Medieval Images Research Articles

Tamil Chola Bronzes and Swamimalai Legacy: Metal Sources and Archaeotechnology

This review explores the great copper alloy image casting traditions of southern India from archaeometallurgical and ethnometallurgical perspectives. The usefulness of lead isotope ratio and compositional analysis in the finger-printing and art historical study of more than 130 early historic, Pallava, Chola, later Chola, and Vijayanagara sculptures (fifth–eighteenth centuries) is highlighted, including Nataraja, Buddha, Parvati, and Rama images made of copper, leaded bronze, brass, and gilt copper. Image casting traditions at Swamimalai in Tamil Nadu are compared with artistic treatises and with the technical examination of medieval bronzes, throwing light on continuities and changes in foundry practices. Western Indian sources could be pinpointed for a couple of medieval images from lead isotope analysis. Slag and archaeometallurgical investigations suggest the exploitation of some copper and lead-silver sources in the Andhra and Karnataka regions in the early historic Satavahana period and point to probable copper sources for the medieval images in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. The general lower iron content in southern Indian bronzes perhaps renders the proximal copper–magnetite reserves of Seruvila in Sri Lanka as a less likely source. Given the lack of lead deposits in Sri Lanka, however, the match of the lead isotope signatures of a well-known Ceylonese Buddhist Tara in British Museum with a Buddha image from Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu may underscore ties between the island nation and the southern Indian Tamil regions.

Materiality, rhetoric and emotion in the Pietà

This study focuses on the representation of materiality on wall paintings, as depicted objects functioned as triggers of emotion to convey meaning in images. In medieval aesthetics images were made to engage all the senses in the spectator so as to create a truthful experience. The material perspective combines well with medieval rhetoric in understanding this process, particularly the concepts of ekphrasis, enargeia and ductus. By doing close readings of images, and identifying materials, figures, objects, gestures and so on, in the same manner as one can close read texts, narratives of the images can be discovered. It is also a reading that helps in identifying emotive expressions and rhetorical gestures that together with material aspects of images and texts also help in identifying gender-related contents. During the 15th century the Pietà (the mourning Virgin Mary holding her dead son) was introduced in Sweden. The image is key in understanding the Marian cult as it was established alongside the expanding devotion to the Virgin in the Nordic countries. By fusing the material aspect and rhetoric in a close reading of the motif that focuses on gender and emotion this study aims to find alternative paths in analysing medieval art.

Riding Across Time and Space: A Case Study of the Political Uses of Medieval Images in Portugal During the Estado Novo

Over the course of the twentieth century, various political regimes in Europe used medieval images to demonstrate and legitimize their power. The present study takes as its focus the case of Portugal and, more precisely, an illumination in the twelfth-century Portuguese manuscript known as the Lorvão Beatus, a copy of the Commentary on the Apocalypse written in northern Spain in the eighth century and attributed to the monk Beatus of Liébana (c. 730–800). This manuscript's depiction of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was frequently utilized during the first decades of the Estado Novo (New State), a dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974. The Estado Novo was headed by António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) until 1968, when Salazar retired due to ill health and was replaced by Marcelo Caetano (1906–1980), who ruled until 1974, the year of the Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) which returned democracy to Portugal. The Estado Novo developed the so-called Política do Espírito (Politics of the Spirit), a cultural policy that attempted to reinvent Portuguese national identity in order to advance its own ideology. In conjunction with this effort, the artists who worked with the Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (Department of National Propaganda) appropriated the depiction of the Four Horsemen in the Lorvão Beatus – either adopting it as a direct model or more loosely alluding to it – as a symbol of Portuguese identity. The example of the Lorvão Horsemen reveals how the Estado Novo used medieval images for propagandistic purposes, to help legitimize their rule and to assert their own place in Portuguese history.

The legitimation of the image of the Saint: on the issue of the authenticity of the relics of Alexander Nevsky

The article has been prepared with the support of RNF, project № 16-18-10080 «“Mobilized Middle Ages”: recourse to the medieval images in the discourses of nation and state building in Russia, Central Europe and the Balkans in Modern and Contemporary time».

