Andrew Murray and Margit Thøfner

Abstract

This opening essay establishes the rationale and scope of the present issue, which examines how bodies were visually constituted in Europe across the medieval and early modern periods. Moving beyond the notion of images as mere representations, the essays explore how artworks and other forms of visual culture actively shaped, perpetuated and challenged ideas of embodiment. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches, contributors investigate the dynamic interplay between the physical and the visual, considering how images informed practices of veneration, medicalisation and sensation, as well as the conceptual boundaries between materiality and representation. By foregrounding the formative role of visualisation in the history of bodies, this collection demonstrates the necessity of interdisciplinary methods for understanding the complex entwinement of images and corporeality in premodern Europe.

Keywords: medieval art, early modern art, visual culture, embodiment, materiality, discourse, bodies, sculpture, representation, ontology of images, interdisciplinary art history, corporeality

Full text: Picturing Bodies_0_Introduction_Murray_&_Thøfner

DOI: 10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2025w00

Biographical note 
Andrew Murray is a lecturer in art history at The Open University, UK.
Margit Thøfner is a senior lecturer in art history at The Open University, UK.