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Under examination are two Temptations of Saint Anthony on stone: one painted on ruin marble by Jacob van Swanenburgh, the other on oriental alabaster by an unknown Flemish artist. I explore the optical properties of the pictorial surface, the ontology of representation, and the impact of the stone support on visual perception. The unique surface qualities of the paintings are considered to function as subiconographic elements closely related to the pictorial subject. I argue that the use of stone as support is largely motivated by both the pictorial subject and religious practices related to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the first in-depth analysis of the cult of the "Virgines Capitales" in late medieval Germany. Devotion to the four capital virgins—Saints Barbara, Catherine, Margaret, and Dorothy—thrived in the Germanic territories during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The four virgin martyrs' widespread popularity is evidenced by a mass in their honor in the Cologne Missal (the "Missa de sanctis quatuor virginibus capitalibus"), a literary tradition of the saints' passions (the "Passienbüchlein von den vier Hauptjungfrauen"), and a vast number of surviving visual images that range from altarpieces to devotional paintings and prints. This study traces the origins and development of the cult, and will argue that devotion to the "Virgines Capitales" was in response to the four saints' powers of collective intercession, derived not only from their individual powers, but also from their combined sexual purity, which made them Christ's brides, and thus especially effective intercessors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a discussion of the interrelations and tension between art and reform in early cinquecento Italy with a focus oil Correggio's "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine with St. Sebastian." In particular, examination is made of the ways in which Correggio's picture relates to notions of faith and docta pietas that were central to the world of its first viewer and potential patron, Francesco Grillenzoni from Modena. Special attention is dedicated to the representation of St. Sebastian, whose sensual figure is not distinguishable from that of an alluring Cupid. Consideration is given to how and why Correggio portrayed the saint as a nova creatura, that is, as the vehicle of human transformation and regeneration, thereby creating a new kind of devotional imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article, I argue that the houses and memorabilia collections associated with venerated personages played an important role in campaigns to elevate popular, unofficial, saintly figures to the level of the blessed or even canonised saints. Two practices converged in these campaigns: the Catholic tradition of sacralising specific sites and endowing material remnants with special meaning, and the ‘museumification’ of memorial houses and collections. The focus here is on the use of material culture in the beatification campaigns for modern stigmatics (who carried the wounds of Christ). Of the hundreds of cases that were reported, only a few were beatified and canonised. The article concentrates primarily on one success story: the evolution of the German stigmatic Anne Catherine Emmerick (1774–1824) from a ‘living saint’ to her being officially blessed (2004) and the role that her houses and possessions played in the promotion of her cult following and image construction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin houses a collection of Eastern icons which were acquired by Mr W.E.D. Allen in the early part of the twentieth century. To mark the re-launch of the Dublin branch of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the ESBVM organised an illustrated lecture on the collection's Hodegetria icon in the Gallery on 11 April 2015. The following is an edited version of the talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the great surviving monuments from the middle ages, the cathedrals, churches and objects made for them or for private devotion, testify to the importance of Christian faith in medieval culture. Devotion to the saints was a facet of that belief, vividly recorded in the surviving relics, reliquaries and images of saints as well as in hagiographic literature. Yet medieval sources also contain references to doubts about the nature and power of saints and their relics. The overcoming of doubt or incredulity was a widely used trope in hagiography. However, if we take medieval doubts seriously, they should prompt us to consider whether the images and objects created to celebrate particular saints might sometimes have been designed to bolster dubious claims or help to authenticate disputed material within a rich discourse about both individual saints and relics and about the nature of holy bodies more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a European emigrant to (and now longtime resident of) Mexico City, contemporary artist Francis Alÿs is deeply sensitive to the ways that cultural systems shape and organize human lives. Over two decades, his work has become deftly efficient at instigating subtle social interferences that highlight and reconsider these organizing systems. Although much has been written about the social and political force of these interferences, the literature on Alÿs's work has generally ignored the significant religious content and allusions recurring throughout his artistic practice. This essay is a critical meditation on the religious implications of his Fabiola project, a collection of more than 370 handmade copies of a lost nineteenth-century painting of a fourth-century Christian saint named Fabiola. By paying special attention to the ways that these "handmade readymades" ennoble the voices of others and revise the possible meanings of visual repetition (particularly in the context of mechanical mass-reproduction), this essay argues that Alÿs's Fabiola is not only a profound study of cultural transmission but one that is particularly resonant with the Christianity that formed St. Fabiola's own life and the forms by which she has been remembered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper examines the complex relationship between the visual arts and inquisitorial power in early modern Spain through the analysis of Pedro Berruguete'sSaint Dominic Presiding over an Auto-da-fé(circa 1490). As the first and most emblematic Spanish painting to depict the public ceremony in which the Inquisition announced its sentences, this work has always been interpreted as a propagandistic image aimed at celebrating the Holy Office. The institutional nature of its commission and exhibition – closely connected with the Dominicans – encourages this reading. However, by anchoring my interpretation in the turbulent historical context surrounding the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain, I argue instead that Berruguete produced a multi-layered painting that also echoed the misgivings of many of his contemporaries about the new institution's methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite its autograph status and close iconographic relationship with the Saint Francis cycle at Assisi, Giotto’s large panel of the Stigmatization in the Louvre occupies a marginal place in the literature on the artist. The painting, brought to Paris by Napoleon, has a secure provenance from San Francesco, Pisa, and has conventionally been identified as an altarpiece for a side chapel in that church. This article, based on extensive new archival research, establishes that the Stigmatization was not an altarpiece. Instead, there are strong arguments for it having been elevated above a choir screen or beam in the nave of San Francesco. As well as transforming our understanding of Giotto’s panel and its intended function, these findings have significant implications for the broader study of early Italian panel painting, challenging the traditional bias towards the altarpiece as the most dynamic genre of ecclesiastical image in the decades around 1300. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the patronage of the fresco cycle representing the Legend of Our Lady of the Snows by the Sienese artist Francesco di Giorgio, in Campagnatico (southern Tuscany). Contrary to current scholarship, the mariegola of the confraternity of the Madonna delle Nevi and the cycle itself, dated 1476, provide evidence that the patronage of the chapel pertained to a lay confraternity. The frescoes include the depiction of saints whose relics, later dispersed, were held in the church and formed the basis for local devotional practices. This study reframes the commission of the chapel within the context of local lay devotion and its relationship with the religious and civic realms, and provides new insights on the role of confraternities as patrons of art in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the practice of wealthy families to endow private chapels and altars at the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, Italy. Focusing on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in particular, the author provides an extensive description of various chapels and the religious themes and figures to whom they were dedicated. These decorations included christological motifs, the cult of the Virgin Mary, and the veneration of early Christian and medieval saints.

