Guest Lecture Prof. Mitchell Merback (Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University): “Ecce pietas es sapientia: Christ-Wisdom in European Art and Piety Before the Reformation“
Albrecht Dürer, Man of Sorrows in the Tomb, ca. 1493, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle
The century preceding the Reformation was a time of „normative centering“ (normative Zentrierung) in Christian piety, according to Berndt Hamm‘s influential theory; but it was also a time when new cultic and devotional forms proliferated. Among these was a piety centered around the idea and figure of Holy Wisdom (Ewige Weisheit), first popularized in the writings of the mystic Heinrich Seuse. In this lecture, Prof. Mitchell Merback (Johns Hopkins University) traces the art-historical coordinates of northern Europe‘s cult of wisdom down to the work of Albrecht Dürer, and discovers there the tradition‘s most charismatic incarnation of Wisdom: the meditative icon of the Pietas Christi, better known to modern audiences as the Schmerzensmann.
This event takes place online via UniMEET: https://unimeet.uni-graz.at/b/sch-rbu-ccg-xpj
This guest lecture is organized by the Department of Art History in cooperation with the Department of American Studies and the Centre for Cultural Studies.