CHRISTINA
gemca |
Christian Iconography in the Inventory of Belgian Cultural Heritage
Period: 2020-2030
Partners
Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique/ Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium (IRPA-KIK)
Funding
Belspo's FED-tWIN program
Members
- Emmanuel Joly (UCLouvain – KIK-IRPA): post-doctoral researcher
- Ralph Deconinck (UCLouvain): supervisor
- Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (KIK-IRPA): supervisor
- Caroline Heering (UCLouvain) : former researcher
The project
Altarpieces, funerary monuments, rood screens, confessionals, stained glass, textiles, and other elements of church interiors support a vast number of images. Far from isolated artworks, these images form interconnected networks within the religious space for which they were created. Understanding them therefore requires studying them in relation to the architectural environment, ritual practices, and communities that gave them meaning.
The FED-tWIN project CHRISTINA, developed in collaboration between UCLouvain (GEMCA) and KIK-IRPA (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage), aims to develop a relational approach to the visual heritage of Belgian churches. The project focuses on the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period and considers all artistic media (painting, sculpture, goldsmith work, textiles, etc.).
Building on recent developments in iconological research, the project investigates how images operate within a network of relationships inside the church space. Key research questions include:
- How do images interact with each other across different locations and media within the church?
- Which devices (frames, ornamentation, architectural structures, etc.) structure these networks of images?
- How do images define sacred zones, spatial hierarchies, and visual pathways within the building?
- How do images interact with the objects or architectural spaces they occupy?
- How do they relate to the individuals who commissioned, produced, used, or observed them?
- How do images structure the rhythm of the liturgical year and ritual practices?
- How do historical descriptions and visual representations of churches document these image networks?
Ultimately, By developing new methodological and digital approaches to analysing and presenting religious heritage through the development of a relational iconographic methodology adapted to heritage databases (primarily in the BALaT online photo library of the KIK-IRPA), the project aims to restore the relationships between artworks that have been fragmented by traditional object-based inventories. The results will also be disseminated through scholarly and broader-public case studies on the spatial and liturgical context of images in Belgian churches.
The project was launched in 2020 under the leadership of Caroline Heering, who developed research on relational iconography in the context of the St. Charles Borromeo Church in Antwerp. Since 2023, it has been led by Emmanuel Joly, whose work focuses on the creation and function of the rood screen and its role within the network of images in church interiors.
Contact: Emmanuel Joly