Genesis 1:4 -"God saw that the light was good" -implied that whatever existed before was bad; and... more Genesis 1:4 -"God saw that the light was good" -implied that whatever existed before was bad; and since God created order and categories, whatever existed before was chaos. The primeval forces of chaos and destruction that continued to manifest in tumultuous powers that disturbed the proper course of life and history -such as floods, famine, disease, death, and even political adversaries -were personified in the figures of giants. As the embodiments of wild, brutish, ferocious, uncontrollable, and unpredictable power, giants had to be vanquished. This fundamental characteristic of giants as the epitome of chaos, destined to be exterminated, is shared in Mesopotamian, Greek, and Celtic mythologies, the Hebrew Bible, and the Norse sagas and Eddas. Genesis 6 tells of the sons of God who took the daughters of Adam as their wives and multiplied. Their offspring, the Nephilim, were giants who brought wickedness and evil to earth: "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:2-4). The identification of giants with chaos also plays a major role in the pseudo-epigraphical Jewish works dating from the third century BCE: the Book of Enoch and the so-called Book of Giants. The latter, a transcription based on the Book of Enoch, is one of the seven scrolls discovered in the caves of Qumran at the Dead Sea. This account of the antediluvian era details the giants' rule on earth and the genesis of evil. As the apocrypha had it, in the Hebrew year 1170, the Watchers -the fallen angels who were sent to humankind in order to instruct them in proper ethical and just conduct -rebelled against God and were seduced by mortal women who gave birth to three generations of giants: the first were the Anaqim, the second the Nephilim, and the third the children of Elioud. These hybrid creatures taught humans the arts of potion-, poison-, spell-, weapon-, and jewelry-making, and the ability to make ointments and makeup, as well as the wisdom of astrolatry and all kinds of evil-doing. They consumed all the acquisitions of humanity, and when humankind could no longer sustain themselves and the giants, the giants devoured the humans, who, in their despair, had become cannibals themselves. In their battles against humans, the giants were especially cruel to those who adhered to God; they turned the world corrupt and wicked, so were called demons and ghosts (Repha'im). Despite enacting such overwhelming evil, the giants simultaneously possessed admirable qualities, evident in their Aramaic name Gavria -a word used for both heroes and men, thus indicating specifically male heroes. Those giants who inherited the roles of the Watchers, however, were granted visionary dreams by God that prophesized the deluge. Perplexed by this enigmatic vision of destruction and fearing God's rage, they sent a messenger to Enoch asking for help. In spite of their inherited sinfulness, the giants did honor Enoch and addressed him respectfully, asking him both to solve the annihilation they foresaw in their dreams and to ask God for forgiveness on their behalf. Once Enoch had elucidated the meaning of their dreams as God's future judgment, however, the giants chose not to repent but to further indulge in pride and arrogance, denying God. Consequently, Archangel Raphael was sent to imprison the demon Azazel, while Archangel Uriel was sent to warn Noah of the coming flood and to advise him how to survive it. In this account, the giants are intrinsically related not only to the sins of pride, arrogance, gluttony, and lechery in their
The visual landscape north of the Alps between the 14th and 16th centuries was shaped by colossal... more The visual landscape north of the Alps between the 14th and 16th centuries was shaped by colossal representations of epic and mythological giants, reincarnated and cast as Christian heroes. In contexts religious or lay, private or public, giants dominated urban spaces but also rural ones. They were painted on church facades and stood tall as sculptures in town squares. Rather than portraying specific characters from particular texts, the figures embodied the notion of “the gigantic” as it appeared in contemporary writings: superhuman creatures from foreign lands and liminal geographies, often associated with supernatural powers, magic, hypermasculinity, and, concomitantly, matriarchy. Since the naming and identity of these giants do not always correlate– thus destabilizing the images’ semiotics – the gap could be filled by fabricated memories of the ancient world. Hence, imagery of giants bridged mythological, biblical, and contemporary times, while producing novel political metaphors.
This book explores the role and function of the vision and the experience of the gigantic. Executed “out of scale” and communicating ideas about excess, giants were experienced as physically and ethically abject and, at the same time, as magnificent, apotropaic, and redemptive; as such they came to embody the very notion of
the medieval sublime.