Kosovo myth in Contemporary Serbian and Albanian historiography: Stages and the main trends

This article was prepared with the support of the Russian Science Foundation, project № 16-18-10080 «Mobilized Middle Ages»: appealing to medieval images in discourses of nation-building and state-building in Russia and the Central-Eastern Europe and Balkan countries in Modern and Contemporary time.

The Spaces of Medieval Mystery Plays on British Television

Medieval mystery plays have had a rich and also distinctive life on British television. These performance texts, drawn from the Bible’s story of the universe from just before its Creation to its end on the Day of Judgment, have appealed to television practitioners not only for drama adaptations (from the 1938 presentation of the Chester Abraham and Isaac onwards) and the foundation stone for new dramatic writing (such as the BBC’s 1959 The Hill by Paul Almond) but also as the focus of documentaries on contemporary civic, social and religious traditions within communities. Charles Parker, for example, cast his own mystery play from the people of York in a 1973 episode of BBC1’s Omnibus, and the 2008 BBC1 Miracle on the Estate chronicled how a mystery play was made into a film by north Manchester residents. Indeed, because of television’s interest in the rich web of meanings arising from and surrounding mystery play performance, especially with regard to their relationship with place and community, it is not always easy to make clear-cut distinctions between program genres - in particular, between programs that may be considered to be primarily dramatic productions of part or all of a mystery play and programs that contextualize dramatic performance within the overall form of documentary. It is clear that from 1938 these dramatic productions and documentaries were routinely transmitted on or very close to significant and relevant dates in the Christian calendar, suggesting that they were perceived to contribute both value and variation to religious programming schedules. Yet this was perhaps a unique case of a dramatic genre that existed in the programming schedules largely within and in relation to a particular cultural context within society more generally, and within and in relation to, in particular, the BBC’s broadcasting commitment to observe significant dates in the Christian calendar. Furthermore, only occasionally were mystery plays produced and transmitted by television companies and networks other than the BBC: producing mystery plays was a particularly BBC pursuit. Very little scholarly attention has been paid to British television’s long series of engagements with mystery plays, which stands in contrast to the extensive scholarship about the modes and meanings of mystery plays in live performance during modern times. This essay considers the extent to which dramatic performances of mystery plays produced especially for television may have contributed to an understanding of this performance genre as a mode of expression related to religious, social, and civic traditions and community life in both medieval and modern Britain. This exploration will focus particularly on how the spaces of production (a studio, cathedral, street) and the spaces of performance constructed therein (a landscape or medieval images) evoke particular interpretative frames of reference, some of which are tied strongly to a sense of place - with places, and the communities that inhabit them, being fundamentally important dimensions of performances of mystery plays.

“Well-Known Things”: Experience, Distance, and Perspective in William Morris’s “The Defence of Guenevere”

