113 Clarke The Icon and The Index

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THE ICON AND THE INDEX: MODES OF INVOKING THE BODY'S PRESENCE
David Clarke. The American Journal of Semiotics. Kent: 1992. Vol. 9, Iss. 1; pg. 49, 34 pgs
Full Text (15323 words)
Copyright Semiotic Society of America 1992
Western painting from the time of the Renaissance until the arrival of modernism can be broadly characterized as being
concerned with making the represented space and its occupants as immediately present to the spectator as possible,
with dissolving the painted surface and opening up an illusion of a three-dimensional world as if it existed before the
viewing eye. To achieve this abolition of spatial and temporal distance-to eliminate from awareness the gap between the
moment of origin and that of reception-anything which draws attention to the body of the spectator, the space of viewing,
and the time of viewing, must be removed. The spectator, that is, must be constructed as a disembodied eye able to
apprehend the whole image as if instantaneously.
Awareness of the body of the artist and the time and space of making must similarly be erased for mimetic art to perform
its conjuring trick of presentness - like the spectator, the painter must also be reduced to an eye, and the act of painting
construed as if taking place outside duration. In terms of the actual practice of painting this means an emphasis on what
Norman Bryson (1983:92), elaborating a view of Western painting similar to (and influential on) the one I am outlining here
talks of as 'erasive' brushwork. Such brushwork does not draw attention to the painted surface or offer the possibility of
being read as a trace of the artist. It is brushwork attempting to serve only an iconic function, and desiring to avoid carrying
any indexical baggage along with it. A trace of the movement of an artist's hand across the canvas is liable to bring
awareness of the artist as an embodied being, of the process (the duration) of painting and of the space of the work's
making (that is, the space in front of the canvas rather than the space 'within' it).
My attempt to characterize several centuries of Western art as sharing this common mimetic orientation obviously requires
a great deal of qualification before it can be matched against specific historical instances, and it is also necessary to admit
the existence of a great number of exceptions to the dominant pattern. Nevertheless, I think I can indicate a vantage point
from which this level of abstract generalization can be seen as a helpful characterization by pointing to the difference
between Western mimetic art and Chinese literati painting and calligraphy. In both these latter art forms brushwork which is
visible as brushwork is the norm, and an elaborate aesthetic context exists in which those indexical marks are the subject
of interpretation. One can also find a deliberate exploitation of the index within Western art by turning to a consideration of
the modern period. The foregrounded, visible brushwork of much modernist painting may be taken as a deliberate attempt
to produce an undermining of the mimetic system, to expose the falsity of its claims to be able to make the world present.
The function of the indexical here is that of the trickster, undermining iconic strategies.
Elsewhere (Clarke 1992:81-99) I have considered in more detail the role of the index in both modern Western art and
Chinese painting and calligraphy, but my concern here is to examine the role of the indexical sign in premodern Western
art. I wish to consider, however, cases where it can be said to be supportive of iconic signification rather than its enemy.
That such cases exist might seem to count against the argument which I have just been sketching, but this is not in fact so.
In modern Western painting the new emphasis on indexical reference did undermine the mimetic system because visible
brush traces were signs of the body of the artist. The category of indexical signs I am considering here are those which
signify the represented body. Such signs, I will argue, function to shore up, to reinforce, the sometimes fragile power of
mimetic art, helping it to perform more convincingly its task of making the represented body as immediately present as
possible.
In early Christian culture, which I would like to consider at some length, one could argue for a stronger version of the
proposition I have just been outlining. Here the importance of the index is arguably even more evident than at later times,
and it is the iconic which takes the supplementary role to begin with. The indexical precedes the iconic, clearing a space in
which it can appear and grow in importance over time until it overshadows the index, relegating it to the supporting
position.