This article explores the only known painting – the Saint Veronica Altarpiece – by Ugo da Carpi, a prominent woodcutter in Renaissance Italy. Not only did Ugo sign this altarpiece, as an ‘intaiatore’, that is, as a ‘woodcut engraver’, he also claimed to have painted it ‘senza penello’, or ‘without the brush’. This inscription prompted Giorgio Vasari to conclude in his 1568 edition of Le Vite that Ugo had used his fingers and other strange instruments. For decades modern scholars have universally rehearsed Vasari’s interpretation, without carefully examining the altarpiece itself. This study – the first to closely examine the painting – proposes that the Saint Veronica Altarpiece was made not primarily with the fingers, but within the context of Ugo’s renowned skill as a woodcut engraver. This mode of production served both to promote the authority of his craft and to sanctify the reproduction of a contact relic ‘made without human hands’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The martyrs' cycle in the archivolts of the north choir portal of the Holy Cross Minster at Schwabisch Gmünd (1351-70s) reveals a strikingly brutal parade of violence—decapitation, split skulls, mutilated organs, nails and teeth being torn out. Each of the martyrdom scenes is expropriated from the narrative sequence of the saints' vitae, epitomizing the moment of immediate violent action. Although such representations ostensibly allude to each saint's imitatio Christi, their visual semiotics suggest otherwise; the unusual iconography of these martyrs depicts them in effeminate, submissive postures, screaming and weeping, in contrast to their usual impassibility. While earlier studies have interpreted medieval violence imagery as either allegorical or reflecting interior thoughts, or have focused on its connection to the liturgy of punishment in early modern times, this article approaches the tortures depicted at Gmünd as concerned with violence as a moral problem. The visual aggression constituted by this monumental public art of extreme violence confronts the viewer somatically with intense brutality unsanctified by pictorial tradition or memory. The viewers' initial encounter with this series of deformed figures therefore must have been experienced as something new and violently shocking that postponed the moment of devotional immersion. Tracing the contemporary discourse on violence and cruelty, I contend that violence per se is what appears here as a subject of artistic speculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors identify Canon Victor van Zwavenarde as the donor depicted in a 15th-century Netherlandish painting housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The painting, attributed to the painter known as the Master of the Saint Ursula Legend, depicts the donor kneeling next to the standing figure of Saint Victor.

