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Speaker: Jasmin Mersmann (I Tatti / Freie Universität Berlin)
In 1501, a Florentine gambler defiles an image of Mary in a public representation of the Annunciation. He is sentenced to death, but the fresco—as if in compensation—henceforth performs miracles. An episodic panel, which later served as a predella for the fresco, depicts the Devil as the instigator of the act. Drawing on this and other case studies, the talk examines the paradoxical role of the Devil as a witness to the power of sacred images. It also considers its flipside: the Devil falling victim to iconoclasm. Theologically, attacks on images of the Devil are pointless, because even if he were present in his images, as a discarnate spirit, he does not feel pain. Both forms of iconoclasm seem to attest to a numinous presence within both sacred and diabolic images, but they can also be read as social practices within concrete historical constellations.
Jasmin Mersmann is a professor of Early Modern Art History at Freie Universität Berlin. She has previously taught at the University of Arts in Linz and at Humboldt University Berlin. She was the head of the research project unBinding Bodies at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik and has held guest professorships at the Italian Academy at Columbia University and at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She has also been a research fellow at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, the IKKM in Weimar, and the IFK in Vienna. In 2012, she completed her PhD at Humboldt University on Lodovico Cigoli and conflicting concepts of truth in early modern times; it was later published in 2016 as Lodovico Cigoli. Formen der Wahrheit um 1600. Her research focuses on the intersection of art history and cultural history in early modern Europe. She is currently completing a book on art and demonology, specifically devil’s pacts and the role of images as agents in the struggle with demons.
Image: Scenes from the Life of Antonio di Giuseppe Rinaldeschi (detail), 1501, Florentine School, Museo Stibbert, Firenze.
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