This anthology examines the workings of historical imagery in fourteen essays, offering fresh per... more This anthology examines the workings of historical imagery in fourteen essays, offering fresh perspectives from leading researchers on a central question for contemporary art history. Drawing on the results of an international conference held in Vienna in 2018, the authors approach images from the premodern period in terms of their fabrication, deployment, and reception. The focus lies on wide-ranging media— architecture, sculpture, painting, metalwork, stained glass—in similarly wide-ranging contexts: from monumental installations in the most public zones of urban churches to exquisite devotional objects and illuminated books reserved for more exclusive settings. This spectrum reflects the broad interests of the conference’s dedicatee, Michael Viktor Schwarz, whose introductory interview lays out the parameters of the subject.
Why does a society seek out images of violence? What can the consumption of violent imagery teach... more Why does a society seek out images of violence? What can the consumption of violent imagery teach us about the history of violence and the ways in which it has been represented and understood? Assaf Pinkus considers these questions within the context of what he calls galleries of violence, the torment imagery that flourished in German-speaking regions during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Exploring these images and the visceral bodily responses that they produced in their viewers, Pinkus argues that the new visual discourse on violence was a watershed in premodern conceptualizations of selfhood. Images of martyrdom in late medieval Germany reveal a strikingly brutal parade of passion: severed heads, split skulls, mutilated organs, extracted fingernails and teeth, and myriad other torments. Stripped from their devotional context and presented simply as brutal acts, these portrayals assailed viewers’ bodies and minds so fiercely that they amounted to what Pinkus describes as “visual aggressions.” Addressing contemporary discourses on aggression and cruelty, the aesthetics of violence, and the eroticism of the tortured body, Pinkus ties these galleries of violence to larger cultural concerns about the ethics of violence and bodily integrity in the conceptualization of early modern personhood. Innovative and convincing, this book heralds a fundamental shift in the scholarly conversation about premodern violence, moving from a focus on the imitatio Christi and the liturgy of punishment to the notion of violence as a moral problem in an ethical system. Scholars of medieval and early modern art, history, and literature will welcome and engage with Pinkus’s research for years to come.
The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy... more The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy Land and has been a destination of pilgrims for millennia. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern edifice, this anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the church, comprising the stages of its construction from the Byzantine era, through Crusader and Franciscan campaigns, into the present. The studies discuss such topics as the basilica’s complex pictorial language, including stained-glass windows, bronze doors, and votive panels, and the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the reception of modern elements of its architecture. The various analyses take into consideration the challenges facing Christian art in a multicultural world.
The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy... more The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy Land and has been a destination of pilgrims for millennia.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern edifice, this anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the church, comprising the stages of its construction from the Byzantine era, through Crusader and Franciscan campaigns, into the present.
The studies discuss such topics as the basilica’s complex pictorial language, including stained-glass windows, bronze doors, and votive panels, and the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the reception of modern elements of its architecture. The various analyses take into consideration the challenges facing Christian art in a multicultural world.
Engaging with the imaginative, nonreligious response to Gothic sculpture in German-speaking lands... more Engaging with the imaginative, nonreligious response to Gothic sculpture in German-speaking lands and tracing high and late medieval notions of the "living statue" and the simulacrum in religious, lay, and travel literature, this study explores the subjective and intuitive potential inherent in thirteenthand fourteenth-century sculpture. It addresses a range of works, from the oeuvre of the so-called Naumburg Master through Freiburg-im-Breisgau to the imperial art of Vienna and Prague. As living simulacra, the sculptures offer themselves to the imaginative horizons of their viewers as factual presences that substitute for the real. In perceiving Gothic sculpture as a conscious alternative to the sacred imago, the book offers a new understanding of the function, production, and use of three-dimensional images in late medieval Germany. By blurring the boundaries between viewers and works of art, between the imaginary and the real, the sculptures invite the speculations of their viewers and in this way produce an unstable meaning, perpetually mutable and alive. The book constitutes the first art-historical attempt to theorize the idiosyncratic character of German Gothic sculpture-much of which has never been fully documented-and provides the first Englishlanguage survey of the historiography of these works.
