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

这个项目将对精神爱的表现进行第一次同类研究，特别是将它们放在早期现代精神中介理论的背景下。基于丘比特和心的形象，这是这一时期爱神灵性的无处不在的象征，它旨在揭示以象征形象为主的精神爱的广泛中介表达。例如，利用阿尔恰托和范维的象征书籍的对称展示中典型的象征和它们的组合，该项目将研究巴洛克爱情象征的创造、构成和有效性，并试图以当代以雅各布·马森的《幻象神秘论》为中心的精神中介理论为背景来解释它们。进一步的目的是研究媒介美学如何将轮廓赋予丘比特的形象，使其变得神秘和多方面，并允许它在辨别的爱欲、人类情感和明确的精神爱之间摇摆，并突出古代传统和解释克里斯蒂亚娜之间的复杂关系。同样，心--神圣之爱和内在人的化身--将在其不同的表现形式中被分析，从身体器官到精神爱的“非实体”象征。对这些情结的解释不可避免地借鉴了早期现代关于中介的理论，就像马森在17世纪中期所概括的那样；这项研究将试图展示他如何明确地将伦理、禁欲和神秘学的相关性归因于符号的使用，特别是精神爱的表现(博爱和爱神)。德国研究、新拉丁研究和艺术史领域的研究人员之间的跨学科合作预计将揭示关于丘比特和心脏的中间文本图像之间的相关性，构成水平和垂直精神中介之间的交叉点，并将展示这一点是如何实现的。丘比特形象和众多心形图案的中间基督化策略将以一种新的方法并列在一起，以理解早期现代灵性中介实践如何提供理论澄清，反之亦然。该项目的成员将与其他子项目(特别是SP1、3和4)密切合作，以标准化所使用的方法并提高视角。除了举办一系列关于这一主题的联合研讨会外，与会者还将在两本专著中介绍他们的研究成果，这两本专著分别是《爱神丘比特在早期现代时期的中间变质》和《巴洛克时期在阿古西亚理论和精神象征实践之间的中间地带》。还将撰写一篇艺术史论文和一篇关于心徽在早期现代时期的改编研究。

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.