IMC 2006: Sessions

Abstract paper a: This paper investigates the group of small scale, devotional panel paintings produced in the area around Rimini in the late Duecento and early Trecento. These panels are unusual among Italian devotional paintings of this period in their distinctive format and their widespread use of narrative, rather than iconic, imagery. In particular this paper will focus on the use of gesture and pictorial structure to encourage the emotional participation of the spectator, and on the relationship between text and image in the development of private devotional practices.

Abstract paper b: Before the Last Judgment – the most striking medieval representation of emotional reactions – every Christian could not fail to perceive gestures of eternal despair. 13th-century illuminators, especially the anonymous illustrator of the Excidium Troiae (Florence, MS. Riccardiano 881) transposed those images to illustrate ancient epic. If a gesture in the ancient tale – as a sign of fight for human love, desire of revenge, wish for annihilation of enemies, and awe of gods – was the expression of a fleeting emotion, in the Christian context instead the idea of suffering's permanence changes dramatically the emotional reactions in an awesome everlasting reality.

Abstract paper -c: The paper 'Gesture of Revelation' presents vault paintings in Swedish medieval rural churches, depicting St Birgitta's revelations. The paper discusses the visual means by which her revelations are rendered visible: her emotional state while receiving them, and the intertwining of her visions with her writing. The gestures of St Birgitta simultaneously visualize both the receiving and the intermediating of her revelation, coinciding in time and space. In the paper, some discernible characteristic features are studied, by which St Birgitta's gestures express the intercession of heavenly and earthly spheres at the moment of writing.