A Holy Land within The Holy Land: Duc in Altum as a Case in Point , 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Late medieval art was obsessed with scaling: scaling sculptures of Roland and Mary up to colossi ... more Late medieval art was obsessed with scaling: scaling sculptures of Roland and Mary up to colossi and down to miniature figurines; scaling up depictions of the cosmos to appear much larger than God and vice versa; miniaturizing architectural elements into micro-architectural structures and then magnifying them into monumental sacrament houses; miniaturizing multi-figured sculptured tympana into altarpieces and then shrinking them further to fit into prayer nuts; playing with multiple scales within shrine Madonnas; and oscillating between thumb-sized prayer books and gigantic display volumes. The preoccupation with scaling was contemporaneous with new improvements to measuring instruments and standards that could investigate celestial bodies; fix time, distance, space, or quantities; and classify human physiognomy. While this engagement with measuring has been well established in recent scholarship (including the PI’s publications on colossal sculpture) its theoretical underpinnings and how it fueled widespread fascination with scale have not been explored. The proposed research seeks to reveal the late Middle Ages as the stage of an overlooked scaling turn, even a revolution. It aims to delineate and bring to the fore what is here defined for the first time as the “Scaling Revolution”—an artistic, technological, cultural, and ethical manipulation of relational sizing (scaling) that occurred in the Latin West during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While measuring (using set units, therefore “objective” ontological category) and scaling (a relative and relational act, therefore a subjective phenomenological category) were always a part of artistic cultural production, during these centuries they were, to an unprecedented degree, in constant flux. Scaling determines how artefacts – and by implication, people – occupy a given space in relation to one another, mediating ontological categories of being and their interrelationships. The scaling revolution culminated in Alberti’s theories of proportion and the discovery of the New World, which mandated a rescaling of the world itself to make room for its “new” inhabitants. By studying scaled artifacts, and introducing a new paradigm and analytical tools, the project argues that the scaling revolution dramatically changed not only the visual and material culture of the period but also its theological and philosophical tenets, therefore affecting many aspects of daily life—language, literature, devotion, commerce, science, and law—and impacting fundamental modes of thinking and ideologies. The proposed research will ultimately contend that scaled objects were instrumental in fashioning the late medieval and early modern self. The visual properties of scaled objects attest to implicit perceptions and cultural assumptions about the relationships between God, humanity, and the races, which forged notions of European primacy. The developments and the consequences of the scaling revolution thus reverberated around the globe and into modernity.
A pair of naked giants, male and female, gazing toward the congregation, flank the apse of St. Ja... more A pair of naked giants, male and female, gazing toward the congregation, flank the apse of St. Jakob in Kastelaz (c.1215) in Tramin, South Tyrol. This article argues that, rather than portraying specific giants from a particular text, the mural figures embody the notion of “the gigantic” as it appears in contemporary medieval epics, romances, and travel literature. As such, they confront viewers with a variety of geographies and temporalities of salvation, connecting the Flood and its redemptive implications to a broad spectrum of mythical times, sacred history, and cosmology, as well as to a wide range of locations across the globe, both near and far. Amid this rich cultural web, the giants in the frescoes offer their viewers two types of pictorial vision: a false one, represented by the hybrids struggling in the obliterating deluge; and a true vision of the Majestas Domini and the Apostles, attainable by humanity alone.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Genesis 1:4 -"God saw that the light was good" -implied that whatever existed before was bad; and... more Genesis 1:4 -"God saw that the light was good" -implied that whatever existed before was bad; and since God created order and categories, whatever existed before was chaos. The primeval forces of chaos and destruction that continued to manifest in tumultuous powers that disturbed the proper course of life and history -such as floods, famine, disease, death, and even political adversaries -were personified in the figures of giants. As the embodiments of wild, brutish, ferocious, uncontrollable, and unpredictable power, giants had to be vanquished. This fundamental characteristic of giants as the epitome of chaos, destined to be exterminated, is shared in Mesopotamian, Greek, and Celtic mythologies, the Hebrew Bible, and the