Rethinking Images as the Book of the Illiterate: Towards a New Acoustic Understanding of Religious Art (1550-1650)

ongoing

"AurArt investigates auditory perception in early modern religious art, by exploring the Catholic debate over the Gregorian definition of images as the ""book of the illiterate"" developed in Italy after the Council of Trent (1563). Drawing on a wide range of literary and figurative primary sources, such as treatises on the justification of images and contemporary Jesuit frescoes, the project demonstrates the close interaction between seeing, reading, and listening in the reception of sacred texts and pictures. By rethinking hearing in early modern religious art, AurArt seeks to fill both a thematic and a methodological gap in the emerging field of study at the intersection of art history, sound studies, and religion studies. The overall goal of the project is to offer a new acoustic understanding of early modern sacred images, which will contribute to the current transformative change leading to a new interpretation of art as a cultural phenomenon involving the whole body and its sensorium. My research will be supervised by Prof. Ralph Dekoninck, a specialist in the field of early modern religious art and literature, and an expert in artistic theories and sensible practices related to sacred images. The fellowship will be hosted at the Group of Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA) at UCLouvain and involves a unique two-way knowledge transfer based on sharing interdisciplinary methodologies for developing new sensory approaches to art history. The results will be disseminated through the publication of four articles, the development of a website and the organization of two international research workshops. AurArt also includes the design of a museum auditory device at the MuséeL of Louvain-la-Neuve, in collaboration with Muriel Damien (MuséeL/GEMCA). The device project involves a synergetic interaction between research, artistic creation, and sensory heritage mediation, with the aim of fostering an embodied acoustic experience of religious artworks accessible to all."