The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625

The Meditative Art: Studies in Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625 asks how and why printed images were utilized as instruments of Christian meditation and contemplation. The book consists of an introductory essay on meditative image-making, followed by nine case studies focusing on various prints and print series produced int he Low Countries, that offered templates for visually-based processes of soul-formation anchored in the imitation of Christ. Engraved by such masters as Philips Galle, Hendrick Goltzius, Boetius a Bolswert, and Jan, Hieronymus, and Antoon Wierix, among others, these prints served to mobilize the votary's sensitive and intellective faculties, harnessing them to the task of restoring the soul's likeness to Christ the Word made flesh. The images are seen implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) to allude to an image theory grounded in the mystery of the Incarnation, and in diverse ways of trope the themes of pictorial artifice and imitation. By calling attention to their status as pictorial images, the author argues, these prints claim to be sanctioned by the condition of representability espoused by Christ Himself. In addition to chapter on the illustrated meditative treatises of Benito Arias Montano, Jeronimo Nadal, and Antonius Sucquet, there are chapters on the prints as catalysts of penitential and communtative self-reformation, as well as on prints as meditative sources of works in other media, such as Otto van Veen's Carrying of the Cross. The book ends with an epilogue on the erotic form, function, and meaning of Hendrick Goltzius's celebrated devotional print of the Annunciation.