Norse sagas and Eddas. Genesis 6 tells of the sons of God who took the daughters of Adam as their wives and multiplied. Their offspring, the Nephilim, were giants who brought wickedness and evil to earth: "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:2-4). The identification of giants with chaos also plays a major role in the pseudo-epigraphical Jewish works dating from the third century BCE: the Book of Enoch and the so-called Book of Giants. The latter, a transcription based on the Book of Enoch, is one of the seven scrolls discovered in the caves of Qumran at the Dead Sea. This account of the antediluvian era details the giants' rule on earth and the genesis of evil. As the apocrypha had it, in the Hebrew year 1170, the Watchers -the fallen angels who were sent to humankind in order to instruct them in proper ethical and just conduct -rebelled against God and were seduced by mortal women who gave birth to three generations of giants: the first were the Anaqim, the second the Nephilim, and the third the children of Elioud. These hybrid creatures taught humans the arts of potion-, poison-, spell-, weapon-, and jewelry-making, and the ability to make ointments and makeup, as well as the wisdom of astrolatry and all kinds of evil-doing. They consumed all the acquisitions of humanity, and when humankind could no longer sustain themselves and the giants, the giants devoured the humans, who, in their despair, had become cannibals themselves. In their battles against humans, the giants were especially cruel to those who adhered to God; they turned the world corrupt and wicked, so were called demons and ghosts (Repha'im). Despite enacting such overwhelming evil, the giants simultaneously possessed admirable qualities, evident in their Aramaic name Gavria -a word used for both heroes and men, thus indicating specifically male heroes. Those giants who inherited the roles of the Watchers, however, were granted visionary dreams by God that prophesized the deluge. Perplexed by this enigmatic vision of destruction and fearing God's rage, they sent a messenger to Enoch asking for help. In spite of their inherited sinfulness, the giants did honor Enoch and addressed him respectfully, asking him both to solve the annihilation they foresaw in their dreams and to ask God for forgiveness on their behalf. Once Enoch had elucidated the meaning of their dreams as God's future judgment, however, the giants chose not to repent but to further indulge in pride and arrogance, denying God. Consequently, Archangel Raphael was sent to imprison the demon Azazel, while Archangel Uriel was sent to warn Noah of the coming flood and to advise him how to survive it. In this account, the giants are intrinsically related not only to the sins of pride, arrogance, gluttony, and lechery in their
The visual landscape north of the Alps between the 14th and 16th centuries was shaped by colossal... more The visual landscape north of the Alps between the 14th and 16th centuries was shaped by colossal representations of epic and mythological giants, reincarnated and cast as Christian heroes. In contexts religious or lay, private or public, giants dominated urban spaces but also rural ones. They were painted on church facades and stood tall as sculptures in town squares. Rather than portraying specific characters from particular texts, the figures embodied the notion of “the gigantic” as it appeared in contemporary writings: superhuman creatures from foreign lands and liminal geographies, often associated with supernatural powers, magic, hypermasculinity, and, concomitantly, matriarchy. Since the naming and identity of these giants do not always correlate– thus destabilizing the images’ semiotics – the gap could be filled by fabricated memories of the ancient world. Hence, imagery of giants bridged mythological, biblical, and contemporary times, while producing novel political metaphors.
This book explores the role and function of the vision and the experience of the gigantic. Executed “out of scale” and communicating ideas about excess, giants were experienced as physically and ethically abject and, at the same time, as magnificent, apotropaic, and redemptive; as such they came to embody the very notion of
the medieval sublime.
This anthology examines the workings of historical imagery in fourteen essays, offering fresh per... more This anthology examines the workings of historical imagery in fourteen essays, offering fresh perspectives from leading researchers on a central question for contemporary art history. Drawing on the results of an international conference held in Vienna in 2018, the authors approach images from the premodern period in terms of their fabrication, deployment, and reception. The focus lies on wide-ranging media— architecture, sculpture, painting, metalwork, stained glass—in similarly wide-ranging contexts: from monumental installations in the most public zones of urban churches to exquisite devotional objects and illuminated books reserved for more exclusive settings. This spectrum reflects the broad interests of the conference’s dedicatee, Michael Viktor Schwarz, whose introductory interview lays out the parameters of the subject.
