Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat

Temaintroduktion: To sider af samme mønt?

David Burmeister — 2023-11-29

Bidragydere

Periskop Temaredaktionen — 2023-11-29

Ikonoklasten Paulus?

Thomas Lederballe Pedersen — 2023-11-29

This article deals with the first letter written by the apostle Paul, known as the First Letter to the Thessalonians (c. 50 CE), suggesting that by reading the letter as a document in the history of visuality as well as religious statement, it testifies to a dialectic within Paul’s theological anthropology. For the new Christians, Paul advocates the abolishment of cult images, which were ubiquitous in the Roman empire. But concurrent to his iconoclastic argument is an insistence on the members of the Thessalonian church taking on the role as religiously informed images themselves. Thereby, the letter shows Paul’s negative, iconoclastic attitude towards images being contradicted dialectically by the reemergence of an alternative type of image within the very same religious community instructed to disavow religious imagery. The article thus aims to situate the contents of the letter within the visual culture of the Roman empire, drawing on both textual evidence and images expressing the cultural patterns in question.

Det ludiske begær

Laura Katrine Skinnebach — 2023-11-29

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (ca. 935-975), wrote and dramatized legends and plays revolving around the topic of carnal desire (negative) and how to fight it with faith (positive). This article argues that the performance of her plays created ludic play spaces in which the nuns and other potential participants could internalize both the experience of lust and the sweet pain of rejecting it.

“Et lille, firfodet Dyr og en Hovedløs mand”

Line Melballe Bonde — 2023-11-29

This article proposes a new approach to medieval imagery. By taking as a case a relief carving showing a disembodied head, a headless body, a horse and foliage, it argues that this seemingly unintelligible motif can be interpreted based on an approach where the human elements do not dictate the reading alone, as in previous analyses, but that non-human components carry a meaning-driving function as well. The article points out how scholarly approaches to pre-modern imagery, by definition, are culturally conditioned and rooted in the conceptual framework of modernity. It argues that the tendency to understand decapitations and public executions as unilaterally negative cannot be applied to the Middle Ages. Implementing instead a step-by-step shift in the interpretative perspective, the article reaches an understanding of the relief as a representation of a deconstructed anthropomorphic knightly identity where the man and the horse represent the Christian self-sacrificing death, literally and/or morally.

The Spirituality of Christian Suffering

Henrik von Achen — 2023-11-29

The essay offers a contribution to understand the paradox of Christian suffering in seventeenth-century Transalpine devotional texts and their illustrations. Outlining the basic components of a transdenominational ‘Spirituality of Christian sufferance’, expressed in both Catholic and Lutheran ascetic literature, it provides a hermeneutic approach to the early modern iconography of carrying one’s own cross in imitation of Christ. To imitate Christ was to align one’s suffering with his. While Catholics and Lutherans had somewhat different practices to obtain such alignment, it originated in the same basic will to suffer, to receive adversity and pain from God. The spirituality of Christian suffering was an attitude of patience by which the Christian dealt with the fact that earthly life was a valley of tears, for most people misery a given. To endure suffering in faith became an important spiritual devotion for all Christians, regardless of denominational differences. Based on Luke 9:23 and Matthew 10:38, suffering should be embraced as a gift, rejection of the world as a salvific act. The model of the suffering Christ should move the faithful to take up their own crosses willingly, and devoutly endure trials and tribulations in this short life to achieve everlasting glory. The spirituality had to be acquired, internalized, and for this both Catholic and Lutheran literature presented literary ‘Schools of the Cross’. Flowing from this spirituality, simultaneously expressing and shaping it, an iconography grew forth rendering the cross-bearing as the path to salvation, a spirituality whose fulfilment was, indeed, the “Patientia Victrix”.

Dark Moon, Eternal Sunshine

Lars Cyril Nørgaard — 2023-11-29

This contribution focuses on frontispieces found in printed sermons from seventeen-century Denmark. It outlines some general features of the visual programs accomplished by Hans Andreas Greys. In such frontispieces, Greys elaborated complex strategies of visual exegesis. However, he also developed frontispieces that did not limit themselves to biblical themes. One engraving, prefacing a sermon of Jesper Rasmussen Brochmand, belongs to this second series of engravings. The contribution analyzes this specific image, detailing its visual distribution of elements before turning to its portrayal of grief. This portrait involves a complex strategy and engagement with the theological language-use of the sermon.

Glansbilledets skyggeside

David Burmeister — 2023-11-29

The 19th century saw a remarkable innovation of the subject-matter of Danish altarpaintings. Frequently depicting the ministry of Christ and his Glory, these paintings have often been criticized for being skillfully executed but lacking drama, being overly sweet or even sentimental. This article argues that, in spite of the glossy façade, these paintings often engage in far more sinister topics of life and of faith. The article argues that Søren Kierkegaard’s theology offers a superb lens for gaining insights into this side of the religious painting of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Danish art and explores the ‘shadows of the glossy images’ through close readings of Danish altar pieces ranging from Bertel Thorvaldsen’s seminal Christ and C. W. Eckersberg’s ground-breaking Incredulity of Thomas to late 19th Century works of art by Constantin Hansen and Anton Dorph. The main argument of the article is that a negative understanding of this world and not least the constant struggle between being separated from, but needing to get (spiritually) closer to the Saviour remain very strong themes in the religious paintings throughout the 1800s, albeit mainly offered as a personal experience and not as a part of the ideal Christ figure.

Processing the Raw

Ronah Sadan — 2023-11-29

In 1883, a late-medieval wall painting of the Last Judgment was discovered under white-wash in the vault of Sædinge Church in Lolland, Denmark, and then quickly covered up again. The painting depicted, in part, a hell scene deemed too offensive to display. A documentary drawing executed upon the painting’s uncovering contains within it the conflicted reception that this scandalous image received within the aesthetic and devotional context of the nineteenth century. Through this case of an image’s uncovering, documentation, and concealment, this article examines various understandings of negativity: as damnation, as aesthetic insufficiency, as devotional decadence, and finally, as absence.