Imago Exegetica: Visual Images As Exegetical Instruments, 1400-1700

This volume consists of essays that pose fundamental questions about the relation between verbal and visual hermeneutics, especially as relates to biblical culture. Exegesis, as theologians and historians of art, religion, and literature, have come increasingly to acknowledge, was neither solely textual nor aniconic; on the contrary, following from Scripture itself, which is replete with verbal images and rhetorical figures, exegesis has traditionally utilized visual devices of all kinds. In turn, visual exegesis, since it concerns the most authoritative of texts, supplied a template for the interpretation of other kinds of significant text by means of images. Seen in this light, exegetical images prove crucial to understanding how meaning was constituted visually, not only in the sacred sphere but also in the secular.

Contributors include Giovanni Careri, Joseph Chorpenning, James Clifton, Nathalie de Brézé, Maria Deiters, Ralph Dekoninck, Arthur diFuria, Caroline van Eck, Dagmar Eichberger, Ingrid Falque, Wim François, Merel Groentjes, Agnès Guiderdoni, Barbara Haeger, Alexander Linke, Walter Melion, Jürgen Müller, Birgit Ulrike Münch, Colette Nativel, Wolfgang Neuber, Shelley Perlove, Leopoldine Prosperetti, Todd Richardson, Bret Rothstein, Tatiana Senkevitch, Larry Silver, Jamie Smith, Trudelien van 't Hof, Michel Weemans, and Elliott Wise

Walter S. Melion, Ph.D. (1988) in Art History, University of California, Berkeley, is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory University. His books include Karel van Mander's 'Schilder-Boeck': Shaping the Netherlandish Canon (1991) and The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625 (2009), along with numerous edited volumes.

James Clifton, Ph.D. (1987) in Art History, Princeton University, is Director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and Curator in Renaissance and Baroque Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has co-curating numerous exhibitions and co-authored numerous monographic catalogues, including A Portrait of the Artist, 1525-1825 (2005) and The Plains of Mars: European War Prints, 1500-1825 (2009).

Michel Weemans, Ph.D. Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, is Chercheur-Qualifie at the Ecole nationale superieure d'art de Bourges. His exhibition catalogues include Le paysage extravagant (2009) and Fables du paysage flamand: Bosch, Bles, Brueghel, Bril (2012). He is co-editor of Paysage sacré/Sacred Landscape (2011).