Overview

Spectacular Miracles confronts an enduring Western belief in the supernatural power of images, for example the belief that a statue or painting of the Madonna can fly through the air, speak, weep or produce miraculous cures. Although discomforting to widely-held assumptions, the cults of particular paintings and statues held to be miraculous have persisted beyond the middle ages into the present, even in a modern European city such as Genoa, the primary focus of this book. Spectacular Miracles draws upon rich documentation from northwest Italy and elsewhere to show how, in a range of historical contexts, these images 'work'. Ritual animation of the image is vividly evoked, as is the phenomenology of the beholder's experience. The subversive potential of the miraculous image to bypass clerical and secular authority is a central theme. Reproducibility enhances this power: devotion is hard to control when a copy of a venerated image (even in a digital form mediated by the internet) is held to carry the same supernatural potential as the original.Spectacular Miracles engages with the history, anthropology and visual culture of images and religion, and is a convincing study of the power of faith and art.

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9781780231051

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Reviews

An impressively researched and perceptive study of miraculous images in Italy. --Apollo magazine Richard Cork The miracle-working image opens the realms of space and time to spiritual experience. As this beautifully written book recovers the local histories and the cultural significance of the transforming image, it reveals a new territory between the academic disciplines, the secular and the profane, the high and the low of the power of image in the individual encounter. Anyone with an interest in the visual image should read this book. --Karen Lang, University of Warwick and Editor-in-Chief, Art Bulletin An impressively researched and perceptive study of miraculous images in Italy. --Apollo magazine Richard Cork 'The miracle-working image opens the realms of space and time to spiritual experience. As this beautifully written book recovers the local histories and the cultural significance of the transforming image, it reveals a new territory--between the academic disciplines, the secular and the profane, the high and the low--of the power of image in the individual encounter. Anyone with an interest in the visual image should read this book. --Karen Lang, University of Warwick and Editor-in-Chief, Art Bulletin Through sumptuous photographs, rich unpublished sources, and years of fieldwork, Spectacular Miracles reveals with sensitivity and insight the long, cumulative history of commingling and exchange between the devout of northern Italy and their sacred protectors. It is a magnificent achievement--a blaze of beauty, a sweep of time. --William A. Christian Jr., author of Divine Presence in Spain and Western Europe, 1500-1960 Through sumptuous photographs, rich unpublished sources, and years of fieldwork, Spectacular Miracles reveals with sensitivity and insight the long, cumulative history of commingling and exchange between the devout of northern Italy and their sacred protectors. It is a magnificent achievement a blaze of beauty, a sweep of time. --William A. Christian Jr., author of Divine Presence in Spain and Western Europe, 1500-1960

The miracle-working image opens the realms of space and time to spiritual experience. As this beautifully written book recovers the local histories and the cultural significance of the transforming image, it reveals a new territory between the academic disciplines, the secular and the profane, the high and the low of the power of image in the individual encounter. Anyone with an interest in the visual image should read this book. --Karen Lang, University of Warwick and Editor-in-Chief, Art Bulletin

Author Information

Gervase Rosser is Fellow and Tutor in the History of Art at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His research and publications have focused on the social, visual and religious culture of medieval and Renaissance cities

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