near the altar as the imagery itself suggests, would have determined whether a viewer fo-
cused on the donors outside the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem (with whom they would
identify) or on Christ behind the altar pictured in the center. The inscription likening the
Halberstadt cloth to the veil on Moses’ face (as in Hexateuch) implicates the dazzling
sanctity of the Host beneath and enacts the donor’s hope for redemption in acts of recip-
rocal seeing and not seeing:
If no Israelite might look directly upon the countenance of Moses, when he came down from
the mountain of divine contemplation how shall I look upon the […] body unveiled, how to gaze
upon it? Thus, with fear I offer an intermediary to it, to the body that is superior to all heavenly
hosts. I, sebastos, Alexios Palaeologos, your pious servant. And you, Logos, grant that I may look
upon your countenance on the Day of Judgment.”260
These verses sum up the theory of medieval iconography. While not rejecting the Old
Testament events and promises, material images elevate them because the Incarnation had
abrogated the written Law and replaced the blood sacrifices. Mere interim devices, how-
ever, they too serve only until Christ returns as judge at the end of time.
Moving objects also interpreted iconography. Recalling the brazen serpent, a candle
inserted into a snake-shaped staff was deployed to relight church candles on Holy Satur-
day.261 Air caused to flow through the Kremsmünster’s à jour decoration when it was
waved over the priest performing eucharistic transubstantiation animated the pictured
soaring eagles and suscitating lion and propelled the cloth at Christ’s tomb, the smoke
rising from Mary’s censer, and the fluttering banner of triumph. Actual currents, in oth-
er words, transfigured the material images into Christ’s two natures. Moreover, when a
deacon inserted the flabellum’s prong into the base adorned with Old Testament cruci-
fixion typologies, he transformed the image-bearing object into a vexillum (as in the Æl-
fric Paraphrase).262
The image on the lid of the Sancta Sanctorum box offered a matrix for discerning the
pattern of the amorphous contents inside which, in turn, are pictured in the loca sancta
narratives on its interior. The very process thus recapitulated, on a small scale, Helena’s
discerning the True Cross among the others on Golgotha that, according to legend, con-
firmed faith; according to legend, only the Christian believers were able to perceive the
True Cross among the three that the Empress unearthed.263 Opening, closing, and repo-
sitioning thus enacted diverse and intricate elements of the Christian religious economy:
the redemption of Adam and Eve’s sin and loss of Paradise, the transfer of God’s covenant
with the Jews to a new Chosen People, the Holy Land’s translocation to Rome, and the
promise of salvation through the Church. The stones and dirt from the Holy Land se-
creted in the Lateran altar beneath the feet of the Acheropita, “the image of the Savior
wonderfully painted on a certain tablet, which Luke the Evangelist sketched out, but the
power of the Lord completed it through the angelic obedience,” also made allusion to the
Ascension completed in a mosaic above of angels bearing Christ’s upper torso to heaven,
and, in so doing, dramatized the belief that Christ’s feet remained on earth even after he
ascended to the Father.264 Once a year, moreover, the people would have followed the
box as it passed through the Arch of Titus beneath the reliefs depicting the Ark of the
Covenant and the other spoils from Solomon’s Temple, the public liturgy reinforces
Rome’s status as the new Jerusalem on the banks of the Tiber.265
The Iconographer’s Share
Using an art metaphor, Anselm of Canterbury explicitly acknowledged that “just as in

the same passage of Scripture the [foolish man] will commend the color or the form of
the figures, so [the wise man] will praise the sense and the signification.”266 The same was
even truer of art itself. Meaning depended on the artisan’s experience, learning, and train-
ing but also the viewer’s knowledge and circumstances. The iconographer’s task was to
transform foolish lookers into wise ones. St. Maura summed up her experience at Troyes
by stating that the images’ primary function was to reinforce faith in a way that moved
the beholder’s reaction beyond the oculo corporali toward the ineffable Deity,267 a goal re-
iterated in various ways by most other medieval commentators.
Iconography is contingent. Monograms, for instance, required readers’ participation to
stabilize specific references. “Seeing” Christ in Eldefonsus’ Host diagram depended on a
viewer’s recollection of depictions of the Maiestas Domini. Moving beyond physical see-
ing required cognitive shifting. Pacificus of Verona had noted in his ninth-century astro-
nomical guide that even a viewer of the heavens had to surpass corporal perception to see
with the mind’s eye what was signified, in a constellation, for instance, discerning “the po-
sition of the nails of the cross of Christ … on which his flesh hung for the salvation of
mankind.”268 Bruno of Segni noted how a beholder’s mental state transformed the mean-
ings of ornaments:269
Not all are seen together at once. At one time, we observe that [the church] is clothed in the
ornament of faith, at another in that of hope, and at another in that of charity. All the rest are in-
visible, hidden, in some way, under a single one ... When the ornament of hope comes into view
and is clearly seen, the whole Church rises up into a state of contemplation, and she is lifted out
of the earthly realm into the heavenly, so that even though she remains physically in the world, she
may say with confidence: “our citizenship is in heaven.” ...270
Visual movement underlay the apprehension of much medieval imagery, as Gerard of

Arras already recognized: “We adore truly Him whom we invoke. We bow down in our
body before the cross, mentally before God; we venerate the cross through which we were
redeemed, but we entreat Him who redeems us.”271 Gerald of Wales applied a similar
subjectivity to the “angelic” sketches:
Look at them superficially with the ordinary glance, and you would think it is an erasure, and
not tracery. ... Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art. You will
make out intricacies, so delicate and so subtle, so full of knots and links, with colors so fresh and
vivid, that you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.272
Anchoring his argument in the brazen serpent story, Giordano of Pisa went still fur-
ther in a 1305 sermon, noting that the viewer’s perception affects meaning and also the
effectiveness of crucifixes:
If you stare at the cross only with the bodily eye, the cross will not heal you; even if you stare
at it for a long time with the mind’s eye, it will not heal you. It is better to stare at the cross so that
you have a likeness of Christ within you and feel the pain of the cross of Christ. Immediately, when
you start to feel it in yourself, and when that form and image grows inside you, you free yourself
from all poison.
The issue was proper guidance. Iconographers had to “keep under control the license
of painters” so that, as the Pictor in Carmine put it, artisans “seek God’s glory, not their
own.”273 Viewers, in turn, had to struggle to understand what they saw.274 Already in
the early fifth century, Paulinus of Nola noted that, even in his modest basilica, a visitor
had to “take the slight trouble of bending his neck backwards, taking stock of everything
with head thrown back so that she or he would acknowledge the truth within these emp-
ty pictures, which nurtures his believing mind with representations by no means emp-
ty.” For Bruno of Segni, parsing meaning required serious effort: “all the people look at
these things and what they signify, and they diligently interrogate them.”275 The high-
up inscriptions on the Canterbury glass cannot be discerned without straining nor their
captions comprehended (though it is possible that interlocutors used “crib-sheets” to ex-
plain iconographies beyond visibility).276 The wriggly couplet inscribed around Christ at
Estella is impossible to read though its very presence activates effort which itself elevates
the mind.277
Modern iconographers, too, must reckon with iconography’s slipperiness and struggle
hard to assess the implications. They need to submit the texts they use to rigorous histor-
ical and codicological analysis.278 The tenth-century illustrated Maccabees in Leiden, for
instance, is bound with Vegetius’ tract on military practice so that it becomes a new trea-
tise about spiritual battle.279 The binding of Theophilus Diversarum artium schedula in the
twelfth century with Vitruvius’ De architectura made an argument about art’s continu-
ity.280 Most important, art historians need to read their textual “sources” as closely as they
do their “images.” The most satisfying experience I have had as a scholar was working to-
gether with the learned and subtle Latinist on the poetry and illustrations in the First
Bible of Charles the Bald.281 Examining the texts and pictures first hand in the Biblio-
thèque nationale de France, I discovered consequential mistakes in the authoritative Mon-
umenta Germaniae Historica transcriptions and also codicological evidence of significant
modifications made during the process producing the ninth-century manuscript, includ-
ing translocation of the Apocalypse frontispiece, obliteration and rewriting of textual pas-
sages, and iconographic supplements that transformed the understanding of the volume.
Most important, as Paul Dutton and I worked together to puzzle out the meaning of a
few particularly opaque written locutions and especially elusive pictorial details, we ar-
rived at an inevitable realization: a single creator must have composed both the pictorial
poems and the poetic pictures. Iconography, in this instance, was not a matter of sources
but of subtle personal ambition.
At the same time, iconographic research is, itself, historically determined.282 Dismiss-
ing it is easy. Applying it productively requires knowledge, thought, hard work, historical
sensitivity, and creative skepticism.
How were iconographies read during the Middle Ages? Distinguishing Hildebert’s
“unindoctrinated who grasp only external things from the learned who examine the inte-
rior things,” art’s location stratified audiences. For monastics, Bernard of Clairvaux would
have banned art altogether.283 Anselm’s windows were in spaces frequented by clergy; the
scale of iconographic units in the San Clemente mosaic differentiated clerics within the
choir from the laity outside.284 The multiplication of Pantocrator icons in the Cappella
Palatina in Palermo and possibly the positioning of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem were di-
rected to the royal viewers.285 The Pictor in Carmine’s decorations were recommended for
places “where public stations take place ... to suggest divine things to the unlearned and
stir up the learned to the love of scriptures,” implying a temporal aspect of iconography
that is too often ignored. The various altarpieces in Sankt Olof, set beneath murals, of-
fered worshipers choices. Viewed over a lifetime, a single work of art acquired shades of
meaning “like the lovely colors of a peacock.”
Perspective also conditioned meaning. While the conventional Zodiac picturing the
entire universe in the Valenciennes Calcidius asserts objective distance, for instance, its
counterpart in Lyons moves the reader inside the solar cone and imagines how the circling
Venus appears on the revolving Earth (X). Like many works of art, the Vatican Last Judg-
ment establishes a viewpoint that constructs its visual grammar and syntax; beginning
outside the walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem occupied by the humble donors and the dis-
tracting details of tortured sinners in Hell, it forces viewers to make choices as she or he
looks up. In the Lateran Aula Gotica, movement through the space that never furnishes
a complete view creates a tension of temporality embodied in viewing and the theological
truths that are beyond the human condition.286 Jacquemart’s quoting the Veronica in the
Paris painting reminded viewers that they see Christ only through images and vestiges left
behind when he returned to the Father. While the faithful depicted within the narrative
all look at Christ (even the praying donors in the foreground) the acheiropoieton alone is
turned outward, the miraculously-made icon providing a contrast to the Jews in the back-
ground who turn away to gaze at the devil absconding with Judas’ soul.287
The Angel column at Strasbourg has God at the top watching the penitents who en-
tered the south transept on Maundy Thursday.288 Christ’s point of view from above on
the Hereford Map effects dual vision with the Annunciation once pictured on the wings
viewed straight on.289 Such oscillation between looking from afar and looking up close,
from a tower (specula) or in a mirror (speculum),290 created medieval art as a space of
contemplation made possible by the Incarnation.291 In Ambrogio’s Massa Marittima al-
tarpiece, the Trinitarian mirror breaks the insistent progression upward toward Mary and
Christ intended to figure the complex play of physical seeing and spiritual imagining.292
Distance engendered desire for close examination,293 even fictive distance; but, as Gerald
of Wales noted, minute detail also tested the limit of apprehension. I myself discovered
the need for bifocal eyeglasses when I made a special trip to Vienna – once and for all to
resolve a scholarly debate about the Trinity in the manuscript model of the Grottaferrata
fresco – but was unable to discern the precise configuration of the manuscript’s Trinitar-
ian iconography without borrowing a magnifying glass from the curator. The modified
detail is likewise impossible to discern from the floor of the monastic church; it was, how-
ever, important for the iconographer.
Near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other, Panofsky cited his visual anoma-
ly as a paradigm for art historical research that needed to attend to details while never los-
ing sight of the overall presentation.294 Mis-en-abîme, the duplication of an iconograph-
ic motif on a different scale within a work of art, engendered cognitive oscillation. The
Chrismon embossed on Christ’s book in the Estella tympanum, for example, cues the en-
tire composition which radiates to Christ enthroned on a sella curulis (a sign of kingship)
surrounded by a quatrefoil mandorla framed by the four evangelist symbols and Mary and
John who witnessed his crucifixion, and then censing angels and the elders of the Apoca-
lypse as the Holy Spirit descends. Eldefonsus’ circle “quod nec initium habet Deus in
medio manens nec finem” is simultaneous a globe, a wafer, and a coin.295 Opening a
shrine Madonna, Candide of Maubuisson discovered that “it was not a Virgin, but a
world – more than a world, a paradise, purgatory, and hell were there with all the mys-
teries of the Old and New Testaments, from the creation of the universe through the Last
Judgment, and all represented in figures no larger than a finger.” The nun could have been
describing the Vatican Last Judgment, which comprehends myriad elements within an
orb measuring 288 X 243 cms, that is scaled by the tiny mundus Christ holds in one hand
at the top, the sole object in the painting that is itself labeled.
Superabundance of iconographies and materializations had a similar effect of obliter-
ating iconographic details in a kaleidoscopic blur, a kind of dissimulation that is a feature
especially of most stained-glass windows. The Andrew III diptych overwhelms the viewer
with gems, pearls, and filigree ornaments holding in place stones and portraits of myriad
saints, as well as the evangelist symbols, twelve narratives rendered on parchment covered
in rock crystal to emulate enamel, and two cameos with additional narrative elements.296
At first look, its virtuosic craftsmanship and material luster stupify the viewer and the ge-
ometric grid, anchored only by the cameos, scatters movement as on a checkerboard (an
object for which the Venetian workshop was also famous). An attentive viewer may home
in on individual iconographies and study the inscriptions, narratives, and saints, but the
reading taxes physical apprehension and remains beyond full comprehension. Icono-
graphic opulence in Aula Gotica is intentionally encyclopedic.
Engaging beholders in processes of discovery, interpretation, and choosing,297 iconog-
raphy does not impose meaning on passive viewers.298 Rather, it negotiates relationships
of matter and spirit, carnal perception and the mind’s eye for those who afford it deserved
attention.
Modern technology actually diminishes some essential aspects. While iconography
could hardly have evolved without reproductive printing and then photography, those
very tools have not only dulled art’s aura but have also elided the differences of such im-
portant iconographic elements as material, color, surface, size, and placement. Moreover,
by being assertively made frontal in imitation of easel painting, they destroy contexts that
affect iconographic readings.299 It still remains difficult to acquire photographs such as
the one included here of the San Marco atrium that relates iconographic elements to one
another within their spatial contexts, in this case the perspective on Adam and Eve’s sin
in Eden and Cain’s rebuke together with the Church’s promise of return figured by the
Corinthian column, vine scroll, and Tree of Life. Smartphones enable scholars to zoom
in on frescoes or sculptures when visiting a cathedral and three clicks on the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek website solves the iconographic problem that only three decades ago
required considerable effort to travel to Vienna and to acquire a pair of bifocals, but such
gains need to be reintegrated into what can be learned of actual conditions of medieval
viewing.300 And while scholars now rightly take into account the dramatic effects electric
lights and museum displays have on the perception of iconographic forms,301 the strug-
gle to see and the possibility of not seeing close-up details and the reading of texts and
complexes of images that recede into the miasma of a cathedral must still be reckoned
with. Had Gerald of Wales worn eyeglasses, he probably would not have thought of an-
gelic model books. An important aspect of medieval iconography is believing that sacred
things are above the senses and beyond human ken.
Throughout the Middles Ages there was, in fact, a continuous pushing back against
material iconography. Theodulf of Orléans offered an aniconic alternative in his chapel at
Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire to images of Christ he had seen in Roman churches, the Ark of the
Covenant with an inscription inviting the spectator to penetrate its meaning.302 That is
the explicit message also of the ultimate vignette of Seuse’s diagram, the triptych at the
end of the red thread that both bends the vertical ascent and marks art’s limits (Fig. 38).
Its hinged doors thrown open,303 the gold center is rendered as a sculptural recess that
flattens into a panel at the top, covered by a Fastentuch, the human form with slippers
edging out of the bottom and suggestions of a leg, torso, shoulders and head.304 Trans-
forming a material image into mental contemplation in the way Elsbeth Stagel’s “Ave
Marias” and “Pater Nosters” do counted out on rosary beads, the veiled sculpture meta-
morphosing into a painting brilliantly realizes Seuse’s claim that that one must “drive out
images with images” in order to “form images of what entails no images.”305 The silvered
Trinity beyond is geometric, reflective, mental. It develops age-old principles of art, man-
ifested already in the ninth century, for instance, through the language of image theory in
the Pantokrator Psalter and even more explicitly, the copy of Cosmas Indicopleutstes’
Christian Topography in the Vatican (BAV, Cod. Gr. 699, fol. 89r).306
For all the unexamined assertions of medieval art’s horror vacui, absence in fact func-
tioned powerfully.307 Two compass-drawn circles on the empty verso of Eldefonsus’ dia-
gram in Paris anticipate the determined iconographic realization that succeed them. De-
void of content, the perfect (cosmic) forms awaiting realization perhaps engage the con-
temporary debate at Corbie between Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus on the issue of
real presence, a theological dispute embedded in how, by manifesting scripture, the Host
activates the eyes of the heart.308 A similar use of emptiness anticipates the Maiestas do-
mini in the contemporary First Bible of Charles the Bald where the double mandorla sur-
rounding Christ and the lozenge figuring the four major prophets are overlain with a poem
before they rendered visible making explicit the claim that the picture that follows hinges
Old Testament words to the New Testament fulfillment: “Behold you have now read the
Old Testament prepared for you/ But the New one that rightly follows [it] reveals things
to be read.”309 As in an old iconophilic trope, the Old Testament is but an underdrawing,
the New Testament painting in full color.310 Leaves on the versos of portraits of Christ in
eleventh-century Gospel books from Echternach also engage debates about real presence
and an ongoing dialogue between artistic abstraction and Eucharistic theology.311 More
or less pure painted fields in such Ottonian manuscripts as the tenth-century Gospels of
St. Andrew (Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, KG 54) raise questions about the re-
lationship of artistic creation to God’s,312 while the alternation of blank vellum with pic-
tures of the creation story in the Stammheim Missal illustrated at Hildesheim in the sev-
enth decade of the twelfth century offers a sophisticated realization of contemporary dis-
cussions of art, perception, and cognition (Malibu, CA, Getty Museum, MS 64).313
The two lowest fields in Cantiga 60 contrast the emptiness of white parchment with
the resplendent celestial blue fields studded with gold separated with rainbows.
Metaphors of humankind’s striving to restore an image of God, the pure geometry and
color of the perfectly arced illusions made when light passes through clouds, the rainbows
are iconographic. Already in his In Apocalypsim, the ninth-century exegete Haymo of Hal-
berstadt interpreted John’s vision of the Lord enthroned in heaven (Rev. 4.3) in terms of
the signs God had provided as proof of his covenant with Noah and his children, Moses
receiving the Law in a cloud, Isaiah, Luke, and John.314 Emphasizing the two principal
colors, red and blue-green, he conjured up judgment for Adam and Eve’s sin and the re-
demption through Christ’s blood. Created by the (unseen) sun (Son), the rainbow in the
Escorial manuscript figures art’s capacity in its basic elements to mediate between earth
and heaven, tantalizing humans with facsimiles of the Paradise Adam and Eve had lost
through sin and opening heaven’s door as Maria-Ecclesia does to provide an oblique
glimpse into a restored world of beauty.315 Even the “abstract” form is iconographically
(over)determined.
Pro gloria Dei
A few years before I sat in on his Princeton seminar, Erwin Panofsky had been entan-
gled in an ugly quarrel with the artist Barnett Newman that engaged many of the same
issues that still dog the field of medieval art.316 The spat was triggered by the Vir heroicus
sublimis painted a decade earlier in which Newman had sought to create an artistic experi-
ence independent of iconography (New York, Museum of Modern Art). Robert Rosen-
blum (at the time, a Princeton professor) had included the painting in his “The Abstract
Sublime,” which, by chance, had appeared in the same issue of ARTnews as George
Kubler’s review of Panofsky’s Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art. Taken aback by
the Latinity of Newman’s title, incorrectly given in the picture caption as Vir heroicus sub-
limus, the iconographer shot off a letter to the editor in which he chided the artist: “does
Mr. Newman imply that he, as Aelfric [of Einsham] says of God, is “above Gram-
mar’?”317 Coached by Meyer Schapiro, the great artist responded by citing ancient usages
of “sublimus;” and then, in a perfect modern recapitulation of the “impious presumption
of painters” that the twelfth-century compiler of iconography had railed against in the
Pictor in Carmine, he turned the knife: “the tenth-century monk had a greater sensitivity
for the meaning of the act of creation than Panofsky ... for a work of art to be a work of
art it must rise above grammar and syntax pro Gloria Dei.”
Four secular Jews entangled in a battle over a painting’s Latin title lay bare the choice
art presented during the Middle Ages between (Jewish) word and (Christian) image,318
which itself raises the question of why so many iconographers have been Jewish? Not all,
to be sure, not Émile Mâle nor Francis Wormald nor André Grabar nor Kurt Weizmann
nor Florentine Mütherich nor Michael Camille, to name a few of the most prominent, but
Adolph Goldschmidt, Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl, Rudolf Berliner, Ernst Kitzinger, Hugo
Buchthal, Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Millard Meiss, Meyer Schapiro, Ernst Gombrich,
Robert Deshman, Rosalie B. Green, Enrico Castelnuovo, Walter Cahn, and many still at
work today. It is a question worth pondering. Judaizing haunts medieval aesthetics.319
In my own case, study of Talmud when I was an adolescent, with its examination of
the significance of minutiae, was surely formative.320 So, I conclude this Introduction by
applying the talmudic mode to the Panofsky/Newman contretemps, which was, after all,
at heart a debate about iconography and the “pure” experiencing of art that is very much
still alive.321 Had Newman been the philologist he presents himself to be, the sublime
painter might have been more understanding of Panofsky. His staccato “for the glory of
God” as justification for expressing “the idea of an object without expressing its name”
takes the biblical phrase out of context. Newman seems not to have known that the scrip-
ture comes from Vulgate’s account of Christ’s raising Lazarus, which gives as the miracle’s
reason: “so that the Son of God might be glorified” (Jn 11.4). Surely, he was ignorant of
the Evangelist’s source in Hebrew scripture: “It is to the glory of God to conceal a word,
and it is to the glory of kings to investigate speech” (Proverbs 25.2). Rosenblum intuited
the underlying message in his review, noting that in Homo heroicus sublimis and other can-
vases, Newman “produces awesomely simple mysteries that evoke the primeval moment
of creation ... conveyed by paint alone.”322
Iconography “investigates speech,” insistently plotting medieval art’s via media toward
“gloriam Christi querant non suam.”323 Mixing word and image in art might imagine
things not yet seen, as in the Vatican Last Judgment panel.324 It might create “playful fan-
tasies” in the words of the Pictor in Carmine, and monsters. It is capable even of trans-
gressing the limits of materiality in stained glass, for instance, and other semipermeable
membranes.325 To the extent that it negotiates the invisible God’s presence in this world,
however, medieval art intentionally remains not only a means but also an barrier. Like the
framed curtain before the Holy of Holies in the Pantokrator Psalter, the veiled stanchion
in the Ælfric Hexateuch, and most explicitly, the white cloth framed by gold that is the
penultimate image in Seuse’s diagram, art by its very material presence, closes off direct
experience of the celestial realm. The interweaving of text and image and the sensual plea-
sure of its color and rich materials engender a longing to return to Paradise and the direct
vision of God. Like the mist that covered Moses on Mt. Sinai, it also impairs the face-to-
face apprehension. As Hrabanus Maurus underscored in his exegesis of John’s vision, the
Evangelist related not a vision of God’s glory itself in the Book of Revelation but a simil-
itude of it; and citing Paul’s mirror simile, he made the point clear in his exegesis of the
rainbow.326 Barnett Newman did something of the same when he discussed the title of
Vir Heroicus Sublimis as a “metaphor” of the painting’s research.327
Iconography assures that comprehending medieval art always remains an asymptotia
to the Kremsmünster flabellum’s “vix exprimet ullus”. As the spiral and the parabola in
transfinite number systems, Plato’s planetary plant and Hildegard’s egg imagine the infi-
nite; but as soon as beautiful images dupe viewers into believing they are approaching the
gloria Dei, they redraw boundaries to caution the faithful that humankind will enjoy di-
vine presence only at the end of time.328 To rise above iconography is to trespass into a
domain reserved for angels and saints.329
Herbert Kessler
Johns Hopkins University
[email protected]
1. See M. A. Holly, Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination, «Ikon. Journal of Iconographical
Studies» 7 (2014), pp. 7-16.
2. D. Méhu, Augustin, le sens et les sens. Réflexions sur le processus de spiritualisation du charnel dans l’Église
médiévale, «Revue historique» 317 (2015), pp. 271-302.
3. L. Brubaker, J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclastic Era, c. 680-850: A History, Cambridge 2011; J.
Elsner, Iconoclasm as Discourse: From Antiquity to Byzantium, «Art Bulletin» 94 (2012), pp. 368-394.
4. A. Kumler, Translating Truth. Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and
England, New Haven, CT and London 2011, pp. 5-6; ead. Whose Iconography?, P. A. Patton, C. A. Fernan-
dez (eds.), Iconography Beyond the Crossroads, University Park, PA 2022, pp. 35-58.
5. Walter S. Melion, to whom this essay is dedicated, is a master of tracing the continuities and disrup-
tions; see, for example, his three-volume Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels by Jerome Nadal, Philadel-
phia PA 2003-2005 and The Meditative Art. Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625, Philadel-
phia PA 2010.
6. Useful overviews include: J. F. Hamburger, Introduction, The Place of Theology in Medieval Art History:
Problems, Positions, Possibilities, and The Medieval Work of Art: Wherein the “Work”? Wherein the “Art”?, J. F.
Hamburger, A.-M. Bouché (eds.), The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, Prince-
ton 2006, pp. 1-10, pp. 11-31, and pp. 374-439; J. Baschet, L’iconographie médiévale, Paris 2008; P. S. Pat-
ton, H. D. Schlib (eds.), The Lives and Afterlives of Medieval Iconography, University Park, PA 2021. J. Baschet
referred to “super-iconography” in R. A. Maxwell, K. Ambrose (eds.), Current Directions in Eleventh and
Twelfth-Century Sculpture Studies, Turnhout 2010, pp. 23-46.
7. The contribution builds on material and arguments presented in my book, Experiencing Medieval Art,
Toronto 2019, while adding some recent bibliography.
8. Commentary of the Song of Songs, chap. 4; C. Winterer, Das Fuldaer Sakramentar in Göttingen, Peters-
berg 2009, pp. 407-414.
9. In Evangelium Ioannis Tractatus, 24.5.
10. De institutione divinarum litteram, 4; PL 70.1115; see L. Kendrick, Animating the Letter. The Figura-
tive Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, Columbus, OH 1999, pp. 74-75. John Sco-
tus Eriugena reiterated the metaphor; Periphyseon, 4.4; Periphyseon. The Division of Nature, I. P. Sheldon-
Williams, John J. O’Meara (eds. and trans.), Washington, DC 2020. For a particularly subtle demonstration,
see B. Fricke, At the Threshold of Painting: The Man of Sorrows by Albrecht Dürer, P. Bokody, A. Nagel (eds.),
Renaissance Metapainting, London 2019, pp. 209-238.
11. Cf. J. C. Schmitt, Animal Farm: une image du tabernacle de moïse dans la Bible historiale de Guiart des
Moulins (BnF, Français 9, Fol. 63r, vers 1412-1415), «Codex Aqvilarensis» 37 (2021), pp. 49-64.
12. R. Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1970; J. L.
Koosed, Moses: The Face of Fear, «Biblical Interpretation» 22(4-5) (2014), pp. 414-429; H. Broderick, Moses
the Egyptian in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv), Notre
Dame, IN 2017.
13. B. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv. The Frontier of Seeing and
Reading in Anglo-Saxon England, London 2007.
14. J. Elsner, Beyond Eusebius: Prefatory Images and the Early Book, A. Bausi, B. Reudenbach, and H.
Wimmer (eds.), Canones: The Art of Harmony. The Canon Tables of the Four Gospels, Berlin 2020, pp. 99-132;
B. Kitzinger, Eusebian Reading and Early Medieval Gospel Illumination, Canones, pp. 133-169; J. H. Ham-
burger, The Birth of the Author, Toronto 2021.
15. P. K. Klein, The Valenciennes Apocalypse and the Pictorical [sic] Tradition, Apocalipsis carolingio de Va-
lenciennes, Ms. 99, Madrid 2012, pp. 175-189; id. The Role of Prototypes and Models in the Transmission of Me-
dieval Picture Cycles: The Case of the Beatus Manuscripts, M. E. Müller (ed.), The Use of Models in Medieval
Book Painting, Newcastle upon Tyne 2014, pp. 1-28.
16. On the abundance of Marian epithets, see; R. Fulton Brown, Mary, M. Ruben, W. Simona (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Christianity, pp. 283-296. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/
histories/.
17. D. Parello, Fünf Felder eines typologischen Zyklus aus Arnstein, Kulturstiftung der Länder u. LWL-Lan-
desmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster: Die Glasgemäldesammlung des Freiherrn vom Stein, Münster
2007, pp. 22-39 and 92-94; H. L. Kessler, Consider the glass, it can teach you, B. Kurmann-Schwarz, E. Pastan
(eds.), Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass, Leiden 2019, pp. 143-156.
18. R. Sánchez Ameijeiras, Imaxes e teoria da imaxe nas Cantigas de Santa Maria, E. Fidalgo (ed.), Las
Cantigas de Santa María, Vigo 2002, pp. 247-330; ead., Los rostros de las palabras. Imágenes y teoría literaria
en el Occidente medieval, Madrid 2014, pp. 171-175.
19. L. Vandi, La trasformazione del motivo dell’acanto dall’antichità al XV secolo: Ricerche di teoria e storia
dell’ornamento, Berlin 2002.
20. E.g. a sixth-century volume of St. Jerome’s Epistles in St. Petersburg (MS. Lat. Q.v.I.9, fol. 38r).
21. B. Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, Jerusalem 1969, pp. 42-43; Y. Levy, “Ezekiel’s Plan in
an Early Karaite Bible, «Jewish Art» 19-20 (1993/94), pp. 68-85; D.-R. Halperin, Clockwise–Counterclockwise:
Calligraphic Frames in Sephardic Hebrew Bibles and Their Roots in Mediterranean Culture, «Manuscript Stud-
ies» 4(2) (2019), pp. 235-261.
22. In turn, the metaphoric curtain came to underlie the ubiquitous vela dado motif in medieval churches;
see: J. Mitchell, Ornament as Index: Dado as Agent in Early Medieval Italy, F. Marazzi, M. Cuomo (eds.), La
Pittura parietale aniconica e decorativa fra trarre antichità e alto medievale. Territorio, tradizioni, temi e ten-
denze, Cerro al Volturno 2021, pp. 347-371.
23. V. Debiais, La croisée des signes: L’écriture et les images médiévales, 800-1200, Paris 2017.
24. Homily 17; R. Betancourt, Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium, New York 2018, pp. 107-196.
25. M. Otter, Baudri of Bourgueil: “To Countess Adela” «Journal of Medieval Latin» 11 (2001), pp. 60-
141; V. Debiais, The Poem of Baudri for Countess Adéle: A Starting Point for Reading of Medieval Latin Ekphra-
sis, «Viator» 44 (2013), pp. 95-106; E. C. Pastan, S. D. White, The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Re-
assessment, Woodbridge 2014; X. Barral i Altet, En souvenir du roi Guillaume: La broderie de Bayeux, Paris
2016, pp. 85-98; M. Hauknes, The Painting of Knowledge in Thirteenth-Century Rome, «Gesta» 55 (2016), pp.
19-47.
26. H. Belting, Bild und Kult: eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, Berlin 1995; G. Wolf,
Salus Populi Romani. Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kultbilder im Mittelalter, Weinheim 1990; M. Peto-
letti, “Ut patenter innotescat”: Il trattato di Nicola Maniacutia (sec. XII) sull’immagine acheropita del Laterano,
E. D’Angelo, J. Ziolkowski (eds.), Auctor et Auctoritas in Latinis medii aevi litteris: Author and Authorship in
Medieval Latin Literature, Florence 2014, pp. 847-863; E. A. Oftestad, The Lateran Church in Rome and the
Ark of the Covenant. Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem, Woodbridge 2019; M. Luchterhand, Die ‚Nacht der
Bilder‘ in Rom. Die Kultgeschichte der päpstlichen Salvatorikone im Spiegel neuer Handschriftenfunde, C. Ruh-
mann, P. Koch (eds.), Museum als Resonanzraum. Kunst–Wissenschaft–Inszenierung. Festschrift für Christoph
Stiegemann, Petersberg 2020, pp. 71-109.
27. T. E. A. Dale, Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience, University Park, PA 2019.
28. Sánchez Ameijeiras, Los rostros, p. 93.
29. S. Murray, A Gothic Sermon: Making a Contract with the Mother of God, Saint Mary of Amiens, Berkeley
and Los Angeles 2004; J. Jung, The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France
and Germany, ca. 1200-1400, Cambridge 2013, pp. 191-193.
30. I. Drpic´, Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium, New York, NY 2016, pp. 18-66.
31. A. Arnulf, Versus ad Picturas. Studien zur Titulusdichtung als Quellengattung der Kunstgeschichte von der
Antike bis zum Hochmittelalter, Berlin 1997; N. Bock, De titulis. Zur Vorgeschichte des modernen Bildtitels,
Berlin and Munich 2017. Tituli on a painted Crucifix in Rosano were planned before the paintings and drew
on the language of Fulcoius and Hildebert; T. Gramigni, S. Zamponi, Le iscrizioni della Croce di Rosano, M.
Ciatti et al. (eds.), La croce dipinta dell’abbazia di Rosano: Visibile e invisibile. Studio e restauro per la com-
prensione, Florence 2007, pp. 71-88.
32. Belting, Bild und Kult, pp. 19-27.
33. G. Peers, Sacred Shock. Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium, University Park, PA 2004, pp. 117-131.
34. M. Bacci, Nicodemo e il Volto Santo, M. C. Ferrari, A. Meyer (eds.), Il Volto Santo in Europa: Culto e
immagini del Crocifisso nel Medioevo (Atti del Convegno internazionale di Engelberg [13-16 settembre 2000]),
Lucca 2005, pp. 15-40.
35. M. Bacci, Kathreptis, o la Veronica della Vergine, «Iconographica» 3 (2004), pp. 11-37; Z. Izydorczyk,
The Cura Sanitatis Tiberii a Century after Ernst von Dobschütz, A. Murphy et al. (eds.), The European Fortune
of the Roman Veronica in the Middle Ages, Brno 2017, pp. 32-48.
36. O. Pächt, Un tableau du Jacquemart de Hesdin?, «Burlington Magazine» 98 (1956), pp. 146-153; K.
M. Rudy, Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medieval Books, New Haven and London 2015, pp. 225-
266; H. L. Kessler, Veronica’s Texttile, D. Cashion, H. Luttikhuizen, and A. West (eds.) The Primacy of the
Image in Northern European Art, 1400-1700: Essays in Honor of Larry Silver, Leiden 2017, pp. 125-137.
37. L. Weigert, French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater, New York 2015, pp. 34-53.
For earlier witnesses of the intertwining of manuscript illustration, objects, and religious drama, see: J. Weitz-
mann-Fiedler, Romanische gravierte Bronzeschalen, Berlin 1981. J.-C. Schmitt offers a complex example of the
interplay of fluid texts and pictures in Animal Farm.
38. About the same time, other sacred images of Christ emerged in texts, legends, and art. Among them
were the “Shroud of Turin” and a profile depiction on an emerald derived from Renaissance portrait con-
ventions that was provided with a textual pedigree in form of a letter from Pontius Pilate to the Emperor
Tiberius; G. Morello, G. Wolf, Il Volto di Cristo (cat. of an exhibition, Rome 2000-01), Milan 2000, pp. 215-
249; A. Nagel, C. S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, Brooklyn, NY 2010, pp. 240-247; A. Nicolotti, From
the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin.The Metamorphosis and Manipulation of a Legend, Leiden 2013.
39. W. H. Waszink (ed.), Calcidius, Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, London
1962; P. E. Dutton, Medieval Approaches to Calcidius, G. J. Reydams-Schils (ed.) Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural
Icon, Notre Dame, IN, 2002, pp. 183-205; B. S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens. Roman Astronomy and Cos-
mology in the Carolingian Renaissance, Leiden 2009; B. Bakhouche (ed. and trans.), Calcidius, Commentaire
au Timée de Platon, Paris 2011; J. Magee (ed. and trans.) Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, Washington, DC
2016; H. L. Kessler, Lions not Lines: Figured Calcidian Diagrams and Diagrammatic Figures, C. M. Booker,
A. A. Latowsky (eds.) This Modern Age: Medieval Studies in Honour of Paul Edward Dutton, Budapest 2023,
pp. 321-362.
40. R. McKitterick, Knowledge of Plato’s Timaeus in the Ninth Century: The Implications of Valenciennes
Bibliothèque Municipale MS 293, H. J. Westra (ed.), From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval
Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, Leiden 1992, pp. 85-96. Yet a third variant appears in Paris,
BnF, MS lat. 6282, for. 42r.
41. J. Lowden, The Octateuchs: A Study in Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, University Park, PA 1992;
L. Brubaker, Life Imitates Art: Writings on Byzantine Art History, 1991-92, «Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies» 17 (1993), pp. 173-223; M. Bernabò, Formation and Development of the Cycle, K. Weitzmann, M.
Bernabò (eds.), The Byzantine Octateuchs, Princeton, NJ 1999, pp. 313-329.
42. Although he set out discrete principles for it, Weitzmann himself shunned the term; see K. Weitz-
mann, The Study of Byzantine Book Illumination, Past, Present and Future, K. Weitzmann (ed.), The Place of
Book Illumination in Byzantine Art, Princeton 1975, pp. 1-60. The method of “picture criticism” had, in any
case, been used before by others, e. g. W. Koehler, Die karolingischen Miniaturen, Berlin 1930-33, vol. I, part
2, pp. 109-212.
43. R. E. Reynolds, God’s Money: Eucharistic Azyme Hosts in the Ninth Century According to Bishop Elde-
fonsus of Spain: Observations on the Origin of the Text, «Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architec-
ture» 4(2) (2013), pp. 1-69. https://digital.kenyon.edu/ perejournal/vol4/iss2/1. See also: A. Kumler, The
Multiplication of the Species: Eucharistic Morphology in the Middle Ages, «RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics»
59/60 (2011), pp. 119-140.
44. On Carolingian iconography and coins, see A. Kumler, Where Your Treasure Is, There is Your Heart
Also: a Kesslerian View from the Soissons Gospels, «Codex Aqvilarensis» 37 (2021), pp. 109-125.
45. The dot was intended to work together with the two horizon bars framing the names of the three per-
sons which, in the Paris version, confusingly includes AND[rew], IER[u]S[a]L[em], and IAC[obus]).
46. See F. Bœsplug, La vision-en-reve de la Trinité de Rupert de Deutz (v. 1000) Liturgie, spiritualité et his-
toire de l’art, «Revue des sciences religieuses» 71(2) (1997), pp. 205-229; J. F. Hamburger, Seeing and Believ-
ing: The Suspicion of Sight and the Authentication of Vision in Late Medieval Art and Devotion, K. Krüger, A.
Nova (eds.), Imagination und Wirklichkeit: Zum Verhältnis von mentalen und realen Bildern in der Kunst der
frühen Neuzeit, Mainz 2000, pp. 47-69.
47. M. H. Caviness, Gender Symbolism and Text Image Relationships: Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias, in J.
Beer (ed.), Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages, Kalamazoo, MI 1997, pp. 71-111 and ead.
Artist: To See, Hear, and Know, All at Once, B. J. Newman (ed.), Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bin-
gen and her World, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998, pp. 110-124; B. J. Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hilde-
gard’s Theology of the Feminine, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA 1997; L. Saurma-Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im
«Liber Scivias» der Hildegard von Bingen: die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung der Bilder, Wiesbaden 1998;
W. Knoch, Visionäre Farbigkeit: Anmerkungen zum Liber Scivias der Äbtissin Hildegard von Bingen (1098-
1179); I. Bennewitz, A. Schindler (eds.), Farbe im Mittelalter: Materialität – Medialität – Semantik, Berlin
2011, vol. 2, pp. 791-802; N. M. Campbell, Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-
Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript, «Eikón/Imago» 4(2) (2013), pp. 1-68; id. Picturing
Hildegard of Bingen’s Sight: Illuminating Her Visions, J. Bain (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of
Bingen, Cambridge 2021, pp. 257-279.
48. J. F. Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and in the Rhineland, circa
1300. New Haven, CT and London 1990; B. J. Newman, What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash
between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture, «Speculum» 80(1) (2005), pp. 1-43.
49. U. Ernst, Carmen figuratum: Geschichte des Figurengedichts von den antiken Ursprüngen bis zum Aus-
gang des Mittelalters, Cologne 1991; M. C. Ferrari, Il “Liber sanctae crucis” di Rabano Mauro: Testo - immagine -
contesto, Bern 1999; Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion, pp. 33-51.
50. F. Wormald, The Utrecht Psalter, London 1953; K. van der Horst, W. Noel, and W. C. M. Wüstefeld
(eds.),The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art. Picturing the Psalms of David (cat. of an exhibition, Catharijnecon-
vent, Utrecht, 1996), Utrecht 1996; Sánchez Ameijeiras, Rostros; Hamburger, Birth of the Author, p. 12.
51. S. Dufrenne, Les illustrations du Psautier d’Utrecht. Sources et apport carolingien, Paris1978.
52. P. Berger, Hebrew Psalms and the Utrecht Psalter. Veiled Origins, University Park, PA 2020.
53. C. Chazelle, The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era: Theology and Art of Christ’s Passion, Cambridge
2001.
54. Sánchez Ameijeiras, Rostros, pp. 199-213.
55. R. Deshman, Another Look at the Disappearing Christ, «Art Bulletin» 79 (1997), pp. 518-546.
56. J. F. Hamburger, Medieval Self-Fashioning: Authorship, Authority, and Autobiography in Seuse’s Exem-
plar, Notre Dame, IN 1998; B. McGinn, Theologians as Trinitarian Iconographers, Hamburger, Bouché (eds.),
Mind’s Eye, pp. 186-207; T. Lentes, Der mediale Status des Bildes. Bildlichkeit bei Heinrich Seuse – statt einer
Einleitung, D. Ganz, T. Lenes (eds.), Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren. Bildtheorie und Bildgebrauch in der Vor-
moderne, Berlin 2004, pp. 13-73; D. Ganz, Medien der Offenbarung: Visiondarstellungen im Mittelalter, Berlin
2008, pp. 313-327; I. Falque, “Daz man bild mit bilde us tribe”: Imagery and Knowledge of God in Henry Suso’s
Exemplar, «Speculum» 92(2) (2017), pp. 447-492.
57. Die Genesismosaiken in Venedig und ihr Verhältnis zu den Miniaturen der Cottonbibel, Helsinki 1889.
58. K. Weitzmann, H. L. Kessler, The Cotton Genesis, Princeton 1986; H. L. Kessler, Conclusion: La
Genèse Cotton est morte, M. Angheben (ed.), Les strategies de la narration dans la peinture médiévale, Turnhout,
2019, pp. 373-402; M. Angheben, De la recension Cotton à la tradition septentrionale. Déconstruction et recon-
struction d’une généalogie séculaire, «Codex Aqvilarensis» 37 (2021), pp. 197-212.
59. K. Krause, Venedigs Sitz im Paradies. Zur Schöpfungskuppel in der Vorhalle von San Marco, «Mit-
teilungen des Kunsthistorische Institutes in Florenz» 48 (2004), pp. 9-54; ead. Die Inschriften der Genesismo-
saiken, M. Büchsel, H. L. Kessler, and R. Müller (eds.) Das Atrium von San Marco in Venedig. Die Genese der
Genesismosaiken und ihre mittelalterliche Wirklichkeit/ The Atrium of San Marco in Venice. The Genesis of the
Genesis Mosaics and their Medieval Reality, Frankfurt 2014, pp. 143-176; L. Geymonat, L. Lazzarini, A Na-
tivity Cycle for the Choir Screen of San Marco, Venice, «Convivium» 7 (2020), pp. 80-113.
60. K. Koshi, Die Genesisminiaturen in der Wiener “Histoire Universelle” (Cod. 2576), Vienna 1973.
61. E. Beaucamp, P. Cordez, Glass Vessels, Camel Imagery, House Façades: The Venetian Art of Commodi-
ties (13th-14th Centuries), E. Beaucamp, P. Cordez (eds.), Typical Venice? Venetian Commodities, 13th-16th
Centuries, London 2020, pp. 4-43.
62. H. L. Kessler, Medietas /Mediator and the Geometry of Incarnation, W. Melion, L. Palmer Wandel
(eds.), Image and Incarnation.The Early Modern of the Pictorial Image, Leiden 2015, pp. 17-75.
63. Michele Ferrari has questioned the medieval authenticity of this text, but the scholarly consensus is
that it is Carolingian: J.-C. Schmitt, Le corps des images: Essai sur la culture visuelle au Moyen Âge, Paris 2002,
pp. 167-198; T. Noble, Images, a Daydream and Heavenly Sounds in the Carolingian Era: Walahfrid Strabo
and Maura of Troyes, G. de Nie, T. F. X. Noble (eds.), Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages: Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images, Farnham 2012, pp. 23-45; W. Diebold, The Attitude to-
wards Images in Prudentius of Troyes’s Sermo de Vita Maurae, S. Fozi, G. Lutz (eds.), Christ on the Cross. The
Boston Crucifix and the Rise of Monumental Wood Sculpture, 970-1200, Turnhout 2020, pp. 348-359.
64. Anselm’s windows were destroyed in the 1174 fire, but late twelfth-century replacements, almost cer-
tainly based on them, include the same unusual juxtaposition; M. H. Caviness, The Early Stained Glass of Can-
terbury Cathedral, Princeton, NJ 1977; T. A. Heslop, St Anselm, Church Reform and the Politics of Art, C. P.
Lewis (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies, Proceedings of the Battle Conference for 2010 (Vol. 33), Woodbridge 2011,
pp. 103-126.
65. P. Henriet, Lucas de Tuy et les images. Tradition et modernité, monde hispanique et monde exterior,
«Codex Aqvilarensis» 36 (2020), pp. 65-90.
66. C. Schleif, Nicodemus and Sculptors: Self-reflexivity in Works by Adam Kraft and Tilman Riemen-
schneinder, «Art Bulletin» 75 (1993), pp. 599-626. Bacci, Nicodemo.
67. Bede noted the alleged Jewish pedigree of a similar diagram in the copy of Cassiodorus’ Explanation
of the Psalms. S. Dufrenne, Une illustration ‘historique’ inconnue du psautier du Mont-Athos, Pantokrator 61,
«Cahiers archéologiques» 15 (1965), pp. 83-95; K. Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine
Psalters, Cambridge 1992, p. 34; M. Evangelatou, Liturgy and the Illustration of the Ninth-Century Marginal
Psalters, «Dumbarton Oaks Papers» 63 (2009), pp. 59-116.
68. At that point, however, iconography risks going aground on the shoals of pseudomorphism; see Y.-A.
Bois, On the Uses and Abuses of Look-alikes, «October» 154 (2015), pp. 127-149.
69. Cf. B. E. Kitzinger, The Cross, the Gospels, and the Work of Art in the Carolingian Age, Cambridge
2019.
70. V. Debiais, Le chant des formes, L’écriture épigraphique entre matérialité du trace et transcendence des
contenué, «Revista de poética medievale» 27 (2013), pp. 101-129.
71. See J. H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Re-
naissance, Kortrijk 1979; D. Nirenberg, Aesthetic Theology and Its Enemies: Judaism in Christian Painting, Po-
etry, and Politics, Waltham, MA 2015.
72. G. Mietke, Wundertätige Pilgerandenken, Reliquien und ihr Bildschmuck, Byzanz. Die Macht der Bilder
(cat. of an exhibition), Hildesheim 1998, pp. 40-55; B. Reudenbach, Reliquien von Orten. Ein frühchristliches
Reliquiare als Gedächtnisort, B. Reudenbach, G Toussaint (eds.), Reliquiare im Mittelalter, Berlin 2005, pp.
21-41; id. Loca sancta. Zur materiellen Übertragung der heiligen Stätten, Jerusalem, du Schöne: Vorstellungen und
Bilder einer heiligen Stadt, Bern 2008, pp. 9-32; A. Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time, London 2012,
pp. 116-132; H. L. Kessler, Arca Arcarum: Nested Boxes and the Dynamics of Sacred Experience, «Codex Aqvi-
larensis» 30 (2014), pp. 83-107; B. Fricke, Tales from Stones, Travels through Time: Narrative and Vision in
the Casket from the Vatican, «West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture» 21
(2014), pp. 230-250.
73. M. Sureda I Jubany, Faithful Crosses. On the Survival of an Early Type of Goldsmith’s Cross in Late Me-
dieval Catalonia, «Convivium» 8(1) (2021), pp. 143-165.
74. J. H. Hamburger, St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology, Berkeley
and Los Angeles, CA 2002; H. L. Kessler, St. John’s Word and Images Beyond Time, P. Carmassi, C. Winter-
er (eds.) Text, Bild und Ritual in der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft (8.-11. Jh), Florence 2014, pp. 287-309.
75. P. Cordez, La châsse des rois mages. Cologne et la christianisation des pierres magiques aux XIIe et XIIIe
siècles, L. Burkhart et al. (eds.), Le trésor au Moyen Âge: Questions et perspectives de recherche, Neuchâtel 2005,
pp. 315-332; id., ¿El arrepentimiento de un mago? Los camafeos de la estatuilla del rey David en la catedral de
Basilea (hacia 1310-1320), «Codex Aqvilarensis» 33 (2017), pp. 127-136.
76. Debiais, Croisée, p. 265; B. Pentcheva, Performative Images and Cosmic Sound in the Exultet Liturgy of
Southern Italy, «Speculum» 95(2) (2020), pp. 396-466; C. Bynum, Dissimilar Similitudes. Devotional Objects
in Late Medieval Europe, Brooklyn, NY, 2020, pp. 17-57.
77. M. Roberts (ed.), Poems. Venantius Fortunatus, Cambridge MA and London 2017, pp. 314-315; B.
Brennan, Weaving with Words: Venantius Fortunatus’s Figurative Acrostics on the Holy Cross, «Traditio» 74
(2019), pp. 27-53.
78. P. D. Vasileiadis, N. Gordon, Transmission of the Tetragrammaton in Judeo-Greek and Christian
Sources, «Cahiers Accademia» 12 (2021), pp. 85-126. Translated into Latin iot/heh/ioh/heh/ on a twelfth-
century lead amulet, the tetragrammaton is fitted into the corners of a cross and framed by the Trinitarian
names; D. Vavřík et al., Unveiling Magic from the Middle Ages: Tomographic Reading of a Folded Lead Amulet
from Dřevíč Fortress (Czech Republic), «Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences» 12 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00976-4. Petrus Alfonsi used the tetragrammaton as the foundation of
his Trinitarian diagram thereby overlaying Christianity’s own dual origins in Judaism and paganism onto
greatest theological mystery; Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion, pp. 224-225.
79. B. C. Tilghman, The Shape of the Word: Extralinguistic Meaning in Insular Display Lettering, «Word
& Image» 27(3) (2011), pp. 292-308.
80. Cf. the late twelfth-century version in Tours (Bib. mun. MS 193, fol. 71r). S. Waldhoff, Synagoga im
Sakramentar. Zur revelatio synagogae in der Handschrift 193 der Bibliothèque municipale in Tours, «Frühmittel-
alterliche Studien» 43 (2009), pp. 215-270; C. Voyer, L’allégorie de la Synagogue: Une représentation ambiva-
lente du judaïsme, C. Heck (ed.), L’allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Âge: Formes et fonctions. Héritages, créations,
mutations, Turnhout 2011, pp. 95-109; T. Frese, Aktual- und Realpräsenz: Das eucharistische Christusbild von
Spätantike bis ins Mittelalter, Berlin 2013; H. L. Kessler, Dynamic Signs and Spiritual Designs, B. Bedos-Rezak,
J. Hamburger (eds.), Sign and Design. Script as Image in Cross-Cultural Perspective (300-1600 CE), Washing-
ton, DC 2016, pp. 107-130.
81. L. Ayres, An Italianate Episode in Romanesque Bible Illumination at Weingarten Abbey, «Gesta» 24(2)
1985, pp. 121-128.
82. The earlier St. Hubert Bible is explicitly Calcidian (Brussels, Bibl. Royale, MS II. 1639, fol. 6v); H.
Bober, In Principio. Creation before Time, M. Meiss (ed.), De artibus opuscula XL Essays in Honor of Erwin
Panofsky, New York 1961, pp. 13-28; C. Rudolph, In the Beginning: Theories and Images of Creation in North-
ern Europe in the Twelfth Century, «Art History» 22(1), pp. 3-55; I. Weinryb, The Bronze Object in the Mid-
dle Ages, Cambridge 2016, pp. 64-65; H. L. Kessler, The Montalcino Bible’s Steep Mountain of Mysteries,
«Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome» 65 (2020), pp. 308-372.
83. Vandi, Trasformazione; N. Van Deusen, The Cultural Context of Medieval Music, Santa Barbara, CA
2011; J.-P. Caillet, Et magnae silvae creverunt... Observations sur le thème du rinceau peuplé dans l’orfèvrerie et
l’ivoirerie liturgiques aux époques ottonienne et romane, «Cahiers de civilisation médiévale» 38(149) (1995), pp.
23-33; Weinryb Bronze Object, pp. 56-73.
84. In Martianus Capella; H. Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany. The View
from Cologne, Oxford 2007, pp. 215 and 226.
85. J.-C. Schmitt, Penser par figure. Du compasse divin aux diagrammes magiques, Paris 2019, p. 116.
86. C. W. Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe, Brooklyn, NY
2011 pp. 112-121; Kitzinger, Cross, pp. 106-120.
87. A. Grabar, Les ampoules de Terre Sainte, Paris 1958; K. Weitzmann, Loca Sancta and the Representa-
tional Arts of Palestine, «Dumbarton Oaks Papers» 28 (1974), pp. 31-55; G. Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrim-
age Art, rev. ed. Washington, DC 2010; J. Elsner, Replicating Palestine and Reversing the Reformation. Pil-
grimage and Collecting at Bobbio, Monza and Walsingham, «Journal of the History of Collections» 9 (1997),
pp. 117-130.
88. A. Iacobini, L’albero della vita nell’immaginario medievale: Bisanzio e l’Occidente” in A. M. Romanini,
A. Cadei (eds.), L’architettura medievale in Sicilia: la cattedrale di Palermo, Rome 1994, pp. 241-290; H.
Klein, Byzanz, der Westen und das ‘wahre’ Kreuz. Die Geschichte einer Reliquie und ihrer künstlerischen Fassung
in Byzanz und im Abendland, Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 115-117 et passim.
89. I. H. Garipzanov, The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World, Leiden 2008, pp. 161-
260; J. F. Hamburger, J. O’Driscoll, Imperial Splendor. The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, 800-
1500, New York 2021, p. 60. A short Carolingian tract attributed to Hrabanus Maurus (now titled De in-
ventione linguarum) considers linkages between letters and pictorial representations to be a form of art;
Tilghman, Shape of Words.
90. V. Debiais, From Christ’s Monogram to God’s Presence. Epigraphic Contribution to the Study of Chris-
mons in Romanesque Sculpture, Hamburger, Bedos-Rezak (eds.), Sign and Design, pp. 135-151; id., Croisée,
pp. 84-85.
91. Eldefonsus would have known Paulinus’ carmina.
92. R. Favreau, L’inscription du tympan nord de San Miguel d’Estella, «Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes»
133 (1975), pp. 237-246; J. M. Martínez de Aguirre, Portada de San Miguel de Estella. Estudio Iconológico,
«Príncipe de Viana» 45, no. 173 (1984), pp. 439-461; J. del Hoyo Calleja, Nec deus est nec homo: a propósito
de la inscripción de la portada norte de San Miguel de Estella, Actas [del] III Congreso Hispánico de Latín Me-
dieval (León, 26-29 de septiembre de2001), León 2002, vol. 2, pp. 797-802; P. Skubiszewski, Maiestas Domi-
ni et liturgie, C. Arrignon et al. (eds.), Actes du Colloque à l’occasion du cinquantenaire du CESCM, Poitiers,
1-4 septembre 2003, Turnhout 2006, pp. 309-408; H. L. Kessler, Neither God Nor Man. Words, Images, and
the Medieval Anxiety about Art, Freiburg i. Br., 2007.
93. C. Meier, Malerei des Unsichtbaren: Über den Zusammenhang von Erkenntnistheorie und Bildstruktur
im Mittelalter, W. Harms (ed.), Text und Bild. Bild und Text: DFG-Symposion 1988, Stuttgart 1990, pp. 35-
65; B. Kühnel, The End of Time in the Order of Things: Science and Eschatology in Early Medieval Art, Re-
gensburg 2003; K. Müller, Visuelle Weltaneignung. Astronomische und kosmologische Diagramme in Hand-
schriften des Mittelalters, Göttingen 2008; F. Wallis, What a Medieval Diagram Shows: A Case Study of Com-
putus, «Studies in Iconography» 36 (2015), pp. 1-40; J. F. Hamburger, Mindmapping: The Diagram as
Paradigm in Medieval Art and Beyond, M. Kupfer, A. Cohen, and J. H. Chajes (eds.), Visualization of Know-
ledge Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Turnhout 2021, pp. 61-86; L. Safran, A Prologomenon to Byzan-
tine Diagrams, ibid., pp. 361-404; A. S. Cohen, Diagramming the Diagrammatic: Twelfth-Century Europe,
ibid., pp. 383-404.
94. Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion, p. 235; Kumler, “Whose Iconography”. I wish to thank Dr.
Martin Schwarz for discussing his work on this important manuscript, which will be the subject of his forth-
coming article, Maiestas Dominae. See also: A. R. Verboon, The Medieval Tree of Porphyry: An Organic Struc-
ture of Logic, P. Salonius, A. Worm (eds.), The Tree. Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art
and Thought, Turnhout 2014, pp. 95-116.
95. M. H. Caviness, Templates for Knowledge: Geometric Ordering of the Built Environment, Monumental
Decoration, and Illuminated Page, Kupfer, Cohen, and Chajes (eds.),Visualization of Knowledge, pp. 405-428.
96. Labyrinths were important iconographic devices; see: A. S. Mittman, Forking Paths? Matthew Paris,
Jorge Luis Borges, and Maps of the Labyrinth, «Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture» 4
(2013). A labyrinth at the start of Otfrid of Weissenburg’s Gospels (Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. Vind. 2867, fol. 1r),
explicated by an accompanying poem and bookended by a cross, figures the difficulty but also the possibility
of deploying the senses to rise spiritually; W. Haubrichs, Error inextricabilis. Form und Funktion der
Labyrinthabbildung im mittelalterlichen Handscriften, C. Meier, U. Ruberg (eds.) Text und Bild: Aspekte des
Zusammenwirkens zweier Künste in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, Wiesbaden 1980, pp. 63-174; Kitzinger,
Cross, pp. 103-114.
97. Ganz, Medien der Offenbarung.
98. The swords and daggers piercing the woman presages Mater Dolorosa iconography; S. McMichael, K.
W. Shelby (eds.), Medieval Franciscan Approaches to the Virgin Mary. Mater Misericordiae Sanctissima et Do-
lorosa, Leiden 2019. On silent prayer, see: V. Debiais, Le silence dans l’art. Liturgie et théologie du silence dans
les images médiévales, Paris 2019.
99. A. García Aviles, Transitus: actitudes hacia la sacralidad de las imágenes en el Occidente medieval, Imá-
genes medievales de culto, Murcia 2010, pp. 22-25.
100. Falque, Imagery and Knowledge.
101. Drpić, Epigram, Art, and Devotion, pp. 111-116 and 355-356; P. Strohmaier, Vom liturgischen Tex-
til zum Werbebanner? Zwei byzantinische Goldstickereien im Dom zu Halberstadt, «Zeitschrift für Kunst-
geschichte» 80 (2017), pp. 219-246.
102. Hamburger, St. John the Divine, pp. 171, 181.
103. P. Binski, The Rhetorical Occasions of Gothic Sculpture, «Collegium medievale» 30 (2018), pp. 7-32.
104. PL 171.1383; W. Tronzo, The Cultures of his Kingdom. Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Paler-
mo, Princeton 1997, pp. 56 and 112; B. Brenk, Visualizing Divine Authority. The Mosaics of Roger II in Sicily:
their Art and their Meaning, Wiesbaden 2022, pp. 117, 135, and 151.
105. P. Wagner (ed.), Icons–Texts–Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality, Berlin 1996; S. Ric-
cioni, Il mosaic absidale di S. Clemente a Roma. Exemplum della Chiesa riformata, Spoleto 2006, pp. 16-30;
id., L’Epiconografia: l’opera d’arte come sintesi visiva di scrittura e immagine, A. C. Quintavalle (ed.), Medioe-
vo: Arte e storia (Atti del Convegno internazionale di studie dell’AISAME), Parma 2008, pp. 465-480; id. The
Word in the Image: an Epiconographic Analysis of Reformed Mosaics in Rome (Twelfth Century), K. B. Aavits-
land, T. K. Seim (eds.), Inscriptions in Liturgical Spaces, Budapest 2011, pp. 85-137; id. The Visual Experience
of the Triumphant Church: The Mosaic of S. Maria in Trastevere, Rome 2021, pp. 56-58 and 111-12; Krause,
Inschriften; Debiais Croisée, pp.145-51.
106. R. Suckale, Die Weltgerichtstafel aus dem römischen Frauenkonvent S. Maria in Campo Marzio als pro-
grammatisches Bild der einsetzenden Gregorianischen Kirchenreform, R. Suckale, Das mittelalterliche Bild als
Zeitzeuge, Berlin 2002, pp. 12-122; S. Romano, Riforma e tradizione 1050-1198, Milan 2006, pp. 45-55.
107. The tympanum at Conques, likewise, includes a veritable tapestry of inscriptions to engage viewers
in historical, theological, and moral arguments; J.-C. Bonne, L’art roman de face et de profil. Le tympan de Con-
ques, Paris 1985. A similar profusion of inscriptions on the carved twelfth-century ivory cross in the
Metropolitan Museum (Cloisters) not only constructs a complex typological program but also serves pictori-
al purposes; E. Parker, C. Little, The Cloisters Cross. Its Art and Meaning, New York 1994.
108. J.-C. Bonne, De l’ornement à l’ornementalité. La mosaïque absidale de San Clemente de Rome, Le rôle
de l’ornement dans la peinture murale du Moyen Âge, Actes du colloque, Saint-Lizier 1995), Poitiers 1997, pp.
103-118; Riccioni, Mosaico absidale, pp. 65-72.
109. On animal iconography, J. Baschet, J.-C. Bonne, and Dittmar, Le Monde roman par-delà le bien et
le mal, Paris 2012, pp. 107-111.
110. Sedulius had already merged animal lore with scripture in his Carmen paschale; the fan structures it
poetically. In the flabellum’s time, Sicard of Cremona incorporated the trope in the section of his influential
Mitralis devoted to church ornament: “More clearly than the other [evangelists], [Mark] accounts for the res-
urrection of Christ, according to which Christ is represented as a lion, who after his death rose up and after
his father’s call on the third day was enlivened.”
111. The verses raise the likelihood that the fan is not whole and that the empty back may, originally, have
had a complimentary relief featuring Matthew’s man and Luke’s ox perhaps illustrated with suitable narra-
tives of Christ’s birth and baptism.
112. On “imaginative theology,” see B. Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry; and Belief in the
Middle Ages, Philadelphia 2003; Sánchez Ameijeiras, Rostros, pp. 171-250.
113. PL 158.365; B. Davies and G. R. Evans (trans.) Oxford 1998, p. 269; Heslop, St Anselm. See also:
U. Eco, Opera aperta, Milan 1962.
114. Cur homo deus, Chapter 3; PL 158.364.
115. M. Büchsel, Materialpracht und die Kunst für Litterati: Suger gegen Bernhard von Clairvaux, M. Büchsel,
R. Müller (eds.), Materialpracht und Mysterifizierung mittelalterlicher Kunst «Kultbild»: Revision eines Begriffs,
Berlin 2010, pp. 155-181.
116. PL 175.14-15.
117. PL 172.814.
118. J. Hamburger, The Hand of God and the Hand of the Scribe: Craft and Collaboration at Arnstein, M.
Embach, C. Moulin, and A. Rapp (eds.), Die Bibliothek des Mittelalters als dynamischer Prozess (Trierer
Beiträge zu den historischen Kulturwissenschaften), 3 (2012), pp. 55-80.
119. Debiais Croisée, pp. 151-164.
120. On persuasion, see M. Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages Oxford 2013; P. Bin-
ski, Medieval Invention and its Potencies, «British Art Studies» 6 (2017); https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-
5462/issue-06/pbinski.
121. A. B. Scott, D. F. Baker, and A. G. Riggs (eds.), The Biblical Epigrams of Hildebert of Le Mans: A
Critical Edition, «Mediaeval Studies» 47 (1985), pp. 272-316, also abbreviated: Accessit Moyses. Idiote tur-
ba, magistri dux populi, fumus obscura parabola fertur, cum Deus in sacra scriptura mistica profert, p. 287.
122. Scott, Baker, and Rigg, Biblical Epigrams, p. 287. Hildebertus’ De nativitate Christi seems to have
inspired the Latin verse of the Palermo Nativity mosaic, with its triple trope of generation.
123. On the meaning of “decorum”, see Carruthers, Experience of Beauty.
124. Krause, Inschriften.
125. Kessler, Neither God Nor Man.
126. See Debiais, Croisée, pp. 171-173.
127. J. F. Hamburger, Ouvertures. La double page dans les manuscrits enluminés du Moyen Âge, Lyon 2010,
pp. 74-77; D. Ganz, Visio depicta. Zur Medialität mittelalterlicher Visionsdarstellungen, R. Hoeps (ed.), Hand-
buch der Bildtheologie, vol. 3, Paderborn 2014, pp. 145-182.
128. G. Wolf, Nichtzyklische narrative Bilder im italienischen Kirchenraum des Mittelalters: Überlegungen
zu Zeit- und Bildstruktur der Fresken in der Unterkirche von S. Clemente (Rom) aus dem späten 11 Jahrhundert,
G. Kerscher (ed.) Hagiographie und Kunst: der Heiligenkult Schrift, Bild und Architektur, Berlin 1993, pp.
319-39; M. Hauknes, Emblematic Narratives in the Sancta Sanctorum, «Studies in Iconography» 34 (2013),
pp. 1-46.
129. H. Stahl, Picturing Kingship. History and Painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis, University Park, PA
2008, pp. 89-116.
130. L. Fernández Fernández, J. C. Ruiz Souza (eds.), Las Cantigas de Santa María: Códice Rico, Ms. T-
I-1 Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid 2011, pp. 477-520; S. Disalvo, El
planctus de la Virgen en la Península Ibérica, desde el Quis dabit hasta las Cantigas de Santa María, IX Congre-
so Argentino de Hispanistas “El Hispanismo ante el Bicentenario”, La Plata 2010, http://ixcah.fahce.unlp.edu.ar;
Sánchez Ameirjeiras, Rostros, p. 217.
131. I. Marchesin, L’arbre & la Colonne: La porte de bronze d’Hildesheim, Paris 2017 is an iconographic
study organized poetically.
132. Sánchez Ameijeiras, Rostros, pp. 235 et passim.
133. On Mary as “porta coeli” see: N. Piano, De la porte close du temple de Salomon à la porte ouverte du
Paradis. Histoire d’une image mariale dans l’exégèse et la liturgie médiévales (IVe-XIIIe siècles), «Studi Medievali»
50(1) (2009), pp. 133-157; F. Dell’Acqua, Iconophilia. Politics, Religion, Preaching, and the Use of Images in
Rome, c. 680-880, London and New York 2020, pp. 278-280.
134. The Tres riches heures juxtaposes the same themes (Chantilly, Musée Condé MS 65); Hamburger,
Ouvertures, pp. 81-83. On Adam’s sin and corporal vision, see S. Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Mid-
dle Ages, London 2002, pp. 139-140.
135. Sánchez Ameijeiras, Rostros, pp. 213-217.
136. R. G. Newhauser (trans.), The Moral Treatise on the Eye, Toronto 2012, p. 178.
137. In fact, three transcriptions still survive, Caviness, Windows, pp. 77-156; T. A. Heslop, St Anselm
and the Good Samaritan Window at Canterbury Cathedral, «Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes»
77 (2014), pp. 1-33.
138. Drpic, Epigram, Art, and Devotion, pp. 42-46.
139. P. E. Dutton and H. L. Kessler, The Poetry and Paintings in the First Bible of Charles the Bald, Ann
Arbor, MI 1997.
140. Riccioni, Visual Experience, pp. 105-107.
141. PL 171.1381.
142. Ch. 5; PL 198.1540.
143. Diebold, Attitude.
144. See the slightly later Isidore in London (British Library, Royal MS 12 C. xix, folio 38r).
145. Letter 159. MGH. Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, K. Reindel (ed.), vol. 4, Munich 1994, pp. 90-99;
see Riccioni, Mosaico apsidale, pp. 20-21.
146. Suckale, Weltgerichtstafel, pp. 76-85.
147. F. Botana, The Works of Mercy in Italian Medieval Art (c. 1050-c. 1400), Turnhout 2011.
148. B. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon. Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, University Park, PA 2010,
pp. 17-44; L. O’Connor, Christ in Majesty on a Late Antique Eulogia Token in the British Museum, «Convivium»
I (2014), pp. 74-87.
149. B. Baert, The Heritage of Holy Wood. The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image, Leiden 2004;
E. Frojmovic, Translating Jerusalem: Jewish Authenticators of the Cross, A Hoffmann, G. Wolf (eds.) Jerusalem
as Narrative Space. Erzählraum Jerusalem, Leiden 2012 pp. 155-186; and G. P. Maggioni, The Literary Sources
for the Legenda Aurea, C. Frosinini (ed.), Agnolo Gaddi and the Cappella Maggiore in Santa Croce in Florence.
Studies After Its Restoration, Cinisello Balsamo 2014, pp. 123-135; H. L. Kessler, Arca Arcarum: Nested Boxes
and the Dynamics of Sacred Experience, «Codex Aqvilarensis» 30 (2014), pp. 83-107.
150. M. Lidova, Virgin Mary and the Adoration of the Magi: From Iconic Space to Icon in Space, J. Bog-
danović (ed.), Icons of Space. Advances in Hierotopy, Abingdon 2021, pp. 214-238.
151. L.-A. Hunt, Art and Colonialism: The Mosaics of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (1169) and
the Problem of “Crusader” Art, «Dumbarton Oaks Papers» 45 (1991), pp. 69-85; M. Bacci, The Mystic Cave.
A History of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, Brno and Rome 2017, pp. 149-150; H. L. Kessler and S. Ro-
mano, A Hub of Art. In, Out, and Around Venice, 1177-1499, «Convivium» 7 (2020), pp. 12-47.
152. H. R. Hahnloser and S. Brugger-Koch, Corpus der Hartsteinschliffe des 12.-15. Jahrhunderts, Berlin
1985; M. Bacci, Icons of Narratives: Greek-Venetian Artistic Interchange, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries, N.
Constantinidou, H. Lammers (eds.), The Receptions of Hellenism in Early Modern Europe. 15th-17th Centuries,
Leiden and Boston 2020, pp. 173-188; S. Gerevini, The Bern Diptych: Venetian Rock Crystal between Craft,
Trade and Aesthetics, C. Hahn, A. Shalem (eds.), Seeking Transparency. Rock Crystals Across the Medieval
Mediterranean, Berlin 2020, pp. 183-195.
153. B. Fourlas, Image and Chalcedonian Eucharistic Doctrine: a Re-evaluation of the Riha Paten, its Deco-
ration and its Historical Context, «Byzantinische Zeitschrift» 114(3) (2021), pp. 1117-1160.
154. P. Darby, Bede, Iconoclasm and the Temple of Solomon, «Early Medieval Europe» 21(4) (2013), pp.
390-421.
155. M. Angheben (ed.), Les peintures de la nef de Saint-Savin, Turnhout 2022.
156. D. Russo, Espace peint, espace symbolique, construction ecclésiologique: Les peintures de Berzé-la-Ville
(Chapelle-des-Moines), «Revue Mabillon» n. s. II, 72 (2000), pp. 57-87; É. Palazzo, Les peintures murales et les
pratiques liturgiques dans l’église médiévale, D. Russo (ed.), Peintures murales médiévales, XIIe-XVIe siècles, Di-
jon 2005, pp. 57-62; E. Lapina, The Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville in the Context of the First Crusade and
the Reconquista, «Journal of Medieval History» 31(4) (2005), pp. 309-326.
157. Volto di Cristo, pp. 97-99.
158. H. L. Kessler, Paradigms of Movement in Medieval Art: Establishing Connections and Effecting Tran-
sitions, «Codex Aqvilarensis» 29 (2013), pp. 29-48.
159. Luchterhand, Nacht der Bilder.
160. Cf. eleventh/twelfth-century triptych in Tivoli; M. Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista. Storia delle im-
magini sacre attribuite a san Luca, Pisa 1998.
161. U. Nilgen, Eine neu aufgefundene Maria Regina in Santa Susanna, Rom: ein römisches Thema mit Varia-
tionen, K. Mösender, G. Schüssler (eds.), Bedeutung in der Bildern, Festschrift für Jörg Träger zum 60. Geburts-
tag, Regensburg 2002, pp. 231-245.
162. The same process of incorporating quotations of the Acheropita and Avvocata and integrating bes-
tiaries underlies the mosaic in Sta. Maria in Trastevere, there mapped onto the Song of Songs and accompa-
nied by a poem; E. Kitzinger, A Virgin’s Face: Antiquarianism in Twelfth-Century Art, «Art Bulletin» 62
(1980), pp. 6-19; Riccioni, Visual Experience, pp. 82-85.
163. A. Draghi, Gli affreschi dell’aula gotica nel monastero del Santi Coronati: una storia ritrovata, Milan
2006; S. Romano, La pittura medievale a Roma. Il Duecento e la cultura gotica (1198-1280 ca.), Milan 2012,
pp. 136-176; Hauknes, Painting of Knowledge; D. Blume, Die Aula Gotica von Santi Quattro Coronati-Kos-
mos, Antike und Tugenden im Selbstverständnis der Kurie, N. Zimmermann et al. (eds.), Die Päpste und Rom
zwischen Spätantike und Mittelalter, Regensburg 2017, pp. 213-233.
164. K. Müller, Fragwürdige Bilder. Die Genesismosaiken in Monreale, Büchsel, Kessler, Müller, Atrium,
pp. 231-246.
165. P. van Moorsel, The Newly Discovered Annunciation in Deir es Sourian. Introduction to the Papers de-
livered at the Round Table, «Cahiérs Archéologiques» 42 (1995), pp. 117-124; K. Innemée, Deir al-Sourian -
the Annunciation as Part of a Cycle?, «Cahiers Archéologiques» 43 (1995), pp. 129-132; L. Van Rompay, Deir
al Surian (Egypt), New Discoveries of January 2000 «Hugoye, Journal of Syriac Studies» 3(2) (2000), pp. 253-
279; H. L. Kessler, ‘Byzantine Art and the West’: Forty Years after the Athens Exhibition and Dumbarton Oaks
Symposium, A. C. Quintavale (ed.), Medioevo Mediterraneo: l’Occidente, Bisanzio e l’Islam, Milan 2007, pp.
57-72; B. Brenk, Pittura monastica in Egitto, Monachesimi d’oriente e d’occidente nell’alto medioevo (Settimane
di studio 54), Spoleto 2017, pp. 769-803.
166. The Crossing of the Red Sea is featured, as well, in Late Antique Egyptian painted cloths now in the
Abegg Stiftung in Riggisberg and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; L. Kötzsche, Der bemalte
Behang in der Abegg-Stiftung in Riggisberg Eine alttestamentliche Bildfolge des 4. Jahrhundert, Riggisberg 2004.
167. A. Semoglou, L’Annonciation de Deir as-Souriani en Égypte. Recherches sur l’origine iconographique des
préfigurations de la Vierge, «Cahiers archéologiques» 48 (2000), pp. 35-43.
168. Kessler, ‘Byzantine Art and the West’, pp. 62-70; G. Bühl, Ivories of the So-Called Grado Chair, H. C.
Evans, B. Ratliff (eds.), Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition Seventh-Ninth Century (cat of an exhibition at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY), New York 2012, pp. 45-50; F. Dell’Acqua et al. (eds.), The Salerno
Ivories. Objects, Histories, Contexts, Berlin 2016.
169. K. Weitzmann, Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom, «Dumbarton Oaks Papers» 20 (1966), pp.
63-64; B. Zeitler, Two Iconostasis Beams from Mount Sinai: Object Lessons in Crusader Art, A. Lidov (ed.), The
Iconostasis: Origins – Evolution – Symbolism, Moscow 2000, pp. 223-242; J. Folda, Crusader Artistic Interac-
tions with the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century: Figural Imagery, Weapons, and the Çintimani Design, C.
Hourihane (ed.), Interactions: Artistic Interchange Between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Pe-
riod, Princeton 2007, pp. 147-166; A. Stewart, Reframing the Mongols in 1260: The Armenians, the Mongols
and the Magi, «Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society» 28 (2018), pp. 55-76.
170. H. L. Kessler, Una chiesa magnificamente ornata di pitture, San Nilo. Il Monastero italo-bizantino di
Grottaferrata, Milan 2005, pp. 73-90.
171. R. Deshman, The Benedictional of Æthelwold, Princeton 1995, pp. 97-98.
172. D. Wright, When the Vatican Vergil was in Tours, K. Bierbauer, P. Klein, and W. Sauerländer (eds.),
Studien zur mittelalterlichen Kunst 800-1250, Munich 1985, pp. 53-66; H. L. Kessler, An Apostle in Armor
and the Mission of Carolingian Art, «Arte medievale» ser. 2, 4 (1989), pp. 17-41; id. Jerome and Vergil in Caro-
lingian Frontispieces and the Uses of Translation, J.-P. Caillet, M.-P. Laffitte (eds.), Le Manuscrits carolingiens.
Actes du colloque de Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, le 4 mai 2007, Turnhout 2010, pp. 121-140.
173. P. Low, You Who Once Were Far Off: Enlivening Scripture in the Main Portal at Vézelay, «Art Bulletin»
85 (2003), pp. 469-489; M. Angheben, Les portals romans de Bourgogne. Thèmes et programmes, Turnhout 2020.
174. H. L. Kessler, Christ’s Fluid Face, R. Müller, A. Rau, and J. Scheel (eds.), Theologisches Wissen und
die Kunst. Festschrift für Martin Büchsel, Berlin 2015, pp. 221-234.
175. M. Bernabò (ed.), L’Illustrazione del nuovo testamento nella Siria del VI Secolo, Rome 2008.
176. D. Smith, The Painted Logos: Abstraction as Exegesis in the Ashburnham Pentateuch, E. Gertsman (ed.),
Abstraction in Medieval Art. Beyond the Ornament, Amsterdam 2021, pp. 143-146; J. A. Freeman, The Ash-
burnham Pentateuch and its Contexts. Trinity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2022.
177. Corrigan, Visual Polemics, pp. 27-29.
178. B. Kurmann-Schwarz, P. Kurmann, Chartres: Die Kathedrale, Munich 2001, pp. 130-174.
179. H. L. Kessler, “‘Aliter enim videtur pictura, aliter videntur litterae:’ Reading Medieval Pictures”, in
Scrivere e leggere (Settimana di studio LIX, 2011), Spoleto 2012, pp. 701-729.
180. Kumler, Translating Truth, p. 145
181. J. Kroesen, P. Tängeberg, Helgonskåp. Medieval Tabernacle Shrines in Sweden and Europe, Petersberg
2021, p. 125.
182. C. Bynum, Seeing and Seeing Beyond: The Mass of St. Gregory in the Fifteenth Century, Hamburger
and Bouché (eds.), Mind’s Eye, 208-240.
183. Caviness, Gender Symbolism; Saurma-Jeltsch, Miniaturen; K. Suzuki, Bildgewordene Visionen oder Vi-
sionserzählungen: Vergleichende Studie über die Visionsdarstellungen in der Rupertsberger Scivias-Handschrift und
im Luccheser Liber divinorum operum-Codex der Hildegard von Bingen, Bern 1998; R. Emmerson, The Repre-
sentation of the Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias: Image, Word, Commentary and Visionary Experience,
«Gesta» 41(1) (2002), pp. 95-110; Campbell, Picturing.
184. H. L. Kessler, Sanctifying Serpent. Crucifixion as Cure, R. Bell, K. F. Morrison (eds.), Studies on Me-
dieval Empathies, Turnhout 2013, pp. 161-81; A. Kumler, Manufacturing the Sacred in the Middle Ages: The
Eucharist and other Medieval Works of Ars, «English Language Notes» 53(2) (2015) pp. 9-44.
185. R. Berliner, The Freedom of the Medieval Artist, «Gazette des Beaux Arts» 28 (1945) pp. 263-288;
Henriet, Lucas de Tuy, pp. 84-90.
186. Berliner, Freedom, pp. 277-278.
187. P. Binski, The Crucifixion and the Censorship of Art around 1300, P. Linehan, L. Nelson (eds.),The
Medieval World, London and New York 2018, pp. 418-436.
188. Eldefonsus’ still nascent Host appeared to him in a dream.
189. See in particular, G. Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico, dissemblance et figuration. Idées et recherches, Paris
1990; D. Arasse, L’annonciation Italienne: Une Histoire De Perspective, Paris 1999.
190 Opera Omnia, vol. 5, p. 323; Carruthers, Experience of Beauty, pp. 201-205.
191. Haec est quam coeli Pictor Deus intus et extra/ Pinxit, et angelica dote [cote?] polivit eam; PL 171,
col. 1381-1383. See J. Huizinga, Verzamelde Werken, Haarlem 1949, vol. 4, p. 48.
192. D. Iogna-Prat, É. Palazzo, and D. Russo (eds.), Marie. Le culte de la vierge dans la société médiévale,
Paris 1998; Bacci, Pennello dell’Evangelista; B. Pentcheva, Icons and Power. The Mother of God in Byzantium,
University Park, PA 2006.
193. M. Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin, New Haven and London 2014.
194. Dell’Acqua, Iconophilia, pp. 95-105 and pp. 241-304.
195. Bock, De Titulis, pp. 106-127.
196. Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion.
197. M. Kupfer, Ecclesia and Synagoga in Principio. The Fourth Gospel as Re-source for Anti-Jewish Visual
Polemic, A. Reinhart (ed.), The Gospel of John and Jewish-Christian Relations, Lanham, MD 2018, pp. 113-156.
198. Kitzinger, Virgin’s Face; W. Tronzo, Apse Decoration, the Liturgy, and the Perception of Art in Me-
dieval Rome: S. Maria in Trastevere and S. Maria Maggiore, W. Tronzo (ed.), Italian Church Decoration of the
Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: Functions, Forms, and Regional Traditions, Bologna 1989, pp. 167-193; D.
Kinney, The Apse Mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere, E. Sears, T. K. Thomas (eds.), Reading Medieval Images:
The Art Historian and the Object, Ann Arbor, MI 2002, pp. 19-26. Romano, Riforma e tradizione, pp. 305-
311; E. Thunø, The Apse Mosaic in Early Medieval Rome. Time, Network, and Repetition, New York 2015, pp.
35-37; Riccioni, Visual Experience.
199. M. Fassler, Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres, «Art Bulletin»
75(3) (1993), pp. 499-520.
200. Debiais, Croisée, pp. 298-300.
201. F. Prado-Vilar, The Parchment of the Sky: Poiesis of a Gothic Universe, Fernández Fernández, Ruiz
Souza (eds.), Cantigas de Santa María, pp. 477-520.
202. PL 171.1390. Two lines of the poem were excerpted as a titulus for the enthroned Virgin and Child
in Lucy of Vere’s mortuary roll in the British Library (Egerton MS 2849). A. G. Remensnyder, Mary, Star of
the Multi-Confessional Mediterranean: Ships, Shrines and Sailors, N. Jaspert, C. A. Neumann, and M. Di Bran-
co (eds.) Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum, Paderborn 2018, pp.
299-325; E. Pérez Rodríguez (ed.), Juan Gil de Zamora, Obra Poética: Ymago, ymitago quid uigoris, quid amoris,
Officium almiflue Virginis, Madrid 2019, p. 240; García Avilés, Imagenes “vivientes”. In the Leiden Aratus
(Universiteitsbibliotheek, VLQ 79, fol. 42v), the Pleiades’s central “star” is the only one veiled like Mary.
Such epithets were featured already in the Bernward Gospels of ca. 1015 (Hildesheim, Dom-Museum, MS
18, fol. 17r); J. P. Kingsley, The Bernward Gospels. Art, Memory, and the Episcopate in Germany, University
Park, PA 2014.
203. A. Sinués Ruíz, Advocaciones de la Virgen en un códice del siglo XII, «Analecta sacra tarraconensia:
Revista de ciències historicoeclesiàstiques» 21 (1948), pp. 1-34.
204. G. Leone, Icone di Roma e del Lazio, Rome 2013, pp. 42-46.
205. Obra poética, p. 238.
206. F. De Maffei, Le arti a San Vincenzo al Volturno. Il ciclo della cripta di Epifanio, F. Avagliano (ed.) San
Vincenzo al Volturno: una grande abbazia altomedievale nel Molise, Montecassino 1985, pp. 269-352; J.
Mitchell, The Crypt Reappraised, R. Hodges (ed.), San Vincenzo al Volturno. I: The 1980-86 Excavations, Rome
1993, pp. 75-114; F. Dell’Ácqua, Ambrogio Autperto e la Cripta di Epifanio nella storia dell’arte medievale, F.
Marazzi (ed.), La cripta dell’abate Epifanio a San Vincenzo al Volturno. Cento anni di studi e ricerche, Cerro a
Volturno 2013, pp. 27-47; ead., Magnificat. L’impatto degli orientali sull’immagine di Maria Assunta al tempo
dell’Iconoclasmo, Le migrazioni nell’alto medioevo (Settimane di studio della Fondazione Centro italiano di Studi
sull’alto medioevo, LXVI, April 2018), Spoleto 2019, pp. 1025-1057; ead., Iconophilia, pp. 280-289 et passim.
207. Carruthers, Beauty, p. 184.
208. Heslop, St Anselm.
209. García Avilés, Imágenes “vivientes”.
210. S. Vanderputten, D. J. Reilly (eds.) Gerardi Cameracensis Acta Synodi Atrebatensis (CCCM 270),
Turnhout 2014 p. 66; Bynum, Materiality, p. 163.
211. Contra paganos seu Mahometanos. Book 4.11; PL 210.427B.
212. A. Davril, T. M. Thibodeau (eds.), Guillelmi Duranti, Rationale divinorum officiorum (CCCM, vol.
140-140A), Turnhout 1995-1998, vol. 1, p. 35.
213. Summa theologica, 3a, quast. 25, art. 4; 4:2149.
214. F. Dell’Acqua, The Christ from San Vincenzo al Volturno (9th century): Another Instance of “Christ’s
Dazzling Face, Panneaux de Vitrail Isolés/die Einzelscheibe/The Single Stained-glass Panel (XXIV International
Colloquium of the Corpus Vitrearum), Zurich 2010, pp. 11-27; ead., Il volto di Cristo e il dilemma dell’artista:
un esempio di IX secolo, M. M. Donato, M. Ferretti (eds.), «Conosco un ottimo storico dell’arte ...» – Per Enri-
co Castelnuovo: Scritti di allievi e amici pisani, Pisa 2012, pp. 21-27; ead., Iconophilia, pp. 156-68.
215. Parello, Fünf Felder, p. 34; Kessler, Consider the Glass.
216. K.-A. Wirth (ed.), Pictor in Carmine: Ein typologisches Handbuch aus der Zeit um 1200, Berlin 2006,
p. 136. It anticipates another Marian metaphor that became popular in the late Middle Ages: “speculum sine
macula” (derived from the Wisdom of Solomon 7:26). See Kupfer, Art and Optics, pp. 128-133.
217. John 8.12 was originally inscribed on the yellow scroll Christ unfurls before the altar.
218. C. Rudolph, Inventing the Exegetical Stained-Glass Window, Suger, Hugh, and a New Elite Art and
Mystic Ark, «Art Bulletin» 93(4) (2011), pp. 339-422, at p. 350.
219. C. Kruse, Wozu Menschen malen: Historische Begründungen eines Bildmediums, Munich 2003, pp.
318-328.
220. F. Dell’Acqua, Il fuoco, le vetrate delle origini e la mistica medievale, E. Menestò (ed.), Il fuoco nell’al-
to Medioevo (LX Settimana di studio) Spoleto 2013, pp. 557-591.
221. Mitralis, p. 15.
222. Sermo 15; see C. Muessig, Heaven, Earth and the Angels: Preaching Paradise in the Sermons of Jacques
Vitry, C. Muessig, A. Putter (eds.) Envisioning Heaven, London 2007, pp. 57-72.
223. PL 165.1065.
224. S. Gerevini, Christus crystallus: Rock Crystal, Theology and Materiality in the Medieval West, J. Robin-
son, L. de Beer (eds.), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval
Period, London 2014, pp. 92-99; ead., Sicut crystallus quando est obiecta soli: Rock Crystal, Transparency and
the Franciscan Order, «Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz» 56, 3 (2014), pp. 254-283;
ead. Bern Diptych.
225. Sicard described: “Lapides pretiosi omnes muri tui, et turres Hierusalem gemmis edificabuntur;” Mi-
tralis, p. 15.
226. Only in acquiring relief did the image of Christ, first written in mind, then outlined, seem fully in-
carnate; Hamburger “Seeing and Believing”.
227. Like other iconographies, the breastplate had no fixed meaning. It was incorporated into the Foun-
tain of Life panel in Madrid (Prado Museum) both as an anti-Jewish motif and justification for lustrous gem-
like Eyckian oil painting; Nirenberg, Aesthetic Theology.
228 H. L. Kessler, The Eloquence of Silver, C. Heck (ed.) L’allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Age. Formes et fonc-
tions. Héritages, créations, mutations, Turnhout 2011, pp. 49-64.
229. Gerevini, Bern Diptych.
230. B. Brenk, Schriftlichkeit und Bildlichkeit in der Hofschule Karls d. Gr., Testo e immagine nell’alto
medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo), 41 Spoleto 1994, vol. 2, pp.
631-691; B. Reudenbach, Das Godescalc-Evangelistar. Ein Buch für di Reformpolitik Karls des Grossen, Frank-
furt am Rhein 1998.
231. H. Wenzel, Die Verkündigung an Maria. Zur Visualisierung des Wortes in der Szene oder: Schift-
geschichte im Bild, C. Optiz et al. (eds.), Maria in der Welt. Marienverehrung in Kontext der Sozialgeschichte
10.-18. Jahrhundert, Zurich 1993, pp. 23-52.
232. Iacobini, L’albero; Klein, Byzanz, pp. 115-117 et passim; P. Salonius, Arbor Jesse – Lignum vitae: The
Tree of Jesse, the Tree of Life and the Mendicants in Late Medieval Orvieto, Salonius, Worm, Tree, pp. 213-241.
233. Grabar, Ampoules; Weitzmann, Loca Sancta; Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art; Elsner, Replicat-
ing Palestine.
234. Theodulf of Orleans disparaged wax’s capacity to blend colors or dirt to equal effect; Opus caroli,
Freeman ed. p.119; Diebold, Attitude, p. 354.
235. Drpić, Epigram, Art, and Devotion, pp. 115-116.
236. B. Fricke, Matter and Meaning of Mother-of-Pearl: The Origins of Allegory in the Spheres of Things,
«Gesta» 51(1) (2012), pp. 35-53.
237. Carruthers, p. 164; Debiais, Chants des formes.
238. Mitralis, 3.6. H. Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher
Bildtafeln der Passion, Berlin 1981; F. Bœspflug, Y. Załuska, Le dogme trinitaire et l’essor de son iconographie
en Occident de l’époque carolingienne au IVe concile de Latran (1215), «Cahiers de civilisation médiévale»
37(3) (1994), pp. 181-240.
239. See J. Wirth, La Critique scholastique de la théorie thomiste de l’image, O. Christin, D. Gamboni
(eds.), Crises de l’image religieuse. De Nicée II à Vatican II, Paris 1999, pp. 93-109; H. L. Kessler, Speculum,
«Speculum» 86 (2011), pp. 1-41.
240. Winterer, Sakramentar, pp. 414-422.
241. Smith, Painted Logos, pp. 143-144.
242. Deshman, Benedictional; V. Debiais, Une théologie de l’informel: le pli et son ombre dans le benedic-
tionnaire d’Æthelwold, «Codex Aqvilarensis» 37 (2021), pp. 163-178. See also: É. Palazzo, Le souffle de Dieu.
L’énergie de la liturgie et l’art au Moyen Âge, Paris 2020, pp. 206-231; A. Kumler, Abstraction’s Gothic Grounds,
E. Gertsman (ed.), Abstraction in Medieval Art: Beyond Ornament, Amsterdam 2020, pp. 55-87.
243. Kumler, Translating Truth; Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion, p. 224.
244. Ganz, Medien der Offenbaren, pp. 323-324.
245. Sententiae 6.2; PL 165.1065-66; trans. L. Hamilton, Décor et decorum: Reforming the Episcopacy in
Bruno of Segni’s De Laudibus Ecclesiaae (Eleventh Century), Unpub. LMS thesis, University of Toronto 2007,
pp. 70-73; id. A Sacred City. Consecrating Churches and Reforming Society, Manchester 2010, p. 204.
246. H. L. Kessler, Shaded with Dust: Jewish Eyes on Christian Art, H. L. Kessler, D. Nirenberg (eds.), Ju-
daism and Christian Art, Philadelphia 2011, pp. 74-114.
247. Weinryb, Bronze Object, pp. 115-121.
248. Vanderputten, Reilly, Acta, p. 66.
249. H. L. Kessler, Real Absence: Early Medieval Art and the Metamorphosis of Vision, Morfologie sociali e
culturali in Europa fra tarda antichità e alto medioevo (XLV Settimana internazionale di studi, Spoleto1998, pp.
1157-1211; id. The Icon in the Narrative, H. L. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God’s Invisibility in Me-
dieval Art, Philadelphia 2000, pp. 1-28.
250. H. Gearhart, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art, University Park, PA 2017, p.
59; D. Ganz, An Artist-Monk in Pieces: Towards an Archeology of Tuotilo, D. Ganz, C. Dora (eds.), Tuotilo:
Archäologie eines frühmittelalterlichen Künstlers, Basel 2017, pp. 21-51.
251. Hamburger, Medieval Work of Art; A. Iafrate, Artifex specialis, per una lettura critica della figura di
Matthew Paris attraverso le fonti, «Opera, Nomina, Historiae. Giornale di cultura artistica» 2-3 (2010), pp. 1-42.
252. B. Baert, The Gaze from Above. Reflections on Cosmic Eyes in Visual Culture, Leuven 2021, pp. 29-40.
On the compass as imposing order and chasing away primal chaos, see: A. Martínez Ruipérez, The Moral Com-
pass and Mortal Slumber, Divine and Human Reason in the Bibles moralisées, «Journal of the Warburg and Cour-
tauld Institutes» 81 (2018), pp. 1-33. Spiral lines conveyed the inspiriting of Christ’s humanity in contempo-
rary depictions of the Maiestas Domini and later at Vézelay, where they reinforce the tympanum’s Trinitarian
underpinning and Christ’s identity with the Eucharist and also make visible the belief that God’s energy trans-
mitted at Pentecost enabled the apostles’ mission throughout the world; Palazzo, Souffle, pp. 227-231.
253. B. C. Tilghman, Pattern, pp. 15-16; Binski, Medieval Invention.
254. Drpić, Epigram, Art, and Devotion, pp. 292-294.
255. H. Doherty, The Twelfth-Century Patrons of the Bridekirk Font, J. Camps et al. (eds.) Romanesque Pa-
trons and Processes. Design and Instrumentality in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe, London 2018,
pp. 291-312.
256. It recapitulates the pier of the Moissac cloister that V. Debiais and E. Gertsman have analyzed, pro-
viding the airlock between raw matter and the spiritual; Au-delà des sens, l’abstraction, «Convivium» 8(1)
(2021), pp. 28-51.
257. Itself an allusion to baptism; P. A. Patton, “Et partu frontis exceptum”: The Typology of Birth and Bap-
tism in an Unusual Spanish Image of Jesus Baptized in a Font, «Gesta» 33(2) (1994), pp. 79-92; Sánchez Amei-
jeiras, Rostros, pp. 73-77.
258. J. Baschet, Lieu sacré, lieu d’images. Les fresques de Bominaco (Abruzzes, 1263). Thèmes, parcours, fonc-
tions, Paris and Rome 1991; Palazzo, Peintres murales.
259. N. Zchomelidse, Santa Maria Immacolata in Ceri. Pittura Sacra al tempo della Riforma Gregoriana,
Rome 1996.
260. Drpić, Epigram, Art, and Devotion; Strohmaier, Liturgischen Textil.

