This edited volume discusses images that bleed, speak, cry, move, and behave in ways we usually attribute to living creatures.
Living images have been the object of devotion as well as targets of destruction, and they have been marginalised in both culture and cultural studies for their ambivalence as well as their transgressive nature. But what is it that makes images the loci of such powerful properties? The present volume is an attempt to recuperate the living image, draw it from the margins, and re-illuminate its importance for cultural history. The title of this book reflects the ambition of the contributions to navigate between the Middle Ages of the past and the Middle Ages of the present. Our aim is to provide new theoretical reflections and methodologies concerning the study of material agency and “living images” both historically and today. The chapters include close examination of surviving objects and archival research, as well as theoretical reflections, and span chronologically and geographically across Europe from North to South, medieval to modern.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, material culture, theatre studies, and religious history.
Introduction Part I: Principles of Animation 1. Four Fundamental Concepts of Animation: Mechanical and Organic, Supernatural and Phenomenological 2. Screen, Window, Door: Three Devices to Understand Animation in the Middle Ages 3. ‘To Which the Crucifix Replied’: The Phenomenology of The Animate Image 4. Mary, Matter, Mother: Re-Thinking the Living Image Through Animism and Materiality in Moments of Crisis, Ritual, and Devotion Part II: Medieval and Early Modern Animation 5. Blood, Peace, and Cinnabar: Animated Crucifixes and the Bianchi Devotions of 1399 6. Guillaume de Lorris and the Speaking Image: Ekphrasis, Prospopoeia, and Poetic Creation 7. Ealy Prints in Motion 8. “I Carve My Figures Fine and Make Them Come to Life”: The Animation of Late Medieval Kleinplastik 9. Clothes as Animation Devices: Miracle-Working Images, Enshrinement, and the Production of Matter in Early Modern Portugal Part III: Animated Tradition(s) 10. Motion and Emotion: Flying Baptismal Angels in Scandinavia 11. Playing (with) Puppets: Jigging Puppets from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century 12. Thinking with a Figure: Different ways of Animating Sculptures of Saints in Polish Puppet Theatre at the End of the 20th Century
Kamil Kopania is Assistant Professor at the A. Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, Poland. Henning Laugerud is Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway. Zuzanna Sarnecka is SNSF Ambizione Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
