PhD thesis defence by Thor-Oona Pignarre-Altermatt
This thesis examines the relationship between visual culture and devotion on the basis of a corpus of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flemish Annunciation paintings depicting the scene in a domestic interior. From the Annunciation by the Master of Flémalle, ca. 1425, in which the scene is, for the first time in the history of panel painting, situated in the interior of a contemporary house, to the Annunciation by Joos van Cleve, ca. 1525, where it is depicted in the bedroom, domestic iconography gradually became the standard representation of the scene in the Flemish school. With the depiction of the Virgin praying at home, these paintings echo the transformations of religious practices at the end of the Middle Ages: it then became possible, especially for the laity, to withdraw at home to read, meditate and pray, by surrounding oneself with objects and images.
I propose to question the parallel between the entrance of the home into the image with domestic iconography, and the entrance of the image into the home with domestic devotion. Therefore, I examine paintings, discourses of pastoral instruction and archival sources together with the aim of complicating our understanding of the domestication of devotion and of contextualizing domestic iconography. I thus clarify the articulation between the different dimensions – visual, spiritual and material – that shaped the devotional culture of the Low Countries at the turn of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. I also address a problem central to Panofskyan iconology, and to the epistemology and methodology of art history, that is the relationship between art and other cultural forms. Lastly, I highlight the importance of a historical moment, at the dawn of the Reformation, when the technical progress of books and images allowed for the wide dissemination of spiritual forms and contents beyond the monastic milieu.