261. Parker, Little, Cloisters Cross, pp. 160-163.
262. See also the enamel base of a Crucifix in St. Bertin; P. Verdier, “La grand croix de l’abbé Suger à
Saint-Denis, «Cahiers de civilisation médiéval» 13 (1970), 1-31; H. L. Kessler, “They preach not by speaking
out loud but by signifying:”Vitreous Arts as Typology, «Gesta» 51 (2012), pp. 35-50.
263. Baert, Heritage, p. 25; Eva Frojmovic, “Translating Jerusalem: Jewish Authenticators of the Cross”,
in Jerusalem as Narrative Space; Erzählraum Jerusalem, A. Hoffman, G. Wolf (eds.), Leiden 2012, pp. 155-86;
Maggioni, Literary Sources.
264. Oftestad, Lateran Church, p. 237.
265. Later altarpieces enact similar narratives when their wings are closed and opened, including (origi-
nally) the Sankt Olof Throne of Mercy; see: D. Ganz, M. Rimmele (eds.), Klappeffekte. Faltbare Bildträger in
Der Vormoderne, Berlin 2016.
266. De tribus diebus, 4; CCCM, 177, p. 10; trans. C. Rudolph, Inventing the Exegetical Stained-Glass
Window, p. 411.
267. PL 115.1372.
268. J. F. Hamburger, Idol Curiosity, K. Krüger (ed.) Curiositas. Welterfahrung und ästhetische Neugierde
in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, Göttingen 2002, pp. 19-58; Kessler, Astral Abstraction.
269. Briefe, p. 99.
270. Book 2, chap. 12; PL 165.940-41. See H. L. Kessler, A Gregorian Reform Theory of Art?, S. Romano,
J. Enckell (eds.) Roma e la riforma Gregoriana. Tradizioni e innovazioni artische (XI-XII secolo) (Acts of a Con-
ference, Lausanne 2005), Rome 2007, pp. 25-48; Hamilton, Décor et decorum, pp. 50-51.
271. Vanderputten, Reilly, Acta, p. 66.
272. Top. hib. dist. II.39: Giraldus Cambrensis, The History and Topography of Ireland.J. O’Meara (trans.).
New York, NY, 1982, pp. 84-84.
273. Wirth (ed.), Pictor, p. 110.
274. Binski, Gothic Wonder, pp. 179-186; P. Binski, Gothic Sculpture, New Haven, CT 2019, pp. 18-39;
Gearhart, Theophilus, 129-135; Nirenberg, Aesthetic Theology, pp. 41-59.
275. PL 165.1065; trans. Hamilton, Decor et decorum, p. 71. Kessler, “They preach not by speaking”. On
the other hand, a prayer added ca. 900 to the Lorsch Miscellany in the Vatican Library (BAV, MS. Pal. Lat.
834, fol. 28v) interpreted the facing picture of three saints as a Trinity: “Haec uulgo picture man[et] dignis-
sima laude...;” B. Bischoff, Lorsch im Spiegel seiner Handschriften, Munich 1974, p. 83.
276. Rudolph, Tour Guide, pp. 54.
277. As at Larreule, Debiais, Croisée, pp. 215-222.
278. See Luchterhand, Nacht der Bilder.
279. S. Wittekind, Die Makkabäer als Vorbild des geistlichen Kampfes: eine kunsthistorische Deutung des Lei-
dener Makkabäer-Codex Perizoni 17, «Frühmittelalterliche Studien» 37 (2003), pp. 47-71.
280. Gearhart, Theophilus, cit., pp. 17-18, pp. 48-50.
281. Dutton, Kessler, Poetry and Paintings.
282. When Wilhelm Koehler reconstructed the lost Bible of Leo I, for instance, he was operating within
an aesthetic of Paul Klee and other contemporary painters; see T. Buddenseig, Die karolingischen Maler in
Tours und die Bauhausmaler in Weimar. Wilhelm Koehler und Paul Klee: Hermann Schnitzler zum Gedächtnis,
«Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte» 73 (2010), pp. 1-18.
283. C. Rudolph, The “things of greater importance”. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval At-
titude Toward Art, Philadelphia 1990.
284. Riccioni, Mosaico apsidale, pp. 68-72; Rudolph, Inventing the Exegetic Stained Glass Window, pp.
412-418; T. Frese, Kommt und seht den Ortsakrale Schrifträume im Sakramentar Heinrichs II, T. Frese et al.
(eds.), Sacred Scripture/Sacred Space: The Interlacing of Real Places and Conceptual Spaces in Medieval Art and
Architecture, Berlin and Boston, MA 2019, pp. 37-62.
285. Brenk, Visualizing Divine Authority, pp. 134-137.
286. Hauknes, Painting of Knowledge.
287. On the Veronica’s strategic functions in art, see Kumler, Translating Truth, pp. 87-91.
288. J. Jung, Kinetics of Gothic Sculpture: Movement and Apprehension in the South Transept of Strasbourg
Cathedral and the Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon, D. Ganz, S. Neuner (eds.), Mobile Eyes: peripatetisches
Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne, Munich 2013, pp. 133-173.
289. Kupfer, Art and Optics, pp. 53-73, 115-27.
290. M. Kupfer, The Cosmic Vision of Saint Benedict, e specula and in speculo, N. Bouloux et al. (eds.), Or-
bis disciplinae. Hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, Turnhout 2017, pp. 483-498; Baert, Gaze.
291. Bredekamp, Bildakts, pp. 237-243; É. Palazzo, L’invention chrétienne des cinq sens dans la liturgie et
l’art au Moyen Âge, Paris 2010, p. 73; Jung, Kinetics; ead. Moving Viewers, Moving Pictures: The Portal as Mon-
tage on the Strasbourg South Transept, A. Beyer, G. Cassegrain (eds.), Mouvement, Bewegung: Über die dyna-
mischen Potenziale der Kunst, Berlin 2015, pp. 23-43.
292. H. L. Kessler, Topografias de la fe en el arte medieval, «Codex Aqvilarensis» 28 (2013), pp. 11-28.
293. Jung, Kinetics.
294. M. A. Holly, review of Michael Pedro, Depiction, caa.reviews.1999.59.
295. Cf. Kupfer, Art and Optics.
296. J. Jung, The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imag-
ination, C. Hourihane (ed.), Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, Prince-
ton 2010, pp. 203-240.
297. Binski, Rhetorical Occasions.
298. J.-M. Guillouët, C. Rabel, Le programme. Une notion pertinente en histoire de l’art médiévale, Paris
2011.
299. C. R. Lakey, The Curious Case of the Chiarito Tabernacle: A New Interpretation, «Getty Research
Journal» 4 (2012), pp. 13-30 and Sculptural Seeing: Relief, Optics, and the Rise of Perspective in Medieval Italy,
New Haven and London, Yale University Press 2018.
300. R. Nelson (ed.), Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, Cambridge 2000,
B. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, University Park, PA 2010.
301. St. Helena, who had unearthed the cross, distinguished the True Cross from the two thieves’ by a
text, the trilingual titulus condensed to INRI. Baert, Heritage, p. 25; Oftestad, Lateran Church, p. 227. See
also: A. Nagel, Medieval Modern, pp. 110-114.
302. Kessler, Arca Arcarum; Debiais, pp. 131-138.
303. B. Fricke, Hinges as Hints: Heaven and Earth in the Coconut Goblet at the Cathedral of Münster, Part
of a Lost Rock Crystal Ensemble, Hahn, Shalem (eds.), Seeking Transparency, pp. 197-209.
304. B. Boerner, Le voile de Carême illustré d’images et la visibilité de Dieu, L.-J. Bord, V. Debiais, and É
Palazzo (eds.), Le rideau, le voile et le dévoilement du Proche-Orient ancien à l’Occident médiéval, Paris 2019,
pp. 67-90; V. Debiais, La nudité de Noé et les linges de l’autel, ibidem, pp. 177-200; id., Linens, Clothes and
Ornaments. Writing on Altar Textiles, T. Kohwagner-Nikolai, B. Päffgen, and C. Steininger (eds.), Über Stoff
und Stein: Knotenpunkte von Textilkunst und Epigraphik. Beiträge zur 15. internationalen Fachtagung für mit-
telalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Epigraphik, Wiesbaden 2021, pp. 72-83; Schmitt, Animal Farm. The en-
shrouded corpse looks nothing so much as the veiled Crucifix pictured two centuries later in the Book of
Hours of Frederick III (London, BL Add. MS 25698. fol. 9r).
305. Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion, pp. 233-234; Falque, Daz man Bild, pp. 462-463. See also the
acanthus airlock in the cloister of Moissac, Debiais, Gertsman, Au-delà des sens, pp. 31-33.
306. H. Kessler, Through the Temple Veil: the Holy Image in Judaism and Christianity, «Kairos. Zeitschrift
für Religionswissenschaft und Theologie» 32/33 (1990/1991), pp. 53-77.
307. R. Ousterhout, The Acheiropoietos that Wasn’t There, «Travaux et mémoires» 20/2 (2016 Mélanges
Catherine Jolivet-Lévy) pp. 385-396; E. Gertsman, The Absent Image. Lacunae in Medieval Books, University
Park, PA 2021; E. Gertsman, V. Debiais, Écarts, excès d’image. Essai sur l’abstraction dans l’art médiéval, Paris
2023.
308. C. Chazelle, Figure, Character, and the Glorified Body in the Carolingian Eucharistic Controversy, «Tra-
ditio» 47 (1992), pp. 1-36; Reynolds, God’s Money, pp. 28-29. See É. Palazzo, Le “livre-corps” à l’époque
carolingienne et son rôle dans la liturgie de la messe et sa théologie, «Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae» 15 (2010),
pp. 31-63; id. L’invention, pp. 270-279.
309. Palazzo, Souffle, pp. 212-225.
310. H. L. Kessler, Configuring the Invisible by Copying the Holy Face, H. Kessler, G. Wolf (eds.), The Holy
Face and the Paradox of Representation, Bologna 1998, pp. 129-151.
311. N. Thebaut, The Double-Sided Image: Abstraction and Figuration in Early Medieval Painting, Gerts-
man (ed.), Abstraction, pp. 213-242.
312. V. Debiais, Colour as Subject, Gertsman (ed.) Abstraction, pp. 33-53.
313. E. C. Teviotdale et al. (eds.), The Stammheim Missal. Ms. 64, The J. Paul Getty Museum. Commen-
tary to the Facsimile Edition, Lucerne 2020; B. Fricke, Wisdom’s Creation: A Double Beginning in the
Stammheim Missal (1160-70), «Codex Aqvilarensis» 37 (2021), pp. 357-376.
314. Deshman, Benedictional, pp. 92-108.
315. Juan Gil called Mary the “esposa y madre del sumo Rey, puerta del cielo, encanto del paraíso;” Ham-
burger, Speculation, pp. 376-377. On doors and thresholds, see Sánchez Ameijeiras, Rostros, p. 216; V. Debiais,
Writing on Medieval Doors: The Surveyor Angel on the Moissac Capital (ca. 1100), I. Berti et al. (eds.), Writing
Matters: Presenting and Perceiving Monumental Inscriptions in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Berlin and
Boston, MA: 2017, pp. 285-308. On Mary as threshold and the closed door of Virginity, see Dell’Aqua,
Iconophilia.
316. B. Wyss, Ein Druckfehler. Panofsky versus Newman. Verpasste Chancen eines Dialogs, Cologne 1993;
P. Conte, The Panofsky-Newman Controversy. Iconography Put to the Test of “Abstract” Art, «Aisthesis: Pratiche,
linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico» 8(2) (2015), pp. 787-797; M. Schreyach, Immanent Iconography in M. Schreyach
(ed.), In Focus: Adam 1951, 1952 by Barnett Newman, London 2018; www.tate.org.uk/research/ publica-
tions/in-focus/adam/immanent-iconography.
317. Panofsky was referring to the Latin preface of Ælfric’s De arte grammatica anglice: “Mihi tamen uide-
tur melius inuocare deum patrem honorifice producta sillaba, quam brittonice corripere, qui nec deus arti
grammaticae suibiciendus est;” J. Zupitza (ed.) Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, Berlin 1880, p. 2.
318. Nirenberg, Aesthetic Theology, p. 59.
319. Nirenberg, Aesthetic Theology, p. 24.
320. Gertrud Bing reported that Fritz Saxl recalled his grandfather’s studying Talmud in the backroom
of a shop he and his wife owned in Senftenberg (north of Dresden): in D. J. Gordon (ed.), Fritz Saxl (1890-
1948) A Volume of Memorial Essays from his Friends in England, Edinburgh, 1957, pp. 1-46.
321. See Smith, Painted Logos, pp. 144-45, p. 158.
322. See Fricke, At the Threshold.
323. P. Seiler, Die Legitimität (Bild-) künstlerischer Ornamenta in den Libri Carolini, M. Embach, C.
Moulin and H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck (eds.), Die Handschriften der Hofschule Kaiser Karls des Großen,
Trier 2019, pp. 187-211.
324. Hamburger, Medieval Work of Art; S. Akbari, Seeing through the Veil: Optical Theory and Medieval
Allegory, Toronto 2004, p. 42; Debiais, Croisée, pp. 64-79; R. M. Pollard (ed.), Imagining the Medieval
Afterlife, Cambridge 2020.
325. See: K. Krueger, Das Bild als Schleier, Paderborn 2001.
326. PL 110.545-548.
327. Schreyach, Immanent Iconography.
328. Hamburger, Seeing and Believing; C. Kruse, “Faciamus Hominem. Die Erschaffung Adams und die
Begründung des Bildschaffens aus der göttlichen Kunst, A. Paravicini Bagliani (ed.), Adam, le premier homme,
Florence 2012, pp. 199-218.
329. A. Speer, Vom Verstehen mittelalterlicher Kunst, G. Binding, A. Speer (eds.), Mittelalterliches Kunst-
leben nach Quellen des 11. bis 13. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart 1993, pp. 13-52; K. Krueger, Mute Mysteries of the
Divine Logos: On the Pictorial Poetics of Incarnation, in Image and Incarnation. The Early Modern of the Picto-
rial Image, W. Melion, L. Palmer Wandel (eds.) Leiden 2015, pp. 76-108; Debiais, Silence, pp. 260-261; C.
Kruse, Welterschaffung – Kunstvernichtung: Kunst in Zeiten der Bilder, Berlin and Boston, MA 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9783110680966.
IMAGES
1. London, British Library, Cotton Ms. Claudius B.iv, fol. 105v, Ælfric Hexateuch, late 12th c.,
Moses Receiving Commandments and Delivering Them to Israelites, paint on parchment.
2. Lyon, Bib. mun., MS 324, fol. 44r, Calcidius Translation and Commentary
on Plato’s Timaeus, 3rd quarter of 9th c., Venus’ orbit, ink on parchment.
3. St. Petersburg, National Library, Firk. Hebr. II B 17, fol. IVr,
Pentateuch, 929, gold and paint on parchment.
4. Mt. Athos, Pantokrator Monastery, MS 61, fol. 165r, Book of Psalms, 9th c.,
Psalm 115, gold and pigments on parchment.
5. Genoa, San Bartolomeo degli Armeni, Mandylion with frame,
14th c., pigment on cloth and wood, gilt metal.
6. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Jacquemart de Hesdin, ca. 1400,
Christ Carrying the Cross, pigment on parchment.
7. Paris, BnF, MS. lat. 2855, fol. 63v, Eldefonsus, tract on the Eucharist,
3rd quarter of 9th c., ink and pigment on parchment.
8. Vatican, Bibliotheca Apostolica, Cod. lat. 1341, fol. 187v, Eldefonsus,
tract on the Eucharist, 3rd quarter of 9th c., ink on parchment.
9. Utrecht, Utrecht University Library, Ms. 32, fol. 1v,
Book of Psalms, Psalm 1, mid-9th c., ink on parchment.
10. Paris, BnF, MS lat. 8846, fol. 5v, Book of Psalms, Psalm 1,
1180-1200, gold and pigment on parchment.
11. Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, Cod. 2929, fol. 82r,
Heinrich Seuse, Exemplar, ca. 1370, ink and pigment on parchment.
12. Venice, San Marco, atrium, mosaic at main entrance and first dome,
2nd quarter of 13th century, Tree of Life and Fall of Adam and Eve.
13. Canterbury, Cathedral, window, 4th quarter of 12th c.,
Life of Christ and Typologies, stained glass.
14. Vatican, Museo Vaticano, reliquary box from Sancta Sanctorum,
7th c., Vision of Cross, pigments, gold, wax, wood.
15. Basel, Cathedral Treasure, reliquary, various dates,
David and Virgin and Child, mixed media.
16. London, British Library, MS Add 14791, fol. 6r, Bible of Abbot Kuno,
1st third of 12th c., Opening of Book of Genesis, silver and pigments on parchment.
17. Vatican, Museo Vaticano, reliquary box from Sancta Sanctorum (opened),
7th c. wood, dirt, and stones.
18. Estella, Church of San Miguel, north portal,
tympanum, 12th c., Christ in Majesty, stone.
19. Darmstadt, Hessisches Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, fol. 1v,
Boethius’ Translation of Porphyrius’ Isagoge to Aristotle’s Categories,
mid-12th c., Lady Dialectic, ink on parchment.
20. Halberstadt, Domschatz, Kulturstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt, inv. no. DS087,
Church Flag with Byzantine Veiling Cloth (Poterokalymma),
probably second half/last quarter 12th century, embroidered silk.
21. Palermo, Cappella Palatina, south transept, mosaic, mid-12th c.,
Christ Pantocrator and Nativity of Christ, stone, glass, gold and silver mosaic.
22. Vatican, Pinacoteca, panel, 3rd quarter of 11th c.,
Last Judgment, pigment on wood.
23. Kremsmünster, Benedictine monastery, flabellum, Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension,
Bear Suscitating Cub, Eagle Flying to Sky and Descending Beneath Sea, 12th c., gilt bronze.
24. Münster, Landesmuseum, windows from Arnstein, 4th quarter of 12th c.,
Tree of Jesse Flanked by Old Testament Typologies, stained glass.
25. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Bibl. 22, fols. 4v-5r, Song of Songs,
early 11th c., Allegory, gold and pigments on parchment.
26. Escorial, Real Biblioteca, MS T-I-1, fol. 88v, Cantigas de Santa Maria,
1280-84, Song 60, Eva/Ave, pigment on parchment.
27. Rome, Santa Maria in Trastevere, apse,
Christ and Mary Cothronus, 1140-43, mosaic.
28. Vatican, Museo Vaticano, reliquary box from Sancta Sanctorum
(verso of lid), 7th c., Scenes from Christ’s Life, pigment on wood.
29. Bern, Historisches Museum, diptych of Andrew III of Hungary,
late 13th c., Life of Christ and Saints, gold, gems, crystal, parchment.
30. Grottaferrata, San Nilo, triumphal arch, Pentecost and Trinity with Prophets,
12th c. and 13th, mosaic and fresco.
31. Deir el-Surian, apse, Annunciation to the Virgin, 8th c., fresco.
32. Mt. Sinai, St. Catherine’s monastery, iconostasis beam (detail),
Adoration of Magi, 13th c., paint on wood.
33. Paris, BnF, MS Nouv. acq. Lat. 2334, fol. 1v, Ashburnham Pentateuch,
Creation of World, 5th c.? with 9th c. overpainting, pigment on parchment.
34. Sankt Olof, altarpiece, sculptural group of ca. 1440 placed in 16th c. shrine,
Throne of Mercy, paint on wood.
35. Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek, Rupertsberg Scivias, fol. 51r,
Hildegard of Bingen’s Vision, ca. 1165 (20th c. copy), paint on paper.
36. Massa Marittima, Museo dell’arte, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, altarpiece, Virgin and Child
with Saints and Personifications, 1st quarter of 14th c., pigment and gold on wood.
The panel is slightly restored in the photo; the silver and Trinity on Fides' mirror
is a reconstruction of the detail now lost in the painting but perceivable
through chemical analysis and sgraffiti.
37. Bridekirk, St. Brigid, baptismal font, 1140s,
Richard Carving Ornament, stone.
38. Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire,
Cod. 2929, fol. 82r (detail of Fig. 11).
Hans Belting (†)
DANTE’S ENCOUNTER WITH LIVING “SHADOWS”
Dante’s Commedia, later known as Divine Comedy, is a journey to the afterworld, ex-
perienced by the poet as a dream. The inhabitants of this otherworldly space are described
as images: their meaning will be the focus of the present paper. Dante understands this
dimension of the afterlife according to the Medieval conceptualization of the three spe-
cific places that are described in the three cantiche of the poem. The dead appear in the
two first books, Inferno and Purgatorio, as living shadows who still carry their mortal bod-
ies with them in image- and voice-form. In Paradiso, they have turned into lights, who
still wait for their resurrection within eternal bodies. Moreover, these three places are
dominated by distinctive temporal notions: an endless time in Hell, the different times
corresponding to each individual punishment in the Purgatory, and the awaited end of
time in Heaven.
The scenario, which is going to be developed by the poet in his work, is most clearly
described in the first, introductory canto. Prior to the beginning of his journey, he gets
lost “in a dark forest”, where wild animals bar his way. Then suddenly somebody appears
who “looked speechless through long silence”. Dante addresses him with these words, ask-
ing for protection: “whoever you are, whether a shadow or a real human being”. The an-
swer is: “I am not a man, but I was once a man (uomo già fui)” (Inferno 1, 73). The speak-
ing shadow is introduced in this way. Some hints at its previous life enable the poet to un-
derstand that he is facing Virgil, who lived more than one thousand years before him. He
greets the great poet of Antiquity as his “master” (maestro) and his unequalled “model”
(autore).
The volume Dante maintains to have studied “so long” is nothing else than Virgil’s
masterpiece, the Aeneis. In the latter’s sixth book, the Trojan Aeneas, the later founder of
Rome, descends into the Netherworld in the aim to ask his father Anchises about the fu-
ture. The role played there by the Cumaean sibyl is undertaken in the Commedia by Vir-
gil, who only in the Paradiso will leave the task to another soul (anima), that of Beatrice,
“who is worthier than me” (Inferno 1:65 and 1:122). Already the introductory verses of
Dante’s poetical journey to the afterworld evoke notions that have informed the percep-
tion of the dead’s afterlife in two different cultures – the “shadows” of Antiquity and the
“souls” of Christian tradition.
58 HANS BELTING
European imagination was nourished by the ancient rhetorical figure of the “living
shadow”, which regained its full poetical potential with Dante. He attributes the expla-
nation of his rather original interpretation of this figure to the words of the ancient poet
Statius, who, according to legend, was a Christian convert. It first appears in the 25th
canto of the second cantica, which corresponds not only to the work’s middle, but also
to a key moment and a real turning point in Dante’s journey. Since a soul is going to ex-
perience a new transformation, through which it will be led into Paradise, there is a need
to provide some elucidations about its body of shadow. The poet’s claims of having seen
souls in the hereafter could sound hazardous, given that Christian doctrine taught that
they were bodiless. Dante’s shadows were not inspired by theology and were introduced
as a tribute to Virgil’s otherworldly journey. He worked out a double strategy whereby
such special images were simultaneously defined by analogy with shadows and in contrast
to bodies.
A double bodily association is already present in the shadow we cast on the ground,
and it can be reduced to this general principle: an image is like a shadow, which differs from
the body but is produced by a lighted body. Sensorial seeing leads first to imagination and
later to conceptualization.
As a natural bodily image, the shadow has constantly played a role as a source of in-
spiration and guidance for image-making. It worked simultaneously as a proof and a loss,
as an index and a denial of the body, whose clear outline was blurred and made hard to
recognize. On the other hand, the body was, in Dante’s eyes, a living phenomenal reali-
ty and, as such, a persona. This latter word, which indicated a mask in ancient theatre,
was already used by Thomas Aquinas to describe whoever lives in his/her own body. Un-
like Virgil, the pilgrim Dante was still a persona. In the sixth circle of Hell (Inferno 6:36),
the two travellers catch sight of an illusory image (vanità) that looks like a person (che par
persona).
Like the border between life and death, the threshold between bodies and shadows, de-
spite their being so strongly associated in the sunshine, can hardly be crossed. Rather than
as a stimulus to transgression, Dante interpreted it as an outcome of transcendence. Ac-
cordingly, the analogy of image and shadow in its mimetic association with the body led
him, in a further step, to acknowledge the ontological difference between shadow and
body. Through their shadows, bodies cast their image on the ground, whereas the dead do
not cast any shadow, since they are shadows.
Ancient thought made clear that shadows cannot be touched in the same way as im-
ages can be hugged. Already Homer describes an unsuccessful embrace that causes disap-
pointment. As Odysseus tries to clasp the image of his mother in his hands (Odyssey,
11:205-210), it vanishes “like a shadow or a dream”. In Virgil’s poem (Aeneid 6: 699-
700), Aeneas throws his arms around his father’s neck, but “the image escaped his hands”
(manus effugit imago). He sees “bodiless beings” (sine corpore vitas), who come towards
him as “empty images” (cava sub imagine). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (402-443), such an
experience of shadows is associated to Narcissus’ mirror-image: what he saw was only “the
shadow of an image” (imaginis umbra) that, after coming and staying with him, also went
down in his company.
DANTE’S ENCOUNTER WITH LIVING “SHADOWS” 59
Similar expressions are also encountered in Dante’s work. In the second canto of Pur-
gatorio (2:76-84), he sees a soul approaching and trying “to embrace him”. Since this at-
tempt fails, the poet cries out: “O empty shadows, which exist only in their appearance!”
(Oh ombre vane, fuor che nell’aspetto). Only by his voice he recognizes the figure standing
before him as his friend Casella, who states: “As I loved you once in my mortal body, so
I love you now albeit bodiless”. In the 21st canto (130-136), Dante and his guide meet
with the roman poet Statius. As soon as Dante introduces Virgil to him, the former dis-
courages him from any embrace: “Brother, leave that alone, as you are a shadow and you
only see a shadow” (Frate, non far, ché tu sei ombra et ombra vedi). Statius admits with em-
barrassment that he “forgot our nonentity and treated shadows as solid bodies” (trattan-
do l’ombre come cosa salda).
The different phenomenal appearance of Dante’s body vis-à-vis his shadow is first hint-
ed at in the third canto of Purgatorio, in the very moment as he leaves the dark depths of
Hell and comes out to the sun-lighted slopes of Purgatory (Purgatorio 3:16-18). Since the
sunshine is behind him, he casts a shadow on the ground in front of him: “The sun was
broken in front of my figure” (rotto m’era dinanzi alla figura), “which was an obstacle to
its rays”. This does not happen with Virgil: is he still at his side? The guide reassures the
poet with these words: “It is already evening in the place where the body, through which
I once cast a shadow (al quale io facea ombra), is buried” (Purgatorio 3:24).
The next instant, as a host of souls fix their attention on the shadow cast by Dante on
the rocky ground, Virgil confirms to them “that you are really seeing a human body, and
that’s why the sunshine is cut through with him on the ground” (il lume del sole in terra
è fesso). It is by God’s will that Dante still has a body, “against which the sunshine is bro-
ken” (rotta). Similar explanations will be given frequently during the visit to the Purgato-
ry. The souls, engaged in improving their status, get frightened when they realize that
Dante breaths and casts a shadow, and mistake him for an intruder. In the circle of the
voluptuous, he is asked why “you can make of yourself a wall against the sunshine”. They
whisper to each other’s ears: “That one does not look like having a fictitious (fittizio)
body” (Purgatorio 26:12), and, in so saying, they provide a definition of their own status.
The shadow is understood as a visual marker signposting the solid matter (cosa salda)
which has been lost by the souls.
Dante understands shortly later why the gluttons, who, as souls, need no nourishment,
can lose weight and may look like starving people. Then Virgil steps aside and is finally
willing to reveal the origins of the bodies of shadow. He encourages the poet Statius to
verbally show the “cosmic view” (la veduta eterna) wherein even the bodies of shadow
have a place (Purgatorio 25:31). Statius deals with this in three steps. First, he sums up the
process whereby the body is created through human conception, in keeping with Aris-
toteles. Second, he follows theological scholasticism in his statement that God creates im-
mortal souls, which share in both human and divine qualities, as they manifest themselves
in the body’s life.
Later on, Dante/Statius relies exclusively on his own thought in describing the origins
of the bodies of shadow. The soul preserves the shaping power (virtù informativa) it pos-
60 HANS BELTING
sessed before separating from the body. The poet has recourse to the natural metaphor of
the rainbow created by sunlight in the air imbued with rainwater: in the same way, the
shell of air that surrounds the souls in the afterworld takes shape in a form through which
they can manifest themselves “by their own power” (virtualmente). A second natural
metaphor hints at flames, which are obliged to follow the fire in any direction: in the same
way, the new shape (sua forma novella) conforms to the soul, and “that’s why we call it
shadow” (ombra). Nevertheless, this bold comparison implies a basic distinction. Where-
as, in this world, the soul manifests itself in the body, in the afterworld it can find ex-
pression only in a very idiosyncratic type of shadow. It happens therefore, so says the soul,
“that we have to speak, laugh, and cry”, and the Purgatory visitor is invited to become
convinced of this, since “the shadow is formed” (l’ombra si figura) by such affections (Pur-
gatorio 25:110).
In this strongly investigated passage Dante takes a risk. He speaks of the miraculous
making of an image, in which the soul lives again in the afterworld. As shown by Étienne
Gilson, there was no place for the existence of shadows in the theological universe. Rather,
they are inventions of a poet who transposes Virgil’s model into a Christian context.
Whereas the ancient viewed shadows as indicators of lost bodies, the souls of Purgatory
prepare themselves to a further transformation into lights, which will resurrect within
their bodies on the day of Last Judgment (il gran dì). Dante is bound to the shadows he
meets with not only through their reminiscences of past lives, but also through their hope
in a shared future.
Already in the 11th canto Dante admits to his artist’s pride, which will be something
he will have to expiate in the same way as the dead artists on the terrace of the arrogant.
Despite such manifestations of humility, in the third cantica he runs another risk, which
his narrative qualities had hitherto been unable to achieve. The ascent to the sphere of
planets in Paradise is a new task, which cannot be accomplished by relying on the shad-
ow notion. He invokes the god-poet Apollo, but only Beatrice can help him to under-
stand what he is going to see. The image problematics emerges here in a new form. Since
the souls leave their body of shadow behind them, they are transformed into lights, whose
association with shadows can only be perceived as contradictory. In the light, the shadow
has vanished.
The afterworld traveller, who is still living in his own body, has literally lost his foot-
ing. Souls move about weightless and as quickly as light in aether. Dante describes them
as “living lights” that are like countless mirrors reflecting divine light: “Then I saw one
thousand souls hastening towards us” (Paradiso 5:103). One of them, “nested” within a
lighting cover as all other souls, comes closer and speaks to him. As the poet inquires
about its identity, it shines “of a brighter splendour”, since, in this way, it shows its joy
for the question (Paradiso 5:109). Other images come to be associated with this noctur-
nal “constellation” of stars. In the 19th canto, the “beautiful image” (bella imago) display-
ing an eagle with open wings proves to be a multiple composition, where each soul radi-
ates like a ruby. Accordingly, the eagle can also speak with several voices. Dante is now
reporting something that “nobody has hitherto described and not even the boldest fanta-
sia may be able to imagine” (Paradiso 19:1-3).
DANTE’S ENCOUNTER WITH LIVING “SHADOWS” 61
God’s vision creates the light radiated by the souls. But it can be wondered whether
they have already achieved their final status. An answer is given by Solomon in the 14th
canto: “our vestment” (vesta) of light will be preserved and will even radiate of a brighter
light, when the flesh, now glorified and hallowed, will cover again our persona, re-estab-
lished in its living wholeness” (Paradiso 13:43-45). Consequently, “the splendour that
shines hereabout will be surpassed by the appearance of the body (carne), which is now
covered with earth” (Paradiso 13:55-57).
The souls’ return to their new, immortal bodies is an audacious thought, which Dante
cannot avoid borrowing from Christian tradition. Nevertheless, he regains his poetical
freedom by adding that souls are “nostalgic about their dead bodies” (mostrar disio d’i cor-
pi morti; Paradiso 13:63). Since very early times, human beings reacted to their existential
challenges by opposing the faces of images to the facelessness of death. Because of death, they
found themselves entangled in the enigma of an absence, to which images owe their old-
est meaning. Their presence in this world responds to a definitive absence. In the myths
associated with funerary cults the dead come always to a place where they are waited for
by the living within an image. Therefore, the ontological meaning of images was con-
nected to death, since it is only in the realm of death that the appearance of an image is
able to attract a new being.
At the core of Dante’s otherworldly journey lays an image theory grounded in the dis-
tinction between image and body. These two notions differ from each other from a dou-
ble perspective: on the one side, bodies are not images, and on the other hand, images have
no bodies. Shadows are cast by mortal bodies, and not by souls, which experience a new
life as bodies of shadow. Since the latter could but be understood as images, they could
not be mistaken for living bodies. Only Dante’s dreaming self could cross the border be-
tween life and death. Awareness of death – which, from an anthropological viewpoint, can
be described as the genetic moment of human image-making – eventually led Dante to
work out the poetical imagery of a journey into the afterworld, which has become world
literature.
COMPENDIUM OF QUESTIONNAIRES
LUISA ELENA ALCALÁ
1. In the last thirty years, images have been a focus of scholarship from many different view-
points, and they have been pivotal in the many scholarly movements, or “turns”, attempting to
methodologically reframe the study of art history in general. Can you briefly explain which was
your original focus of interest and in which directions your scholarly approach developed over
the course of time?
My original focus of interest was the Society of Jesus and the ways in which Jesuits in-
fluenced and engaged with images and artistic matters in the viceroyalty of New Spain in
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At first, this topic (of my dissertation) was
meant to be a study on patronage. However, due to the kinds of sources and archival ma-
terials discovered, I broadened the focus, finding patronage studies too limiting because
they fell short of recovering a sense for how the Jesuit network operated. The aspects that
interested me about the Jesuits concerned mediation: how they circulated objects and im-
ages, placed them in specific settings, and activated them for a multi-ethnic and layered
society through various methods. Since then, my research has moved in other directions:
sometimes it returns to the more traditional methodologies of art history, including artist
biographies, style, and iconography; at other times, it engages with the recent “turns” in
the field, such as the spatial turn. In general, I work from the objects and am not married
to any methodology, but rather let the objects and artists that pique my curiosity signal
which path might best respond to the issues that seem most pertinent to them.
2. Please name up to three books that you consider to have played an important role in ori-
enting your research.
These would be Jonathan Brown’s, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish
Painting (1978), David Freedberg’s The Power of Images (1989), and Michael Baxandall’s,
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Picto-
rial Style (1988). Professor Brown was my mentor, and he taught me both to look close-
ly at painting and to undertake historical research exhaustively. Through a series of case
studies, his book did just that, offering an elucidating window onto the past by demon-
strating the extent to which style, iconography, ideas about art, and patronage were dense-
ly interwoven. Baxandall´s classic study is equally concerned with recovering a sense for
how works were made and seen, but his methodology was in its day completely new. To-
66 COMPENDIUM OF QUESTIONNAIRES
day, one would probably characterize him as someone who thought “outside the box”.
For someone who was trained in the study of Old Masters but works on Spanish Ameri-
can colonial art like myself, his “period eye” was a welcome stimulus, an invitation to ex-
plore specific viewing contexts more deeply. Finally, Freedberg’s study, which engaged
with low as much as high art, has been deeply inspiring for the study of religious images
in Spanish America. Although different in approaches, from today´s vantage point these
three books and their methodologies seem rather complementary.
3. What is your assessment of traditional art history, with its emphasis on controversial no-
tions and often rigid distinctions between “style” and “iconography”? What do you see as its
hermeneutic limits and advantages? Do you think it should be thoroughly replaced with new
approaches, or simply revised and integrated into the present-day art-historical discourse?
From the replies to the previous questions, it is probably already clear that I consider
traditional art history still of great value. In fact, I am often in awe of the depth of knowl-
edge of the foundational figures of the field. Although the time when style analysis or
iconographic decoding were an end in themselves is mostly over, it is also true that some-
times current characterizations of those methodologies are reductionist. In an interest in
evidencing what is new and different in our own times, we have not always fully recog-
nized previous contributions and the ways in which they continue to be relevant. For the
most part, in my area of work, style and iconography are still present in much of current
scholarship, albeit as tools which facilitate addressing broader and different questions. As
such, their worth should be recognized more openly.
4. Since the 1990s, our field has experienced many different “turns”, each laying emphasis
on one of the multiple dynamics in which images are involved. To what extent did your re-
search benefit from such scholarly debates?
The field’s “turns” are stimulating because they draw attention to very specific aspects
of the visual realm, often allowing us to consider images in a new light. Also, because these
“turns” are usually interdisciplinary, originating outside art history, I find that thinking
about how they might intersect with art historical research provides a space for creativity.
Of these trends, the spatial and the material turn have been the most influential for me.
Years ago, authors working on space, a sense of place, and landscape provided a stimulus
for research on the painting Conquista y reducción de los indios infieles de Pantasma y Para-
cas, published in The Art Bulletin (2012). More recently, I have re-engaged with the spa-
tial turn as a means of positing that distance, as a concept and a reality, needs to be fore-
grounded more in accounts of viceregal art (Latin American and Latin Visual Culture,
2021). At the same time, a source of concern is that while at their best the “turns” allow
us to see works in new light, they can also invite simple reformulation of previously well-
studied objects, dressing the old in new clothes with little authentically new substance.
Whatever the approach, I would encourage more research on entirely new topics: at least
for Latin American colonial art most artists and works have still not been the object of
any kind of study.
LUISA ELENA ALCALÁ 67
5. In your opinion, which specific notions have become particularly relevant to our present-
day understanding of images, and how have they affected your own approach?
For anyone working on Latin American art of the viceregal period and interested in
doing so in an inclusive and sensitive manner, notions about colonialism are fundamen-
tal. Years ago, postcolonial studies and foundational figures, such as Homi Bhabha,
raised awareness of the complexity of intercultural relations, posing questions that con-
tinue to be necessary when addressing the relationship of the Western world to the rest
of the globe in the humanities. At the same time, for those notions to be effective and
convincing when applied to specific studies about art and images, it is fundamental that
they rest on a solid historical foundation for, as many historians of Latin America have
demonstrated, not all colonialist contexts operated in the same way, nor was lived expe-
rience the same across the vast geography of those territories. Another widely relevant
frame of discussion at present for many fields, and with which I often engage, is global-
ization. The exchanges and interconnections being uncovered challenge earlier narratives
which existed mostly as part of local or national histories. Globalization, despite its pit-
falls, has transformed the field, and not just in terms of the production of knowledge: it
has brought scholars working in disparate fields into greater contact and collaboration
than ever before.
6. What is your specific understanding of “meaning” in visual objects? How do images man-
age to convey messages, and what are the implications?
In general, I believe meaning is conveyed through the “what” and “how”, which is why
I feel strongly that we must not renounce to training future generations in how to look
closely at objects. This includes not just knowing how to identify and interpret subject
matter or iconography, but also formal matters related to style, composition, colour, scale,
texture and more. At the same time, meaning is ultimately the result of how those forms
and themes are perceived and interpreted by their audiences; and, considering how varied
these have been across time and space, but also in any one given moment and place, im-
ages will always possess more than one meaning. While fixed, images are tremendously
rich and flexible vehicles of communication, and meaning is often the result of the visu-
al and cultural associations that a given public brings to a work. This is quite evident in
the study of sixteenth-century New Spanish art: as Alessandra Russo and others have
demonstrated, an archbishop´s feather mitre could carry different meanings in Europe
than among the indigenous communities of central New Spain and for the amantecas
(feather-artists) who created it.
7. To what extent is “meaning” determined by factors not immediately associated with the
specific visual appearance of images, such as mise-en-scène strategies, conditions of visibility,
and more generally the experiential dimension of viewers?
Indeed, these are other factors that also affect the production of meaning. Because of
traditional academic divisions by media and technique (the dominant triumvirate of ar-
chitecture, painting, and sculpture), art historical specialization has sometimes decontex-
tualized each one of these types of monuments or objects, creating an ideal narrative for
them that does not always account for actual visual experience. For instance, we often
write about paintings as if they were visible in luminescent museum-like viewing condi-
tions but walking into a church, usually dark, reminds us that perhaps they were seen and
even understood in different ways in the past. Of course, there have been scholars work-
ing on the issue of experience and meaning for a long time (take, for instance, John Shear-
man´s Only Connect…Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance). And, currently in
the field of religious images some of these aspects are gaining ground as scholars research
processes such as the veiling and unveiling of objects, while others apply new computer
technology to reconstructing original viewing conditions. Perhaps one additional factor
that deserves greater attention in terms of “meaning” has to do with the role of ornament
surrounding and framing images and objects.
8. In your view, are we now better equipped to reconstruct and more deeply understand
the complex relationship between the visual appearance of an image and the expectations of
its viewers?
For the most part I would agree that this is so, although the historiography of practi-
cally every field of expertise has repeatedly demonstrated in hindsight that there was al-
ways more to learn. Viewer expectation, or the way people connect to images, is ulti-
mately as vast and heterogeneous as the realm of the visual itself. Extracting a satisfying
and accurate sense for how reception operated and what the role of the viewer was from
sources (especially textual ones) is usually not easy to accomplish because those sources, if
found, are rarely as explicit as we would like them to be. Nonetheless, as Baxandall
demonstrated years ago, the kinds of sources that may be of relevance for understanding
the relationship of images to society needs to be as varied as possible, and in this respect,
interdisciplinary approaches have been helpful. It would be wonderful to see these applied
more often to the study of viceregal art in Spanish America, where less work has been
done on this issue.
9. To what extent can images contribute to informing their viewers’ understandings of other
images and other aspects of reality and experience?
Social history and art have been an important part of our tradition, and it clearly
speaks to the potential for images to inform other images as well as overall social experi-
ence. Images clearly work in a matrix, and the viewer’s understanding is thus also the re-
sult of recurrence, repetition, borrowings, citation, similarity and difference vis-à-vis oth-
er related works, and the constant resignification that takes place through the relation-
ships in the world’s enormous community of images. Furthermore, to the extent that they
may be representational – a window or a mirror onto the world – there is no doubt that
they provide echoes of other works and experiences.
10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

