The Efficacy of Images

Images at Work: On Efficacy and Historical Interpretation

an introduction to the special issue Images at Work, by Hannah Baader and Ittai Weinryb

The introduction begins with the example of a magical fly:

In an early thirteenth-century letter, the newly appointed general emissary to Puglia and the imperial chancellor Conrad of Querfurt (ca. 1160–1202), educator of the German emperor Henry VI and later bishop of Hildesheim, recollected one of the many legends associated with the city of Naples:

In the same city is a gate of the greatest strength, built like a castle, possessing doors of bronze which now the emperor’s troops control, on which Virgil had placed a fly of bronze. As long as it remained whole, not even one fly could enter the city.

imagesConrad here unravels unique relations between animals, men, and objects. Placed upon the walls of the medieval city of Naples, above the bronze gates, is a manmade object, produced in bronze in the shape of a fly, whose function is to prevent other, living, flies from entering the city. That object is more than just a physical presence on the exterior of the walls of medieval Naples and more than just a depiction. The bronze fly of Virgil is an image that “works,” so to speak. It is described as having a certain influence on the natural world. The object has a function; it is supposed to operate, to effect change. At the heart of the story is the manufacturer of the object, Virgil, the classical Latin author who, in medieval text and imagination, had been characterized as a sorcerer. The legendary qualities ascribed to Virgil and the legendary qualities ascribed to the object are played out in the natural world.

Such consideration of operational qualities forms the essence of the collection of essays in this special issue, with its notion that images and artifacts have an ability to “act.” To consider how the bronze fly worked is to consider how images operate within various times, spaces, regions, religions, and frameworks as well as or according to various disciplines, subfields of study, and different investigatory modes. It is to study how images operate, and to reflect on the sheer qualities of objects in a broader sense. They may attract or, in the case of the bronze fly, repel living organisms. The mechanism for images that repel is known as apotropeia, from the Greek verb “to avert.” The bronze fly was considered to have a practical effect or function—to keep other flies at bay. As such, the small fly is part of a larger ensemble, the large gate and bronze doors, built “like a castle,” protecting the city by their strength. From Conrad’s letter, we know that the fly hanging above the city gate was found above the now-lost bronze doors that formed a threshold at the same gate. In this way we can understand the bronze fly as part of a wider environment of crafted objects made out of the same materials (bronze or other copper-based alloy) and according to the same technique (lost-wax casting). The bronze doors thus formed part of a created world of similar material objects—demarcating the threshold of the city—a world that included a bronze fly with a specific purpose or effect.

The bronze fly is also a story of fabrication. In the Middle Ages, Virgil was associated in legend with various artisanal and mechanical capabilities, but rather than being described in such tales as a scientist, he was rendered as a sorcerer or magician. His ability to influence the natural world was understood not as a product of discovery and rediscovery of certain techniques (like bronze casting), but rather as an indecipherable practice with supernatural results. The bronze fly of Virgil is triggered by acts of secret knowing and making. It is immersed in tradition, ideas about antiquity, and the miraculous. Continue reading (full text of this introduction free online) …

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In recent years, art history has seen a shift in the historical understanding of the material object, drawing further attention to historical experience and potential historical efficacy as a means of historical interpretation. Anthropologists and art historians alike have established viable interpretive schemes for the exploration of material objects. This introduction to the special issue Images at Work outlines the various problems encountered in articulating notions about the historical efficacy of an object.

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HANNAH BAADER is Permanent Senior Research Scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut.

ITTAI WEINRYB is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center in New York City.

Representations’ Stephen Greenblatt wins 2016 Holberg Prize

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Stephen Greenblatt, founding co-editor of Representations and John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, has been named the 2016 Holberg Prize Laureate. The prize, awarded annually by the Norwegian government, is given to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social science, law or theology. Previous laureates include Julia Kristeva, Jürgen Habermas, Natalie Zemon Davis, Manuel Castells, Bruno Latour, and Marina Warner.

“His scholarship has had an immeasurable impact on the practices of literary studies, history and cultural criticism, well beyond his own field of expertise,” noted the Holberg Committee. “Greenblatt has provided us a vocabulary through which we can approach the task of understanding our times and its history. His work has been animated by the idea of life as art, and art as revealing something important about life.”

An award ceremony will take place in Bergen, Norway, in June 2016, to honor both Greenblatt as the Holberg Prize Laureate, and Nils Klim Prize laureate, Sanja Bogojević, Senior Lecturer at Lund University.

Representations’ Beate Fricke on “Making Marvels, Faking Matter”

Beate Fricke, Associate Professor of Art History and member of the Representations Editorial Board, will participate in a conference on “Christianity and Capitalism.” Organized by the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies with support from the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, the conference will take place in the Geballe Room of the Townsend Center (UC Berkeley) on Friday, March 11 and Saturday, March 12.

 

More details about the schedule can be found here. Other participants include Aden Kumler (University of Chicago), Mark Peterson (UC Berkeley), David Hawkes (Arizona State University), Carl Wennerlind (Barnard), Ivonne del Valle (UC Berkeley), Shannon Stimson (Georgetown), John Martin (Duke), Ethan Shagan (UC Berkeley), and Elizabeth Honig (UC Berkeley).

Images at Work: A Special Issue, Representations 133

NOW AVAILABLE

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Guest Editors

Ittai Weinryb, Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Material Culture,

Bard Graduate Center

Hannah Baader, Senior Research Scholar, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence

Gerhard Wolf, Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence

According to legend, the poet Virgil made a fly out of bronze and perched it above the gates of Naples. The fly’s sole purpose was to prevent other flies from entering the city. This Representations special issue explores the intention, function, and reception of images like Virgil’s fly: images made to influence the natural world. The essays collected here examine the theories behind the construction of these operative images, question the way the production of apotropaic images related to the production of art, and consider how such working images helped to fashion a world.

The aim of the volume is to find the connection between historical moments and theories relating to efficacy as ascribed to objects or things. Each essay included does this a little differently: from Finbarr B. Flood’s thinking about the anthropomorphic eye and hand patterns in medieval Iran to Persis Berlekamp’s illumination of the protective dragons of 13th-century Syria, and from Tanja Klemm’s explication of Renaissance medical iconography to Christopher Wood’s theorizing on the artwork’s paradoxical lack in the face of anthropomorphism, and finally, in the last essay, to Gerhard Wolf’s witty engagement with thing theory and the material turn. Together these essays analyze the material artifact in light of historical circumstance, and the historical circumstance is in turn illuminated by the artifact.

Contributions to the volume both reflect and respond to recent shifts among art historians and anthropologists in the historical understanding of the material object, building on and furthering debates begun by David Freedberg, Jane Bennett, Horst Bredekamp, Lorraine Daston, Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour, and others. Notable contributors include guest editor Gerhard Wolf, Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and Finbarr B. Flood, Professor of the Humanities at New York University and author of the prize-winning Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter.

Featured Articles

Images at Work: On Efficacy and Historical Interpretation*
HANNAH BAADER AND ITTAI WEINRYB

*For a limited time only, this article is available for free.

Animal, Vegetal, and Mineral: Ambiguity and Efficacy in the Nishapur Wall Paintings
FINBARR B. FLOOD

Symmetry, Sympathy, and Sensation: Talismanic Efficacy and Slippery Iconographies in Early Thirteenth-Century Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia
PERSIS BERLEKAMP

Life from Within: Physiology and Talismanic Efficacy in Marsilio Ficino’s De vita (1498)
TANJA KLEMM

Image and Thing, A Modern Romance
CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD

Image, Object, Art: Talking to a Chinese Jar on Two Human Feet
GERHARD WOLF