Sacred Images and Normativity: Contested Forms in Early Modern Art
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Book Series
The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe, vol. 2
Holy Children and Liminality in Early Modern Art
Chiara Franceschini, Cloe Cavero de Carondelet (eds)
- Pages: 231 p.
- Size:216 x 280 mm
- Illustrations:8 b/w, 91 col.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2025
- € 95,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-58698-4
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Jan/25)
- € 95,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61517-2
- E-book
- Forthcoming
- Contains contributions in Open Access
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Holy Children is a collection of essays that offers an innovative exploration of the visualization and materiality of infancy in early modern sacred contexts in different medias, by looking at the relationship between form and meaning from a cross-cultural perspective.
Subject(s)
BIO
Chiara Franceschini is Professor of Early Modern Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and the Principal Investigator of the ERC project SACRIMA, The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe (2016-2022).
Cloe Cavero de Carondelet is Lecturer and Juan de la Cierva Research Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Between 2017 and 2021, she was Research Associate with the ERC project SACRIMA.
Summary
Children play a key role in the visual cultures of early modern Europe. On the one hand, they are central figures because of the Christian belief in a divine embodiment as a child; on the other, since children were assigned with values of mediation and transitions between different worlds, liminality became one of the ideas that structured the extensive spectrum of their roles in premodern imaginations.
By fostering a conversation between art historians from different backgrounds and specializations, this volume departs from the conventional focus on representations of children as evidence for inquiries into childhood to explore their status as (normative) images.
Starting from the ancient putto and liminal representations of children, before moving on to holy children, the Christ Child or child martyrs at the crossroad of religious conflict, the eight essays in this book seek to grasp the many different ambiguous meanings carried by objects representing children and the ways in which artists and viewers reflected on the concepts of childhood and liminality between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries across different European trajectories: from Ravenna to Sarajevo, from Milan to Mechelen, and beyond.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Holy Children, Liminal Bodies: An Introduction
Chiara Franceschini, Cloe Cavero de Carondelet
Chapter 1
Fragments of Desire: On the Ravenna Thrones and their Multiple Contexts of Reuse
Chiara Franceschini
Chapter 2
Baptising the Putto: Transmigration of the Infantile Forms in Sacred Settings between the Adriatic and the Alps
Jasenka Gudelj
Chapter 3
Prudence, Memory and the Liminal Child in the “Medieval Housebook”
Andrea Pearson
Chapter 4
From Sacred to Secular: The Infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist Embracing
Nelleke de Vries
Chapter 5
Re-thinking so-called ‘Holy Dolls’: The Performative and Devotional Context of Christ Child Sculptures in the Early Italian Renaissance
Patricia Simons
Chapter 6
Child and God: The Body of the Christ Child in Medieval and Early Modern Italian Sculptures
Fabien Lacouture
Chapter 7
The Cult of the Holy Child from Sarajevo: Sanctity between Official Orthodoxy and Multiconfessional Piety
Vuk Dautović
Chapter 8
From Norwich to Nagasaki: Hieronymus Wierix and the Iconography of Crucified Child Martyrs
Cloe Cavero de Carondelet
Bibliography
Indexes