The “material turn” has been significant in my research in so far as its questions inter-
sected directly with my study on the Virgin of Loreto and replicas of the Holy House in
Mexico. The devotion gained meaning locally not just for what it represented but because
of how the materials of the Holy House were described and activated by the Jesuits pro-
moting the cult among Hispanic and indigenous audiences. That said, the materiality of
images as a methodology means different things to different people (it is like globalization
in this). Currently it seems to cover everything from technical art history to historical re-
search on materials and consideration of them as one more factor that shapes meaning. In
any case, I find it important to remember that while material-based study is currently
shedding new light and even helping to reconfigure certain areas of research, such as the
realm of religious images and objects, awareness of technical and material factors was
something that foundational figures in the history of art, such as Henri Focillon, empha-
sized early on. And, like all methodologies, it is probably more pertinent for certain ob-
jects than others; as regards technical studies especially, we need to explore how to relate
its findings to the history of art in more direct and meaningful ways.
11. In your view, how can we approach the “social life” of images? In what sense can we
assume that images interrelate with their viewers and users?
Recently I invited Alejandro Vergara, Senior Curator of Flemish and Northern Euro-
pean Paintings at the Museo del Prado, to give a class in the galleries. Standing before
Rubens and Brueghel’s Five Senses, he drew attention to the allegorical figure of Sight, sit-
ting at a table and gesturing toward a small painting that a putto holds up to her gaze, re-
minding us that it was often in such a setting that people gathered to talk about paintings
and objects. Possession (through acquisition or gifting) and subsequent conversation have
always been fundamental aspects of the social lives of images, and there are plenty of
sources, both textual and visual, that capture these interactions. Of course, we lack explicit
testimony of engagement for most objects, and in the field of Latin American viceregal art
sources are drastically fewer than those for European art of the same period. Nonetheless,
as many scholars have shown, that absence should not mean that one cannot figure out
some type of “social life” for those objects. The biography of things and agency are
methodologies encompassed in the broader category of the “social life” of images which,
along with many other colleagues in my field, I find quite helpful, especially because we
not only have fewer sources but also know less about artists and patrons. Ultimately, these
approaches activate the works of art in interesting ways.
12. Does the experience of images exclusively imply the exercise of sight, or do other senses
also play a role? If possible, please cite a relevant case from your research field.
Besides sight, some images clearly have the capacity to engage other senses, most no-
ticeably touch and sound. As regards the former, in the previously mentioned research
about the Holy House of Loreto, it is evident that pilgrimage to the original sanctuary in
Italy was as much about seeing the image of the Virgin and Child, supposedly made by
Saint Luke, as it was about experiencing and touching the walls of the Holy House. Pil-
grims sought to physically experience the space of the Holy House and touching the brick
or stone walls, supposedly the original ones of the house where the Annunciation to the
Virgin Mary took place, was a crucial experience. Consequently, many copies of the Holy
House also sought to imitate and recover that experience, inviting touch through materi-
al imitation as well as through sermons and texts that emphasized touch.
13. Recent studies have emphasized that “iconicity” (or “visual efficacy”) is not an exclusive
property of artistic images but can also be regarded as an attribute of non-figurative objects,
such as elements of landscape, natural materials, and living beings. To what extent can such
objects be included in an art-historical narrative?
Although not my field of expertise, Non-Western art history has much to teach in this
respect. For example, Inca and Andean societies revered certain sacred mountains and
stones, and this was not just a pre-Hispanic phenomenon but rather a tradition that per-
sisted after the Spanish conquest and into the present. Acknowledging the iconicity of
such natural formations facilitates writing a history of viceregal art for this geography that
is not exclusively about Spanish cultural imposition and local adaptation; it is also about
the meeting of different cultures who understood iconicity (and religion) through differ-
ent forms, both manmade and natural. Beyond the Non-Western traditions and contexts
of cross-cultural contact, it may also be true that even in the study of European art, we
have neglected this issue. It occasionally comes up, as when Palomino, the Spanish trea-
tise writer, notes a few examples of local devotion being expressed to images people “see”
and find in an odd-shaped rock or other natural object. Rather than delimiting such ac-
counts to theoretical analysis about materiality and religious images, one could also take
such anecdotes as a window onto a broader arena of belief, popular beliefs, that persisted
locally even as orthodoxy was rigid. Although typically researched by anthropologists,
such considerations are still underexplored by art historians.
14. Many studies have focused on the dynamics by which images originally meant for a spe-
cific viewing context come to be transferred to, appropriated by, and transformed and reshaped
in another. Which hermeneutic tools can be useful in our analysis of such phenomena?
The field of Latin American viceregal art has a wealth of studies that address these is-
sues, many from theoretical perspectives grounded in postcolonial theory and often ap-
plying but also transforming those theoretical models to fit the specific historical situa-
tions of each case. At the same time, for Latin American studies terminology – finding the
best word to describe these processes – has been a source of much discussion and some
debate. Should we call it hybrid, mestizo or syncretic? Does the metaphor of “translation”
satisfy the field of art history for tracing such movements and transformations? Is it only
apt for cross-cultural contexts or can it be used in a European context as well? When
should we use each one of these (and other) terms (the list is long)? And are they inter-
changeable? Although they most certainly are not, they do sometimes seem to be used
with laxity and without full consideration for the differences involved. At the same time,
it is worth considering the extent to which the terms we choose may determine the out-
come of the research. Are we missing other artistic dynamics by foregrounding these pro-
cesses? What do we push into the background?
15. English is more and more the lingua franca of global art-historical scholarship. To what
extent may we avoid applying to non-European contexts notions drawn from an essentially
Western European understanding of images and their materiality and meaning?
Avoiding the Western lens if one has been formed by it (and, as we all know, art histo-
ry as a field has been shaped by it) is almost impossible, and it seems important to ac-
knowledge this and move forward from there. The investigation of non-European contexts
seems to require a double task: the specialization in the culture of choice, as in any other
field, combined with the critical analysis of an earlier historiography that projected and im-
printed European art historical models worldwide. The latter task has, of course, already
been undertaken, and there is much to learn from reading authors such as Craig Clunas or
Susan Vogel. Ultimately, to avoid applying these Western European notions it seems nec-
essary to learn more about other cultures and artistic traditions, something easier said than
done. How many specialists in non-European cultures are there in European or Latin Amer-
ican universities? At stake is not just a greater understanding of non-European contexts but
also the legitimacy of studies that pursue a global focus (or, more commonly, connections
between two or more culturally distinct geographies). For those interested in working with
the non-Western artistic traditions, the highest of academic standards must be met and en-
gagement must be professional and not episodic or the result of an academic trend.
16. Finally, what are we still lacking? In which direction should we pursue our studies in
the following decades?
A couple of thoughts. First, as regards English as a lingua franca, one of the risks in-
volved is that it generates a larger bibliography in this language than before, and while
beneficial, this may also result in future generations relying more on it than on the bibli-
ography these texts cite in other languages. To what extent does English run the risk of
making scholarship in other languages invisible in the future? Will younger generations
foster the fallacy that they no longer need other languages besides English? Maybe this will
not happen, but some grade of vigilance may be wise in the pursuit of a balance between
the bridges we are building and the foundational blocks they rest on. Secondly, in terms
of the age of globalization and interdisciplinary ambitions, we must work harder to meet
their challenge because they require both specialization and deep knowledge of cultures
and societies that we are not always as versed in as it might be desirable. Finally, I hope
we do not leave expertise – the traditional kind – aside. Knowing how to look and inter-
pret images in terms of condition, materials, and techniques which, along with style,
make them look the way they do, are defining skills of the art historian.
Luisa Elena Alcalá

Universidad Autónoma of Madrid
[email protected]
BARBARA BAERT
the course of time?
In 2004, at the beginning of my academic career, I became involved in an interdisci-
plinary research program on one verse: John 20, 17. The research team consisted of an ex-
egete, an anthropologist, and myself as an art historian. For me, the Noli me tangere pro-
ject was not only pars pro toto for a turn into the senses, but also led to the concept of In-
terspace. Interspace concerns the “magnetic field” between word and image, or the me-
thodical translation of a literary corpus into the iconographic tradition. The insights from
this interdisciplinary collaboration, have given me the methodological resilience for the
follow-up projects on the iconography of the bleeding woman from Mark, and on the
context of the so-called Johannesschüssel.
These latter projects not only challenged the relationship between high & low materi-
al culture, but also fundamentally questioned the original concept of Interspace once
again. Where iconography appeared to have no safety net in primary sources, and knowl-
edge of functions of textless phenomena remained “blind,” other approaches forced them-
selves upon us.
Infra: §3 en §4.
– As early-career scholar onwards. Gerhard Wolf & Herbert Kessler about the
mandylion and il volto di Cristo. These authors had a considerable impact on me regard-
ing the ontology of the image (later also Georges Didi-Huberman and his L’image ou-
verte).
– Compagnon de route. The Belgian non-conformist art historian/anthropologist Paul Van-
denbroeck on nun’s art, material culture and Berber textiles. Vandenbroeck did not need the
Turn for his transcultural & transhistorical research in archetypes and migration of motifs.
– Today. Anthropologist Timothy Ingold on the impact of environmental senses and
his work on the meaning of the visual medium as making processes.
BARBARA BAERT 73
I will explore this question with three case-studies that challenged me to reconsider the
dichotomy between style & iconography, between form & content.
1. Hybrid Objects: Enclosed Gardens. Revisions
The phenomenon of the Enclosed Gardens (Besloten Hofjes) in the Low Countries is
one that has only received some attention in the last decade. As a product of so-called cot-
tage industry within the nunneries, it was not considered part of the canon for a long
time, until the Gardens regained interest from the gender and anthropological turn. The
Enclosed Gardens escape the actual definitions of religious devotional material and escape
the more conventional methodic perspectives. By distancing themselves from mainstream
questions, the Enclosed Gardens became pars pro toto for an art history that dissolves the
boundaries between high and low, between text and image, and between making and
completing. The study of the Gardens has demanded a revision concerning these in-
grained contradictions.
Infra: §10 Tim Ingold.
2. Objects and instruments of daily life: art-form-process. Replacements
The essay About Sieves and Sieving takes as its subject an object that utterly coincides
with its own function. The essay explores the longue durée of the sieve as a symbolic-tech-
nical object of use, looking at examples from Jewish folklore, Berber culture, and ancient
Egypt that indicate the cosmological importance of the action of sifting, and the exclu-
sivity of women in the related actions. The roundness of the sieve and the ‘shaking’, rock-
ing, circular movements support this symbolic spectrum. Female responsibility for nutri-
tion and hygiene are cultically and symbolically transferred to the sieve. About Sieves and
Sieving also involves paradigmatic challenges. The first challenge concerns its tectonics.
The sieve’s filtration process is made possible by a woven structure. Its capacity both to
retain (saving the good) and to remove (discarding the unwanted) in a single action makes
the sieve a fundamental symbol of ‘separation’ and ‘filtration’.
The sieve connects the principles of matter, structure, form and function in a radical
manner, and inspires us to consider objects, things, material culture etc. organisms. The
binary asks a replacement by the non-binary, by consubstantiality and immanence.
3. Art Historiography and ‘burned’ scholars. Integrations
As a student during the eighties, I was taught what is known as Panofsky-bashing. We
were taught to regard Panofsky as the “Atlas bearer” of guilt, in terms of an overly rigor-
ous definition of Worldview, an overly dogmatic interpretation of disguised symbolism,
and a malignant irreparable dichotomy between form and content within his famous
three-step system. The result is that our generations have not read Panofsky and know
only the negative valuation history as a teaching tool. This has prompted me personally
to revisit so-called stakeholders in art historiography in prima lectura. The return to pri-
mary sources, among ‘overheated’ scholars brings peace and hygiene to the lore and inte-
grates exegetical nuance and ‘the period’s eye’ into historiography. This project led to the
publication Signed PAN at Princeton (Peeters Publishers).
search benefit from such new scholarly debates?
1. My generation has experienced the various “turns” both consciously and uncon-
sciously. My doctoral research during the 1990s concerned the literary, material, and
iconographic development of the Legend of the Cross from the early Middle Ages to the
15th century. The dissertation project worried some senior scholars at the time. The
method was fluid, the finality unbounded, and the genre indeterminate: no catalogue
raisonné, no stylistic research, no single iconographic course, and an open lock on all sorts
of “vernacular” traditions. Someone at the Hebrew University at the time called my in-
terdisciplinary ambition “a glorious mistake”. Through the material & anthropological
turn, however, A Heritage of Holy Wood would still gain a frame of reference to this day.
These “multiple dynamics” led me, backed by scholars such as Carolyn Walker Bynum,
Cynthia Hahn, Jeffrey Hamburger, Bianca Kühnel, John Lowden & Miri Rubin, to the
study of liturgical and domestic objects in material (gendered) space, and their anthropo-
logical anchoring in the senses (cfr. §7 mise-en-scene and project OrnaSacra).
2. Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte was never taught as such at KU Leuven. But as a
searching postdoc scholar, I myself came into contact with German Kunstwissenschaft
around the year 2000 through the Berlin milieu of Gerhard Wolf, Hans Belting and
Christoph Wulf. Around the same time, I also began to read the work of James Elkins
and Tom Mitchell on my own initiative. The German Bildwissenschaften on the one hand
and the “Iconic Turn” from the U.S. on the other emancipated me. The French Turn
with l’anthropologie visuelle (Louis Marin, Georges Didi-Huberman), also broke open my
work theoretically.
As benefits I mention:
– Ontology and iconogenesis of the image (e.g. vera icon). Myths of emergence of the
image; paradigms of image as non-figurative (dissemblence) versus figurative (ressemblance)
(Georges Didi-Huberman); Textile and “textility” as matrix of the dynamics of the image
(Tristan Weddigen);
– Nachleben studies. Research on Aby Warburg: Pathosformeln, Ninfa fiorentina and
the launch of the Studies in Iconology series (Peeters Publishers: 2014-*).
In the foregoing, I have outlined the impact on turns. My impressions can be extrap-
olated to present-day understanding of images:
– Transcultural rooting and archetypes: so-called migration of images (Warburg Studies);
– Making & Meaning: images in their materiality and made by human hands;
– The image in the sensory space: images entangled in the sensorium.
BARBARA BAERT 75
I add two elements that have not yet been addressed:

The renewed fascination with the detail, the Beiwerk, the parergon, the ornament.
Since Ernst Gombrich’s The sense of Order, there has not yet been an “Ornamental Turn”.
How can we provide meaning to these motifs that have been mistakenly considered “emp-
ty”? What role does the parergon play in artistic interpretation today. From the perspec-
tive of art historiography, Spyros Papapetros performs inspiring work on Gottfried Sem-
per to this end.
Developments in Digital Humanities. The possibilities of deep learning, computa-
tional art history in which form groups, iconographic families (genealogies of images) can
be articulated.
See my answers in §5.
“How to summarise Barbara Baert’s reconfiguration of iconology? As a resistance to the reduc-
tion of iconology to hermeneutics, i.e. to the interaction with images as flat entities to be read, as
visual representations that can be coded and decoded, understood as “illustrations” of texts. Bar-
bara Baert proves that images confront the viewer more like a sensing organism than as text. While
a text depends on a code, the contact between organisms is never perfectly coded. It presupposes
continuities and transitions, movements and tensions. The image is not just a visual text but an or-
ganism that appeals to the broader aesthetic and intellectual disposition of the viewer. An image
that evokes odours and touch, movement and breath demands infinite attention as it claims to in-
clude more than a readable message. It cannot just be seen, archived, explained and left behind be-
cause it solicits the experience of time as duration. Subsequently, the experience of time as dura-
tion is a sign of life and it is in this sense that we may speak of a “life” of images (Vlad Ionescu, in
Predella, 39, 2016).”
– Mise-en scene. With our project team Ornasaca and its casus of the liturgical space
of the Cathedral of Antwerp during the 16th century, we developed the idea of the litur-
gical space and its objects (retabula, altar bells, etc) as a choreography of moveable pat-
terns, dependent of the momentaneous liturgical and devotional needs.
– Conditions of visibility. For my dissertation in the nineties on The Legend of the True
Cross, I traveled the world hoping that churches would be opened as to set my eyes on
fresco cycles, liturgical objects, etc. Deep Pixel Viewing as for example is shared with the
public after the famous Van Eyck conservation project lead to important new icono-
graphical interpretations, as for example deep details of the pupil of the new discovered
authentic lamb’s face (published in Iconographica). Of course, the emotional impact to see
the images “in vivo” remains incomparable.
– Experiental viewer. The sensory and emotional experience of the viewer has long re-
mained taboo as a methodological starting point. In the training, an objective gaze is
claimed from the students. That gaze should then lead to a language purged of emotion.
That is a fiction. Where the viewer’s gaze attaches itself to the image, a dynamic of mean-
ing-giving arises. One cannot escape the projection of the subject and the self. This posi-
tion is taken most radically by Mieke Bal (after Roland Barthes): the image needs the gaze,
it comes to life in the meaning that the viewer himself administers. The viewer fertilizes
the image.
This position has also influenced my academic language. I have evolved into an écrit-
ure that allows for scenography, drama, and prose, thus integrating relevant passages from
(functional) literature. My academic position is evolving toward “authorship”.
As a writer and an essayist Siri Hustvedt (A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Wom-
en: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind).
“One can argue that there is a synesthetic quality to all art experiences, that art revives a mul-
timodal-sensory self. While looking at a painting, for example, don’t we feel the brush? Studies
have shown that mirror systems are active when people look at visual art and are also activated by
written accounts of actions or emotional situations. If we do not feel our way into works of art, we
will not understand them. I do not sense the touch of persons depicted in paintings, but I do have
strong felt responses to the marks left by the painter’s brush, but then arguably this is a common
experience, one hardly limited to people with mirror touch.”
its viewers?
The “now” might be:
– The ability to relate the classic iconological approach to a phenomenology of the im-
age. Reading images – that is to say, explaining them in terms of visual symptoms that are
detectable in texts – appears as a first step, an introductory episode meant to account for
other sensorial dimensions of the image. (After Vlad Ionescu about Pneuma, in Predella,
39, 2016).
– Or say that the end precedes the beginning,/ And the end and the beginning were
always there/ Before the beginning and after the end. /And all is always now (T.S. Eliot
[1888-1965], Four Quartets)
A valuable classical-Panofskian viewpoint is that the image is embedded in its cultural
environment. That environment can be micro (e.g., a snapshot) or macro (the oft-dis-
cussed concept of Weltbild). The image can be loosely or very tightly sewn into a tempo-
ral and spatial joint. Occasionally the image even escapes that wiring. The image floats or
is “suddenly” there. Be that as it may, I agree that one image evokes another, and a dia-
logue with the broader cultural context ensues. Here I hold to a strong iconological re-
flex. The relevance of this reflex lies in the resilience of the Art Sciences to unfold itself
and allow access to the erudite.
BARBARA BAERT 77
“Yet, the potential of the discipline to spread out and the freedom to keep the subject matter
close some of the time and to expand it over its complete breadth on other occasions is one of the
most delightful choreographies that the Human and Art Sciences can create. The dynamics of open
and closed, of landscape and focus, of archetype and details – and everything in between: the
thinking, seeking, trying, hesitating, failing, the creative solutions, and so forth – are more than
just a spontaneous reflex: they form the ampleur of an actual describable hermeneutics in the Zwis-
chenraum or ‘the third area’ (from: Baert, Interruptions & Transitions).”

Here I am very much inspired by Tim Ingold. Throughout his work, Ingold has
fought against dualisms in the human sciences, such as the dichotomy between object
and subject, between form and content. Instead, he sees objects as living beings and
artists as makers from whose hands objects flow. Ingold therefore rejects Aristotle’s ex-
hausted Western hylemorphic model, whereby art is just a passive meeting of form and
matter. Ingold replaces this template with an ontology that prioritises the actual forma-
tive processes and transformations of materials over, respectively, the finished product
and a static definition of form. Form came to be seen as imposed, by an agent with a par-
ticular end or goal in mind, while matter – thus rendered passive and inert – was that
which was imposed upon. To the transformations and blends of materials rather than to
the different stages of matter.
“My ultimate aim is to overthrow the model itself, and to replace it with an ontology that as-
signs primacy to processes of formation as against their final products, and to flows and transfor-
mations of materials as against states of matter [...]. My aim is to restore things to life and, in so
doing, to celebrate the creativity of what Klee (1973, p. 269) called ‘form-giving’. This means
putting the hylomorphic model into reverse. More specifically, it means reversing a tendency, ev-
ident in much of the literature on art and material culture, to read creativity ‘backwards’ (Ingold,
The Textility of Making).”
Cfr. reflections in §7 & §9.
Again, I will let Siri Hustvedt speak her mind about these interrelations. “I believe art
is born in the world of the Between, that is bound up with the rhythms and music of ear-
ly life, as well as in a form of transference that moves from inner life out onto the page,
from me to an imaginary other. My story tells emotional, not literal, truths.”
See also §8.
This question was exactly the purpose of the book Pneuma (2016), and Interruptions
& Transitions (Brill, 2017) where I launched the concept of thresholds. Being a core-sub-
ject in my work it was already touched upon above.
I will give one passus from the book:

“In her book Die Schwelle im Mittelalter: Bildmotiv und Bildort, Tina Bawden assigns five co-
ordinates to this intertwined energy of stillness and movement, of past and future, of the in-be-
tween: ambivalence, concealment, invitation, transformation, and mediation, to which I would
like to add a sixth parameter – synesthesia. (…) “Research into the impact and meaning of odour
as part of a model of knowledge has long been underestimated. In ancient, oral cultures – as well
as in late antique and medieval epistemology – rites and models were developed in which scent (in-
cense, oils, flowers) occupied a prominent place. Odour is an ephemeral element that reaches us
through the air. Winds carry odours with them. An odour is phantasmic. In the sacral context,
odour plays a crucial role as an evocation of, and a way of recognizing, the divine. The unseen God
manifests himself through his voice and through scent, and is worshipped with the scents of sacri-
fice, incense, herbs, perfumed oils. Perfume is a medium that allows people to move between the
now and the transcendent. Odour may be only the fifth sense in the Platonic model, it is never-
theless an exceptional sense of knowledge. Odour evokes insights in a flash: as an anamnesis, as an
intuition. Odour is also the pre-eminent binding agent of synesthetic apprehension.”
I think this approach is also the opening to what we did not touch yet so far: the trans-
global, transcultural view on visual culture. What bounds us is wind, smell, nature. What
brings us in intercultural dialogue is indeed the fundamental bias of the body in the sen-
sory world of the planet.
“We should not be guided merely by the sense of sight in meandering through the labyrinth of
Fragments, and also, and perhaps more importantly, in pursuing our own research interests: if we
follow the thread that Barbara Baert has lent us with her generous example, then we may find our
way out of any labyrinth and be less afraid to pursue scents wherever they may lead us” (Davide
Stimilli on Fragments: a celebration book with 110 lemmata from Barbara Baert’s oeuvre since the
year 2000 (2018).
– The non-figurative. In the most recent analyses by visual anthropologists, the con-
spicuous presence of rock and flamed marble in iconographic traditions thematising the
pneumatic emergence of images is interpreted as a visual undertaking whereby the hidden
and mysterious “breath” is evoked pictorially. Independently from each other, Georges
Didi-Huberman, Paul Vandenbroeck, and Victor Stoichita suggest that the faux marbre
in representations of the Annunciation is an expression of a phase in the visualisation pro-
cess that precedes the stage of figuration. In other words, artists insert representations of
marble and mineral-amorphous drawings in iconographies that benefit from the symbol-
ism of “what precedes” and the “taking root in the matter in order to take shape”, as the
Annunciation. Paul Vandenbroeck goes one step further. He writes: “In addition to the
phallic sphere, we must introduce non-phallic symbolic domains. Such a domain can be
called the matrix. The matrix conceptualises non-oneness, the prenatal experiences of the
BARBARA BAERT 79
I and the non-I, which exist together without absorbing or repelling each other. [...] The
basis of meaning lies in the ‘transcendence’ of bodies. As yet non-symbolic processes of
interconnectedness are charged with meaning: not by a ‘higher’ (symbolic) intervention,
but from the base, from within (Matrix Marmorea).”
– Landscape. My first experiment with this approach was the book on wind: Pneuma
and the Visual Arts in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity. At this very moment is “im-
primatur”: Looking into the Rain. Magic, Moisture, Medium (De Gruyter). Back cover text:
“The sensory experience of water falling from the heavens evokes feelings ranging from fear to
gratitude and has inspired many works of art. Using unique and expertly developed art-historical
case studies – from prehistoric cave paintings up to photography and cinema – this book casts new
light on a theme that is both ecological and iconological, both natural and cultural-historical. The
follow-up of Pneuma and Rain, will be Morass. Mystery, Matrix, Medium (inspired by the work of
Rod Giblett)”.
14. Many studies have focussed on the dynamics by which images, originally meant for a
specific viewing context, came to be transferred, appropriated, transformed, and reshaped in
another. Which hermeneutic tools can be useful in our analysis of such phenomena?
I think of two points of interest here.
Moshe Barasch describes the creation of Noli me tangere as a particular example of en-
ergetic inversion. Energetic inversion is the power of a gesture to become a formal-artistic
recipient for various emotions and their shifting interpretations across the history of art.
In the history of gesture, the Noli me tangere constitutes such a powerful force field.
I still consider what Aby Warburg developed in his oeuvre, and realized together with
Gertrud Bing in his Bilderatlas, to be the fundamental hermeneutic for image transfer. It
is a tool that is both infinite in its ambitions, and the only access to understanding mi-
grations, genealogies and time travel of image cores. No other explorer has tried with such
passion, delicacy and stubbornness to fathom what still continuously washes up on the
shores of the Middle Sea from the Far East: from Mithras to Cherub, from astrology to
mathematics. Panel A says all about the methodological basis for understanding the hu-
man will to expression: 1) Orientierung; 2) Austausch; 3) Soziale Einordnung. This is why
the publication project of Horst Bredekamp et al. is so important.
We will not be able to reverse this process. I myself am in favor of the use of loanwords.
Some terms are hermeneutically intertwined with the author’s native language and can-
not be translated without losing the psyché of the word.... For example: Scheine (Hegel),
Kunstwollen (Riegl), Pathosformel (Warburg), Aura (Benjamin), Punctum (Barthes), etc.
Belgium’s position in this regard is interesting. As a trilingual country, Belgium re-
mains art historically connected to the French tradition (anthropologie visuelle), to the En-
glish-speaking tradition (Pictorial Turn, Visual Studies) and to its German-speaking
neighbors (Bildwissenschaften). With this in mind, we have recently set up a network –

réseaux iconologies – which will further explore and disseminate this added value with
methodological workshops.
There is nothing “lacking” and there is no “should” because there will always be Kunst-
wollen. Today and in the near future, we will embrace the various efforts that have already
been initiated regarding the decolonization of our heritage, museums and the language
surrounding them, and the further opening up of the planetary borders for a transglobal
historiography of art. Unmasking gender-unfriendly reflections also remains an important
responsibility. Finally, the art historian, in his capacity to unite images and narratives, can
also play a social, ecological, and climatic role.
“Yes, everything becomes attenuated, but it’s also true to say that nothing entirely disappears,
there remain faint echoes and elusive memories that can surface at any moment like the fragments
of gravestones in the room in a museum that no one visits (...). We never eliminate all vestiges,
though, we never manage, truly, once and for all, to silence that past matter, and sometimes we
hear an almost imperceptible breathing” (Javier Marías, The Infatuation).
Barbara Baert
KU Leuven
[email protected]
CHARLES BARBER
the course of time?
My initial work was focused upon the liturgical framing of the reception of the im-
age. This led to a greater interest in the words used to articulate works of art in both the
past and the present (the work of art, rather than image, remains my preferred term). My
attention to words continues as I engage with the varied ways in which works disclose
themselves.
Martin Heidegger, On the Origin of the Work of Art; Jacques Derrida, The Truth in
Painting; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things.
I am not so sure that a “traditional” art history is so readily definable; what we see to-
day is a continuation of a long history of methodological fluidity that defines our ill-dis-
ciplined “discipline”.
These changing foci have certainly helped me to shape fresh questions, whether
through adopting/adapting the point of view being explored (materiality, for example) or
by reacting against the terms proposed (object agency, for example).
I can only suggest notions that have currency in my own work (framing, dislocation,
fracture, resistance), I am reluctant to propose a definition of “our present-day under-
standing of images”.
I think that “meaning” resides in our persuasive appropriations of what images propose.
When is meaning determined?
its viewers?
Better equipped than whom? I have my doubts that we (or those that came before us
or those that will follow us) can claim a superior point of view.
This would depend upon the work to which the viewer chooses to put any given image.

It is both fundamental and but one aspect of the work of art.
This would depend upon the work to which the viewer chooses to put any given image.
Icons could be seen, eaten, smelt, touched, and heard. Whether our process as art his-
torians is bound to one of these senses or can embrace some or all of them is a situation-
al choice we can make as practitioners within the field.
CHARLES BARBER 83
This may depend upon whether we understand iconicity to be a manifestation of pro-
ductive knowledge or a mode of framing things in the world.
Genealogy, per M. Foucault.
By listening.
That is for each of us to decide.
Charles Barber
Princeton University
[email protected]
CLAIRE BOSC-TIESSÉ
the course of time?
From an initial education in Western history and African art history, I have developed
a history of images (always considered as objects) in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia,
with a special focus particularly on the different aspects of their making, their status, and
their use. The analysis of the ruling systems and artistic productions over a long period,
from the 13th to the 19th century, enabled a deeper understanding of the different tem-
poralities of the objects, by encompassing them in the visual and material cultures from
which they originated and through which they passed, in order to draw up a history of the
statuses accorded to them. Combining different approaches, I have jointly directed sever-
al projects on Christian rock art, in particular on the UNESCO World Heritage site of
Lalibela, and on the constitutive materials of paintings, technological and artistic process-
es based on ensembles of wall paintings and a corpus of icons from the museum of the In-
stitute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, at the crossroads of history, archaeology and
material sciences. On a broader level, my work is reconsidering the conditions and modal-
ities of writing a history of African objects before the 20th century and the issues at stake.
While preparing my doctoral thesis, some authors accompanied the questions I was
asking myself. Ahead, they had proposed some approaches that allowed me to build my
own, adapted to my topics of study. I began my thesis in 1995 and that of Jérôme
Baschet, then recently published (Lieu sacré, lieu d’images, les fresques de Bominaco
(Abruzzes, 1263). Thèmes, parcours, fonctions, Paris-Rome, La Découverte - Ecole française
de Rome, 1991) confirmed my conviction to look at the sets of images, murals, and illu-
minations I was studying at the time as total objects interacting with places, including
wall paintings in monuments and illumination in books. It is not this particular book that
I would include in my top three readings today, but it was a starting point (I now advise
my students to read L’iconographie médiévale, Paris, 2008). Moreover, in a history of
CLAIRE BOSC-TIESSÉ 85
Ethiopian art that was still very much marked by the notion of influence when it came to
identifying the engravings that had served as models, Serge Gruzinski, and especially La
pensée métisse (Paris, Fayard, 1999), provided me with clues for thinking about the choice
made by Ethiopian kings, clerics, and painters to sometimes make use of foreign images
and transform them into new forms. This prompted me to always look for what was the
third term of the encounter, what he called the “attractor”, the way in which artistic ex-
change and transformations could take place within and beyond a connected history. Lat-
er, and in relation to other concerns, it was Eric Michaud’s book (Histoire de l’art. Une
discipline à ses frontières, Paris, Hazan, 2005) that helped me to formulate my research on
the intellectual ruts we inherited, and on nationalist and ethnicist approaches to art.
Without limiting art history to that, dating and attributing – its first operations when
it was constituted as an academic discipline – are still fundamental operations in order to
avoid anachronistic, even atemporal iconological interpretations. This does not prevent us
from reexamining the ways in which we proceed, from reformulating them if necessary,
and from reconsidering their meaning. Thus, questions of dating also lead us to reconsider
the different ways in which objects relate to time. Furthermore, although attributing is
not an objective of my practice, I do address the question of the modalities of creative ges-
tures, of the types of authorship, of how the “author” is designated, whether the latter is
perceived as individual or collective, and of the socio-political stakes of these attributions
and determinations. In a context of documentary paucity, the notion of style is still need-
ed as a method of inquiry but also as a gateway to explore creative processes. Differenti-
ating styles is not an end but a first operation of sorting things out in the aim to go fur-
ther. In both cases, there are questions that remain unanswered as to motivations or for-
mal choices, but this provides a basis for examining the modalities and meaning of a fig-
ural thinking at work.
What we call “turns” is often specific to a field of social sciences, or to a community
of researchers, which emphasizes or returns to the practices, objectives and subjects of an-
other field. Each of these turns is therefore specific to a particular group, to which one as-
pires to belong. If we are sometimes called upon to take position in relation to these
“turns”, which we do not always feel concerned with, it is – beyond that – very impor-
tant to always think of our objects as global and to clearly set out our choices of approach
and their limits. Furthermore, we need develop a reflexive way of thinking that situates –
as much as possible – what we have done and what we are doing in the historiographical
debate but also in a broader way, in relation to systems of thought, moments in history,
and places on the globe where we are active and where we are speaking from.
My ongoing investigations are driven by Walter Benjamin’s notion of aura, at least as
developed by George Didi-Huberman at the end of Devant le temps. Histoire de l’art et
anachronisme des images (2000), and more generally by the questions raised by temporal,
geographical and cultural closeness and distance, which imply considering the different
regimes of historicity experienced by and through objects, as well as reflecting on how on
the art historian situates himself in a given place and time in relation to material works.
Moreover, working in Ethiopia and in Africa more generally, it would be interesting
to revisit the notion of “thing”, already considered by Otto Pächt on the one hand and
Jean Bazin on the other, in the aim to investigate the ways in which the so-called sacred
thing-object, as it is defined or perceived, is construed in African contexts and then to
come back to European ones.
How images would convey messages and who would understand them is always a
question that implies a reflection on the different operating modes of various kinds of im-
ages. This includes an acknowledgment of the creators’ intentions (and the tensions that
may arise among the different persons taking part in it) and the people works are made
for in both the moment of their making and, possibly, in future times. Some images may
have been designed and produced as highly elaborate ideological discourses, others as pri-
marily evoking a being or presence, or an effect. Moreover, images can carry different
meanings than the religious or political texts from the same period, to which they may re-
fer. How these messages are conveyed remains to be examined in each case. The same sub-
ject in the same style, or even the same image, can also have different meanings or effects
depending on the context. The pomp and circumstance surrounding the display of images
can change the message it conveys to viewers about what it “represents”, i.e., the ways in
which the displayed image is made present and is invested with a special status.
Above all, these issues must be addressed systematically. What consideration is given
to these elements, as well as to the reception of images, by those who create, commission
and display images? Whatever the answer, even if it is completely negative, this can shed
light on their makers’ expectations and therefore the status, function, or power (for in-
significant that it may be) images are invested with.
its viewers?
Thanks to work such as that of Michael Baxandall, we are in any case better equipped
to ask ourselves this question systematically, but we must accommodate our method of
inquiry depending on the objects and the available documentation. We can also wonder
how the expectations of the viewers at different times contributed or not to the preserva-
tion of certain objects, or some specific features of an object. We should take into account
the extent to which perception is conditioned by a number of “filters”, such as, most no-
tably, the modification or disappearance of colours.
An image reflects a history into which it is embedded. Like art historians, people who
look at images are led – at least mentally – to compare the images and their conditions of
display, and this comparison is revealing, although it is rarely expressed in words. The ways
in which such feelings were apprehended in the past are difficult to reconstruct in our times.

