Reading Notes
Chiara Frugoni, The voice of the images. Iconographic pills from the Middle Ages, Einaudi, Torino 2010
am not an expert of the Middle Ages and even an art historian. The reason why I read with great pleasure, the text of Frugoni is whether the pictures, as often we hear, are more easily understood than written messages.
sure to understand the meaning now attributed to the images in the Middle Ages are a number of directions, or is at risk of not understanding "the medieval images were expressed with their own language also made up of gestures Code conventions of architectural details of allusive, metaphors, symbols: if you do not know, those images have no voice "(p. xxi).
The first chapter - and perhaps the most interesting - is centered on the fact that in medieval times is not the face to express her feelings, but the position of the hands and body: "In the Middle Ages, say to ease until the twelfth century, his face does not express the characters' inner feelings and emotions of the soul, while leaving the body language and hands, as if the body speaks "(p. 3). Notable examples given: the hand on the chest of a woman indicates that the groom has the power over his wife "(p. 33), the hand speaker (Pp. 68-69), the palm open to the outside as "acceptance and adherence to the divine word" (p. 90) - very attractive in this respect, the figure 84 - the passage of the act of praying from the original figure of the person with their hands up praying hands (p. 94).
Even more significant is the consideration of more far-reaching that "in the Middle Ages, for centuries, they preferred a conventional language, rather than natural. Why not? "(P. 119). The response shows how the use of images is far from immediate and spontaneous, but answers to specific cultural criteria. The fundamental role played by the aesthetic principles of Plotinus, principles for to remain unchanged throughout the Middle Ages, continuing, albeit in a less unified, up to Giotto "(p. 122):" According to these principles, the image must be provided in its readability fullest, bringing everything in the foreground , avoiding corners and shadows, playing a solid, ie lining up side by side its sides like a box not yet glued, and finally adopting a vision for where the lines of flight appear to reverse and so divergent, so that images get bigger as you move away, or a bird's eye perspective, as if from a picture and we saw flying over flattened to the ground 'effect domino. If, then, is an end "planning" that justifies the additive mechanism, the immediate consequence is that it lacks any merger between the character and the space in which it is thought to act "(p. 122). There's an idea "teaching" in the production of images, teaching idea that goes in a direction opposite to natural patterns of reproduction of the reality of the senses: the order to better understand the perspective and away from the use of a common vision "snapshot" of reality ...
The question I would like to clarify (and this I must speak to my fellow medievalist) is the extent to which these criteria belonged to the educated classes only: the note expression of the frescoes as a bible of the poor (and mostly illiterate) suggests that the medieval images were legible (easily?) from large sections of the population. But is it really true? The example given by Frugoni the radiant sun of San Bernardino (pp. 145-146) shows that misunderstandings were possible (the three witch trials to San Bernardino, moreover, the sun was a pagan symbol ...). Anyway, the considerations of Frugoni provide arguments in support of use of the images is not limited to, didactic, simple imitation and flat illustration
... [things to take: On the silence and its iconographic p. 103 et seq.; the theme of the Jews, p. 136; the signum viventis, p. 148; angels, pp. 222 et seq; types of Marian icons: Theotokos nicopoia (giver of victory), Odighitria (she who shows the way), or glykophilousa Eleousa (sweetness) pp.238-242]
