AurArt – Rethinking Images as the Book of the Illiterate: Towards a New Acoustic Understanding of Religious Art (1550-1650)
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Period: 2025-2027
Funding: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Grant n° 101150579
Members: Marta Battisti (researcher), Ralph Dekoninck (supervisor)
The project:
The AurArt project investigates the role of hearing in the experience of sacred images in the early modern period. By adopting an auditory perspective, it offers a renewed understanding of how these images were conceived and used, contributing to the broader shift toward interpreting art reception as a multisensory and embodied cultural phenomenon.
AurArt’s theoretical foundation lies in the idea that sacred images served as the “Book of the illiterate” (Liber idiotarum), a notion traditionally attributed to Gregory the Great and deeply rooted in early Western Christianity. This concept has profoundly shaped the historiography of Christian art, structuring debates from the linguistic and visual turns to the material turn. AurArt reopens this longstanding discussion by reframing it through sensory, affective, and embodied perspectives. To do so, it focuses on a key yet understudied moment: the early modern redefinition of the “Book of the illiterate” through the notion of Catholic images as a “universal language” (lingua universalis), closely tied to the Church’s confessional and missionary ambitions.
Departing from Rome, the heart of Catholic Christianity, AurArt examines the role of sacred images as embodied forms of communication in a global context of intercultural exchange, where the visual and the auditory were closely intertwined. The project combines the study of theoretical reflections – including treatises on image theory, guides for preachers, and prayer manuals – with case studies that make it possible to assess, from a historical perspective, the role of auditory perception in the affective reception of sacred images, objects, and spaces.
AurArt bridges art history, sound studies, cognitive studies, and the history of emotions to develop a new acoustic understanding of religious art. This research perspective – enhanced by the design of auditory devices for museum display – aims to enrich our appreciation of art as a fully multisensory experience.
Voir la page de l'Union Européenne sur le projet
