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The Salus Populi Romani Madonna in the World Author(S)

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The Salus Populi Romani Madonna in the World Author(S) Sacred Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Salus Title Populi Romani Madonna in the World Author(s) Mochizuki, Mia M. Citation Kyoto Studies in Art History (2016), 1: 129-144 Issue Date 2016-03 URL https://doi.org/10.14989/229454 © Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University and the Right authors Type Departmental Bulletin Paper Textversion publisher Kyoto University 129 Sacred Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Salus Populi Romani Madonna in the World Mia M. Mochizuki Baroque Machines A curious vignette provides an unlikely introduction to the world of elaborate Baroque machinery: a pudgy, if industrious putto raises the earth on high via a set of rotating gears that reduce the heavy lifting of a planet by leveraging a complicated Fac pedem figat et terram movebit besystem understood of integrated within pulleys its context (fig. 1).in theIts explanatoryImago primi motto, saeculi “ Societatis Iesu (Antwerp, ,” or “give him a place to fix his foot and he shall move the earth,” can only with its landmark accomplishments and obstacles. The emblem played on the word 1640), a book that commemorated the centennial anniversary of the Society of Jesus “conversion” as celebratingRegnorum both et Provinciarum the Society’s commitmentper Societatem to world-wideconversio.” explorationEmploying aand block the and“turning” tackle of pulley people system, to Christianity the scene on references such missions, Archimedes’ as the subtitle principles for this for harnessingchapter implies, the strength “ of compounded force to lift objects otherwise too heavy to home the point, the motto echoes Pappus of Alexandria’s record of the great inventor- move, the weight of the world paralleled to the difficulty of this endeavor. And to drive one discrete substitution.1 In the Imago beenengineer’s replaced proud by claim, an objective “Give me third-person somewhere pronoun to stand whoseand I will agency move could the earth,” elastically, with , the first-person voice of Archimedes’ claim has ambiguously, span both the “he” of a Jesuit missionary and the “it” of a machine. In this achieveformulation, the result. the identity of the actor responsible for “moving the earth” seamlessly glidesAnother between emblem Jesuit and in themachine, same thebook person proposes and the just tools what of kindtechnology of machine needed was to envisioned for the logistics of this global enterprise. This time, a man is shown laboring Societas Iesu persecutionibus formatur The Society is made complete by adversity 2 atfunctioned a printing not press only aswith a propagation- the motto, “ and conversion-machine, but also as a metaphor,” (“ for the pressures and setbacks of the ”).Society. For early The classicalmodern Jesuits,reference the here printing was topress the work of a poet, not a scientist: Virgil’s Aeneid fingitque premendo,” when Apollo literally imprints the Cumaean Sibyl’s body and soul.3 The intention was to provide a mechanical extension of Thomas à Kempis’ (6: 77–80), Imitatio “ Christi concept that had proved so formative to the Society’s spiritual charism.4 Machines, whether pulley or printing press, supplanted a late medieval model preferenced on man, usurping the stage to assume the role of proxy for the production of object and person alike. Outside 5 the picture plane too, the press played a significant role in Jesuit global strategy. Jesuits not only established presses throughout the world, one in India (1556) before Rome (1559), they also went so far as to ship a whole press from Lisbon to Goa to 130 Mia M. Mochizuki Fac pedem figat, & terram movebit Imago primi saeculi Fig.Societatis 1 “ Iesu, a Provincia Flandro-Belgica” in Joannes eiusdem Bollandus, Societatis S.J.,repraesentata Godefridus Henschenius, S.J., JohannesMaurits Sabbe Tollenarius, Library, S.J., Faculty Sidronius of Theology Hosschius, and S.J.,Religious Jacob vandeSciences, Walle, KU S.J.,Leuven, Leuven. (Antwerp, 1640), p. 321, they made sure to bring their press to Macao, via Manila, to carry on printing in exile, despiteMacao and the finallylabor involvedto Japan. inEven transporting when the Jesuitstwenty-seven were expelled crates.6 from Japan in 1614, books in western languages, romaji- and kanji In Japan, the Jesuit releasingPress established approximately a remarkably sixty-seven prolific titles publishing with a little house less than in its half own still right, extant producing today.7 -scripts, and in twenty-five years press presented an opportunity not to be missed by the foot soldiers of the Catholic Reformation.The confluence In the dominant of the need historiography, to reach the printmakingworld and the has advent been overwhelmingly of the printing characterized