The context within which the indexical has this early importance is the cult of relics. Representational art did not play a
significant ritual function in Christianity from the very beginning, ' but when it came to do so it achieved its position by taking
on some of the functions which relics had performed in earlier years. Ernst Kitzinger, speaking of Greek Christianity and
dating the beginning of the shift of emphasis from relics to images to the late sixth and seventh centuries, writes that 'the
forms which the cult of icons took are strikingly similar to those one encounters in the cult of relics.' (Kitzinger 1954:115) In
particular he mentions the belief in magical power, so important in the early cult of images, as something that had been
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associated with the cult of relics all along. In the Western church, where relics played a central role until much later, (Geary
1978:13) we see a consequent delay in the development of representational art as a resource for Christianity-even if the
possibilities of the iconic are perhaps more fully developed there eventually. (Geary 1978:13 sees the ninth to the
eleventh centuries as the high point of the cult of relics in the West.)
In distinguishing between relics and art as resources used by Christianity I do not mean to claim that relics are indexical
signs and that images are iconic signs. The index and the icon are modes of signification rather than categories of
objects, and indeed no one type of sign (whether icon, index or symbol, to use the terminology of Charles Sanders
Peirce) is ever found in pristine isolation.2 (1940:108) What I am attempting to claim, however, is that iconicity is the
dominant mode in the case of images, whereas indexicality is privileged in the case of relics. This is so because it is by
means of its indexical quality, its contiguity with or status as a trace of the saint, that the relic functions to make present that
holy figure to the faithful.
One could attempt to classify relics in terms of their apparent3 indexical proximity to what they represent. At one end of
the scale might come something that had been in contact with a saint's relic-a relic of a relic, as it were. A greater degree
of closeness might be afforded by something which had been in contact with the living body of the saint (such as an item
of clothing), and perhaps something which bore visible traces of that living body would have a higher value again -since it
would have inscribed upon it its status as an index. Beyond this might be the category of objects which are products of the
body (such as hair, milk, or tears) followed by fragments of the body itself, a category extending up to include the 'whole'
body of the saint.4
Whatever the degree of metonymic distance involved, all relics function to evoke the presence of the holy figure they refer
to. For this to occur their status as signs must be denied-rather than being a reminder of a saint, a reference to him, his
bones are to be taken as the saint himself. Gregory of Nyasa, for instance, approaches this identification in his remarks on
the adoration of relics: 'those who behold them embrace, as it were, the living body itself in its full flower, they bring eye,
mouth, ear, all their senses into play and then, shedding tears of reverence and passion, they address to the martyr their
prayer of intercession as though he were hale and present.' (in Kritzinger 1954:116)
Not only does the saint appear so present in the relic that one can talk to him, but communication is felt to occur in the
other direction too. The abolition of spatial and temporal distance is so great that the saint's relics can perform miracles,
can act on their present day surroundings. Indeed, the ability of relics to display miraculous powers would have been
taken as the strongest and perhaps only necessary proof of their authenticity. Saint Helena was able to tell Christ's cross
apart from its two companions because it performed a miracle.
Through their production of a sense of holy presence relics helped sustain the structures of Christian ideology-their
(literally) tangible quality would have provided a point of contact with a system of beliefs whose credibility might otherwise
have been eroded by an abstractness. An analysis of the function of relics does not end, however, with discussion of the
role they played in inculcating religious beliefs. The power relics were felt to have led to their being involved more broadly
in the field of social activity. According to Patrick Geary's Furta Sacra, for instance, the prominence of relics during the
period between 800 and noo was largely due to conscious Carolingian policy. Promotion of relic use can be seen in the
reenactment (801 and 813) of the canon of the Council of Carthage requiring that all altars lacking relics should be
destroyed. Charles the Great (who had a compartment for the insertion of relics in his emperor's throne) made the
practice of swearing oaths on relics the norm, extending their status in the legal sphere as well.
