Felipe Pereda, Jeffrey Hamburger | Spring 2022 | Harvard University
The course looks at the ways in which artists pushed the boundaries of representation to capture ineffable experiences evoked in accounts of mystical experience. Drawing on the writings of famous mystics from the 6th through the 17th centuries, it will be organized thematically around the erotic, the aesthetic, and somatic dimensions of visual images, as well as what it means to visualize the invisible.
General
Reading and Discussion Notes
January 26: Introduction: Veiled Vision – The Veronica at the End of Time
Primary Source
Secondary Sources
Michel de Certeau, "Mysticism," Diacritics, Summer, 1992, 22 (1992), pp. 11–2
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Vision and the Veronica,” in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp. 317–382.
Felipe Pereda, “The Veronica According to Zurbarán: Painting as figura, and Image as vestigio”, in Ch. Göttler and S. Dupré, eds., Knowledge and Discernment in the Artistic and Scientific Cultures of the Early Modern Arts, Ashgate: London-New York. 2017, pp. 125-162
Recommended
Suzanne Lewis, “Vision and Revision: On Seeing and Not Seeing God in the Dublin Apocalypse,” Word & Image 10 (1994), pp. 289–311.
Lucy Freeman Sandler, “Face to Face with God: A Pictorial Image of the Beatific Vision,” in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986), pp. 224–235.
PDFs of Presentations
February 2: Seeing the Word in Early Medieval Art & Theology
Primary Sources
Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor (New York: Newman Press, 1982), Bk. XII
Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, trans. John R. C. Martyn, Medieval Sources in Translation 40, 3 vols. (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), letters to Serenus of Marseille and Secundinus (with interpolation) Online at Letter to Serenus and Letter to Secundinus (excerpt)
Hrabanus Maurus, In Honor of the Holy Cross, excerpt
Secondary Sources
Cynthia Hahn, “Visio Dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality,” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance, ed. Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 169–196
Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean To Say ‘I Saw’: The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80 (2005), pp. 1–43
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion: Berthold of Nuremberg's Transformation of the Poems in Praise of the Cross by Hrabanus Maurus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), pp. 33–51
Herbert L. Kessler, "’Hoc visibile imaginatum figurat illud invisibile verum’: Imagining God in Pictures of Christ,” in Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Giselle de Nie, Karl F. Morrison, and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 291–235
Recommended
Cynthia Hahn, “Vision,” in A Companion to Medieval Art, ed. Conrad Rudolph, Blackwell Companions to Art History 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 44–64
Herbert L. Kessler, “Pictures Fertile with Truth: How Christians Managed to Make Images of God Without Violating the Second Commandment,” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, 49–50 (1991–1992), pp. 53–65
PDFs of Presentation
February 9: ‘Laughing at the Foot of the Cross.’ Devout Painting, Alumbradismo, and the ‘Heretic’ Roots of Spanish Mysticism
Primary Source (in Spanish)
Edicto de los Alumbrados (1525), in Antonio Marquez, Los Alumbrados, Madrid: Taurus, 1972, pp. 273-283
Secondary Sources
Jessica J. Fowler, “Assembling Alumbradismo: The Evolution of a Heretical Construct,” in After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, Brill: Leiden, 2016, pp. 251–282
Moshe Sluhovsky, “La Spiritualité à la Mode,” in Believe Not Every Spirit. Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 97–136
Felipe Pereda, “True Painting and the Challenge of Hypocrisy,” in After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, Mercedes García-Arenal, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 358–394
Christopher Nygren, “Titian’s Ecce Homo on Slate: Stone, Oil, and the Transubstantiation of Painting.” The Art Bulletin 99:1 (March 2017), pp. 36–66
Recommended
Mercedes García-Arenal and Felipe Pereda, “On the Alumbrados: Confessionalism and Religious Dissidence in the Iberian World,” in The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches, Kimberly Lynn and Erin Rowe, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 119–150
Felipe Pereda, “Luis de Morales, Divine Painter,” in The Divine Morales, Leticia Ruiz Gómez, ed. (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2015), pp. 44–57
