Download PDF | (Studies in Medieval History and Culture) Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Gerhard Jaritz - Marian Devotion in the Late Middle Ages_ Image and Performance-Routledge (2022).
227 Pages
Marian Devotion in the Late Middle Ages By the late Middle Ages, manifestations of Marian devotion had become multifaceted and covered all aspects of religious, private, and personal life. Mary becomes a universal presence that accompanies the faithful on pilgrimage, in dreams, as holy visions, and as pictorial representations in church space and domestic interiors. The first part of the volume traces the development of Marian iconography in sculpture, panel paintings, and objects, such as seals, with particular emphasis on Italy, Slovenia, and the Hungarian Kingdom. The second section traces the use of Marian devotion in relation to space, be that a country or territory, a monastery or church or personal space, and explores the use of space in shaping new liturgical practices, new Marian feasts and performances, and the bodily performance of ritual objects.
Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University, Italy. She has also received a Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities Research Fellowship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her current research investigates the transition of depictions of Mary from hagiographic collections to church space.
Gerhard Jaritz has been a professor at the Department of Medieval Studies of the Central European University, Hungary since 1993. His fields of interest include the history of everyday life, visual culture, and gender history.
Contributors
Sabine Engel is currently working as a lecturer at the Academy of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Gemäldegalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett, and the Bode-Museum. She also lectured at the Freie Universität Berlin. Furthermore, since January 2020 she is the curator of the lecture series “Christliche Bildbetrachtung,” cooperation between the Gemäldegalerie and the Stiftung St. Matthäus in Berlin. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Hamburg, received grants from the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. She has published a book on the topic of “Christ and the Adulteress”: Das Lieblingsbild der Venezianer. “Christus und die Ehebrecherin“ in Kirche, Kunst und Staat des 16. Jahrhunderts, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2012. Her other publications focus mostly on Venetian Renaissance art. Her research interests include gender studies, Ottoman influence on European art, the history of Reformation and artists’ signatures. Mija Oter Gorenčič obtained a PhD in art history at the University of Ljubljana. Her field of research is medieval monastic art, architecture, architectural sculpture, iconography, mural painting, and the patronage of nobility. Author of two monographs and more than fifty scientific papers. Head of France Stele Institute of Art History and the president of Scientific Board of Research Center of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She also teaches at the Department of Art History at the University of Maribor. She has won several scholarships (Vienna, Bamberg, Paris, Graz), including the 2020 JESH scholarship (Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities) awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She also received the Slovenian Art History Society award. She is currently the leader of a research programme and two research projects: Artwork as Reflection of Knowledge and Networking and the Digital Corpus of Medieval Mural Painting. She was also the leader of two other research projects: The Profane in Sacral Spaces and Political Iconography of the Andechs and the Babenbergs in the Case of Gairach Charterhouse. A scientific paper, which was one of the results of the last project, was recognized by the Slovenian Research Agency as an outstanding scientific achievement.
Kristin Hoefener holds a PhD in musicology (Liturgical offices in honor of St. Ursula) from Würzburg University (Germany). Currently, she works as Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow at University Nova in Lisbon (Portugal) on a project about late medieval Dominican chant repertoire from Aveiro. Parallelly, she is the artistic director of the vocal ensemble KANTIKA that specializes in medieval music. Her past research focused on liturgical monodies and their strong anchoring in context (historical, hagiographic, and liturgical), as well as their participation in an innovation process (liturgical reforms, innovation in musical notation, composition of new chants, compilation of cycles with new and old elements). Mihnea A. Mihail is a Teaching Assistant at the National University of Arts and Researcher at New Europe College in Bucharest. In 2018, he defended his PhD thesis Iconographic Transfers and the Geography of Art in the Hungarian Kingdom in the 14th-15th Centuries. His principal fields of interest are medieval wall paintings, iconography, and the relationship between images and sacred spaces. Recently, he published an article entitled “The Sacra cintola and Christ’s Side Wound. The Representation of St Francis and St Thomas in the 15th-Century Wall Painting in Mediaș, Transylvania,” in Ikon. Between 2018–2021 he was Research Assistant for the ERC project Art Historiographies in Central and Eastern Europe. An Inquiry from the Perspective of Entangled Histories. Together with his colleagues, he is currently editing a volume dedicated to Periodization in the Art Historiographies of Central and Eastern Europe, forthcoming with Routledge. Alana O’Brien is an honorary research associate of La Trobe University, Australia. She was a fellow with the Medici Archive Project 2002–2005 and worked as an Art Curator at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Currently based in Florence, she