SACRIMA - “The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe”

SACRIMA will study the normativity and the autonomy of art in particular in the religious field in Early Modern Europe (circa 1450-1650). Bringing together researchers trained in the history of art of different European areas as well as historians of religion, law and cultural transfer, this interdisciplinary project will break ground in two main ways. First, by questioning and developing the notion of ‘visual norm’ in a double sense: institutional norms imposed on images and autonomous visual norms. Second, by adopting a comparative approach at the crossroads of the history of art, the history of religion and law, and cultural geography.

Focusing on a comparison between five major areas that, remaining inside Catholicism, responded differently to the challenge imposed by the Reformation, the project has the following stated objectives: 1) A comparative survey of cases of contested images in the Italian peninsula and islands, France, Iberia, the Low Countries and Southern Germany. 2) An investigation of the notion of ‘visual norm’ (focusing on aspects such as styles, iconographies, reproduction and reframing) and a study of the status, the autonomy and the legal value of images. 3) An exploration of the geography of reactions to art transfer aiming at reconstructing a cross-border cartography of visual norms in Europe and the Mediterranean.”