That the materiality of the works is on everyone’s lips is no doubt indicative of how
much it had been forgotten, at least by a large number of art historians who, unlike ar-
chaeologists or museum curators, for example, have a less direct relationship with works,
which they mostly know through photographic reproductions. This is even more evident
in the case of images, since the iconic turn, which has affected historical disciplines in par-
ticular, has focused on the iconology of images without really considering them as three-
dimensional objects. But this also leads to the question of the difficulty of accessing the
objects directly. All these elements have led to forget for a while that images have a for-
mat, a weight, a position in or on an object, etc. Systematized global and material ap-
proaches associated with other kinds of analyses are still rare. Nor is it a question of sim-
ply identifying the materials, but of understanding their implementation, their arrange-
ments and, beyond that, the processes, technological know-how, and gestures that enable
their making. In this way, taking into account the materiality of the images sets the
grounds for an art history that participates in the social sciences. This requires a real in-
terdisciplinarity that understands the background, methods, terminology, and objectives
of each field, which is not yet fully implemented and therefore does not yet fully bear fruit
in terms of developing new paradigms.
If we understand the social life of images here as what makes them become exchange-
able goods at one time or another, this raises the question of the various kinds of value
they may have in different situations. The issue is particularly relevant for images that
were disseminated far from the geographic and cultural context in and for which they
were created in either their original form or as replicas or reproductions. The study of the
categories of value attributed to images by viewers or users is very helpful as it can bring
to the fore all the associations images may happen to carry beyond those for whom and
for what they were initially intended and explain on which grounds they may be attrac-
tive to beholders who do not understand them or ignore their original iconological pro-
ject. Furthermore, it questions how an image works and how we look at images beyond
their social life.
The experience of images relies above all on the sense of sight, but at the same time it
involves more generally the body notably in a kinaesthetic way: beholders interacting with
both static and moving objects through their physical movements. This is the case with
religious objects carried in rituals, used as focuses for kinetic devotions, and meant for ei-
ther an uninterrupted or a fleeting display. In any case, this kinaesthetic relationship to
the object also involves other senses, such as hearing and olfaction, that may be aroused
by the association of images with musical performances, words of all kinds (proclaimed,
whispered, official or not), and ceremonial scents, as well as the smell of incense, body
odours, etc. All these aspects are part of experience and must be included in the analysis:
questions should be asked as to the extent to which such a multi-sensorial dimension of
images was acknowledged by their makers and their audiences. Furthermore, touching a
work is often problematic but it would be interesting to perceive a work, and even an im-
age, through this medium and see what this adds to our understanding.
Including non-artistic elements having an iconic dimension into the art historical nar-
rative seems necessary in the aim to work out larger social, political, and religious frame-
works to our understanding of specific situations or phenomena in their multiple aspects.
It also raises interesting questions and encourages scholars to reassess the definition of vi-
suality in broader terms.
The first “tool” is to carry out an in-depth study of the context in which these appro-
priations and transformations take place, the conditions, motives, effects, and the histor-
ical phenomena in which they are embedded. In this respect, it is a hermeneutic and not
a ready-made method to apply. This may seem obvious, but it is rarely carried through to
the end. I was confronted with this problem when studying the use of the Evangelicae His-
toriae Imagines engravings realized in the 16th century for over four decades: conceived by
the Mallorquin Jesuit Nadal and drawn by Italian Jesuits, they were finally engraved and
published in Antwerpen, then copied and adapted in other books in the 17th and 18th
centuries, and widely used in Ethiopia in the eighteenth century in a context of violent
opposition to Catholic aims, where a taste for images disconnected from their provenance
prevails. But one could go much further.
We are facing an imperative of communicability of notions, and we must therefore be
able to recognize the structures at work and translate them when dealing with similar phe-
nomena. But to do this, we also need to broaden our knowledge as well as our terminol-
ogy and lexical practices. It is necessary to carry out, and be able to publish, research on
the lexical and semantic history of notions relating to creation, art, divinity, representa-
tion, etc. Such studies require time, and will not necessarily offer systematic answers on
lexical equivalences in different languages. It is important to remember that these are re-
search topics in themselves.
The needs are not necessarily the same in the different fields of inquiry. For the arts of
Africa, we still need to go into much greater depth on how to make history even if this
will vary according to the periods and areas concerned. In the same way, we need to re-
examine the relationship between collection, corpus and heritage and the ways in which
we rely on objects to recognize when there is history to write. Recent research in the hu-
manities has fully recognized intangible heritage, but we still do not know exactly how to
take them into account in an art historical narrative. More generally, the methods of a real
history of forms, embodied in a social history, are still poor. We should also take more
specifically into account the conditions and situations (place and time) in which our anal-
yses take place.
Claire Bosc-Tiessé
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, France
[email protected]
MANUEL ANTONIO CASTIÑEIRAS GONZÁLEZ
the course of time?
A small group of scholars was trained at the University of Santiago de Compostela
(Spain) by professor Serafín Moralejo (1946-2011). He pioneered in our country the in-
troduction of the Panofskyan iconographic and iconological method in the study of me-
dieval images, and he took up Gombrich’s criticism of that method in claiming the pri-
macy of genres, the theory of decorum and the terminological fallacy. It was a formative
experience. My first approach to medieval art occurred within that context and, more
generally, within the study of the Western tradition. I was interested in the connection
between art and pilgrimage, the migration of images, and the survival of Antiquity in the
Middle Ages. My PhD on Spanish medieval calendars (1993, edited as a book in 1996:
El calendario medieval hispano: textos e imágenes), as well as the handbook Introducción al
método iconográfico (Barcelona 1998), that developed from the classes I was holding at
the time, were both indebted to that approach. Before long, my further steps as a young
scholar were affected by several stays in Italy. In Pisa, Salvatore Settis enlarged my vision
on the survival and reception of Antiquity and on Aby Warburg’s legacy. The reading of
his three volumes on Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana (Torino 1984-1986) was an
epiphanic experience which has long conditioned my approach to this fascinating topic
as my recent publications on the image of Hercules (2017) or the reliquary-altar of St
Saturninus at the abbey of St-Hilaire d’Aude (2020) show.1 In Rome, I worked with
Chiara Frugoni (1940-2022), who pushed me to become a medievalist concerned with
the relationship between text and image and the role of patronage in the “production”
of iconographic programmes.
At that time, I also began to explore other fields. Semiotics, literary theory, and re-
ception aesthetics expanded the toolkit at my disposal in the study of the meaning and
function of images. Umberto Eco’s semiotics, Julia Kristeva’s intertextuality, Mikhail
Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic capacity of a text and its re-accentuation over time,
Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics and fusion of horizons, were all instrumental in
my inquiry into the complexity of the iconic language in medieval art. As a result, I am
MANUEL ANTONIO CASTIÑEIRAS GONZÁLEZ 91
fascinated by issues concerning medieval images that go beyond the limited approach
of iconography/iconology and focus on the role of the beholder. For instance, in my
view, the paving mosaic of Otranto is a monumental equivalent of the literary exercise
of ekphrasis.2 Romanesque portals, to use another example, do not exactly correspond
to texts, but are more akin to a performative text, in the sense of Marco De Marinis’
Semiotics of Performance (Bloomington 1993).3 The issue of authorship, anonymity,
and “portrait” in relation to medieval artists is another case in point, as I try to show
in my work on Romanesque panel painting and illumination.4 Finally, the intercultur-
al and transcultural aspects of the image of Saint George between the Eastern and
Western Mediterranean allowed me to explore the shifting meaning of this representa-
tion and its varied reception by different audiences.5 The open-minded spirit of the
journal Iconographica has been a point of reference for all of those concerned with see-
ing images from multiple, transdisciplinary, and transcultural perspectives – and I am
no exception.
Books are not the only publications to convey ideas in our field. In my experience, es-
says and articles play as crucial a role as books in increasing knowledge and widen our
epistemic horizons. For instance, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl’s seminal Classical
Mythology in Medieval Art (“Metropolitan Museum Studies”, 4, 2 (1933), pp. 228-280),
Otto Karl Werckmeister’s Pain and Death in the Beatus of Saint-Sever (“Studi medievali”,
3rd series, XIV, 2 (1973), pp. 565-626) and Michael Camille’s Seeing and Reading: Some
Visual Implications for Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy (“Art History”, 8, 1 (1985), pp. 29-
49) spurred my interest in understanding the mechanisms of transmission, creativity, and
perception of medieval images in ways that art-history books have yet to do.
The most influential books in challenging my research on medieval images do not be-
long to art history, but to other fields, such as semiotics, anthropology, and literary the-
ory. Umberto Eco’s I limiti dell’interpretazione (Milano 1990) gave me the opportunity
to reflect on the continuous process of resignification and polysemy of images and texts
by distinguishing among the intentio auctoris, intentio operis, and intentio lectoris. Alfred
Gell’s Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford 2010) prompted me to use the
term “agency” instead of “patronage” and to apply the formula Recipient as Agent/Index
(material entities) and as Patient, whenever patrons regard themselves as authors of a
work of art. Finally, Stephen Jaeger’s The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ide-
als in Medieval Europe, 950-1200 (Philadelphia 1994) and Enchantment: On Charisma
and the Sublime in the Arts of the West (Philadelphia 2012) offered a better understand-
ing of some peculiar processes in the ontology of art and the production of images dur-
ing the Middle Ages. Jaeger’s publications, for example, can be used to explain on which
grounds abbots and bishops were presented as agents of the divine driving-force in texts
and works of art, and how the concepts of charisma and aura replaced the role of the
artist in the creation of medieval images, in both icons and reliquaries.
We are anxious about the future of our discipline and the renewal of medieval studies.
First, we feel the need to test the boundaries of the established narratives of art history in
the modern-nation states. Second, most scholars are keen to participate in the emerging
field of the Global Middle Ages. Third, I am convinced that works of art should be stud-
ied as examples of specific cultural and artistic encounters. The distinction between “style”
and “iconography” is an old-fashioned one – the signifier is always a bearer of meaning,
no matter what. Thus, in my course on Romanesque Art, I focus an entire class on look-
ing at the celebrated portal of Saint-Foy at Conques from a semiotic point of view, along
the lines of the seminal contributions by Meyer Schapiro (Words, Script, and Pictures:
Semiotics of Visual Language, New York 1996) and Jean-Claude Bonne (L’art roman de
face et de profile. Le tympan de Conques, Paris 1985). Frontal, profile, symmetry, asymme-
try, beauty and ugliness, scale, order, and chaos are intrinsic to the meaning of an image.
Conques offers a beautiful example to explore those semantic possibilities. Furthermore,
the tendency of iconography/iconology to look at medieval images as a reflection of a
written text, or of a collection of written texts, should be replaced by an understanding of
works of art as performative texts in themselves, in which the onlooker is included in it.
Post-structuralism has highlighted how figurative and non-figurative elements (orna-
tus) are equally seminal in the hermeneutics of art. They cannot be separated from other
aspects such as relative position, distribution, and relation to space. This is what Jérôme
Baschet, Jean-Claude Bonne and Pierre-Olivier Dittmar call “iconographie totale.” The
visual arts are seen as part of a complex set of relations between ritual and hierarchy.
Sometimes this kind of approach forces art into a structure or logic system that is alien to
any specific cultural and historical context and ignores the limitations of the makers’ skills
and the will of patrons. I am convinced that works of art are evidence (or indices) of a
specific culture. In order to place them into their context and reconstruct contemporary
perceptions and audiences, we need to consider several issues including some theoretical
ones. Hence, the importance of exploring coeval written sources in any attempt to devel-
op a discourse on medieval art and of considering the different agents involved in the
making of a work of art.
Many things have changed in our field in the last decades. The blurring of frontiers in
Europe and the growing interest in cross-cultural issues pushed the study of images in dif-
ferent directions. Compelling studies have explored artistic interactions in the Mediter-
ranean and the various processes of hybridization, appropriation, and cultural exchange
that characterized them. Scholars are testing the boundaries of established art-historical
narratives. We are indebted to Hans Belting’s Bild und Kult: eine Geschichte des Bildes vor
dem Zeitalter der Kunst (München 1990) and his approach to the cult and reception of
Byzantine images in Western Europe. As a topic, it dominated our understanding of the
status of medieval images in the last decades and it opened new ways of thinking about
the scholarly debate. The collection of essays edited by Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf
on The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation (Bologna 1998), Michele Bacci’s The
Many Faces of Christ (2014), Beate Fricke’s Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Con-
ques and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art (2015), the rich scholarship
on Crusader art, are all examples of this renewed interest in the status of representation,
the cultic value of images and the complex reasons for the circulation of icons and of
repertoires of images between the Eastern and the Western Mediterranean.
In this regard, I have focused my attention on the reception of Byzantine and Cru-
sader images in the art of the Iberian Peninsula, especially in Catalonia, and the expan-
sion of the Crown of Aragon into the Mediterranean. This pushed me to shift the core
of my research from Romanesque art to Crusader, Byzantine, and Gothic art with a fo-
cus on artistic exchange, cross-cultural studies and the making of new identities. My
views on Magister Alexander and Cypriot art,6 the Sigena chapterhouse and the legacy of
the Psalter of Melisende,7 Catalan rule in Greece and its echo in the metropole or home-
land (the main territories of the Crown of Aragon),8 the controversial question of the
artistic milieu of the creation of the Kahn Madonna and its possible arrival in Calahorra
(Spain) as a religious/diplomatic gift,9 the fighting over the image of saint George from
East to West and into the Atlantic kingdoms are all topics that I believe can contribute
to this new trend that looks at Mediterranean studies as a global phenomenon. Along
these lines, I edited together with my colleagues of the Sapienza University of Rome a
special issue of Arte Medievale (2020), on Incontri mediterranei. Arte e artisti tra Bisanzio
e l’Occidente dopo la Quarta Crociata (1204-1430), and, with the Portuguese scholar,
Carla Varela Ferndandes, the collective book Images and Liturgy in the Middle Ages. Cre-
ation, Circulation and Function of Images between West and East in the Middle Ages (5th-
15th centuries) (2021). My forthcoming book, Latin Perceptions of the Byzantine East: Art
and Identities in Flux during the Catalan Expansion across the Late Medieval Mediterranean
is focused on similar themes.
Rethinking the issue of representation in art has benefited the three main fields of my
research. For some time now, I have looked at the meaning and perception of images in
the context of pilgrimage and Romanesque art in terms of textuality, intertextuality, and
patronage. Little by little, I have realized the importance of including the beholder as well
as his experience of the surrounding space. An understanding of the phenomenology of
embodiment and Edmund Husserl’s kinaesthetic consciousness in the experience of art
changed my insight on the function of images in the Cathedral of Santiago de Com-
postela. The setting of a cultic statue of Saint James on the main altar in 1211, as a dou-
ble of the central high relief of the apostle-patron on the Western portal (1168-1188),
transformed the direction of the pilgrim’s itinerary into the building and his perception
of narrative and iconic images.10 Similar cases have been explored by Giovanni Freni
(2011) for the Duomo of Fidenza and by Christopher Lakey (New Haven 2018) in his
book on the Romanesque portals in Modena and Ferrara.11 A growing interest in litur-
gical performances, the performative aspect of medieval images, and the five-senses ap-
proach pushed me to go beyond the restricted limits of iconography. My studies on the
representation of the Sibyl since the 11th century are a pertinent case.12 Finally, the
emerging field of Mediterranean studies as a privileged space to look at images from a
cross-cultural perspective gave me the opportunity to shift my research to new problems
and geographies. Thus, as I mentioned before, I have been working in the last decade on
travelling objects and shifting identities in the context of the expansion of the Crown of
Aragon to the East.
I consider the visual object as a performative text, not only because of its capacity to
evoke other texts and images but also because of what it means by itself. It is true that a
visual object is a sign, whose signifier – shape, form, dimension, colour – can stress and
adjust the signified. As a result, the “meaning” is based on the peculiar relationship be-
tween signifier and signified and it can change over time and in different contexts. A vi-
sual object can also be categorized as an iconic, indexical, and symbolic sign – these cat-
egories are not mutually exclusive, so that any depiction may combine any of them. Thus,
the complex iconographic programmes of the portal of Santa Maria de Ripoll and the
Creation Tapestry in the Cathedral of Girona can be seen as text by themselves, with an
incredible capacity for quoting other texts and images, such as the Ripoll Bible or an as-
tronomical treatise.13 At the same time, however, the iconic value of most of the narra-
tives of those artworks become both index and symbol.
I consider myself an art historian and the aim of my research is to understand how
works of art matter in the expression and transmission of ideas, beliefs, devotions, and
conflicts in the Middle Ages. Hence, my emphasis on highlighting that in every process
of production of a work of art there are three main agents involved: the artist (or mak-
er), the recipient (or patron), and the audience. The relationship among them and their
role can be interchangeable, as Alfred Gell pointed out, and they all condition the mean-
ing of the work of art. This leads us to question the idea of authorship, which in the Mid-
dle Ages is often related to the recipient, who can be God or the commissioner. Then, as
far as the role played by the artist in the process of meaning is concerned, we must dis-
tinguish between auctor materialis and auctor intellectualis as Lucia Battagia Ricci has
done in her study on the Buffalmacco’s paintings in the Camposanto at Pisa.14 Ulti-
mately, the meaning of a work of art is the result of a long process in which material and
intellectual aspects are thoroughly mixed. However, the result is not univocal an in every
case we must address intentio auctoris, intentio operis and intentio lectoris.
The shaping of “meaning” is the result of many factors and, in some cases, makers and
commissioners are not in full control of the process. We have overcome the belief that
the significance of an image is based on visual appearance, iconographical identification,
or a patron’s requests only. The significance of a topic, image, or work of art can change
depending on their location and media. For instance, it is not the same to be within a re-
ligious or a secular building, at the main altar or on a portal. Likewise, images change au-
dience and significance from being on an illuminated page, on a painted panel or on a
fresco. The growing interest in issues related to lighting, visibility and mise-en-scène has
fostered studies on materiality, 3-D virtual reconstruction and aesthetic perception. They
are all helpful tools in re-enacting the onlooker experience and in offering a better un-
derstanding of the original setting and intention. My own participation in the 3-D vir-
tual reconstruction of the main altar of the Cathedral of Santiago during the period of
Diego Gelmírez (1100-1140) made me realize that the shrine was literally enclosed by a
railing which emphasized the perception of this place as a sancta sanctorum.15 Likewise,
during my study of the mural paintings in the chapterhouse at Sigena (1197-1208), the
original distribution of the benches for the nuns and the lighting through the windows
on the west wall helped me understand the direction of the narrative into the room and
the effects of light on its content and meaning. Finally, thanks to reconstruction draw-
ings of the original hanging system of the Kahn Madonna, I could distinguish between
the original Byzantine layout of the piece and the later addition of two wings for display
in a Latin context.
its viewers?
A medievalist should be trained in the study of the coeval texts concerning the theo-
logical, aesthetic, devotional, and sociological value of images. Ekphrases, travel ac-
counts, chronicles, visions, exegetical debates, collection of miracles, homilies, custom-
aries, rituals and even wills are usually good tools to reconstruct the horizon of expecta-
tions of the potential viewer of a work of art. Sometimes scholars forget the need to
plunge into written sources and explore the coeval vocabulary for the visual arts in order
to assess the appropriateness of their interpretation and test their own limits. The recon-
struction of the horizon of expectations of the original audience is a difficult but neces-
sary task. No less complicated is to build a hermeneutical bridge between present and
past. We should be aware that in the process we are projecting our own concerns. In this
regard, Alexander Nagel’s Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (London 2012) is a
provocative effort at finding analogies between our contemporary aesthetic experience
and medieval modes of perception.
This is the core of our mission as art historians who study images. In the past, this was
the aim of Panofsky’s iconology, but this logocentric approach has been contested and, in
many respects, overcome by semiotics and post-structuralism. Recent studies on the per-
ception and fruition of images try to avoid old-fashioned intellectual history by focusing
on gender, multiculturalism, body awareness and the five-sense theory. I am convinced
that images have the capacity to express fears, emotions, ideas and to take us back into the
past. Each category of image – narrative, iconic, devotional, portrait, marginal, etc. – be-
longs to a system of communication with a horizon of expectations. Fruition, therefore,
is not only aesthetical and can be translated in terms of religious debates, social concerns,
strategies of promotion, etc.

I worked in a museum – the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya – as curator for five
years (2005-2010). There, I developed a special sensibility for the materiality of images.
It is a complex field, which requires the combination of traditional art-historical ap-
proaches with lab-analyses and knowledge of technical literature. Research on pigments,
pictorial techniques and artistic materials can bring new insights into the meaning of an
image. The precious character of some pigments, such as lapis lazuli or orpiment, the
search for glittering effects and the use of some specific colours such as blue or red con-
vey meaning, as I show in the case of Catalan panel painting.16 Often materiality is con-
nected to exegetical debates or aesthetical questions. It might even entail a reflexion on
the ontology of a work of art, as Beate Fricke showed in the case of the reliquary statue of
Saint Foy at Conques.17
The social life of images in medieval culture is apparent. As Meyer Schapiro pointed
out, the emergence of extensive iconographic programmes on Romanesque portals consti-
tutes the “speaking face” of the Church and its will to communicate with an audience. The
aim of this medium – the Romanesque portal – is to provoke the curiosity of the viewer,
and often addresses its audience by way of inscriptions. These image-laden portals acted as
stage or backdrop to both liturgical and daily life. Likewise, devotional statues and most il-
luminated books can be seen as part of a ritual performance. We can obviously add other
examples of the social life of images in the Middle Ages both in private and public domain.
In the last decades, several scholars contributed to enlarge our perception of the expe-
rience of medieval images. Alexei Lidov’s hierotopy highlights how the creation of sacred
spaces involves not only images but also lighting, music and smell. The five-sense theory
provided us a helpful tool to include other senses in the perception of images, in which
touching and tasting were usually part of the religious experience of the sacred. Most of
these approaches are in debt to the principles of Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of Em-
bodiment and the concept of synaesthetic consciousness. In it, movement and contrast
with others are at the core of the individual’s search and perception of space. I found these
ideas helpful to understand the ways in which pilgrimage centers were transformed dur-
ing the 12th and 13th centuries. In the case of the Cathedral of Santiago, at the turn of the
13th century, Maestro Mateo set a new longitudinal axis (W-E) in the sacred topography
of the basilica thanks to the building of an impressive western porch – the Pórtico de la
Gloria – the setting of a monumental choir in the central aisle and the placing of a stat-
ue of Saint James on the main altar. It dramatically altered the previous transversal axis
(N-S) as well as the itinerary created by Diego Gelmírez around 1100. It also engaged pil-
grims in new kinetic devotional practices in front of the statue of the Apostle.
Iconicity is a phenomenon that involves many signifiers and artistic images are not
unique in their access to it. In his study on the “copies” of the Holy Sepuchre in western
Europe (1942), Richard Krautheimer made clear that there is an iconography of archi-
tecture. A stone, a mountain, a cave, a road, a rock or a river can also become an icon
within a specific culture or belief. These natural elements are relevant in any pilgrimage
culture, in which the sacredness of space is often based on some relevant elements of the
landscape. In the Byzantine and post-Byzantine world, the impressive landscape of
Mount Sinai became iconic. Its features appear not only in icons related to Mount Sinai
but also as a mirror image of Mount Tabor in the depiction of the Transfiguration. Some-
thing similar happens with the reception of the Holy Land in the West – the sacred to-
pography of the biblical stories is evoked through images, places, and natural landscapes.
The study of images should always entail the phenomenology of reception. I find es-
pecially suggestive Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic capacity of a text/image and
its continuous re-accentuation over time.18 I am also devoted to Umberto Eco’s distinc-
tion between intentio auctoris, intentio operis and intentio lectoris, and the unquestionable
character of the work of art as “opera aperta”. In the last few years, we are witnessing a re-
newed interest in this topic from the perspective of cross-cultural studies. Terms alien to
the traditional vocabulary of art history – such as appropriation, framing, intercultural,
transcultural, hybridization and introjection – have been progressively incorporated into
our field. Most of these terms stem from anthropology and psychoanalysis. They can help
in the study of the use of images in cross-cultural contexts. Currently, I am using these
concepts in my research on the image of Saint George in the Mediterranean and in some
case studies of the Catalan presence in late medieval Greece and Sinai, and its conse-
quences for the art of the metropole.
Art history has been transformed by a global perspective in the last few decades. The
terminology used in our field often shows its limitations in the understanding of images
from milieus that are multicultural or unrelated to the Western tradition. The application
of western European concepts to the study of other geographies and beliefs is unwarrant-
ed and research on the ontology of artistic creation in these cultures is needed. I believe
that anthropological studies and comparative art history can be helpful in this endeavour.
Global art history seems here to stay and to develop in the future. Our understanding
of artistic areas such as the medieval Mediterranean is transformed by this new perspec-
tive. The era of established narratives in art history, based on the geography of modern-
nation states, is obviously over. Comparative art history offers a new field of research and
new methodological tools for its development are in order. Help may come from other
fields – semiotics, anthropology, literary theory – as the study of images cannot be re-
stricted to art history. The training of future art historians will have to be open to input
from outside.
Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras González

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
[email protected]
1. M. Castiñeiras, Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides. A Geographical Myth in the Creation Tapestry,
in H. Bredekamp, S. Trinks (ed.), Transformatio et Continuatio – Formen von Wandel und Konstanz der An-
tike auf der Iberischen Halbinsel 500-1500 /Transformatio et Continuatio – Forms of Change and Constancy of
Antiquity in the Iberian Peninsula 500-1500, Berlin and New York 2017, pp. 113-136; M. Castiñeiras, In-
venting a New Antiquity: the Reliquary-altar Depicting the Martyrdom of Saint Saturninus at Saint-Hilaire
d’Aude, in J. McNeill - R. Plant (eds.), Romanesque Saints, Shrines and Pilgrimage, New York-London 2020,
pp. 187-201.
2. M. Castiñeiras, L’Alessandro anglonormanno e il mosaico di Otranto: una ekphrasis monumentale?,
«Troianalexandrina» 4 (2004), pp. 41-86.
3. M. Castiñeiras, The Romanesque Portal as Performance, «Journal of the British Archaeological Associa-
tion» 168 (2015), pp. 1-33; M. Castiñeiras, Au-delà de l’interprétation et de la surinterprétation de la sculpture
romane : réflexions sur la vie et la performance des images, «Annales d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie de l’U-
niversité Libre de Bruxelles» 40 (2018), pp. 37-68.
4. M. Castiñeiras, Artiste-clericus ou artiste-laïque? Apprentissage et curriculum vitae du peintre en Catalogne
et en Toscane, «Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa» 43 (2012), pp. 15-30; M. Castiñeiras, Autores homóni-
mos: el doble retrato de “Mateo” en el Pórtico de la Gloria, M. Castiñeiras (ed.), Entre la letra y el pincel: el artista
medieval. Leyenda, identidad y estatus, El Ejido (Al) 2017, pp. 27-52.
5. M. Castiñeiras, Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Saint George in the Eastern Mediterranean under the Lati-
nokratia (13th-14th c.) and his Mythification in the Crown of Aragon, «Arts/Open Access Journal» 9(3) 95,
2020 (Special Issue, Encounters in Medieval Wall Painting between the West and Byzantium: Appropriation, Ex-
change, and Mutual Perceptions: www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/9/3/95/pdf)
6. M. Castiñeiras, Oxford, Magdalen College, ms. Gr. 3: Artistic Practice, Byzantine Drawings and Mobili-
ty in Mediterranean Painting around 1200, «Arte medievale» serie 4, 5 (2015), pp. 87-100.
7. M. Castiñeiras, Like a Psalter for a Queen: Sancha, Melisende and the New Testament Cycle in the Chap-
ter-House at Sijena, «Journal of the British Archaeological Association» 174 (2021), pp. 1-42.
8. M. Castiñeiras, Paliachora (Egina), el Sinaí y Catalunya a finales del siglo XIV: hibridación artística,
política y peregrinación en el Mediterráneo Oriental, C. Varela Fernandes (ed.), Imagens e Liturgia na Idade Mé-
dia, 5, Secretariado Nacional dos Bens Culturais da Igreja 5, Lisboa 2016, pp. 9-56.
9. M. Castiñeiras, Un nuovo contesto per la Madonna Kahn? Michele VIII, l’unione delle Chiese e la scon-
certante connessione con Calahorra, «Arte Medievale» serie 4, 10 (2020), pp. 262-283.
10. M. Castiñeiras, Plonger le pèlerin dans une expérience sensorielle totale : mise en scène de l’arrivée dans la
cathédrale de Saint-Jacques au Moyen Âge, T. Le Deschault de Monredon (ed.), Le Pèlerinage: orgine, succès et
avenir, Cahors 2019, pp. 109-132.
11. G. Freni, Space, Image, and the Public in the Duomo of Fidenza. Movement as a Semiotic Code, N.
Zchomelidse - G. Freni (eds.), Meaning in Motion. The Semiotics of Movement in Medieval Art, Princeton-New
York 2011, pp. 95-130; C. R. Lakey, Sculptural Seeing. Relief, Optics and the Rise of Perspective in Medieval
Italy, New Haven 2018.
12. M. Castiñeiras, El trasfondo mítico de la Sibila y sus metamorfosis (siglos IV-XIII): Santa María la May-
or, Sant’Angelo in Formis, Belén y Santiago de Compostela, M. Gómez Muntané - E. Carrero (eds.), La Sibila.
Sonido. Imagen. Liturgia. Escena, Madrid 2015, pp. 169-206; M. Castiñeiras, La performance du Chant de la
Sibylle à la basilique de la Nativité de Bethléem durant la période croisée et ses possibles échos iconographiques et
musicaux, B. Caseau - E. Neri (eds.), Rituels religieux et sensorialité (Antiquité et Moyen Âge). Parcours de
recherche, Milano 2021, pp. 221-241.
13. M. Castiñeiras, The Portal at Ripoll Revisited: An Honorary Arch for the Ancestors, J. McNeill - R. Plant
(eds.), Romanesque and the Past, Leeds, UK, 2013, pp. 121-141; M. Castiñeiras, The Creation Tapestry, Girona
2011.
14. L. Battaglia Ricci, Ragionare nel giardino. Boccaccio e i cicli pittorici del Trionfo della Morte, Roma
2000, pp. 102-112.
15. M. Castiñeiras, Diego Gelmírez, un committente viaggiatore: dalla Porta Francigena all’altare maggiore
della Cattedrale di Santiago, A. C. Quintavalle (ed.), Medioevo: I Committenti, XIII Convegno Internazionale
di Studi, Parma, 21-26 settembre 2010, Parma-Milano 2011, pp. 268-280.
16. M. Castiñeiras, The Catalan Romanesque Painting Revisited: the Altar Frontal Workshops, C. Houri-
hane (ed.), Spanish Medieval Art, Recent Studies, Princeton-Tempe, Arizona 2007, pp. 119-151; M.
Castiñeiras, Il·luminant l’altar: artistes i tallers de pintura sobre taula a Catalunya (1119-1150), M. Castiñeiras -
J. Verdaguer (eds.), Pintar fa mil anys. El colors i l’ofici del pintor romànic, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
Bellaterra 2014, pp. 17-54.
17. B. Fricke, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints. Sainte Foy of Conques and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in
Medieval Art, Turnhout 2015.
18. T. J. Farrell (ed.), Bakthin and Medieval Voices, University of Florida Press, Gainesville (FL), 1995.
FLORIANA CONTE
methodologically reframe the study of art history in general. Iconographica has contributed to
this debate by housing articles that approach images from multiple, including transdisciplinary
and transcultural, perspectives. Can you briefly explain which was your original focus of in-
terest and in which directions your scholarly approach developed over the course of time?
Until my twenties I read novels, some essays on history and literature, I watched
many films. In the books I preferred, images played a role in emotional and social life,
they could take on a supernatural efficacy, imitating nature as simulacra or even taking
revenge on the neglect of men: I hadn’t read Kris and Kurz or Schlosser, I didn’t know
anything about the “legend of the artist” nor of the functions of imitation of art. The
narrative around the images that conditioned me was in works of fiction such as Balzac’s
Cousin Bette and Cousin Pons and Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray; the strategy of
staging, and static or dynamic reworking of images of the past and of the contemporary
was in movies such as Rocco and his brothers and Conversation piece by Visconti, The Age
of Innocence and Life Lessons by Scorsese and Novecento by Bertolucci. In the last two
years of my university studies, I have channeled my interests towards the history of art.
Patrons and Painters and Rediscoveries in art by Francis Haskell then broadened the terms
of the investigative mechanism of research that reconstructs the history of images in re-
lation to those who created, wanted, paid for them, and the environment in which they
were born, to that for which were commissioned under the conditions in which they
have come down to us.
Geschichte der Portraitbildnerei in Wachs: ein Versuch (1911) by Julius von Schlosser:
while I was studying for the Ph.D. at the Scuola Normale in Pisa and I was twenty-four,
I began to familiarize myself with German, so first I read Pommier’s 1997 French trans-
lation, without fully understanding all the implications of Schlosser’s method. Ten years
later, while I was writing a book in which funeral sculpture with a memorial function had
a decisive place in the reconstruction of the history of art between the State of Milan and
the Kingdom of Naples after the death of Caravaggio, I actually read the essay thanks to
FLORIANA CONTE 101
the best of three Italian translations released in 2011 (Storia del ritratto in cera. Un saggio,
edizione annotata e ampliata da Andrea Daninos, 2011).
Rediscoveries in Art. Some aspects of taste, fashion, and collecting in England and France
by Francis Haskell (1976): looking at the works and studying the books, history rises
again as it really is. I indicate Rediscoveries also because, like other books by non-Italian
art historians that I consider important, it is written in a clear and engaging language: in
fact, the chapters rework a cycle of educational conferences from 1973.
Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia (1990-2009) by Paola Barocchi: it teaches not to sep-
arate the “history of art criticism” from the history of art, and to build a very difficult type
of book, the history of art book made of literary and visual sources, completely different
from an anthology.
Especially in Italy in the twentieth century and due to the authority of Roberto
Longhi, who was only a bit interested in iconography, “style” coincided with the link be-
tween quality and the only form of exercise possible for a connoisseur who is also an art
historian: the sequence of images of works linked by a name and a progressive chronolo-
gy using a mimetic language. Today, anyone who imitates Longhi without being an
equally excellent connoisseur of images and of the language to be used to write about
them risks considering the works in a purely sequential way, to the detriment of their his-
tory. Today’s history of art still produces important results when it absorbs Longhi’s les-
son from the first «Paragone», from Proposte per una critica d’arte to the following experi-
ences, including popular ones. After all, the history of art can continue to benefit from
the fruitful relationship between the recognition of the materiality of the images, the abil-
ity to attribute them, the study of the sources and the fortune of both told with the mas-
tery of language and narrative techniques.
Rather than investigating the meaning in the visual arts and the power of images, I still
find profitable those in which images are intended as historical sources to learn about the
past and better understand the present. The perspective of the history of reception and the
historical fortune of images is an objective starting point even when the research requires
specifying a chronology, an attribution, a production context, etc. A revealing case study
in my research was that of the Pescocostanzo altarpiece by Tanzio da Varallo: after the his-
torian Gaetano Sabatini (1928) had published the document that allowed its attribution
and dating to 1614, and after Roberto Longhi (1943) had proposed the same attribution
and dating (apparently independently), for decades the iconography of the altarpiece re-
mained a mystery to all the scholars who dealt with it. Art historians sought an answer in
seventeenth century studies, not in those about other periods, and the results of the ru-
minations were truly imaginative. In 2012 I realized that the central scene of the altar-
piece led back precisely to the iconography of images of devotion famous in southern Italy
that dated back to the cult, renewed in the seventeenth century, of the icon known as the
Madonna of Constantinople: I had known since at least 2001 Il pennello dell’Evangelista.
Storia delle immagini sacre attribuite a san Luca (1998) by Michele Bacci, and other stud-
ies about this medieval image and its fortune.
Narrative (cf. 1), photography (of works of art and as work of art) and the re-presen-
tation of images of the past in motion in cinema are relevant filters in the understanding
of images after the 1950s. Even for non-specialist audiences, these are visual filters that al-
low access to different forms of knowledge, not just the history of art and images. A cer-
tain way of creating and presenting images is now common both in fictional storytelling
and in the study of history and artistic creation. Then there is the relationship of images
with words: the language guarantees the attempt to reproduce the illusion of movement
and the relationship with space. The words, the syntax, the language of ekphrasis in gen-
eral are fundamental in the historiographic mechanism: the expressive research must be
different if you write about the fifteenth century in Florence or about Pop art in Rome.
For me, images contain primarily the message of the past, which is also useful for bet-
ter understanding the present. Francis Haskell demonstrated this concept with the con-
tradictions and the open problems of History and Its Images (1993), trying to reconstruct
some aspects of the impact of images on historical imagination. Images explain how real-
ity is conditioned by taste, fashions, religious beliefs, money of some men, the actual avail-
ability of certain objects on the market at a given historical moment, by contemporary art
which always represents the key to access images of the past, from the techniques of re-
producing images, from the increasingly technical language that is needed to talk about
art and artists.
The staging strategies, the conditions of visibility, the experiential dimension of the
spectators are increasingly decisive factors for the deciphering of an image. Let me explain
with two eloquent examples of the relationship between images, their preparation, and
the experiential dimension of the spectators: the series of photographs by Thomas Struth.
In Museum Photographs, the room behind visitors to international museums also frames
FLORIANA CONTE 103
the works of the past they are admiring, creating a new image intended for the external
viewer. In Audience, spectators are also photographed from the front in the halls of the
museums, favoring the illusion of inclusion in the external viewer. In both cases, the two
most traditional means of reproducing images, painting and photography, merge into a
single image that focuses on the spectators who become part of the set-up and of a con-
temporary architectural and exhibition landscape.
its viewers?
I believe that photography of works of art and photography as work of art (see 7) have
assumed a decisive role (often, however, with photography prevailing over direct inspec-
tion of works) also for the interpretation of the meaning of the works placed in their orig-
inal context or in museums. A work interpreted by a photograph, by an installation, by a
new location in an environment different from the one for which it was designed opens
the way to different cognitive attitudes, not necessarily contingent on its original mean-
ing. The atlas of images significantly titled Opere allestimenti fotografie that Paola Baroc-
chi organized for vol. III**. Tra Neorealismo ed Anni Novanta, 1945-1990 of Storia mo-
derna dell’arte in Italia: the atlas opens with a table dedicated to the visual interpretations
of antiquity in which three zooms on the Annunciation by Gentile Bellini and on the Re-
ception of the ambassadors by Carpaccio. These details were chosen by Roberto Longhi for
its Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana, and they make clear that the photography
of work of arts is the main language of art history, which in turn owes a lot to the cine-
ma for the concept of the selection of images details.
The reproductions and citations of images from the past allow us to decipher the vi-
sual language of contemporaneity. The images reproduced in art history books, in aca-
demic and popular magazines, especially in electronic publishing, on television, in social
media, offer the art historian the tools around which to build critical reflection on how
language is evolving in national and international figurative arts and how it affects the so-
cial, political, and taste-related orientations of the population. Images inform viewers
about the present: in particular, they allow us to understand aspects of the iconography
of political communication and that of commercials and advertising photographs. Deci-
phering the images we are bombarded with every day, and putting them in series giving
shape to a centuries-old sequence is also a very efficacious way for teachers to deal with is-
sues of civics.

For my generation and for subsequent ones in Italy, the history of art is primarily a
history of photographs that transform three-dimensional objects into images. A certain
way of making history of art is based on these images, essentially based on the attributive
rearrangement that often ignores the materiality of the objects that are studied in effigy.
But the objects have executive characteristics, anomalies, manufacturing findings, which
cannot be reproduced in the images. So also because at least since the 1970s the history
of art and the works of art themselves (think of the performing arts) coincide with pho-
tography, which hands down their occasional materiality, I believe that the materiality of
the images coincides now in the common idea with the immateriality of the art they re-
produce. It is no coincidence that the twentieth century is the century of the “immateri-
al form of art”, the Performance Art, which some protagonists of it historicize by exploit-
ing the presumed affinity with the material art par excellence, sculpture, because of the
common difficulty of sculptors and performance artists in raising funds from the clients
to be compensated. The “immaterial form of art”, which has the body as its main materi-
al and its behavior as iconography, finds in documentary photography controlled by the
artists the means through which it can be turned into material art: photographs are sold,
even if the work of art is immaterial and therefore unsaleable. The concept of the artist as
a star is also linked to these photographs that document intangible art, whose image is a
simulacrum to be idolized, even if it does not create objects. In this sense, today the ma-
teriality of images is transferred from the created object to the artist who creates nothing.
Images are traditionally related to the viewers through the position of the objects in
the architecture that contains them, of the architecture in the urban context, of the city
in the territory and in the landscape. In this way, the images always take on a “social life”
that coincides with their civic and political function, even when their historical fortunes
are studied: if you study street art you get to investigate illegal buildings and landscaping,
then to study the social role that certain images had when they were created and the one
they are invested with in the course of time, as the context preserving them changes. Fur-
thermore, even the fakes conceived for deceptive purposes explain the “social life” of im-
ages: one understands how one century sees another, as for example in the nineteenth cen-
tury the sculpture and painting of the Quattrocento that wealthy collectors wished to buy.
In addition to sight for each field concerned with the history of style and iconography,
touch should certainly be mentioned, as it is useful for investigations of the surface of pan-
els (especially if you are in doubt about their authenticity) and of sculptures.
FLORIANA CONTE 105
In figurative painting, the landscape is inserted into an image from the point of view
of man, even if no human figures are represented in the image. The narration on the land-
scape adheres to it on a perceptive basis. A historical-artistic narration that gives value to
the recovery of the visual experience also as a personal emotional experience has a consol-
idated and renewable twentieth-century tradition even today in the genre derived from
periegetic literature, such as the travel books by Cesare Brandi (Persia mirabile, Pellegrino
di Puglia, etc.). More generally, images enable viewers to see the landscape through figu-
rative diaphragms: it is natural for an art historian, but also a citizen of average visual cul-
ture, to wish to preserve a stretch of landscape that reminds him or her of the environ-
ment of Latium and Tuscany pictorially celebrated by Poussin, Lorrain and Salvator Rosa.
If one deals with Italian and American painting of the 1960s, the language must adhere
to the urban landscape that inspires figurative painters, whose visual elements (petrol
pumps, advertising billboards, signs, signs, cars on road etc.) are the real subjects of the
painting, not its background. Obviously, the continuous scars have progressively de-
stroyed the fluid connection between place, architecture, city, work of art and art history
that was typical above all of the Italian tradition, in which the landscape is closely con-
nected to literature and art and it is part of the same cultural heritage.
The stringent links between the reproductions of images in an attribution-based anal-
ysis that also includes, where appropriate, iconographic issues, is always the basis of the
art historian’s instrumentation. This instrumentation cannot ignore the knowledge of
techniques, materials, styles, architecture, the market, artistic institutions, sources, histo-
riography, language, literature, philosophy, reproduction, conservation, and restoration.
All the other professional skills that accompany art historians in their research (the
chemist, the restorer, the computer engineer, etc.) are very useful but cannot replace the
figure of the connoisseur who becomes a historian. Non-invasive diagnostic investigations
and IT-assisted humanities are an increasingly dominating presence in popular and sci-
entific publishing and university courses, to the point of downplaying the specific role of
art history, even if they have nothing to do with the latter’s focus and expertise.
The global and prevailing Western point of view is about the concept of “art that im-
itates nature”. The relationship between art and nature, the “imitation”, involves numer-
ous points in the fields of culture and the classification of reality. In other cultures, with
other languages, imitation is not the base of art. And each culture has precise words to
speak about its concept of art. So “basic English” helps to understand each other during
oral and written expositions, but it strongly sets limits to the topics for which every cul-
ture and every language have technicalities, discursive models, argumentative styles, gram-
matical and syntactic structures, visual systems typical of the community that uses it and
not always transposable into other languages, unless we run the risk of impoverishing our
argumentation skills. The exclusive use of basic English leads to the perspective of an An-
glophone monoculture (Harald Weinrich 2002), which offers the undeniable advantage
of disseminating information in a fast and universally understandable way. Yet, this may
result in an excessively simplified diffusion, which does not allow for argumentative sub-
tleties and semantic nuances, may trivialize communication, and lead to the loss of histo-
ry. If a language no longer has the words to convey a scientific message (in the history of
art or any other science), it turns into a mere communication tool for daily occasions or
a little more.
Ultimately, the primary task of the art historian always remains to connect series of
words and series of images to reconstruct history and put it in direct relationship with
people’s lives. Our studies are often conditioned by the simplifying methods of analysis
of contemporary art criticism even when we study the art of the past. Art is asked to en-
tertain, not to represent a unifying, identifying element that breaks down social barriers
and improves reality. The relationship between generalism and specialism, today skewed
in favor of the latter, should also be overturned to resurrect the all-encompassing system
of culture promoted by humanists.
Floriana Conte
Università di Foggia
[email protected]
PHILIPPE CORDEZ
the course of time?
Over thirty years ago, starting when I was a child and continuing through my teenage
years, I studied drawing and painting in the workshop of the artist Denis Godefroy in
Rouen, Normandy. Teaching – both children and adults, including patients at the psy-
chiatric hospital – was for him not only an artistic but also a social engagement. His un-
derstanding of images, as a drawer and painter, was physical and metaphysical. He had
deconstructed images in the 1970s, in the sense of a figuration analytique, and he rein-
vested his art with material and gesture, technique, sensitivity, and emotion in the 1980s.
He died in 1997. A few months later, I began studying art history.
In 2002, I completed my degree at the École du Louvre in Paris. My wish to study
objects and images first-hand, in museums, had determined this course. However, I felt
uncomfortable with the widely practiced sacralization of art. For this reason, another fo-
cus of my studies at the Louvre was the anthropology of European societies and cultures.
This included some fieldwork: I followed bronze-casting techniques in contemporary
handicraft and experimental archaeology. An additional interest of mine was museology,
especially anthropological museums, which reflect social life. In order to shed light on the
long European tradition of keeping and admiring sacralized objects for centuries in in-
stitutions, I turned to historical anthropology for my Ph.D. The result was my book
translated as Treasure, Memory, Nature. Church Objects in the Middle Ages (London-
Turnhout 2020).
André Leroi-Gourhan, Le Geste et la Parole, 2 vols., Paris 1964-1965 (Gesture and
Speech, Cambridge, Mass. - London 1993). Symbolic artefacts and images arise in tandem
with hominization. In France, the study of art history is thus associated with that of ar-
chaeology. These two volumes, entitled Technics and Language and Memory and Rhythms,
are rooted in physical anthropology, prehistoric archaeology, and contemporary ethnolo-
gy. Presenting a theory of human behaviour and cultural development, this study is also
an ecological critique of modernism. I read the volumes in 2001. This sparked my inter-
est in being a scholar. Leroi-Gourhan inspired much research in technologie culturelle, the
anthropology of techniques. In 2012, I tried to build a bridge between this subdiscipline
and art history with an essay and an edited volume on tools and instruments. That was
important for my subsequent work.
André Desvallées, François Mairesse (ed.), Dictionnaire encyclopédique de muséologie,
Paris 2011. This comprehensive reader, produced by the dedicated committee of the In-
ternational Council of Museums, offers an introduction to museology. Ten years before
its publication, in 2001/2002, I studied this field enthusiastically at the École du Lou-
vre. At that time, anthropological and aesthetic approaches to extra-European indige-
nous art and culture were a subject of debates concerning the future Musée du Quai
Branly in Paris (inaugurated 2006). In those years, Michel Colardelle was also reinvent-
ing the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires in Paris (closed 2005) as the
Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée in Marseille (opened 2013).
Colardelle, driven by ideas from “new” and “critical” museology, wanted to make cen-
tral the visitor’s sensory and cognitive experiences with objects, as well as to reflect on
interculturalism. He was a figure of socialist museum politics, engaged and creative, and
an inspiring teacher.
Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps. Essais d’anthropologie médié-
vale, Paris 2001. When I was looking for a Ph.D. advisor, Michel Colardelle introduced
me to Isac Chiva (1925-2012), a retired ethnologist of rural France and a close collabo-
rator of the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Chiva suggested Jean-Claude Schmitt,
a historian of the Middle Ages whom he felt knew ethnography well. I told Chiva of my
interest in the development of the European Union and especially in Germany. He re-
ferred me to a text in which he discusses the pogrom of Iași in Romania in 1941, which
he survived, as well as his friendship with the poet Paul Celan in their Parisian exile and
his collaboration with German ethnologists who confronted the National Socialist her-
itage of Volkskunde.1 Chiva urged me to pursue what I felt committed to. Jean-Claude
Schmitt agreed to help me study a church treasury in former East Germany. His recent-
ly published collection of essays was perfect for my transition from ethnologist to me-
dievalist. I admired the depth of his methodological reflection and his ability to histori-
cize all sorts of human experiences. This opened up possibilities for me at a key point, as
I realized that contemporary museology came to bear upon many questions about
church treasures.
What is traditional art history? We should distinguish the traditio of artefacts, their
handing down from one generation to the next, from research about them, which is about
PHILIPPE CORDEZ 109
interpretation in the present and is thus never really traditional. With its objects and ques-
tions, art history is a heterogeneous field in which factual knowledge and logical inter-
pretations are brought to bear on material and ideological issues. This is a strength of the
discipline. Our teachers at the École du Louvre were museum professionals, most of them
brilliant. We did not reflect much on methods, but we were introduced to art from all
times and continents, in the Louvre galleries and other Parisian museums: the scope was
universal. Such an approach, in this case bound to the patrimony of the French nation,
raises questions. Leaving the Louvre, I felt the need to step back and study our “Western”
fascination with museum objects as a cultural construction. History and anthropology
were helpful. With later academic experiences in Germany and Italy, I came back to ob-
jects and art history. Traversing several scientific cultures, almost like an ethnologist, and
holding organizational roles within international research communities (at the Kunsthis-
torisches Institut in Florence, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and the
German Center for Art History in Paris) have taught me that rejecting methods often
happens out of ignorance and fear, or out of an irrational commitment to the idea of
progress. Integration is more productive. I admire strong argumentation, whether on
style, iconography, or various other topics, and do my best to learn and collaborate and
to enrich art history.
I have been part of two groups of scholars committed to renewing the study of im-
ages. These experiences were formative. Among other cultural historians close to Jacques
le Goff, Jean-Claude Schmitt understood that images document the imaginaire of past
societies. He also situated the concept of imago within medieval anthropology. Michel
Pastoureau, focusing on the history of the symbolism of colours and animals and ex-
tending this approach to objects, explained how the imaginary is part of reality (I real-
ized later how this connects to surrealism, through his father’s friendship with André
Breton). My second encounter was with the Bildwissenschaft, or “image-science”, of
Horst Bredekamp, my other Ph.D. advisor, in Berlin. From there, I obtained a faculty
position in Hamburg, where Bredekamp had contributed to actualizing the legacy of
Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and his Warburg-Haus, and this deepened my understand-
ing of this intellectual community. The first scholarly conference in which I presented,
between Paris and Berlin, was organized by Hans Belting’s group in Karlsruhe, and his
rather physical anthropology of images was important for me too – as was, later, Herbert
L. Kessler’s broad knowledge and theoretical understanding of medieval Christian im-
ages. Bildwissenschaft analyses all sorts of images, beyond the sacralized notion of art.
Progressively, this brought me back to art history. However, since this discipline has
more to account for than images – their various relations with all kinds of three-dimen-
sional material objects being one major question – I suggested Objektwissenschaft as a
complement and expansion and launched a book series entitled Object Studies in Art His-
tory. My efforts concentrate on easily movable objects, at the intersection of art history
and cultural and social history.
I understand images as objects. By definition – etymologically – an object is that which
affects the senses of a subject and is processed through cognition. There is a useful differ-
ence between thing and object, though a given item can be both at once. Things are con-
ceived abstractly as existing concretely. Objects, on the other hand, are perceived in life
by the senses: they consist of sensory properties, coming together as we experience them
in specific situations. Perception is culturally determined and continuously creative. It is
an experience of presence, but also one of distance, or absence, when it comes to sensory
deprivation. The latter occurs when access to objects is not immediate; and obviously,
with images, what is depicted can be seen in most cases only from one side and cannot be
touched, smelled, heard, etc., although our brain supplements this. Represented objects
might even be unrealistic, able to exist only in images or texts or in our minds. Perceiv-
ing objects, interpreting them cognitively, allows for creative recombinations and actual-
izations. This is, for me, what art history seeks to study. Images, like other objects, are
multisensorial and cognitive experiences.
Only a tiny part of what humans perceive with their bodies is elaborated into ideas.
Most perceptions remain unconscious, still contributing, however, to shaping future per-
ceptions and reactions. We become accustomed to perceiving and acting in environments.
This process of adaptation, constitutive of identities, gives rise to styles, which are best de-
scribed as effects of repetition and familiarity – as in a volume on style in anthropology,
techniques, and aesthetics edited by Bruno Martinelli in 2005. Beyond individuals, col-
lective styles are created when human groups share practices, objects, and images. In such
sensory communities, people agree on how specific perceptions are to be valuated and in-
terpreted: when meaning is attributed to styles, they become symbols. How symbolism is
conceived within groups varies, as Philippe Descola has shown for visible forms in his an-
thropology of figuration.
The notion that humans have five senses, sight being particularly valued among them,
was known in antiquity. It is a simplification, ignoring the dynamics and complexities of
multi- and intersensoriality, as well as other senses, like proprioception, through which we
know our movements and positions. When we see bodies in images – heroic, tortured, ac-
tive, etc. – our brains relate them to our perceptions of our own body, both from the past
PHILIPPE CORDEZ 111
and in the immediate present. The same happens with other representations and percep-
tions. Experiencing images is never solely visual, such that the reverse question is worth
asking: when is meaning created in a more specifically visual way in images? Perhaps when
meaning becomes conventional, in what is commonly called “iconography”. But visual
codifications are only meaningful in certain situations. There are iconographic styles, as
are there styles of thought. And likewise, the boundaries of iconic representation are not
always clear. I co-edited a volume on fifty objects that, while all shaped like books, served
a variety of functions, from reliquaries and mechanical clocks to camera obscurae and lap-
top bags, spanning the late Middle Ages until today. Are they feigned books, and thus im-
ages experienced in practice, through their use? They are rather combinations of actual el-
ements of books – combinations held together materially and symbolically, invoking
mental images to create meaning in given situations.
its viewers?
We are at an interesting moment. My impression is that considering images in isola-
tion is a dead end. It certainly allows us to take them seriously and to develop adequate
theories. But it also entails an essentialization of images, or even a generalization of “the
image”, which might interest aesthetes or philosophers and can be studied from these per-
spectives but cannot serve as a fundament for art history as a full human science. To cul-
tivate more comprehensive approaches to images, we need to recognize that vision and
imagination are experienced and memorized in connection with all sorts of sensory per-
ceptions. Moreover, both as artefacts and in our brains, images are part of the reality they
represent. In two essays, I have exposed how the theologian and natural philosopher Al-
bertus Magnus explained the appearance of the head of a king in veined-marble panels,
in Venice, as an astral influence ultimately directed by God; and how Giotto, hearing of
this, painted in his famous chapel in nearby Padua vices and virtues as figures in stone in
order to impress upon viewers that free will resists astral determinations. This assertion of
the place of human art in the forces of nature was important well into the early modern
period. Today, developments within sensory anthropology and the anthropology of tech-
niques are opportunities for art history to participate in interdisciplinary debates and to
expand its scope.
The notion of different modes of existence is helpful here. Bruno Latour describes
the heterogeneity of human experience, between the realms of science, politics, and re-
ligion – establishing new connections as a way to address social and ecological chal-
lenges. Objects, images, and texts also exist as realities that are ontologically discrete
from one another yet are related via sensory properties, whether experienced directly or
in representations. These properties establish continuums across distinct realms, and
their recombinations inform future perceptions. As I recognized in a co-authored book,

the crown of Hildegard of Bingen, which features images, existed in several different
though related forms: as a vision experienced by the twelfth-century mystic; as a textu-
al description of said vision; as a preciously embroidered personal insignia (extant to this
day and newly identified); in the similar yet simpler crowns for Hildegard’s singing
nuns; and in what people outside their convent heard related to this. This diversity pro-
duced significance and legitimation for the objects and subjects involved. Art history
can reconstruct such connections, in which images often have important functions,
along with their implications.

Materiality, as a term, is an abstractum. I think we need concrete and precise ques-
tions about the physical properties of specific materials (their colour, brilliance, sound,
texture, etc.) and about the history of their interpretation and organization in cultural
systems. Equally relevant are techniques dealing with the physical and symbolic proper-
ties of materials: natural and data sciences can reveal technical choices and patterns; an
iconology of techniques can shed light on their socialization through representations.
Forming materials into images establishes relations among the materials, the images, and
the techniques entailed, with possibly far-reaching consequences. My analysis of figures
of slaves sculpted in ebony – as parts of chairs and gueridons made in Venice around
1700 – led me to retrace the history of the association between the material ebony and
the bodies of people identifying or identified as black. This relates to the transatlantic
slave trade and its legacy in Europe and America. As this case underlines, we experience
images materially with our bodies, and they shape how we inhabit our bodies, both in-
dividually and socially.
If we avoid metaphors in order to seek precision, as I think we should on this topic,
then images do not have “social lives”. They do not live, nor do they act, and therefore
making them the subject of any active verb is, in a factual sense, wrong. Humans, rather,
make images, involve them in their social lives, act with them. Images and objects have
histories, not biographies. It is certainly common to attribute some life and subjectivity
to inanimate objects. This is the case with toys at a normal phase of child development; it
seems to be the primary purpose of certain images of divinities or individuals, and it is
also frequent in advertising. Art historians as scientists, however, should not share such
beliefs. Their role is rather to describe the origins, forms, and functions of these beliefs.
Evident partners in this endeavour are psychologists, specialists of religion and politics,
and sociologists (as all human societies involve objects). Most importantly, attributing
subjectivity to images and other objects can mean delegating responsibility and thus dis-
tracting from the actual role of humans. This can have important consequences. Art his-
tory can contribute to explaining, in many cases, what is at stake.
PHILIPPE CORDEZ 113
Objects that bear images – that is also: images as objects – involve multisensoriality in
various ways, as do images that represent objects in relation to bodies. One task of art his-
tory is always to understand how this occurs. Not all objects and images are intended for
an “objective” perception. Take for example a transparent glass beaker, enamelled around
1300 with colourful images of three camels – animals known to drink rarely, but a lot at
a time – amid vivid vegetation. Made to be sold, probably in Venice, and later unearthed
in the Rhineland, this small vessel invited the user to glimpse the refreshing wine through
and between these images, before consuming it. It must have been appealing on the mar-
ket, as well as entertaining for drunken people with altered sensory and cognitive facul-
ties: hence the simple pattern and generic message. Another multisensorial object that I
have studied, this one much more complex, is a hydraulic musical fountain, an excep-
tional piece of precious metalwork made in Paris in the fourteenth century and now in
the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is rich in images: water-spitting men, dragons, and an-
imal heads, enamelled figures of couples playing musical instruments, of winged hybrids,
and more, all amid architectural forms whose details caught sparkling drops of water.
Modest in size, this refined object would have offered an overwhelming sensory experi-
ence to a small, privileged, educated group. As a “fountain of youth” and a political alle-
gory, it seems to have manifested eternal felicity in the kingdom of France. I think that
such complex cases can teach us a lot about images, about the various ways in which they
relate to objects, and about art history more generally.
Seeing includes our experience of images, which contribute to shaping our perception.
This is why we speak of a picturesque landscape or a photogenic person – and inversely,
things like landscape design and facial cosmetics follow trends established in existing im-
ages. Moreover, we can use real objects iconically in life, just as figures use attributes in
images. Such relations between presence and representation, between earlier experiences
and sensory perception, are not limited to vision and images; they accompany other sens-
es and objects, too. This poses a major question indeed. If perceiving an object is already
creative and thus means creating an artefact, should art history expand its purview beyond
objects made by humans? I think so, also because this has important implications. The in-
terpretation of the long tooth of a narwhal as the horn of a unicorn, for example, was es-
tablished in the twelfth or thirteenth century and still, in part, motivates the hunting of
this small whale from the Arctic Ocean. Art history has the means to uncover the leitmo-
tifs that shape how humans relate to “raw” materials and other resources. This is relevant
also in terms of political ecology.
Like other objects, images are made and then perceived, used, and transformed in spe-
cific historical situations. These situations are materially, socially, and symbolically deter-
mined, each one unique and continuously changing. Objects and situations are intricate,
and these intricacies as they exist in time are, I think, the main problem of art history.
How should we thus analyse objects, especially those not meant to exist in front of us?
More than to situate them solely in known history or the present, we should seek to un-
derstand how situations are determined by objects, how they would not exist without
them. Objects result from, deal with, and contribute to shaping situations, that is, con-
texts. They are not autonomous – and this includes modern works of art – but are creat-
ed as solutions to material, social, and symbolic problems, sometimes with ingenuity or
virtuosity. In addition, objects exist in dynamic situations and may be kept, given away,
or destroyed in reaction to them. The better we describe the materials, techniques, and
forms of objects and especially of images as specific combinations of sensory properties to
be perceived and interpreted, the better we can grasp and explain their correlations to the
specific situations in which that experience happened. This approach brings together ob-
ject studies and cultural history.
Artefacts, in their material logic, already relate to language. Considering pertinent lan-
guages is thus important for their study, always with the necessity of distinguishing be-
tween the language practiced by those being studied and the analytic language of the sci-
entist (even if that is contemporary English in both cases). Cultural anthropologists refer
to the emic and etic approaches, describing cultures complementarily from within and
outside. “Art” in the common sense and thus “artist” and “art history” are local and re-
cent inventions, originating in Europe just a few centuries ago. They are related to Chris-
tianity, its tradition of interpretation and representation and its transformations, and they
involve European languages, past and present. European legacies are now more or less
globalized, or are treated as such. But “global art history” should not be a history of only
this process of globalization, whether in the form of Christian missions or the develop-
ment of multiple modernities and contemporary art scenes. This scope is in itself a mark-
er of progress, because it is more explicitly Eurocentric than the nineteenth- and twenti-
eth-century practice of selecting, in the history of the world, what would fit best with cur-
rent Western ideas of art or of world heritage. But it is not yet global. A universalist per-
spective in art history would be fruitful in its analyses and as a message, but to develop it
the discipline needs more radical approaches, beyond the common notion of “art” or no-
tions specific to any single community. It would have to encompass, non-hierarchically,
productions from all times and places, including those of cultures with less material
PHILIPPE CORDEZ 115
equipment, even beyond Homo sapiens. A strategic field in which to begin exploring this
is the European Middle Ages, as a profound alterity that generated Western modernity,
key notions – imago, obiectum, artifex – having been elaborated there. But the discipline
must also test its concepts with even more distant alterities, in dialogue with archaeology
and anthropology.
Art history’s recent achievements concerning vision and images are impressive. But
they come at a price: relegating the discipline to mere questions of observation and rep-
resentation. There is an urgency now, in the face of the current ecological situation, to
grasp more comprehensively how humans create artefacts and act with them in the world,
and how they might do so in more sustainable ways. Such questions demand global ap-
proaches to the human experience and to human experiences in their past and present di-
versity. Our crisis is primarily a legacy of Europe. It has roots in the divisions among, and
the evolutions of, craft, art, industry, and design. Art history has much to contribute by
broadening its questions around and beyond images, with a sense of responsibility.2
Philippe Cordez
Musée du Louvre, Paris
[email protected]
1. I. Chiva, Des itinéraires décalés et croisés / Getrennte und gekreuzte Wege. En l’honneur de Utz Jeggle,
Tübingen 2001.
2. I thank Lena Bader, Matthias Krüger, Léa Kuhn, Joanna Olchawa, and Robert Vogt for comments and
Julia Oswald for excellent editing.
VINCENT DEBIAIS
the course of time?
My focus of interest has been and remains the relationship between texts and images in
Medieval visual culture from the Christian West, mainly from an epigraphic perspective,
with a focus on monumental writing in sculpture, painting, and mosaics, as well as the
shapes, functions, and audiences of medieval inscriptions made in the pictorial medium. I
aimed to go beyond the traditional association of source and illustration to demonstrate
that inscriptions and images are part of the same visual and intellectual discourse that
tends to overcome the limits of the form. The topic of text/image relationships may sound
old-fashioned or overinvestigated, but the different “turns” of the last three decades allow
a new understanding of the extent to which the simultaneous analysis of visual and textu-
al elements can tell us about medieval written and visual cultures. More recently, I have
been dealing with the concept of abstraction in medieval visual arts and the implication of
informality during the Middle Ages, in connection with Christian theological notions of
ordo and forma.
For my research on text/image relationships, I have read and constantly re-read two
important books: Arwed Arnulf, Versus ad Picturas. Studien zur Titulusdichtung als Quel-
lengattung der Kunstgeschichte von der Antike bis zum Hochmittelalter, Munich, 1997; Her-
bert L. Kessler, Neither God nor Man. Words, Images, and the Medieval Anxiety about Art,
Freiburg, 2007. More recently, I rely a lot on Jean-Claude Schmitt, Penser par figure. Du
compas divin aux diagrammes magiques, Paris, 2019
VINCENT DEBIAIS 117
Personally, I do not believe in any need for replacement. Notions evolve, concepts are
adjusted, but, basically, I assume that methods remain almost the same. New trends and
new objects need sometimes to be addressed by means of more precisely focused ap-
proaches, but this must be done in the aim to respect the material and to produce deep
knowledge, not to serve a trend. The notion of iconography can be discussed for specific
images but the intellectual paths it opens with careful descriptions and thorough identi-
fications cannot be avoided or replaced. Art history will probably grow stronger if it in-
corporates new approaches in their diversity without trying to create “school”- or “club”-
like phenomena. I cannot think of any notions that may be mutually exclusive or dis-
qualify other scholars’ approaches.
I am convinced that my research benefited a lot from various personal encounters and
from slow, individual, and friendly intellectual debates, especially during fellowship and
research stays in the US, and I am truly grateful to my colleagues, teachers, and students,
who took time to carefully discuss intriguing topics or conceptual challenges. In the oth-
er hand, I cannot say that the great scholarly debates or trendy discussions have been pro-
ductive in the same way, especially during scientific meetings, symposia, or workshops,
when questions of methods were often posed, whereas the real historical or artistic issues
were left aside. I sometimes had the feeling that it was more important to manifest one’s
belonging than to make research, and this has often led me to avoid these debates. I am
convinced these debates are useful and helpful for the field, but we should think of a more
convenient format for their development.
For the last few years, I have been especially interested in three main notions. The first
one is materiality; after the effervescence of the “material turn” and all the fruitful meet-
ings and publications, I have found that both the means and meaning of medieval images
can be revealed by a careful analysis of the empirical and symbolic qualities of their ma-
terial aspects. The second topic is a general understanding of the anthropology of images,
in a cross-cultural and cross-historical perspective, thanks to Philippe Descola’s work,
among others. The third one is the importance of Christian theology as a major key to the
interpretation of the visual, not only as it concerns the contents of medieval images, but
also their shapes and functions.
In my understanding, “meaning” is at the intersection of content and media. Iconog-
raphy tends to focus on the image’s subject, and on the ways in which the subject is staged
within a sculpture or painting, but I assume that the meaning also stems from all those
elements within an image that do not directly belong to the subject: i.e., from what I call
the iconography of the in-between, and especially from the material and technical impli-
cations of image-making.
Meaning cannot be separated from the rhetoric of the visual, and from the narrative
or iconic strategies used to stage an image in its context of display. Recent research on sa-
cred space, light, movement, senses, and the body have shown the importance of the dis-
play conditions, and the contemporary art concept of “installation” may help us to see
where meaning is produced when an image is created for specific events involving the
senses of sight and touch.
its viewers?
I assume we are now ready for some experiments in the archaeology of reception. In
this respect, recent works by Roland Bettencourt or Bissera Pentcheva for Byzantium
prove to be very stimulating, even if I doubt that we will be able to go much further. There
is always a difficulty in separating the sensorial effect of the object and the possible ex-
pectations from the viewer. New approaches from the anthropology of the visual could
probably give some insights here, based on the experience of seeing, feeling, waiting for,
and dreaming images, but we will always face the limits of a reconstruction where spiri-
tual, religious, and magical aspects are hard to investigate.
Images are part of the continuum that shaped the medieval world, as shown by Jean-
Claude Schmitt or Jean-Marie Sansterre; but they have a special status at the same time –
they constitute a special level of reality. Art history still must assess this level of reality that
came to be shared by material/visual images, and other types of images. This is probably
where medieval art history must meet its fellow disciplines and methods in the wider field
of medieval studies. The experience of dreams, ghosts, but also feelings and emotions
probably have common points with the medieval experience of art.

