Materiality, rhetoric and emotion in the Pietà

Abstract

This study focuses on the representation of materiality on wall paintings, as depicted objects functioned as triggers of emotion to convey meaning in images. In medieval aesthetics images were made to engage all the senses in the spectator so as to create a truthful experience. The material perspective combines well with medieval rhetoric in understanding this process, particularly the concepts of ekphrasis, enargeia and ductus. By doing close readings of images, and identifying materials, figures, objects, gestures and so on, in the same manner as one can close read texts, narratives of the images can be discovered. It is also a reading that helps in identifying emotive expressions and rhetorical gestures that together with material aspects of images and texts also help in identifying gender-related contents. During the 15th century the Pietà (the mourning Virgin Mary holding her dead son) was introduced in Sweden. The image is key in understanding the Marian cult as it was established alongside the expanding devotion to the Virgin in the Nordic countries. By fusing the material aspect and rhetoric in a close reading of the motif that focuses on gender and emotion this study aims to find alternative paths in analysing medieval art.

Keywords:

• Virgin Mary
• medieval art
• visual culture
• medieval wall paintings
• iconography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 28. See also Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, 20.

2 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 82.

3 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 58–9, 82.

4 Kieschnick, ‘Material Culture’, 230.

5 See Carruthers, The Craft of Thought; and The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages. See also Lindhé ‘“A Visual Sense is Born in the Fingertips”: Towards a Digital Ekphrasis’.

6 See Carruthers, The Craft of Thought on Quintilian and enargeia, 130–3.

7 Gumbrecht, Production of Presence, 25.

8 Walker Bynum, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, 198, 200. The images are however not limited to this female experience because they contain a wider representation of the Incarnation.

9 See Bal, Quoting Caravaggio; and Reading ‘Rembrandt’.

10 There are many preserved Pietàs in Sweden; some of the most expressive are sculptures that were part of altarpieces. See Karlsson, Ecce Homo, 289–302, for more examples.

11 Karlsson, Ecce Homo, 297, illuminates the content of the two ‘schools’ of St Birgitta’s influence on the Pietà: one argues that her Revelaciones were central for the introduction to the motif in Scandinavia, the other that she was influenced by German sculptures of the Pietà.

12 The word ‘pietà’ is of Italian heritage and it literally translates as ‘pious’. Philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum sees pietà as compassion, the very essence of Christian love in Upheaval of Thoughts, 572, 587–8. The hymn Stabat Mater was spread earlier during the 12th century; see Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 106.

13 See Rubin, Mother of God, 313–4; and Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 17.

14 See Dahlby, De heliga tecknens hemlighet, 13.

15 This is also how the Virgin Mary reflects what humans will look like at the Resurrection according to Shahar, ‘The Old Body in Medieval Culture’, 171. St Augustine and later theologians thought bodies of the resurrected would be the same age as Christ when he died, as depicted in many images of Judgement Day, so 33 was considered as the ideal age.

16 Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, 157–8. Unfortunately, very few documents of liturgical practices are preserved in Europe, so it is hard to reconstruct the performative qualities of the images. Ibid., 160.

17 Nilsén, Program och funktion i senmedeltida kalkmåleri, 458.

18 Källström, Domkyrkan som andaktsmiljö under senmedeltiden, 111–2.

19 Belting, Bild und Kult, 24–5.

20 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 49–51.

21 Belting, Bild und Kult, 11. One way of controlling images was through consecration, Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 34

22 See Dionysius the Carthusian (d. 1459): ‘how greatly and informed must her faith have been! This is why, even in the hour of the Passion, she alone remained fully unshaken and perfected in explicit faith’, in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 313.

23 See for example Bonaventure (d. 1274) and Umbertino of Casale (d. after 1325), in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 212–13, 269–70.

