Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures and Living Images from the Middle Ages to the End of the 18Th Century Ed

and Living Images Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures and Living Images From the Middle Ages to the End of the 18th Century ed. by Kamil Kopania Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures Sculptures Puppets, Dolls, The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures and Living Images Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures and Living Images From the Middle Ages to the End of the 18th Century ed. by Kamil Kopania Reviewers: Dr. John Bell - Associate Professor, Dramatic Arts Department University of Connecticut; Director of Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry Prof. Florian Feisel - Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart Proofreading: Dr. Timothy Williams Layout, typesetting and cover design: Jacek Malinowski Copyright © 2017 by Kamil Kopania Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures Copyright © 2017 by the Publisher Publisher: The Aleksander Zelwerowicz and Living Images National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok Sienkiewicza 14 Str. From the Middle Ages 15-092 Białystok, Poland www.atb.edu.pl to the End of the 18th Century Publication supported by: The Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw ed. by Kamil Kopania www.ihs.uw.edu.pl and by the University of Warsaw through a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland DEC-2013/09/HS2/01444 Print and binding by: EPEdruk Sp. z.o.o. www.epedruk.pl Print run: 300 ISBN: 978-83-883580-1-2 Dolls, Puppets, Sculptures and Living Images From the Middle Ages to the End of the 18th Century ed. by Kamil Kopania The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw (The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok) 4 Table of Contents Kamil Kopania – Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw / The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok, Poland Puppetry in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period – New Perspectives 6 Peter Dent – University of Bristol, United Kingdom The Late Medieval Action Figure and the Living Image 18 Kamil Kopania – Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw / The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok, Poland The Assumption of Mary in Dieppe – an Unusual Example of Theatricalized Medieval Religious Ceremony 34 Alessia Frassani – Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands Representation and Reflexivity. Paradoxes in the Image of Christ from Sixteenth-Century Mexico 58 Natalia Keller – Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile, Chile ‘Pick Him up and hold Him in your arms.’ The Function of the Holy Dolls in the Convent Life of the Late Middle Ages 76 Markus Rath – Universität Basel, Switzerland Jointed Dolls as Works of Art 94 Duarte Nuno Chaves – University of the Azores, Portugal Contributions to the study of the tradition of dressing religious sculptures in Portugal 16th –19th centuries 108 Annette C. Cremer – Justus-Liebig-Universität, Gießen, Germany Utopia on a Small Scale – Female Escapism into Miniature 126 Piotr Oczko – Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland A Great Theater of Things. Raree-show (‘t Fraay Curieus) by Willem van Mieris 140 Illustrations 159 5 Kamil Kopania – Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw, The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok, Poland Puppetry in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period – New Perspectives The period of the Middle Ages has not attracted broad interest among historians, theorists, and practitioners of the puppet theater. In works on the history of puppetry, we can of course find some information on the subject of medieval manifestations of this kind of artistic work. As early as the mid- nineteenth century, the topic was treated at some length in Charles Magin’s seminal and still useful monograph Histoire des Marionnettes en Europe depuis l’antiquité jusqu’a nos jours.1 The French scholar showed the wide scope of the phenomenon, providing both secular and religious examples of puppet performances produced in Western culture, particularly in the high and late Middle Ages. Furthermore, he also analyzed examples on the borderline of traditionally understood puppet theater, discussing religious figures whose construction was subordinated to the demands of animation, by which means the figures represented, usually Christ or Mary, could make a powerful impression on the living spectators. Later scholars, authors of book-length studies of the history of puppetry, have followed in Magnin’s footsteps, including Jacques Chesnais,2 Hans 1 Ch. Magnin, Histoire des Marionnettes en Europe depuis l’antiquité jusqu’a nos jours (Paris: Michel Lévy 6 Frères, Libraires-Éditeurs, 1862 [second, revised and extended edition. First edition: 1852]). 