Visual Aggression: Images of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Germany

Assaf Pinkus Visual Aggression: Images of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Germany University Park: Penn State University Press, 2021. Yet few actually feature saints in the throes of agony; most martyrs appear instead to face their torment with remarkable stoicism. [...]one wonders how unmediated medieval encounters with such galleries of violence really were since church imagery was often activated for viewers through verbal remediation: indeed, we know preachers explicitly referenced architectural sculpture in their sermons, and Conrad Rudolph’s 2018 article (Art Bulletin 100, no. 1) has shown guides were often available to explain complex art programs to visiting pilgrims. [...]this union importantly defers devotional experience, instead prompting the viewer’s actual experience of pain so that “the pictured suffering becomes their own in a literal manner” (71). [...]compounding the issue, substantial portions of the introduction, chapters one, three, and five are recycled (often verbatim) without acknowledgment or citation from his 2014 book, Sculpting Simulacra, and several previous journal publications.1 Many readers will undoubtedly appreciate Pinkus’s emphasis on nondevotional responses to martyrdom scenes as a refreshing alternative to the imitation Christi model that has traditionally informed interpretations of these images.