The materiality of images is essential for the understanding of both the making and re-
ception of medieval art. The question is not only what makes images be, but also what
makes images mean. The importance gained by archaeological approaches in the most re-
VINCENT DEBIAIS 119
cent trends of medieval art history leads sometimes to an exclusively material under-
standing of images, as if they were made of things or stuffs, and had no intellectual or spir-
itual content. On the contrary, the symbolic approach to materials often leads to the op-
posite result of only emphasizing the immaterial functions to the detriment of any mate-
rial aspect. In this respect, it might be useful to go back to medieval thought and look at
the conceptualizations of materiality worked out in the Middle Ages. The works by Elina
Gertsman, Aden Kumler, Beate Fricke, Bissera Pentcheva seem truly relevant in this re-
spect. Working with the students in museums and archives is fundamental to reach this
global understanding of medieval material.
Alfred Gell’s agency certainly opened new perspectives as to our understanding of the
ways in which medieval images interacted with each other. Sometimes we lack informa-
tion about the viewing/experiencing contexts of such images, and it remains difficult to
assess their environment and their social life. New trends in the ecocriticism might be in-
teresting to develop in view of an “ecology of the visual” where images, people, and events
are thought of as parts of a global, interrelated milieu. In any case, we will have to remain
careful when trying to reconstruct such interactions. Medieval images belonged to a spe-
cific ontology, and we cannot give them attributions and “powers” they did not have.
Sight is the most important sense for the experience of images, as shown by Éric Palaz-
zo recently, but touch is also crucial, as we can read throughout Jackie Jung’s research. In
my own work, sight works along with touch to understand all the phenomena of textures,
for example.
In my new research, I focus on the notion of “abstraction” in medieval visual arts. So,
I truly believe in a large understanding of iconicity, even for images and objects that look
imageless or formless. In the same way as there is an iconicity of script, I guess there is
also an iconicity of sound, of nature, of material, of social gatherings. Everything might
be considered for its iconicity if it has been understood as such by medieval thinking, and
the semantic spectrum of the word imago is so strong and wide that it might encapsulate
all these forms of image-making. Of course, it seems difficult to put them under the title
of “art”, and this is where art history might need to be careful not to lose its purpose, but
for a global approach to medieval visuality these are promising research paths.
Recently I came across research tools stemming from theoretical biology and ecology
and used them to explain phenomena of transformation, alteration, adaptation, erasure,
destruction, disappearance… Even if it can only work in terms of analogy and discrete
parallelism, it may be interesting to apply them to medieval topics.
I understand the concern, but the language I work with is not only a tool, it also de-
fines and shapes my own thinking and I truly do not know how I could reshape every-
thing in order to avoid linguistic tricks or evidences of who I am. Awareness is a key, care-
fulness is necessary, but it seems more important to teach focusing on the meaning of
words instead of trying to create a new lingua franca that should erase any personal in-
volvement. But this is my own limitation and fear probably. Writing seems too hard for
me to remodel it at my age!
I wish I knew! Personally, as a scholar of western Christian art, I would advocate for a
reconciliation between the erudite approach of medieval images and objects and a more
sensitive, spiritual, poetic reading of objects. I have the feeling that art history became
cold, clinical sometimes, and that language is not used anymore to convey the sensations
and aesthetics emotions triggered by the encounters with medieval art. Current trends are
so self-aware that they do not allow any statement that is not political, and beauty often
disappear behind the curtain of methods, schools of thought, and claims. I sometimes
wish art history may be more about people and their experiences of beauty. But this is a
very naïve proposal that does not fit in the state of the field where we should be thinking
more about the students, young scholars, and their challenges to live or survive in the
academia. Wanting to focus on theology, philosophy, and the spiritual implications of
medieval art might seem superfluous in this context, but this is probably where we can
make a statement about the possible specificity of medieval art within the panorama of
universal art.
Vincent Debiais
Centre de recherches historiques, France
[email protected]
RALPH DEKONINCK
the course of time?
I am the product of a very classical training in art history, from a time when the stylis-
tic approach was the main orientation of art history studies in my university, with an
opening towards the analysis of works of art by laboratory methods. While relying on
such foundations, my path has opened up towards more properly iconological questions.
My research is part of what is known today as “visual exegesis” applied to early-modern
religious imagery. This expression of “visual exegesis” is not only to be understood in the
sense of a simple exercise of iconographic/iconological interpretation: it refers more pre-
cisely to the study of image-specific visual strategies aimed to produce sensible meanings
or meaningful affects, with a view to reform, conversion, or inner conformation. The in-
terpretive act, both intellectual and affective, was at that time conceived according to this
pragmatic aim. It was guided or induced by a certain visual rhetoric (which relied on the
combination of various figurative registers, from narrative to symbolic). In the cases of the
illustrations of Jesuit meditation literature on which I have worked, it can be said that the
image can compete with ingenuity to enter into resonance with textual exegesis. Far from
confining itself to a role of illustration or dependence on the gloss of written commen-
taries, the image glosses itself, or even thinks itself, by producing its own “theory” in the
etymological sense of the term theoria, i.e. by producing the conditions for its own con-
templation and understanding. The image thus becomes not only the support or the lo-
cus of meditation, but even more the motor of spiritual transformation. Therefore, in my
field of inquiry we can speak of a shift from the study of images to the study of the pro-
cess of vision, that is to say towards the relationship of the beholder to the object of med-
itation through the latter’s image. This belies the idea that “we cannot see what seeing is”:
representation can be offered as a meditation on the very act of seeing, which opens up
very stimulating research perspectives on the experience of the image, or rather on the im-
age conceived and lived as an experience.
Here are the three books, published between 1989 and 1993, that marked the begin-
ning of my career as a researcher in art history, many other authors – such as Louis Marin
and Marie-José Mondzain – having after that guided my steps: David Freedberg, The
Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago, 1989; Georges
Didi-Huberman, Devant l’image. Questions posées aux fins d’une histoire de l’art, Paris,
1990 (Confronting Images. Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, trans. John
Goodman, University Park, 2005); Victor Stoichita, L’instauration du tableau, Paris,
1993 (The Self-Aware Image. An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting, a revised and
updated edition, Turnhout, 2015).
Concerning the understanding of the distinction, and even the opposition between
iconography and style or meaning and form in relation to Christian images, I would say
that we have inherited the Christian doxa drawn from the famous letter of Gregory the
Great to the iconoclast bishop Serenus of Marseille. It is well known that this letter grants
the image a linguistic status, able to stand in for the sacred text in order to serve those who
do not have access to it. This conception was to leave a profound impression on our “nat-
ural” way of interpreting images in terms of meaning and reading. As a reaction to this lo-
gocentric approach that sees the image as a text to be read, the pendulum has tended to
swing the other way and research has shifted attention from meaning to the material pres-
ence of images. Images appear as objects endowed with a certain power, a feature that short-
circuits the classical metaphysics of representation, whose tendency is to reduce representa-
tion to a disembodied sign or as an imitation of reality that has a symbolic or mimetic
meaning. In this respect it is possible to speak of a return to presence instead of represen-
tation. This is probably a reaction to the increasing dematerialisation of images in contem-
porary society, the very term “image” now tending to make us forget its material density.
search benefit from such new scholarly debates?
Like a return of the repressed, the powers of images have come to the surface, and we
have (re)discovered all their anthropological depths, hidden since the Renaissance by the
theoretical and even ideological frameworks of artistic literature and then of art history.
It is therefore no coincidence that the anthropological turn that has affected art historical
research in recent years has come mainly from medievalists who have sought to reveal the
workings of the belief in the efficacy of images. Some images are now considered as agents,
that is to say, as objects endowed with an ability to act or to trigger reactions and not sim-
ply as things to be interpreted as passive transporters of ideas. The image does not simply
produce meaning, but also actions or reactions, based sometimes on the idea or belief that
RALPH DEKONINCK 123
they can act by themselves. This move from the material turn to the performative turn
characterises a series of research projects carried out in a wide variety of fields, all of which
attempt to go beyond what images tell us or show us towards what they want, or more
precisely towards the “needs, desires and demands they embody” (Mitchell); in short,
what we want from images. To put it simply, while it is obvious that an image can make
us cry, how can we believe that it might cry by itself? This scholarship has especially high-
lighted the ways in which belief in the efficacy and agency of images depends on a series
of factors, ranging from their specific material and formal characteristics to the ways in
which they were displayed and the rituals activating them or being activated by them.
In recent years, we have witnessed a revival of scholarship on ornament (closely relat-
ed to a new interest in the study of parerga and framing effects in general), a dimension
that seems to have escaped the field of iconography, of meaning and of representation.
Being no more considered as a simple pattern, ornament is today approached as a com-
plex phenomenon whose significance exceeds the strictly stylistic dimension. Its aesthetic
dimension, far from being limited to the issue of taste and fashion, must be reintegrated
within the realm of human intentions and actions. By serving with its aesthetic qualities
the significations (symbolic, ritual, etc.) of the object, the ornament acts on the spectator
and makes him react in return. The ways in which ornamentation affects meaning need
thus to be considered. In particular, we need to examine the ways in which an image is
often transformed by the force of its ornamentation, but also by the ornamental appara-
tus accompanying it and bringing it before the viewer. Let me remind that the primary
meaning of ornamentum relates to the harmony between form and function. Deriving
from the Greek etymology referring at one and the same time to the idea of beauty (cos-
metic) and to the idea of order (cosmos), it designates the appropriateness to a function,
even to what guarantees its efficacy, or even efficiency, and therefore quite the opposite of
the superfluous to which we habitually attach the word.
If we consider that the majority of medieval and early-modern images-objects were vis-
cerally rooted in situations that gave them sense and to which they gave sense, I would say
that I understand this last word “sense” (and not “meaning”) in three complementary
ways: in that it touches not only on the question of meaning, but also in the way it refers
to the organisation of space, to the paths induced, to the direction of the gaze as well as
of the body; and finally in that it refers to sensitivity, to the affects, to the emotions that
make sense, according to the first two meanings of the term that I have just mentioned.
Meaning, space, and emotion/motion, or if one prefers the semantic, kinaesthetic and aes-
thetic dimensions (in the primary sense of aesthesis), such are, in my opinion, the coordi-
nates of what I would call the situated arts or images, at least in the field that is mine.
Let me express a truism: in the era of globalisation and the digitisation of images,
which are now apprehended in fairly virtual networks, and in the face of the musealisa-
tion of many works of the past that were not conceived for the museum, it is important
today to consider anew the inscription of works in spatial-temporal situations, or in what
we should call their “chronotopes” in the early days of their creation and reception. Al-
fred Gell speaks of “Art nexus” to designate the network of intentionalities through
which producers and receivers, not to mention all the mediators or mediations in be-
tween, act on the senses of the work, and make sometimes the work itself act as an agent
in its own right. For my part, I prefer the expression of “art connections” that I under-
stand according to the orientations that I have just mentioned (cf. answer to the question
6) and which do not exclude the mediators and mediations. What interests me are the
networks of images and objects that constitute what I would be tempted to call a “spatial
nexus” in which these images-objects make sense. This corresponds more or less to what
Jérôme Baschet called “relational iconography” or to what Ernst Gombrich called the
“ecology of images” referring to the visual environment with which human beings have
always interacted.
its viewers?
In my field of research, the study of the interactions between spiritual practices and
artistic practices (cf. answer to question 1), or, to be more precise, the study of the in-
terferences between the plastic and symbolic characteristics of the works on the one
hand, and the meditative modalities of their creation as well as their reception on the
other hand, allows us to better understand the complex relationship between the visual
appearance of an image and the expectations of its creator and its viewers that they also
contribute to construct. It is a question of looking at the mental equipment of the spec-
tator of the time, i.e., the ways in which his visual and spiritual culture is deeply im-
pregnated with the protocols of reading and experiencing the image conveyed by medi-
tative literature.
More broadly speaking, if we consider images-objects as a crucible of human relation-
ships, the principle of life (Eigenleben) in images, according to Bredekamp, can no longer
be seen conceived as a direct extension of the human body or society, but as a force
(Eigenkraft) emanating naturally from images themselves, a force that can act on the body
as on society. It is possible to speak of figural forces, to use the terminology of Louis
Marin, while Bredekamp prefers to speak of Potentia or Latenz to designate these laten-
cies activated at a precise moment or in specific circumstances. To see the image as a force
is in fact to take an interest in power as potential, in potentiality, that is to say, in the en-
tirety of what the image is able to bring about. What then are the characteristics of this
RALPH DEKONINCK 125
latent force, and what activates or intensifies it, what contributes to its performance and
to its efficacy? That is the question that seems most important to me.
If we were to apply this question to the field of spirituality, it is interesting to note how
material images were not only able to assimilate many of the protocols of meditational or
devotional practices, but also how they were able to impregnate these practices them-
selves, right up to the mystical experiences whose relations testify well to this impregna-
tion of the visual models in vogue at the time. Spirituality has as main objective the trans-
formation and conformation of the faithful to the models given as examples to be imitat-
ed. It is on this ground that meditation has been thought as a painting in action. Paint-
ing was in fact used as a model for thinking about the act of spiritual imitation, the med-
itator being assimilated to a living image, a likeness in the making, who undergoes or par-
ticipates in the work of conformation, a kind of “spiritual galvanoplasty” to use Henri
Bremond’s beautiful expression. Thus, the image in act is at the heart of the meditative
process, as a means and an end. It is in this sense that meditation could be thought of as
painting in action.

Many studies have repositioned the question of the material side of art works at the
centre of art historians’ interests. In contrast to an approach to art history that has long
avoided the material dimension of images in favour of an often strictly stylistic or icono-
graphical analysis, it is now understood that the properties and values of materials are part
of the very meaning of works of art and the ways in which they are received. It invites us
to consider how materials generate certain forms and appearances, and how they bring
about and maintain certain beliefs in the immanent power of objects, independent of
their formal or representational value. This reflection is for example particularly relevant
for liturgical objects made of a wide variety of materials (metals, wood, ivory, textiles…)
whose symbolic meaning pertains to their efficacy.
Turning away from classical iconographic and stylistic approaches, research has at-
tempted to understand the uses and practices which an image can give rise to. Many im-
ages form indeed a knotwork of social actions and interactions with it being at one and
the same time the object and the means. From this, a body of thought on the functions
of the image and on its power to bring about actions or reactions has been developed. It
had long been recognised that the image could arouse an emotion, but this emotion in
turn was able to provoke a motion, such as prayer, conversion, donation, and so on, just
to mention the type of reactions closely related to religious images.
Let’s take again the example of the liturgical realm. It is obvious that in order to bet-
ter apprehend the meaning and efficacy of ritual objects, a strictly stylistic and icono-
graphic approach cannot suffice any longer, because these objects only ‘function’ within
a complex system of relations: relations with the people who ordered and manipulated
them; relations with the ritualized time-space; and finally, the relation between the dif-
ferent objects themselves displayed and used in a certain order.
More generally speaking, we could say that this type of images is only performative
insofar it is performed, i.e., insofar it engages the spectator in a performance. It is even
possible to say that it is effective only when it is performed, in the sense of the perform-
ing arts.
The presence of the image, during the Middle Ages and the Early-Modern period, has
never been as isolated as a work of art hanging in a museum might be (and yet such a
work is not really isolated, the museum itself being a frame that locates the work and de-
termines its artistic status); the image or object is always located in a specific place and
within a network of other artefacts, gestures, words, sounds, smells... After considering the
nature of the work, it is therefore necessary to go beyond its immediate frame to under-
stand it within this network of sensitive relationships that are thus fashioned around it
and because of it.
The symbiotic environment (cf. answer question 7), which I envisage in the church
spaces of early modernity, is composed not only of a great variety of image-objects but
also of a multitude of deeply ritualised gestures and words. This is particularly true for the
ways in which the rituality of ordinary liturgical times on the one hand and the extraor-
dinary religious festivities on the other constituted powerful factors in activating works of
art and images. Far from being conceived as autonomous pieces that we could contem-
plate today in isolation, these works were, for the most part, integrated, understood, and
experienced in complex ensembles that were both perennial and ephemeral. This mixture
of ephemeral and perennial art prompts us to rethink our conception of the hierarchy of
the arts and the boundaries between the different artistic and visual media.
The history of art, especially for the periods after the Middle Ages, continues to main-
tain a division between image and object. This division is still characteristic of museums,
which distinguish between works of art that correspond to an image (essentially painting
and sculpture) and the so-called decorative arts, which fulfil a function that is not exclu-
sively iconic and artistic. Many of these objects do not carry any image. This does not pre-
vent these objects from making images, i.e., from being a space for the projection of an
RALPH DEKONINCK 127
imaginary. An object doesn’t need to be figurative to be efficient, and to form a knotwork

of social actions and interactions. This is also one of the main lessons of the anthropolo-
gy of images and art.
Within the frame of what is labelled today “Global art history”, the investigations on
all type of cultural and especially visual circulations and transfers constitute certainly one
of the main trends of the present research. If we want to understand for example the
worldwide dissemination of early-modern European images, in particular engravings (and
for my part more specifically the Antwerp engravings), and their influence on diverse vi-
sual cultures, we need to better understand the reasons for this international success. In
other words, we need to examine the conditions of possibility of cultural transfer and
translation as well as explaining its effects. This supposes to reconsider the classic question
of influence exerted by the European prototypes on the new conquered territories, by set-
ting aside the model of a one-way relationship between prototype and copy, which as-
sumes a certain passivity on the part of the receiver and the exercise of a certain power of
domination on the part of the issuer. This conception, based largely on the idea of images
as propaganda tools in the hands of conquering powers imposing their models, did in fact
persist for a long time. In recent years, attention has turned more towards the factors in-
volved in the various forms of visual interbreeding that typify the dissemination and as-
similation of this European imagery throughout the world. The image, thus directly or in-
directly inspired by the first European visual sources, can turn out to be the result of a
subtle interplay of borrowings that can affect both themes and modes of composition, or
even particular motifs, which can be infinitely recombined according to a grammar and
syntax that have yet to be understood in terms of how they operate and which cultural is-
sues are involved.
For some time now, research in the anthropology of the image has sought to move
away from specifically Western framework of thought in order to think about the image
by shifting towards the study of non-Western cultures. Anthropologists such as Alfred
Gell, Carlo Severi and Philippe Descola, specialists in these cultures, have in turn at-
tempted to take a renewed look at European arts thanks to this departure from their own
cultural framework. The recent broadened reflections of Philippe Descola in Les formes du
visible (2021) thus seek to account for four modalities of figuration or figurative schemes
through time and across cultures on a global scale (animism, naturalism, totemism and
analogism), the comparative perspective allowing him to bring together an Alaskan Yup’ik
mask, an Aboriginal bark painting, a miniature landscape from the Song dynasty and a
Dutch interior painting from the 17th century. While the generalising ambitions of such
a comparative anthropology of figuration may appear somewhat excessive and, for some,
somewhat reductive, it is certain that it contributes to a fresh look at the iconic and artis-
tic heritage of the West through this test of otherness.
In emphasising the conditions of creation and even more the modalities of reception
of images, some main trends in art historical research and Visual Studies have tended to
neglect their intrinsic being as a factor that can activate their power. In this regard Bre-
dekamp speaks of ‘intrinsischer Bildakt’ (intrinsic image-act) to account for the intrinsic
power of images. The presence in question here is no longer that of the referent in the
image or of the forces manipulating it, but that of the image itself, and it matters little
whether this is anthropomorphic or not, figurative or not. We need therefore to rein-
troduce the issue of the aesthetic dimension of images, a dimension that must not be re-
duced simply to the philosophical sense of beauty but for which it is necessary to restore
the etymological sense relating to sensibility. The anthropology of the image and the Vi-
sual Studies have attempted to deconstruct the aesthetic approach to the work of art so
that other forms of reaction suppressed or sublimated by the aesthetic reaction might be
considered; with the consequence that this dimension has been neglected in research.
Now, the power of images can be brought back to the question of their sensible force.
This is probably one of the best manners to reconcile iconography and style or meaning
and form.
Ralph Dekoninck
UCLouvain
[email protected]
ANNE DERBES
the course of time?
My initial focus as a student of art history was the one I was taught as an undergrad-
uate: analysis of a work’s style to identify the artist and date. In my first graduate course,
a survey of trecento painting, the instructor began by pairing Giotto’s Lamentation in the
Arena Chapel with the Nerezi Threnos. That was life-changing: I turned from matters of
style to issues that were to me far more compelling. Though scholars had assumed the uni-
directional, unvarying “influence” of Byzantine art on Italian painting, in writing my dis-
sertation on duecento passion iconography, I argued that these assumptions were flawed;
while passion images changed fundamentally over the course of the thirteenth century,
painters were far more selective in response to stimuli from the Byzantine east than had
been imagined. I then asked the obvious question: if not “Byzantine influence,” how can
we understand these changes? Surely the sponsors of these works had a role in shaping
them, and though my subsequent research has taken different directions, the relation be-
tween a given work, those who initiated it, those who paid for it, and their possible mo-
tivations has remained a constant interest.
Panofsky’s work, especially Meaning in the Visual Arts, was fundamental: from it I
learned to think about the interpretation of a work in its cultural contexts as an alterna-
tive to the connoisseurial approach then in vogue. Feminist scholarship has been critical-
ly important to me; I cannot point to a single book, but to a group of scholars whose work
on gender and ideology has shaped mine, most prominently Diane Wolfthal and Pamela
Sheingorn. I should also cite Linda Seidel’s early article, “Salome and the Canons”; An-
nemarie Weyl Carr’s essay, “Women as Artists in the Middle Ages: ‘The Dark is Light
Enough’”; and Caroline Walker Bynum’s work, especially the essays in Fragmentation and
Redemption. Most recently, as I studied the baptistery of Padua, I found scholarship on
ritual to be very helpful; publications by Victor Turner, Richard Trexler, and Bissera
Pentcheva were all instrumental.
Traditional art history is unquestionably dated: limited in its narrow approach to vi-
sual images and, at times, tainted in its relationship to the marketplace. Even so, me-
dievalists must sometimes depend on its methods to determine when, where, and by
whom a work might have been produced. Amy Neff and I are currently studying a puz-
zling multi-scene panel in Palma de Mallorca; the panel is ascribed to an Italian artist, but
without solid evidence. We must rely on traditional methods, both stylistic and icono-
graphic, to identify its painter. These methods often point in the same direction – but not
always; visually and often compositionally the panel is strikingly Palaeologan, but at times
its iconography is clearly non-Byzantine. Moreover, close visual analysis indicates that our
painter collaborated with a local artisan. In any case, these methods offer only the start-
ing point of our study: they are necessary but far from sufficient for us to interpret the
painting. In short, integrating traditional methods with new approaches seems the best
avenue going forward. Future developments in technical art history may well allow the
field to move beyond such methods; even now technical analysis is an important tool of
the art historian.
Anthropological and phenomenological approaches to visual images have greatly ben-
efited my research, especially in the last decade. In working on the baptistery of Padua, I
came to understand its images, both painted and sculpted, as participating in the ritual
experience: the images respond to and echo the actions of the celebrant, the ritual garb of
the initiates, and the words of the hymns chanted in procession to the baptistery and at
the font. I came to understand, too, the ways in which ritual can bring together a dis-
parate community and engage those present in a sense of common purpose; both archi-
tecturally and programmatically, the baptistery participates in the work of (temporarily)
uniting the congregation. Toward the end of my research, I was able to witness the rites
of Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday in Padua, and as a result gained a clearer under-
standing of the power of ritual to move even the agnostic observer. The spectacle rouses
the senses: the scents of smoke and incense, the sounds of the chants, and the jostling of
the throng immerse those present in this multisensory experience, and the images, gleam-
ing in a darkened interior, play a key role in this enterprise.
I believe strongly in the primacy of the image; for me, interpretation begins with look-
ing closely at the work itself. Also important to me is the understanding that images are
ANNE DERBES 131
not neutral; they are almost always ideologically inflected in one way or another. The
work that they do has interested me throughout my career. Finally, I believe that complex
works of art such as fresco programs or multi-scene panel paintings are largely collabora-
tive: products of exchange among the maker(s) and funder(s) of the works, and whomev-
er the funders may have consulted. I would argue that the more complex the work, the
more likely it is that several interested parties played a role in shaping it. To cite just one
example, an altarpiece, now lost, in Padua’s San Benedetto was funded by two laywom-
en, and a third woman, the abbess, paid for its transportation and installation in the
church. It seems reasonable that all of these women, as well as the painter(s), would have
had a voice in decisions regarding the altarpiece. Though a focus on the artist as the cre-
ative genius solely responsible for a particular work may now seem dated, it still lingers in
certain circles.
I think all but the most conservative scholars today would agree that meaning is not
fixed but contingent on many things, among them those you list in question 7, and that
“meaning” is not singular but plural; surely images were understood in different ways.
Generally, though, I assume that visually engaged medieval viewers were sensitive to the
choices made by the creator(s) of the work. In other words, many viewers would have tak-
en note of the size, scale, and placement of figures; of their gestures, clothing, and phys-
iognomy; of the colors used; of the relationships between a given image and those in prox-
imity to it. All of these choices would likely have functioned as visual cues, conveying
messages to the attentive viewer. Beyond that, images may have often served as visual cues
to viewers to think of familiar prayers, hymns, biblical passages, and ritual actions, and
these associations too would have enlarged the meaning of a particular work.
Bissera Pentcheva’s work on icons is a pioneering study in this vein. The Padua bap-
tistery of Padua, a building in which I spent many hours, also provides a response. The
baptistery has several doors, only one of which is used by visitors today. In the fourteenth
century, the laity would normally enter from the east, but on ceremonial occasions such
as solemn baptism, the congregation would enter from the processional entrance on the
west. The viewer’s initial vantage point differs according to the door used to enter. Those
entering from the east are first confronted with the tomb monument of Fina Buzzacari-
ni, the woman who paid for the baptistery’s spectacular interior; the size and grandeur of
the monument immediately draw the viewer’s attention. Only those entering from the
west are granted a direct view of Christ, Mary, saints and angels in the dome, reinforcing
the connection between the sacrament and salvation. The natural light in the interior also
changes, and the most important images in the space are the most lavishly gilded, catch-
ing the shifting light; these images would also have gleamed most brightly by the light of
the candles on the altar and carried in processions on feast days.
its viewers?
Yes, I think so. At least we are now raising questions about viewership that previous
generations of art historians did not ask.
If we define an image as one component of a larger work – one fresco in a program,
or one scene in a multi-scene panel painting – then it is clear that these components in-
teract, responding to one another both visually and thematically. This has long been
known about the Arena Chapel frescoes; it is also true for the frescoes in the Padua bap-
tistery and for the individual narratives in the Mallorca panel that Amy Neff and I are cur-
rently working on. But it is true as well for works separated both geographically and
chronologically; for instance, the dome of the Padua baptistery is an intervisual rework-
ing of the east dome of San Marco in Venice.
As for informing viewers’ understanding of experience, the baptistery’s images would
have prompted parishioners to think not only of baptism proper but also of ritual prac-
tices in the cathedral next door; for instance, in many respects the fresco of the Holy
Women at the Tomb corresponds closely to the liturgical drama as it was enacted local-
ly, at the cathedral. I would assume that images in other ritual spaces similarly informed
their viewers’ understanding of the rites performed there or in close proximity.

An image’s materiality often conveys meaning. Compelling work has been done by
scholars who study works in various media such as rock crystal or stained glass, but cost-
ly materials used in fresco and panel painting – gold leaf, ultramarine – of course signify
importance. Diane Wolfthal’s book on Netherlandish canvas painting is an important
study of the Franciscan use of humble materials.
Another approach is to consider the current state of the material used. The graffiti in
the Arena Chapel frescoes provide one example: visitors attacked the demons in hell and
scratched out eyes of malefactors, such as the personification of Iniustitia, thus enlarging
the meaning of the blinding of Lucifer in the chapel’s quatrefoil. Megan Holmes’ work in
progress on such interventions in panel painting promises to be most interesting in this
regard. Pious touch also has altered images’ original appearance: the face of Mary Mag-
dalen in Coppo’s Lamentation in the San Gimignano cross has been effaced, presumably
by devout touching; in a panel in Berlin, the Magdalen’s face has disappeared from the
Way to Calvary, probably in the same way. Joanna Cannon’s classic essay on devotion to
the Virgin’s foot explores the same phenomenon.
ANNE DERBES 133
The term “social life” of images has been used in connection with images in public
spaces, and the frescoes in baptisteries clearly interact with the lives of viewers: in Venice,
Florence, and Padua, among other cities, the local baptistery depicts infants and young
children, often wearing white, often in the arms of parents. Such images would have both
evoked the children brought to the baptistery for the rite of initiation and prompted oth-
er adult viewers to bring their own children to the church for the rite. Perhaps the term
might apply as well to private works such as manuscripts. A northern Italian manuscript
in the British Library, the Passio of St. Margaret, was likely used as a birth aid by women
in labor; it includes the text of the peperit charm, an incantation chanted by laboring
women and their attendants to encourage the infant to come forth. The page with the
peperit chant depicts a confinement scene, and both text and image are smeared, possibly
by tears or the saliva of kisses. In either case, the smears suggest the powerful interaction
between an image and its users.
Almost all the senses, obviously sound (the chanting of hymns, for instance) but also
touch (the hand of the celebrant) and smell (incense, smoke), play a huge role in ritual,
as Thomas Aquinas noted. Images in ritual spaces often correspond to the hymns, touch-
es, even the scents that the congregation would have known in local ritual practice. As one
example, the Padua baptistery’s drum includes an unusually detailed cycle of the life of
Jacob; in Padua, on each Sunday in Lent, congregants and clergy processed to the baptis-
tery as the cantor and choir chanted responsories, and on two Sundays, these responsories
focus on events in the life of Jacob that are depicted in the baptistery. Similarly, on East-
er Sunday, approaching the font, the choir chanted “Praise the name of the Lord”; the
baptistery includes, close to the font, a huge fresco of the Entry into Jerusalem, the bibli-
cal event when Christ was similarly greeted.
If we understand a given work, such as an altarpiece in a church, as part of an entire
ensemble, then the ways that it interacts with other aspects of its environment are clear-
ly important. I’ve touched on this in my responses above, but to expand: in the Padua
baptistery, the gestures of the holy figures in the drum and on the walls of the church of-
ten echo those of a specific living being, the celebrant in the rite of baptism. The cele-
brant’s gestures – placing his hand on the head or chest of the initiate – thus enlarge the
meaning of the images, and vice versa; in that sense, he becomes part of the larger pro-
gram of images.
Spolia represent one obvious instance of transferring and transforming images; figura-
tive spolia, such as the appropriation of Byzantine images in duecento painting, are less
obvious but equally important. In the case that I know best, that of Byzantine passion im-
ages taken and at times reshaped by Italian painters and patrons, especially in Franciscan
commissions, it was important for me to understand as much as possible about the Fran-
ciscan order: the centrality of the passion to the order, with its founder uniquely honored
by the stigmata; the ways in which members of the order described the passion in devo-
tional texts and in sermons; the order’s involvement in the eastern Mediterranean.
That’s a good question; the only answer that comes to me is the need for scholars to
immerse themselves as fully as possible in the cultures they study, whether western Euro-
pean or not. Even those of us who study western European art live at a considerable re-
move, chronological and cultural, from the people who made and saw and used the im-
ages we study.
I would welcome further study of gender issues in medieval art, and especially in me-
dieval Italian art; so much remains to be done. But new generations of scholars will find
their own approaches and questions to ask.
Anne Derbes
Hood College
[email protected]
JAŚ ELSNER
the course of time?
My original formal training as an art historian was in Byzantine Art and Iconoclasm.
That means simultaneously in visual/material and conceptual art history, embedded in ar-
chaeologically-attested materials as well as those preserved above ground, with a strong fo-
cus on integration in related questions of religion, rhetoric (especially polemic and apolo-
getic), highly complex and unreliable literary sources with philological difficulties, an-
thropology and disputed historical contexts. One may say all these strands have remained
in my work as it has extended back to Roman and Greek antiquity, forwards to later me-
dieval, early modern and recent receptions of Classical art, and across Eurasia to Islamic,
Chinese and Indian art. The approaches I have most championed include the viewing of
art in relation to different kinds of materiality and the significantly understudied three-
dimensional semiotics of the ways objects (like boxes, polyptychs, buildings) offer them-
selves to experience. A continuing interest in rhetoric has led both to the study of the his-
toriography of the discipline in its own right and to a specific focus on the problems of
ekphrasis as an intermedial discourse designed tendentiously to ‘translate’ the silent ma-
teriality of works of art into items appropriable by text, textual argument and analysis.
Oh dear. Very difficult! I have spent so much time at war with Gombrich’s Art and Il-
lusion (1960), which is brilliant, brilliantly written and wrong-headed. His version of nat-
uralism (and notably his subtle Eurocentric argument for the superiority of European
models of representation) continues to be a target for attack! Because I work on late an-
tiquity, I too have been caught (like so many of my predecessors) in the great war between
Riegl’s Spätrömische Kunstindustrie and Strzygowski’s Orient oder Rom (both published in
1901). Both are superb as explorations of empirical data – the former in its rigorous for-
malist descriptions and range of materials, the latter in its pioneering movement outside
the geographic norms of its time into the arts of the late antique east and late ancient
Egypt; both are fundamentally wrong – Riegl in the proposition of Kunstwollen as some
kind of salvific underpinning for the discipline and Strzygowski in the racism that ended
up so sympathetic to National Socialism. I see most of what the discipline has been do-
ing in our time as the legacy of the line between Spätrömische Kunstindustrie before World
War 1 and Art and Illusion in the wake of World War 2.
I don’t believe new approaches have really changed things very much. The great value
of the traditional discipline is its rigorous standards (formalist, stylistic, iconographic, and
philological), which will always form the empirical basis. We are now past the post-struc-
turalist wave that glutted the field with a lot of literary-derived theoretics that have less
applicability to material culture than its cleverer exponents imagined. I think ‘theory’
needs always to be flexible and adopted ad hoc in relation to the topic at issue in any giv-
en art historical account. Some of the more recent approaches I very much do espouse,
like comparativism or an ecologically-grounded art history, are themselves rooted in the
old universalist ambitions of the great generations of art historians in the first half of the
twentieth century and in the traditional instinct to put objects into contexts.
We live in the present. The most interesting aspect of a historiographical study of the
field is that you may imagine you are looking at the study of Roman art or Renaissance
art, but in fact you are looking at the playing out of ideologies and political/social posi-
tions held by the participants at the time of writing in relation to those topics. We are no
different. Current debates (‘decolonizing the curriculum’, questions of gender and sexu-
ality, the environmental crisis) are ‘where we are at’, as they say, and ramify against what
we write now. In my case, my current work is comparative (looking at art in the world re-
ligions and especially early Indian Buddhist art by comparison with late antique early
Christian and late ancient Jewish art, all of roughly the same periods), but it has also in-
evitably confronted questions of landscape ecology and colonial histories…
We live in a revolutionary era of the image: the rise of the digital, the streaming cul-
ture of movies and series, texts and novels recalibrated (usually in trivialising forms) into
visual epitomes as films or documentaries, advertising in still and moving images, AI, all
aspects of our lives conducted by screen, the video recording of our every move, the fak-
ing of truth in all kinds of ways using the psychological power of images in eliciting im-
pulses to desire or aversion, the arousal of anger… This incredible revolution (at least as
JAŚ ELSNER 137
great as the move from roll to codex or the rise of the printing in the history of the book,
but now so much directed translinguistically to the use of images) is what we live now.
We cannot have the distance to grasp or assess it, but it is driving our study of art more
than any notion or concept.
I am not a fan of the idea of images as some kind of instrumental conveyor of ‘mes-
sages’ or ‘concepts’. This is too linguistic a model for how art works. Nor do I like the
metaphors of ‘communication’ or ‘conveyance’. Images ‘speak’ silently and with multiple
meanings depending on the psychological and cultural experience of those who view
them. They cannot be entirely controlled (although the attempts to do so are frequent)
and they always occupy a spectrum of potential significances. Meaning is something view-
ers may choose to impute into art, but also to withhold from assenting to. One issue in
the current culture and the rise of screens is the concomitant loss of a sense of the mate-
riality of objects – three dimensions, tactility, weight, tangibility, smell. All these are part
of what we might call ‘meaning’.
Since I do think relevant meaning (which is not the same as authorial intention or un-
derstandings at different viewing eras) is constructed at the point of reception, such factors
as mise-en-scène strategies, visibility conditions and the experiential dimension are essential.
These can to some extent be controlled by the maker or propagator of images, but – even
in so ritually circumscribed a space as a church – the choices of what to look at, in what
order and with what obedience to or disregard of decorum makes a great deal of difference.
its viewers?
I do not believe in progress or evolutionary development when it comes to the human
sciences. Why should we be more advanced or intelligent about issues of visual subtlety,
visual appearance or viewing than that old enemy (and lover) of art Plato or than a great
apologist of painting like Leonardo? Why should our art history, so less learned than that
of Riegl, Panofsky or Wind, be better than theirs? No one has thought through the psy-
chological complexities of the visual or of its description more brilliantly than Philostra-
tus (whose Imagines were written in the third century AD) – the subject of a book I am
currently engaged on with my friend Michael Squire. So we are only better equipped in
the sense that we have (if we pay attention) access to the deep thinking of the past and we
have issues of our own, compelling to our time, that were not necessarily foregrounded at
other times. However, that does not mean progress!
I do think images comment on other images and on their viewers’ viewing of them. At
any rate, so many of the reliefs I am studying now (from the great stūpa of Amarāvatī in
south eastern India, 1st century BC to 3rd century AD) stage their scenes in the context of
representing multitudes viewing them and the events they depict. That observation – that
scenes are staged with a surrounding of viewers within the image – is equally true of im-
agery in Roman art or Attic painted pots. The Amarāvatī sculptures perform a commen-
tarial role both on other images and on other monuments at the site. That commentary
plays out against the scriptures to which they allude and the commentaries on those scrip-
tures on which they riff. That problematic of images playing on other images, comment-
ing and being commented on, is no different from the ways Christian art plays on other
Christian art, sometimes on earlier pagan art and always on Scripture, nor is it so different
from the use of digital imagery in film or on the web. Sometimes contiguities work by care-
ful choice (e.g. an art historian’s powerpoint), often by the happenstance of what google
throws up or Pinterest offers to a random click…. What you see is framed by what else is
present and you as the viewer have the choice to go with that or edit the context out…

I think materiality is key, all the more so in the traditional fields because our dominant
means of communication now is online and virtual. Of course, virtuality also has its ma-
terialities (from AI glasses to computers to screens) but these are not the materialities of
the objects visualised. My father was a potter and I remain keenly aware of the need to
complete a pot by handling, lifting, cupping it, as of the need to complete a painting by
viewing it in the flesh… How old fashioned and conservative I have become!
Clearly, both the idea of a social life to images and the rich recent art history of this
theme have real substance. Whether we take this as a matter of patronage and making, or
of viewing and reception, or more anthropologically according to something like the
‘nexus’ proposed by Alfred Gell, it is obvious that images stand in a space between their
makers, promoters and users, supplying different kinds of signification to all these groups
as well as to individuals within them. How much further current approaches can get in
this area, I am less sure. But there is a case for attempting to construct parallel and com-
parative social lives for similar kinds of images (or for the same images that move between
cultures though trade or gift exchange).
The sole emphasis on sight is a terrible aberration and the result among modern stu-
dents of too much internet! All objects have a smell (remember the not wholly pleasant
JAŚ ELSNER 139
cow-glue in old books and the dry scent of dust). All objects have weight. Ekphrasis in
antiquity is obsessed with the sounds, smells, even tastes of the visual (including the ways
it plays in the imagination), since the visual is really a route into the synaesthetic. No im-
age executed in pre-digital materials is fully flat or dematerialised: even analogue pho-
tographs have negatives and positives played out on the surfaces of the paper chosen for
the print. In my fields of work, the play of engraving and stippling on metal or stone
against the voluminous implications of deep relief carving (even in ‘flat’ reliefs as opposed
to fully 3-d sculpture) is essential for the material, visual and rhetorical articulation of al-
most all ancient art (Classical, Chinese, Indian, Mesoamerican). And the thickness or
thinness of paint on plaster or paper or canvas or board is no less important than colour,
form and design…. This is before we start on questions of function such as works of art
that are intended to supply scent (like censers) or light (like lamps).
It has always been the case in monumental art that the choice of a site is as much part
of the monument as the man-made addition to the site that might transform the whole
into ‘art’. The 3000 BC stone circle at Castlerigg in Cumbria is small – nothing like
Stonehenge – but nonetheless a substantial monumental act in the mountains. What it
does, in its site, is to define the circle of mountains around it (visible as circling peaks
across 360 degrees from the spot) as precisely that – a totally natural, magical circle whose
phenomenological and environmental circularity is defined through or made sensibly pre-
sent for human participants by the smaller circle of stones (made from the materials of
those mountains but differently and humanly configured). The dialogue is what makes the
art. It is in the category of all great landscape art (Smithson, Goldsworthy, Ai Wei Wei
etc) but in a different league…. How can we exclude the non-figurative, landscapes, nat-
ural materials, living beings from art, iconicity or art history?
I think part of the nature of art is its magical quality of transformation – the meta-
morphosis of raw materials into something alive in a different way from those materials
in the viewer’s experience. That goes for all kinds of bricolage, spoliation, appropriation,
copying, replication and so forth. The problem with generalized hermeneutic tools here is
that the historical and contextual situations are different in all cases and the hermeneutics
need to be adapted to the discursive story being told by the art historian.
This is a fundamental question. It has two elements. First, it is actually a disaster that
English should be the lingua franca: the great strength of art history (and I write as an En-
glish-speaker) is its multiple European languages/conceptual systems of expression: re-
ducing them to one is to write out so much of what has been done and what is possible.
The aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities of what can be said in French, Italian, Ger-
man, Spanish, Russian are different from and massively enriching by contrast with what
can be said in English. Second, all these European languages are grounded in Eurocentric
assumptions founded in the Christian reception of the Classical tradition and their joint
reflections on images. This entire tradition is totally inadequate to cultural systems found-
ed on entirely different conceptual models – notably, for instance, the rejection of real
presence in the ‘emptiness’ of Buddhist traditions in e.g. India, China, Korea and Japan,
the rejection of linear time and the denial of the notion of a single lifetime as the one and
only life of a given human being or animal in traditions from Hinduism to many oral cul-
tures in Australasia or Africa and so forth. Whatever is meant by concepts like ‘art’, ‘im-
age’, ‘relief’, ‘sculpture’, etc., in the multiple cultures west, south and east of Europe has
never been properly studied – and to reduce these multiple things to deeply ancestral Eu-
ropean terminologies is frankly reductive and ridiculous (quite apart from neo-Colonial-
ist apologetic politics, whether explicit or not).
Above all, we need two huge projects. First, to grasp the key terms relevant to art his-
tory in all the ancient and living literate cultures/languages east of Europe – Arabic, Per-
sian and so forth as far as Japanese – as well as south (one thinks of ancient Egyptian, Su-
danese, Ethiopian, Yoruba as well as Islamic north African) and as far as is possible look-
ing also at the literate ancient (pre-European) cultures of the Americas. That is a philo-
logical project for hundreds of scholars gathering all written references and understand-
ing the concepts within their own cultural encyclopaedias and taxonomies of meanings
across time. Second, there needs to be an anthropological project of the same kind look-
ing at the extremely rich conceptual languages for what we think of as ‘images’ in the vast
range of oral cultures (for whom literacy is a post-colonial creation) in the Americas,
Africa, Australasia. I realise this is a fantasy: no one will ever fund such a thing and few
people are equipped to conduct the enterprise. But the result would be the possibility to
create a genuinely global, non-Eurocentric art history, capable of comparativism and of a
robust critique of colonial assumptions.
Jaś Elsner
University of Oxford
[email protected]
PABLO ESCALANTE GONZALBO
the course of time?
My research is situated in the field of the transformation of pre-Columbian artistic ex-
pressions under the circumstances of colonization. One of the challenges of this area of
knowledge is the need to recognize forms and meanings potentially belonging to two dif-
ferent traditions, and to value their connecting routes. It can be compared with the study
of Christian art of Late Antiquity, insofar as it is necessary to consider pagan symbolic tra-
ditions, as well as the new languages generated in Christian thought.
My work has taken care of two aspects of this transformation of indigenous art: On
the one hand, I have dealt with a set of artistic manifestations that formed an integrated
whole and reached their full visibility only within liturgy. On the other hand, I have stud-
ied pictographic codices produced by native artists throughout the sixteenth century, in
which the rationality of the changes can be explored in detail.
I would highlight three specific methodological challenges: 1) Characterize Mesoamer-
ican religiosity and liturgy as it survived the cataclysm of state religions after the Con-
quest. 2) Define the ways of action of religious orders to conduct the process of syn-
cretism. 3) Build the category of Mesoamerican pictographic language.
In Islands of History, by Marshall Sahlins (Chicago 1985), I found approaches that
stimulated my reflection on the symbolic expressions of cultural diversity in coloniza-
tion contexts. The book gave me tools to inquire about how traditions determine cog-
nitive criteria. In Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, by
E. H. Gombrich (Princeton 1960) I obtained very useful clues to meditate on what to-
day we would call the construction of pictorial languages, and especially some guidelines
that have allowed me to build a working definition of the concept of “Pictographic lan-
guage”. And, thirdly, I read an Italian version of several papers by Aby Warburg, under
the title La rinascita del paganesimo antico, originally Gesammelte Schriften, recollected
by Gertrud Bing (Leipzig-Berlin 1932). There I could see acute insights that guided my
inquiry into the use of humanist sources in New Spain, and a line of thought on the Pa-
ganism/Christianity relationship, which has accompanied my vision of the sixteenth
century since then.
I find that any form of methodological extremism that proclaims the superiority of one
research strategy and the obsolescence of the others can impoverish Art history. I also be-
lieve that the instrumental utility of some research steps is often confused with the expla-
nation strategy, which should be as comprehensive as possible. That said, I find that the
exploration of style is a necessary tool to identify basic aspects of geographical or ethnic
affiliation, and more complex aspects regarding the intentionality of works of art. I also
think that iconography, as an assessment, even if provisional, of the potential meanings
of an image, offers a starting point for other revisions.
The dichotomy iconography/style is a naïve appreciation: no scholar can ignore that
style acts as a factor in the construction of meaning, that stylistic variations respond to
needs for meaning.
The writings of classic authors of iconography, such as Edgar Wind or Erwin Panof-
sky were quite complex constructions, difficult to overcome; they implied a great hu-
manistic erudition, philological strategies, as well as very lucid notions of the History of
ideas and the analysis of social contexts.
Some of the recent turns in the history of images are the continuation of method-
ological explorations begun long ago. In recent decades, for example, a way has been
found to introduce semiotics among the tools of the art historian, without the previous
levels of conflict and misunderstanding.
Studies on reception, whose long history Peter Burke reminds us, have served in these
days to open new routes in the knowledge of images. I appreciate and share Burke’s idea
that “the more distant the two cultures are, the more visible the reception process be-
comes”, which makes this approach especially useful for shedding light on images in the
context of the relationship between The West and the indigenous worlds.
Some studies on the cultural patterns of colonial societies have proposed very innova-
tive approaches as to what we could call “the double reading” of objects: objects related
to native traditions, and at the same time inserted in the order of European and Christian
customs, and even in the world market. In this respect, the work of Thomas B.F. Cum-
mins seems exemplary to me.
PABLO ESCALANTE GONZALBO 143
One of the most relevant notions that have been constructed in the history of art in
recent decades is that of pictorial language: a type of analysis that transcends the bound-
aries between formal and iconographic studies, and that also considers the complex prob-
lems of materiality. The exploration of pictorial language has relied in some way on the
methodological legacy of structural semiotics, and on studies, quite recent, on the gaze as
a determining historical fact in artistic processes.
Colonial artifacts and images show, on the one hand, the decomposition of native
techniques and styles and, on the other, a variety of adaptation strategies to coexist with
European forms. Images immersed in domination/negotiation dynamics usually show a
delicate balance in the construction of meanings; they take advantage of different
metaphorical levels of symbols in search of religious and cultural compatibility. This cir-
cumstance of my object of study inclines me to seek more comprehensive methodologi-
cal approaches, capable of exploring the semantic routes created by procedures such as
analogy and juxtaposition. The question of colonial images goes far beyond the “coexis-
tence of styles”: it is precisely about the creation of new plastic languages.
I work with images and liturgical spaces, and with pictorial representations of the ter-
ritory that seek to intervene in the negotiations between indigenous people and Spanish
colonists. From that study experience, and meditating on previous research, I would say
that the meaning of an image is the way in which its visual configuration confirms a belief.
I think of an example, which I will explain without details. The members of an in-
digenous brotherhood meet in the cloister of the monastery, there they make smaller pro-
cessions than those carried out in the atrium. The pavements of the cloister have been flat-
tened with red gravel, as red were the stones of the cave in which their ancestors saw the
sacred sign that motivated them to stop their migration and found the city State. In the
cloister here are images of jaguars, as in native founding legends. On the top of the foun-
tain stands the sculpture of an eagle, brought from the ancient settlement which the fri-
ars have forced them to abandon. In the procession they carry crosses adorned with feath-
ers and flowers.
This whole set of images has a deep meaning for the community: we are Christians, we
are pilgrims, our ethnic history is part of the history of salvation.
Most liturgical images were embedded in complex assemblages and only within them
did they have full meaning. Spaces, routes, and illuminations, as well as ornaments, cos-
tumes and other images were part of such sets.
This becomes evident in the spectacular autos sacramentales and in rural processions,
but it was something very widespread, especially in the liturgy of the 16th century.
Even relatively sober ceremonies, such as the procession of a brotherhood through the
corridors of the cloister, formed part, together with the images, of the same unit of mean-
ing. The narrative of the Passion of Christ, which was the most common pictorial pro-
gram in the lower cloisters of New Spain, had to be combined with the march of the be-
lievers to complete a meaning such as “His sacrifice produces our salvation”.
Incense or gunpowder smoke was used in New Spain, and still today, to form a cloud
that surrounds some processional images. At certain festivals, the offering of bread and
wine is also caused to rise from a cloud of smoke. The device of the cloud produces the
notion/sensation of wonder and signals the crossing of the border between the divine and
the human.
its viewers?
I think a distinction can be made between two types of studies on human relationship
to images. Those that deal with a more intellectual relationship, based on leisurely obser-
vation, and linked to aesthetic judgment and literature. And, on the other hand, those that
address a more emotional, passionate relationship, based on the gaze, even on glance. At
the risk of simplifying things, we could say that these are two forms of relationship with
images, one elitist (courtesan or bourgeois) and the other popular, or popular collective.
Works like Michael Baxandall’s have taught us to what extent there is a social regula-
tion of styles, including an elitist social construction of pictorial languages. Other studies
have warned us of the power of images, quasi acting subjects, in various contexts.
Peter Burke constructed a fairly complete model that contemplates the intellectual
construction of images, the variations that result from that construction, and the collec-
tive responses to images.
There is an asymmetry that we should consider in more transversal investigations: the
elitist response to images is such that it can modify images/ the popular response is such
that it can accept (or reject, for that matter) images as facts of power.
From time to time, the concern of some groups about the possibility that images teach
something other than what should be accepted has been revealed. That fear shows a strong
belief in the ability of images to instruct. The time of the Counter-Reformation is exem-
plary; and it is particularly striking what we see within the corpus of precepts and discus-
sions on painting in the Spanish seventeenth century: a remarkable conviction in the ped-
agogical usefulness of the image!
I hesitate to accept that radical faith in the ability of images to document the people’s
conceptions. Along with the images of the Counter-Reformation, sermons and catechesis
were developed, and there was a general care for the respect of orthodoxy, fueled by the
real risk that the Inquisition represented. In that context, images could confirm more than
instruct, celebrate more than explain.
I tend to think of the efficacy of the image rather in terms of its ability to make beliefs
visible. If the Divina Comedìa described, for educated people, a topography of Heaven
and Hell, the sermons simplified and disseminated it: and the paintings offered a visible
synthesis.
The painting can say as much as “Thus travels the light of Glory ... Something like this
is the way to empyrean heaven ...”.