Because of the power which was felt to reside in relics many rulers utilized them in order to bolster their own political
stature. The possession of the remains of St. Peter, for instance, helped provide a basis for the authority of the popes,
and newly consecrated bishops would (till 1078) take oaths of allegiance to the papacy on his body. It was not, of course,
a case of people merely exploiting the relics that happened to be in their possession: many rulers went to great trouble in
actively accumulating relics on account of the prestige they bestowed. Louis IX of France, who acquired the crown of
thorns in 1238 from King Baldwin II (the Latin king of Jerusalem), and Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, who had by
1520 accumulated 19,013 relics, are but two examples of this tendency. The latter's enormous collection would have
entitled him to a reduction on time spent in purgatory of 1,902,202 years and 270 days, on account of the indulgences
given by the papacy to those who offered reverence to relics. (Bentley 1985:176)5
Not all the impetus for the cult of relics came from above. Religious communities were also active in acquiring them, as
Geary has demonstrated in his study of medieval relic theft. Despite attempts to control the movement of saints'
remains,6 'translations' were widespread, and would often be justified as obedience to the will of the saint involved, who
might perhaps have expressed the desire to have his body moved in a dream. Possession of a relic would provide a
monastic community with some degree of autonomy from secular power in a time of political turmoil, since they could
respond to pressure by 'humiliating' relics-subjecting them to symbolic indignities - and thereby bring public opinion to
their defense. Relics could also provide direct economic benefits to a community because of the pilgrims they would
draw. The relics of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral offer a particularly good illustration of this: the various
shrines to that saint drew in a revenue of one thousand and seventy-one pounds in 1120. (Bentley 1985:98)
Because of the central importance of relics in medieval life-the many functions they served-demand for them was great.
One way in which this demand was met was through the 'discovery' of new relics, but clearly such a method is not
altogether satisfactory. The manufacturers involved would need to exercise extreme caution in order to avoid being
discovered, would have to have their stories well prepared in advance. In this respect one could perhaps talk of a natural
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advantage of images over relics (should the former be able to take the latter's place) since they could be openly (and
therefore more easily) produced.
Another means to meet the need for relics was to divide up existing ones, but this too had something less than
satisfactory about it. Despite the claim of Theodoret that "when the body is divided . . . the grace remains undivided"
(Bentley 1985:95) one cannot help but feel that a small piece of bone is somehow less valuable than a whole saint's body,
and not just for simple quantitative reasons. The whole body is more acceptable because the indexical link to the saint it
shares with the smaller fragment is supplemented by a greater degree of iconic resemblance. Even in the case of relics,
which I have categorized as operating primarily through indexical reference, an iconic dimension is already present on
occasions. But to the extent that a relic is divided up into fragments this iconicity is destroyed. Here again images have an
advantage over relics in that many images of the same subject can be made without a diminishing level of iconicity being
experienced. If a relic is multiplied without the process of fragmentation which injures iconicity then it becomes prey to the
kind of ridicule John Calvin directed when he noted that St. Giles had a body in Toulouse as well as in the town bearing his
name in Languedoc.
A further method of increasing the number of relics which has the advantage of not requiring their fragmentation is the
production of what I referred to earlier as a 'relic of a relic' when discussing the differing degrees of indexical proximity
relics can have to their referent. Such a secondary relic would commonly take the form of oil or of a cloth, one condition
being that it should be easily portable. An example of the creation of a relic of this kind can be found in a sixth century
account telling how to visit the alleged tomb of St. Peter in Rome. The supplicant is encouraged to open the barriers
around the saint's tomb, and then a little window which they should lean through to ask for what they needed. The
instructions to the pilgrim then state that "if he would like to have a holy relic, he should leave a small cloth there."
Following this, he is required to pray, fast and wait, "and then-by an amazing wonder the cloth which he draws up from the
tomb will be rich with divine power." (Bentley 1985: 44) Biblical authority could be invoked to support a practice of this
kind: Luke 8.44 reports the healing of a woman (the 'Hemorrhissa') who had touched the hem of Christ's garment, whilst
Acts 19.12 tells that "handkerchiefs and aprons" were taken to the sick from St. Paul's (living) body "and the diseases
departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them."
