El cuerpo y la religiosidad medieval. La estatua y el amor físico en la Plena Edad Media

Abstract

In the 12th century, a statue of Venus seduced Maestro Gregorio; his look made the godess blush. The image of inamorati is a frequent item in iconographical catalogues. Either as escopofilia or as agalmatofilia, it has survived because of its use of recurrent characters, as a topos that is regularly reshaped into a new version from period to period. In this paper I focus on the analysis on some medieval case-studies, in order to illustrate the dynamic dispute that concerned the attitude to adopt when looking at images. The range of alternatives was wide: from puré aesthetical worship to the moral conduct as moulded by the ecclesiastical power for believers' consumption. For instance, from Venus to Mary there was an intricate route to go through in the 12th and the 13th centuries, in which the Church played an active role that was more complex than the plain introduction of norms and mediating agents. The subject deserves more than simple accounts of the psychosexual significance of the love narratives, which usually is quite obvious. The relationship between subject and object, the ties that bond religious attitude and artistic expression, the tensión between reality and representation, all affected the medieval man, thus unveiling the intricate conflict between convention and desire.