"Silentium"el silencio cósmico como imagen en la Edad Media y en la modernidad

Resumo

This essay focuses on the illustrations of the apocalyptic passage of "silence in heaven" (Revelation 8.1) in a group of medieval manuscripts of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana, dated from the 10th to the 12th centuries. These images present a fascinating variety of pictorial solutions that have been largely overlooked by art historians: the combination of abstract and symbolic patterns, the deconstruction of script, and the exploration of the materiality of the parchment as a theatrical milieu to make silence present and palpable. I begin by tracing the textual and visual origins of the motif, advancing a hypothesis on the probable existence of a pictorial archetype from Beatus' own time (8th century), and continue by analyzing the conditions of production and reception of these images in the context of 10th-century Mozarabic monasticism and within practice of lectio divina, where the concept of silence acquired multiple meanings. To conclude, I develop a theoretical reflection on the problematics of the representation of silence, drawing analogies with several 20th-century artists such as John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg whose artistic experiments around this theme find their medieval counterparts in the productions of remarkable illuminators such as Ovecus and Petrus. Framing this essay is a critical examination of the results of the engagement of painters Fernand Léger and Roberto Matta with the illustrations of one of these manuscripts, the so-called Morgan Beatus, which had been famously introduced to them by Meyer Schapiro in the 1930's, shedding light on the complexities of the dialogue between medieval and modern art.