The article examines four paintings created by Italian artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, also known as Il Guercino, which he kept in his own private residence. The author notes similarities in the paintings, which all depict Christian saints alone in the wilderness. The saints depicted are Mary Magdalene, St. Jerome, St. John the Baptist, and St. Paul the Hermit. The author emphasizes Guercino's decision to portray these saints in solitude with identical scenery. The influence of the artist's old age on his decision to execute the paintings is explained.

Opinion remains divided about the meaning and original function of Simone Martini’s early fourteenth century Saint Louis of Toulouse altarpiece, some maintaining that it was primarily a cult image, designed to celebrate the recent canonization of a Franciscan saint, others that it was a dynastic image, justifying Robert of Anjou’s succession to the Neapolitan throne. One way of resolving such an issue would be to establish the painting’s original location. This article explores three possible sites in Naples in terms of different kinds of historical evidence linking these locations with the altarpiece and with the Angevin royal family. It concludes that one of these constitutes the most plausible setting for the Saint Louis of Toulouse altarpiece and that such a location clarifies the relative priorities of politics and piety for this highly prestigious commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the symbolic role of the Biblical character Mary Magdalen in the dynastic politics of the Burgundian Hapsburgs in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. According to the author, Margaret of Austria and others in her dynasty appropriated Magdalen's story and image as part of the founding mythology which justified their power and holdings. It is suggested that Margaret was a highly skilled diplomat and that she used the art she commissioned as political propaganda to lay claim to the contested duchy of Burgundy in France. Topics discussed include the relics of Mary Magdalen supposedly held at the church of Vézelay in Burgundy, portraits of Margaret linking her with Magdalen, and her involvement in the construction of a church in Brou, France.

This study offers a close reading of the processes involved in crafting a Byzantine holy portrait by focusing on certain episodes in the Life of Nikon and the Life of Irene of Chrysobalanton, hagiographies dated to the eleventh century. The article argues that the anxieties of visual representation in Byzantium are encoded in those episodes in the narrative in which an artist prepares to make a saint's portrait. In the process, the episodes offer provocative ruminations on the relations between a representation and its prototype, words and images, sight versus hearing, and the roles of the artist and the viewer. They reveal that these issues were by no means resolved with the official end of Iconoclasm in 843, but remained vibrant arenas of philosophical and theological reflection well into the eleventh century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

