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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1025: Memory, Images, and Magic in 15th-Century Art and Humanistic Thought

Wednesday 4 July 2018, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:Images of Learned Magic - Formation, Continuity & Transmutations Project (IMAFOR), University of Jyväskylä
Organiser:Lauri Ockenström, Department of Music, Art & Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä
Moderator/Chair:Katja Fält, Department of Music, Art & Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä
Paper 1025-aThinking and Remembering in Sacred Images
(Language: English)
Roger Ferrer Ventosa, Departament d'Història i Història de l'Art, Universitat de Girona
Index terms: Anthropology, Art History - General, Philosophy, Theology
Paper 1025-bHumanism and the Revivals of Medieval Image Magic and Pagan Antiquity at the End of the 15th Century
(Language: English)
Lauri Ockenström, Department of Music, Art & Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä
Index terms: Art History - General, Pagan Religions, Philosophy, Science
Paper 1025-cMercurial Talismans: Magic and Memory in Marsilio Ficino's De Vita
(Language: English)
Susanne Kathrin Beiweis, Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University, China
Index terms: Medicine, Pagan Religions, Philosophy
Abstract

Both in humanistic thought and in the visual arts of the 15th century, images served as important devices for activating memory, the late medieval concept of which included imagination as well as knowledge and operative dimension. In this sense, images not only act as cognitive tools that are intended to unite the divine with the mundane but as a mechanism that allows the individual to manipulate his environment. On a more general level, differing humanistic views about images reflect acute contemporary tensions between Christianity, classical antiquity, reason, and magic. Paper -a analyses images as mediums of knowledge both in artistic and Hermetic context, and paper -b the magical background of mnemonic images. Paper -c discusses the mnemonical dimensions of Marsilio Ficino's image magic.