Drawing on original research covering different periods and spaces, this book sets out to appreciate the specific place of images in the history of evangelisation in the long modern period. How can we reconceptualise the functions of the visual mediation of the gospel message, both in terms of the production and reception of this message and in terms of its effective mediators, artists, religious, and cultural ambassadors? The contributions in this book offer multiple geographical and historical insights regarding the circulation of the image on the global scale of the Christianised world or the world in the process of being Christianised, from China to Iberia. Combining the contribution of historians and art historians, the authors highlight the points of intercultural encounter and tension around preaching, catechesis, devotional practices, and the propagandistic use of images.
Through its aesthetic and social study of the image, and by examining the inner and outer borders of Europe and the mission lands, Eloquent Images contributes significantly to the history of evangelisation, one of the major dynamics of the first European globalisation.
Giuseppe Capriotti is professor in early modern art history at the University of Macerata.
Pierre-Antoine Fabre is professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and studies modern Catholicism and evangelization.
Sabina Pavone is professor of early modern history and global history at the University of Macerata.
Overcoming the traditional incommunicability between historians and art historians, the authors of the essays in the book work together by "questioning" the images involved in religious propaganda from a global viewpoint. In doing so, they offer new insights from an empirical perspective.Ivana Čapeta Rakić, University of Split