Representations of love in the Early Modern period seen against the backdrop of Baroque theory on symbolic art

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This project will conduct the first study of its kind into representations of spiritual love, placing them specifically in the context of Early Modern theories on spiritual intermediality. Based on figurations of Cupid and the heart, the omnipresent symbol of amor spiritualis in this period, it aims to shed some light on the extensive intermedial representations of spiritual love predominantly found in emblematic images. Drawing on quintessential symbols and the combinations of them typically found in the symmedial presentation of books of emblems by Alciato and van Veen, for example, the project will examine the creation, composition and effectiveness of Baroque representations of love and attempt to interpret them against the backdrop of contemporary theories on spiritual intermediality centred around Jakob Masen’s Speculum imaginum veritatis occultae.A further aim is to examine the way in which intermedial aesthetics lends contours to the figure of Cupid, making it enigmatic and multifaceted and allowing it to oscillate between discerning Eros, human emotion and pronouncedly spiritual love, as well as highlighting the complex relationship between ancient tradition and ‘interpretatio Christiana’. In a similar vein, the heart – the embodiment of divine love and of the inner person – will be analysed in its various representations, ranging from a bodily organ to a ‘disembodied’ symbol of spiritual love. Interpreting these complexes inevitably draws on Early Modern theorising on intermediality, as epitomised by Masen around the mid-17th century; the research will attempt to show how he explicitly ascribed ethical, ascetical and mystagogical relevance to the use of symbols, notably to the representation of spiritual love (caritas and amor divinus). The interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers in the fields of German Studies, Neo-Latin Studies and Art History is expected to reveal that the correlation between intermedial text-imagery about Cupid and the heart constitutes a crossing point between horizontal and vertical spiritual intermediality and will also show how this was achieved. The strategies for intermedial Christianisation of the figure of Cupid and of the numerous heart motifs will be juxtaposed in a new approach to understanding how the Early Modern practice of spiritual intermediality provides clarification of the theory, and vice versa.The members of the project will work closely with other sub-projects (particularly SP 1, 3 and 4) to standardise the methodology used and sharpen the perspective. In addition to staging a number of joint workshops on the subject, the participants will present their research findings in two monographs entitled Intermedial Metamorphoses of Cupid, the God of Love, in the Early Modern Period and Baroque Intermediality between Argutia Theory and Spiritual Emblematic Practice. An art history thesis and a study on adaptations of the heart emblem in the Early Modern period will also be written.