February 16: Visions and Re-envisioning: Hildegard of Bingen, Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart
Primary Sources
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), Bk. I, vision 1.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 57, in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. Trans. and ed. Maurice O’C. Walsche, revised with Foreward by Bernard McGinn (New York: Crossroads, 2009), pp.295–299
Johannes Tauler, Sermons, trans. Maria Shrady (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), Sermon 69
St. Georgener Prediger, “Von manger hande schrift der mentschait” (excerpt with translation by Jeffrey F. Hamburger)
Secondary Sources
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The 'Various Writings of Humanity': Johannes Tauler on Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Scivias,” in: Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn Starkey & Horst Wenzel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. Download pp.161–205
Recommended
“Johannes Scotus Eriugena deutsch redivivus: Translations of the Vox spiritualis in Relation to Art and Mysticism at the Time of Eckhart” in: Meister Eckhart in Erfurt, ed. Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 32 (Berlin–New York, W. de Gruyter, 2005), pp.473–537
February 23: Teresa of Avila: The Creation of a Myth
Primary Source
Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez, OCD. Trans., Hackett: Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2008 (Chapters 9, 20, 28, 29 and 31, pp. 48-52, 120-133, 185-201, 212-223)
Secondary Sources
Carlos Eire, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila. A Biography, Princeton UP: Princeton-Oxford, 2019, Ch. 3. “The Life of the Vida in Art,” pp. 132-163.
Ralph DeKoninck, “The Mystical Experience—Between Personification and Incarnation: The Idea vitae Teresianae iconibus symbolicis expressa (Antwerp, Jacob Mesens: 1680s),” in Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion, Walter Melion and Bart Ramakers, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 186–217.
Felipe Pereda, Crime and Illusion. The Art of Truth in Golden Age Spain (London: Harvey Miller, 2018), Ch. 3. “The Art of Evidence,” pp. 91–115
Victor Stoichita, “Visions and Paintings”, Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), pp. 45–77
Recommended
Julia Kristeva, "The Passion according to Teresa of Avila."
Felipe Pereda, “The Illusion of Touch. Mysticism according to Murillo,” in Murillo ante Su IV Centenario. Perspectivas Historiográficas y Culturales, Benito Navarrete Prieto, ed. (Sevilla, 2019), pp. 269–284.
Luis M. Girón Negrón, “’Ya, ya se abren las flores’: La lírica de Santa Teresa en la historia literaria de la mística cristiana,” Hispania Sacra 72 (2020), pp. 409-426.
March 2: Speculations on Speculation: Passion Piety and the Positive Way
Primary Sources
Gertrude of Helfta (excerpts), Herald of God's Loving Kindness, trans. Alexandra Barratt, 4 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991-2020).
Heinrich Seuse, The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons, trans. Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), excerpts.
Heinrich Seuse, Wisdom’s Watch Upon the Hours, trans. Edmund College (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of American Press, 1994), pp.314–329
Secondary Sources
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Visible, yet Secret: Images as Signs of Friendship in Seuse,” Amicitia – weltlich und geistlich. Festschrift for Nigel Palmer on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. Annette Volfing & Hans–Jochen Schiewer, Oxford German Studies 36/2 (2007), pp.141–162
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Medieval Self-Fashioning: Authority, Authority, and Autobiography in Suso’s Exemplar,” in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp.233–278
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotions,” in: Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang: Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte, Kolloquium Kloster Fischingen, ed. Walter Haug & Wolfram Schneider–Lastin (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), pp.353–408
N.B. Skim this essay, as it's rather long, and unfortunately all the sources cited are in Latin.
March 9: Images of Rapture: Teresa in Spanish Rome
Primary Source
Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez, OCD. Trans., Hackett: Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2008 (Chapter 29, pp. 194-201)
Secondary Souces
Irving Lavin, Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts (New York-London: Oxord University Press, 1980), text volume, pp. 107ff.
