Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Global Economies of Salvation. Art and the Negotiation of Sanctity in the Early Modern Period

Project description

‘Globalising’ the history of early modern art

Art history has long paid heightened attention to the adherence of artworks to the models of sanctity formulated by the counter-reformation church. The EU-funded GLOBECOSAL project will explore how artworks were employed in the process of negotiating sanctity with the Roman Curia in the age of Iberian hegemony. To that end, it will examine the artworks produced with regard to leading Catholic figures in the post-Tridentine 'global' context. The project traces the circulation of material objects and iconographies within and between global networks of knowledge transmission and combines this approach with a hypothetical 'global market of symbolic values' developed on the basis of concepts from critical sociology. Overall, the project's work aims to challenge established views on Roman Catholicism, colonialism and the early modern world as a whole.

Objective

GLOBECOSAL investigates how artworks were employed in the process of negotiating sanctity with the Roman Curia in the age of Iberian hegemony by examining the artworks produced with regard to the pioneers of Catholic blesseds and saints in the post-Tridentine ‘global’ context. As the cult of the saints was among the key conceptual battlegrounds in the conflict between the Catholic church and the Protestants, in the post-Tridentine period, saints came to fulfill spiritual, ideological and propagandistic purposes. Art history has paid heightened attention to the adherence of artworks to the models of sanctity formulated by the Tridentine church, leading to an overall neglect of competing local constructions of sanctity, a shortfall particularly momentous with regard to blesseds and saints connected in different ways to the process of European expansion, specifically to the Iberian empires.
The hypothesis under examination is that the artworks produced in relation to gaining recognition by the Church of saints first venerated in newly Christianized territories reveal an underlying negotiation of the local Catholic communities’ spiritual status within universal Catholicism. As official recognition affirmed the society which had made a saint its own, artworks related to this process served purposes of self-representation within the broader framework of social identity formation.
GLOBECOSAL traces the circulation of material objects and iconographies within and between global networks of knowledge transmission, and combines this approach with a hypothetical ‘global market of symbolic values’ developed on the basis of concepts from critical sociology. Investigating the negotiation of sanctity between Rome and geographically distant areas participates in ‘globalizing’ the history of early modern art and is qualified to challenge established perspectives on Roman Catholicism, colonialism, and the early modern world at large.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2020-STG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 479 316,00
Address
RAMISTRASSE 71
8006 Zurich
Switzerland

See on map

Region
Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Zürich Zürich
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 479 316,00

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0