Picturing Sainthood
Images and the Making of Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism
Villino Stroganoff, Rome and online (only keynote lectures), June 19th-21st, 2024
In the early modern period, throughout the process of negotiation that gave shape to sainthood – whether officially recognized or aspirational – images were of paramount importance. Encompassing a wide range of media, from inexpensive medals and woodcuts to costly altarpieces, images were as crucial at the grassroots level of popular devotion as in the context of elite patronage. The conference Picturing Sainthood: Images and the Making of Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism investigates the role of images in generating, defining, and recognizing sainthood across cultures in the wake of Catholicism’s global expansion during the period of Iberian hegemony (c. 1500–1700).
The conference is organized by the ERC- and SNSF-funded project Global Economies of Salvation. Art and the Negotiation of Sanctity in the Early Modern Period (GLOBECOSAL) at the University of Zurich in collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome.
Conference Program
June 19th
15:30 – Refreshments
16:00 – Welcome by Director Tristan Weddigen (Bibliotheca Hertziana) & Opening Address by Raphaèle Preisinger (UZH, GLOBECOSAL)
16:30 – Paolo Aranha (Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici): “Disguising and Revealing: Hagiography and Iconography on the Martyrdom of the Maronite Jesuit Abraham de Georgiis (Massawa, 1595)”
17:00 – Pause
17:30 – Keynote Address by Simon Ditchfield (University of York): “Asymmetrical Sanctity between Celebration and Control: Imagining Roman Catholicism as a World Religion (1586–1634)”
18:30 – End of the session
19:30 – Dinner for Conference Speakers
June 20th
9:00
Visit to the Museum and Sacristy of the Chiesa del Gesù
11:00
Visit to the Church of St. Ignatius
12:30 – Lunch break
13:30 – Francisco Montes González (Universidad de Sevilla): “New Spain’s Jesuits and the Visual Strategies for Promotion of the Cult of St. Rosalie of Palermo”
14:00 – Bat-ami Artzi (Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino) and Cécile Michaud (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú): “An Augustinian Martyrial Discourse in Image and Text: Friar Diego Ortiz in Antonio de la Calancha’s Chronicle and in a Unique Colonial Painting”
14:30 – Lucía Querejazu Escobari (UZH, GLOBECOSAL): “Jesús dividió su aprisco entre uno y otro Francisco. St. Francis Solanus as an Early Modern alter Franciscus (1630–1675)”
15:00 – Pause
15:30 – Hannah Joy Friedman (UZH, GLOBECOSAL): “Aspiring Saints’ Images and the Books That Illustrated Them: The Censored Portraits of Nicolás de Ayllón (1632–1677)”
16:00 – Jonathan Greenwood (Library and Archives Canada): “Engraving Miracles and Miraculous Engravings: Prints, Healing, and the Cult of Stanisław Kostka in Peru during the Long Seventeenth Century”
16:30 – Carlos Rojas (Universität Bern): “From the Image as a Body to the Body as an Image: Possessions and Miracles of Maria Gertrudis in Santafé de Bogotá during the 18th Century”
17:00 – Pause
17:30 – Keynote Address by Ramon Mujica Pinilla (Academia de Historia del Perú): “Picturing Creole Sainthood in Viceregal Peru: St. Rose of Lima and Amerindian Triumphalism in Spain’s Multiethnic Empire”
18:30 – End of the session and aperitivo
June 21st
9:00 – Wei Jiang (UZH, GLOBECOSAL): “Invisible Men: The Indian Victims in the Hagiographic Representations of the Cuncolim Martyrs”
9:30 – Regalado Trota Jose (National Historical Commission of the Philippines): “Searching for Images That Promoted the Causes of the Saints in the Early Modern Philippines”
10:00 – Yoshie Kojima (Waseda University 早稲田大学): “Representations of St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola during the Christian and Hidden Christian Period of Japan (16th–19th Centuries): Eucharistic Imagery and Forms of Devotion”
10:30 – Pause
11:00 – Antonio De Caro (UZH, GLOBECOSAL): “Strange Holy Creatures: Imagining St. Francis Xavier’s Miracle(s) of the Crab”
11:30 – Elisabetta Corsi (Sapienza, Università degli studi di Roma) and Alessandro Dell’Orto (Centro Studi Cinesi della Pontificia Università Urbaniana): “Picturing Sainthood in Shaanxi: The Miraculous Story of How Etienne Faber, S.J. (1597-1657) Became a Tudi Ye”
12:00 – Anthony E. Clark (Whitworth University): “China Baroque: Promoting China’s Jesuit Saints in Hagiographic Art and Drama”
12:30 – Lunch at the Villino, followed by a guided tour of the Bibliotheca Hertziana for conference speakers (Tristan Weddigen)
14:00 – Urte Krass (Universität Bern): “St. Thomas the Apostle on Three Continents: Tracing His Images and Relics in the 16th Century”
14:30 – Raphaèle Preisinger (UZH, GLOBECOSAL): “Competition and Discord in (Visual) Saint-Making: The Case of the Martyrs of Japan”
15:00 – Closing Remarks
15:30 – Leaving for a visit to Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI)
16:30 – Visit at ARSI
Global Economies of Salvation 