Jonathan Unglaub, “Amorosa Contemplatione: Bernini, Bruni, and the Poetic Vision of Saint Teresa,” The Art Bulletin 102:2 (2020), pp. 32–63.
Genevieve Warwick, “Bernini (1598-1680): Sculpting Sainthood,” An Irish Quarterly Review 104, (2014/15), pp. 444–455.
Giovanni Careri, “The Albertoni Chapel,” in Bernini. Flights of Love, the Art of Devotion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 51–86.
Recommended
Dyan Elliott, “Rapture,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, (2012), pp. 189–199.
Bernard McGinn, “Mystical Union,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 404–421.
Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, eds., The Spiritual Senses. Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
March 23: Song of Songs: From Allegory to Romance
Primary Sources
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, trans. Kilian Walsh and M. Corneille Haflants, Cistercian Publications: Cistercian Fathers Series 4, 7, 31, 40, 4 vols. (Spencer, MA, 1971–1980), vol. 2, sermon 31.
Secondary Sources
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Behold the Author,” in The Birth of the Author: Pictorial Prefaces in Glossed Books of the Twelfth Century (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2021), pp.181–212
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland ca. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), “Song of Songs Miniatures,” pp.70–87 and “Mystical Union Miniatures,” pp.105–117 (notes: 266–272, and 278–282).
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Le Cantique des cantiques: Un rare commentaire illustré dans l’Italie du Quattrocento,” Art de l’enluminure 59 (2016) (in English translation Download in English translation).
March 30: Christ’s Gender and the Aesthetics of Mysticism
Secondary Sources
Moshe Sluhovsky, “Contemplation, Possession, & Sexual Misconduct,” and “The Devil in the Convent,” in Believe Not Every Spirit. Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 137–165 and pp. 233–264.
Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. 2nd revised edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), "Ad Bynum," pp. 364–389
Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, University of California Press: Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1982, pp. 162-169.
Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg” in Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 79–117
Tanya M. Luhrmann, “The Ugly Goddess: Reflections on the Role of Violent Images in Religious Experience,” History of Religions 41 (2001), pp. 114–141
Recommended
Felipe Pereda, “’Divinos Pechos, como cántaros.’ Estética, política y género de las imágenes del barroco español,” in Mercedes García Arenal y Felipe Pereda, eds., De Sangre y Leche. Raza y Religión en el mundo ibérico moderno (Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2021), pp. 323–370.
April 6: Apophasis: The Negative Way
Primary Sources
Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt (London: SPCK, 1977)
Nicholas of Cusa, De coniecturis (On Surmises), trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis, MN: 2000), pp.163–257 (excerpts)
Secondary Sources
Madeline H. Caviness, “Images of Divine Order and the Third Mode of Seeing,” Gesta 22 (1983), pp.99–120.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Color in Cusanus (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2021)
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Revelation and Concealment: Apophatic Imagery in the Trinitarian Miniatures of the Rothschild Canticles,” in Proceedings of “Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,” Beinecke Studies in Early Manuscripts (Yale University Library Gazette, supplement, 66, 1991), pp.134–158.
Recommended
Christel Meier, “Über den Zusammenhang von erkenntnistheorie und Bildstruktur im Mittelalter,” in: Text und Bild, Bild und Text: DFG-Symposion 1988, ed. Wolfgang Harms (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990), pp.35–65
April 13: John of the Cross: The Dark Night Experience
Primary Source
John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St John of the Cross, Kavanaugh, Kieran and Rodríguez, Otilio, trans., Institute of Carmelite Studies: Washington, DC, 1979: “The Dark Night,” I. 1 (pp. 295-299), II, 4-8, 16 (pp. 334-345, 362-368)
Noche Oscura/Dark Nigh
Secondary Sources
James Clifton, “Secret Wisdom. Antoon Wierix’s Engravings of a Carmelite Mystic,” in The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400-1700, Celeste Brusati and Karl Enenkel, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 639–666.
