Thomas E. A. Dale – författare

Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendancy of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture were considered both superstitious and idolatrous. In Pygmalion’s Power, Thomas E. A. Dale argues that the reintroduction of architectural sculpture after a hiatus of some seven hundred years arose with the particular goal of engaging the senses in a Christian religious experience. Since the term “Romanesque” was coined in the nineteenth century, the reintroduction of stone sculpture around the mid-eleventh century has been explained as a revivalist phenomenon, one predicated on the desire to claim the authority of ancient Rome. In this study, Dale proposes an alternative theory. Covering a broad range of sculpture types—including autonomous cult statuary in wood and metal, funerary sculpture, architectural sculpture, and portraiture—Dale shows how the revitalized art form was part of a broader shift in emphasis toward spiritual embodiment and affective piety during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.Adding fresh insight to scholarship on the Romanesque, Pygmalion’s Power borrows from trends in cultural anthropology to demonstrate the power and potential of these sculptures to produce emotional effects that made them an important sensory part of the religious culture of the era.

Romanesque mural painting was arguably the most visible field for religious images in Western churches between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Beyond its traditional justification as Bible of the illiterate mural painting demarcated the principal functional spaces within the church and propagated the sacred narratives, the systems of belief and institutional politics. The present volume provides the first accessible collection of essays devoted exclusively to the contextual interpretation of Romanesque mural painting. They are offered in homage to Otto Demus, who established the essential parameters for the field with his unsurpassed survey of the field over thirty years ago. Presenting previously unpublished research on individual case studies from Italy, France and Spain, the collection of essays published here pursues Demus's premise that mural painting was designed both to shape the experience and ritual use of distinctive spaces within the medieval church, and to advertise certain institutional affiliations and political agendas. The introduction, by Thomas Dale, provides a methodological overview to the field, assessing Demus's contribution to the study of Romanesque mural painting and surveying the scholarship of the past thirty years. It also furnishes the first overview of primary texts that refer to the functions and exegesis of mural painting between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. The ten essays are grouped under four topics1. Patterns of Narrative Disposition in Sacred Space2. Reinforcing the Praesentia of the Saints: The Church as Locus Sanctus3. The Burial Crypt as Mediator between the Living and the Dead, Terrestrial and Celestial Space4. Ecclesiastical Politics and Institutional Identity.