When images first start to be used in Christian ritual they appear to fill a role analogous to that of secondary relics: they
enable the buoyant demand for portable objects imbued with a sense of holy presence to be fulfilled. It is important to
note, furthermore, that they seem able to evoke that sense of presence primarily because of their (claimed) indexical link
to the holy body-that is, in the same way as the relics. In early accounts of images in the Christian tradition that indexical
link tends to be stressed as the important factor, over and above the links to their referent via iconic means.
By way of an introductory example we can consider a case which straddles the borderline between the categories of relic
and image. Antoninus of Piacenza mentions in the description of his journey to the holy land an impression of Christ's
chest and hands miraculously left on the stone column of the flagellation. (Kritzinger 1954:104) What seems to be
indicated here is something less than a complete image,7 rather we are being told of a particularly special kind of relic.
Many objects associated with the passion of Christ have been treated as relics, amongst them the tail of the ass he rode
into Jerusalem (Genoa), its skeleton (Vicenza) (Bentley 1985:243), the porphyry slab on which the soldiers guarding him
played dice (St. John Lateran), the table on which the last supper was celebrated, and'twenty-eight marble steps from
Pilate's palace in Jerusalem (the 'Sancta Scala'). Clearly the column of the flagellation would, of itself, have as much right
as those steps (for instance) to be considered as a relic since Christ's body had been in contact with both-the
impressions upon it merely serve to underline the indexical link which is already there, to strengthen the sense of
contiguity. The relic is further strengthened in that the traces on the column seem to have had an iconic quality, putting it in
an even more select group. To this type of relic-namely those wherein an iconic image is produced as an intrinsic effect of
the creation of the indexical trace-would belong such examples as the footprint of Mohammed to be seen in the Dome of
the Rock in Jerusalem. This latter would share with the marked column another special distinguishing feature: both are
indices which claim to have been miraculously created (since they are made in material too resistant to have taken an
impression through normally explicable means). The significance of the supernatural index is not only that it testifies to the
power of its maker, but that it makes him the conscious active author of the trace.
In other cases the existence of an image is more clearly indicated than in the example I have discussed, but nevertheless
the indexical means by which those images came into being is stressed in the accounts, is treated as more central to their
value than is their iconicity. This is true, for instance, of the mandylion of Edessa. Although accounts of this image vary in
detail, it was said to have been produced by Christ wiping his face on a linen cloth (possibly his own garment, in which
case the indexical linkage is further strengthened). This miraculously impressed image was taken to Edessa by Thaddeus
where it cured the illness of King Agbar, in accordance with a promise made earlier by Christ in a letter written to the
ruler.8 The mandylion continued to manifest its miracle-working power, acting (according to Evagrius) as a relic might to
defend Edessa when it was besieged by the Persians in the sixth century. (I am indebted here to Kitzinger 1954:113 - 14;
Cormack 1985:124; and Kuryluk 1991:38-47.) In the tenth century, because of its fame, it was moved to Constantinople,
becoming an imperial possession.
Further examples of images being produced by this technique of (miraculous) imprinting from the living holy body are
available. A very similar story to that of the mandylion is told by the pilgrim Antoine de Plaisance, who claims to have seen
at Memphis (c570) a holy face miraculously imprinted on a cloth which Christ had used to wash his face.9 This image
displayed its supernatural nature by changing its appearance in front of the spectator's eyes (as the mandylion was also
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said to do; see Kuryluk 1991:47.)10 Cloth again provides the support for the image in the case of Veronica's veil, a
sudarium which became imprinted with Christ's features when she offered it to him to wipe his face on the way to
Golgotha. The active authorship of the image by its subject and the direct physical connection with his body are both
implied in this verbal picture of a sweat-cloth onto which has been exuded an image.11
The idea of a likeness actually made from bodily fluids is also present in another image of Christ on cloth, the very famous
Turin Shroud, since certain marks on the image are commonly interpreted as blood stains. Indexical linkage is surely at an
even higher level when an image can claim, as in this case, to be made of the represented body and not just by it. The
idea of a relic or image as an attempt to make present that which is absent has a particular twist to it in the case of this
supposed burial shroud, since the very absence of Christ's body from the sepulchre is so central a part of the biblical
narrative at the point where this linen appears in it, as the marker of the spot the body is absent from.
