In a composite form essay, Jean-Claude Schmitt continues his study of medieval images, a study as semantic and historical as plastic on the way in which the medieval West thinks the image and sometimes thinks by the image.
The image, medieval but not only, is one of the major axes of Jean-Claude Schmitt’s work. In 1996, he published in Annals A major article: “ The culture of the imago ». L’imago “” In fact refers to three concepts of concepts “: Firstly the image of God in Jesus Christ, emphasizing the fundamental importance of the incarnation for Christianity ; second “ All symbolic productions of men », Namely the images from language (ekphrasismetaphors) and material images ; Third, mental images, productions of imagination, dream and memory. It is therefore more than the medieval image and West bathe in a culture and a thought of theimago that Jean-Claude Schmitt has studied in many works, as The body of images. Tests on visual culture in the Middle Ages in 2002.
The image is therefore just as central in the thought of the medieval West as it is in the thought of Jean-Claude Schmitt and the forms of his works tend to demonstrate this. The body of images cited above and Medieval images. The figure and the bodywhich occupies us today, are constructed in a similar way, by the meeting of several articles, ranging from 2006 to 2023 for this work. If the form can amaze, if it can sometimes make reading more complex by the alternation between “ chapters »(The quotes are methodological and conceptual ours) (1 ; 2 ; 4 ; 6) and others dedicated to case studies (3 ; 5 ; 7 ; 8 ; 9), it proves, by the recurrence of certain subjects, to what extent, throughout these years, the author has kept a homogeneous course. More than a collection of articles, it is therefore a book in itself which carries real consistency.
Christian images
The work is subject to medieval images, most often produced in a Christian religious context. The author justifies to concentrate essentially by the central presence, although problematic several times in history, of the image for this religion. This centrality is explained in a first chapter, “ The paradox of iconophile monotheism (P. 25-64). Christianity differs from the other two monotheisms by a presence of the image justified by the doctrine of the incarnation. It is because of the double nature at the same time divine and human of Jesus that Christians feel authorized to represent him in human features, authorization which even extends to the representation of the Father, in a reversal completely seen by Jean-Claude Schmitt: if the Son is in the image of the Father, in the representations the Father comes to be represented in the image of his Son.
If Jean-Claude Schmitt perfectly justifies to focus on the images produced by the Medieval Christian West, he also justifies, and with a lot of pedagogy, the three other words-Image, Figure and Body-which form the title of his work.
The mere fact of describing the images immediately confronts us with a serious terminology problem. What about the words of Middle Ages and what about ours ? (p. 159)
What is an image for the Western Middle Ages ? Jean-Claude Schmitt answers it in a simple way: “ Any object aimed at a visual effect (P. 17). Such a definition of the image owes a lot to the Hans Belting art historian and his work Image and worship. An art history before art era. The image like imago is a more relevant notion than that of art which generates a hierarchy.
One of the great qualities of Jean-Claude Schmitt is his constant search for clarity and pedagogy through the definition of concepts at the heart of his research. We have seen it for the image concept/imago (like the author we will use from now on the word “ picture ), This is also the case for those of “ figure “And” body ». By the introduction from its title of these two concepts, Jean-Claude Schmitt poses the need to understand that the meaning of an image, essentially religious for the Medieval Christian West, must be understood and analyze at the crossroads of a meaning which is “ figure “And content that is” body ».
A culture of analogy
The concept of figure – or figura In Latin – must be understood within medieval culture. According to Jean-Claude Schmitt, who takes up the thought of Eric Auerbach, medieval culture has broken with the mimesis antique. It is not conceived as an imitation of reality, but as a “ figurative interpretation From the latter (p. 75) within a culture of analogy. If a figure represents a person, an object or a place, its relation to the referent is not direct but indeed. These objects are not reducible to themselves but recall an older, hidden meaning, which they reveal.
