Баше Ж. Образ-объект [Электронный ресурс] // Vox medii aevi. 2021. Vol. 1(8). C. 94–130. URL: https://voxmediiaevi.com/2021-1-baschet

DOI: 10.24412/2587-6619-2021-1-94-130

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Jérôme Baschet

French medievalist, assistant professor of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris), author of “The Otherworld Justice. Representations of Hell in France and Italy (12th-15th centuries)” (1993), “The Bosom of the Father. Abraham and the Paternity in the Medieval West” (2000),“Zapatista Uprising: Indian Insurrection and Global Resistance” (2002),“Feudal Society. From the Year 1000 to the Colonization of America” (2004),“Bodies and Souls. The History of Individuality in the Middle Ages” (2016).

Image-object

We are accustomed to hear that the medieval images served as the“Bibles of the illiterate”. This expression pretends that their primary goal was to visualize the truths of the faith on behalf of those who did not have access to the written word. Jérôme Baschet demystifies this elusive and partly false metaphor. He invites the historians of the medieval art to concentrate their attention on the materiality of the images. The medieval image (from the huge altarpieces to the tiny pilgrim badges) is not only a visual message but also a corporeal object. Therefore, it is impossible to understand the functioning of these “images-objects” without taking into consideration their material being: various practices tied to their corporeity, the symbolic meanings attached to the materials they were made of, and plenty more.
Keywords: “Bible of the illiterate”; cult of images; iconography; image-object; text and image
Translator: Mikhail Maizuls, Candidate of Sciences(History), Research Fellow of the Center for Visual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, RussianState University for Humanities; maizuls@gmail.com