The activation of the image: expatriate carvers and kneeling effigies in late Gothic Spain

Woods, Kim (2017). The activation of the image: expatriate carvers and kneeling effigies in late Gothic Spain. The Sculpture Journal, 26(1) pp. 11–24.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2017.26.1.3

Abstract

It was Erwin Panofsky in 1956 who first coined the concept of the ‘activation of the effigy’, by which the traditional recumbent, lifeless effigy of the western tradition might instead be invested with a sense of life. This paper traces one such activation, the kneeling effigy. According to Panofsky, it was the Italian sculptor Mazzoni who pioneered the independent kneeling effigy, but about half a century earlier independent kneeling effigies were being produced in Castile by expatriate carvers Master Hanequin and Master Egas Cueman, originally of Brussels. This paper introduces a range of kneeling effigies in Spain including the kneeling alabaster effigies of Pedro I and Bishop Lope de Barrientos. Two sets of surviving constitutions give an insight into how these kneeling effigies might have operated within the chapel spaces. The origins of the kneeling format is traced not to Italy but to northern Europe.

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