An early reviewer of William Morris's first volume of poetry voiced complaint that was to be echoed by many later critics: whereas a poet's work is with the living world of men,... all that [Morris's poetry] produces are pictures. (1) At first glance, the poems do appear curiously circumscribed by restrictions imposed by their content and style; of and Other Poems (1858) never strays from its dream world of Arthurian and medieval picture making. volume is concerned with very specific aesthetic effects that are contingent on the description of surfaces and visual tableaux in alternately Froissartian and mythically Arthurian versions of the medieval past. Thus, Morris's poetry risks appearing narrow, overly specific, and perhaps even minor in the context of his overwhelming productivity in areas that fall outside the boundaries of literature. To Morris, however, poetry was not side project, to be read and understood as separate from his other creative endeavors such as painting, tapestry making, and interior design or as even quite distinct from his developing political activism. Indeed, Morris--more than any other artist of the loosely connected pre-Raphaelite movement--always explicitly insisted that connections between artistic and social goals, between aesthetics and political principles, were not only always present but also critical to the success of any artistic endeavor. (2) This essay seeks to highlight the tension between seemingly narrowly defined aesthetics, on the one hand, and capaciously ambitious artistic goals, on the other, in order to suggest that the aesthetically narrow qualities of Morris's poetry are intricately connected to Morris's notion of how his reader should relate to the past evoked in his text. I argue that these qualities in Morris's poetry enlist, and make active, the reader's participation in exploring the past. Furthermore, I suggest that there are possibilities inherent in that kind of readerly participation of which the titular poem The of Guenevere makes particular use: that of collective and collaborative engagement with the past. By treating the text as call for the reader to participate in re-creation of past experience, I am departing from long critical tradition that reads The of Guenevere as story in which the reader is asked to pick moral stance, choosing between accusing and defending her. Instead, I propose that The Defence functions not as story about the past but as an experience of the past. (3) I will endeavor to explain what I mean by this by highlighting two features of Morris's poetry that are particularly prominent in The Defence: first, I discuss the sense of historical distance, which paradoxically serves as way for the reader to connect with the past; second, I point to how, for Morris, the perspectiveless medieval images evoked in the text function to encourage particular kind of nonindividuated collaborative engagement between the reader and the text. The of Guenevere sets up series of visual tableaux, the first of which, in startling in medias res opening, leads us in only four short stanzas through to launching her defense: But, knowing now that they would have her speak, She threw her wet hair backward from her brow, Her hand close to her mouth touching her cheek, As though she had had there shameful blow, And feeling it shameful to feel ought but shame All through her heart, yet felt her cheek burned so, She must little touch it; like one lame She walked away from Gauwaine, with her head Still lifted up; and on her cheek of flame tears dried quick; she stopped at last and said: O knights and lords, it seems but little skill To talk of well-known things past now and dead. (11. 1-12) (4) Morris had of course read Thomas Malory closely. But here we are thrown, to great dramatic effect and with forceful immediacy, into scene in the Arthurian cycle that Malory omits. …

Imago Mortis

Imago Mortis Bridget Whearty Mediating Images of Death in Late Medieval Culture. Ashby Kinch. Leiden: Brill, 2013. <http://www.brill.com/imago-mortis> One of the joys of being a medievalist today is the exploding growth of digital access. It seems that every month a new library or museum announces an ambitious digitization program. In the face of this glut of availability, there is a pressing need for smart studies engaging deeply with medieval images. Ashby Kinch’s Imago Mortis: Mediating Image of Death in Late Medieval Book Culture is one such study. Imago Mortis is an ambitious book, exploring cross-pollinations between didactic and literary works, manuscript illumination, wall paintings, cadaver tombs, late medieval religious traditions on the commemoration of the dead, and local and international political maneuvering in England and English-occupied Paris during the 1420s and 30s. Through these nodes, Kinch traces how visual and verbal artists draw on, adapt, and transform each other’s traditions in ways that are sometimes complementary, sometimes competitive, and nearly always in the service of making death more palatable to their powerful patrons. It would have been significantly easier to study one or two of these topics more deeply and in isolation, but it is in teasing out this vast network that Imago Mortis does its most valuable work. As Kinch puts it, “attending closely to the creative re-interpretation of both conventional and novel images of death in the medieval period opens up important dialogues: between literary and visual forms; between artists and the patrons for whom they produced their work; between the political and religious institutions that competed for the psychological and social energies of the late medieval individual; and between ourselves and the past” (276). In Chapter One, “Affirmative Visions of Dying in Illustrations of Henry Suso’s ‘De Scientia,’” Kinch shows how three manuscripts pair Suso’s vision of the lonely bad death with illustrations showing a good end surrounded by community. For the visual artists illuminating these manuscripts, Moriens, the dying one, is supported in death by the same institutions that supported him in life: a good friend (in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munchen Cod. gall. 28), a loving family (in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS IV. III), and an attending cleric (in London, British Library, Additional MS 37049). Rather than dismissing these craftsmen as bad readers of the texts they illustrate, Kinch reads disagreements between Suso’s text and accompanying illustrations as visual [End Page 301] artists’ thoughtful critiques and deliberate transformation of the textual tradition they accompany. Chapter Two, “Verbo-Visual Mirrors of Mortality in Thomas Hoccleve’s ‘Lerne for to Die’” turns to the only extant Middle English verse translation of Suso’s “De Scientia.” Although it begins by analyzing a deathbed illustration in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 53, this chapter is not really concerned with connecting Hoccleve’s poem with a specific death culture, visual arts tradition. Instead, it traces how Hoccleve’s verse aestheticizes Suso’s Latin prose, arguing that this highly wrought poetic form serves as a tool for self-promotion, highlighting the English writer and his virtuosity. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Hoccleve differentiates himself from Chaucer through his preoccupation with death and loneliness, Kinch argues that Hoccleve depicts Chaucer as the poet who transcends death, but that he portrays himself as a poet who faces death, thus creating a space for himself outside of Chaucer’s shadow as well as outside the reach of meddling friends and worldly ambition. The intimate links between worldly ambition and patronage are a central topic of Chapter Three, “Commemorating Power in the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead,” which analyzes luxury images of the Three Living and the Three Dead. Here Kinch reveals how aristocrats co-opt an art form that began as clerical critique of aristocratic power. Through patronage of exquisite books and monuments, aristocrats turned this satire of their class’s failings to their advantage. The leveling power of death turns out to be something of a lie when patronage is taken into account. All men must die, but the wealthy can purchase rich memorials that ensure the survival of their names and memories, urging those...

Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine

Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine

The Augustinian Heart: Late Medieval Images of Augustine as a Monastic Identity

This study focuses on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century images, commissioned by the Ordo Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, of Augustine in rapture at the Trinity, revealing a wounded heart. This imagery begins an iconographical trend within the order that portrays Augustine as the Doctor of Love and departs from the image initiated by Possidius of Augustine as the rational thinker and bishop. A comparison with contemporaneous images of Francis receiving the stigmata reveals a new understanding of the relationship of the body to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century mendicant piety, and the importance of the iconisation of the body in the Hermits' understanding of Augustine.

Robyn Malo Relics and Writing in Late Medieval EnglandRelics and Writing in Late Medieval England. Robyn Malo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. vii+298.

<i>Robyn Malo</i> Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England<i>Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England</i>. Robyn Malo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. vii+298.

The Power of Deceased in Panel Paintings from Central Europe (c. 1474-1507)

The belief in the extraordinary power of a deceased saint was reflected by many late medieval images. The narratives about posthumous miracles were associated with rituals and other practices, important for the order of the society in the given period. One important group of images supported the cults of the relics (e.g. their miraculous finding or ritualized translatio) and of the grave (mostly healing miracles on this place). Nevertheless, the mediating rôle of saints in performing miracles did not require the actual presence of the relics. Some narratives about posthumous miracles supported the church rituals such as the Eucharistic cult or the sacrament of confession. The apparitions of saint could strengthen their authority in confrontation with secular rulers.

Introduction:

ABSTRACT The organizing principle of this gathering of articles is the inquiry into the agentic potential of later medieval devotional objects. In my introduction, I provide exploratory remarks on the ontology of living images, and broadly outline their histories as well as the theoretical and disciplinary concerns that they raise. I then consider the ways that the essays presented here target and engage with these concerns. As a group, the articles interrogate animate and animated objects whose enlivening stands at the intersection of visual, literary, and performative cultures. Although interdisciplinary in nature, all articles retain a focus on viewing practices, on the interaction between the object and the beholder: as such, they stand at the crux of current scholarly interest in materiality and agency inherent in, and attributed to, medieval images. The material presented here focuses on the later Middle Ages but spans a wide range of geographical locations, from Spain to Poland.