Rosemary Drage Hale, “’Taste and See, For God is Sweet.’ Sensory Perception and Memory in Medieval Christian Mystical Experience,” in Vox Mystica: Essays on Medieval Mysticism in Honor of Professor Valerie M Lagorio, Anne Clark Bartlett, Thomas H. Bestul, Janet Goebel, y William F. Pollard, eds. (Cambridge-Rochester: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 3–14.
Andrew Keitt, "The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Visionary Experience, Medical Discourse, and the Inquisition," The Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005), pp. 77–96.
Corteguera, Luis R., “Visions and the Soul’s Ascent to God in Spanish Mysticism”, in Looking Beyond. Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, Colum Hourihane, ed. (Princeton: Index of Christian Art, 2010), pp. 255–263.
Recommended
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God. Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): Ch. 10. “John of the Cross: the dark nights and depression,” pp. 226–251.
April 20: Seeing and Seeing Beyond in the Art of the Late Middle Ages
Primary Source
The Monk of Whitby, The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), excerpt.
Secondary Sources
Carlo Bertelli, “The Image of Pity in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme,” in Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. Douglas Fraser et al. (London: Phaidon, 1969), vol. 2, pp.40–55
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “A Mass of St. Gregory by the Master of the Houghton Miniatures: The Interplay of Devotion and Invention in Netherlandish Miniature Painting,” in: New Perspectives on Flemish Illumination, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, 16–18 November 2011, eds. Lieve Watteeuw et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), pp.45–61
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary,” in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp. Download pp.111–148
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, "Seeing and Believing: The Suspicion of Sight and the Authentication of Vision in Late Medieval Art,” Seeing and Believing: The Suspicion of Sight and the Authentication of Vision in Late Medieval Art,” in: Imagination und Wirklichkeit: Zum Verhaltnis von mentalen und realen Bilder in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Alessandro Nova and Klaus Krüger (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000), pp.47–70
Recommended
Hans Belting and Cristiane Kruse, Die Erfindung des Gemäldes. Das erste Jahrhundert der niederländischen Malerei (Munich: Hirmer, 1994), pp.74–79 (Fenster und Spiegel als Metaphern des Gemäldes).
Caroline Walker Bynum, “Seeing and Seeing Beyond: The Mass of St. Gregory in the Fifteenth Century,” in The Mind's Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 208–240.
Donat de Chapeaurouge, Das Auge ist ein Her, das Ohr ein Knechtî: Der Weg von der mittelalterlichen zur abstrakten Malerei (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983).
Ingrid Falque, Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
Sixten Ringbom, “Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions: Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Piety,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser. 73 (1969), pp.159–170
Sixten Ringbom, “Vision and Conversation in Early Netherlandish Painting: The Delft Master’s Holy Family,” Simiolus 19 (1989), pp. 181–190.
Brett Rothstein, “Vision, Cognition, and Self-Reflection in Rogier van der Weyden’s Bladelin Triptych,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (2001), pp.37–55.
Robert Scribner, “Popular Piety and Modes of Visual Perception in Late-Medieval and Reformation Germany,” Journal of Religious History 15 (1989), pp.448–469.
April 27 Concluding Presentations & Discussion
General Bibliography
N.B. The literature on any of the topics covered by this course is truly vast, and it makes no sense to try to summarize it here. Please consult with Profs. Hamburger and Pereda for suggestions. Overviews that might be helpful include the following:
Christian Spirituality, ed. Jill Raitt with Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff, 2 vols. (New York: Crossroad, 1985–1987).
The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman, Cambridge, 2012
The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, Edward Howells and Mark A. McIntosch, Oxford University Press, 2020
Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, eds., The Spiritual Senses. Perceiving God in Western Christianity, Cambridge, 2012
Jean Leclercq, François Vandenbroucke, and Louis Bayer, The Spirituality of the Middle Ages, A History of Christian Spirituality 2 (London: Burns & Oates, 1968).
Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
Peter Dinzelbacher, Christliche Mystik im Abendland: Ihre Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Mittelalters (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1994).
Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism, 7 vols. (New York: Crossroad, 1991–).
Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik (Munich: Beck, 1990–).