Voir et entendre : des paroles dans l’image. À propos d’une enluminure du manuscrit 121 de la Bibliothèque municipale d’Avignon

Abstract

Seeing and hearing : words in the picture, with reference to an illumination in ms 121 in the City Library at Avignon. Drawing letters, or writing a word within an image, is not an anodyne act, and proceeds from the desire to represent the invisible, the latter being not necessarily immaterial or divine. As for music and its representation in pictures, this consists of translating a sound principle, the voice, into a pictorial field in the form of a word. To investigate the way words can act and modify things, we have chosen a unique and exceptional image, an illumination, painted between 1330-1340, whose visual content reaches a high degree of sophistication (Avignon, BM, ms. 121, fol. 73 v). It represents the death of a Religious, and, as it belongs to the vast field of caritas, it includes prayers, mediation and gestures, which are essential and should be effective.