I think there is no doubt that materiality is part of the message. And today we can ap-
proach the material consistency of images better than ever. For centuries, materials have
been understood as conveyors of certain values, such as rusticity or nobility, inevitably
connoting the meaning of the works. To this traditional assessment, we should add a rel-
atively recent understanding of materials as the origins of the meaning process, at least in
some cultures and in certain types of works. I believe that the use that many abstract
artists made of materials, as objective or natural referents, not only favored the aesthetic
approach of the public, but also promoted a new interest in “understanding” materials. I
think of Tàpies, or Pollock.
However, I am more familiar with non-Western and syncretic art and its ceremonial
contexts. Some progress has been made in identifying the cosmological meaning of cer-
tain materials. And, thus, it turns out that we can affirm that, in the first place, it is jade:
the green stone is the main source of meaning. And then there are its forms, like the ax
or the drop of water, that qualify its meaning. The same can happen with the quetzal
feather or the skin of a jaguar.
assume that images interrelate with their viewers and users
The sentence “the life of images” is a beautiful poetic figure. As soon as we forget that
it is a metaphor, we will begin to move away from understanding the social and aesthet-
ic processes that create the illusion that images live. The expression has been linked to the
name of some authors such as Fritz Saxl and John Berger, in part due to the distortion
produced when translating their works.1 A similar expression was used, indeed, by Hen-
ri Focillon in La vie des formes (Paris, 1934).
The works of David Freedberg and Peter Burke, each in their own way, represent fine
examples of how to face the problem: understanding the efficacy of images in the cultur-
al contexts that determine how they are perceived, and exploring the social process of
feeding/receiving meanings.
We use bold expressions like Michael Fried’s “absorption”, Alfred Gell’s “captivation”, and
even Fritz Saxl’s “magnetic power of images”. And I wonder if we are not, sometimes, begin-
ning to imagine that, indeed, there is something in the images that makes them act on us.
I believe that the best way to profit from the theoretical advances on the interaction
and response of people to images would be to deepen our knowledge of the social rela-
tionships underlying these apparent relationships of attraction.
Most of the pre-Hispanic images that we know were literally immersed in long and
complex ceremonies. Consider, for example, groups of young people who entered a
square dancing and singing to the rhythm of drums and flutes. They were soon engulfed
in copal smoke from the braziers. They could smell the scent of flowers that saturated rugs
and parapets. As for the images of their gods (those we see in museum showcases today):
consider that they were painted in bright colours, impregnated with blood or charcoal,
covered with blankets and feather ornaments. Those who participated in the celebration
did not go there to contemplate the images; rather they appeared before the images and
were “observed” by them. The gods, whose effigies had been activated for a few days with
the temporary inlay of precious stones, were deemed to be actually present.
Without music, without cyclical movements, without the lash of the fragrances of
smoke and flowers, there was no ritual event, nor was the aesthetic episode consummated.
Privileging silent observation is the result of our experience in museums. In the in-
digenous world, even after the conquest, the festival was the space of images par excel-
lence, and it was a multisensory space.
It is not possible to study the indigenous cultures of central Mexico and their plastic
expressions and not arrive to the vision of the landscape as a powerful component in cer-
emonial precincts, in ritual displacements, in visual or oral narratives about identity.
It is an interesting paradox that peoples that developed an intense urbanism, such as
the Nahua, had remained attentive to the reading of landscape, to the point of replicat-
ing it in the ceremonial complexes of their cities. Myths of origin and myths of founda-
tion marked the landscape, inch by inch, in a symbolic narrative of possession and pro-
tection that was repeated in the ceremonies of the year. In fact, ceremonial itineraries con-
stantly crossed from the countryside to the city. In lienzos and codices, this iconic land-
scape was formulated in pictographic terms.
The pre-Hispanic notions of migration, sacred destiny and ethnic identity were linked,
after the conquest, to Christian conceptions of pilgrimage, salvation, and Christian com-
munity. The landscape was re-signified, and the processions gave new vitality to this mul-
tiple system of references: territory, pictorial representation, urban-cosmogram.
Art history must deal with that symbolic device that is landscape and consider rich in-
terdiscursivities: as in topography/myth/pictography/architecture.
I have faced three modalities of transferring images to new contexts. One of them is
the exhibition of debris, which implies an unequivocal reference to another era. It occurs,
for example, when the broken image of an indigenous god is placed face down on the wall
of a church. As a defeated warrior of the Psychomachia.
A second modality is syncretism: the coexistence of the symbolic repertoire of two reli-
gious traditions, under the predominance of one of them and with analogy as a guide. In
the case of New Spain, the understanding of syncretic images and programs requires the
parallel analysis of written and pictographic testimonies, of liturgical episodes, and of the
repertoires and plastic languages of the two traditions.
A third modality is eclecticism. The cases that I have been able to explore show a disar-
ray, but not a disdain for the harmonization of meanings. The works produced after the
collapse of the Teotihuacan empire, in which Mayan, Oaxacan and Teotihuacan motifs
and symbols coexist are paradigmatic. There is a provisional confluence without a stable
hegemony.
Is eclecticism always the expression of a period of crisis? And is syncretism typical of a
society in transition? I think so, in both matters.
In the case of Hispanic America, and since the sixteenth century, the recognition of in-
digenous cultures has been carried out within the framework of the Spanish language and
the classical and Christian philosophical traditions. In the 19th century, the criteria of sci-
entific rationality and new ethnic prejudices were incorporated. So, anglophone hegemo-
ny is only the last leg of the process.
Impossible to escape the system of thought that gave rise to our current way of
analysing the world. However, the historical sciences have some mechanisms of review
and self-criticism. Since the 1970s, for instance, research on the indigenous worldviews,
as well as translations and philological studies, has intensified. This has allowed new in-
quiries with alternative explanations that are not restricted by Western views of art and
religion.
Faced with the issue of the English-speaking predominance in art history scholarship,
I believe that the challenge of the Hispanic American countries goes beyond the delicate
task of translating the concepts. The biggest problem is our theoretical and conceptual de-
pendence on North American and European academic circles. In other words, the scarci-
ty of our own theoretical production.
Sometimes partisan positions within the academic endeavor make me uneasy, even
more so if they proclaim the death of the previous ways of investigating. The best works
of art history that I know, those with the greatest explanatory capacity for complex prob-
lems, are those that integrate various methodological procedures, and can incorporate new
analysis strategies without ignoring the resources that are at the origins of the discipline.
When I examine with my students the works of Svetlana Alpers, for example, we have this
feeling that the tools of the old masters and new approaches can coexist in solid and
deeply historical explanations.
Personally, I think it would be helpful for art history to revisit its relationships with
social history. Concepts such as ideology, whose application to the study of images Nicos
Hadjinicolau probed, or hegemony, so interesting in the study of culture, can enrich the
current panorama in the analysis of images. I have the impression that our success in un-
derstanding the processes of construction of meanings, and of responding to images,
could be completed with the reconsideration of the cultural conflict typical of divergent
interests in history. There are social circumstances outside the canvas or the wall that we
do not always make visible in our explanation.
Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
[email protected]
1. In its translation into Spanish, Lectures of Fritz Saxl, edited by Gertrude Bing, (London 1957) bear the
title La vida de las Imágenes (Madrid 1989). The book About looking, by John Berger (New York 1980), re-
ceived a new title in its German translation: Das Leben der Bilder oder die Kunst des Sehens (Berlin 1981).
IVAN FOLETTI
the course of time?
Trained at Lausanne University, I was initially mainly interested in traditional iconol-
ogy. As early as in my MA studies, I shifted my attention toward the interaction between
spaces, images, and rituals. This interaction between representation and “performativity”
has been further developed, especially in the last ten years, with a growing interest in the
role of beholders and their perception of images. In the last few years, I have been more
and more fascinated by images in the broadest sense of the term – e.g., architectural lay-
outs, urban structures, processions, pilgrims’ bodies – and their impact on human cogni-
tion. In certain cases, I have also investigated objects and images with immense pedagog-
ical, olfactive, and aural potential. Visuality, in these cases, was virtually impossible to dis-
sociate from other phenomena.
In a certain sense, I have moved from conception to perception, and to the experience
of visual acts. However, I believe it is also essential to add that my perspective has always
been challenged by the history of art history.
It is practically impossible to say what the most influential books for my understanding
of images have been. But I would certainly start with the short story The Portrait by Niko-
lai Gogol. This moralizing and romantic tale about art explores the life and power of im-
ages. Reading this novel as a teenager, I was fascinated by its ideal of the artist who should
never betray his talent and “sell his soul”. More interesting from a scholarly perspective was
the full realization of how visuality is an instrument of both taste and artistic research.
Two other books transformed my understanding of images. The first is My Name is
Asher Lev by Chaïm Potok, and the second is Neither God nor Man by Herbert Leon
Kessler. Both books discuss the role of the invisible God in visual culture. The first is the
literary confession of a Jewish artist from the Bronx, discovering his identity as a painter.
He transgresses the rules of his Hassidic community to depict a Crucifixion featuring his
mother’s face. Kessler’s book unites the image of the Crucified Christ with the Judeo-
Christian debate on images.
I would distinguish between methodologies and scholarly traditions. As for the first,
iconographic and formal analysis are simply the basis of art history and visual studies.
Without them, it is hard to imagine any systematic use of other methodological tools.
However, I strongly disagree with the use of any methodology as an end or as a must.
Each object and image require a unique approach. Furthermore, I believe that any obses-
sive or artificial use of one specific methodology by an entire school of art history can de-
stroy the field. I am therefore convinced that all possible methodological tools should be
used to access the meaning and relevance of images, in the past and in the present.
Without a doubt, I’ve benefited from several of them, from the amazing challenges
posed by the anthropology of images, most notably developed by Hans Belting, the de-
bates initiated by the “material turn” and, lastly, within the framework of the “sensual
turn” promoted by Pentcheva and Lidov. Once again, however, these tools should serve
the final goal of understanding and explaining objects and images.
From the “power of images” to “hierotopy”, “sensual icon”, “Bildakt”, “icon of space”
and the concept of “agency”, the notions used in present-day scholarship are numerous.
They are all, to some extent, important to the development of the field. The two most rel-
evant, for me, are very close to one another: the notions of “spiritual eye”, developed by
Kessler, and “iconic presence”, established by Belting. Both are instruments that enable
us to better understand the role of images as thresholds between the tangible world and
what lies beyond. For a medievalist, I see these as crucial tools to make better sense of past
men and women’s relationships to images.
The “meaning” of any image should be divided into two main categories: pre-cultural
and cultural. The first layer of understanding occurs in the first moments the beholder is
faced with an image. This understanding is “intuitive” and mainly determined by colors
IVAN FOLETTI 151
and lines. The second level arises from the beholder’s cultural knowledge and is under-
stood through iconography and/or inscriptions accompanying the image. The meaning of
images and objects can be reinforced or weakened by the materials used in its making: a
golden image has a very different meaning from a wooden one (if the wood, of course,
does not imitate gold).
The mise-en-scène of an image, as well as any performer and/or guide explaining it, ob-
viously has a fundamental impact on its meaning. A Christological cycle of mosaics could
be understood in a completely different way if used during a bishop’s homily – the story
of Christ’s life can represent an anti-heretical visual project. A hidden image, revealed only
periodically, will of course be more attractive, an aspect which also enhances its meaning.
In the second case, “meaning” can take on a very important social dimension as well, an
aspect again closely linked to the materiality of the image itself.
its viewers?
I believe we certainly have more tools and data to better understand the expectations
of the potential viewer. On the one hand, textual evidence can be accessed more easily
thanks to digital tools: image databases are making comparative approaches easier, and of
course research in neuroscience is paving the way for unexpected discoveries. On the oth-
er hand, we should admit that our training is of much lower quality in some essential as-
pects: compared to scholars a century ago, we have an ultimately lower overall culture of
literary sources, and our knowledge of other disciplines is much weaker. For the smart-
phone generation, the growing problem of concentration and personal memory represents
a clear weakness. We have more tools but less knowledge.
9 To what extent can images contribute to informing their viewers’ understandings of other
I believe knowledge of images is an obvious tool to better understand other visual ele-
ments. This is particularly true for pre-modern images, where the repetition of patterns
and/or prestigious models is essential to visual culture. In a more banal way, certain im-
ages can enable the viewer to reconstruct other missing ones, contributing to a more com-
prehensive outlook.

As stated above, the material dimension of an image is absolutely fundamental in all
stages of its life, from conception to use and reception. A golden sculpture covered with
shining precious stones could be both an image of a saint and a metaphorical image of
Heavenly Jerusalem. An object’s materiality cannot be dissociated from its meaning. In
this regard, our perspective is truly biased, due to the modern hierarchy of the arts and
digital technologies. A painting on wood may be considered more relevant for scholarship
because it was done by Giotto, than an ivory altar, which in the past would have been
considered more valuable because of its materiality. The screen, then, as a threshold, ob-
viously flattens any possible material dimension. It is perhaps not surprising that the ma-
terial turn arrived precisely when personal screens started to dominate society.
As mentioned previously, the interaction between images and rituals has played a cru-
cial role in my own understanding of art history. This is a classic case where images have
a social life. They can contribute to inclusion in or exclusion from a community and be-
come real actors within social groups. “Walking images” (e.g., devotional images in pro-
cession) interact directly with the viewer, who can, in certain cultures (thanks to masks or
paintings), become an embodied image himself.
Definitely the latter. Images imply a multisensorial experience. In my research, the
most classic example are the 5th century doors of Santa Sabina in Rome. These are com-
posed of carved wooden panels with images in relief that can be touched. Engraved in yel-
low cypress wood, they originally had a very intense scent, like the smell of incense. And
as recently discovered, they were also conceived as an acoustic box to amplify the sound
from inside the basilica. And this is in addition to the bishop, who possibly used them as
counterparts to his preaching.
I absolutely believe that the image notion should be expanded to all these phenome-
na. Within my research group, we have been investigating issues related to landscape as
part of a visual act for at least five years. Especially in the Armenian context, the combi-
nation of material – such as the color of stones – with the flora and the surrounding en-
vironment play a key role in the understanding of space as an image. Furthermore, much
of the early medieval culture I am investigating is non-figurative, while being extremely
meaningful as an image. We can cite, for example, aniconic reliquaries, where only the as-
sociation of materials have a clear visual meaning. I would also like to mention the re-
search of Bissera Pentcheva and the question of “aural” images “decorating” aniconic
spaces by sound.
IVAN FOLETTI 153
When speaking of objects and images reappropriated for different contexts, the first
notion we encounter is of course the widely-studied “spolia”. As shown by Dale Kinney,
this is a largely abused word. However, the idea of “memory” constructed through ancient
material culture is fundamental. Within collections, especially in museums, object stories
can also play a pivotal role in suggesting new narratives for otherwise “mute” objects. The
mutilation of images can obviously be a tool of rare violence, while reappropriation of
faces has been recognized as an anthropological act of domination.
I believe that the way English is now becoming the only possibility for scholarship in
the humanities could indeed make it an instrument of colonial domination. As is demon-
strated by the recent dominance of British universities in European Research Council
grants, the perfect mastery of English as a native language remains a clear advantage. Be-
sides this competition, it could contribute to the flattening of intellectual dynamics. On
the other hand, especially for countries that never spoke any of the dominant languages
of academia, “scholarly English” is a chance to bring new contributions to the global
scene. Basically, I see the hegemony of English as a very dangerous issue, especially on the
part of Anglo-Saxon editors and institutions, but also as a great opportunity to make the
research of linguistic minorities more accessible.
From a terminological perspective, this is obviously a challenge for global art history.
We are currently working on a project dealing with the translation of Western medieval-
ist terminology into the Chinese context, and we should definitely consider how the is-
sues of translation and diversity are still very much present in the multicultural spaces still
existing within our field.
I do believe that Art History needs to undergo a significant self-transformation, mov-
ing from individual research to “laboratories” of the human sciences. The amount of
knowledge and the acceleration of data production does not leave us many other alterna-
tives. At the same time, such a collaboration may, if used properly, allow us to overcome
one of the main limitations of traditional academia, i.e., its extremely hierarchical struc-
ture. Art History also needs more “real” transdisciplinary research, in the sense of collab-
orative projects with a shared goal. By this, however, I am not speaking of the sometimes
very empty requests of some grant agencies. On the contrary, I believe in transdisciplinary
dialogue only as the result of a true shared enthusiasm for research.
At the same time, we need a different place for humanities in society, with less precar-
ious positions. The current situation is devastating for both young researchers and senior
scholars – the first broken by insecurity, the second unable to build on stable ground and
at the same time tempted by the abuse of power. In this context, I believe new ethical
standards in the field are essential: too many publications appear simply for career-relat-
ed purposes or because of cronyism – justified by these precarious situations. If the field
becomes a career-oriented industry above all, it will lose its essential purpose, not to men-
tion its relevance to society.
Ivan Foletti
Masaryk University
[email protected]
BEATE FRICKE
the course of time?
Originally, I wanted to enroll in an art history program and focus on the study of arts
of the Americas, just having returned from travelling through Guatemala and Honduras
for a couple of months. However, the last chair position in Germany for then so-called
Pre-Columbian art had been abandoned in the 1980s, contrary to the former plan to cre-
ate a department of world art history at the University of Heidelberg. When continuing
instead with medieval art and turning my attention to relics, reliquaries, so-called cult im-
ages, and the theory of images and visual culture in the Latin West, I was still inspired by
anthropological approaches, which led me to pursue questions such as what has triggered
major changes in the veneration of images and in visual culture more generally. I was in-
terested in the powers attributed to and residing in a vessel, not an image, and how its cre-
ation generated questions about artistic imagination as well as philosophical discussions
regarding the nature of visibility, humanity, and time.
When I changed to the anglophone academic system, my research shifted to concerns
about how we can understand and represent the diversity of how the past is inscribed into
the present. My attention shifted to different types of archival traditions, to artistic re-
flections embedded into the works created by pre-modern artists, and, more generally, to
new ways of addressing the gaps in what is all too often presented as linear traditions. I
started to be interested in overcoming the homogeneity ascribed by institutions and by
practices of preserving memory and cultural heritage to a past that never was as pure, as
male, nor as religious as it is often still staged. Embarking into Eurasia-Africa lines of ori-
entation, overcoming the language limitations and narratives resulting in them, was and
still is my aim.
Miguel Ángel Asturias, Hombres de Maíz; Mary Carruthers, Craft of Thought; Kubler,
Shape of Time.
Since these are three different questions, one looking back, one asking for an evalua-
tion of the impact, and one looking forward, I would like to answer the parts separately.
1. The described opposition originates in the relatively defined points of departure, i.e.,
the “artist” vs. a clearly defined culture or region in a specific period, and in attempts to
negotiate their relationship. None of these concepts has survived in their original homo-
geneity and definition.
2. Since then, art history has broadened the fields and types of objects of study to en-
compass visual culture, thereby merging high/low artistic cultures, including indigenous
cultures and traditions of memory, and beginning to acknowledge the diversity of prac-
tices in the conservation of different pasts.
3. We need to understand the impact of the incompleteness and scatteredness of the
surviving objects/monuments and related archives and archival traditions. Only after un-
derstanding how our past and present approaches have created dominant and even false
narratives can we collaboratively invent new future approaches across the thresholds cur-
rently dividing us into subfields and more or less privileged academic cultures.
One could say I benefited greatly from the so-called turns such as the Pictorial/Iconic
Turn, the Material Turn, The Global Turn, Art & Science, etc. Several protagonists con-
tributing to these turns have definitely inspired me, yet I felt and feel not defined by these
turns. I would not subscribe to one of the respective approaches “only.” Each turn creates
a focus, thus not only opening but also narrowing perspectives, and this is especially the
case when such terminology is applied retroactively. Once a turn is labelled as a specific
“…. (put in random adjective) turn” and articles and/or monographs describing it are
published, this particular turn is usually already over. Furthermore, I often realize that sig-
nificant scholarship contributing to the rise of such turns has often been published years
or even decades earlier. E.g. Edward Bevan’s “Holy Images” 1940 has inspired Ilene
Forsyth’s “Throne of Wisdom”, 1972, Hans Belting’s “Bild und Kult. Das Bild im Zeital-
ter vor der Ära der Kunst“ / “Likeness and Presence. The image in the era before art”,
1990 and Gerhard Wolf’s “Salus Populi Romani. Eine Geschichte römischer Kultbilder,”
1990, long before the pictorial turn described by T. W. Mitchell (1992), or the iconic turn
proclaimed by Gottfried Boehm (1994). Thinking in “turns” is mostly triggered by at-
tempts to look back, to categorize what has happened before, not what is going on now.
BEATE FRICKE 157
In a forthcoming collaborative monograph, Finbarr Barry Flood and I try to find terms
for our work – terms that do not carry long histories and cultural baggage from a specific,
and therefore dominant, culture. The term “flotsam” has proven to be particularly help-
ful in identifying objects as well as bridges and differences regarding the archival traditions
and the archives between the two fields of our expertise (the Latin West and the Islamic
World).
In addition to this, we need to understand which images are available to us and why,
and to inquire into questions such as these: which images are lost, which are still there,
which are published, which have never been published, which are digitally accessible, and,
finally, what biases are inscribed into the structures providing us these images? When and
how was meta-data produced for now digitally available images? What images have not or
will never enter these databases and why is that?
And last, but not least, the reflections about the word “image” itself has always proven
to be extremely complicated and productive. As a German-native speaker, the image/pic-
ture differentiation in English has constantly affected my approach, stimulating my in-
terest in terminological traditions condensed in terms such as Bild, imago, ֶ‫( ל ֶספ‬pesel),
εἰκών (eikon), (sura/timthal), to name just a few. We tried to be transparent
about the potential implications of the terms applied to specific objects, about the way in
which preferred terms have changed over time, and about the religious attitudes towards
them in different moments of time and different regions of the world.
Meaning is what we construct retrospectively on the basis of the remaining “tesserae”,
the stones of the mosaic, – the fragmented remainders of the past. But there are three dif-
ferent types of meaning resulting from this reconstruction: 1. Visual objects, in their en-
tirety, can act like a single tessera of the larger mosaic. 2. They can also represent the en-
tire mosaic. 3. In our attempts at writing history, we can focus on the reconstruction of
such a mosaic, on a methodological and/or theoretical level. Processed-based inquiry, with
its premises and assumptions, meta-narratives brought with us as members of a specific
culture, ethnic group, and gender, also contributes significantly to the construction of
“meaning” in visual objects. In the process of interrogating processes, it is determined the
kind of value placed upon particular modes of meaning-making: whether one sees value
in the process of reconstruction itself, in the cultures of loss and oblivion, in the visual
culture which they evoke, or in the contemporary visual tradition created by these “mo-
saics of the past”.
The “meaning” distilled from our attempts to identify historical layers of conveying
sense is often a stark reflection of our current conditions. We are actively debating what
defines our present condition: climate change, inequalities in our present societies, re-
turning nationalisms, a lack of access to knowledge and education in specific social groups
or in disfavored regions. So, we should always keep the impact of our premises in mind,
the current conditions of our thinking guiding our research interests, and our attention
for mise-en-scène strategies in a past “we see now”.
its viewers?
Yes and no – access to extant scholarship and options to publish new knowledge are
increasingly limited for many scholars because of rising fees, paywalls, reduced funding
for purchasing publications. Each culture, each subfield of our discipline yields different
answers to the question how the relationship between visual appearance and its reception
has historically changed over the arch of time. Global/World Art history has demonstrat-
ed that we have always been global/globally connected. Yet we cannot stop here, and we
should not fall back into the study of regional phenomena or national paradigms, and in-
stead learn from each other and expand our knowledge together. Methodologically, the
increase in diversity of scholars, regions, methods, is only beginning, and we need more
and different forms of collaboration to approach the relationship between visual appear-
ance of an object and the expectation of its viewers in different cultures. Only in dialogue
we can learn to acknowledge our cultural premises and try to overcome them via the de-
velopment of new approaches.
Images can help us to reveal a past not recorded by written sources. They can help us
to write about a past not documented by authorities, clerics, mostly male and white, from
privileged parts of societies, and from cultures whose past is continued, institutionally,
whose language still exists, whose myths and stories have been recorded. Several cultures
are only preserved through excavations, or known from tombs, or they have not written
down their myths and histories in form of chronicles, and their archives, institutions, and
written documents have been destroyed. We should work together and turn challenges,
disparities, and imbalances into the basis for collaborative efforts to develop new methods
together, methods to strive for a better understanding of the past revealed by and in vi-
sual cultures. Images can tell the other side of the “officially” recorded history; they can
provide insight into the everyday lives of people, or into the realities of underrepresented,
suppressed, or disenfranchised groups in a society, for example by showing the meaning,
the impact, and the contribution of slave labor to the production of works of art. Images,
if not studied according to certain established master-narratives, can diversify recorded
voices; they are symptoms of the impact of theft, and especially of cultural constructions
of “heritage”. They make us conscious of the hegemonies embedded in the dominant nar-
ratives coining our discipline, our methods, and our thinking and vision of the past.
BEATE FRICKE 159

Material in the context of making makes me raise questions such as these: what type of
ingredients do you need, where do they come from, which trade connections contributed
to their semination, what form of knowledge do you need to use the material and to work
with it, or to achieve specific effects? What material forms condition the perception of im-
ages – reflection, light sources, visual or physical access, barriers like grilles, screens, veils,
etc. How do specific materials change over the arch of time; has the color changed, or the
surface, its haptic character, its smell or taste? Which material carries which specific mean-
ing in which region and religion? How was this meaning attributed to a material commu-
nicated, perceived, defined, and/or disseminated? And, last but not least, how does the ma-
teriality of images interact with the spirituality of its recipients? Which beliefs contributed
to this relationship, who articulated them, and how did they change over the course of time
and in different religions? I am thinking of discourses such as the nature of four elements,
or the relationship between macro- and microcosm that can be found in several religions,
regions, and periods. Materiality, we might say, is a reciprocal kind of concept; the mate-
rial through which an artwork or image is rendered takes on its own resonances, which in
turn inform the criteria through which material can be perceived in the first place.
We can approach the social life of images through the method of reconstruction: a re-
flection on how the “life-world” (Husserl) or “life-forms” (Wittgenstein) have been
recorded, and how we as art historian reconstruct the past. Life-world, a term coined by
Edmund Husserl (who uses the German term Lebenswelt), may be conceived as a universe
of what is self-evident or given within a specific practice, a world that subjects share and
experience together. Essential here is the embeddedness of theoretical insights into life-re-
lated practical contexts, e.g. geometry originated in the need to remeasure the land after
flooding of the Nile, Euphrates or Tigris, and later turned into a practice for measuring
everything. For Husserl, this leads to a tension between the scientific/technic aspects of
life and ethical/practical questions of life, resulting in a major crisis, in which the rele-
vance of sciences and technology overshadows ethical and practical aspects of life.
As an art historian unearthing embedded and interwoven life-worlds in pre-moderni-
ty and in cultures whose intellectual and spiritual heritage is only partially recorded, and
of which several social groups are not represented at all, particular challenges are at stake:
How do we embark into the historical layers of what has been recorded about the rela-
tionship between viewers and users? What kinds of images have survived and what kind
of experiences? Can we restore past conceptions of the universe, and which parts of the
societies and the people do they represent? Who is excluded? The differentiation of uni-
verses being self-evident or given is huge with regard to pre-modern cultures – each made
up by different ideas about perception, vision, cognition and especially different religious
traditions. Some images were made to be never seen, others were made to be seen in very
different ways and charged with different roles in religious practices.
Furthermore, the very same object can change it statute many times throughout his-
tory, a cannon can be a military tool, then a display of power as booty, turn into a gift, a
work of a craftsperson, a work of art, and last, but not least, a work displayed in a muse-
um or in a virtual exhibition. Each of these changes defines the social life of the object.
With each change, the relationship to its “users” and viewers are reset, and redefined, and
trigger new types of visual experiences.
In my book about the statue of Ste Foy of Conques I have tried to show that the lived
experience by people venerating a statue including a relic and the official theological dis-
courses were often very different yet influenced each other mutually. This interest in stark
oppositions – the official or theoretical discussions about images, their limits, their roles,
and their capacities, and the experience and practice in a religious or even profane world –
has continued to coin my research. That the same object is capable of yielding a multi-
tude of very ambivalent insights still intrigues me. It also has led to my research for an-
other of my projects, my forthcoming book about illuminations of Genesis as an archive
of implicit articulations and reflections by medieval artists about origins: the beginnings,
potentials, and limits of their creativity, their self-reflection of sorts about what an artist
is. How was or could “artistic” practice become a subject of self-reflection, providing
truth into human and/or divine creation. In another research project about bronze
censers, out of which will soon come a volume, of concern is the multisensory nature of
incense, smell, and taste, and the problems of the sense that we tend to favor in our work
as art historians.
In multiple cultures, the iconicity of structures, such as landscape, or of specific mate-
rials, rituals, or of a combination of site, time, and artisans or collaborators play a more
important role than “art” or the production of works of “art” conventionally defined ac-
cording to rather eurocentristic, sinocentric, or dominant narratives in the anglophone art
history that have coined the discipline of “art history” since its origins. If we take up the
challenge of opening up the canon, of re-equilibrating, re-calibrating, and revisioning the
mentioned dominant narratives and structures, we also seriously need to change how the
discipline operates logistically, financially, technologically, and so on. Perhaps most im-
portant are access to scholarship (OpenAccess and/or the reestablishment of scholar-led
publishing) and access to education and training for working in conservation and for in-
stitutions preserving cultural heritage. More generally speaking, we need to develop new
methods and narratives together across the subfields of our entire discipline, and to learn
from scholars working in the global south, especially about the Arts of the Americas, of
BEATE FRICKE 161
Africa, the Oceanic Islands, but also in Korea, Central Asia, and so on. Bridging the di-
vide between scholars working on different periods could help to ease the inclusion of
iconicity attributed to non-figurative objects.
Any fiction of a past, for example the opening of the so-called grottos (Domus Aurea
in Rome), or the invention of grotesques in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian or
French art and poetry, can lead to productive misunderstandings. These developments
have contributed to ideas of Renaissances, and discussions about continuity or rupture
within the history of visual cultures.
Furthermore, there are insights to be found in theoretical discussions about how such
former contexts transformed into new ones, or the degree to which original context can
and should be conveyed in places for which the object was not intended, like the display
of the sacred in a museum. How can we bridge the sacred and profane in a secularized
world? How to address religious or nationalistic re-inventions of the past?
However, most pressing are questions surrounding how we can recover the cultural
heritage of indigenous people after long periods of colonization and suppression? How do
we tackle inequalities of accessibility to one’s own cultural heritage, for example in the
case of the Benin bronzes or works from Afghanistan? These issues pose new challenges,
leading us to reconsider what defines cultural heritage, and to define good practices of
restitution we only begin to conceive of.
Key to avoiding such transfers and implicit re-colonization of the discipline and its ma-
terial, especially in an age in which digital publishing should provide more and not less
access to scholarship, are the following approaches.
1. Understanding and describing the problems in dominant narratives and lineages of
the anglophone world, in which categories developed by white, male thinkers like Hegel,
Kant, Riegl or Wölfflin, and subsequently translated into English, are still key references
for contemporary discourses; this, to me, is a surprisingly narrow canon and is based on
an irritating presumption of continuity if seen from a twenty-first-century perspective
outside of the anglophone world.
2. Develop new categories, methods, and terms together with art historians working in
different periods or regions of our discipline, ideally from another academic context, writ-
ing usually in another language and/or from another part of the world.
3. Respect and understand the alterity of academic writing in different parts of the
world. If a piece of writing in English written by a non-native speaker seems to have “no
argument” from the perspective of a scholar from the anglophone world, that does not
mean there is none. The inequitable weighing of ideas based often on Anglophone per-
spectives, conventions, and criteria is just one problem in our discipline that would ben-
efit greatly from a more open transferal of ideas. Equally pressing is the need to accom-
modate different cultures of academic writing, which in turn might foster wider appreci-
ation for what is perceived to be new or innovative, and thus relevant and deserving of
publication. The turn towards publishing in English needs to be combined with new
strategies of publishing: new types of journals, new formats, and scholars (not for-profit-
presses) designing and running them. OpenAccess should be the norm, not the excep-
tion. Non-native publishers in English should not just succumb to the collapsing struc-
tures of an anglophone academic world, which has outsourced significant aspects of qual-
ity control and selection process to the editorial offices and to scholars working for for-
profit publishers.
On a most basic level, we should study different pre-modern cultures without surviv-
ing texts, thereby focusing on art historical methods and theories for reconstructing the
past. We should come up with new forms of collaboration that should receive more, not
less credit. We need interdisciplinary collaborations to understand the shared heritage of
fields understood in modernity as opposed (e.g. medicine and religion). Furthermore, a
collaborative approach is needed for the systematic analysis of how loss is described, re-
constructed, and addressed in Art History – with particular regard to the discrepancy be-
tween cultures whose monuments and objects are exclusively known through archeologi-
cal findings versus cultures with continuities in language, institutional and religious prac-
tice, especially in regions whose past is told differently in different states, according to
modern hegemonies.
Before any strides can be taken in this direction, it is important to note how even the
act of envisioning the future of the discipline comes with immense hurdles. One of the
central tenets of the aforementioned book project on “flotsam” with Finbarr Barry Flood
was to try to write new histories of objects without written archives, and we were con-
stantly faced with the question of whether our own imagined new approaches might also
be a product of the Eurocentric perspectives from which we were hoping to depart, with
the act of “discovering” gaps in the scholarly imagination not exactly without colonialist
underpinnings. As I have sketched elsewhere in this survey, I find collaboration to be one
of the most fundamental tools for our discipline today, and I believe that only by collab-
orating in the present can we begin to act in a direction that hopefully will eventually ma-
terialize into one that is forward-thinking.
Beate Fricke
University of Bern
[email protected]
THOMAS KAFFENBERGER
the course of time?
Formed as a building archaeologist, my original research focus was the uncovering of
‘objective evidence’, the reconstruction of original shapes and establishing of chronolo-
gies of medieval architectures. During my work on Eastern Mediterranean materials,
though, I became aware of the limits of this methodology as well as of a traditional stylis-
tic analysis. Both approaches remained of importance to me, in order to reach a solid
base for interpretation – e.g., the creation of a comprehensive catalogue of medieval
Greek Churches in Cyprus, each discussed with respect to their formal aspects and
chronologies. However, this did not allow me to further elucidate the role of the inves-
tigated buildings within the societies they were built and used by, in this case the multi-
denominational, culturally diverse environment of late medieval Cyprus. At this point
my focus of interest started including questions of the potentially ‘meaning-conveying’,
iconographic dimension embedded in numerous building projects of the medieval peri-
od (such as choice and reuse of materials, referential systems in chosen shapes and forms,
interaction between spaces, images and beholders), which led to a better understanding
of the multi-layered roles of buildings such as for example the Greek cathedral of Fam-
agusta, Cyprus.
In the beginning, I found books using the approach of traditional building archaeol-
ogy particularly instructive – as an example I can mention Der Dom zu Speyer by Wal-
ter Haas et al., 1972, which formed my appreciation for the meticulous investigation of
the material legacy. My interest in a further contextualisation of works of architecture
was among others fostered by the seminal Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich 1130-
1270 of Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale, already published in 1985. The authors ad-
dress the complex issue of the interdependence between form (‘style’) and function and
prompt reflexion about the semantic readability of stylistic choices. This approach, de-
spite its age, is still influential for my approach to architectures, as it takes into account
the complex historic realities surrounding each creation of a building in the Middle Ages,
also paving way for the inclusion of more updated approaches e.g. of a hierarchisation of
spaces.
Also Stephan Albrecht’s Die Inszenierung der Vergangenheit im Mittelalter. Die Klöster
von Glastonbury und Saint-Denis had an important impact on my approach to medieval
architecture, pointing out the potential of architectures to be imbued with relic-like qual-
ities in order to stage an institution’s tradition and historic value.
An attempt to “fully overcome traditional art history”, as occasionally preached, ap-
pears hardly fruitful. A solid analysis of the objects we are dealing with, as much as their
historic realities by no means absent from older studies, still forms the base of our under-
standing, even if often more implicitly than explicitly. Notwithstanding, dualist distinc-
tions often prove to be a limiting factor in the study of art. While style and iconography
can evidently be clearly outlined through precise definitions, only a more fluid perception
of phenomena, an acknowledgement of their interplay, allows for a productive use of both
notions. If we speak about the iconography of architecture, where we encounter a differ-
ent mechanism of semiotics than in most imagery due to the former’s non-figurative na-
ture, an integrated, combined methodology has proven to be most fruitful. Conclusively
I would maintain that insisting on the use of a single approach – instead of a combina-
tion chosen for a specific set of questions and objects – will often be nothing more than
an intellectual exercise for its own sake.
The enhanced interest in certain approach angles has, despite the long-standing tradi-
tion of an iconographic reading of architectures, clearly helped to form new ideas about
the potential iconicity of built environments. Foremost, the “spatial turn” with its focus
on conceptual and actual spaces played an important role. It enabled the development of
a framework within which an architecture is not solely perceived as the sum of its walls,
but as one element in a relational network with the imagery it contains, the beholders it
was conceived for, the cityscape or landscape it forms part of etc. Somewhat connected
are also the effects of the “anthropological turn”, more specifically the turn towards how
humans affected the creation of architecture, and in turn its impact on society. My per-
sonal research has benefitted from the latter context in that it provides methodological
tools for a valorisation of “minor” works of architecture, which serve as key to an under-
standing of the multi-layered nature of past societies.
THOMAS KAFFENBERGER 165
Important aspects for the study of images in more recent research include the perfor-
mativity, the interactive nature of the objects, which reflect onto the beholder and have
the capacity to affect him/her. This is of special relevance to architectural iconography:
here, the “image” is not confined to a flat surface or a restricted volume; it contains peo-
ple, spectators and accounts for the latters’ spatial mobility and potential reactiveness to
what they behold. Aspects of this could be subsumed under the notion of “Raumbild”
(“image-space”), which has however been used in rather diverse contexts and can be
charged with different meanings.
A notion specifically useful for my own research has been one of the dicta of the soci-
ology of spaces, which sees a space as a relational arrangement of beings and social goods
in a place. Despite its general nature, it underlines the impossibility of discussing spaces
without taking into account the factor of movable and immovable objects and the per-
spective of a (mobile) viewer.
A recurring problem in the discussion of “meaning in architecture” is the multi-
faceted nature of buildings, which at the same time serve a practical purpose (as a con-
tainer for goods, for social actions), but also as marker of places and as objects structur-
ing landscapes and cityscapes, ultimately as conveyer of political and religious realities.
“Meaning” already occurs on a pre-iconographic level: the distinguishable shape of a
building signals to the beholder, that he/she is for example approaching a church, a mar-
ket hall, a bridge. This aspect is well illustrated by the debate around the “correct and
suitable” architecture for train stations around 1900, where a distinguishable, intuitive-
ly recognisable shape for this new type of building was being sought. While a certain cul-
tural embedding is necessary in the general sense for the perception of all “meaning” in
architecture, further levels of meaning are conveyed to those with more profound visual
and cultural experience. A specific choice of rare, expensive materials can be interpreted
as a general message of venerability, or, with an enhanced cultural background, might re-
fer to a very specific historic context explaining the use of a specific valuable material in-
stead of another.
In my opinion, meaning in architecture is always created on the one hand through an
interplay of appearance and form, spatial staging, the arrangement of movable objects
etc., and on the other hand through the cultural experience of the beholder, paired with
the “immaterial narrative”. Meaning could already vary according to the expectations of
the beholder and the mode of their interaction with the building: in the case of a church
this could be to find a space for prayer and worship, for burial and redemption, but also
for refuge, physical security, and such. Cultural habits can imbue an architecture with
meaning, often in an interplay between the conscious organisation of spaces, the form of
the architecture and the placement of images within; as example might suffice the use of
church portals as places of legal decisions and judgement. An iconicity, in a stricter sense,
might often require knowledge about the political context in which an architecture was
created, require the beholder to have personally experienced other buildings related to the
one in question. Oftentimes, the key to iconic values such as the demonstration of a pa-
tron’s alliances, the evocation of Holy Sites etc. would be some sort of narrative replacing
a potentially lacking personal experience of the beholder.
its viewers?
While an awareness of new methods and new approach angles certainly enables us to
draw a more balanced image of the relationship between artwork and beholder, this
progress is limited by certain factors. Speaking specifically about the study of medieval ar-
chitecture: despite the wider availability (yet not necessary knowledge) of primary textu-
al sources and images, those materials still do not allow us to approach the actual experi-
ence of the beholder with certainty. Being aware of the potentially multifaceted nature of
the latter is certainly an advancement, yet we must admit that we remain somewhat
trapped in our period’s subjective view projected onto the societies we study. Even more,
the enormous flux of digital images surrounding us, the availability of reproductions, of
digital tools might to some extent remove us further from the more authentic experience
of architectures and artworks the early scholars of our field still enjoyed (as biased as their
interpretations might often have been).
First, the experience of iconic qualities of architecture can be determined through the
images placed within – e.g., the vault of a church can be turned into a simulation of heav-
en through the placement of angelic imagery, blue background etc. This in turn would
evidently reflect back on the viewer’s experience and perception of the architectural space,
making its transcendental nature accessible.
Second, the contact with certain iconic architectures would further enhance the be-
holder’s experience of other architectures, or even natural sites. If acquainted with the
Mont St. Michel, or the Sacra di San Michele, a faithful person of the Middle Ages would
presumably experience certain mountains, particularly those with churches on top as su-
perior in terms of “closeness to the angelic spheres” (a parallel for the Byzantine world be-
ing chapels of St. Elijah on hilltops). In this way visual experience and once-heard narra-
tive replaces the need for a further narrative later on and in some way even extends be-
yond the limits of said narratives.

In architecture, materiality is on a first level a question of practical necessity; the avail-
ability of stones or wood, of easy-to-work or problematic materials. On a second level it
becomes a question of aesthetics, a general enhancement of splendour evidently indicat-
ing a higher ‘value’, venerability of a building and its associated patrons. On a third lev-
el, materiality plays an important role in the iconicity of architecture. Often this happens
through the use of particularly distinctive materials: if embedded in the floor or attached
to walls, they can mark the places of particular liturgical or ceremonial importance. But
also the material itself can be imbued with further significance through mise-en-scène or
narratives: for Charlemagne it was of relevance that the marble columns used in his pala-
tine chapel had been brought from Ravenna; for the Venetians the value of the spolia used
on the façade of St Mark was not solely their (potentially imitable) artistic quality, but
also the fact that they were physically brought from Constantinople, turning the materi-
al itself into the conveyor of a political message. Finally, the in itself nondescript materi-
al of an older building’s fabric can be charged with veneration-worthy qualities: in the
crypt of St. Denis, most prominently, the remains of the ancient basilica are not only kept
but embellished to serve as visual connector with the institution’s past.
Buildings and the space(s) they contain are highly intertwined with the societies that
surround them. On the one hand, the viewer’s experience, rituals, and performance are
often the key to the iconographic understanding of buildings. For example, a centralised
building might or might not evoke the presence of the Holy Sepulchre to a viewer ac-
quainted with the latter’s shape. If said church is additionally used for burial purposes,
and perhaps hosts relics of the cross or related liturgies, specifically this use, this entan-
glement of the building with social actions ‘unlocks’ the whole extent of the building’s
iconicity.
On the other hand, architectures can form and shape social behaviour through their
various levels of meaning. They can create points of attraction and specifically direct
movement, on a small scale within spaces (e.g., orientation towards singled out, specifi-
cally staged places), on a larger scale across cities, landscapes (e.g., in the form of pil-
grimages).
While hard to grasp, to re-imagine, the role of a multisensorial experience cannot be
underestimated in a past viewer’s experience of architectures. The importance of tactile
properties goes hand in hand with the perception of materiality. Taste is harder to con-
nect to architectures, yet phenomena like the ingestion of pulverised fragments of images
supposed to be of healing qualities might also be traceable in particularly venerated ar-
chitectures. The factor of scent certainly plays a role in the performative dimension of
spaces, e.g., to convey proximities to certain places within a church building during litur-
gies. An important example of my personal research field are the soundscapes of multi-
cultural medieval societies. The use of bells, an inherently “Latin” custom, made its way
to the Levant especially in the 13th and 14th centuries to concur with the semantron used
by the Greeks. The investigation of patterns of appropriation of bells in the Greek sphere,
in particular in monastic culture, has the potential to reveal a conscious direction of the
faithful within a city, on the one hand, but also as an indicator of various liturgies
throughout the day, adding the often-neglected factor of “time”.
Architecture itself is in some way the first level of a non-figurative object presenting
iconicity on various levels. While not every notion expressed above can be transferred ver-
batim onto elements of landscape or natural materials, iconic properties of architecture
can be enhanced by the latter – or in turn serve to enhance nature’s own iconic qualities.
I would claim that one of the essential human acts of cultural behaviour is the appropri-
ation of distinctive natural sites through the placement of buildings. This can be of prac-
tical nature – a watermill needs to stand next to a river – but often contains important
symbolical and very generally “iconic” meaning – a specific river can come to be regard-
ed as miracle-working, healing as consequence of the placement of a sanctuary next to it.
Or vice versa: the social practice of considering a water source as miraculous can initiate
the construction of a building, interacting with the performative practice previously es-
tablished on site. A further example for the interplay between “iconic” nature and archi-
tecture would be the above mentioned “holy mountains”.
Works of architecture as a whole are, with rare exceptions, immobile. However, we can
speak about the transfer of architectural ideas and models. The appropriation and trans-
fer of those, their imitation in new spatial contexts, is of primary role in the perception of
an iconography of architecture. Rather than suspecting an inherent semantic readability,
it is a comparative analysis that leads to the uncovering of such transfer processes. Those
imitations are by no means restricted to purely formal aspects but always include some of
the previously discussed notions: contextual narrative, location, performative and liturgi-
cal aspects etc. One of the most useful hermeneutical keys are – to this day – the histori-
cal sources themselves, which can reflect the narrative attached to the visual and still vis-
ible aspects of a building. Evidently textual sources, such as pilgrim’s reports, need to be
treated carefully as well in order to distinguish idealised topoi and the reflexion of gener-
al narrative from the actual experience of the respective authors.
The gradual introduction of English as common scholarly language came with the ad-
vantage of enabling intensified international exchange. Ideas previously blocked within a
restricted scientific circle and bound to the language they were expressed in, can now be
more easily shared, appreciated, and integrated in further studies. However, the extent of
the methodological caveats becomes clear if we look at only the classical Western Euro-
pean scientific cultures: diverging terminologies even between German, Italian and
French lead to a simplification and potential distortion if transferred into English. The en-
tire thought process is impacted by the language it is led in: for example, subtle notions
of uncertainty, for which the German language provides ample options, are much harder
to convey in English. Transferred onto a global perspective, such caveats are amplified as
even seemingly simple notions of chronological organisation, as basic as “medieval”, can-
not be applied universally. Here, a suitable way forward might be to not discard local
scholarly traditions and the language that they are built upon, but instead allowing for
more informed academic translations that can comment on those notions that are native
to one academic context but absent from the other tradition.
I see the main challenge for the nearer future in the exterior tendency to structure hu-
manities the same as other sciences. The problematic need to ensure funding by com-
plying with systems often created for fields in which there is a high frequency turnover
of projects and publications, just like the quantitative rather than qualitative evaluation
of publications, creates an unfavourable climate for more time-consuming groundwork
or studies approaching large corpora of objects. An avalanche of new publications is
bound to have a significantly shorter lifecycle than many of the older studies. Instead of
adapting to those externally requested frameworks, humanities would profit from the de-
velopment of more suitable, own structures of evaluation and evolution. For example, I
would like to see more opportunities created to pursue research detached from the re-
quirement of rapid publication and the pressure to use novel methodologies even on ob-
ject groups previously not investigated. Rather, I’d favour a stronger return of studies
originating from the object(s) and developing individual combinations of approaches
suitable to uncover the layers of meaning of the objects in question. While I am aware
of the “traditionalist” allure this might have, I am convinced that the relevance of re-
search in our field lies also in the sustainability of results, in their relatability several re-
search generations from now.
Thomas Kaffenberger
University of Fribourg
[email protected]
YOSHIE KOJIMA
the course of time?
My current research focuses on the reception and transformation of Western Christian
images in Japan during the Catholic (Counter-) Reformation and the following period by
Hidden Christians, including the so-called Kakure Kirishitan, who chose not to reconcile
with Catholic orthodoxy, maintaining separate and distinctive religious practices devel-
oped in nearly three centuries of isolation. Originally, my intention was to survey how
Christian sacred images of Western origin transformed as they became indigenous and
amalgamated with domestic religious images, such as those of Shinto and Buddhism.
However, as the investigation progressed, it has become increasingly clear that for the
Kakure Kirishitan, their sacred images have been subjectively legitimated, adhering not to
the original religious context but to the formalities and forms that were, paradoxically,
substantial and inherited from their ancestors, who supported their faith at the cost of
their own lives. In such a framework, the notion of iconographical orthodoxy is relative
and conditioned by formalities and forms.
Kouya Tagita, Shouwa-jidai no Senpuku Kirishitan [Hidden Christians of Showa Era],
Tokyo, Kokushokankokai (1978). This is the first and most extensive study on the Kakure
Kirishitan (Hidden Christians). The author, born in 1896, was a scientist, autodidactic
folklorist, and historian who devoted his life to researching the Hidden Christians. While
there has been no comprehensive study of the art of the Hidden Christians, some impor-
tant works have certainly addressed the reception of Western art in Japan during the
Catholic (Counter-) Reformation period. Such studies include Mitsuru Sakamoto et al.’s
Namban Bijutsu Sō-Mokuroku, Youfū-ga-Hen, Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsu-kan
Kenkyū Hōkoku 75 [An Essay of Catalogue Raisonné of Namban Art: Japanese Early Euro-
pean-Style Painting - Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History 75] (1997). As
YOSHIE KOJIMA 171
for Western literature, Henri Focillon’s La vie des formes (1st print: E. Leroux, 1934) has
been helpful in contemplating how the “life of the forms” is eloquent, which is why it
takes on its own connotation.
Given that style and iconography are defined by the environment of a certain period
or region, the two should not be strictly distinguished. However, difficulties might arise
if they are conflated and discussed methodologically, as each has its own autonomous de-
velopment. Rather than introducing new approaches, however, perhaps we should first
examine the linkage between style and iconography in a specific environment, such as
with an individual religious sect in a specific region. To give an example, the Buddhist
statue (statues?) of the early Heian period in Japan, carved form one tree, which empha-
sizes volume and characteristic solemnity, is closely related to esoteric Buddhism and the
esoteric-related iconography of the time. Artworks like this could be discussed in a more
comprehensive and macroscopic way.
New scholarly debates – such as those taken up by Michele Bacci, Georges Didi-Hu-
berman, Herbert Kessler, Carlo Severi, and Victor Stoichita – have provided guidelines
for my current research. For Japanese scholarship, I would point to Sueki Fumihika, who
is not an art historian but a more general historian who strongly contributed to deepen
our knowledge of the history of Japanese thought and religions.
If I had to guess, I would say that ‘fundamental’ notions such as function, agency, and
materiality as well as formality and type are not related to style or iconography. Such no-
tions function as identifiers or containers for variable and relative representations. Look-
ing at, for example, sacred images of the Kakure Kirishitan, consider, for instance, that
the formality and type of the moon was originally associated with the immaculate con-
ception, which has gradually been conceived as the norm for all sorts of representations
of the Virgin Mary and other female sacred images, though at times it has been viewed as
something completely different and linked to indigenous beliefs.
Naturally, meaning in visual objects is different from the meaning conveyed by words.
Visual objects can operate as a more direct way of conveying meaning in the sense that
the object or form being viewed has meaning in itself.
This depends on how much the society and the community that perceive the images
are culturally, socially, and historically related to the society and community that created
the images. Even the meanings of universal motifs, such as the sun, moon, trees, and flow-
ers, are defined on the basis of viewers’ contexts.
its viewers?
We are now far better equipped to understand this relationship than when we dis-
cussed the history of form in developmental-historical terms and learned that formalism
was central to the methodology of art history. At the same time, however, the boundaries
between art history and other disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and anthropology,
are becoming increasingly blurred, making it difficult to discuss art history as a larger, self-
contained narrative.
In order to perceive and experience reality, people rely on images more than they
might at first think. This is why, in every age and region, heads of religions have used im-
ages to spread their beliefs and rulers have used images to govern. Images can be directly
perceived without being interpreted and can often be more eloquent than words in both
good and bad ways.

Materiality is relevant to me because I am currently researching religious images that
were used as tools for faith by the Kakure Kirishitan. Material existence itself has been
crucial for them. Some of the Kakure Kirishitan communities that originally did not pro-
duce sacred images in order to avoid detection have gradually adopted other religions’
holy images due to the need to have a material existence. Materiality is also important for
the study of Fumi-e, which means “trampled sacred images.” These copper or brass reliefs,
originally imported from Europe and then reproduced in Japan, were used to identify
Hidden Christians. Thus, the materiality of Fumi-e has affected both Hidden Christians
and their persecutors.
YOSHIE KOJIMA 173
An image may be considered to have an autonomous social life, whether intended or
not by the viewer or user. For example, not to mention the art historical odyssey of
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Western world, the non-Western world also has its
own autonomous social life surrounding this painting. In Japan, for example, this work
has not only become an icon for Western art and Leonardo’s mythology but has also been
reproduced in various forms as a symbol of something unfamiliar but Western and lofty.
As long as the experience of images is spatial and temporal, multiple senses can play
roles in how they are perceived. The sacred images of the Kakure Kirishitan, used togeth-
er with a very special oration in absolute secrecy, are highly interesting. The Latin Cate-
chismus Romanus, for example, has been handed down orally. However, the meaning has
been lost, and the work is now understood as holy sounds or spells. This links to the grad-
ual oblivescence of the original meaning of sacred images. Over time, the sounds – not
the words – and the forms – not the icons – have taken on other meanings.
To the extent that nonfigurative objects evoke specific concepts, notions, and ideas,
this may be included in an art historical narrative. For instance, with a certain shape of
landscape for Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo in Japanese, which means “celestial realm”),
the imagery would be closely related not only to painting but also to Buddhist garden art
in Japan.
In general, for studies of transfer, transformation, and the reshaping of images across
multiple civilizations, we would first need knowledge of multiple languages, including
classical languages. Translation of the basic texts relevant to those studies would also be
important.
Taking into account the state of scholarship on Western art as well as traditional art
of non-Western world, such as those of China and Japan, even today the world of art
historians is divided roughly into a Western-language context and non-Western, espe-
cially East Asian, language context. Therefore, strictly speaking, English is not the lingua
franca here. The majority of important studies on East Asian art are written in the orig-
inal languages and are not yet translated into Western ones. I believe that notions in-
formed by a basically Western European understanding of images have always had the
potential to become universal, but as a matter of course, that depends on the imagina-
tion of scholars.
One of the issues we need to address is how to resolve the persistently present but un-
consciously concealed boundaries between the worlds of scholarship operating in West-
ern and non-Western languages.
Yoshie Kojima
Waseda University
[email protected]
ADEN KUMLER
the course of time?
My first experiences studying medieval art, at the University of Chicago in the 1990s,
were shaped by the emphasis on “word and image” relations that had already transformed
iconography and iconology at that time. The integration of semiotics, psychoanalytic the-
ory, and, not least, the history of gender and sexuality in the classes I took made studying
medieval art quite thrilling. My first publications, including my first book (based on my
dissertation), focused on questions of how medieval images produced meaning in collab-
oration and in tension with texts, primarily vernacular-language texts focused on aspects
of Christian religious truth and practice. In the last ten years, like many other art histori-
an colleagues focused on periods before 1500 CE, I have increasingly integrated consid-
eration of materials and material culture in my research and teaching. Often described as
“the material turn”, recent interest in historical conceptions of materials and the materi-
al world, as well as the very material “stuff” of images is not a radical new direction in art
history, but rather a return, with a number of vital differences, to fundamental questions
of form, facture, and process. Although it might be described as displacing the focus on
“images” and image-theory that dominated scholarship in my field in prior decades, I
think images and their theoretical stakes remain a central preoccupation.
Reflecting on this question, I find that essay-length studies have been far more impor-
tant for my research than books. Nonetheless, books have played crucial roles in shaping
the questions that interest me most. From a much longer list, three books that have deci-
sively shaped my perception and thinking are: Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience
in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford-New York,
Oxford University Press, 1988); Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago: Signs of Iden-
tity in the Middle Ages (Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2011); Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ide-
ology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989).
By “traditional” art history, the question seems to evoke iconography, iconology, the
connoisseurial tradition’s taxonomies of “styles” and “schools,” and art historical stem-
matic criticism’s investment in tracing the diachronic transformation and continuity of
“motifs”. Whereas in the study of medieval art I think both iconography and Panofskyian
iconology still play central roles, the connoisseurial and the stemmatic approaches have
fallen out of fashion. This, I suspect, because they are today judged to depend upon high-
ly mechanistic, sometimes teleological accounts of how art is made that are of little use in
addressing questions of why art is made, or how works play formative roles within cul-
tures. From this vantage, they seem to ill-suited to investigation of the cultural, social, and
political – that is to say, anthropological – dynamics that have most interested art histo-
rians since the 1960s. The rejection of such “old fashioned” art historical methods, has in
turn produced a curious state of affairs. On the one hand, very few art historians active
today have been trained in the techniques of close observation and comparison that de-
fined the habitus of pre-1960s connoisseurship, with the result that many academic art
historians effectively delegate the work of dating, localization, and attribution to col-
leagues working in museums and in the art market. At the same time, at least among his-
torians of medieval art, growing interest in artistic processes, techniques and materials,
and in makers would seem to call for a critical revival of the first-hand skilled forms of
empirical observation that “old-fashioned” connoisseurship and stemmatic criticism prac-
ticed. In my view, a reinvestment in these practices would be welcome, provided that it
was resolutely sceptical, self-aware and critically interested in how an art historian’s con-
temporary moment shapes their perception. Past concern for adjudicating “quality” seems
to me to be at best irrelevant to, and, at worst, obfuscating of most historical questions
we want to bring to works of art and to artifacts today, but surely meticulous, compara-
tive close-looking can do much more than pronounce upon quality.
In my lifetime, art history has taken numerous “turns”: to reception, to post-Freudian
psychoanalytic theory, to the history of gender and sexuality, to word-image relations, the
“iconic turn,” the “material turn,” etc. Each of these (re)orientations has enriched my un-
derstanding of the images, works of art, objects, and historical-cultural practices I study.
Cumulatively, these “turns” have expanded my conception of what an image has been and
can be, what objects can do, and – perhaps most importantly – they have diversified both
the questions and the ways of pursuing answers that I bring to my research, teaching, and
writing. The heuristic contribution seems most vital to me: that is, the ways that succes-
sive “turns” open up new possibilities for question formation, new impulses to be curious
ADEN KUMLER 177
about works of art and culture. It’s a sign of the discipline’s vitality that art history keeps
“turning.” So much so, that rather than naming and trumpeting each “turn,” perhaps we
should simply acknowledge the inventive energy of the discipline as a quasi-constant.
I find that the concept of the meta-image – that is, images that thematize or question
their own status and effects as images – has proven to be enduringly illuminating. Skilful
analyses of such reflexive images have effectively demonstrated how “the image” has been
diversely theorized in images: a trans-historical and trans-cultural phenomenon of central
significance to anyone interested in images and their histories. In the study of medieval
images, important recent work on diagrams has, in my view, opened up new vistas for
how we can perceive and interpret seemingly non-mimetic images in ways that recognize
their representational power, that is their denotative (and sometimes connotative) work,
as well as modes of thinking-in-images that were central to medieval European cultures.1
As a final observation, I think the explosion of interest in art historiography, that is in the
history of art history itself, is significant. The best work in this vein offers us new critical
perspectives on the concepts and blindspots that have both enabled and limited our un-
derstanding of images.
I take a rather promiscuous approach to this question. In practice, I find that I distin-
guish – and occasionally collapse – several species of “meaning” when analyzing a given
work. Thus, to discuss meaning “in” a work of art often invites consideration of the mak-
er(s) intention(s): all the cumulative, often minute decisions and actions that first speci-
fied the object as a physical and hermeneutic existent. When a work presents representa-
tional or picture-like elements to perception, then the project of interpreting meaning
“in” the work turns to established iconographic and iconological questions: What is de-
picted? How is it depicted? What historical pre-existing knowledge is demanded or acti-
vated by the work’s depictive aspect? But, as much recent scholarship has emphasized,
non-mimetic elements, as well as materials, size, format, techniques, placement, and use
are themselves powerfully involved in the “meaning” of works of art. And, of course,
meaning often changes profoundly over time. Accordingly, I find it surpassingly difficult
to isolate the meaning “in” any given medieval work; one is always already confronted
with a complex situation in which “meaning” is produced, variously, by conditions lead-
ing to the start of the process of making, informing that process, and accruing to and/or
vanishing from the work, in situ or in movement, through time. For these reasons, to ad-
dress “meaning” in relation to works is always a complex and necessarily selective under-
taking. The challenge is to be clear-sighted and self-aware about how one privileges cer-
tain meaning-producing or meaning-imputing dynamics, and excludes others.
I think extra-formal factors are quite important to how any image was seen in the past
and they continue to inform how a given image or work is seen. Put dogmatically: we
never perceive or interpret images in a vacuum. And, of course, this is part of the real
challenge of interpreting historical images: we never have access to the initial mise-en-scène
of the image, both in an empirical sense and in an apperceptual sense. The experiential
dynamics that condition the perception of images have, I think, in recent years really
come to the center of scholarly attention. The growing number of scholars who are com-
mitted to a multi-sensory art history indicate how seriously and ambitiously the experi-
ential dimension of perception is now taken. As an historian convinced that the body has
a history (or rather, histories), and that sensorial experience is a cultural fact, I remain
quite skeptical about how an emphasis on sensual experience can avoid positing the hu-
man sensorium as quasi-transcendent or trans-historical. My first encounter with the
Fragments for a History of the Human Body volumes published by Zone books (1989)
made me a cultural constructivist when it comes to questions touching on human em-
bodied experience of images.
its viewers?
In broad terms, I think the open-ended project of studying images and their behold-
ers has produced an ever-growing body of knowledge and a diversification of questions
and interpretive approaches that have both expanded and deepened how we can conceive
of and understand the interplay of images’ appearances and the expectations of viewers.
To this continuous process, the advent of digital images and the concomitant explosion
of images of images, offers us an historically unprecedented musée imaginaire. I can still
recall lectures from my BA studies in which a majority of the slides projected were in black
and white and studying for exams involved making notes from black and white pho-
tographs. The proliferation of images accessible online makes all kinds of research possi-
ble in ways that would have been unthinkable in the past. At the same time, however, this
phenomenon also has the effect of radically widening the gulf between the expectations
we bring to historical images today and the expectations historical beholders likely
brought to the images they encountered. To put this simply, any student of medieval art
today with an internet connection has access to a far more expansive corpus of medieval
images than any medieval beholder – even the most privileged, widely travelled, and “art
loving” medieval beholder – ever had. This state of affairs makes scholars today potential-
ly better equipped to ask longue durée questions, but I think it also makes it harder for us
to grasp the historically conditioned, quite contingent dynamics of expectation and per-
ception that informed how people in the past experienced works of art. At the very least,
the proliferation of digital images of historical works of art, objects, and images should
ADEN KUMLER 179
prompt us to think even more critically about how and to what ends we deploy those
techniques of comparison and distinction that remain central to art historical practice.
In a word: massively. A transcultural and transhistorical phenomenon, intervisuality is
always at play when an image is encountered and any intellectual, affective, or creative
process is sparked by that encounter. So too, in my own research I find again and again
traces of contact and mutual relation between images and other aspects of medieval real-
ities and experiences, be they material, conceptual and/or imaginative. Thus, for example,
the recourse to images and artifacts in medieval Christian theology and philosophy – most
notably, in thought experiments – demonstrates how people in the past “thought with”
the visual-material culture around them. To take the passage of light through a transpar-
ent vessel as a starting point for thinking about the physics of light or the mystery of a vir-
gin becoming pregnant with a god-man is to attempt to understand “reality” with a men-
tal image likely derived from “real-world” experiences with transparent vessels, but plau-
sibly also catalysed by images of the Annuciation. Put bluntly in terms of method: icono-
graphic and iconological interpretation would be nonsensical undertakings if images
could not inform other images, both directly and obliquely.

