Subproject 7: The medial status of the body – the body as an image and images of the body: King Kāleb and other Ethiopian saints depicted in Portugal and Brazil in the 18th century

The aim of this subproject, which links Ethiopian studies and art history, is to examine the intermedial configurations of saintliness from the perspective of Critical Whiteness Studies. The role of skin colour in the characterisation of saints in texts and images is addressed diachronically, with a group of Ethiopian saints at the heart of this study. The comparison of the unmarked nature of skin colour in Byzantine, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic hagiographies from the sixth century onward to its explicit marking in the reception of these sources in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is of particular interest. The goal is not only to trace the medial shifts and semantic charges of these saintly figures over the centuries but also to highlight the relational structures that play a role in these markings – or the lack thereof. Recent research shows that, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Brazil, Ethiopian saints were used to establish Christian brotherhoods aimed primarily at appealing to enslaved African people.

The historically relational structures of skin indicate that the human body occupies an intermediate position; it has always been the subject of cultural interpretations and formations. As a site of images, the body oscillates between nature and culture. In all cultural contexts, the image of the body is shaped by formative processes, which are evident in aspects such as clothing, hairstyle, and even posing; it is thus embedded in multiple processes of image-making. Yet, biologistic readings continuously view the body as static. This intermediate position of the body shows that it is to be seen as a separate entity in intermedial structures that explore the space between body and image. After all, the image of the body is not formed at the moment a portrait is created; the posing alone indicates that previous images have been inscribed into the body, which must be considered in the processes of image creation.

The subproject closely examines the intrinsic medial characteristics of artistic genres such as printmaking and sculpture, while also analysing the attributions and metaphors found in related texts. Additionally, it explores the way in which saints’ bodies were depicted in the tension between their earthly existence of flesh and blood and their spiritual transcendence. In the research group’s terminology, the body is positioned in a very specific way at the interface between horizontal and vertical intermediality.

Thanks to its emphasis on the unique function of the human body within intermedial systems, this subproject is productively connected to subprojects 3 and 5, enabling close collaboration between the projects.