Journées d’étude : « A Jesuit Aesthetic? Thinking the Sensible and the Practice of Art in the Early Modern Society of Jesus » (Paris, 30 novembre – 1er décembre 2023)

Journées d’étude : « A Jesuit Aesthetic? Thinking the Sensible and the Practice of Art in the Early Modern Society of Jesus » (Paris, 30 novembre – 1er décembre 2023)

Organisation : Ralph Dekoninck, Antonin Liatard, Cécile Vincent-Cassy

Lieu : Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie / 1, rue du Séminaire de Conflans – 94220 Charenton-le-Pont (métro Liberté, ligne 8)

Dates : 30 novembre – 1er décembre 2023

Was there a Jesuit aesthetic?

We suggest to take this expression in the etymological sense of a thinking of the sensible, rather than a thinking of art, which cannot be confused with a theory of the image, even though these two fields are closely linked and therefore cannot be thought of separately. It seems important to broaden the focus to approach the question of art – which is not really theorized in Jesuit literature, with some exceptions (such as Possevino’s Tractatio de poesi et pictura humana or the Trattato della pittura e scultura by Ottonelli, written in collaboration with Pietro da Cortona) – but also of ornament (defended in particular in Bellarmine’s Disputationes de Controversis), through different ways that consider it in the wider field of a spiritual, pedagogical and apologetic culture that summons the sensible and thinks the image/art in terms of effects.

The aim of this conference is to examine the particularities of the Jesuit conception of the sensible, which can be discovered through a variety of writings, starting with those specific to the field of spirituality (in particular through the question of the application of the senses in Ignatian spirituality, as well as through the debates around mysticism), and crossing these approaches with those of rhetoric in order to fully grasp how the Christian tradition and that of Antiquity were articulated.

Indeed, it is at the crossroads of different types of sources that we can identify a thinking which does not present itself as a body of doctrine, but has its roots in Christian anthropology and psychology as well as in a theology of the visible. It will also be possible to specify the contours of this thought by paying attention to other types of literature, where the sensitive effect is thought of in terms of the spectator’s receptivity.

In addition to the exploration of texts, the conference will also explore the relationship between these texts and the works produced by/for the Jesuits. The aim is to shed light on these works through a framework of thinking, while showing that the latter is also influenced by the evolution of the arts between the 16^th and 17^th centuries, both in Europe (Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal, etc.) and in the American and Asian territories where the Jesuits carried out their missionary vocation and developed a dual strategy of adaptation to local artistic traditions combined with the importation of European plastic canons.

 

This conference is organized within the framework of the CoMArtis project “Coadjutores: Migrant Artists and Ideas in Iberian Globalization” (PID2020-117094-I00), funded by the Spanish National Research Agency and directed by Professors Juan Luis Gonzáles García (UAM) and Sara Fuentes Lázaro (UDIMA) in collaboration with other Spanish, European and Latin American scholars, together with the Group for Early Modernity Cultural Analysis (GEMCA) of the Université catholique de Louvain, and the UMR Héritages 9022 (CY Cergy Paris Université / CNRS / Ministère de la Culture)

 

30 November

10h Introduction

 

Chair: Carmen Fernández-Salvador

 

10h20 Maarten DELBEKE, UTH Zürich

Novelty and norm in Sforza Pallavicino’s views of poetry and art

 

10h40 Juan Luis GONZALES GARCIA, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

The Trattato della pittura e scultura by Ottonelli and Cortona (1652), between antitheatricality and

Iconocracy

 

11h Discussion & coffee break

 

11h40 Cécile VINCENT-CASSY, CY Cergy Paris Université / Héritages UMR 9022

Francisco Pacheco’s Art of Painting (Seville, 1649) as a Jesuit treatise

 

12h Ralph DEKONINCK, GEMCA / Université catholique de Louvain

Beauty and emotion. The uncertain status of pleasure in Jesuit culture

 

12h20 Discussion

12h40-14h30 Buffet lunch

 

Chair: Juan Luis Gonzáles García

 

14h30 Aline SMEESTERS, GEMCA / Université catholique de Louvain

The poetic innutrition of artworks according to Balbinus’ Verisimilia (Prague, 1666)

 

14h50 Hector RUIZ SOTO, CNRS / Héritages UMR 9022

Clarity versus ornamental complexity: Jesuit aesthetics and the challenge of stylistic obscurity

 

15h10 Discussion & coffee break

 

Chair: Cécile Vincent-Cassy

 

15h50 Bert DAELMANS, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas

Sentir y gustar. The application of the senses in Jesuit illustrated books from the early 17th century

 

16h10 Agathe BONNIN, CY Cergy Paris Université / Héritages UMR 9022 – Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Jesuit aesthetics and gender. Marina de Escobar’s sensitive relationship with Christ in the textual and

artistic images promoted by the Society of Jesus

 

16h30 Maxime CARTRON, CIREM 16-18 / Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

“The ghost of the Jesuit style”: normalizations of the baroque sensitive in 20th century France

 

16h50 Discussion

1^st December

 

Chair: Sara Fuentes Lázaro, UDIMA, Madrid

 

9h30 Caroline HEERING, GEMCA / Université catholique de Louvain

Between aesthetic and religious experience: the sensitive exaltation of ornament and ornamenta in festivities orchestrated by Jesuits in the 17th century in the Southern Netherlands

 

9h50 Antonin LIATARD, Université de Bourgogne – GEMCA / Université catholique de Louvain

Pauperism or exuberance? The Jesuit discourse on ornament, between the ideal of sobriety and the quest for sensitive effect (16th-17th centuries)

 

10h10 Discussion & coffee break

 

10h50 Paolo SANVITO, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienne

The significance of emblematics in Jesuit spaces in examples from the German Assistance

 

11h10 Maria BERBARA, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Jesuit cartography in Portuguese America: the case of “Brazil as an island”

 

11h30 Steffen ZIERHOLZ, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Jesuit Liminality

 

11h50 Discussion

12h20-14h30 Buffet lunch

 

Chair: Maria Berbara

 

14h30 Tanja PERICA-OTT, Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg im Breisgau

On Knowing: Art, visuality and the hierarchies of the gaze

 

14h50 Carmen FERNANDEZ-SALVADOR AYALA, Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Like marble and jasper: local materials and visual experience in the Amazon

 

15h10 Karine DURIN, Université de Nantes

Experiencing materiality and the powers of ingenuity in the aesthetic and intellectual practice of Jesuits in the Baroque age

 

15h30 Discussion & coffee break

 

Chair: Ralph Dekoninck

 

16h20 Émilie CHEDEVILLE, Université Paris Nanterre

Harmony of place and unity of faith. An overview based on some French Jesuit sermons from the modern era

 

16h50 Pierre Antoine FABRE, EHESS, Paris

L’image d’un saint. Recherches sur l’iconographie des premières promotions de saints jésuites (1556-1640)

 

17h20 Discussion