As I explored in an essay from 2019, the term “materiality” is exceedingly elastic.2 I
have yet to encounter a deployment of the term that makes clear its sense and utility, in
distinction to “matter,” “materials,” “physical substance,” “facture,” etc. If one takes the
question as asking how the material form of a work conditions our apperception of that
work, I would answer that the material form is always of paramount importance. This as-
sertation can be readily tested by comparing an encounter with a work re-mediated
through ekphrasis, photography, or line-drawing with a first-hand experience of the same
work. If by “materiality” one refers not to the empirical constitution and presence of an
image, but rather to the constellation of ideas about matter, materials, and images that po-
tentially informed its making and reception, the answer I’d give is the same. A maker and
a perceiver’s premises or ideas about matter, materials, images, and whatever is culturally
designated as immaterial or transmaterial (e.g., concepts like beauty, ugliness, divinity, the
demonic, nature, history, fraud, value, etc.) inevitably inform both the making and the
perceiving of images.
A matter of principle, I am resistant to granting human-like agency to images and so,
by extension, I am resistant to propositions that would grant images a “social life.” At the
same time, however, it is clear that certain images in medieval Europe were understood to
exert themselves upon the world and to act in ways that we might readily define as social
or anti-social. In medieval Christian contexts, figural images of Christ, Mary and the
saints offer the most obvious and wide-spread exemplification of this phenomenon. And
of course, medieval Christians devised a variety of ways of understanding and/or justify-
ing such images’ sociality. I find such emic accounts of how images were understood to
interrelate with human beings, with nature, and with other images quite important, but
as an historian I am equally interested in how people in the past conferred “social life”
upon images. Considered from this angle (i.e., anthropologically), we need not assume
anything. The evidence for medieval Christians cultivating relationships with images, par-
ticularly religious images, as if they were people is irrefutable.
For medieval people it seems clear that the experience of images was often a multi-sen-
sory affair. Given that many medieval images are consubstantial with the forms of func-
tional objects, the haptic dimension of experiencing images is obvious. Nonetheless, un-
til recently, the experience of touching or handling images received relatively less atten-
tion from scholars working on medieval art. Following several decades in which scholar-
ly attention was fixated on vision and theories of vision, the recent enthusiasm for a mul-
ti-sensory approach to images is, fundamentally, a welcome corrective. In this newer
work, the importance of touch, sound, and smell to medieval experiences of images, ar-
chitecture, and the built environment has already been amply demonstrated.3 Thus, when
Herb Kessler revised and expanded his 2004 book Seeing Medieval Art he quite signifi-
cantly re-titled it Experiencing Medieval Art.4 Attention to the sense of taste in relation to
medieval images, however, has not yet garnered much attention, although historians of
medieval Christian exegesis and mysticism have shown that visionary experiences often
involved gustatory sensations, charged with religious significance and much work has
been done on the visual aesthetics of elite dining in the period. A small number of stud-
ies have examined the physical ingestion of images in medieval and early modern cultures:
this work should prompt us to integrate taste more fully in our accounts of how images
were experienced in the medieval past.5
I am convinced that “artistic images” have never enjoyed a monopoly upon iconicity.
The transhistorical, pluri-cultural phenomenon of the “chance image” demonstrates that
people have repeatedly discerned images, including iconic representations, in natural ma-
terials and phenomena.6 The history of landscape architecture and garden-making also
testifies to how intensely non-figurative works have attained and/or been invested with
iconicity. So too, with respect to living beings, one could read Kantorowicz’s The King’s
ADEN KUMLER 181
Two Bodies as a study in a longue durée tradition of iconicity, organized in relation to the
living and the deceased body of the ruler. In the medieval period, it seems clear that
iconicity is sometimes a property of “artistic images,” but it is by no means their “exclu-
sive” property. As an art historian focused on the medieval period, I think the pressing
question is not whether non-figurative objects can be included in our art historical narra-
tives, but rather how our art historical narratives should change in response to the vital
play of iconicity within and beyond “artistic images.”
Which hermeneutic tools are not useful in our analyses of such phenomena? Arguably,
all historic works of art are subject to the dynamics inventoried in the question. Collec-
tively, changing aesthetic values, conceptions of the work of art, ideas about what is in-
volved in experiencing images, as well as the insistently empirical dynamics of historical
change (ranging from transformed landscapes and built environments to the inevitable al-
terations and/or restorations of works extant today) powerfully condition both how a
work is materially constituted, how it appears, and how it is received. These are the in-
escapable pre-conditions of our encounters with historical works of art and they call for
all the forms of attention and analysis we can muster.
As someone who researches and writes exclusively on “western” art, I hardly feel qual-
ified to answer this question proscriptively. I have certainly found the critical examination
of emic terms undertaken by colleagues working in fields other than my own to be illu-
minating. As a recent case in point, in an essay that appeared in a book I recently co-edit-
ed with Beate Fricke, Kristopher Kersey offers a sensitive examination of how several
Japanese terms associated with concepts of impermanence (aware, mujō, and mappō), have
been taken up by essentializing accounts of “Japanese aesthetics” (particularly, Japanese
Buddhist aesthetics). As Kersey shows, such scholarly recourse to emic terms effectively
strips them of their complex historicity, and obscures how impermanence, futurity, and
loss were aesthetically conceived and explored in twelfth-century Japan.7
This question, and the status quo it evokes, points to the profound inadequacy of the bi-
nary “western” / “non-western.” Although this binary names a reductive taxonomy that has
shaped the writing and teaching of art history profoundly, and continues to do so, I
nonetheless I think it should be more actively interrogated and dismantled. It lumps to-
gether the majority of world cultures under the rubric “non-western,” designates art and ar-
tifacts made in the western hemisphere as “non-western” (e.g., works created in Mesoamer-
ica and by North American first nations), and represses the fact of major discontinuities and
tensions within the art and art-theoretical vocabularies of the so-called “West.”
One desideratum – by no means the only one – is intensified exchange and research
collaboration between those of us trained in the discipline of art history and colleagues
trained in archaeology and technical art history/conservation studies. I am convinced that
such collaboration would lead to exciting insights, both empirical and theoretical. Where-
as I see some momentum towards integrating the findings of technical art history in the
teaching and research done by “traditional” art historians, the majority of art historians
and archaeologists continue to work along more or less separate tracks. We often are
siloed in separate programs within universities, hold separate conferences, and publish in
different journals. Of course, this was not always the case. To offer a concrete example of
how collaboration between art historians, conservation scientists, and archaeologists could
produce insights that each specialization could not achieve alone: the role of destruction,
waste, loss and damage in the making and experiencing of artifacts and art works is an
area of research that merits greater attention and theorization. Examining these ubiqui-
tous dynamics from collaborative, interdisciplinary perspectives would, I think, deepen
and transform how we can perceive and interpret images’ complex, transitive conjunc-
tions of presence and absence.
Aden Kumler
University of Basel
[email protected]
1. For salutary points of entry into a much larger bibliography, see: J. F. Hamburger, R. Maurus, Dia-
gramming Devotion: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Transformation of Hrabanus Maurus’s Poems in Praise of the Cross,
Chicago and London 2019; S. Bogen, Der Körper des Diagramms: Präsentationsfiguren, mnemonische Hände,
vermessene Menschen, K. Marek et al. (eds.), Bild und Körper im Mittelalter, 2nd (rev) Munich 2008, pp. 61-
81; S. Bogen, F. Thürlemann, Jenseits der Opposition von Text und Bild: Überlegungen zu einer Theorie des Di-
agramms und des Diagrammatischen, A. Patschovsky (ed.), Die Bildwelt der Diagramme Joachims von Fiore: Zur
Medialität religiös-politischer Programme im Mittelalter, Ostfildern 2003, pp. 1-22; D. Ganz, The Cross on the
Book: Diagram, Ornament, Materiality, M. Brown, I. Garipzanov and B. Tilghman (eds.), Graphic Devices and
the Early Decorated Book, , Woodbridge 2017, pp. 243-264; K. Müller, ‘Admirabilis forma numeri’: Diagramm
und Ornament in mittelalterlichen Abschriften von Boethius’ ‘De arithmetica,’ Ornament. Motiv - Modus - Bild,
München 2012, pp. 181-210; B. Kühnel, The End of Time in the Order of Things: Science and Eschatology in
Early Medieval Art, Regensburg 2003; B. Kühnel, Carolingian Diagrams, Images of the Invisible, in G. de Nie,
K. F. Morrison and M. Mostert, Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Papers from
“Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible, 400-1000” (Utrecht, 11-
13 December 2003), Turnhout 2005, pp. 359-389; U. Ernst, Diagramm und Figurengedicht. Betrachtungen zu
zwei affinen Formen visueller Kommunikation, «Comunicare e significare nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di stu-
dio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo» 52 (2005), pp. 539-571; K. Müller, Irritierende Variabil-
ität. Die mittelalterliche Reproduktion von Wissen im Diagramm, B. Bussmann et al. (eds.), Ubertragungen: For-
men und Konzepte von Reproduktion in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Berlin and New York 2005, pp. 415-
436; K. Müller, Visuelle Weltaneignung: astronomische und kosmologische Diagramme in Handschriften des Mit-
telalters, (Historische Semantik 11), Göttingen 2008.
ADEN KUMLER 183
2. A. Kumler, Materials, Materia, ‘Materiality,’ C. Rudolph (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Art, 2nd ed.,
Hoboken, NJ, pp. 95-117.
3. See, for example, E. Palazzo, L’invention chrétienne des cinq sens dans la liturgie et l’art au Moyen Age,
Paris 2014; B. V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, University Park, PA
2010; B. V. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia. Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium, University Park, PA 2017; Niall
Atkinson, The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life, University Park, PA 2016;
M. Bagnoli (ed.), A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe (Exhibition, the Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore, October 16, 2016 - January 8, 2017, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art,
Sarasota, February 4 - April 30, 2017), Baltimore 2016; F. Griffiths, K. Starkey, Sensory Reflections Traces of
Experience in Medieval Artifacts, Berlin and Boston 2020; M. G. Shoaf, Monumental Sounds: Art and Listen-
ing before Dante, Leiden 2021; T. E. A. Dale, Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Reli-
gious Experience, University Park, PA 2019; R. Betancourt, Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium, Cam-
bridge 2018; R. Betancourt, Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Litur-
gy, Cambridge 2020; E. Palazzo, L’activation sensorielle de l’art dans la liturgie au Moyen Age. Etat de la ques-
tion et perspectives, G. Rodríguez, G. Coronado Schwindt (eds.), Abordajes sensoriales del mundo medieval, Mar
del Plata 2017, pp. 3-14; E. Palazzo (ed.), Les cinq sens au Moyen Âge, Paris 2016.
4. H. L. Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, Peterborough 2004; H. L. Kessler, Experiencing Medieval Art,
Toronto, Buffalo and London 2019.
5. See, for example: F. Barry Flood, Bodies and Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation, and the Ingestion of the Sa-
cred in Christianity and Islam, in S. M. Promey (ed.), Sensational Religion, New Haven 2014, pp. 459-494;
G. Vikan, Ruminations on Edible Icons: Originals and Copies in the Art of Byzantium, K. Preciado (ed.) Re-
taining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions, Washington, D. C. 1989, pp. 47-59; M.
Schaller, Bilder essen? Einverleibte »Schluckbildchen« und »Schabmadonnen«, F. Eberling, E. Paetzold and M.
Schaller, Einverleibungen. Imaginationen - Praktiken - Machtbeziehungen, Berlin 2021, pp. 138-165.
6. On “chance” or “potential images,” with critical consideration of prior scholarship, see D. Gamboni,
Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art, London 2002.
7. K. Kersey, Impermanence, Futurity, and Loss in Twelfth-Century Japan, B. Fricke, A. Kumler (eds.), De-
stroyed–Disappeared–Lost–Never Were, University Park, PA 2022.
OYA PANCAROĞLU
the course of time?
I came to study images in the context of my PhD thesis (completed in 2000) in which
I sought to understand why figural imagery began to play a pervasive role in the visual cul-
ture of the Persianate world starting in the late 12th century – a phenomenon that lasted
for less than a century. At the time, I was mainly interested in the images themselves and
their immediate companions – inscriptions (in the case of objects and tiles) and texts (in
the case of manuscripts) – and tried to establish connections that had either been ignored
or denied in the extant scholarship. Since then, my interest has expanded to include ques-
tions about forms of objects on which images appear and the role of compositions that
blur the supposed borders between image, ornament, and writing.
Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, 1987); Jacques Le Goff,
L’imaginaire médiéval (Paris, 1994); Gülru Necipoğlu, The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and
Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, 1995).
“Traditional” (European/Western) art history has maintained all manner of rigidity,
often riding on the easy premise of “one size fits all”. The impulse to classify and catego-
rize is understandable and perhaps necessary for preliminary stages of research but be-
comes unproductive and distorting when it becomes the end goal, resulting in art that is
pigeonholed and straitjacketed. Perhaps it becomes more manageable and gives the im-
pression of “furthered” research but, in effect, the application of too many rigid distinc-
OYA PANCAROĞLU 185
tions becomes reductive. I am generally wary of any wholesale prescription of approach-

es to employ, whether “traditional” or not. Each field within the global landscape of art
history has its own set of conditions against which any prescription of methodology
should be tested.
I came into the field in 1990s as a graduate student and my earliest memory of such a
“turn” involved the notion of the “gaze”. At the time, especially in the mid-nineties in the
United States, this was a rather loud drumbeat but, frankly, I found myself reacting to its
loudness by avoiding it. Probably I was reacting to what seemed to me to be its blanket
adoption, its trendiness at the time. Since then, my out-of-sync relationship to the se-
quence of “turns” has not changed much. That is to say, all or most of the debates gener-
ated by these turns are interesting or beneficial and no doubt I have benefitted from some
of them by osmosis or otherwise, but I personally find it hard to participate in a collec-
tive scholarly debate at the “moment” that it becomes “hot”. And, some 25 years later,
the “gaze” as a “cooled off” notion is much more palatable to me.
In my field (medieval Islamic art), the notions that have been relevant in the last 20-
30 years in the study of images include narrativity, portability (especially for objects but
also images), spatiality and theories about ornament. Narrativity had interested me from
the beginning, but I delved into ornament only in the last decade or so. I feel it has ex-
panded my horizons considerably because the images I study tend to be “ornamental” as
much as narrative and it has helped me to face this reality. Moreover, because I also do
research on architecture, I find that thinking about ornament unites my two areas of in-
terest, further expanding my horizons.
I don’t think that I have a “specific” understanding of meaning. I try to keep an open
mind about meaning in the sense that I think it is contingent upon context and condi-
tions and therefore changeable. But, of course, that doesn’t stop me from proposing
meanings every now and then. For the period and region that I study, I find that images
conveyed messages primarily by maintaining an affinity to a basic repertoire (a “set
menu”, if you will) that established their relevance while, at the same time, achieving
some kind of inflection or modulation, especially, but not exclusively, by means of par-
ticular combinations with other images, texts or ornamentation.
All of those factors certainly have an impact on the generation and re-generation of
meaning. Social protocol around the image, too, can be a determinant. Who owns the im-
age, who has access to it and how... these things add weight to meanings.
its viewers?
Probably so, on the average. But it is not always possible to arrive at an understanding
of viewers’ expectations. We can guess but we don’t always have the means to know. Still,
the complexity of image-viewer relationship should always be born in mind.
Interrelationships among images as well as between images and, for example, human-
made environments are some of the most fundamental questions that image studies re-
quire. Figuring these interrelationships out should ideally be more than a formal exercise.
If we can approach the question of why those interrelationships exist, then we may come
that much closer to the agency of images with regard to perception.

Does the “materiality of images” refer to the material(s) out of which the image is cre-
ated or to something about the image that brings material (or the idea thereof) to the fore-
ground? Perhaps these two make up two sides of the same medallion. Or perhaps the
question is deliberately ambiguous. Why do certain images go with certain materials?
There is a category of early Islamic (8th-10th c.) figurines (assumed to be toys) that are
made exclusively from bone and encountered largely in archaeological contexts. Perhaps
they were also made from wood, but wood does not survive in archaeological contexts to
the same degree as bone. Hence, it’s not clear how much importance should be attached
to bone as exclusive material in this case but, at the same time, the materiality of bone
seems to be a defining element for the formal aspects of the figurine. So, I would take the
question of materiality on a case-by-case basis.
Discovering the “social life” of images requires some sense of the context(s) of their
placement and/or movement. For images related to veneration (icons, votive statues, etc.)
we can already be one step ahead in the game because of the basic functional interactivi-
OYA PANCAROĞLU 187
ty of such images and our sense of their intended context even when they are removed
from it. Similarly, a Roman villa with its preserved mosaic floors or wall paintings in situ
opens up a whole vista for glimpsing into the “social life” of the images in the various
spaces of the Roman household. When there is a total loss of context, however, sometimes
it is only the image itself that can be interrogated about its social life and often images
don’t reveal everything.
Sight is a fundamental but not exclusive sense in the experience of images. Hearing,
touching and possibly tasting can also be involved. From the late 12th to the early 13th
century in Iran, we have a large body of ceramic vessels (especially bowls and plates) paint-
ed with images and inscribed with poetry. As poetry was a performative literary genre,
these poems were quite possibly read out loud. In order to see the image and read the
poem, the vessels required handling, hence touching. As vessels, they were potentially
used for serving food in them, inviting the sense of tasting to the experience.
Iconicity does not have to be limited to artistic images and does not have to be a con-
cept exclusive to art history. It would be more interesting and possibly more productive
to see another discipline deal with this issue.
This is a broad and varied category of images. And each case is different, requiring a
different set of tools.
I think the problem is not so much that some important notions about images have
been developed vis-a-vis European/Western artistic production but rather the tenacious
creed that those productions are somehow unrelated to anything else in the world and
have a natural conceptual predominance. Thus, “medieval art” without any qualification
is assumed to be European medieval art and all other medieval arts are expected to be
qualified, geographically or ethnically. Even with those qualifications provided, however,
the “others” continue to be lumped together as “non-western” this or that. This persistent
western vs. non-western dichotomy is, frankly, meaningless from a historical point of
view. The status quo needs to be disturbed and, to my mind, one way to do this is to stop
using non-European qualifiers as signposts and to reject “non-European” or “non-West-
ern” as acceptable categories. Once the playing field is evened out, the applicability of no-
tions across contexts can be assessed without the weight of biases.
I think art history in general would benefit from greater emphasis on breadth of cov-
erage. If every scholar pushed herself or himself beyond his or her comfort zone in terms
of chronology, geography and/or medium, art history would be a more connected world.
Oya Pancaroğlu
Boğaziçi University
[email protected]
PAMELA PATTON
the course of time?
Iconography has been at the center of my research and publications on medieval Iberi-
an art over the past 30 years, and I’ve seen the boundaries and potential of iconographic
studies change considerably over that time. My training in the late 1980s and early 90s was
extremely traditional: I was taught to think of iconography, and especially the pictorial nar-
ratives that I studied for my dissertation and first book (Pictorial Narrative in the Ro-
manesque Cloister, 2004), in terms of Weitzmannian model-copy stemmata and presumed
textual models. However, coming of age as a scholar in the 90s also enabled me to profit
from the disruptive approach to iconographic studies taken by such scholars as Michael
Camille, Madeline Caviness, and Keith Moxey, who explored how the meaning of images
could be shaped by such factors as folk and oral traditions, space and place, and the vari-
able cultural frameworks of successive medieval viewers. Over time, their ideas transformed
the potential I saw in iconographic work, and in my second book (Art of Estrangement,
2012) and subsequent scholarship, they played a key role in my investigation of the ways
in which artists and patrons deployed visual images to promote community ideologies,
proclaim identity, and stake out cultural affiliations and oppositions for their viewers.
Michael Camille’s Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (1992) sets out co-
gently his revolutionary vision for iconographic studies; this and his other work encour-
aged me to think more flexibly about how images made meaning in the Middle Ages. The
essays in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s The Post-Colonial Middle Ages (2001) offered an influen-
tial argument for the ways in which postcolonial theory could apply to medieval society
and culture, providing an important lens for my understanding of how images could be
used to negotiate identity and difference in the Middle Ages. And the many works pub-
lished by Jerrilyn Dodds, including her articles and exhibition catalogs as well as her Arts
of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Medieval Culture (2008), co-
authored with María Rosa Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale, shaped my thinking
about the ways in which the significance of images originating in one cultural context
might transform when adopted in other, neighboring ones.
There’s value in mastering the various old-fashioned ways in which a work of art might
be approached – for example, one has to be able to differentiate a color choice or com-
positional detail that derives from stylistic tradition from those drawn from iconographic
conventions, and one needs connoisseurial skills to assess the formal and material proper-
ties of a work of art. But there’s little to be gained by trying to narrow one’s scholarship
to just one methodological focus, whether style, iconography, or even a particular theo-
retical approach, and doing so risks neglecting other dimensions of a problem that might
lead to a better answer for it. I prefer to think of methodology as an array of tools in a
toolbox: each research topic raises object- and context-specific questions that will be bet-
ter answered by some tools than others, and we should use the ones that help us most.
There’s no point in trying to drill a hole with a hammer.
As suggested above, I’ve found the poststructuralist and postcolonial turns especially
relevant to my iconographic research. Poststructuralism helped me to break open the
field’s rigidified assumptions about how iconographic traditions developed and made
meaning, while postcolonial theory called attention to the ways in which medieval power
relationships and notions of identity could shape the production, presentation, and re-
ception of the works of art I study. More recently, I’ve found critical race studies quite im-
portant to my work on skin color and identity in medieval Iberia; here, it highlights the
racial and racist dynamics that contributed to the ways in which some images were pro-
duced and understood, and that still can shape the ways in which we currently study them.
Poststructuralism and the many other theoretical approaches with which it intersects
(feminist theory, reception theory, postcolonial theory, to name a few) effectively created
a watershed moment for image studies: they offered an alternative to the formulaic im-
age-text equivalencies once dominant in the field while also making room for more con-
text- and reception-oriented research. Removing the traditional iconographic “rules” in
this way does carry some risk, in that it opens space for scholarship that may become over-
PAMELA PATTON 191
ly speculative or subjective. However, if researchers maintain the high evidentiary stan-

dards that such work deserves, the resulting scholarship can be both innovative and per-
suasively grounded. This is a challenge I consider constantly in pursuing my own research.
I can address this best for my own field of medieval art. Modern ideas about how me-
dieval images made meaning has broadened significantly in recent decades. Rather than
assuming a stable context in which a medieval image always means the same thing, we
now can see meaning as subject to variations produced by the interaction of multiple par-
ties – the artist, the patron or stakeholder(s), and the viewers – and in relation to visual
traditions that were often, but not always, fully shared by all of them. Looking at iconog-
raphy in this way permits a richer sense of how images “mean” because it combines aware-
ness of what the artist and/or patron presumably intended with awareness the meanings
to be drawn from it by a potentially diverse group of viewers, under varying conditions.
In this model, meaning is not just “conveyed” from a maker to a passive recipient but is
also drawn from the work by a viewer who may understand the image in unforeseen ways.
All aspects of this interchange tell us something about what the work of art meant with-
in medieval society, and all are worth examining.
If one agrees that meaning is determined in part by the viewer’s experience and cul-
tural background, then these must affect which visual aspects of the work they’ll see as sig-
nificant and how they will interpret them. But ultimately, these visual aspects are what
trigger the apprehension of meaning.
its viewers?
I think we are, in the sense that we’re now more open to considering the viewer’s side
of the equation when we assess the meaning of an image. However, I also believe this to be
an ongoing process: there’s always more we still don’t know about human experience in
the past, and we’ll surely continue learning and revising our views so long as our field exists.
Again, my response relates to the Middle Ages, where images seem strongly to have in-
formed their viewers’ understanding of the world. In the absence of widespread literacy
or significant chances to travel, images provided medieval people with one way of mak-
ing sense of the world. They could impart (and revise) core cultural narratives, chart the
changes of the seasons, articulate political and social relationships, and envision foreign
places and peoples. Such functions are suggested, for example, by widespread medieval
traditions of public ruler portraiture, by the propagandistic imagery of western European
church portals, and by world maps represented as hosting the so-called “Monstrous
Races.” I’m not suggesting that images consistently served as “Bibles of the illiterate,” as
they’re sometimes described, but I do believe that they often were used to articulate and
reinforce key concepts and values within a shared community.

Materiality can shape the meaning of a work in important ways, and of course it often
bore meaning itself. The expensive pigments of a purple-dyed manuscript or the gems
added to a crucifix brought connotations of wealth, authority, and/or global reach to the
core iconography of these works; the marks left on an ivory from rubbing or kissing it
shed light on its religious and social role. This is why it remains so important to study
works of art in physical form, not merely through photographic images, and to train stu-
dents to recognize what kinds of things the materials of the object can tell them.
If we grant that meaning is made not just by the creation of a work of art, but by its
reception and use by viewers, then understanding how such viewers interacted with it in
different times and places necessarily will enrich our sense of that meaning. Examples of
such interactions are numerous: the veneration of an icon; the purchase of a pilgrim badge
that is then displayed on clothing; the handling of an amulet; the annotations of owner-
ship and other signs of use in a manuscript. In my view, some of the most exciting schol-
arship under way our field today has to do with this.
The context within which a work is viewed logically must have an impact on its re-
ception. While at times this may be accidental, there are some cases in which the artist
seems to have previsioned or even planned for such phenomenological complexity. An ex-
cellent case from my field is Patricia Blessing’s recent treatment the carved stucco designs
in the cloister of San Fernando in the monastery of Las Huelgas (“Weaving on the Wall:
Architecture and Textiles at the Monastery of Las Huelgas de Burgos,” Studies in Iconog-
raphy 40 [2019]: 137–182). Blessing identifies the large carved roundels of the cloister
vault as visual and haptic echoes of the Andalusi silks imported and worn by the
monastery’s elite Castilian patrons; she shows how their translation into architectural
form activated the liminal potential of the cloister to assert the foundation’s ties to royal-
ty and dynastic power.
PAMELA PATTON 193
The designation of the form as iconic must involve some human agency, whether it’s
the transformation of distinctive landscape elements at sites such as Sinai or Montserrat
into meaningful visual signs or the representation of the Cross through gesture. Because
these are human-made images, I would argue that their significance could be studied us-
ing many of the same approaches that scholars use to study meaning in figurative objects.
Good models for this are abundant in my research field of medieval Iberia, where the
cross-cultural and transcultural use of images and objects is common. The most success-
ful work of this kind has been case-specific, pursuing socio-cultural evidence of how a par-
ticular transferred image or type of image was likely to have been understood in its new
context. Because contexts and viewership in Iberia were so variable, it’s sometimes hard
to draw conclusions that are broadly applicable beyond the level of case studies: as I’ve ar-
gued, for example, a silk textile sold as a luxury good in Cairo had a quite different con-
notation when it was used to line a Christian reliquary in León, and still another when it
was represented pictorially as the costume of the devil in a fresco at the latter site
(“Demons and Diversity in León,” Medieval Encounters, 25, nos. 1-2 [2019], 150-179).
In such cases, a closely focused study tends to yield more conclusive answers.
As a US scholar who publishes mainly in English, I’m acutely aware of this challenge.
The first steps are to recognize how tightly language can be tied to cultural paradigms that
may not apply well to one’s topic, and to recognize when these might steer one’s argu-
ments into anachronism or inaccuracy. It’s critically important to define one’s terms when
such language comes into play: for example, if one chooses, as I do, to use the word “race”
in the study of the Middle Ages – an era when neither the word itself nor a strict equiva-
lent for it existed – one has to acknowledge what that term means in modern English and
which of its dimensions one finds applicable and relevant to a medieval context. Another
step is to listen carefully to scholars whose roots and training extend beyond traditional
Euro-American discourse, whose perspectives can challenge and revise the cultural as-
sumptions European or North American may bring to their research.
As a medievalist, I’d like to see scholars continue to broaden the geographical and cul-
tural parameters of iconographic studies, including not only the lands directly contiguous
to European and Byzantine zones but also the more far-flung areas with which these con-
nected indirectly through trade, such as west Africa or central and east Asia along the Silk
Routes. It’s increasingly clear that these contacts affected the visual traditions of commu-
nities all along their paths, so they are well worth exploring. I also think the time has come
to reassess what we have learned and might still learn from certain pioneers of icono-
graphic studies, such as Erwin Panofsky, whose third or “iconological” level of interpre-
tation foreshadowed many of the context- and reception-oriented approaches that re-
searchers use today. It’s easy to reject foundational scholarship as outdated or superseded,
but it sometimes offers quite relevant insights.
Pamela Patton
Princeton University
[email protected]
SARIT SHALEV-EYNI
the course of time?
Since early in my research, I have been defining Jewish art as a special branch of local
art, whose peculiar characteristics also shed light on the surrounding visual culture in
which it developed. Instead of dealing with questions of influence or acculturation, I
speak of a shared visual culture and general cultural arena, in which there was frequent
and dynamic interaction between different groups. In this situation, images emerge as loci
of identity, interreligious contact, cooperation, and clash between opposing views. Con-
centrating on book art, the main surviving medium, I adopted a holistic attitude to the
manuscript, including, in addition to the contents of images, their visuality and material-
ity, codicology and palaeography, texts and contexts, issues of making and practice, com-
bining all of this to use as a tool for reconstructing the social life expressed in the images
and in the illuminated book as a whole. More recently, I introduced into my research the
study of manuscripts as material objects, analysing their effect through their reception in
the particular space in which they were viewed and activated.
Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 1992); Herbert L. Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, Rethinking the
Middle Ages 1 (NY, Broadview Press, 2004); Éric Palazzo, L’invention chrétienne des cinq
sens dans la liturgie et l’art au Moyen Âge (Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2014).
Iconography and style are the solid foundations of our discipline. While iconography
has been greatly transformed during the last decades and adapted to suit present-day dis-
course (usually without mentioning the term), the research of style has been neglected, dis-
appearing from the current art history discourse. Style is still the main tool for dating and
locating works of art, which are crucial for the contextualization of images and objects of
unknown origin. Beyond the traditional implications, stylistic analysis reveals important
aspects of the visuality of the image/object. As such it has the potential to be integrated
within the discussions of more updated approaches, seeking to understand aspects of ef-
fect, such as materiality and neuro-cognitive reception. Now, when the visibility of differ-
ent materials used to design images and objects and their role in attracting viewers have
been acknowledged, the specific stylistic analysis of different substances in various artefacts
can reveal additional, valuable, aspects of their effect on viewers. In order to “free” style
from the aspect of formality with which it is identified today, the old rigid parameters of
the stylistic analysis should be replaced by flexible ones fitting the present discourse.
The emergence of different “turns” has been a continuous source of inspiration. The
“material turn” urged me to explore different materials and techniques and analyse the ef-
fect of their specific design on the final image and its impact in relevant spaces. The “sen-
sorial” and “spatial” turns opened the way to my recent project “The Ashkenazi Prayer
Book and the Liturgical Experience”, in which I consider the sensorial effects of the litur-
gical codex within the solemn interior of the synagogue. The research is based on a re-
construction of the almost entirely lost aural-visual aspects of the Ashkenazi liturgical
prayer halls in which the manuscripts were designed to be used. Archaeological remnants
of the original synagogue architecture together with visual data left in prayer books, in-
scriptions, or instructions written in the margins referring to tunes and other aspects of
performance, have been combined into a mosaic of spoken words, voices, and images.
This reconstruction enables us to reveal the mutual dynamics between the aural-visual
liturgical experience and the liturgical illuminated books: the communal large codex used
by the cantor who conducts the ceremony and those private smaller copies used by con-
gregants during service.
Among the more relevant notions in our present-day understanding of images are the
central role played by objects in medieval culture, and the crucial effect of the immediate
setting in which they were displayed and employed, on their reception. In my study of il-
luminated codices as material objects, I am interested in the differences and dynamics be-
tween the two main domains in which they were used: the public prayer hall in the pres-
ence of the entire community, and the intimate domestic area. Personal ritual books,
which included both public and domestic ceremonial texts and were therefore in use in
both domains, are of special interest. The effect of such a ritual codex in a communal
SARIT SHALEV-EYNI 197
space designated as holy was entirely different than that in the ordinary, profane, space at
home. On the other hand, the shared codex used in both settings acted also as a con-
necting link between them. This connection was especially effective in images depicting
motifs which, though clearly identified with the public ritual domain, illustrated texts re-
cited in the home. In the minds of the users, these images may have created a strong bond
between the individual ritual at home and the communal experience in the public hall.
Meanings of visual objects are flexible, depending on the context in which they appear,
as well as their function and location in the public or domestic space in which they are
used or displayed. In the case of figural and narrative components, messages are often con-
veyed in relation to the Scripture and other general or local beliefs and traditions. Poten-
tial meanings can be inherent in an image even early on in its production, reflecting the
different profiles and outlooks of the producers, patrons and guides, each with his own
motivation. This mosaic of people involved in the production was especially crucial in a
case of a Christian craftsman designing an image from the Holy Scripture for a Jewish
customer, sometimes with the involvement of a Jewish guide dictating the general con-
tents, or requesting more specifically the inclusion of some post-biblical Jewish compo-
nents. The artist could have followed the general or detailed instructions but, whether un-
intentionally or on purpose, have also left some traces of his own Christian perception
that he was accustomed to. The reception of such multi-voiced images was especially com-
plex and diverse.
Identical images can have different meanings depending on the setting. For instance,
at the beginning of Sephardic haggadah manuscripts, an image of Isaac’s sacrifice within
a cycle of full-page miniatures of biblical scenes followed by illustrations of contemporary
family members performing the seder ritual would probably have connected the celebrants
with the biblical past. A similar image, appearing in an Ashkenazi prayer book for the
New Year, would have been received in terms of Abraham’s obedience to God’s demand
to sacrifice his son, as an ancestral merit supporting the worshippers who stood in judg-
ment on that day every year. The same image on a stained-glass window in a church would
be perceived through its typological meaning as a prefiguration to the Crucifixion of
Christ. Adjustment of the image to various visibility conditions within the spacious sacred
interior is seen in thirteenth century stained-glass windows produced to suit different
modes of viewing. Those looking from a distance saw the diverse geometrical patterns of
series of windows, changing from one to another, creating together a kaleidoscope effect.
Only when the viewer stood closely in front of the window was he able to follow the nar-
ratives in the small units and decipher the interrelations between different components.
its viewers?
Although some of the changes in the field were initiated as a result of approaches first
developed outside of the discipline, they were adjusted successfully and now broaden im-
mensely the scope of our understanding of image-viewer dynamics. Among the most cru-
cial innovations are the recognition of the significance of the various aspects of the setting
in which the image was exhibited or used: the comprehension that the connection with
viewers was achieved not only through sight but through a whole range of sensorial stim-
ulations, forming together a multi-dimensional experience that included viewing and the
fundamental observation that images communicate with viewers not only through their
contents but also their materiality. All these together have suggested a better framework
of research, revealing many new aspects of image-viewer interactions that were previous-
ly hidden from us.
Common images circulated in different media and well-known to viewers may shed
light on less familiar images, when allusions to the former are discerned. This can happen
also in totally different, even contradictory, contexts. For example, in the Codex Manesse,
a female lying in bed with an exposed breast, while a man with clasped hands kneels at
the foot of the bed, could have reminded viewers of the contemporary version of the Na-
tivity, in which Mary was depicted lying in bed in a similar position with a breast exposed.
Such associations with well-known religious images, often seen in profane art, gave the
viewer insight into issues of relations and tensions between carnal and spiritual concepts
of love. Images could enrich the understanding of the courtly practice or religious ritual
to which they were attached or to which they alluded. An image of a biblical narrative of-
fered the viewer a better understanding of the service of the holiday commemorating the
event being celebrated. Integrative images incorporating biblical narratives with contem-
porary celebrants, such as a kneeling nun or a biblical protagonist wearing a Jewish prayer
shawl, would add a further dimension of comprehension and identification with the con-
tents of the celebration.

Materials were experienced from a distance through the sense of sight. In the case of
objects, the interaction with the user was direct and the sense of touch stimulated an ad-
ditional dimension. A user could feel the thickness of the parchment while turning the
pages. Attracted first by the eye, he/she could also pass his/her fingers over the rough
painted areas, and on the voluminous shining gold leaf laid over raised gesso. Materiality
of objects was integrated with function as well as with other, perishable materials related
to their use. Wine flickering in a sparkling sumptuous cup made of silver used for the
home ritual of the Kiddush added an aroma of sanctity for the master of the house who
performed the ritual and passed the cup between the other participants, who, each in
his/her turn, experienced the integration of the expensive metal and wine. A couple shar-
ing a precious cup in a courtly banquet had a similar effect with an additional sensual as-
pect, when one enjoyed the taste of the other’s lips on the metal rim. Such a sensual di-
mension of materiality could also have been a by-product of a religious ritual practiced in
a mixed domestic framework.
The monumental sculptured facades of the Gothic cathedrals were public colored
“screens” standing out in the urban everyday reality, attracting the eye not only of those
entering the liturgical interior but also of the passers-by. Situated in the commercial cen-
ter of the city, they were visible to inhabitants of all social strata, interrelating even with
Jews, for whom these images were opposed to the foundations of their belief. Jewish spec-
tators shared with their Christian contemporaries neuro-cognitive responses to human
figures, faces, dynamic gestures and colors, which aroused in this case an urge to respond
to the contents of these images. Jews could not decorate their prayer halls with figures and
narratives but they did include them in their communal prayer books, where they ma-
nipulated some of the main images typical of the facades, such as the Coronation of the
Virgin, or the defeated blinded Synagoga with whom contemporary Jews were identified.
Jews responded to these visual forms, using them but in a new variation representing their
own, opposed view. Manipulation of well-known images, also discerned in more subtle
variations made by Christians in nearby sites, are a clear indication of social interrela-
tionship.
The sensorial effects of images/objects/codices viewed and used in association with cer-
emonies were multidimensional. In the case of a Latin or Hebrew liturgical book, the tac-
tile dimension was related to its use as a material object while the aural dimension was
aroused by the recitation or chanting of the texts that the book contained. The sensorial
response had a special dramatic effect when the image depicted the biblical narrative that
was commemorated on the specific holyday, being referred to in the hymn written along-
side the image and recited aloud in the service. In some cases, the integration between the
visual and aural dimensions was achieved not only in the mind of the users while viewing
the images during the performance of the service, but in the actual image, in the form of
quotations from the relevant liturgical text written in banderoles, which were incorporat-
ed next to the specific biblical protagonist as if he/she were speaking aloud. In images vi-
sualizing each of the Ten Commandments in an Ashkenazi prayer book, some of these
quotations were verses of Aramaic hymns accompanying the public reading of the Com-
mandments during the Shavuot service.
A cross-like morphology and any gesture of crossing limbs, which were either designed
by artists as a typological commentary on Old Testament narratives or actually seen in ev-
eryday life, were considered by Christians to be reliable Christological arguments. Jacob
crossing his hands to bless Joseph’s sons, the huge bunch of grapes carried by the spies
from Canaan, or the gates of Gaza carried away by Samson, were all designed in the shape
of the cross as indications of a prefiguration of the crucifixion and related episodes. A per-
son gazing on the typological window of the crucifixion in Chartres, for example, and
then walking in the streets, would likely see the shape of the cross in different natural con-
texts around him. A prominent example is the case of the donkey, the main transporta-
tion vehicle in medieval times; the meeting between its spinal column and its shoulders
has the shape of the cross, which according to a popular belief was regarded a Christo-
logical hint alluding to the fulfilment of Zachariah 9, 9. The cross-like shape of the don-
key’s back was such a direct and convincing argument in popular debate that scholarly
Jewish authorities felt obliged to instruct people on how to cope with it.
The manipulation of the original item is meaningful in this context. Hebrew
manuscripts were often transported from their original location in the wake of forced or
voluntary migrations. Additions of notes and images in the new location testified to the
new context of reception. More dramatic transitions were those cases in which images
made for Jews were appropriated by Christians. In the case of an illuminated haggadah
that reached the hands of the librarian of the Benedictine monastery in Tegernsee, a Latin
introduction explaining the text and images was written by the Dominican friar Erhard
von Pappenheim and copied on an additional quire at the beginning of the manuscript.
Here, a Jewish ritual codex for domestic use was transformed into an illuminated study
book for monks. Different strategies of appropriation can be discerned side by side as ex-
emplified in two adjacent synagogues in Toledo, which were decorated with mudejar mo-
tifs in stucco and with Hebrew verses of Psalms running along the upper part of the walls.
The two were reused as churches; one eliminated the original use by deleting the Hebrew
inscriptions; the other left them as an act of Christological interpretation, according to
which the Hebrew verses were incarnated in Christ.
Many of the aspects prevalent in present-day research, such as the materiality, sensori-
al reception and social life of images, have the ability to be flexible enough to adjust to
various visual cultures, as long as one is well aware of the fundamental differences between
geo-cultural areas and the potential misinterpretation of non-European cultures as a re-
sult of one’s western European orientation. Adhering to the images/objects themselves,
their visuality and materiality, as well as a comprehensive contextualization (including
also relevant local languages), which is always important, would, in such cases, play a sig-
nificant role in suppressing our “western eye”.
The present track of materiality and the multi-dimensional experience of reception
have the potential to keep occupying our minds in the years to come as well, while also
broadening the scope to include more ordinary materials and the domestic domain,
which has been less researched. Research may also be further developed beyond the prop-
erties and meanings of the materials and their manufacture. In order to further under-
stand the effect of materiality on medieval viewers one should add the visuality of dif-
ferent designs of the same material in various artefacts, namely the various ways materi-
als were artistically manipulated in different cases and how the specific result could have
affected the viewer’s experience in changing locations. Focusing on the image-viewer dy-
namics, we may also (re)turn to the producers/designers, not as the “authors” of the im-
age/object but as viewers of other images inspiring their work and as the first viewers of
their own artefact.
Sarit Shalev-Eyni
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
[email protected]
JEAN-MICHEL SPIESER
the course of time?
Actually, I was trained in “Lettres classiques”, the French equivalent to “Classics”,

Greek, Latin, and French Literature. I turned quickly to Archaeology, in the French Ar-
chaeological School at Athens. Some years later, I get the charge of leading one of the
French teams excavating in Caričin Grad and I was called to publish the Byzantine ce-
ramics discovered in the recent excavation in Pergamon. Publishing Byzantine ceramics,
as well as some other ceramic productions touches directly upon the question we are dis-
cussing today. A ceramic publication can look like an archaeological book, but also like
an art historical book, at its best it includes both approaches. Through this archaeological
experience, the importance of materiality permeated me deeply. Meanwhile, in the 1970s,
my doctoral dissertation on Early Christian Thessaloniki introduced me to art historical
issues. Little by little, also through my teaching duties and through personal interest, I
shifted my scholarly work to the field of art history. I considered and still consider that
artistic productions are to be approached in their historical contexts (historical in its
broadest meaning). Therefore, art history is inevitably a transdisciplinary field. I tried to
use at my best the inputs given by most of the various turns which structured our field,
but without giving an absolute priority to one of them.
It is difficult for me to extract three books which played the most important role in
orienting my research. I have the feeling that many books which I read, nourished my re-
search, sometimes giving me direct inputs, sometimes leaving a conscious or even uncon-
scious mark. These books came from various fields, expanding my horizons. Nevertheless,
I will quote three books which may exemplify the orientations, which I tried to give to
my research. Going far back in my memories, I cannot but mention the Meditations on a
hobby horse by Ernst Gombrich. Already, I was taught in the importance of reception. An
JEAN-MICHEL SPIESER 203
archaeologist has also his place here: André Leroi-Gourhan, actually much more than an
archaeologist, in his volumes of Evolution et technique, was, I think, the first to stress that
the notion of “appropriation” should replace “influence”. As third mention, I opt for a
book, not the most known, by Claude Lévy-Strauss, La voie des masques. I was amazed by
his views on the masks of some North American native people. He stressed specially one
point, the ways in which the same structures and appearances of a mask take on different
meanings in different cultural contexts.
I would like to emphasize first that “style” and “iconography” are only words, which
refer to uncertain and vague notions. The evolution of a painter’s style during his or her
life and the evolution of style in a cultural context during some decades or centuries are
not all to be dealt with in the same terms. Such notions can be misused. This is not a rea-
son to get rid of them. We should not forget that since the 19th century, with the help of
these notions, art historians built up, little by little, a stable framework, which, con-
sciously or unconsciously, we still use, even when new attributions, new dating proposals
introduce some changes into it. When faced up with a new artefact, the first step to take
is still to locate it within the framework. Of course, each work can give us many other an-
swers if other questions are asked. Art history today cannot but pose new important ques-
tions that were overlooked in past times. But without some apparently old-fashioned no-
tions, art history is at risk of being diluted no less than it is at risk of staying in old paths,
if it does not go beyond.
I am not sure that art history experienced turns only since the 1990s. I remember An-
dré Grabar, in the early 1960s, mentioning his interest in a “linguistic turn”. Of course,
in the last decades, many turns succeed each other designing a kind of interlacing. The
readers of this text have surely inferred from my answer to the second question that my
research is grounded in an empirical approach. I am convinced that many methods and
approaches can be appropriated for all fields in art history. Trying to understand the dec-
oration of a Byzantine church, I have at my disposal less documentation, and not of the
same kind as if I were studying the work of a seventeenth century painter. More than ex-
ploring all the ins and outs of one of the various turns, I tried to do my best with some
notions. The most important benefit of all these turns has been to make obvious that art
can no longer be studied, disputed, appreciated without considering its historical and so-
ciological background, without getting some knowledge about perception, to give only
some examples. New, various, and important insights in what we cannot but call artistic
productions became possible in the last decades. It would be reductive to hierarchise the
various turns and ignore what is useful for a specific research.
For instance, the notion of system gave a strong impetus to my research. It helps to
understand how images, but also all other objects which belong to “art” in the largest
sense of the word, from what is still usually called “minor arts” to architecture and ur-
banism, are embedded in the same cultural and historical context. This has nothing to do
with some “Zeitgeist”, but this issue cannot be developed here. The same notion is also
very helpful to understand the process of global changes such as Christianisation in the
long late antiquity and provides insights as to the ways in which changes in art produc-
tion are both subjects and agents in these processes. For individual works, of course, some
other important notions gained in attraction in the recent decades. The most obvious,
maybe, is the attention given to reception. But I think also that reception can be a treach-
erous notion. The most obvious difficulty is to get rid of the influence of today’s recep-
tion, our personal feeling, or a supposed mainstream reception, easily understood as some
anthropological invariant. Furthermore, reception can be understood on various aesthet-
ic, religious, cultural levels, which may sometimes be differentiated, sometimes not. But
such reflections lead us to the meaning, topic of the next question.
“Meaning” is not a notion as easy to understand as it seems at first glance. Of course,
we can say that the subject of an image is its meaning. It sounds quite obvious for edu-
cated Western Europeans in front of an image displaying a biblical or a mythological sub-
ject. It is the same for an Australian Aboriginal in front of a picture painted by an Abo-
riginal painter; it can be the same for me also, but I have first to make some research or
to be taught by an informer. But, usually, the mind of the viewer goes beyond this “mean-
ing”. Do “meaning” and “message” equate? This question leads to another: do images
convey messages? “Message” supposes an intention from the author and the hope that the
message will be understood by the viewer. But can the image convey the message by itself
without any preconception in the mind of the viewer? In other words, are the religious
paintings by Guido Reni a support for meditation without preconception from the view-
er? Could anybody acknowledge the spiritual message, being self-evident for Christians,
without knowing anything about Christianity? Of course, the image’s aesthetic efficacy
may stimulate various meditations, but is it then justified to speak about message?
Actually, I think that I have, at least partially, already answered. As the readers may
have understood, I am sceptical about the possibility that the mere visual appearance of
images may be enough to make its meaning understandable. Of course, this could be true
for images which have a conventional meaning, as is usually signposted in museums by a
label under or beneath a picture. It is no more the same for many images in 20th century
European painting, when the painter leaves free the imagination of the viewers, even if
the use of a label may give an opposite conclusion. I don’t know if something similar can
be found in non-European cultures. Meaning is also supposed missing in decorative pat-
terns. But this point would need a further development. For the visibility conditions or
mise-en-scène strategies, I am not sure they determine the meaning. It has been argued
that, for the viewer of the Trajan’s column, the meaning was obvious even without walk-
ing around the column to follow the succession of the scenes or without distinctly seeing
the upper part of the column. In the case of an image of worship, we can assume that
“meaning” does not correspond to the representation itself, but to the effect it is expect-
ed to have on viewers: then an appropriate mise-en-scène has obviously an impact, but is
this the meaning of “meaning”?
its viewers?
The huge development of humanities and social sciences, let us say in the last hundred
years, brought many new approaches as to the relationship between images and their
viewers. Other criteria for approaching an image than an explicit or implicit comparison
with antiquity was a first and necessary step, followed by the affirmation that art is not a
necessary concept to apprehend images. We know that social status and education play
their part in the perception of images. We have some clues as to how the neurological
components of perception may help to understand why images are felt as enjoyable or ex-
pressive, but it is a sensitive field. It would be a mistake to overestimate this approach. It
could also lead to the “discovery” of supposed anthropological invariants. But it should
not be set aside. As I already wrote above, the sensorial and cultural contexts are to be con-
sidered. It is difficult and not completely avoidable to withdraw from one’s own cultural
environment. This approach is necessary not only in the study of images produced in non-
European cultures but also for the European past, starting with the 19th century even if it
seems closer to us. But this distance does not imply that we should forget the basic tools
of art history.
In most human cultures, images are not isolated and are not understood or expected
to be expressions of an individual self, something that is specific to modern cultures where
originality is a kind of requisite for artistic production. But many images in our daily life
are still embedded in a web of significations. In a way or another, each image refers to the
system in which it is included. It may be a quite common utilitarian system such as the
highway code or a mental or spiritual system such as religious beliefs. For times closer to
us, the art market can also be considered as a system in which each artistic production has
its place. Having in mind such a fundamental property of images, in my opinion, it
should become obvious that each image has numerous and various connections with oth-
er images as well with material or concrete items or with mental images, emotions, feel-
ings, etc. Any image may explain, suggest, establish connections, thus inform the percep-
tion of the viewer. What may be difficult for the art historian, for the historian or the so-
ciologist is to understand which connections a viewer is making when seeing a given im-
age. I would even say, that, without direct evidence, it is not possible to get the genuine
reaction from a given viewer, but a good knowledge of a milieu or a culture can allow the
researcher to gain a kind of statistical response.

