Visualizing Virgin Mary’s holiness in "popular" iconography tradition between European East and West
Résumé
The aim of this paper is to revisit the idea of transmission and migration formula of Mariological iconography between eastern and western tradition. My contribution primarily deals with Marian popular iconography after the European age of printing press. I will study a selection of pious printed images by emphasizing some specific features of the representation schemas concerning the Virgin and Mother of God. One case study will be the 19th century eastern France with regard to colorful lithography painted in pochoir technique, a heritage of the ancient engraving tradition as illustrated by some examples from the French national library collection. Besides, the production of religious imagery such as those of the factory Pellerin will be reconsidered together with the evolution of the 19th century commercial prints and panels. More particularly I will show how floral iconography aspects penetrated in western popular visual culture by interacting with the pictorial language of Medieval eastern models. Thus Slavonic iconographic heritage coming from Central Europe will be studied on the basis of late medieval European and post-byzantine iconic language, by covering also some early Marian pictorial occurrences from the Hispanic and Flemish cultural area. In addition, the pilgrimage and cult aspect will help us to redefine religious iconography by taking into consideration contemporary religious devotional practices. Mary’s devotional hagiology nourished by the 19th century Virgin’s apparitions and related to some special prayers will be seen in the context of late medieval and early modern Marian hymnography sources. Therefore, this paper will tend to contribute on the visualization of the concept of holiness regarding Mary’s floral poetry in European votive images as inspired from religious imagery and practices till now neglected.