Fig. 19.1: Inside Sanderum Church, Funen, Looking East
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Fig. 19.1: Inside Sanderum Church, Funen, looking east. Open Access. © 2021 Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639438-020 Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen Chapter 19 The Heavenly Jerusalem and the Late Medieval Church Interior It might easily be supposed that the notion of the Heavenly Jerusalem in particular was an early medieval or Romanesque phenomenon in both the visual arts and in theologi- cal thinking. Indeed, it is striking that the representation of Jerusalem is so massively present in Romanesque churches and in Romanesque art, while a cursory glance at Gothic art quickly reveals that this presence no longer appears at the same level of in- tensity. This chapter explores how Heavenly Jerusalem is manifested within what seems to be two distinct epistemological systems of thought which came to influence respectively the Romanesque and the Gothic regime of representation. Liturgical Space Representing Jerusalem Through anagogical readings, everything in the church, along with the building it- self, could and was understood as a reference to the Heavenly Jerusalem, into which humankind was to enter after Judgement Day.1 Everything in and about the church building conceptually pointed towards the Heavenly Jerusalem as the place which humanity should strive towards and long for, no matter if this was made ex- plicit or not. The connection between the church building and the celestial home of humankind was visualized in liturgical objects and pictorial art. Romanesque art certainly was an artistic high point for such visual allusions. In the imagery of the late Middle Ages we also see symbolic architecture used as reference to Jerusalem: censers were still produced in the shape of micro-architecture, and architectural representations of everything from bench-ends to altarpieces could be fashioned in ways which can hardly be understood as alluding to anything other than the celestial 1 The literature on this subject is vast, but important seminal insights and further references can be found in Robert Konrad, “Das himmlische und das irdische Jerusalem im mittelalterlichen Denken,” in Speculum Historiale: Geschichte im Spiegel von Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsdeutung, ed. Clemens Bauer, et al. (Munich: Verlag Karl Albert Freiburg, 1965). See also William Alexander McClung, The Architecture of Paradise: Survivals of Eden and Jerusalem (Berkeley: University of Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, Dr., archaeologist and researcher at The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark 396 Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen city.2 Depictions of the Day of Judgement, with the Heavenly Jerusalem and the Mouth of Hell flanking the enthroned Christ is one of the most common motifs from the period, along with the frequent use of Jerusalem, the terrestrial city, as a scenic backdrop for visualizations of the Passion narrative. Yet there seems to be a shift in the visual culture taking place from the Romanesque to the Gothic paradigm which invites further exploration. This is particularly evident in the late Middle Ages. New motifs sprang up from the late fourteenth century which gradually came to dominate the representations up until the Reformations of the sixteenth century, while other motifs fell away. The first premise of the following is that a shift in the iconographic content of what we could call Romanesque and Gothic art reflects a change in the religious imagination of the late Middle Ages. The second premise is that any medieval repre- sentation of holiness somehow reflects the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem. This shift in the visual culture of the period has already, at a fundamental level, been discussed by Erwin Panofsky in his still evocative volume Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1951–1957), but the specific changes relating to the showing of the Heavenly Jerusalem seem to be in need of further examination and discussion.3 This chapter therefore explores the shift from Romanesque to Gothic imagery in church interiors and how the Heavenly Jerusalem came to be represented by the late Middle Ages. The material on which it draws is found among Danish village churches in which the number of extant Romanesque murals and sculptural pieces, along with richly preserved late Gothic material, allows for comparison and explo- ration of this shift. From Romanesque to Gothic: Near but Far – Distant but Close As was stated at the outset the basic premise here is that two distinct, different epis- temological systems of thought characterized respectively the Romanesque and the Gothic regime of representation. The early system, the high medieval Romanesque California Press, 1983). See also Chapter 1 (Kristin B. Aavitsland), 33–40; Chapter 15 (Line M. Bonde), 299–323; and Chapter 16 (Kersti Markus), 324–39. 2 See for instance François Bucher, “Micro-Architecture as the ‘Idea’ of Gothic Theory and Style,” Gesta 15 (1976). 