Why does a society seek out images of violence? What can the consumption of violent imagery teach... more Why does a society seek out images of violence? What can the consumption of violent imagery teach us about the history of violence and the ways in which it has been represented and understood? Assaf Pinkus considers these questions within the context of what he calls galleries of violence, the torment imagery that flourished in German-speaking regions during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Exploring these images and the visceral bodily responses that they produced in their viewers, Pinkus argues that the new visual discourse on violence was a watershed in premodern conceptualizations of selfhood. Images of martyrdom in late medieval Germany reveal a strikingly brutal parade of passion: severed heads, split skulls, mutilated organs, extracted fingernails and teeth, and myriad other torments. Stripped from their devotional context and presented simply as brutal acts, these portrayals assailed viewers’ bodies and minds so fiercely that they amounted to what Pinkus describes as “visual aggressions.” Addressing contemporary discourses on aggression and cruelty, the aesthetics of violence, and the eroticism of the tortured body, Pinkus ties these galleries of violence to larger cultural concerns about the ethics of violence and bodily integrity in the conceptualization of early modern personhood. Innovative and convincing, this book heralds a fundamental shift in the scholarly conversation about premodern violence, moving from a focus on the imitatio Christi and the liturgy of punishment to the notion of violence as a moral problem in an ethical system. Scholars of medieval and early modern art, history, and literature will welcome and engage with Pinkus’s research for years to come.
The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy... more The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy Land and has been a destination of pilgrims for millennia. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern edifice, this anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the church, comprising the stages of its construction from the Byzantine era, through Crusader and Franciscan campaigns, into the present. The studies discuss such topics as the basilica’s complex pictorial language, including stained-glass windows, bronze doors, and votive panels, and the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the reception of modern elements of its architecture. The various analyses take into consideration the challenges facing Christian art in a multicultural world.
The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy... more The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is among the most celebrated loca sancta in the Holy Land and has been a destination of pilgrims for millennia.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern edifice, this anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the church, comprising the stages of its construction from the Byzantine era, through Crusader and Franciscan campaigns, into the present.
The studies discuss such topics as the basilica’s complex pictorial language, including stained-glass windows, bronze doors, and votive panels, and the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the reception of modern elements of its architecture. The various analyses take into consideration the challenges facing Christian art in a multicultural world.
Engaging with the imaginative, nonreligious response to Gothic sculpture in German-speaking lands... more Engaging with the imaginative, nonreligious response to Gothic sculpture in German-speaking lands and tracing high and late medieval notions of the "living statue" and the simulacrum in religious, lay, and travel literature, this study explores the subjective and intuitive potential inherent in thirteenthand fourteenth-century sculpture. It addresses a range of works, from the oeuvre of the so-called Naumburg Master through Freiburg-im-Breisgau to the imperial art of Vienna and Prague. As living simulacra, the sculptures offer themselves to the imaginative horizons of their viewers as factual presences that substitute for the real. In perceiving Gothic sculpture as a conscious alternative to the sacred imago, the book offers a new understanding of the function, production, and use of three-dimensional images in late medieval Germany. By blurring the boundaries between viewers and works of art, between the imaginary and the real, the sculptures invite the speculations of their viewers and in this way produce an unstable meaning, perpetually mutable and alive. The book constitutes the first art-historical attempt to theorize the idiosyncratic character of German Gothic sculpture-much of which has never been fully documented-and provides the first Englishlanguage survey of the historiography of these works.