as a Protestant preoccupation, crediting the success of the Reformation to its distribution of books in the vernacular and widespread circulation of anonymous independent thinking. This interpretation has overshadowed the fact that the Catholic Churchbroadsheets also very that cleverly fanned adoptedthe flames and of inverted radical thechange latest with in technological an unstoppable innovation, flow of the printing press, to bulwark a tradition under attack. By turning that most impressive foe to the service of the Church, Pope Pius V appropriated one of the strongest weapons of the Protestant revolt for the rehabilitation of Catholic teaching, thereby instigating radical shifts in the narratives of devotional image production and a critical recalibration of the status of Catholic sacred art in the aftermath of reform. Using what Sacred Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction 131 Fig. 2 Anonymous, Salus Populi Romani Madonna, ca. 6th–10th century, tempera on panel, Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Borghese Chapel, Rome. amass a pictorial conscript of multiples to successfully confront the global challenges of Reformation,could be termed at least a “printing-press initially, if its long-termmodel” of effectscultural could exchange not be allowed foreseen. the Church to Replication, Not Repetition The catalyst, as so often occurs, was a seemingly innocuous decision. In the waning days of June 1569, Pope Pius VSalus took Populi the unprecedented Romani Madonna step of permitting St. Francis act,Borgia, he sealedthird Superiorthis icon’s General status asof the Societyface of universalof Jesus (r.post-Tridentine 1565–1572), toCatholicism. make the Theearliest later official appearance copies of of this the Madonna in Rome and Munich, Lisbon (fig. 2). and With Isfahan, this singleBahia and Beijing, Goa and Gorgora, provides some indication of the distance she would travel from her modest origins, both conceptually and geographically, from the time her portrait was reputed to have been painted by St. Luke on a table top built by the the Assumption (August 15th 8 In fact, among all the achievementsyoung Jesus through of the herSociety processing under Borgia’sof the Roman leadership, streets it of was Lazio his on recognition the Feast Dayof the of ) during the late medieval period. 132 Mia M. Mochizuki Fig. 3 Melchior Küsell, Portrait of St. Francis Borgia with the Salus Populi Romani Madonna, 17th century, engraving, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Fondo Iconografico Lamalle, S. Francisco Borgia, sub nomine, Rome. rich potential of the Madonna of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore for missionary work9 Appropriately, that was already of all singled the portraits out in ofhis St. first Francis biography Borgia, by the Pedro one thatde Ribadeyneyra, best tells this storyS.J. (1592) is itself and a print.remembered Before the in ancrowned early visualscull, ahagiography reference to bythe Melchior decisive Küsellmoment (fig. of vocation3). during the viewing of the deceased body of Empress Isabel of Portugal, wife that was the result of this call, Borgia proudly cradles a copy of the Salus Populi Romani Madonnaof Charles in V, his before left hand. the ray of inspiration in the background with the Jesuit monogram favor that reward closer scrutiny. For the problem was a fundamental one: how can multipleIt is thecopies widespread of a singular ramifications sacred image of this exist apparently for an object simple whose papal unmitigated gesture of like photography, the facsimile and the digitalized internet after it, raised the stakes ofuniqueness what it meant defines to itscreate being? in Atimitation the dawn of anof aoriginal. global age,10 Gerhard the printing Wolf’s press foundational concept, study of the Salus Populi Romani stops, tantalizingly, just at this fascinating point when this Madonna was launched into the world at large, as do significant contributions by Pasquale d’Elia, S.J. just after World War II and Steven Ostrow, Kristen Noreen, and Sacred Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction 133 Midori Wakakuwa more recently.11 When confronted with the logistical problem of how to make an image that had been a rallying standard for centuries in the battle against heresy cover more ground on the world stage, Pius made a canny call. Like the Protestant endorsement of the printing press, the Catholic appropriation focused on this machine’s magical ability to multiply one image into many, what must bread into the sustenance for multitudes. Lisa Pon has described the Renaissance have seemed like a real-worldcopia ”application was informed of the by themiracle material of Jesus plenty turning of abundance, one loaf asof a delicate tightrope between novelty and tradition that played out in the most vigorous andculture sustained of copying, debate when over
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