The object of our study is the narration of Veronica’s meeting with and compassionate gesture towards Christ on the way to Calvary, with the intent of discovering the origin and development of this episode, which, without any historical witness, has traversed history from the devout Middle Ages to the present time, attracting the interest of ordinary people, the powerful and artists all over the world. The study identifies and describes the iconographic genesis of this encounter, analysing and categorizing the 800 literary and artistic citations of the episode in the online database Veronica Route from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, concentrating on the representation of the moment of contact between Christ and the woman through the medium of the cloth. Comparing the works present in Veronica Route on this subject by means of tags attached to each iconographic feature and manual analysis, we identify and interpret the various symbolic, cultural and psychological emphases which have emerged progressively in the depictions of the meeting and contact between the apocryphal figure of Veronica and Christ.
Zardoni, R., Murphy, A. C., Saint Veronica and the Inventio of a Gesture, in Monika Kopytowsk, M. K., Artur Galkowsk, A. G., Massimo Leon, M. L. (ed.), Thought-Sign-Symbol. Cross-Cultural Representations of Religions, Peter Lang, Berlin 2022: <<LODZ STUDIES IN LANGUAGE>>, 235- 264 [https://hdl.handle.net/10807/225567]
Saint Veronica and the Inventio of a Gesture
Murphy, Amanda Clare
Membro del Collaboration Group
2022
Abstract
The object of our study is the narration of Veronica’s meeting with and compassionate gesture towards Christ on the way to Calvary, with the intent of discovering the origin and development of this episode, which, without any historical witness, has traversed history from the devout Middle Ages to the present time, attracting the interest of ordinary people, the powerful and artists all over the world. The study identifies and describes the iconographic genesis of this encounter, analysing and categorizing the 800 literary and artistic citations of the episode in the online database Veronica Route from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, concentrating on the representation of the moment of contact between Christ and the woman through the medium of the cloth. Comparing the works present in Veronica Route on this subject by means of tags attached to each iconographic feature and manual analysis, we identify and interpret the various symbolic, cultural and psychological emphases which have emerged progressively in the depictions of the meeting and contact between the apocryphal figure of Veronica and Christ.
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