Joanne Anderson, Late Medieval Art and the Sacralising of the Landscape

This lecture will explore the sacralising of the landscape by focusing on exterior wall paintings in the late medieval Alpine territories and specifically the depiction of saints. It will consider how their imaged presence on primary and secondary routes in the mountains managed the visual and spiritual experience of travellers as well as those in the local community, who lived with the imagery on a daily basis. In this way, we will think about apotropaic values but also aesthetic ones. These painted saints persisted, and were therefore operational, in the landscape for up to one hundred years at a time which allows us to think about the temporal, spatial and experiential elements of 'art' and how they contributed to the sacralising of the landscape. On a more practical level, the lecture will also look to the jobbing artisans responsible for the making of the images, whose workshop practice speaks to circulation systems and the reality of seasonal migration.

Joanne Anderson is Lecturer in Art History at the Warburg Institute. Her research interests include Mary Magdalen in the medieval and early modern period, art and landscape and exhibition history. Joanne’s doctoral thesis on Mary Magdalen has been incorporated into her monograph, entitled Moving with the Magdalen: Late Medieval Art and Devotion in the Alps (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). It focuses on the importance of the mountains to Mary Magdalen’s cult and contingent imagery found in parish churches and chapels across this geography. Her prior publications explore connections to pilgrimage, religious theatre and female patronage in the cross-cultural Alps. Before joining the Warburg, Joanne held positions at Birkbeck College (2014-15), the University of Sussex (2013-14) and the University of Warwick (2009-2013).