is finalizing the work on a book focusing on the reception and response to artworks in religious settings by their historical audiences. She attempts to recreate the environments – devotional, physical, social – in which the works were viewed to understand better how observers might have understood them in specific historical periods. The Order of the Servants of Mary and the devotional cult of Saint Filippo Benizi are central to these studies. Her interest in Servite Miraculous Madonnas extends directly out of this research and is the subject of a new project. She has also published on artist and artisan membership of confraternities, such as the Florentine Confraternities of San Giovanni Battista detto dello Scalzo and of San Sebastiano. Juliet Simpson (MA St Andrews, DPhil. University of Oxford) is Full Professor of Art History, Chair of Cultural Memory and Research Director for the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities, Coventry University. She is also Visiting Fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London. Professor Simpson is the author of numerous publications on long nineteenth-century art, art critics, word and image relations, symbolism, medieval historiography, and the reception of medieval and Renaissance visual cultures. Recent publications include Gothic Modernisms, co-edited with A.-M. von Bonsdorff, T. Bauduin and J. Baetens (Peter Lang: forthcoming: 2021), and articles on ‘Lucas Cranach’s Legacies’ (2020) and ‘Portable Museums and the Northern Gothic Art Tour’ (2021). Awards include from the Leverhulme Trust, AHRC, CNRS, and Royal Netherlands Academy, as well as a Visiting Professorship, University of Amsterdam (2017–18), and currently, as Visiting Fellow (2019–) at the Warburg Institute. She is guest curator, in partnership with Ateneum (Finnish National Gallery) for the international exhibition and publication, Gothic Modern, 1875–1925: Munch to Kollwitz (Helsinki, Ateneum-Oslo, Nationalmuseum-Berlin Alte Nationalgalerie, 2024–25). Professor Simpson is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts and Royal Historical Society, UK, and sits on the International Editorial Board of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.
Elisabeth Sobieczky is a senior post-doctorate in Art History at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Department of Conservation-Restoration. After working in the museum field, she became a university assistant at the University of Graz in 2006, and she is lecturing at various universities (CU Boulder/USA, University of Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Danube University Krems, Paris-London University Salzburg) since 2014. She has received her PhD from the Technical University Berlin (2004) and was awarded a dissertation scholarship by the Gerda-Henkel-Foundation (2000–2002). Currently, she is holding a research scholarship by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P 32716-G: The Polychromy or Early and High Medieval Wood Sculpture. Her research areas are medieval art, iconography and iconology, art techniques and practices, materiality in art, digital art history. Ferenc Veress graduated as an art historian at the University of Budapest (2005). His MA thesis discussed Jesuit architecture, especially the followers of Andrea Pozzo in Central Europe. In 2006, he functioned as a fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, the Old Masters’ Gallery. In 2012, he received a PhD degree in Rome, La Sapienza University, with a thesis on the copies and imitations of the Vatican Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarroti. In 2014, he was the curator of the exhibition “Miklós Zrínyi (1620–1664), the Poet, General and Politician” in the National Gallery, Budapest, and between 2014 and 2018, he functioned as a curator in the Soproni Múzeum and the Diocesan Collection, Szombathely. 2018: post-doctoral fellow at the University of Szeged, Department of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology. Marina Vidas, PhD, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen and Research Fellow at the National Gallery of Denmark. She is currently working on the research project “Italian Paintings in Gold: Reflection, Devotion and Experience, 1300–1450” a comprehensive study of the fourteenthand fifteenth-century Italian gold background paintings in the museum’s collection. Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky is an affiliated researcher at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy. She has received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowship with Ca’ Foscari University, Venice (2018–2020) and a Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities Research Fellowship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, in collaboration with Salzburg University (2018). She earned her PhD in 2016, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, with a dissertation on “Between Mary and Christ: Depicting Cross-Dressed Saints in the Middle Ages (c.1200–1600)”.
Preface
Miri Rubin began her book Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary, first published in 2009, with the statement that “for a historian of Europe Mary is a constant presence.” This awareness has also become the reason for editing the present book and inviting ten authors to contribute their new findings regarding the veneration of the Virgin and the visual culture that developed around such devotion in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. The chapters mainly refer to Southern and Central Europe and document Mary’s position in the fulfilment of people’s religious requirements with the help of images and texts. The shown contexts clarify several ways and practices by which the relationship of the faithful to the Mother of God was determined. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of images which influenced better comprehensibility decisively.