2 J. Chesnais, Histoire générale des marionnettes (Paris: Bordas, 1947). Richard Purschke,3 Reginald S. Sibbald,4 George Speaight,5 John E. Varey,6 Max von Boehn7 and Marek Waszkiel.8 Each of them discovered previously unknown information on puppetry, none of which, however, transformed our knowledge of the medieval theater in any fundamental way. Moreover, none of the works named deals at length with the medieval period. Some few archival references, literary or iconographical, relating to secular or religious puppet performances, contrasting greatly with the abundance of sources on puppet theater in the Renaissance, and especially the baroque period, often lead people to espouse, more or less explicitly, the view that, to paraphrase a subheading in Reginald S. Sibbald’s book, the importance of puppetry grew after the Middle Ages.9 Furthermore, various types of animated religious figures and the ceremonies in which they were used have been discussed only perfunctorily and treated more as a kind of curiosity than a full-fledged phenomenon in the history of the puppet theater. Only the works of Henryk Jurkowski, many years in the making, finally heralded a new vision of the Middle Ages. In his monumental study of the history of puppet theater, we observe quite a traditional approach to the problem, but one of incalculable value in terms of its broad outlook, including source material not only from Western Europe but from Central Europe as well.10 However, in his book Przemiany ikonosfery. Wizualny kontekst sztuki teatru (Changes in the Iconosphere. The Visual Conetxt of Theater Art),11 published several years ago, the emphasis shifts to the paratheatrical, thus in the medieval context including various kinds of sculptures used in liturgical 3 H. R. Purschke, Die Anfänge der Puppenspielformen und ihre vermutlischen Ursprünge (Bochum: Deutsches Institut für Puppenspiel, 1979); H. R. Purschke, Über das Puppenspiel und seine Geschichte. Querschnitt aus dem literarischen Schaffen des Puppenspiel-Historikers und -Theoretikers (Frankfurt/M.: Puppen & Masken, 1983). 4 R. S. Sibbald, Marionettes in the North of France (Philadelphia-London: University of Pennsylvania press, 1936). 5 G. Speaight, The History of the English Puppet Theatre (London: Robert Hale, 1955). 6 J. E. Varey, Historia de los títeres en Espańa. Desde sus orígenes hasta mediados del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1957). 7 M. von Boehn, Puppen und Puppenspiele (München: F. Bruckmann, 1929). 8 M. Waszkiel, Dzieje teatru lalek w Polsce (do 1945 roku) (Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk – Instytut Sztuki, 1990). 9 “The growing importance of the marionette after the Middle Ages”; R. S. Sibbald, Marionettes in the North of France, 13. 10 First released in Polish: Dzieje teatru lalek, od antyku do romantyzmu (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1970). Revised and supplemented English-language edition: A History of a Puppet Theatre in Europe, vol. I, From Its Origins to the End of the 19th Century (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press,1996). 7 11 H. Jurkowski, Przemiany ikonosfery. Wizualny kontekst sztuki teatru (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2009). or paraliturgical ceremonies to mark church holidays, as well as in daily religious practice. With this book, Jurkowski gave medieval animated sculptures their due, moving them in some measure from their niche as curiosities to the main current of reflection on theater history. He did not go so far, however, as defining them to be worthy of ranking as a full-fledged theatrical phenomenon – as the book’s title indicates to readers, it offers reflections on the context of theatrical art. Likewise, he did not create an exhaustive catalogue or analysis of works of this type or the activities to which they were connected, since that was not his book’s aim; instead, it presents an erudite survey of certain questions, encompassing and syn-thesizing several periods. Jurkowski’s inspiring study challenges us to ask whether the sculptures he describes constitute merely a context of theatrical art, or its essence. Perhaps they simply do not fit within contemporary classifications (ill-suited to the historical reality) applied to the medieval stage? In order to answer that question we must consult some works by art historians. In the last several decades, it is they who have been primarily interested in different kinds of animated sculptures.12 It is to them that we owe the discovery of numerous works, related sources, and other sources not directly related but nonetheless document various types of theatrical activities involving the use of sculptural representations. Let us begin by enumerating the types of works that constitute the object of their and our interest. In order of importance, those are: animated sculptures of Christ riding the donkey (Palmesel) animated sculptures of the crucified Christ animated sculptures of the resurrected Christ In addition to these three types, comprising most of the surviving specimens and also carrying the strongest theatrical connotations (such sculptures fulfilled a specific function not unlike that of an actor, appearing as the main protagonists of religious spectacles using dramatic or quasi-dramatic texts), we should also mention the figures of Christ in the tomb, figures of Mary used in the ceremony marking the Assumption and crèche figures.

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