There are a great many studies on the figure of Mary Magdalene in different areas of knowledge. Nevertheless, there is a gap as regards the image of this character in Catalonia, and specifically ...regarding the visual representation of her soul at the moment when she died. This text aims to analyze this matter based on two Catalan altarpieces: the Altarpiece of Saint Mary Magdalene from Perella (Bernat Martorell, 1437–1453) and The Death of Mary Magdalene (Jaume Huguet, 1465–1480). The analysis has been carried out based on the postulates from the tradition of studies on iconography and iconology: the relationships between image and text, the history of the iconographic types and the magnetic power of images. The basic hypothesis is that the representation of Mary Magdalene’s soul in the 15th Century in Catalonia is visually borrowed from the iconographic type of the Dormition of the Mother of God. To test this, comparative analyses have been made of the visual representation of the two women and also of the textual sources, such as the canonical and extracanonical gospels, a variety of medieval legends and different hagiographies or vitas and sermons from the period.
The article presents the results of a pilot study focusing on what are called shadow paintings in Norwegian church interiors from the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the many Baroque illusionistic ...wall paintings in churches, painted shadows are probably the least known and considered. Shadow paintings are grey or black paintings that surround church furnishings, such as altarpieces, epitaphs and sculptures, as well as pulpits and stalls. They create an illusion of light by “casting” a shadow behind an object, thus enlarging and accentuating the object. Most of the original shadow paintings were overpainted or removed during the 19th century, but in the 20th century many were rediscovered and successively revealed. Remnants of shadow paintings are found in several northern European countries. In Norway, nineteen visible shadow paintings have been preserved, offering an understanding of how these wall paintings were formed, executed and popularized. Aside from their decorative character, painted shadows can supply greater knowledge about the church furnishings. But above all, shadow paintings are relics of an age when light – both natural and spiritual – created a more dramatic expression within churches.
The Annunciation Broadcast by Prophets (1565) was an altarpiece created by Federico Zuccaro (1541–1609) for the Church of the Annunciation, Rome. It was the first image commissioned by the Order of ...the Jesuits, a movement involved in propagating the objectives of the Counter-Reformation Church. Altarpieces were particularly effective points of communication between the Catholic Church and the lay beholder, and used visual exegesis as a means to communicate appropriated receptions of biblical texts. The intimate connection that these objects have to their theological and political context marks them as significant moments of biblical reception, that have, up to this point, been overlooked by historians in the field. This article identifies the broader lacuna in scholarship surrounding the reception history of the Bible during the Counter-Reformation. Whilst this is due to a preference for studies of the Bible in the Protestant Reformation, the lack of scholarly investment poorly reflects the relevance of the Counter-Reformation period to the reception-historical methodology. The context prioritized the interpretation of the Bible through the lens of Church tradition, or in other words, the history of the Bible’s reception. This affinity is echoed in the reception-historical approach found in contemporary biblical scholarship, creating a hermeneutical link between the two contexts. Visual culture was a valuable expression of Counter-Reformation rhetoric and visualized the mediation of biblical texts through Church tradition. This article uses Zuccaro’s altarpiece as a tool to argue this hypothesis and postulate the intimate relationship maintained between texts and their reception in Counter-Reformation Catholicism.
The article contains an inventory of the sources of the cult of Saint Thomas Becket in the Swedish Church province, putting them in a regional as well as chronological perspective. There is evidence ...for the cult in different types of source material but especially in liturgical texts and pieces of art. The earliest example dates back to the 1190s in Uppsala archdiocese. During the last part of the Middle Ages there is evidence of his cult in calendars, missals, and breviaries from all Swedish dioceses but one. However, the degree of festivity with which his day was annually kept varied between the dioceses. The cathedrals played an important role in promoting the cult. At least two of them were provided with chapels and altars in honour of Saint Thomas. Pieces of art with connection to him are preserved from four of the dioceses. Despite the fact that much of the sources from the Middle Ages have been lost, it reasonable to maintain that the cult of Saint Thomas was most evident in the dioceses of Uppsala and Linköping respectively.
Touching the Passion considers the ways that the Passion in late medieval retables touched worshipers. The author explores the "aesthetics of immersion" through different lenses, such as scale, ...medium, the five senses, the effect of the frame, and medieval mnemonics.
Antwerp altarpieces produced between c. 1500–1540 could be remarkably similar and have often been regarded as epitomising the shift from bespoke commissions to standardized objects made to be sold on ...an open market. The only (preserved) Antwerp altarpiece imported to Norway was commissioned by the priest Ansten Jonsson Skonk and put on display in the parish church of Ringsaker shortly before the Reformation was introduced in Denmark-Norway in 1537. Unique in Norway, the altarpiece is of uncommon character even within the larger body of preserved Antwerp pieces. When analysing the many idiosyncrasies of the Ringsaker altarpiece, it comes across as a deliberately versatile product: on the one hand it carefully reflects altarpieces and devotional practices known to Skonk; on the other, it also reflects contemporary religious disputes of northern Europe more broadly, substantiating the claim that (some) Antwerp workshops intentionally created “multi-confessional” artworks – seemingly to suit the patron(s) in question once installed.
During construction of a 6 km long railway tunnel close to historic churches in Stockholm, a preventive monitoring model was applied for ensembles of large-scale immovable ecclesiastical artworks. ...Construction work such as blasting and pile-driving took place during five years under or very close to these immovable works of art. In Sweden, risk assessment related to construction work is focused on risks associated with the building; meanwhile, there is no common approach for protecting the immovable historic works of art and architectural surfaces. This paper discusses how a preventive model for vibration monitoring on immovable artworks was developed and used as well as how the preventive purpose was perceived by different stakeholders during and after the tunnelling work. Experience from this project concludes that monitoring that includes uniform visual inspection becomes crucial for being able to protect the artworks. The concept of vibrations standards relying on fixed numbers of critical vibrations levels for mitigating the effects of vibration on immovable art can be questioned based on experiences from this project.
The purpose of this article is to study domestic devotion in Catalonia in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, based on the information provided by numerous post-mortem inventories and ...texts written by coetaneous spiritual authors such as Ramon Llull, Francesc Eiximenis and Saint Vincent Ferrer. Among the objects recorded in the inventories, pieces of furniture and devotional objects laypeople and clergymen used in their pious practices as “material” aid for personal prayer stood out. They were in keeping with the strong visual culture that pervaded the Late Middle Ages. There were retables, oratories and images of religious themes. However, the inventories also listed lesser known but equally recurring objects such as paternosters and Agni Dei. Painted cloths depicting religious scenes that decorated the homes of numerous wealthy Catalan-Aragonese families at that time were also present. Spiritual books such as books of hours and psalters, biblical texts, Legenda Aurea, etc., were mentioned as well. They were part of the incipient libraries of the laity in the Late Middle Ages.
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