The Principle of Personification. Visual Intelligence and Epistemic Tradition, 1300-1800"

 The Principle of Personification. Visual Intelligence and Epistemic Tradition, 1300-1800"

Dr. Cornelia Logemann

Hardly any imaging technique was more successful in the early modern period than personification. Allegorical interpretive contexts, which were largely made up of these embodiments, dominated the arts - and it was not uncommon for the extensive and increasingly complex image programs to begin to oscillate ambivalently for the viewer.

While there was already a new interest in this central cultural technique in the late Middle Ages, the principle of 'personification' received further impetus from the 'rediscovery' and connection with mythological elements from the late 14th and 15th centuries.

All over Europe people celebrated the return of the ancient gods, who, now removed from their context, embodied primarily abstract properties and principles for the contemporary observer.

Walter Benjamin already described the discrepancy between the 'disembodied projection' of the Middle Ages and the physical figures of gods that the Renaissance rediscovered for its purposes - and the success of this new form of representation seems to be explained not least by this tension.

The aim of the junior research group is to demonstrate from various disciplinary perspectives the forms and functions of this central cultural technique in the crucial early phase from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century, which must be considered fundamental for the reconstruction of the modern understanding of images.