Le forme del divino. Problemi di arte sacra tra prima modernità e Novecento

In the Western world, painted or sculpted images have long been considered ‘incarnations’ of the Divine, and have found their justification in this dual nature, heavenly and earthly at the same time. In becoming man, Christ himself became a ‘figure’, establishing for the Church Fathers the legitimacy of the image. Worship images have thus been able to acquire affective and liturgical dimensions over the millennia: they support, welcome and revive the bond that holds a community together, thus in Western Christianity up to the Reformation and in Orthodox Christianity. This book investigates and interrogates the theologians of the early modern age – Erasmus or Calvin – but also writers and philosophers – Dostoevsky and Florensky, Heidegger, Simone Weil, Pasolini – who expressed a reasoned dissent in relation to the nineteenth and twentieth century avant-gardes, claiming instead the metaphysical or religious foundation of the image.