A Holy Land within The Holy Land: Duc in Altum as a Case in Point , 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Late medieval art was obsessed with scaling: scaling sculptures of Roland and Mary up to colossi ... more Late medieval art was obsessed with scaling: scaling sculptures of Roland and Mary up to colossi and down to miniature figurines; scaling up depictions of the cosmos to appear much larger than God and vice versa; miniaturizing architectural elements into micro-architectural structures and then magnifying them into monumental sacrament houses; miniaturizing multi-figured sculptured tympana into altarpieces and then shrinking them further to fit into prayer nuts; playing with multiple scales within shrine Madonnas; and oscillating between thumb-sized prayer books and gigantic display volumes. The preoccupation with scaling was contemporaneous with new improvements to measuring instruments and standards that could investigate celestial bodies; fix time, distance, space, or quantities; and classify human physiognomy. While this engagement with measuring has been well established in recent scholarship (including the PI’s publications on colossal sculpture) its theoretical underpinnings and how it fueled widespread fascination with scale have not been explored. The proposed research seeks to reveal the late Middle Ages as the stage of an overlooked scaling turn, even a revolution. It aims to delineate and bring to the fore what is here defined for the first time as the “Scaling Revolution”—an artistic, technological, cultural, and ethical manipulation of relational sizing (scaling) that occurred in the Latin West during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While measuring (using set units, therefore “objective” ontological category) and scaling (a relative and relational act, therefore a subjective phenomenological category) were always a part of artistic cultural production, during these centuries they were, to an unprecedented degree, in constant flux. Scaling determines how artefacts – and by implication, people – occupy a given space in relation to one another, mediating ontological categories of being and their interrelationships. The scaling revolution culminated in Alberti’s theories of proportion and the discovery of the New World, which mandated a rescaling of the world itself to make room for its “new” inhabitants. By studying scaled artifacts, and introducing a new paradigm and analytical tools, the project argues that the scaling revolution dramatically changed not only the visual and material culture of the period but also its theological and philosophical tenets, therefore affecting many aspects of daily life—language, literature, devotion, commerce, science, and law—and impacting fundamental modes of thinking and ideologies. The proposed research will ultimately contend that scaled objects were instrumental in fashioning the late medieval and early modern self. The visual properties of scaled objects attest to implicit perceptions and cultural assumptions about the relationships between God, humanity, and the races, which forged notions of European primacy. The developments and the consequences of the scaling revolution thus reverberated around the globe and into modernity.
A pair of naked giants, male and female, gazing toward the congregation, flank the apse of St. Ja... more A pair of naked giants, male and female, gazing toward the congregation, flank the apse of St. Jakob in Kastelaz (c.1215) in Tramin, South Tyrol. This article argues that, rather than portraying specific giants from a particular text, the mural figures embody the notion of “the gigantic” as it appears in contemporary medieval epics, romances, and travel literature. As such, they confront viewers with a variety of geographies and temporalities of salvation, connecting the Flood and its redemptive implications to a broad spectrum of mythical times, sacred history, and cosmology, as well as to a wide range of locations across the globe, both near and far. Amid this rich cultural web, the giants in the frescoes offer their viewers two types of pictorial vision: a false one, represented by the hybrids struggling in the obliterating deluge; and a true vision of the Majestas Domini and the Apostles, attainable by humanity alone.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
A pair of naked giants, male and female, gazing toward the congregation, flank the apse of St. Ja... more A pair of naked giants, male and female, gazing toward the congregation, flank the apse of St. Jakob in Kastelaz (c.1215) 5 in Tramin, South Tyrol. This article argues that, rather than portraying specific giants from a particular text, the mural figures embody the notion of "the gigantic" as it appears in contemporary medieval epics, romances, and travel literature. As such, they confront viewers with a variety of geographies and temporalities of salvation, connecting the Flood and its redemptive implications to a broad spectrum of mythical times, sacred history, and cosmology, as well as to a wide range of locations across the globe, both near and far. Amid this rich cultural web, the giants in the frescoes offer their viewers two types of pictorial vision: a false one, represented 10 by the hybrids struggling in the obliterating deluge; and a true vision of the Majestas Domini and the Apostles, attainable by humanity alone. Executed c.1215, the mural decoration of the apse in St. Jakob in Kastelaz, in Tramin, South Tyrol (northern Italy), reveals a spectacular exposé of what Rudolf Wittkower long ago aptly 15 called the "Marvels of the East": an array of mythological beings including a battling centaur, a manticora, a fish-man, an acephale, a cynocephalus, a siren, a fish-rider, a dolphin, a hydra, some kind of horned sea animal, a sciapode, a bird-woman, and a Capricorn/fish-unicorn, all of which were 20 believed to exist at the edges of ancient and medieval civilization (figures 1-3). 