Belting Likeness And Presence Summary

Prior to the European Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, holy and sacred images were not considered “art” but rather were regarded as sacred and venerable objects that belonged to “tangible presence of the Holy” in a figural rather than non-narrative sense (Belting, 1994, p. 654). Han’s Belting’s Likeness and Presence: a History of The Image Before the Era of Art tackles the herculean task of tracing the history of Christian iconography—the portrait of saints, the Virgin Mary, and of Jesus Christ—from late Antiquity to the eighteenth century and its role within a shifting European cultural milieu, focusing on its conceptual and artistic treatment. The “era of art” began during this medieval period, Belting contends, which is when artists

Moreover, he explores the etiology of Christian iconography against the backdrop of social and political maelstrom that characterized later antiquity in Rome as well as early Byzantium. He proffers a unique yet fascinating interpretation regarding how and where to situate the image of the holy within the trajectory and historical development of Western civilization. By employing art-historical analysis, Belting grounds various interpretations of Christian iconography, framing the analysis of sacral objects and iconography in an ironically iconoclastic fashion. Although Belting posits that religious objects and iconography developed in a teleological fashion, he places less emphasis or focus on the influence of historical contingencies and why the iconography developed in the ways it did as a result of shifting social, cultural, and historical

The nexus between Western and Eastern Christian objects reveal that the two separate cultures remained intrinsically linked and dependent on one another, spawning syncretic art forms and objects. He marshals his empirical evidence of iconography and accompanying sources in a variety of different European languages that provides fascinating data and analysis on medieval art works regarding the history and legends associated with the visuals. However, Belting fails to deeply reflect on why religious iconography oscillated in its form and meaning throughout the period of study, preferring to focus his analysis on what was occurring to the images he chose to study. Nonetheless, Belting clearly articulates his belief that the study of religious iconography must remain insulated from psychological and anthropological frames of analysis because, he asserts, the viewer should occupy no place in studying iconography despite the division between the history of art and artists and the history of images. The difference between the two categories is predicated on the viewer’s own perceptions of the nature of the religious images and objects being studied. This distinction between the history of art and the history