The case studies document the efforts based on the need to realize possibilities of closer proximity of the people to Mary and her function as a mediator to God. They show that such facilities for the veneration of the Virgin opened up important chances to meet Mary and her power, not only for educated members of the society but also for ordinary folk. In these respects, the volume offers new results regarding the Virgin, her veneration, and her impact in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. It can thus be seen as a step further in coping with the “constant presence” of Mary in the past and for historians of today. Our thanks go to the authors and the competent and helpful representatives of Routledge Publishers who have supported the genesis of the book immensely. Without them, the volume’s stages of nascency would have increased and extended considerably. Gerhard Jaritz
Introduction
This volume addresses expressions of Marian piety in Western Christianity with particular emphasis on the Late Middle Ages, concentrating on manifestations of Marian devotional practices as reflected in visual representations and the performance of Marian devotion. The development of the cult of the Virgin shows its adaptability in the ecclesiastical sphere, popular culture, personal/ private devotion, and political contexts. By the Late Middle Ages, manifestations of Marian devotion had become multiple and multifaceted, covering all aspects of religious, private, daily, and personal life. Mary became a universal presence for the faithful on pilgrimages, in dreams, in holy visions, in pictorial representations in church space and domestic interiors, and at the foundation of dynasties, thus becoming a universal symbol. With the process of vernacularization in the Late Middle Ages, the image of the Virgin reached a wider audience that could access the content of their faith in their mother tongues. The growth of the cult of the Virgin led to an increase in seeking answers and details about her life, resulting in the emergence of Marian apocryphal lives and varied literary and ecclesiastic products. Chronologically, this volume is situated in the complex cultural manifestations specific to the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.
The volume contributes particularly to understanding the contexts that influenced new artistic and devotional productions in the Late Middle Ages and transition to the Early Modern Period. Earlier research dealt mostly with the High Middle Ages. Contrary to a number of previous publications that offer a general focus on the High Middle Ages, this volume covers the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. At one end of the spectrum, attention is devoted to t welfth- century sources and developments; the other end of the spectrum stretches to the sixteenth century and later afterlives of medieval Marian devotion. We offer readers mainly a selection of case studies that explore the development of varying Marian iconography in the context of related religious texts, Marian hymns, liturgical performances, and institutional and political developments of the later Middle Ages. Previous scholarship has tended to sketch broad developments in Marian piety over the course of the Middle Ages in the West, while studies on Mary in Byzantium have tended to be more focused and have successfully brought together multidisciplinary perspectives with strong contributions from art historians. The publications on Mary in Western Europe have tended to focus on certain aspects of Marian piety, such as the widely popular Marian miracles and the trope of the compassion- filled, mournful Mother of Sorrows. This collection constitutes a substantial addition to current scholarship by investigating Mary- centered artworks and pious practices from Central and Eastern Europe in addition to Italy and France by focusing on key themes such as elite and popular religious beliefs and practices, interaction between urban and rural communities, mutual borrowings between texts and images, the symbolism of cloth/ clothing, Mary as ( co- ) Redemptrix and protector, the role of gender in late medieval representations/ understandings of Mary, and the emergence of new iconographies, such as Maria in sole, as well as ( other) eschatological aspects of late medieval Marian piety.
The Iconographic Level
The essays are arranged in chronological order. They analyze devotional developments on both the iconographic and performative levels. The iconographic level traces the development of Marian iconography in sculpture, panel paintings, and objects such as seals, with particular emphasis on Italy (Sobieczky, Vidas), Slovenia (Oter-Gorenčič), and Romania ( Mihail, Veress). The volume traces the growth of Marian pictorial representations in various media as related to textual representations, theological concepts, and religious literature. Two essays ( Sobieczky, Vidas) focus on the mediating and affective function of colours as reflections of religious concepts embodied in visual products displayed in either public or private spaces. This section concentrates on emotional responses specific to Franciscan spirituality and the placement of visual items with clear religious contemplative functions in domestic interiors. Other essays are dedicated to rare Marian iconographies and their relation to mysticism and exegetical works (Oter-Gorenčič), transpositions of theological themes and spatial reframing of iconographies ( Mihail), and the connection between Franciscan writings and apocalyptic representations of the Virgin ( Veress). The proliferation of Marian iconography is also analysed in relation to devotional texts such as the Meditations on the Life of Christ (Engel). The volume opens with the essay of Elisabeth Sobieczky that highlights the likely meanings of the multicolored polychromy and/ or gold used for Marian sculptures. Her essay focuses on the role of and the relationships among techniques, materials, and colours in the iconography of selected polychrome high medieval Marian sculptures from Italy, with special attention to Sedes Sapientiae sculptures and the medieval theology of light. She demonstrates that the selection of materials and colours was deeply dependent on the intended function and meaning of the image, with the writings of Petrus Damianus, in particular, serving as a reference for the importance of metaphors of light in images. In the second essay, Mija Oter-Gorenčič presents and contextualizes a rare Marian image from the convent of the Benedictine monastery of Gornji Grad ( Germ. Oberburg), investigating the origins and meaning of a late- medieval monastic seal that shows Mary holding the cross as if she were intended as a substitute for God the Father. The essay demonstrates the multifaceted importance and complex theological background of the Marian iconography of the seal. It is a rare iconographic motif and one of the oldest, if not the oldest, visualizations preserved of the standing Mary holding both the cross and the Crucified Christ in Western Europe. The seal is an exquisite example of the Marian veneration that flourished in Benedictine monasteries during the first half of the fourteenth century. Marina Vidas takes a traditional art- historical approach to three Tuscan trecento paintings that depict the Virgin with Child against a gold background. All three paintings were once central parts of m ulti- panelled altarpieces and today are in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark. She addresses how Mary is represented, the visual traditions that these paintings drew on, the possible significance of and the interplay between narrative elements and the colours, especially gold, and how the images affected their viewers and prompted devotion. The paintings were part of rituals and experiences in which memory, the senses, and emotions would have been activated and played a role in transposing the faithful into a receptive state.