1 This parade of combating, fabulous creatures , immersed in flowing water, is framed, literally and conceptually, by the sacrifice of Cain and Abel on the span-drels of the triumphal arch, the Majestas Domini with a Deësis in 25 the conch of the apse (figure 4), and the Apostles' tribune in the arcade beneath (figure 5). 2 Furthermore, two nude, elderly male and female figures-supposedly atlantes-appear at the base of the arch and seem to support the entire composition on their hands and heads (figures 6 and 7). As the images most 30 immediate and accessible to the congregation, the figures invite their beholders to enter the realm of the mirabilia and curiositas. 3 This pair not only appears as supporting pillars of the structure and the representation, but also their size is larger than any of the hybrid marvels located within the 35 apse. These so-called atlantes are depicted pressed (or compressed) into the frame, bending their knees as if they are too huge to fit. Despite their remarkable visual prominence, in terms of both scale and location, as well as their status as the closest to human among the exotic creatures, they have never 40 been regarded as the key to understanding the entire program of the apse. I suggest that the two figures represent giants, who in the Middle Ages were believed to exist in both the biblical and the mythological past, as well as in the present, within the late medieval imaginary. 4 Although Middle High German 45 epics are replete with narratives featuring giants, the figures of Kastelaz do not portray specific giants, but rather the notion of "the gigantic," namely, the thematic and cultural web associated with giants: superhuman creatures of mythological times, foreign lands, uncivilized violence, sin, and 50 destruction. As liminal creatures in their essence (not fully human, and yet not fully monstrous), who survived the flood and engendered further anomalies, giants transverse epochs and geographical space. As such, I argue, they confront the beholder with the temporalities and geographies of salvation, 55 connecting the Flood and its implications regarding salvation to present medieval times. Giants are not fully accommodated in the past, present, or eschatological future, and they do not exist within the borders of any civilization, occupying instead the wild regions of the East and West alike. 5 Therefore, their 60 inclusion as mediating figures between the beholders outside the sanctuary, the hybrid beings in the bottom register inside the apse, and the holy figures in the sacred realm above it locates the notion of Christian salvation within a broader spectrum of sacred history and cosmology. Moreover, 65
Interdisciplinary Conference and Public Art Project at the University of Oslo, September 7-9, 201... more Interdisciplinary Conference and Public Art Project at the University of Oslo, September 7-9, 2017.
The immediate and communicative presence of the Bamberg Rider stands in stark contrast to his eni... more The immediate and communicative presence of the Bamberg Rider stands in stark contrast to his enigmatic identity, either lacking a specific identifying attribute or possessing redundant ones, preventing the production of a single coherent meaning. This article reexamines the armor-less Rider in light of later medieval notions of the "living statue" and the symulachrum. It argues that the sculpture was intentionally devised to produce a pure simulacrum (neither an historical nor an allegorical figure) receptive to the imaginative horizons of the viewers. In encouraging intuitive, emotional, and somatic responses, the statue is no longer conceived as a representation or imago but, rather, it becomes a speculation of its viewers, a wax upon which the subjective expectations are stamped. As a res and a presence of its own, the Rider operates within a ritualistic setting, in which it is reincarnated or re-enacted, substituting for whatever reality exists in the "here and now" of its viewers.
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Books by Assaf Pinkus
This book explores the role and function of the vision and the experience of the gigantic. Executed “out of scale” and communicating ideas about excess, giants were experienced as physically and ethically abject and, at the same time, as magnificent, apotropaic, and redemptive; as such they came to embody the very notion of
the medieval sublime.
architecture, sculpture, painting, metalwork, stained glass—in similarly wide-ranging contexts: from monumental installations in the most public zones of urban churches to exquisite devotional objects and illuminated books reserved for more exclusive settings. This spectrum reflects the broad interests of the conference’s dedicatee, Michael Viktor Schwarz, whose introductory interview lays out the parameters of the subject.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern edifice, this anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the church, comprising the stages of its construction from the Byzantine era, through Crusader and Franciscan campaigns, into the present.
