Biography

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.

Project Summary

Medieval hagiographies and miracle stories portray Mary as one of the devil’s chief adversaries.

Her images functioned not only as mediators but also as agents of grace, so much so that, by the 16^th century, they often became sites for exorcisms and for the rescission of devil’s pacts. The violent reactions of possessed individuals indirectly attested to the Virgin’s presence in statues and images. Paradoxically, demons became primary witnesses to her power. In a similar logic of inversion, her images were also associated with iconoclastic acts which were said to be inspired by the devil. This project sheds light on two key historical moments when the status and aesthetics of devotional images were at stake: Savonarola’s reform movement and the Protestant critique of the cult of images. It will focus on Marian shrines as loci of exorcisms, as well as case studies of attacks on Marian images attributed to the devil. Special attention will be given to the assault on an Annunciation fresco at the Florentine church of S. Maria de’ Ricci, which later became an object of veneration.