Page - 51 - in Europäische Bild- und Buchkultur im 13. Jahrhundert

51 michaEl a. michaEl The Emotional Charge and Humanistic Effect of the Crucifixion in some Thirteenth-century English Illuminated Manuscripts Introduction In his book, The Crossing of the Visible, Jean-Luc Marion concludes: The icon … contradicts point by point the modern determination of the image, following the ruthless demands of metaphysical iconoclasm. Far from managing a new spectacle, it allows it to point to another gaze. Far from comparing the visible to the invisible by a mimetic rivalry, it bears the mark of the blow of the prototype by which it is recognized. Far from prostituting itself in a self-idol- atrous spectacle, it solicits a veneration that it does not cease to transmit to its prototype, which demands the veneration of my own gaze climbing, across this type, toward it. The icon has as its only interest the crossing of gazes – thus, strictly speaking love. In contrast to dogmatic metaphysics, the icon saves the image from the status of illusion, alienated from an invisible and intelligible original.1 Before commenting on this statement, I would like to juxtapose it with that made by David Freedberg in his ground-breaking book The Power of Images of 1989: People are sexually aroused by pictures and sculptures; they break pictures and sculptures; they mutilate them, kiss them, cry before them, and go on journeys into them; they are calmed by them, stirred by them, and incited to revolt. They give thanks by means of them, expect to be elevated by them and are moved to the highest levels of empathy and fear.2 At first glance Freedberg’s psychoanalytical approach which purports to reject ‘the intellectual constructions of critic and scholar, or the literate sensitivity of the gen- erally cultured’, as he puts it, in favour of ‘those responses which are subject to repression because they are too embarrassing, too blatant, too rude, and too uncul- tured … because they have psychological roots that we prefer not to acknowledge,’ would seem to be a far cry from the sensitive and passionate writing of Marion. I 1 Jean-Luc Marion: The Crossing of the Visible, trans. by James K. A. Smith, Stanford 2004, originally published as: La Croisée du visible. Paris 1996. 2 David Freedberg: The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago 1989, p. 1.