The repeated involvement of cloth as a medium in the cases I have just been considering makes these objects directly
analogous to the brandea, the cloths used to transmit power from the relics with which they have come in contact (and
which I have already discussed). They differ only in that their (supposed) contact is with the living body rather than the
remains of a holy figure, and in that their indexicality is supplemented by their iconicity. One should not overstate, however,
the extent to which the iconic has grown in importance here. As the eye-witness accounts of the Turin shroud and
Veronica's veil (the two examples which exist today in a more than purely textual form) reveal, the image in neither is
particularly easy to see. Rather it is a matter of interpreting and extrapolating from the indexical traces, of seeing the
image in those traces. Indeed, had the degree of iconicity been too high in either of these cases it would have had the
effect of undermining belief in the (more important) indexical link.
The image of Camuliana,12 found in Cappadocia but brought in 574 to Constantinople, differs from the images I have
already discussed in that it was not created by (a supposed) direct impression of the represented body. The indexical
connection to (indeed 'authorship' by) the referent are still present however since a miraculous celestial origin is claimed
for it. According to a Syriac chronicle of 567 it was found by a woman who had desired to see Christ face to face, in a
water basin in her garden. Although there are other images which appear in an analogous manner13 it seems that this
more ineffable kind of origin was perhaps less convincing. This may be conjectured since in a later version of the story
Christ appears in person and presses his face against the cloth, and even in the earlier version the celestially produced
image itself produces a mechanical copy on the cloth used by its finder to wrap it.14
A further category of sacred image, neither celestially produced nor the result of a miraculous printmaking, is represented
by the painting of the Virgin and child by St. Luke. That image does not share a property of all the images so far
discussed, namely of having been produced by the individual whose body it represents. Nevertheless, it is made by the
hand of someone who himself has a holy status, and so retains a degree of indexical proximity to the sacred. Less exalted
authorship is present in the case of an image of St. Theodore of Sykeon made surreptitiously by a painter observing him
through a small opening in a wall, (Cormack 1985:39) but the image's having been made in the era of the holy figure does
endow it with a degree of connectedness to its subject.15 That connectedness is enhanced through its having been
blessed by the saint after its completion, a form of relation which is also claimed in the case of St. Luke's image of the
Virgin.16
With discussion of the image of St. Theodore we have begun to enter the realm of images which are openly admitted to
have been made by human hands, but even here the theme of indexicality continues, being displayed in differing ways. In
the case of the Santissimo Bambino d'Arcoeli in Rome, for example, we have an image which claims to be made of olive
wood taken from the Garden of Gethsemane. (Turner and Turner I9y8:plate II) Indexical contact with the holy is
maintained here by the material of the sculpture, the wood being a kind of secondary relic of Christ which has been
transformed into an image of him. A further way in which an indexical link is maintained can be seen in the instance of a
mosaic of the Virgin being constructed in the Church of the Latomos at Thessaloniki, which supposedly changed
miraculously overnight into an image of the young Christ. This story of (as it were) joint divine and human authorship of an
image seems almost to have as its subtext a comment on the insufficiency of purely human image production. (Cormack
1985:132).I? That same insufficiency is also demonstrated in an account in the Coptic Encomium of St. Menas of a
painted image of the saint on a wooden tablet which had to be brought into contact with the saint's remains in order that the
saint's 'blessing and power' could enter it. (Kitzinger 1954:117) Here there is almost a mimicry of, a going through the
motions of, the mechanical process of imprinting even though the saint's image is already on the panel. This narrative
explicitly constructs the image as a second-best substitute for the relic, was something made by a Phrygian military
commander only because the saint's remains (taken with him on an expedition to Libya as a palladium)18 refused to move
any further. The portability of an image, analogous to that of the brandeum, is clearly one of its advantages -this quality
enables it to abolish spatial barriers too the saint's presence.