Medieval Visual Metaphors and Beasts Noble and Savage

D. I. Antonov and M. R. Maizul's, Demony i greshniki v drevnerusskoi ikonografii: Semiotika obraza (Demons and Sinners in Old Russian Iconography: The Semiotics of the Image). 384 pp. Moscow: Indrik, 2011. ISBN-13 978-5916741490. Aleksandr E. Makhov, Srednevekovyi obraz: Mezhdu teologiei i ritorikoi. Opyt tolkovaniia vizual 'noi demonologii (The Medieval Image: Between Teleology and Rhetoric. An Attempt at an Interpretation ofVisual Demonology) .256 pp. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Kulaginoi--Intrada, 2011. ISBN-13 978-5903955053. E. V. Pchelov, Bestiarii Moskovskogo tsarstva: Zhivotnye v emblematike Moskovskoi Rusi kontsa XV-XVII vv. (A Bestiary of the Muscovite Tsardom: Animals in the Emblems of Muscovite Russia from the Late 15th through the 17th Centuries). 202 pp. Moscow: Staraia Basmannaia, 2011. ISBN-13 978-5904043476. The authors of these three volumes closely examine how medieval European and Muscovite artists used bestiary images in attempting to capture the liminal moment that revealed the true nature of demons and sinners, on the one hand, and reinforced the majesty of the state, on the other. Both the monograph by Makhov and that by Antonov and Maizul's focus on visual animal imagery that reflects the darker side of liminality to represent the dark mirror of the soul. Pchelov, in contrast, investigates the Muscovites' transformation of many of these same creatures into noble emblems of state power. All three studies explore symbolic worlds characterized by an underlying duality that is especially evident in allegorical representations of beasts meant to illustrate noble or ignoble aspects of humanity. (1) A. E. Makhov focuses on the changing image of demons in the emerging Christian culture of the West. He sees the development of West European medieval visual demonology as a reflection of both theological and rhetorical concepts. Just as writers of the period interwove contradictory elements to produce literary works simultaneously concealing and revealing truth, so artists transformed the visual image into a theologically significant narration uniting disparate elements that characterized the medieval epitome of beauty. He finds this multifaceted approach reflected especially clearly in the development of the iconography of the devil, whose image was required to embody recognizable scriptural and liturgical elements symbolizing the demonic nature. Drawing upon an impressive body of representations of demons in paintings, frescoes, architectural details, and manuscript illustrations gathered from churches, museums, and libraries throughout Western Europe and the United States, Makhov skillfully interleaves visual and textual evidence into his analysis of this medieval image's construction. One or more black-and white illustrations accompany almost every page of text, and a central insert contains 32 pages of full-color plates, most with multiple images, all referenced clearly in the text. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Makhov focuses most extensively on the theology of the demonic image, beginning with the devil's origins in Lucifer's pride. The fallen angel's rebellion upset the peaceful foundation upon which creation was based. Having caused this imbalance, the devil is literally out of order. His disordered essence fragmented into innumerable variations, reflecting a state of diminishment (umalenie) that transformed the devil into the king of the material world. In the end, however, the devil plays an essential role in the fulfillment of God's plan, serving as the tempter and punisher, without whom the righteous would not win their reward. The first part of the monograph (15-187) juxtaposes texts and images to demonstrate the theological meaning of demonic poses, gestures, and guises. For example, by raising a foot or dancing over die mouth of Hades to celebrate power over sinners, the devil contrasts demonic disorder with angelic stillness. He can even assume the form of an angel. …

Review of 'Inventing Eleanor: the Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine'

Review of 'Inventing Eleanor: the Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine'

English Folk Ballads Collected By Cecil James Sharp in The Southern Appalachians: Genesis, Transformation and Ukrainian Parallels

