Where His Feet Had Trodden: The Space of the "Eastern" Carpet in Hans Memling's Saint John Altarpiece. (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Engler, Rachel Julia
• Is Part Of: Konsthistorisk tidskrift. Volume 87:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 45
• Page End: 59
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: Art -- Periodicals; Kunstgeschiedenis (wetenschap); Kunst; Electronic journals; 705
• DOI: 10.1080/00233609.2017.1321040
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0023-3609

Abstract

Abstract : "The heterotopia, " Michel Foucault writes, is "capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several places, several sites that are in themselves incompatible." This paper argues for a heterotopic understanding of the Oriental carpet in its depicted form within Hans Memling's paintings of Christ and Mary. Memling's painted carpets are imagined territorially and to introduce a different kind of space into images otherwise tentatively whole. Such an understanding not only pushes against a narrative in which Eastern objects in Northern interiors primarily suggest a flourishing economy but also demonstrates the painted carpet's participation in the tradition of virtual pilgrimage and the Holy Land relic. Though far from sacred in its domestic use in Northern Europe, the carpet achieves a latent symbolic function when represented in Memling's painting. It is transformed into a generalized relic of walking and marks a moment of encounter between a holy body and an object made thereby holy too.