3 Others have, of course, worked with these topics before within a Danish context. Note for in- stance the important contributions of: Hans Jørgen Frederiksen, “Det himmelske Jerusalem i arki- tektur og billedkunst,” in Det ny Jerusalem: Guds by og de skiftende forventninger, ed. Anne Marie Aagaard (Copenhagen: Anis, 1989); Otto Norn, The House of Wisdom (Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers’ Forlag, 1990). Chapter 19 The Heavenly Jerusalem and the Late Medieval Church Interior 397 system, I tentatively call “Near but Far”, while the late medieval, or Gothic, system might be termed “Distant but Close”. Both may seem to be cryptic oxymorons, but hopefully the ensuing elucidation will make the meaning clearer. Both notions first and foremost represent analytical categories, enabling us to understand the shifts in the representation of eschatological as well as soteriological notions in medieval church art, particularly in the church decoration found in Scandinavia. What is going to be represented over these next pages is thus an idealized version of what was actually to be seen in the churches, since such firm categorizations as those presented here serve primarily as a mapping of general trends, which specific case studies can challenge or nuance at a later stage. Along the same vein it should be stressed that the imagery discussed in the article is relatively late when compared to the written sources discussed. A pronounced dissonance is accordingly discern- ible in the materials collected here. This could lead to reflections about centre and periphery, but this I think would be misleading. First of all, the Gothic mode of showing never did replace the Romanesque mode completely, and secondly the routes by which the ideas fostering the changes travelled would have been indirect and chaotic in nature, making specific questions of chronology and dating less rele- vant or pressing. One further has to consider the Scandinavian tradition of periodi- zation which dates terms like “high medieval” and “late medieval” later than most scholarship concerning the European continent in general. Our exploration of the shift from one paradigmatic system of thinking about and representing the Heavenly Jerusalem to another can conveniently be illustrated through the church of Sanderum on the Danish island of Funen, where a number of preserved Romanesque and late Gothic wall-paintings revolve around the same themes in strikingly different ways.4 The apse of this rather large rural parish church, as well as the walls of the chancel and nave, were decorated with paintings probably soon after the building was erected in the middle of the twelfth century.5 These wall- paintings, executed in late Romanesque style, in all likelihood remained visible in the church for a long time and were only replaced around 1525 when the building re- ceived vaults and the whole interior was redecorated with new images (Fig. 19.1). The murals have been known for a long time and have gained some notoriety within Danish research on medieval art. The late Gothic decoration was uncovered and re- stored for the first time in 1882 under the leadership of conservator Julius Bentley Løffler of the National Museum in Copenhagen. A large part of the paintings discov- ered by him were at that point promptly covered again, as they were deemed ugly and without value. When, a few years later in 1895–96, the conservator Jacob Kornerup worked on the images again, he by chance revealed a large Romanesque decoration 4 Some initial thoughts on this subject have previously been published in Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, “Åbenbaringer,” Skalk 1 (2014). 5 The building history is elucidated in DK Odense: 2916–30. 398 Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen in the chancel, which at the time was considered a sensation. Nevertheless, it was only in 2009–10 that the parts of the Late Gothic murals whitewashed in 1882 were once again uncovered and left visible to be seen today.6 A number of the now visible murals are in a fragmented state of preservation and incomplete, but the extant motifs from both the Romanesque and Gothic series of paintings are still enough, through their selection of images, to give us a sense of what these two different iconographic programmes aimed to convey to their beholders. There are thus preserved enough de- cisive motifs from both periods to allow us to identify the overall meaning of the im- ages. The same kind of reading can be achieved in many other churches, but Sanderum is special in that we have here two comprehensive, visible programmes of images in the same church in two chronologically separated and distinct styles. Most importantly, both groups of images delve into the same theme; the epiphany of the holy conflated with the revealing of the Heavenly Jerusalem. However, the decorations clearly arrive at widely different messages to their audience. Furthermore, the differ- ence in what is communicated to the beholder in the early and late programmes is strikingly clear and enables us to approach the question of what the changes in the representation of the Heavenly Jerusalem by the late Middle Ages had come to mean.