IMAGE AND SALVATION: THE EVENT OF A VISUAL WORK IN THE TIME OF PLAGUES

The article presents a study of the role of visual works of the 14th–18th centuries created in the time of the spread of the plague or in anticipation of an epidemic for its witnesses. The existential and social contribution of religious rituals specializing on the disaster and aimed at surviving are determined in the article. Historically and socially stable traditional ritual responses to the spread of the plague were the most important tools for those living during it. In ritual practices, the witnesses of the epidemic received significant experience of recreating the ordered being-in-the-world and the destroyed social ties. Thus, rituals specializing on the disaster rebuilt order in the world that was constantly disintegrating and asserted its stability. The problem of the uniqueness of the purpose of the abundant frescoes, altarpieces, icons, paintings created during the plague is comprehended. Based on the material of the evolution of the figurative expressions of the cult of St. Sebastian, who became one of the defenders of the plague, the article shows how the uniqueness of their expressive surfaces contributed to the revival of feelings and the birth of forms of sensory presence in the world freed from the plague’s pressure. Evoking powerful streams of sensations in the viewer, the power of the image acts as the resource of reviving feelings that are not exclusively related to the circumstances of the epidemic. The visual rhetoric of the works thereby counteracts the extinction of consciousness fixed by witnesses in the historical reports of the plague. The study of the iconography of the images of St. Sebastian reveals how visual works also allowed flexible variations of the meaning of salvation, including the affirmation of the openness of the future. For instance, unique works developed the technique for protecting witnesses of the epidemic. The forms of presence motivated by the works at their meaning and sensory levels could put an end to life’s complete subordination to the epidemic. Starting from the 16th century, this trend of reorientation of sensory presence as a response to a large-scale epidemic disaster was also developed with architectural structures.

epidemic, anomie, consciousness, extinction of consciousness, visual image, work of art event, forms of presence, restructuring of sensory experience