English to Russian Art/Literary History религиозные образы в искусстве позднего средневековья

Augustine consider Creation itself a book that attentive reader could read to discover God, an idea taken up by the mystical theologian Alain of Lille in his Rhythmus alter. On the other hand, the probing eye could lead the mind, the body, and even the entire community into mortal peril, as the author of the Ancrene Riwle demonstrated with his use of the story of Dinah. Particularly as affective piety took root, we see expressed a rising awareness of the tension between what Jeffrey Hamburger has punningly named “idol curiosity” and the practice of speculation as a key tool for contemplation. The vexing opposition between proper and improper visual activity was particularly relevant to women, who were regularly warned against their “foolish eyes” as well as their foolish concern with their own outward appearance. The question was one of how to exercise one’s vision, and how to be visible, without crossing the line that divides piety from impiety. Illuminated books created for the devotional use of laypeople – particularly women – were one theater in which the distinctions between good and bad visual activity could be explored, and visual arguments for proper looking elaborated.
In this chapter, I explore how the emergent reflexive image of the book owner developed in new directions in the period between about 1260 and 1310. Many of these developments speak to precisely the problems of female visual agency, and propose models for a positive and empowered, but strictly delimited, devotional gaze.