Mobile Shrines and Magical Bodies - Modern Afterlives of Shrine Madonnas (original) (raw)
2022, Marian Devotion in the Late Middle Ages Image and Performance Edited By Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Gerhard Jaritz
Early modern efforts to reinvigorate the diverse plethora of Marian sculptures, paintings and votive shrines reflect the enduring position of the Virgin in both Catholic and Protestant forms of worship and spaces of sacred initiation. Whilst the medieval provenance of these now rare objects has attracted recent scholarly treatments,1 this discussion explores neglected contexts and afterlives of Shrine Madonnas and their cognates, “Vierges Ouvrantes,” in an expanded framework of Marian reception and response, encompassing key pre-m odern and nineteenth- c entury new ritual and the sensory and cultural contexts. In particular, my focus will be the significance, and to borrow from Aby Warburg, the “ afterlives” or Nachleben of Shrine Madonnas, within re-i magined embodied medieval practices and spaces, examining anew, the fascination with their liminal aspects as o bject- dramas and the threshold figures entwined with the sacred uncanny.
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