24 Tallon, ‘Christianity’, 112.

25 Martin and Runzo, ‘Love’, 312–3.

26 The characteristics were used to contrast the Virgin to Eve from early Christian theology. See The Venerable Bede (d. 735) and Ambrose Autpert (d. 781) in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 39, 49. This continued throughout the Middle Ages.

27 See Bernhard (d. 1153) in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 141.

28 See Rubert of Deutz (d. 1130) in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 130.

29 Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form: Medieval Challenges to Bodily “Order”’, 114.

30 See Abbot Odilo of Cluny (d. 1049) and Bonaventure (d. 1274) in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 92, 211. See also Tallon, ‘Christianity’, 122.

31 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 45.

32 This can be compared to Nussbaum’s readings of St Augustine where the memory of one’s experiences makes it possible for the soul to develop. Memories evoke emotions that are reminiscent in meditation of the truth and the profound need of every human – the love of God. Nussbaum, Upheaval of Thought, 538–41, 548. See also Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 85, 89–90.

33 Carruthers, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, 4; Largier, ‘Medieval Mysticism’, 366, discusses ‘sacramental mimesis’ as an additional practice of making texts sensual and emotional experiences in a liturgical imitation of Christ and saints.

34 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 15.

35 This idea is developed as an exegesis of John 19:37. See, for example Bonaventure (d. 1274) and Umbertino of Casale (d. after 1325) in Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 215, 217.

36 St Birgitta’s influence on medieval art is well studied, particularly on the Nativity; see Cornell, ‘The Iconography of the Nativity of Christ’; Hildeman Sjölin, Bilden, texten och kyrkorummet; Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Saint Birgitta of Sweden in Florentine Art’. See also Husabø Oen, ‘Sight, Body, and Imagery in the Visionary Experiences of Birgitta’, and her dissertation The Visions of St. Birgitta: A Study of the Making and Reception of Images in the later Middle Ages.

37 Klemming, Heliga Birgittas Uppenbarelser, 33. All the quotations in old Swedish come from this source. The Virgin often returns to this event in her colloquies with St Birgitta and gives various details of a physical and material nature.

38 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 53–4.

39 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 41.

40 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 14, 44; and ‘Editor’s Introduction’, 4–5

41 After Cod. C 56 4°, Klemming Svenska Medeltids-Postillor:3, 133.

42 Raphael, ‘Gender’, 188.

43 See Cod. 787 4°, Klemming, Svenska Medeltids-Postillor:1, 118–9; Cod. T180, Ejder Svenska Medeltidspostillor, 6–7, 27; Cod. GkS 1390 4°, Ejder, Svenska Medeltidspostillor:8, 174–9; and Cod. AM 787 4°, Andersson, Sermonis Sacri Svecice, 200.

44 Nilsén, Program och funktion i senmedeltida kalkmåleri, 247; see also Karlsson, Ecce Homo.

45 In the Madonna with Child, the baby Jesus is seated in her lap, and because he cannot talk his mother speaks for him as in the legend of the Three Magi. See Kyhlberg, Heliga tre konungar. Belting, Bild und Kult, 318–9, also makes this connection in relation to the more animated imagery of the Virgin Mary from c. 1100.

46 Sometimes when Mary is not alone with her dead son the image is called Mourning of Christ. Nilsén, Program och funktion i senmedeltida kalkmåleri, 35.

47 The first (and so far only) major study of Passionsmästaren is Söderberg, De gotländska passionsmålarna och deras stilfränder, however he revised his original discussion of Passionsmästaren’s work in later studies; Svenska kyrkomålningar från medeltiden; and Gotländskt kalkmåleri 1200–1400. In the last he values the paintings of Passionsmästaren as being of poor quality, [‘torftiga’], 210.

48 Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 63, 65. Carruthers also discusses (mental and material) images as ‘meditation machines’ that aid mnemotic meditations; see ibid 230. This could be further developed in a future study by using Bruno Latour’s (and other’s) Actor-Network-Theory, in order to map material and semiotic relations. See Latour, Reassembling the Social.

49 Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, 42.

