In the Footsteps of Christ
Hans Memling's Passion Narratives and the Devotional Imagination in the Early Modern Netherlands
By (author) Mitzi Kirkland-Ives
This study considers the intersections between narrative art and a range of devotional practices current in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. This body of practices stood in a symbiotic relationship with the visual imagery, informing viewers’ interaction with images, which in turn affected their understanding of these oth
Hans Memling’s Scenes from the Passion of Christ leads the viewer on a long and arduous journey in the space of just under a metre. The panel presents a ‘continuous narrative’ on a grand scale, offering roughly two-dozen individual episodes from the last week of Christ’s life. These scenes are represented in a single contiguous cityscape and the surrounding countryside, and viewers would have followed the narrative recounted across the panel, following the action from station to station along painted roads and pathways, through gateways and portals and implied passageways as pedestrians in their imaginations. This study considers the intersections between narrative art and a range of devotional practices current in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. This body of practices stood in a symbiotic relationship with the visual imagery, informing viewers’ interaction with images, which in turn affected their understanding of these other practices. In other words, these images must be understood as part of a broader tradition of ritual and symbolic life. As such, the study offers a valuable re-evaluation of Memling and his art within the religious practice of his times, while opening up some of his most ingenious and idiosyncratic works that are little known by non-specialists.
- By (author) Mitzi Kirkland-Ives
Other Titles in this Series
The Reformation Unsettled
British Literature and the Question of Religious Identity, 1560-1660
Volume 3
Similar Books
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society
New Perspectives on Northeastern Bavaria and Western Bohemia in the Early Middle Ages
Volume 9
Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination
Acts of the XXVII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM, Trento 12-15 September 2023
Volume 31
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