The purpose of this research, presented at the Conference sectional meeting, is to tracepeculiarities of transformation of British folk medieval ballads, which were brought to theSouthern Appalachians in the east of the USA by British immigrants at the end of the XVIIIth –beginning of the XIXth century and retained by their descendants, through analyzing certain textson the levels of motifs, dramatis personae, composition, style and artistic means, as well as tooutline relevant Ukrainian parallels. The analysis of such ballads, plot types and epic songs wascarried out: 1) British № 10: “The Twa Sisters” (21 variants); American “The Two Sisters”(5variants) and Ukrainian plot type I – C-5: “the elder sister drowns the younger one because of envyand jealousy” (8 variants); 2) British № 26: The Three Ravens” (2), “The Twa Corbies” (2);American “The Three Ravens” (1), “The Two Crows”(1) and Ukrainian epic songs with the motif oflonely death of a Cossack warrior on the steppe (4). In our study British traditional ballads areclassified according to the grouping worked out by the American scholar Francis Child(305 numbers), Ukrainian folk ballads – the plot-thematic catalogue developed by the Ukrainianfolklorist Оleksiy Dey (here 288 plots are divided into 3 spheres, cycles and plot types). Theinvestigation and comparison of the above indicated texts witness such main tendencies: 1) theAmerican counterparts, collected in the Appalachian Mountains, preserve the historic-nationalmemory and cultural heritage of the British immigrant bearers on the level of leading motifs,dramatis personae, composition peculiarities, traditional medieval images, epithets, similes,commonplaces; 2) some motifs, characters, images, artistic means, archaic and dialectal English ofthe Child ballads are reduced or substituted in the Appalachian texts; 3) realism of Americanballad transformations, which overshadows fantasy and aristocracy of their British prototypes, issimilar to the manner of poetic presentation of the typologically-arisen and described events by theUkrainian folk ballads and dumas .

"Sicut lilium inter spinas". Floral Metaphors in Late Medieval Marian Iconography from Patristic and Theological Sources

This paper proposes an interpretation of the flowers and other plant motifs present in some late medieval images of four Marian themes: the Virgin Enthroned with Child, the Virgin of Humility, the Sacra Conversazione and the Coronation of the Virgin. By supplementing certain unjustified conventions that, without any argument, see these flowers as natural symbols of Mary’s love or virginity, our iconographic proposal is based on multiple evidence by prestigious Church Fathers and medieval theologians. By commenting some significant passages of the Old Testament, all of them praise the Mother of the Savior in terms of flowers and plants as metaphors for her holiness and virtue. Thus, on the basis of a solid patristic and theological tradition, this paper attempts to interpret these botanic elements as symbolic figures of purity, humility, charity, sublimity of virtue and absolute holiness of Mary and, as the essential core, her perpetual virginity and virginal divine motherhood.

"Flos campi et lilium convallium". Third Interpretation of the Lily in the Iconography of The Annunciation in Italian Trecento Art from Patristic and Theological Sources

This paper (which complements two previous works of our authorship) proposes to interpret the bouquet of lilies in medieval images of The Annunciation in two essentially intertwined dogmatic meanings, related to Christology and Mariology. Contradicting conventional “explanations” of such flower in this Marian scene, we found our proposal in many and consistent testimony of some prestigious Church Fathers and medieval theologians, glossing the biblical sentence Ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium. Such lyrical expression is seen by those authors as a clear metaphor that identifies Christ, the incarnate Son of God, and that, as such, also refers to Mary, in whose virginal womb the Son of God's incarnation is produced. Thus, based on the solid patristic and theological tradition on this biblical sentence, we dare to interpret the bouquet of lilies in paintings of the Annunciation (illustrated here by nine paintings of the Italian Trecento) as a double metaphor, which means both the supernatural human incarnation of God the Son and the virginal divine motherhood of Mary.

El mundo como una manzana en la palma de la mano: El pomo y su relación con la cartografía medieval

This article focuses on the orb –an insignia of power that situates the world in the hands of the sovereign–, and the connection that it had in the Middle Ages with geography and cartography, both in form and symbolism. Due to the shortage of preserved examples, iconographic sources will be relied upon, as it is within portraits of emperors, kings and also Christ as the Savior where the orb appears as a defining element of the medieval image of power.

The Medieval Image at the Interception of Signifier, Signification, Historical Context, and Commodification in Book of the Hours

The Medieval Image at the Interception of Signifier, Signification, Historical Context, and Commodification in Book of the Hours