Taking as an example the doctrine of biblical typology, Jean-Claude Schmitt thus speaks, of a “ Infinite network of analogies woven between “figures” or “types” past (Adam and Eve, David) and their correspondents or “antytypes” of the New Testament and the History of the Church (P. 20-21). This network of analogies can just as easily be woven outside of the old testament/new will, between pagan figures and Christian figures as in so -called moralized bibles, between microcosm and macrocosm, between vices and virtues, as in the lower margins of the famous famous Breviary of Belleville whose author deploys the analysis in the fourth chapter, precisely entitled “ Analog figures ».
In the medieval West, the image is not aimed at the reproduction of reality and even the portraits do not necessarily seek the resemblance to the model.
The medieval image is therefore not an objectivist imitation. But it is not only a representation:
It is also and first of all a material object: its materiality is due to its support, materials, mineral and plant pigments or gold sheets which cover certain parts of the surface of the table or miniature (p. 22).
On a methodological level, several protruding points can be highlighted. The first is this central material dimension, to the point of taking place in the very title of the book. We saw what it was in the face, now make way for the body. Christian monotheism is distinguished in particular because the image takes shape, via the incarnation in Jesus Christ but subsequently in objects whose presence in the world must be studied. The author takes the path open during the emergence of the famous Material Turn In the mid -1980s.
Jean-Claude Schmitt is a historian and not a historian of art, that does not prevent his book from being of a rustling news for this last discipline since in June (2024), the International Art History Committee organized its congress around the notions of “ matter ” And “ materiality “, Notions” inherent in the design, production, interpretation and conservation of artifacts of all cultures and all times ». Materiality, thought as the effect produced by the properties of matter, is envisaged by Jean-Claude Schmitt in the relationship between signified and signifier, in connection with devotional and liturgical practices and more broadly “ As a central and paradoxical data of Christian culture (P. 175). By their materiality the images gain a form of freedom compared to the texts and can no longer be thought only or as representations, even less as illustrations. If it took another, here is a new nail brought to the coffin of the “ Illiterate bible ».
From this materiality of the images also emanates an effect, a power to act, an agentity present in the very definition of the image for Jean-Claude Schmitt (“ Any object aimed at a visual effect », P. 17). He registers in this in line with Auerbach but also Alfred Gell, the British anthropologist author of the founding test Art and Agency (Art and its agents1998). A work of art, and for Jean-Claude Schmitt perhaps even more a work of medieval art, acts on its spectators and users.
Over the course of history
The image does not only reflect belief, it contributes to shaping it, especially when it is not fixed by a doctrine, but (…) continues to seek while developing. (p. 227)
This quote makes it possible to make the link between the effect of an image and its role in the construction of a belief over time. Because there lies the last notable point of the work. Beliefs and images are historical objects, they are transformed over time. And if the idea that immediately comes to mind would be to see the images change over the beliefs, the reverse is just as true although less intuitive for non -historians of art. This, Jean-Claude Schmitt demonstrates it beautifully in the eighth chapter which is undoubtedly the piece of bravery of the work: “ Mary’s bodily exception (P. 226-270). Making the concept of “ figurative thought From Pierre Francastel, he analyzes on a long time – sometimes exceeding the terminals of the Middle Ages – the appearance and the prosperity of the image of the bodily assumption of Mary and the progressive abandonment of the Byzantine iconography of the Dormition, a term used to designate the death without violence of the saints and in particular of the Virgin Mary.
Where the problem is again that of the body-the bodily exception of Mary-Jean-Claude Schmitt shows how it is the images and not the theologians who shaped this belief in the elevation body and soul of the Virgin. Mary’s bodily exception is also found in a last more anthropological than Historic chapter or the author studies the ceremony of the Círio de Nazaré in Brazil to which he attended in 2013.
Medieval images. The figure and the body is therefore a work of great richness and a deep density, whose construction by meeting of articles can sometimes make reading a little difficult. If it is perfectly consistent with this research axis on medieval images, on the edge between history and art history as it is done today, the work perhaps says as much about its author as on its subject. The voluntarily fragmented construction of the work and the non -chronological organization of the articles which form the chapters can sometimes put the reader off by steep transitions or some repetitions, but they nevertheless offer privileged and rare access to behind the scenes, in the intimate laboratory of the historian.