St Sebastian entered the thematic repertoire of post-Byzantine mural painting from the West in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Two main iconographic types are encountered in post-Byzantine wall-paintings, both of them popular in Western art: The Ordeal of the Arrows and St Sebastian after the Martyrdom. The influences of Italian models on the iconography are obvious. Nonetheless, the loans from Western iconography and Renaissance art concern a limited number of scenes and subjects, because the post-Byzantine painters tried to renew painting within the framework of Orthodox tradition and its doctrinal content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how icons (such as the fida'i or freedom fighter), motifs (such as gendering of the land) and metaphors (such as the Palestinian wedding) iterated in poetry have become inscribed in the imaginary Palestinian universe of poetics, across cultural, geographical and generational divides, specifically in cinema. It charts how their signification changed over time and their re-iteration in film with celebrated directors such as Michel Khleifi, Hany Abu-Assad and Elia Suleiman. It concludes with reflections on Palestinians' impetus in making art and films from within a chronological purview, ending with the radical turn that Elia Suleiman's cinema proposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three fragments of stone sculpture — from Dewsbury and Otley in West Yorkshire, and Halton in Lancashire — preserve images of an angel and attendant figure, perhaps a monk or mass-priest. All three fragments apparently belonged to monuments including further figural images with clear pastoral resonance: narrative images of the life and ministry of Christ, or images of the evangelists or apostles. While an absolute date cannot be supplied for the production of these monuments, the Otley monument seems to belong to the period 780–800, and the Dewsbury and Halton monuments seem to belong to the early 9th century. Previous discussions of these angel images have not provided a convincing identification. Here it is proposed that the sculptors were adapting contemporary models depicting an angel and attendant figure in order to draw attention to the connections between Old and New Testament narratives of angel veneration. It is argued that these images reflect and promote the angelology of Gregory the Great, who considered angels ideal exemplars for the contemplative preacher. If so, then the monuments may have been produced in response to two broader historical trends. First, the instability of kingship in Northumbria, which prompted Alcuin to promote the Roman and Christian authority of the Church and to propose ecclesiastical reform. Second, a gradual shift from mixed communities including monks, towards communities composed exclusively of priests, which may have required a defence of the role of contemplatives in society. Finally, it is suggested that these images therefore have an important implication for debates about the pastoral organisation of the early Anglo-Saxon Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract:In the two centuries prior to the outbreak of the iconoclastic controversy in the eighth century, anecdotes about icons began to appear in hagiographies. This essay develops a reading of certain of these anecdotes as constituting a form of "picture theory" that teaches the reader how to engage with icons and how to imagine saintly presence. Reading backwards from the iconoclastic controversy in which positions regarding idolatry and the role of material images in Christian theology and ritual were debated openly, I argue that the hagiographical enterprise that preceded iconoclasm developed discursive pictorial strategies for advertising the importance of representation, of imaging, as a means for embracing the saints without idolizing them. Hagiographical anecdotes about icons in effect sidestepped an idolatrous impulse at the same time as they anticipated the later positive theorization of material expressions of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the English printing in the 16th century which was dependent mainly on the transmission and recycle of woodcuts and other illustrations. It states that the movement of images throughout the period defined and shaped the printed iconography as well as industry of printing in England. It notes that the image of the Virgin offers unique insight in the transmission of image, where one historian points out that during the Reformation, this image became prime symbols of what is required for destruction. Furthermore, it notes that by recycling and transmitting, printers used the illustrations more economically.

The article focuses on icons created and sold in Aksum, Ethiopia. Traditional art in Ethiopia was first sponsored by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC). However, as tourism began to rise, traditional art forms were adapted for foreign buyers. Ethiopian icon painter Berhanemeskel Fisseha is featured. The article discusses shop owner Hailemariam Zerue who works with local artists and develops new artistic talents to create unique art works for sale to tourists. The history of the the EOC and their monasticism is explored.

The article discusses one of the oldest images of the Virgin Mary in Rome, Italy, a painting variously dated to the sixth and ninth centuries and titled the "Madonna della Clemenza." The work is housed in the Cappella Altemps in the basilica of Santa Maria in the Trastevere area of Rome. Various texts are cited which mention the work, around which a medieval cult seems to have developed. The design and construction of a chapel containing the painting is described, as well as a number of religious icons and figures surrounding the work.

The article discusses a Ukrainian icon depicting the Biblical Last Judgment from the village of Mshanets, Ukraine located in the National Museum of Lviv, Ukraine. The author is largely concerned with describing the contents and layout of this relatively large icon, with emphasis given to the influence of Byzantine, and therefore Western, art on the work's iconography. The icon contains images of the Biblical figure Daniel, the torturing of various types of sinners, and a serpent, along with various angels and saints.

This article collects instances of Byzantine icons in which portraits have been placed not in the field of the holy figure, but within the icon's frame. The portraits are called donor portraits, as icons were gifts to God and the holy figures depicted. The article proposes that the portrait in the frame may be a recognition that the icon in question is an image not simply of the holy figure, but of an icon of that figure: of a site, that is, in which its power has been known to reside. The article points to the portrait in the frame as just one of many ways in which icons' frames become more elaborate in late Byzantine art, and it invites historians to pay closer attention to the way in which especially late Byzantine patrons, artists, and devotees tended, articulated, and sustained the durable charisma of their iconic images by attentive framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]