Relations between images and religious norms are extremely controversial in human societies today as well as in the past. However, the question of the ‘normativity of images’ was never systematically explored. While research on the ‘power of images’ progressed greatly in the last 30 years, the question of the capacity of images to produce norms was never addressed. SACRIMA put this question at the centre of a new comparative and interdisciplinary investigation into the status of the sacred image in Early Modern Europe. It studied relations between religion, aesthetics and geography in Early Modern Europe, breaking ground in two main ways. First, by conducting a new investigation of early modern images using the concept of ‘normativity’, a notion that is generally associated not with images, but with written documents. Second, by adopting a comparative and trans-national approach at the crossroad of the history of art, the history of religion and cultural geography. Through a new survey of image-based material in ecclesiastical archives in five major areas that, remaining inside Catholicism, responded differently to the challenge imposed by the Reformation, SACRIMA investigated relations between art, religion and cultural transfer in the period 1450-1650.
SACRIMA had three main objectives:
1. To provide a comparative survey of contested images in Italy, France, Iberia, the Low Countries and Southern Germany, investigating similarities and differences of institutional visual policies inside Catholic Europe, using a comparative approach and focusing on dynamics of conflict, negotiations and inter-confessional border crossing.
2. To develop and challenge the notion of ‘visual norm’ in different media, through a series of in-depth case-studies and an analysis of different aspects: form and materiality, meaning and iconographies, spatial relationships and movement, reproduction, restoration and reframing.
3. To integrate the investigation of institutional and visual norms through a study of art transfer and local reactions, aiming at reconstructing a cross-border cartography of image normativity and a geography of visual norms throughout Europe and beyond.
This reflection on the notion of the ‘normativity of images’ significantly contributed to shedding new light on previously explored notions such as those of ‘image censorship’, the ‘power of images’ or the ‘performance of images’. At a wider level the Project offered a richer understanding of the historical processes of integration of the different forms of European visual culture.