As the reader may expect from my earlier answers, the materiality of images is a key is-
sue. This assessment may be in relation with my archaeological past. But I think that it is
as important for art historians as for archaeologists. This materiality can be seen from var-
ious points of view. Some appear as quite trivial, but, since they are trivial, they can be
easy overlooked or forgotten in the understanding of an image. I mean materiality in the
narrowest sense of the word: materials, techniques, and tools used for its production. Yet,
I would say that such factors as an image’s accessibility, its display in private, public, or
remote places, its being located far from the viewer or meant to be seen face-to-face (and
we should not forget that the invention of the museum changed deeply the accessibility
of many images) belong to the materiality of an image. Some may argue that this is an
overly expanded concept of materiality. One could say that, but it is part of a set of data,
which can be objectively apprehended. I would have said an objective reality if this word
had not become a kind of taboo for some people. Anyway, whatever name you give to this
set of data, it is for me a necessary basis for any reflection or interpretation in the field of
art history.
Each image has its place in a human society. So far it cannot but have a social life.
The first step of this life brings it from the workshop of its producer to the place for
which it was ordered, sometimes in a figurative sense when the painter has to go on site
to paint a fresco on a wall. It may therefore be clear that the possibility to speak about
the social life of an image is connected with necessary information about the patron or
the recipient, often the same, but sometimes a larger community. A second (and further)
step of this life is to be considered when the owner of an image changes. The most in-
teresting challenge would then be to understand the possible changes in the relation be-
tween the image and the new owner or group of viewers. In some cases, it is obvious that
the relation between images and users change, when an image moves from a private
dwelling to a museum or when a private dwelling becomes a place to visit. A church may
even in same time be a place of worship and a place to admire paintings, with viewers
reacting in different ways.
All my answers to the previous questions tried to make clear that an image never in-
volves only the sense of sight. But what else? It seems easy to think that touch has no re-
lation with images. But if we consider that an ivory may also be conceived as an image,
we can remember that Antony Cutler stresses the pleasure of touching an ivory. In quite
another way, a believer can be happy to touch and to kiss an icon. But is the sensory ex-
perience in itself the most important part of this encounter? It is a set of mental attitude,
which gives its meaning and strength to the bodily contact. Recently some researchers
have been interested in the issue of the role of music and songs for the feeling of believ-
ers during the liturgy. It is easy to understand that in this context hearing gives or can give
a new impetus to the sight of an image or of a set of images. We are near to the notion
called hierotopy by Alexei Lidov. In my view, an image is never experienced by the sole
sense of sight, but the mental disposition is crucial, and, through it, other senses can
strengthen the feelings given by the sight.
The first time I was asked to write about iconicity, I had a look in some dictionaries
and I was puzzled that the usual definition did not seem to fit with art historical issues.
Eventually I understood – properly I hope – that for the art historians who use this word,
it means the possibility for a non-figurative item to become iconic, to have the capacity
to be translated by an image or apprehended as an image. It is of course possible to in-
clude this property into an art historical narrative. Actually, the most trivial, even crude
items may become iconic (see Duchamp), but I think that non-figurative objects, land-
scape, etc., are not iconic per se: rather, it is the sensibility of people living in a given time
that ascribes iconicity to a scenery or to people who, in other times, did not seem worthy
of iconicity. The development of objects considered to be worth qualifying as iconic is an
important part of the art historical narrative. But I would leave open to discussion
whether this narrative is fundamentally different from previous narratives which high-
lighted the evolution of the usual and most appreciated themes of the images?
I am not sure that we need new hermeneutic tools to analyse such phenomena. The
first point should be to be aware when images are no more present in their original set-
ting. It seems obvious for paintings or statues displayed in museums. But I am not sure
that all art historical productions take account of this change of display, between an open
space, the cella of a temple, or a private room of a patron and the public space of a mu-
seum. More interesting are changes in the past, as when an image of Aphrodite, original-
ly intended as a cultic statue, became some centuries later the subject of erotic epigrams,
or when images of a shepherd carrying a lamb came to be viewed by Christian people as
allegories of Christ and were later displayed as such in museums. In all these cases, it is le-
gitimate (and necessary) to analyse how we are affected by our contemporary sensibility
and then to get the historical and anthropological tools which may help us to understand
the meaning which could have had the same image within its original setting and cultur-
al context. This context has to be known. It means that we need to have at our disposi-
tion hermeneutic tools which go beyond the usual art historical methods.
This seems to be a twofold question (English vs other languages, Western or not, and
Western understanding vs non-European images), but I will deal only with the second is-
sue. We are practising art history and not dealing with mere conceptualizations of art, for
all that they may be interesting. Historical elements are therefore an important part of our
discourse. Of course, images are created in contexts where less value or no value was giv-
en to chronology or other historical elements. Even our Western analysis is able to take
this into account and has to do it. Such an analysis can bring out some historical evolu-
tion of which their users, as producers or as viewers, were not aware. Let us make a com-
parison with religion: frequently people practising a religion think that their religion did
never change. Historians of religion should not be blind to such evolutions. To sum-
marise a development which would need more space, if we don’t accept that the origin of
the notion used, Western or not, is not the point, but the adequacy of the used concepts,
and if we don’t accept that historians or art historians can cross the boundaries of their
own culture, we won’t get history, but only soliloquies, an Orthodox about Orthodoxy
or Byzantine art, an Indian about Indian art and religion...
It is surely presumptuous to try to foresee which innovation could give a new impetus
to art history. It is easier to pay attention on what could threaten it. So many “turns” have
enriched the practice of art history to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting its
foundations. We have always to deal with artefacts, made by a human being for a given
purpose, for people supposed to understand it, living in a given time and in a given cul-
ture. All these components create a network, which has to be analysed. This has to be done
with the appropriate concepts, European or not. Art is not an isolated practice. The art
historian should know the culture and the language or the languages of the culture to
which the artefacts, which are of interest for him, belong. If this task is not pursued, art
historians will be enclosed, unconsciously, in their own mental systems. For the same rea-
son, art historians should keep away from trends and fads which are at risk to introduce
biases caused by changes of sensibility in the contemporary world or by a questionable
feeling of the superiority of contemporary trends in our field. Again, the knowledge of the
cultural context is the best way not to yield to this evolution.
Jean-Michel Spieser
University of Fribourg
[email protected]
NARCISSE SANTORES TCHANDEU
the course of time?
In the classical tradition of ethnology applied to the arts of Africa, my first research fo-
cused on the manifestations of sculpture in traditional medicine among the Bana, a
Bamileke ethnic subgroup (Western Cameroon). If the question of functionalism was
dominating, that of the phenomenological perception of the image, as a mental symbol,
participating in the restoration of the psycho-physiological and sociological balance of be-
ing, opened up beautiful breaches in my general conception of ancient iconography in
Africa. In this sense, the notion of symbolic efficiency, shaped in Lévi-Strauss’s Structural
Anthropology (Anthropologie structurale) (1958), invited us to go beyond the classic West-
ern perception of the fixed, narrative, descriptive or reflexive image, in favour of an im-
mersive, interactive and systemic vision. Such a transition was made possible by the phe-
nomenal impact of the ritual which, like a placebo effect, clearly acts on the collective con-
sciousness of a group of beliefs. By subsequently directing our research towards prehistoric
arts, it was a question of testing the very essence of this mental structure of the image, in
reality quite constant in the primitive human mind from one continent to another, but
finding in the ancient extra-Western arts the most exemplary manifestations of its con-
ceptual and material regeneration.
In order, these books have allowed us to take a new critical look at research concern-
ing the prehistory, history, and contemporaneity of art in Africa. On prehistory, E. Anati
(2003)1 provides a holistic approach to the origins of art from one continent to another.
It highlights the most notorious and ancient concentrations in Africa, which bears wit-
ness to an early and diffuse historical awareness of the image on the continent, while chal-
lenging certain evolutionary assumptions on the matter. However, we must regret the au-
thor’s tendency towards a lazy comparison between prehistoric arts and the tribal arts of
NARCISSE SANTORES TCHANDEU 211
non-European societies. Quite disconnected from the classical tradition of ethnology,

African art by J.-J. Kerchache et al. (1988),2 dares take on a new philosophical approach,
bouncing cheerfully on the formalist question well introduced by C. Einstein (1919), to
come to an epistemological reflection on the very meaning of notions and their cultural
transfer. This leads the authors to counterbalance a classic Western hierarchy of the visu-
al arts, based on the art of representation, mimesis, and atmospheric perspective, in
favour of an African conception whose art of “presentification”, dominated by symbol-
ism and allegory, would determine its graduation. But we are still far from a metaphysics
of creation which, following the example of British social anthropology, has been con-
cerned with bringing the artist out of his anonymity. In the tradition of prolonged field
experiments, the research of S. Kasfir (2000) on Contemporary African Arts (L’art con-
temporain africain) has the merit of freeing itself from the prerequisites of the aesthetic-
stylistic classifications linked to university theories, but also those fixed by the globalized
market and museum system. Also, the author approaches recent arts from a historical per-
spective that takes into account as much the survival of ancient iconography, struggling
with colonial art workshops (the progenitors of the school of conventional art), than the
rise of a new popular culture, in phase with the processes of industrialization (rise of the
printing press) and urbanization.
Insofar as there does not exist a unilateral history of art (any more than that of
thought), its classic object of study is probably not apprehended in the same way from one
continent to the other. If in the West, the theoretical debate was animated by supporters
of stylistic attributions or classifications (formal referents) and those of iconological ap-
proaches (cultural history of the image), in Africa a similar debate has opposed an ethno-
logical vision to a formalist one. In terms of ethnology, it must be said that the pre-emi-
nence of functionalist approaches has not completely superseded the arguments of some
proponents of structuralism. Thus, the work The way of masks (La voie des masques) by C.
Lévi-Strauss (1979) undoubtedly represents a fine experience in line with the Panofskyan
school, in particular as concerns the structural analysis applied to the iconography of the
masks of the Pacific Indians. In the tradition of formalism, Negerplastik by C. Einstein
(1915) undoubtedly appears as one of the first scientific recognitions of the formal con-
tribution of “negro art” to early 20th century artistic avant-gardes in Europe. A response
to this formalistic tendency was given by scholars promoting different approaches, such as
the ethno-aesthetics of J. Delange (1967)3 and L. Stéphan (1985),4 or the ethno-mor-
phology applied to African art by L. Perrois (1966).5 In the absence of an ancient written
tradition in Africa, the oral one, still relatively viable during the colonial periods, could
nevertheless have offered valuable sources for other theories such as authorism, the social
history of art, the ethnolinguistics, the psychology of art… Let us note, however, certain
pioneering authors in the field, such as L. S. Senghor (1956)6 or H. Memel-Foté (1967)7

on the subject of ethnolinguistics applied to African aesthetics; F. M. Olbrecht (1940)8
whose approach to stylistic signatures (as in the case of the “master of Buli”) is as decisive
in the history of African art as the work of G. Morelli on Italian Renaissance paintings;
M. Trowell (1966) and his avant-garde work on African design,9 just like the psychoana-
lytical theories introduced by Eckart von Sydow (1930),10 and well applied to the study
of African fertility dolls by P. Roumeguere and G. Roumeguere Eberhardt (1960).11
Beyond the classic relationships between art history and philosophy, the 1990s high-
lighted the permeability of the discipline to ICT, multimedia, and cultural industries,
which had already been prefigured by movements such as the Bauhaus school and by dis-
cussed theories such as Benjamin’s “aura”. All fields and objects of study in the history of
art are affected to a greater or lesser extent. Considering the example of our study (N. S.
Tchandeu and S. Hassimi 2021) on the sculpted monoliths of the Cross River (Nigeria-
Cameroon),12 the discipline also took into account technological advances in terms of in-
ventory and survey (drone, high-resolution photography), as well as 3D photogrammet-
ric reconstruction of damaged specimens. In fact, the development of methods of visual
anthropology contributed a lot to the scientific documentation of an ethnological di-
mension that is still alive, but in the process of irreversible disappearance in the face of ac-
celerated processes of urbanization. Also, graphic art techniques such as comics and ani-
mation have become such popular mediums of communication that they do not even
spare prehistoric arts in the cultural industries of image and movie. This gives us an op-
portunity to pay a posthumous tribute to a colleague torn from life very early, Bienvenu
Gouem Gouem, SAFA (society of africanist archaeologists) prize 2021, for the comic strip
on the archaeological site of Lom Pangar in Cameroon.13
The notions of “imaginary museum”, “transfiguration of the banal” and “aura” seem
to us to have had a significant impact on the destiny of African art in particular and that
of art history in general:
– the “imaginary museum” of A. Malraux (1962)14 which returns to the classic essence
of the museum, that of displaying objects which, being deprived of their function, are
supposed to be invested with an enhanced intrinsic expression of pure form. In fact, this
relatively anthropocentric and “elitist” conception of the museum resists neither the per-
spectives of the “new museology”, which is more conceptual and participatory and in-
volves the social and environmental body, nor the option of a living culture or eve an in-
teractive cosmology as perceived in the imaginary of art in Africa, even less than that of
the virtual museum;
– the notion of the “transfiguration of the banal” introduced by Danto, in the shap-
ing of an analytical aesthetics particularly suited to the understanding of “readymade” and
conceptual art in general; we come to a questioning of the very definition of art, leading
to a disintegration/dematerialization of the subject and the technique of representation to
which the ideal contemplation responds;
– the notion of “aura” introduced by W. Benjamin, which subjected the uniqueness
or authenticity of the work of art to the test of mass reproduction made possible by cul-
tural industries (photography and cinematography in particular). In this process of in-
dustrialization, the “unique” or the “here and its now” are characterized in negative terms:
handmade objects undergo a process of degradation and devaluation which strips it of
their authority and sacredness. But finally, as N. Heinich (1983) pointed out,15 this the-
ory does not really suits the game rules of “who loses wins”, since the reproduction tech-
niques are the very cause of the existence of the aura, therefore of the triumph of the
unique, both through the materialization of duplicates and through their omnipresence.
Taking as an example the statue of Queen Bangwa (Cameroon), once very little known
in the art world despite its singular plasticity, we have to believe that her photograph in
1934 with a model (Adrienne Fidelin) by Man Ray, has undoubtedly contributed to a re-
newed visibility of the object, to the point of reaching the sales record for an African
sculpture in the 1990s.
Everything depends first of all on the genre of image, in particular on its sensory,
mental and intellectual perception, which varies according to whether the referent, rela-
tively classic, is of a naturalist, symbolic or abstract order (in the sense of a formal, icono-
logical, phenomenological, or psychological interpretation); or when it is a more com-
plex contemporary, i.e., conceptual, experimental, interactive, generative, digital or
robotic medium (such as a cerebral shock, a participatory or situational experience, or a
fictional immersion). Then, just like people, the image has a cultural and social life whose
genesis, evolution, exchanges, and cultural shocks determine its destiny. Also, beyond the
simple anachronistic education of taste, dear to certain art critics, it is necessary to de-
velop an image culture that may limit errors of interpretation over time and space. A ma-
jor mistake would be to interpret images of yesterday or elsewhere with the codes of to-
day or here. In these cases, because of its essentially symbolic mode of representation,
African art has been particularly exposed to all sorts of misunderstandings dictated very
often by a Eurocentric gaze. Thus, we recently discovered that the famous kneeling “beg-
gar woman” of the Baluba (J. Maes 1935)16 is actually a worthy ritual pot-bearer of the
Bakuba (J. Volper 2017);17 that the point-like prominences on the sculpted heads of the
Ikoi do not represent horns, but very traditional hairstyles for women (K. Nicklin and L.
Salomon 1984);18 that certain statues with berets do not represent ancestors but candi-
dates for initiation (B.C. Bela 2006)…19 Examples are legion. But the external gaze
alone does not justify all the faults, since in situ, the cultural shocks of the colonial peri-
ods in Africa have led to a very often irreversible and sometimes radical conversion of
gaze, taste, and endogenous values. For the little anecdote, it happens to me, during some
of my teachings at the University of Yaoundé 1, to project old photos of scarified
Africans, with mutilated teeth, lips, ears, and/or genitals. Always taking care to remind
students (in order to somehow capture their empathy) that these body arts were mostly
shared by local communities before being banned during the colonial period, they are
paradoxically met, barely a century later, with a general feeling of denial, rejection or re-
fusal to assume such a heritage.
As soon as we leave the classic register of art in itself or the imaginary museum, to vi-
sualize objects in an interactive, systemic, functional or ergonomic ecology, its meanings
can be dependent as much on the art of communicating as a sign, symbol or icon, and as
situational art related to the experience of perception in/ex situ, as well as empirical art,
in terms of operationality, finality and end of the image. The transfer of African objects
from their ritual contexts to museum collections is quite indicative of a situational dy-
namic of the senses. Of course, within the museum, only the aesthetic sense is retained,
although the latter, depending on the whim of the collector, can already be biased. This
is the case, for example, with the nkissi statues of the Bavili: some collectors, worried about
their “strange” combinations of nails and mirror, removed such elements from the wood-
en frame before exhibiting them. Even objects recognized for their aesthetic qualities,
such as the engraved calabashes of the Fulani, sometimes do not escape a misunderstand-
ing of their ethnological meaning, as their specific display seems to imply: we had the op-
portunity to observe one such misunderstanding at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Mu-
seum (S.-L. Betzogo, C. Evina Miaché et al. 2022).20 Two different levels of reading jus-
tify this observation. The first, that of unity, highlights the exposure of each object on its
concave face, a point of view that is no doubt satisfactory for western European optical
conventions, but is entirely at odds with the Fulani ways of perception, which always dis-
play objects in a profile from which the peduncle has been amputated and from which the
design is modulated. At the second level, that of the group, the mosaic-like museum ex-
hibition clashes with the Fulani approach, which is dictated by a decreasing hierarchy of
size in a north-south direction, in honor of the cardinal position of women (R. Dognin
1989).21 Considering the functional object par excellence, the mask, how can we hope
that, in the imaginary museum, it will rediscover, in the eyes of the African, the phe-
nomenological sense that irresistibly associates it with the wearer, with music, dance, sea-
son, time, circumstance, and a specific ritual place?
its viewers?
If we consider the entire history of the image, including that of its modern distribu-
tion circuits (museums, galleries, fairs, festivals, biennials, press and broadcast media,
etc.), it is clear that the rise of ICT radically liberalized, democratized and dematerialized
visual contents, while universalizing access to the current global village. All this to say that
values – of industrialization and digitization, both linked to the liberal realities of post-
modernism, correspond to the gradual erosion of classic and modern values – attached to
the material, durable, sacred, elitist, exclusive or authentic dimensions of the artistic im-
age, than to a new order of institutionalization, regulation and international validation of
art. In this perspective, as much as one can question the current status of art and artists,
grappling with the diktat of institutions (state, media and stock market) of validation, ide-
ological-political programs and an increasingly more hermeneutic and prescriptive ap-
proach, we can also see a certain rupture between the most conceptual tendencies of con-
temporary art and beholders of all kinds. However, in this movement of rupture of the
“paradigm of contemporary art” (N. Heinich 2014),22 the cultural shock seems less
marked in the pilot civilizations of the West, producers of “software” (sometimes to the
detriment of the general public), than in other cultural traditions, such as those of Africa,
which are collateral consumers of a program that is inseparable from colonial history.
Thus, just as the “colonial museum” attracts a large audience only among expatriates who
are more or less enamoured of exotic sensations, contemporary art exhibitions in African
galleries (worthy daughters of Western parent galleries) seem to respond more to the re-
quirements of programs and markets elsewhere, than to the aspirations of local audiences.
Like the child who is introduced to the realities of the world through the modelling of
clay, or even the apprentice who is initiated into art by first copying the works of the mas-
ter, the aestheticized or “artificized” image (N. Heinich 2012)23 knows how to make be-
ing visible, thus allowing the transfer, at the level of art, of the Heideggerian ontological
question “What is being?”. We come to the conclusion that as much as creating is an ex-
hibition of the artist’s imaginative self, contemplating is the discovery of the public’s
imaginary self. However, this play of the imagination has gradually been able to push its
limits throughout the history of Western art, moving globally from the religious or sym-
bolic capture of an extra-artistic referent (Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Renaissance) to the
experience of art in itself (Modern), to the trivialization of the object of representation
and its dematerialization (Contemporary). From this point of view, the advent of mod-
ern art, largely motivated by the democratization of the image via photography, once
again makes it possible to take a detour to its other source of inspiration: African art. In-
deed, by its pure forms, its independent volumes, its subjective planes and rhythms, its
whimsical decorations and above all its freedom from the grip of any real extra-artistic ref-
erent, the latter constituted an undeniable plastic alternative to the reinvention of the
modern Art. So, it is difficult to credit some of these artists who, driven by a certain snob-
bery, reject its influence on their work, as evidenced by the paradoxical attitude of P. Pi-
casso, a “passionate” collector of African art, whose denial of the latter’s influence on his
own creation has remained famous: “Negro art, I don’t know”. Thus art, as mediocre as
it may appear to some, has never really fulfilled its purpose unless it is a mockery of itself
and its own history, but also when it knows how to destabilize our perception of reality
and changes the beaten track.

Whether it is materialized for purposes of contemplation, communication, apology,
divinization, self-fulfilment, etc., the artistic image has not only known a sympathetic his-
torical destiny, but has also been exposed to all sorts of misadventures, going from icono-
inhumane, to icono-phobia, iconoclasm/chromoclasm, up to drifting into a contemporary
conceptual or post-conceptual immateriality. Our judgment on the materiality of the im-
age therefore remains fundamentally conditioned by the relationship of causality and end,
the reasons for the production being able to be in adequacy or not with the finality. Con-
sidering the objects of African art on display in Western museums, their purely contem-
plative purpose would participate in the materiality of dead, inert, and inanimate images,
in total contradiction with the reasons for their creation, in particular those of making liv-
ing and moving images in the context of social and religious activities. In the Batéké (Bas-
Congo) for example, icono-functional codes make it possible to distinguish on the one
hand the living statue, animated by the butti spirit and provided with a mass of abdomi-
nal remedy. On the other hand, mention can be made of the dead statue tege, whose ab-
sence or drug discharge signals the spirit’s absence. But as we have already indicated, the
strangeness of such assembled sculptures, including the famous “fetishes” nkissi with nails
and mirrors of the Bavili, very often led collectors to strip the wooden frame of all its ac-
cessories.
On this subject, the sociology of art has often replaced ethnology in Africa, linking the
status of art or artists on the one hand, the geographical determinism of the environment
and the classification of forms of social organization on the other hand. In the latter case,
some authors such as S. P. Blier (1998)24 have been able to highlight the characteristics
of a court art or royal art, made by promising professional, sometimes ennobled, artists,
who very often gave shape to cooperatives. The latter gave birth to works whose major
characteristics – the precious or non-precious nature of their materials (gold, silver,
bronze, ivory, iron, pearls, wood, etc.), the type of decoration (figurative or geometric),
or their more or less monumental aspect – are codified by social hierarchies. By differen-
tiation, in the so-called not centralized societies or with strong initiatory institutions, we
observe the activity of artists with more intermittent statuses, even quite marginalized in
certain cases (as with, e.g., blacksmiths-sculptors). Their production is characterized by an
art that is more sober in materials and relatively modest in size, predominated by the
theme of initiatory brotherhoods with masks, figures of ancestors, and agrarian rites. Tak-
ing into account this time the determinism of the environment, the example of architec-
tural expressions makes it possible to take the measure of the great stylistic ensembles:
those of Sudano-Sahelian Africa whose masterpieces are undoubtedly the cob architecture
from the famous mosques of the Kanga Moussa era; those of forest areas of Africa where
the reign of wood was best celebrated by the monumental palaces with pillars and carved
opening frames in Grassfield, Cameroon; those of the Guinean coasts adapting the con-
structions to support on piles or to an ingenious water sealing system such as the Yoru-
ba/Edo/Ashanti “impluvium” architecture; those between the Rift Valley and the Rhode-
sian complex which bequeathed some wonders of humanity in terms of Stone Architec-
ture such as the rock churches of Lalibela (Ethiopia) and Great Zimbabwe. But it also
happens in some cases that the works do not obey any of these geo or socio-structural con-
structions, either because their ancient production is totally foreign to the current soci-
eties which have fortuitously inherited them; or since the geographical distance from the
original focus of production leads to a heavy loss of meaning, as much linguistically as
epistemologically and metaphysically.
In Western civilizations where the classical classification of the arts, at least from Pla-
to to Schopenhauer via Hegel, is well defined, it is necessary to believe that the evolution
of the conception of art (techne, plastic arts and visual arts), corresponds to the gradual
shift from an initially mechanical or tactile experience of the image to a purely retinal and
finally analogical and digital perception. This very taxonomic, exclusive, and evolutionary
approach to the notion of visual image is paralleled in African traditions by a more func-
tional, inclusive, participatory, and organically dynamic experience. The example of the
traditional cult called Bwiiti-Ombwiri (N. S. Tchandeu 2021),25 very widespread and still
very much alive in several groups (Apindji, Mitsogho, Fang) of the equatorial forest, gives
a good overview of the perception of the image as a phenomenon of “total art”, which
brings together the visual, rhythmic, tactile, and even gustatory arts, in a process of con-
templation of the Bwiiti-Ombwiri spirit. Thus, any faithful of the Bwuiti-Ombwiri who
accesses the temple dedicated to it, must first taste the hallucinogenic plant called iboga.
This introductory rite prepares everyone for a cosmic journey in which the decor and at-
mosphere of the temple participate from start to finish: players of the famous zithers with
cephalomorphic necks; singers in chorus and dance steps following a well-codified chore-
ography; a central pillar whose iconography often traces the myth of the Bwuiti-Ombwiri
spirit and its cosmic power. All of this prefigures in a certain way certain revolutions in
modern and contemporary arts, in terms of breaking taxonomic boundaries between art
forms and the promotion of multimedia.
Of course, and that’s the whole history of contemporary art, at least since the ready-
made. But this entire still involves a conceptual process that justifies the public being ex-
posed, consciously or not, to a cognitive/reflective/destabilizing experience in relation to
the transfiguration of the ordinary, the diversion of the causality of the object or even to
the re-sublimation of the waste. To take the example of one of my favorite objects of
study, megaliths, research in the Mandara Mountains (Cameroon-Nigeria) (N. S Tchan-
deu and A. Mezop-Temgoua 2017)26 highlights stones erected by man, and those that are
natural, but whose unique appearance and/or history justify their being re-appropriated
and personified in the name of a “rock spirit”. But worked by man or not, all these stones
have in reality no visual and emotional charge in the eyes of the mountain dwellers, un-
less they bear traces, constantly revitalized, of the deposits and anointing of consecrated
products (white millet wine, blood and sacrificial guts of animals). And among the ex-
pected visual effects, the most impressive is undoubtedly a kind of litho-phobia which jus-
tifies that the mountain dweller, especially of the female sex, avoids touching, or even star-
ing at these representations for a long time and too closely. Moreover, in the Bamileke
country (Cameroon) where certain megaliths, called tsu-Ssi (literally, places of God) are
located in “sacred groves”, they have participated for several centuries in sustainably sav-
ing the ecosystem and preventing the exploitation of inalienable resources (N. S. Tchan-
deu, W. V. Kengne et al., 2021).27 Also, the concept of “art of sacred environments” has
necessarily been integrated into our work, which of course does not have the same se-
mantic content as the contemporary notion of land art, but does not move away from it
in the perspective of returning art to nature.
We have already mentioned the problem of the interpretation out of context of the
image, whether the transfer is of a temporal order (productions of societies that have dis-
appeared but re-appropriated by new ones), or of a spatial order (transcontinental mo-
bility of images). If it is no longer necessary to return to the anecdotal case of African im-
ages transferred to Western museums, it is on the contrary necessary to be interested in
the opposite phenomenon, very often trivialized, that of the transfer of images and espe-
cially of the Western imagination in the African postcolonial context. In the case, for ex-
ample, of the apologetic monuments of administrators, civil servants and soldiers, one
can observe in several African countries a rise in iconoclastic movements (and this also
extends to the former colonial powers). Mainly oriented against controversial personali-
ties, these movements experienced a great student momentum in South Africa with its
“Rhodes must fall” period (March 2015). In Cameroon, the activist A. Blaise Essama be-
came famous by repeatedly decapitating the head of the statue of French General Leclerc,
even pushing his movement to unbolt about 50 public space signs with French surnames.
These textbook cases well justify the theory of “necropolitics” of A. Mbembé (2006),28
presenting such representations as being the extension of “a form of racial terror”, sup-
posed to “bring back into the scene of the present the dead who, during their lifetime,
tormented, often by the sword, the existence of Africans”. Beyond simple material repre-
sentations, one must look far into the colonial institutionalization of workshops and art
schools of European tradition, to realize to what extent Western imagination has pro-
foundly upset the conception of art, of image or representation in Africa. In fact, several
generations of post-colonial artists have been nurtured in ignorance of their iconograph-
ic heritage, in favour of an appetite for the history of “high art”, from its antiquity to its
contemporary forms. But in this process of socio-cultural transformation, the artistic ge-
nius has also been able to find original ways of self-fulfilment, in particular by appropri-
ating certain processes or recent art movements (recycling, assemblage, installation/pub-
lic art, performance, pop art, graphic design, etc.), following semiological codes specific
to traditions and local cultural realities.
The question often arises when it is necessary to determine the presence or not of a no-
tion of the history of art through extra-Western languages, or even worse, when it is a
question of applying theories of analysis and interpretation specific to the history of West-
ern art movements to non-Western contexts. In the first case, from L. S. Senghor
(1956)29 to R. Somé 1998,30 via R. F. Thompson (1971),31 there is luckily enough a rel-
atively rich literature on the designation, in African languages, of the notions concerning
classical aesthetics (beautiful, good, good, ugly, pleasant, perfect, etc.), art and represen-
tation. This allows us to notice that even if the art historical discipline was largely built in
the West, the notion of art has been an object of debate throughout its history. First rel-
egated to the domain of techne in Antiquity, the Latin notion of ars or artes will gradual-
ly undergo a conceptual shift of emphasis from the technical means towards the final out-
come, culminating with the fairly recent conceptualization of “artistic creation”. In fact,
since the existence of the art as a cultural phenomenon is witnessed in all human groups
(F. Boas 1927),32 the cultural meaning of the notion of art is less problematic, than the
paradigms specific to each culture in terms of identification, analysis, interpretation and
classification of images. It is therefore not surprising if the societies which have most en-
gaged in conceptualizing the subject, including that much discussed of evolutionism, have
also established themselves as a standard for measuring and classifying the forms of arts
from one continent to another. What should be done to moderate or counterbalance this
trend? Let’s hope that the human civilizations that have mainly practiced oral traditions
become aware of encouraging new generations to research and write the history of their
artistic heritage.
In relation to the international orientation of research in art history, the economy of
my regrets would readily be expressed on two levels: on the diachronic level, where the
discipline struggles to conquer the field of the oldest arts (prehistory and antiquity ), al-
most abandoned to archaeology, while literature becomes more dense when it goes from
the arts of the Renaissance to the Contemporary; on the synchronic level, highlighting
this time a resignation from the history of art to the benefit of ethnology when one ap-
proaches non-Western classical arts, a paradoxically nuanced observation on the subject
of postcolonial productions, often projected as forms of collateral extension of Western
modern and contemporary arts. This allows us to conclude by noting that, as the avant-
gardes of modern art have been able to reinvent themselves by resourcing in the arts that
were once condemned in the mists of time, the history of art would also benefit from re-
vitalizing its theories and research methods from those horizons where it does not dare or
does not dare enough.
Narcisse Santores Tchandeu

University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon
[email protected]
1. E. Anati, Aux origines de l’art, Paris 2003.

2. J. Kerchache, J. Paudrat, and L. Stephan, L’art africain, Paris 1988.
3. J. Delange, Arts et peuples de l’Afrique noire, Paris 1967.
4. L. Stéphan, Ethnologie-Ethno-esthétique, Encyclopædia Universalis, Corpus 7, Paris 1985, p. 475.
5. P. Perrois, Note sur une méthode d’analyse ethnomorphologique des arts africains, «Cahiers
d’Eudes Africaines» 21(6) (1966), pp. 69-85.
6. L.S. Senghor, L’esthétique négro-africaine, «Diogène» 16 (1956), pp. 43-61.
7. H. Memel-Foté, La vision du beau dans la culture négro-africaine, Colloque: Fonction et signi-
fication de l’art nègre dans la vie du peuple et pour le peuple, Colloque sur l’art nègre, Dakar 30 mars -
8 avril 1966, Paris 1967, pp. 47-67.
8. F. M. Olbrecht, Stijl en substijl in de plastiek der Ba-Luba: De «Kabila» - Stijl, «Wetenschap-
peliike Tijdingen» 1 (1940), pp. 22-30.
9. M. Trowell, African Design. An illustrated Survey of Traditional Craftwork, 2d ed., New York,
NY 2003.
10. E. Von Sydow, Les masques-Janus du Cross-River (Cameroun), «Documents» 6 (1930), pp.
321-328.
11. P. Roumeguere, J. Roumeguere-Eberhardt, Poupées de fertilité et figurines d’argile. Leurs lois
initiatiques, «Journal de la Société des Africanistes» 30 (1960), pp. 205-223.
12. N. S. Tchandeu, S. Hassimi, Monolithes sculptés akwanshi/atal de la Cross/River (Nigéria-Ca-
meroun), «Afrique Archéologie & Arts» 17 (2021), pp. 55-76.
13. K. Ntep, B. Gouem-Gouem, V. M. Nomo, and M. Ndoh, Sisulu L’enfant de Lom Pangar,
in press.
14. A. Malraux, Le Musée imaginaire, Paris 1965.
15. N. Heinich, L’aura de Walter Benjamin, Note sur l’œuvre d’art à l’ère de sa reproductivité te-
chnique, «Actes de la recherche en Sciences Sociales» 49 (1983), pp. 107-109.
16. J. Maes, Figurines mendiantes des Baluba, «Pro Medico» 12(3) (1935), pp. 75-77.
17. J. Volper, Du goût à la théorie. Le «Maître de Buli» au travers du prisme photographique,
«Afrique: Archéologie & Arts» 13 (2017), pp. 11-22.
18. K. Nicklin, J. Salmons, Cross River Art Style, «African Arts» 18(1) 1984, pp. 28-94.
19. C. B. Bela, Les expressions sculpturales au Sud-Cameroun: le cas du pays béti, «Afrique: Ar-
chéologie & Arts», 4 (2006), pp. 125-128.
20. S. L. Betzogo Etongo, C. Miaché Evina, and N.S. Tchandeu, Restituer le patrimoine ou le
déporter de nouveau: quand «La route des chefferies du Cameroun» mène au Musée du Quai Branly-
Jacques Chirac en 2022, «Vestiges: Traces of Record» 8 (2022), pp. 44-58.
21. R. Dognin, Les calebasses peul et les limites de l’explication anthropologique, L. Perrois, C.F.
Baudez (eds.), Anthropologie de l’art: formes et significations (arts de l’Afrique, de l’Amérique et du Pa-
cifique), Paris 1989, pp. 89-104, pp. 94-97.
22. N. Heinich, Le paradigme de l’art contemporain. Structures d’une révolution artistique (Se-
ries: Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines), Paris 2014.
23. N. Heinich, R. Shapiro (eds.), De l’artification. Enquêtes sur le passage à l’art (Series: Cas de
figure), Paris 2012.
24. S. P. Blier, L’art royal africain, Paris 1998.
25. N. S. Tchandeu, From “Collective Anonymity” to “Individual Mark: Rediscovering African Art
as a Model for Participatory, Interactive and Environmentalist Education”, My Learning is Affected by
the Condition of my Life, Artez Studium Generale 2021, https://studiumgenerale.artez.nl/nl/studies/
essay/from+collective+anonymity+to+individual+mark+rediscovering+african+art+as+a+model+for+
participatory+interactive+and+environmentalist+education/.
26. N. S. Tchandeu, A. Mezop Temgoua-Noumissing, Extension territoriale des mégalithes au
Cameroun: foyers éteints, cultures vivantes et arts environnementaux, «Afrique: Archéologie & Arts»
13 (2017), pp. 77-92.
27. N. S. Tchandeu, W. V. Kengne, W. Y. Fokam Noulé, Autels en pierre des «lieux de Dieu»
tsu’Ssi à Bansoa (Cameroun): entre art des environnements sacrés et dépôts picturaux rituels, «Afrique:
Archéologie & Arts» 15 (2019), pp. 67-88.
28. A. Mbembe, La colonie: son petit secret et sa part maudite, «Politique Africaine» 102(2)
(2006), pp. 101-127, p. 121.
29. L. S. Senghor, L’esthétique négro-africaine, «Diogène» 16 (1956), pp. 43-61.
30. R. Somé, Art africain et Esthétique occidentale, La statuaire Lobi et Dagara au Burkina Faso,
Paris 1998.
31. R. F. Thompson, Aesthetics in traditional Africa, C. F. Jopling (ed.), Art and aesthetics in pri-
mitive societies, New York 1971, pp. 374-381.
32. F. Boas, Primitive art, Oslo 1927.
MARIA VASSILAKI
the course of time?
My first approach to art history adopted the current trend of the time to use iconog-
raphy and style as the main vehicles to understand and interpret the art produced in
Byzantium. This is what I had been taught to do while at university during my under-
graduate years. I still do not regret it as a method, no matter how traditional is considered
to be nowadays, as it does teach you a certain and solid (?) way of approaching, seeing,
and interpreting art. My postgraduate years in London took me to a different path and
introduced me to issues of inter- or trans-disciplinarity from a transcultural perspective.
The notion of society, and of the ‘other’; the use of art to express issues of oppression and
repression; all these have become the tools of my research.
Μανόλης Χατζηδάκης, Εικόνες της Πάτμου. Ζητήματα βυζαντινής και μεταβυζαντινής ζω-
γραφικής (Αθήνα: Εθνική Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος, 19771, 19952) Also in English: Manolis
Chatzidakis, Icons of Patmos. Questions of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Painting (Athens:
National Bank of Greece, 1985); Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul. Icons, Death Masks
and Shrouds (London: Reaktion Books, 1997); Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence. A His-
tory of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Style and iconography are the foundation stones of art historical discourse. Despite the
bad reputation they have received in the recent past, they remain useful analytical tools in
the hands of open-minded art historians. The ultimate goal of any visual analysis is the
MARIA VASSILAKI 223
uncovering of an image’s intrinsic meaning by framing it within its specific time, location
and culture. Meaning should be in the heart of an art historical enquiry and if applied
wisely, both style and iconography can be useful means to the desired end.
Stylistic analysis is especially effective for Byzantine art, where the overwhelming ma-
jority of artefacts are unsigned and need to be dated with precision. However, when it
limits itself to a descriptive and formalistic analysis it becomes connoisseurship, an eso-
teric and rather elitist way of viewing art.
Style and iconography are two traditional art historical approaches which should not
– and indeed cannot – be replaced, as they both form the basis of any art historical anal-
ysis. Once their limitations as analytical tools are acknowledged, they can be used but al-
ways with the aim of historical contextualisation in mind.
My research has benefitted from debates examining issues of patronage, audience re-
ception, feminism, and the role of the artist.
One of the most important notions for our understanding of images is ritual. Rituals
are focused interactions that are to be found at the heart of all social demonstrations. They
employ symbolisms that generate group emotions which in turn form patterns of com-
munication that are the backbone of any organized society. In this respect, the analysis of
ritual practices is a deeper form of cultural analysis.
Meaning in visual objects is created by a specific visual language with its own code of
communication, which engages the mind in a powerful and transformative way. The un-
spoken codes and symbols contained in this visual language are perceived by the analysis
of the sight and of the mind, which form a visual literacy that differs for each era. Line
and colour, shadow, light, symbols and narration, are both tools and elements of convey-
ing a message via an image.
It is, but the question is how can we describe and interpret the experiential dimension
of viewers, who lived many centuries ago and in circumstances completely different from
ours, which sometimes is difficult or even impossible to understand and define.
its viewers?
We’re definitely better equipped, but I’m not sure to what extent we can define the ex-
pectations of viewers, who are different from us. In any case, I find it very difficult to under-
stand and interpret how different the viewers of the past had been in comparison with us.
Images alone may not usually suffice in providing their viewers with other viewers’ no-
tions about them. There is the danger of overstretching the evidence of reality and expe-
rience if we take it for granted that “images can contribute to inform their viewers’ un-
derstanding of other images and other aspects of reality and experience”.

The materiality of images is an approach that complements the formal analysis of im-
ages in terms of style and iconography. Although images are usually examined for their
visual properties they are also physical objects that can be held, touched, sensed. These
material properties are vital in facilitating a rethinking of the traditional art historical rep-
resentation of images and complementing our understanding of them.
The term “social life of images” is a theoretical and methodological approach of
analysing images in public spaces as part of a wider visual dialogue that involves both the
patron and the viewer. This analytical framework seeks to situate the image in a spatial
and temporal context, while considering the social factors influencing the image, leading
to an analysis of the political dynamics of an image and its potential symbolic power to
influence public discourse. Thus, the viewer and/or user of an image becomes an indis-
pensable agent in the art historical analysis of an image. Although art objects and artworks
are produced to satisfy a certain demand, practical or spiritual, once they are publicly dis-
played, they acquire a meaning attributed to them by their viewers and users, which can
be different than that of the original patron. This is the mechanism by which they can re-
veal the dynamics of a social system.
Modern theoretical approaches, varying from phenomenology and cognitive psychol-
ogy to social and cultural anthropology, have manifested that ‘sight’ alone is not enough
to ‘see’. In order for sight to become vision, perception, cognition and ultimately memo-
MARIA VASSILAKI 225
ry, the human mind experiences a multi-sensory process, involving touch, smell, hearing
and even taste. In recent years this viewpoint has also been applied to Byzantine art and
archaeology, placing all kind of images, be it frescoes, icons, relics and inscriptions, in the
centre of a synesthetic religious experience.
No matter how appealing this cross-disciplinary approach may be, it should always be
remembered that the main goal of images in Byzantium was to bring the faithful in con-
tact with the divine. In my opinion, we should be careful not to superimpose modern sen-
sibilities or the latest research trends upon the medieval viewer. It is equally important to
bear in mind that, with the exception of frescoes, all other medieval images are viewed and
experienced in the safe and often sterile environment of a museum, which limits a holis-
tic and sensual perception of images.
The issue here is the translation and understanding of the term iconicity in other lan-
guages and especially in Greek. As is widely known, the term icon and εικών do not car-
ry the same meaning, although the former is typically the translation of the latter and vice
versa. Similarly, the term iconicity, when translated as εικονικότητα, it refers to virtual re-
ality (εικονικός = virtual) rather than the similarity between the form and meaning of a
subject. Therefore, the use of the term is rather problematic in some languages and we
should begin by clarifying the nuanced use of the term in various languages.
Hermeneutics is broadly defined as the theory and practice of interpretation. In art his-
tory, these interpretative approaches are meant to shed light on specific intentions and be-
liefs involved in the production of the art historical object/artefact. Essentially, the aim of
a hermeneutic methodology is to unveil the wider cultural and social forces that may have
influenced the final artistic outcome. Thus, when analysing medieval images with this per-
spective in mind, it is vital that we take into account the fact that the vast majority of
them have been transferred outside their natural habitat, which was mainly the church.
With the exception of frescoes, images, be it icons or other liturgical objects, are nowa-
days to be found in museums and other collections. It is therefore vital to take this into
account, if we are to interpret in a way that can be justified by the social and historical
context of the time a specific image was produced.
The problem with the global use of English as the lingua franca is not so much in the
application of Western European notions on the understanding of images but the ubiq-
uitous use of English as a reading and writing language for medieval art history. Biblio-
graphical references these days tend to be mainly – if not solely – in English, which goes
to show that primary sources and past publications in non-English languages are ignored
with a light heart. It is of course impossible to demand that modern scholars speak, read,
or understand more than two languages, as was the case for the founding fathers of the
discipline, but this is an issue we should keep in mind, when training younger academics.
Perhaps a third foreign language should be a pre-requisite for doctoral studies and a fourth
should also be a taught option.
An innovative approach and an ultra-fresh mind. To me what really matters above all
is the use of common sense while interpreting and analysing issues of art of the past.
Maria Vassilaki
University of Thessaly
[email protected]
ANNEMARIE WEYL CARR
the course of time?
What first seduced me in art history was the translation process: saying adequately
what one saw. It characteristically addressed signed works of attested excellence with lit-
erary subjects – though there was always the challenge of verbalizing why some anony-
mous or subjectless work deserved respect – and its intention was deeply humanistic: to
mobilize one’s own educated and cultivated sensibilities. Renaissance painting seemed its
ideal site. Learning to “see” Romanesque art was a long, earnest effort that finally forced
me to look at things, not style and literacy. Manuscripts liberated me from the hegemo-
ny of both artist and masterpiece – manuscripts were the product of multiple hands and
eras, spoke to multiple senses, assumed meaning on radically different levels, and abso-
lutely could not be assigned significance on grounds of quality alone. Nonetheless, I still
craved images. Here Cyprus entranced me. I encountered it in the Crusader era, which
imposed an earnest immersion in the role of art as an instrument of social critique. It has
been not the Crusader mélange, however, but the intensity of Byzantine images – even
modest Byzantine images – that truly challenges me. How to address them adequately is
my biggest challenge.
Hans Belting’s Bild und Kult forced me into thinking about images rather than art. It
both drew my attention to icons – which till then I had, like my mentor Hugo Buchthal,
“done my best to avoid” – and at the same time dispelled the notion that icons were im-
material “windows on another world.” The eye rests, indeed leans on, the icon’s surface.
Robert Farris Thompson’s Face of the Gods. Art and Altars of Africa and the African Amer-
icas (Munich, 1993) made a deep impression on me, because it offered me whole new
ways of thinking about talking about art – in terms of verbs; of faces as altars (and vice
versa); or of his quotation from Robert Motherwell that “the function of the artist is to
make actual the spiritual, so that it is there to be possessed” (by whom?). I devoted care-
ful, methodical attention to Robin Cormack’s Writing in Gold and later Painting the Soul,
deeply appreciative of the way he laid out one critical question posed by the shift from ap-
preciation to reception and agency, and talked them through. But really, books were less
impressive than the articles of people like Barbara Zeitler, Lucy-Anne Hunt, and Robert
Nelson, because they were tackling real objects, not just ideas.
It’s easy enough to drop art historical notions like name artists, or masterpieces. How-
ever, since I work on images that function through powerful visual and liturgical canons,
style and iconography play an ongoing role in my thinking. They can be variously used in
varied combinations, but I cannot imagine dismissing them. This said, less and less of
what art history treats actually does consist of images with either visual or literary canons;
an “image” can be as composite as a cityscape or as intangible as a sound, and “style” can
run from brushstroke to what Margaret Conkey so deliciously called “styles of use.” There
are questions about setting; material, weight and value; modes of exchange or transmis-
sion; access and conditions of perceptibility; issues of power and identity – and there is
room in art history for many dispensations. However, I don’t believe the mere fact that
something is visual makes it material for art history. It needs philosophical ballast; mate-
rial culture has different parameters. And I believe that we owe it to each other to verbal-
ize very clearly what we believe we have seen in an artifact. We need to engage thought,
and we need to enable sight.
What first challenged me in art history was the translation process, and I regarded it
as deeply humanistic: designed to mobilize one’s own educated and cultivated sensibili-
ties in response to the artist. All of this shifted as works of art became diagnostic tools of
social critique. Looking became a way of exposing relationships of power; artistic indi-
viduality lost force in the face of group identities – gender, class, ethnicity, religious or
ideological affiliation; and an essentially humanistic response became a confession of
one’s parochial inability to see beyond the limits of one’s own history and education. The
visual became a form of social science. This is much what I do in Crusader Cyprus. More
recently, I sense a frustration with the visual itself. Any directed response is not merely
visual, or even merely social, but organic, engaging a vast network of neuromuscular sys-
tems that run beyond individual senses into the physical and environmental forces that
bodies interact with. Efforts to make neurobiology, environmental ecology, the chem-
istry of materials, the physics of sound an integral part both of artifacts themselves and
ANNEMARIE WEYL CARR 229
their adequate appreciation is drawing us into uneasy domains that are hard to anchor
in the terminology of either art or history. We need to remain in some basic way a hu-
manistic endeavor.
I am older than a lot of this group, and I’ve seen the “obvious” message of many of the
artifacts I study and love change radically over time. I loved art history because I could
“see” things’ messages; I loved icons because they subjected words to their own truth. But
in the end, artifacts rely on perceivers and so lead deeply volatile lives. I’m sobered by the
layered complexity of their lives in time. What is the most honest way to address it? Shift-
ing theoretical lenses become distinct performances, interesting perhaps if they’re adroit,
but eerily independent of the artifact itself. Is there anything beyond “what you make of
it if you try on this lens”?
My understanding has become very tied to the material I work on, where it has at least
two forms: 1) can a work make visible and resonant within itself at least a portion of what
I have come to understand about the subject from the writings of the Greek fathers, an-
cient or more recent; 2) can it stimulate my serious effort to see how that particular bur-
den of content has been tailored to engage the needs and concerns of a living audience,
whether contemporary with or after the time and place of its production. The means are
capacious: selection, elaboration or exclusion of thematic elements are of course impor-
tant, but so are scale; material, color and texture; accessibility; location (relative to what?);
illumination; hierarchy; compositional or locational rhythm, sequence, cadence, and sur-
prise; exposure or occlusion, especially by clothing; varied forms of writing ... But I have
never seriously abandoned the role of a topic or subject.
How something looks can’t be separated from how it works. To some extent, anything
inside the work is functioning through the conditions in which it is being seen, and they
can’t be separated. But there are many degrees of separation, and most of them offer some
degree of both gain and loss. The obligation incumbent on all of us is to be clear about
what we are and aren’t seeing. Mise-en-scène is fickle: I spent my early years on Cyprus
lamenting that churches were dark, icons occluded, interiors dilapidated, and people self-
involved; today I spend my life yearning for precisely that lost “authenticity.” But both
conditions offer some gifts, and they make the same demands: are you really seeing what
can be seen?
its viewers?
My generation has been so fortunate: in our ample opportunities for frequent travel to
see “the real thing” or the “real place”; in our incredible cameras and visual enhancement
devices to bring “the real thing” to our fingertips; in our ability to move with unprece-
dented confidence across multiple linguistic, religious, and cultural systems. And we’ve
had a good century of critical theory to nudge us to ask who is looking and how. So yes,
I think we are better equipped today to probe the relationship between the way things
look and the ways they are seen. But we have left behind us a clearly perceptible history
of shifting romanticisms in the interpretation of peoples and their things. So are we get-
ting closer to truth, or just grasping different parts of the elephant? As historians – even
visual historians (as long as we remain that way) – we remain subject to the distorting
lenses of our own intellectual fashions.
I really believe it is by seeing, not reading, that we learn to see. A text can alert us to
the fact that someone saw X in a certain artifact, but it is when WE see it that X becomes
a meaningful part of our visual equipment. In this respect, I believe images are constant-
ly teaching viewers to see.

I am irredeemably a “painting person.” Even my gestures in speaking of art suggest flat
surfaces, not volumes. Thus I am endlessly being booby-trapped into thinking of artifacts
as visual planes. Even a virtual image is never just a visual plane. It has working parts, and
one will never really understand how it works without them. So yes: I am recurrently
grateful to be reminded that images are just abstractions. Neither I nor the Byzantine peo-
ple I ponder ever encounter Byzantine artifacts that are just images. I am also very con-
scious of the fact that my way of relating pictures to the surfaces they occupy, and my way
of relating the seen artifact to other things in the world, are both quite different from what
I sense among the devotees of the icons I study. When I become absorbed in the picture
I’m seeing, it essentially becomes a virtual image, innocent of size or weight or heft. I
think when many medieval viewers became similarly abstracted into the picture’s image,
it became a person, who could even be seen sometimes walking in other places. But with-
out the thing it was pictured on, the person wouldn’t exist, any more than my abstrac-
tions would exist without the thing my eye bumped into. Here again, I am grateful when-
ever I am reminded of this. But I have not therefore constructed a discourse of meaning
that is distinctive to materiality. Materials condition perception but they don’t talk.
ANNEMARIE WEYL CARR 231
Social life can be hard on images. Probably the single most useful way of approaching
it is by turning away from the images altogether to find out what has been said about
them, when and by whom. More concretely, though, we can pay attention less to the im-
ages as such than to the way people behave in their presence, especially (but not only) if
they are in some way in situ. Modifications that have been made to images are valuable.
Even more indicative are evidences of use. How keenly can the historian pick up on the
flymarks of what have people done to make images and their artifacts work, or at least
work better, for them? Valuable to me has been Margaret Conkey’s idea of “styles of use,”
because uses have patterns and codes and can themselves open avenues of inquiry. Use,
like appreciation, is a form of consumption – it eats away at things – so we’re always try-
ing to see it away. But it can be very informative, even if hard on the images.
The mingled smell of beeswax and olive oil in a space sharply heightens my receptivi-
ty to icons, probably much as the sound of church music enhances many people’s recep-
tivity to religious art. I am sure the painters who adorned the churches I enter expected
that lamps and candles would constitute a steady part of devotional and liturgical practice
in those spaces, that their fragrance would come to permeate the atmosphere there, and
that their paintings would thus be accompanied by that odour. Yet the icons were there
always, even if regular devotions were not occurring and generating their smells, and they
were still expected to function to hallow the space. Musically, too, even in cases in which
paintings incorporate rhythmic or proportional elements drawn from music performed
beneath them, the paintings are expected to be visible and functioning to move viewers,
even if no music is being made. So I tend to regard such poly-sensory responses as acces-
sory, an addition to my own equipment, rather than as an ingredient integral to the im-
age and its functionality. I guess it’s one of the cases in which I still believe that artifacts
do exist outside of the way in which I perceive them.
This is interesting, and certainly it can deepen our understanding of how we invest our
world with properties like significance and emotional inflections. But it serves as a com-
parison.
This is such a present and pressing question for me, as suggested already in Question 5).
I launched decades ago into a study of a certain great icon over time. I did so in order to
show how it shifted over time. My mantra became “the afterlife of images” – that is, how
they live on into new meanings. But now that project has become an albatross, because it
really isn’t enough just to show what chameleons images are. That is essentially reception
theory: it presumes that there is a “real,” stable image, and the curiosity lies in the fact that
viewers – who are, after all, outside the image and experiencing it not in reality but inside
their own hermetic world – always do seem to smudge the image in absorbing it. The icon
is up to something else. Its image does change. It is not simply seen differently; it looks
different at different time/places. I am reasonably sure that it is being altered to keep it
looking the same. But so far, art history is proving more skilful at dissolving an image into
multiple perceptions than at integrating it again to grasp what it is that holds all the vari-
ables together.
As we surge out into “globalism,” we just really need to stop talking so much and start
listening much harder. I am often gobsmacked listening to people from another tradition
talk seriously about artifacts, as with Faces of the Gods in question 1. The kinds of quali-
ties Thompson chose to talk about, and the language he used, were fresh, and they left me
scrambling to see what they were doing for him – what questions they were answering; what
structures he had set up for talking about his altars. The classes I took with Yasser Tabbaa
were similarly compelling – partly of course because he really is a mathematician, but also
because the science and philosophy he was drawing on were being used to answer ques-
tions I hadn’t even thought about asking when looking at the artifacts he was working on
(what became Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival). Similarly, Pavel
Florensky’s Iconostasis makes a strong impression on me each time I read it. These authors
are fully within “art history” and using many of its basic strategies. But they are not the
kind of outsider that I am, for instance, to Byzantine art, trying to impose my Anglo-
phone mode of eye-tongue coordination on a different cultural system.
A theme that emerged as I was answering these questions was the degree to which I be-
lieve that artifacts do exist outside my own perceptions of them. And I think this is some-
thing I crave as we sally forth under the banner of globalism to conquer the world and ab-
sorb it into [Anglophone] art history. We need honestly to believe that artifacts are out
there independently of us, and learn to listen to the things their own environments are
saying about them.
Annemarie Weyl Carr

Southern Methodist University
[email protected]
WU HONG
the course of time?
My research focuses on East Asian Buddhist art. For my PhD dissertation, I am pri-
marily concerned with typological development of Japanese sculptures of the Asuka peri-
od and their religious and socio-political implications. My current project deals with ear-
ly Chinese Buddhist art, with a particular focus on the notion of divine and the Buddha
image as a living entity. I have also developed an interest in the phenomenological ap-
proach to images and artistic experience, but am exploring ways to systematically inquire
along such a direction.
David Freeberg, The Power of Images; Francisco Varela, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive
Science and Human Experience; Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and
the Feeling Brain
Advantage: it provides a convenient framework of analysis.
Disadvantage: such rigid compartmentalizing scheme sometimes oversimplifies a more
complex scenario. Style and iconography are not intrinsic properties but rely on a view-
er’s perceptive and cognitive apparatus. What is undertoood as a stylistic element by one
group may be seen as an iconographic feature by another group. Such fluidity in cogni-
tion is not uncommon, especially in inter-regional cultural transmissions. I am not aware
of an alternative approach that can do a better job, but when applying the old scheme of
“style” and “iconography”, I see them not as distinct, immutable categories but as flexible
understandings dependent on the viewer.
My research benefits significantly from the affect turn or the sensorial turn, which allows
me to analyze images and visual forms beyond their stylistic and iconographic constitutions.
The notion of an embodied experience.
For a long time, western philosophy has been dominated by a rationalist approach and
the presumed separation between mind and body. But to quote Antonio Damsio,
Descartes is wrong and there is great potential to reconsider the theories of Spinoza
(which has much in common with Yogacara Buddhism). My research is informed by this
new direction in philosophical studies and I am interested in exploring how vision, to-
gether with our other sensorial organs, leads to an artistic experience that is more bodily
than intellectual.
I see two modes of communication of meaning. The first is consciously perceived and
processed by our brain (e.g., we recoganize an iconographic message in one painting). The
second works more directly on our body while the perception process may be unconscious
(e.g., a painting may convey a particular kind of feeling or affect).
The phenomenological encounter with an image is not an act between the viewer and
the image in a vacuum, but a situated experience dependent on all players in the specific
circumstance and the circumstance as well.
its viewers?
Yes. We are better aware of the complexity of the relationship, but to further investi-
gate the mechanism of interaction among different factors in the relationship is still very
difficult.
WU HONG 235
Our perception and cognition of the outside world depends on our perceptive ca-
pacity and cognitive apparatus, which is continuously evolving given new experience we
acquire at every moment of life. Therefore, encounter with an image will certainly im-
pact on our subsequent encounters with other images and other aspects of reality and ex-
perience.

The physical aspects of images, but also with extending qualities associated with feel-
ings to be invoked in an interacting person. For instance, marble tends to be associated
with feelings of cold, sublime etc.
Images are a crucial element in the life of their viewers and users; they have an im-
pact on their way of life, such as an icon dictating its owner to pray to it every day as a
morning ritual etc. While a user determines the usage of an image, an image also claims
a share of its user’s time and prescribes a particular way of interaction between the im-
age and the user.
Many art historians have pointed out that tactile perception is involved, especially in
perceiving illusional space as depicted in an image. However, other senses also play a role.
Just like a red apple already activates the olfactory sense of its viewer without the need of
projecting the scent itself, an image can also arouse other senses of its viewer.
In Buddhist rituals, olfactory and auditory aspects are important parts that, together
with sight and tactile experiences, condition the body of a participant in a particular mode
that is most suited for receiving or connecting with the divine.
I thought they are already assimilated into studies of visual culture/material culture?
Models in transculturation studies etc.
This is hard to avoid. Linguistic terms are loaded with meanings developed from its in-
tellectual lineage. For instance, in Chinese texts, there is a stress on 灵像 (images that
are numinous and efficacious), yet to what extent “numinous and efficacious” is compa-
rable with “divine” deserves discussion. We need to be more aware of such differences
when using English to discuss non-European phenomena.
In addition to the material aspect of the finished artwork, perhaps investigations of the
material aspect of the creation process would also yield insightful results. I find James
Elkins’ What Painting Is also quite inspiring, thought similar works are few in art histor-
ical research.
Wu Hong
Fudan University
[email protected]
PHOTOCREDITS
Kessler: photo © The British Library Board, Cotton Claudius B. IV, f. 105v (fig. 1); photo ©
Lyon municipal Library MS0324, f. 44r (fig. 2); photo © The National Library of Russia (fig. 3);
photo © Mt. Athos, Pantokrator Monastery (fig. 4); photo from G. Morello and G. Wolf (eds.),
Il Volto di Cristo, Exhibition catalog, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Milan 2000, p. 79 (fig. 5);
photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Gérard Blot (fig. 6); photo © Bibliothèque na-
tionale de France (fig. 7); photo © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (fig. 8); photo © Utrecht Uni-
versity Library (fig. 9); photo © Bibliothèque nationale de France (fig. 10); photo © Coll. and pho-
togr. Bnu de Strasbourg (fig. 11); photo © Archivio Fotografico della Procuratoria di San Marco
(fig.12); photo © Reproduced courtesy of the Chapter of Canterbury (fig. 13); photo © governa-
torato SCV - Direzione dei Musei, tutti i diritti riservati (fig. 14); photo © Historisches Museum
Basel, Peter Portner (fig. 15); photo © The British Library Board MS Add 14791, fol. 6r (fig. 16);
photo © governatorato SCV - Direzione dei Musei, tutti i diritti riservati (fig. 17); photo ©
author’s archive, Doron Bauer (fig. 18); photo © University and State Library Darmstadt (fig. 19);
photo © Halberstadt Cathedral / Ivan Drpić (fig. 20); photo © per la riproduzione fotografica si
ringrazia la Direzione Centrale degli Affari dei Culti e per l’Amministrazione del Fondo Edifici di
Culto del Ministero dell’Interno, proprietaria dell’immagine conservata nella Cappella Palatina
(fig. 21); photo © governatorato SCV - Direzione dei Musei, tutti i diritti riservati (fig. 22); photo
© Kremsmünster, Benedictine monastery (fig. 23); photo © LWL - Museum für Kunst und Kul-
tur, Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster / Rudolf Wakonigg und Hanna Neander (fig. 24);
photo © Staatsbibliothek Bamberg / Gerald Raab (fig. 25); photo © Escorial, Real Biblioteca (fig.
26); photo © Michele Bacci (fig. 27); photo © governatorato SCV - Direzione dei Musei, tutti i
diritti riservati (fig. 28); photo © Bernisches Historisches Museum. Photograph Yvonne Hurni
(fig. 29); photo from P. Emiliano Fabbricatore (ed.), San Nilo. Il Monastero italo-bizantino di Grot-
taferata, 1004-2004, Mille anni di storia spiritualità e cultura, Rome 2005, tav. 3, p. 82 (fig. 30);
photo © author’s archive, Paul van Moorsel (fig. 31); photo @ Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Ex-
peditions to Mount Sinai (fig. 32); photo @ Bibliothèque nationale de France (fig. 33); photo @
Justin Kroesen (fig. 34); photo @ Abtei St. Hildegard, Rüdesheim-Eibingen (fig. 35); photo @
Museo di arte sacra di Massa Marittima (fig. 36); photo @ author’s archive (fig. 37); Coll. and pho-
togr. Bnu de Strasbourg (fig. 38).

M Bacci F Crivello and V Scepanovic Eds

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

M Bacci F Crivello and V Scepanovic Eds

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

M Bacci F Crivello and V Scepanovic Eds

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Iconographica Library .

Iconographica. Studies in the History of Images

© 2023 SISMEL · EDIZIONI DEL GALLUZZO

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-88-9290-264-0

Any use other than as authorized under this license

IMAGES IN PREMODERN SOCIETIES

3 Herbert L. Kessler, Above Iconography

202 Jean-Michel Spieser

For Walter S. Melion at seventy

“God is ‘above grammar’”

When I was a graduate student at Princeton University, I sat in on Erwin Panofsky’s

Spreading the Peacock’s Tail

+ David * rex * manu * fortis * aspectu *desiderabilis * ecce

The amalgam of an Augustan Medusa head, twelfth-century cameo, and thirteenth-

A Twisting Acanthus Coil

Deferring to Horace, Venantius Fortunatus had stressed crisscrossing already in the

Rhyming MANIFESTUS with MYSTICUS in images as in words, the Kremsmünster

Pictorial notions depended on conventionality, that is, on recognizable semantic units

resent the incarnate person.239 Despite numerous experiments, no standard iconography

The Iconographer’s Share

Using an art metaphor, Anselm of Canterbury explicitly acknowledged that “just as in

Visual movement underlay the apprehension of much medieval imagery, as Gerard of

Pro gloria Dei

260. Drpić, Epigram, Art, and Devotion; Strohmaier, Liturgischen Textil.

DANTE’S ENCOUNTER WITH LIVING “SHADOWS”

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

Luisa Elena Alcalá

I add two elements that have not yet been addressed:

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

I will give one passus from the book:

neighbors (Bildwissenschaften). With this in mind, we have recently set up a network –

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras González

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

their recombinations inform future perceptions. As I recognized in a co-authored book,

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

imaginary. An object doesn’t need to be figurative to be efficient, and to form a knotwork

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

tions becomes reductive. I am generally wary of any wholesale prescription of approach-

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

ly speculative or subjective. However, if researchers maintain the high evidentiary stan-

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

Actually, I was trained in “Lettres classiques”, the French equivalent to “Classics”,

10. What is your assessment of the materiality of images?

non-European societies. Quite disconnected from the classical tradition of ethnology,

+ David * rex * manu * fortis * aspectu desiderabilis ecce