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The image that I’ve chosen to share is an illumination from the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, a medieval manuscript from the eleventh century that contains the first six chapters of the Old Testament in Old English accompanied by over four hundred illuminations. It’s the first image (read: not words – although, I think most scholars today would agree with Hill that words are images as well), and it depicts the Fall of Lucifer and the Rebel Angels.
This particular image fascinates me for several different reasons: the juxtaposition of the Almighty and Lucifer; the way the feet of a couple of the angles cross the frame; the duplicitous representation of Lucifer as both fallen angel and serpent; and the fact it is a narrative image added to the manuscript depicting a story that does not actually occur within the text of the Hexateuch.
I believe this image draws from the intersection of narrative and aesthetic traditions. This individual image tells a story (in addition to the rest of the images in the manuscript working almost like a comic book to visually represent and reinforce the Biblical narrative). Also, this manuscript is an exemplary text: most manuscripts from the medieval period do not look like the Hexateuch. It reveals and reinscribes the aesthetic preferences of the medieval conceptions of the visual.
I examined this particular image for my thesis, but the readings for the past two weeks have raised new and interesting questions for me:
1). What can this image inform us about the rhetoric and epistemology of the visual during the medieval period? What might be gained from such an understanding?
2.) How is this image “intertextual?” Intertextuality is something that Helmers addresses in the introduction to Defining Visual Rhetorics, but it’s not a part of the framework and vocabulary that Foss presents in her chapter.
3.) How might we “evaluate” this image in terms of its function and purpose without that evaluation being presentist? Or, does it even need to be evaluated? Or, can we evaluate historical artifacts? [This question and this concept in Foss give me considerable trouble, because I’m just not sure that the purpose of an image is important. Isn’t it more important to examine an image for what it does rather than what it is supposed to do?]
I've never seen this image before. It's really interesting and I'm glad you've shared it. The last question you posed asks if the purpose of an image is important (as opposed to the function of the image). I would argue that the purpose IS important, especially in an image like the one you've provided here. Given that the historical context surrounding this image is so markedly different from the present-day context, considering the purpose of this image can give us a way of learning about and discussing the eleventh century. I don't think it's an either/or binary here - either purpose or function. Rather, it's valuable to examine and consider both the purpose and the function - what the image was intended to do and what it actually did (and what it does for viewers today)... because we know that the impact it has upon viewers today is going to be different than the impact it had upon viewers at the time of the original printing. In considering this image's purpose, I might ask questions such as, "Why do some of the fallen angels have material covering parts of their bodies while others do not? Does this say something about eleventh century conceptions of gender?" ; "Why is there barely any boundary between the representation of Heaven and that of Hell? If Christians believe Heaven is above and Hell is below the earth, then why doesn't the image include a space for earth between Heaven and Hell? What impact might this omission had upon eleventh century viewers? What impact does it have today?"
ReplyDeleteI like your questions here, Logan. This is an interesting image. I wonder, going off of what Christine suggested, if the material covering the genitals of some of the angels is supposed to represent fig leaves. If so, it represents another liberty taken with the text: as we know, God provides fig leaves for Adam and Eve after the Fall, but this (I assume) is supposed to take place pre-Fall. Nevertheless, the fig leave represents awareness of sin (hiding of nakedness, hiding of self from others and God), so it would make sense, symbolically, to dress the fallen angels this way.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what to make of the term intertextuality. It sometimes seems as if it's just another way of saying that texts inform each other, but that's axiomatic, isn't it? I mean, some have used Gen. 6:1 to argue for the existence of fallen angels, but others (watch this) have interpreted the "sons of God" as space aliens! There, I connected my post to yours. ;-)
But all that to say that we could find a string of related texts in the biblical accounts, in the church fathers (like Origen), and in the illuminated manuscripts. I think we'd almost have to narrow it down: where else do we see Lucifer depicted as both an angel and a serpent, etc.