50 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 66.

51 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 167–9. She also devotes chapter 5 to the rhetorical concept of Varietas, 135–64.

52 Lindgren, ‘Kalkmålningarna’, 317. For more detailed analysis of pigments used by Passionsmästaren (in the parish church of Anga, Gotland), see Nord and Tronner, Medeltidsmästarnas färgval, 26–8; and the related article by the same authors, ‘Kemisk analys av fjorton medeltidskyrkors muralmålningar’, 334–41.

53 See Cennini in Il libro dell’arte (c. 1400) and his repeated warnings about pigments that might turn black depending on time or technique.

54 Hetherington, Medieval Rome, 23.

55 Belting, Bild und Kult, 23.

56 One might see them as part of an immaterial cultural heritage because the ritual and liturgical use was inherited and preserved with the aid of these very artefacts.

57 Liepe, Den medeltida kroppen, 52.

58 John 19: 38–42, but Joseph of Arimathea is also mentioned in Matthew 27: 57–60, Mark 15: 45–7, Luke 23: 50–3.

59 Binski, Medieval Death, 45–6, 52.

60 See Barasch, Theories of Art, 80–4.

61 This is probably the only church the German-born Johannes Rosenrod painted in Sweden, Cornell and Wallin, Johannes Rosenrod, 164–5. See also Söderberg, Svenska kyrkomålningar från medeltiden, 164–5.

62 Nilsén, ‘Johannes Rosenrod’ suggests that the donor of the paintings, the nobleman Bengt Jönsson, had interests in defending St Birgitta’s writings that were being contested at the time; Söderberg, Svenska kyrkomålningar från medeltiden, 160, also comments on Bengt Jönsson’s interest in the saint. For a study of the iconography of St Birgitta, see Lindgren Bilden av Birgitta.

63 The incense can be a reference to the story of the Three Magi and their gifts to the baby Jesus.

64 Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form: Medieval Challenges to Bodily “Order”’, 101; and Walker Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ in the later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg’, 85–7, 114.

65 Walker Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ in the later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg’, 82, 92–3. For further discussion on Christ as mother, see Walker Bynum, ‘ “… And Women His Humanity”: Female Imagery in the Religion Writing of Late Middle Ages’, 158–9.

66 Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ in the later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg’, 93, 116.

67 Liepe, Den medeltida kroppen, 55–8.

68 Liepe, Den medeltida kroppen, 55.

69 Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form: Medieval Challenges to Bodily “Order”’, 115.

70 Purity was essential in the discussion of the Virgin as Immaculata. See Tavard, ‘The Genesis of Mariology’, 107–8.

71 A common explanation has been that this part of was made by less skilled craftsmen. Nilsén gives a more solid interpretation where the master often was not from the parish and needed the aid of local workers to finish the outlined work of the master. Nilsén, Program och funktion i senmedeltida kalkmåleri, 8.

72 This is noted by Nord and Tronner, ‘Kemisk analys av fjorton medeltidskyrkors muralmålningar’, 338. In Tensta church there were no later pigments recorded; all seem to be original in the same area of the Pietà, Ibid., 340. For a more detailed analysis of the pigments used by Rosenrod in the Tensta church, see the same authors, Medeltidsmästarnas färgval, 21–2.

73 This symbolism is present in the Late Middle Ages in the form of making the sign of the cross in prayers since Pope Innocentio III (d. 1216). Three fingers were used in a gesture as a sign of the Trinity; the remaining two were a sign of Christ’s dual nature. Dahlby, De heliga tecknens hemlighet, 56.

74 After Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 205.

75 Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality, 33.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann-Catrine Eriksson

Ann-Catrine Eriksson (born 1969) is PhD and a senior lecturer in the Theory and History of Art at Umeå University, Sweden. She was engaged in an interdisciplinary research project, “Imitatio Mariae: the Virgin Mary as a Virtuous Model in Medieval Sweden”, funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2011–2014.