The interaction of elite culture and popular piety in a rural setting and the influence of scholarly texts on wall paintings are highlighted in the essay of Mihnea A. Mihail. He focuses on the image of the Defensorium, a diagrammatic image that links four Old Testament scenes with four beasts from the Physiologus, by exploring the significance of the wall painting in Hărman ( now Romania) in the development of Defensorium iconography and how this iconographic theme could have reached the eastern part of the Hungarian Kingdom. His essay also investigates the links between this theme and the medieval ars memorativa and the function of the Defensorium in the context of a funerary chapel. The essay of Sabine Engel focuses on a painting of the Madonna and Child by the Venetian Michele Giambono and calls attention to the way Mary’s veil envelops the Christ Child and also gestures downward to the artist’s signature below. She highlights the flow of the veil from the mother’s head behind the Child’s right shoulder over the whole length of his back to her right hand and discusses the interplay of veil and signature. Ferenc Veress shows how the Maria in sole trope emerged from contemporary theological ideas and developed iconographically in different media. The essay discusses theological ideas as well as visual representations connected to the iconography of the Virgin in Sole, the Woman clothed in the Sun, from the end of the fifteenth to the second half of the sixteenth century.
The Performative Level On a performative level, the volume traces the use of Marian devotion in relation to space, whether in a country/ territory, monastery, church or personal space, the use of space and its functions in shaping Marian devotion, new liturgical practices, new Marian feasts and performances, and the bodily performance of ritual objects. The essays deal with forms of Marian devotion and the conceptualization of monastic/ church space in relation to liturgical productions ( chants) and their devotional functions ( Hoefener). Another essay ( O’Brien) traces spiritual tendencies and Marian devotion in specific orders such as the Servants of Mary, analysing liturgical practices, the development of Marian imagery, and the emergence of a new devotional cult. The concept of performance is connected to medieval liturgical drama and its iconographic connections in the framework of new Marian feasts (Znorovszky). The volume concludes with a case study (Simpson) on the recontextualization of spaces, bodily performance, and the afterlives of Marian objects. Kristin Hoefener focuses on how Dominican nuns and friars sang the Salve Regina and introduces a Dominican chronicle (Schwesternbuch) from Engelthal, near Nuremberg, which passes down short mystical narratives about Dominican sisters. She presents how the Salve Regina, in Latin or German, was used as a chant or prayer for private devotional practice at times of serious illness or death. Alana O’Brien’s essay makes a strong case for how the Marian piety of Filippo Benizi, an early saintly member of the Servites, was tied to the viability and growth of the order.
Increased Marian spirituality was partly manifest in the Marian imagery produced for their altars and other areas of their churches and convents. Some of these images inspired miracle cults. Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky argues for the influence of apocryphal texts and medieval Western iconography on de Meziere’s notably eschatological Marian play. She advances the idea that this liturgical drama displays the imagery of various Marian representations in an eschatological context that is reflected in iconographic allusions by presenting Mary as the Queen of Heaven, by partially placing the action of the play in heaven, and by allusions to the Revelation in the binding of Lucifer re- enacted on stage. Juliette Simpson’s essay takes a novel ethnographic approach to the complex enigmatic meanings of Shrine Madonnas, used in mediating rituals of birth, procreation, and incarnation as bodily “ performance” – enacting multiple, frequently controversial, thresholds of the sacred. Although the medieval provenance of these n ow-r are objects has attracted recent scholarly treatments, her discussion explores neglected contexts and afterlives of Shrine Madonnas and their cognates, Vierges Ouvrantes, in an expanded framework of Marian reception and response that encompasses key p re- modern and new nineteenth- century ritual, sensory, and cultural contexts.
The authors aim to bridge what often remains disconnected – visual art and the written text – and the methodologies of various disciplines. We believe that the studies in this volume present a timely contribution to the growing body of scholarship on Marian devotion and its reception in the Middle Ages, especially in connection with visual representations and performance.
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