The studies discuss such topics as the basilica’s complex pictorial language, including stained-glass windows, bronze doors, and votive panels, and the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the reception of modern elements of its architecture. The various analyses take into consideration the challenges facing Christian art in a multicultural world.
Papers by Assaf Pinkus
The proposed research seeks to reveal the late Middle Ages as the stage of an overlooked scaling turn, even a revolution. It aims to delineate and bring to the fore what is here defined for the first time as the “Scaling Revolution”—an artistic, technological, cultural, and ethical manipulation of relational sizing (scaling) that occurred in the Latin West during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While measuring (using set units, therefore “objective” ontological category) and scaling (a relative and relational act, therefore a subjective phenomenological category) were always a part of artistic cultural production, during these centuries they were, to an unprecedented degree, in constant flux. Scaling determines how artefacts – and by implication, people – occupy a given space in relation to one another, mediating ontological categories of being and their interrelationships. The scaling revolution culminated in Alberti’s theories of proportion and the discovery of the New World, which mandated a rescaling of the world itself to make room for its “new” inhabitants.
By studying scaled artifacts, and introducing a new paradigm and analytical tools, the project argues that the scaling revolution dramatically changed not only the visual and material culture of the period but also its theological and philosophical tenets, therefore affecting many aspects of daily life—language, literature, devotion, commerce, science, and law—and impacting fundamental modes of thinking and ideologies. The proposed research will ultimately contend that scaled objects were instrumental in fashioning the late medieval and early modern self. The visual properties of scaled objects attest to implicit perceptions and cultural assumptions about the relationships between God, humanity, and the races, which forged notions of European primacy. The developments and the consequences of the scaling revolution thus reverberated around the globe and into modernity.
This book explores the role and function of the vision and the experience of the gigantic. Executed “out of scale” and communicating ideas about excess, giants were experienced as physically and ethically abject and, at the same time, as magnificent, apotropaic, and redemptive; as such they came to embody the very notion of
the medieval sublime.
architecture, sculpture, painting, metalwork, stained glass—in similarly wide-ranging contexts: from monumental installations in the most public zones of urban churches to exquisite devotional objects and illuminated books reserved for more exclusive settings. This spectrum reflects the broad interests of the conference’s dedicatee, Michael Viktor Schwarz, whose introductory interview lays out the parameters of the subject.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern edifice, this anthology is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the church, comprising the stages of its construction from the Byzantine era, through Crusader and Franciscan campaigns, into the present.
The studies discuss such topics as the basilica’s complex pictorial language, including stained-glass windows, bronze doors, and votive panels, and the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the reception of modern elements of its architecture. The various analyses take into consideration the challenges facing Christian art in a multicultural world.
The proposed research seeks to reveal the late Middle Ages as the stage of an overlooked scaling turn, even a revolution. It aims to delineate and bring to the fore what is here defined for the first time as the “Scaling Revolution”—an artistic, technological, cultural, and ethical manipulation of relational sizing (scaling) that occurred in the Latin West during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While measuring (using set units, therefore “objective” ontological category) and scaling (a relative and relational act, therefore a subjective phenomenological category) were always a part of artistic cultural production, during these centuries they were, to an unprecedented degree, in constant flux. Scaling determines how artefacts – and by implication, people – occupy a given space in relation to one another, mediating ontological categories of being and their interrelationships. The scaling revolution culminated in Alberti’s theories of proportion and the discovery of the New World, which mandated a rescaling of the world itself to make room for its “new” inhabitants.
By studying scaled artifacts, and introducing a new paradigm and analytical tools, the project argues that the scaling revolution dramatically changed not only the visual and material culture of the period but also its theological and philosophical tenets, therefore affecting many aspects of daily life—language, literature, devotion, commerce, science, and law—and impacting fundamental modes of thinking and ideologies. The proposed research will ultimately contend that scaled objects were instrumental in fashioning the late medieval and early modern self. The visual properties of scaled objects attest to implicit perceptions and cultural assumptions about the relationships between God, humanity, and the races, which forged notions of European primacy. The developments and the consequences of the scaling revolution thus reverberated around the globe and into modernity.