Although I have had occasion to discuss images of St. Theodore and St. Menas, the great majority of the images referred
to so far have been representations of Christ or the Virgin. A factor here is the relative absence of primary relics
associated with Christ and the Virgin due to their bodily assumption to heaven. Only more indexically distant secondary
relics such as the cross (or the tail of the ass and other such items mentioned earlier) have tended to be available in
respect of these figures, making them less tangible in relic terms than the saints.19 Where bodily relics have appeared
(as in the case of the Virgin's milk or Christ's milk teeth) their status has been problematic. It was not only Calvin who
attacked such relics, even the Catholic Church has been embarrassed by a cult of the holy prepuce in Calcata, north of
Rome. Consequently, given the central importance of Christ and the Virgin to church doctrine it is natural that once images
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become established as an acceptable alternative means to relics of evoking the presence of the holy that these two
figures should tend to predominate. To represent a saint when you could represent Christ would be to introduce an
unnecessary distance from the sacred, would be to sacrifice one of the advantages that images had over relics. Of
course, the very focus of images on the figures of Christ and the Virgin itself reinforced their central importance.20
As the history of the man-made image continues, the insufficiency of iconic reference to the holy ceases to be so strongly
felt. As the conventions of iconic reference become more familiar, more strongly grounded, the need for support from an
indexical link to the same referent becomes less necessary. A sense of presence is evoked primarily by means of the
seductive rhetoric of the iconic itself. As Kitzinger notes, (1954:116) most of the early references to adoration or other
ceremonial use of images involve an image of miraculous origin, but as image use becomes established this is less
necessarily the case. I will have something to say in due course about later images of the Christian tradition, and will argue
that indexical support for iconic reference does not altogether disappear, but I would like to consider here one particular
subgenre of (undisguisedly) man-made images which, although employing iconic rather than indexical means primarily,
still refers back to the cult of magically produced images.
This particular category, which in its earliest manifestations is a further part of the story of transition from relics to images,
is that of images which depict miraculously produced images. The many replicas of the mandylion which were to be found
in Byzantine churches21 are images of this kind, offering no claim of indexical proximity to their referent, but depicting
images which do have such a claim.
The mandylion is not alone amongst the miraculously produced images already mentioned in being subject to such a
secondary elaboration. The fame of the veil of Veronica is magnified by the many sculpted and painted representations
that have appeared depicting it, and the Turin shroud (to take a more modern example) is known largely through the
photos that have been made of it.22 What is lost in terms of indexical proximity is to be balanced in these cases not only
by the opportunities for multiplication, but by the opportunities for greater legibility. The technical possibilities of
photography enabled the image on the Turin shroud to be brought into focus - the body it claimed to be a negative imprint
of becomes (positively) visible in a photographic negative. The representation uses its iconic resources to improve upon
the original, to specify what to see in it.23 It exerts a power over that which it is apparently a servant to. In El Greco's St.
Veronica (Munich, Alte Pinkothek), for instance, the face of Christ has a degree of iconic detail which would, if found in the
original, have undermined its claims to indexical authenticity.24
El Greco's painting seems to demonstrate the growing hegemony of the iconic over the indexical, the shift of power
between them which has occurred. Another example, however, can be used to underline that indexicality does not
disappear from Christian art altogether - even when art has attained a high degree of mimetic power it still has moments of
doubt concerning its ability to make present the sacred. Guercino's St. Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin seems to
offer (as Arthur Danto suggests) (Danto 1991: 212-14) a fairly self-conscious meditation on the difference between the
developed mimetic idiom it is employing and the simpler, more archaic style of the image by St. Luke that it depicts. The
holy image in this case is itself a painting (as opposed to a trace as in the case of the mandylion or Veronica's Veil) and so
this juxtaposition, this doubleness is possible-indeed inevitable: the indexical is not subsumed in, consumed by, the
iconic.
