Replicating Holiness in the Visual Culture of the Counter-Reformation

FAIN: FT-52236-04

Kirstin Joanne Noreen
Louisiana State University and A&M College (Baton Rouge, LA 70803-0001)

This two-month research project is part of a larger study that examines the visualization and replication of sanctity during the period of the Counter-Reformation as expressed in the popular revival of medieval cult images, the development of new pictorial programs representing models of holiness, and the documentation of hagiographic narratives. The Summer Stipend will be used to examine seventeenth-century copies of Early Christian and medieval pictorial programs in Rome to demonstrate how the antiquarian and didactic environment of the Counter-Reformation helped to shape the concept of the image and the picturing of sanctity.

Associated Products

“Sacred Memory and Confraternal Space: The Insignia of the Confraternity of the Santissimo Salvatore (Rome)” (Article)
Title: “Sacred Memory and Confraternal Space: The Insignia of the Confraternity of the Santissimo Salvatore (Rome)”
Author: Kirstin Noreen
Abstract: This article describes how the Confraternity of the Santissimo Salvatore, a powerful group charged with the upkeep of the miraculous image of Christ found in the papal chapel of the Lateran, used their insignia as a public manifestation of their economic and political power. Relief carvings depicting the group’s stemma, showing a bust of Christ often combined with kneeling confraternal members, were placed on the facades of structures in the area of the Lateran to designate the confraternity’s holdings and reinforce its charitable works. While the use of insignia to demonstrate property rights is not unusual or surprising, the stone plaques also served as a memory of the processional activities sponsored by the group and its control over one of the most important cult images in the city. This article explores how the display of the confraternity’s insignia helped to define a sacred zone associated with a portion of the processional route, thus reinforcing the confraternity as a mediator between image and public.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/roma-felix-formation-and-reflections-of-medieval-rome/oclc/76820830&referer=brief_results
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Roma Felix — Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, eds. Carol Neuman de Vegvar and Éamonn Ó Carragáin
Publisher: Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007

“Revealing the Sacred: The Icon of Christ in the Sancta Sanctorum, Rome” (Article)
Title: “Revealing the Sacred: The Icon of Christ in the Sancta Sanctorum, Rome”
Author: Kirstin Noreen
Abstract: The Christ icon of the Sancta Sanctorum, known as an acheiropoieton because of its supposedly miraculous origins, occupied a central position in the cult of images in Rome. Although covered with a silver revetment in the early thirteenth-century, two small doors located at the feet of Christ facilitated communication between the holy icon and the viewer during ritual celebrations. These doors, through which Christ’s body could be partially revealed, represented a very real locus of power in Roman cult practice, for their control was regulated by civic authorities during public celebrations that involved the entire commune. This article argues that four scenes found on the doors demonstrate how the Christ icon was understood in relation to its miraculous creation, its
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/revealing-the-sacred-the-icon-of-christ-in-the-sancta-sanctorum-rome/oclc/102787058&referer=brief_results
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Word and Image, vol. 22

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