Image and Incarnation: The Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image(39 Intersections)

The doctrine of the Incarnation was wellspring and catalyst for theories of images verbal, material, and spiritual. Section I, “Representing the Mystery of the Incarnation”, takes up questions about the representability of the mystery. Section II, “Imago Dei and the Incarnate Word”, investigates how Christ’s status as the image of God was seen to license images material and spiritual. Section III, “Literary Figurations of the Incarnation”, considers the verbal production of images contemplating the divine and human nature of Christ. Section IV, “Tranformative Analogies of Matter and Spirit”, delves into ways that material properties and processes, in their effects on the beholder, were analogized to Christ’s hypostasis. Section V, “Visualizing the Flesh of Christ”, considers the relation between the Incarnation and the Passion.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Acknowledgements Notes on the Editors Notes on the Contributors List of Illustrations Introduction Walter S. Melion and Lee Palmer Wandel PART ONE REPRESENTING THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION Medietas / Mediator and the Geometry of Incarnation Herbert L. Kessler Mute Mysteries of the Divine Logos: On the Pictorial Poetics of Incarnation Klaus Krüger A Meaty Incarnation: Making Sense of Divine Flesh for Aztec Christians Jaime Lara The Ineffability of Incarnation in Le Brun’s Silence or Sleep of the Child Matthieu Somon PART TWO IMAGO DEI AND THE INCARNATE WORD Thomas Aquinas, Sacramental Scenes, and the ‘Aesthetics’ of Incarnation Mark D. Jordan The Poetics of the Image in Late Medieval Mysticism Niklaus Largier Incarnation, Image, and Sign: John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion & Late Medieval Visual Culture Lee Palmer Wandel Eye to Eye, Text to Image? Jan Provoost’s Sacred Allegory, Jan Van Ruusbroec’s Spieghel der eeuwigher salicheit, and Mystical Contemplation in the Late Medieval Low Countries Geert Warnar ‘A Just Proportion of Body and Soul’: Emblems and Incarnational Grafting Christopher Wild PART THREE LITERARY FIGURATIONS OF THE INCARNATION From Negative Painting to Loving Imprint in Pierre De Bérulle’s Discours (1623) Agnès Guiderdoni Discerning Vision: Cognitive Strategies in Cornelis Everaert’s Mary Compared to the Light (c. 1511) Bart Ramakers The Fountain of Life in Molinet's Roman de la rose moralisé (1500) Michael Randall PART FOUR TRANSFORMATIVE ANALOGIES OF MATTER AND SPIRIT Figuring the Threshold of Incarnation: Caravaggio’s Incarnate Image of the Madonna of Loreto Ralph Dekoninck Super-Entanglement: Unfolding Evidence in Hieronymus Bosch’s Mass of St. Gregory Reindert Falkenburg The Mystery of the Incarnation and the Art of Painting Dalia Judovitz Convent and Cubiculum Cordis: the Incarnational Thematic of Materiality in the Cistercian Prayerbook of Martin Boschman (1610) Walter S. Melion PART FIVE VISUALIZING THE FLESH OF CHRIST Dieu le Père en Vierge Marie. La Trinité – Pietà de Rubens Colette Nativel Images of the Incarnation in the Jesuit Japan Mission’s Kirishitanban Story of Virgin Martyr St. Catherine of Alexandria Haruko Nawata Ward Index

About the Author :
Walter Melion, Ph.D. (1988), University of California, Berkeley, is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta. His books include Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s ‘Schilder-Boeck’ (Chicago: 1991) and The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550–1625 (Philadelphia: 2009). He is series editor of Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History.

Lee Palmer Wandel, Ph.D. (1985), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is Professor of History, Religious Studies, and Visual Culture at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Recently she has published The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge, 2006), and edited the Brill Companion to the Christian Tradition The Eucharist in the Reformation (Brill, 2012).