Guercino, in Danto's reading, is not simply displaying the power of his own developed iconic language over that of the
archaic painting contained within it. Rather, he is pointing out that despite its more developed mimetic ability, his image is
unable to offer the same closeness to its subject that St. Luke's is -a closeness which is demonstrated by the adoring
attitude of the angel within the painting towards the subject of St. Luke's. The more the image displays its ability to abolish
temporal distance, to make us present at the scene of St. Luke's studio, the more it marks out its difference from the
archaic but indexically connected painting it contains -an image more concerned with its relationship to its subject than its
relationship to the beholder (who is so directly addressed by the figure of St. Luke in Guercino's image). It is as if
Guercino is saying that the closest he can get to the holy body is to make a representation of a representation of it.
An earlier painting of the St. Luke painting which experiences none of the complications found here is the Altdorfer
Schone Maria of Regensburg (CI 519-22). (Freedberg 1989:101 and Baxandall 1980:83-4) Rather than representing St.
Luke in the act of painting this is simply a version (via an intermediary version) of the S. Maria Maggiore Original' itself.
Altdorfer's image in turn came to be regarded as capable of working miracles, its power perhaps being enhanced
(indexically) by its placement on the site of an earlier miracle of the virgin.25
Persistence of the importance of the indexical in the face of the growing power of (iconic) images, a theme I have been
alluding to here, can be demonstrated in a further way. Even when no miraculous origin is claimed for a miracle-working
image, direct contact with it, or contact via an intermediary object, will characteristically be required for its power to be
transmitted. The metonymic dimension is preserved in the use of images even when it is being abandoned in respect of
the creation of them. Since we are as likely nowadays to encounter the images of Christian art in an art museum (or if in a
church, in a church-as-a-site-of-tourism) it is perhaps particularly important to emphasize the ritual role associated with
them before aesthetic distance was invented and in places where it has not intruded. The attentive visitor to a Catholic
church will soon become aware that tactile responses to, say, a sculptural representation of a holy figure have not
disappeared for everyone,26 but in the museum physical contact with art works is explicitly taboo.
Contact with the image can be effected in a variety of ways. Touching is common, but ingestion also occurs. Freedberg
1989: 178 mentions the eating of paper images obtained from pilgrimage shrines, and in one story a fragment of the
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original artwork is used - plaster scraped from a fresco depicting Sts. Cosmas and Damian being mixed with water to form
a health-giving potion. This latter method offers an extreme example of somatic contact with the holy body,27 calling to
mind the Eucharist.28
A parallel with relics is seen in cases where some intermediary object is required to transfer the image's miracle-working
power. Earlier I noted how images could themselves function as means of transmitting the power of relics, and here we
can consider cases where images (now increased in status) themselves make use of such subsidiary materials. Two
examples can be found in the Life of Theodore of Sykeon: (Cormack 1985:24 and 35-6) on one occasion he is said to
have been cured of the bubonic plague by drops of dew which fell on him from an image of Christ which happened to
have been above him in a Church, and on another he prayed in front of an image famous for exuding a sweet-smelling oil,
with the result that oil gathered into a bubble and poured down into his eyes. Even the miraculously-created mandylion
required an intermediary of this kind to perform its feat of protecting Edessa from the Persian siege. Water which had
been sprinkled on the face of the image was applied to a fire which then consumed an artificial hill the Persians had been
building as an assault tower. (Kitzinger 1954:104 and Kuryluk 1991:45)
Parallel to the role played by dew, oil and water in the stories recounted above is a particular category of intermediary
material associated with images, that of bodily substances secreted by or otherwise extracted from images. Calvin talks of
crucifixes at Salvatierra and Orange on which beards are said to grow, and others that are said to shed tears, (Calvin
1870:248; see Baxandall 1980:59 on a fake weeping statue) and these certainly illustrate the phenomenon I am
describing. Other illustrations are found in stories where images bleed when attacked. In Writing in Gold, Robin Cormack
notes that this is said to have occurred in the case of an image of Christ at Berytus, and with a mosaic of the Virgin and
Child on Cyprus. David Freedberg notes accounts of the same thing happening in the case of the Madonna dell'Arco
(near Naples) after it had been hit by a ball thrown by a young man.29 Clearly actual bodily products would provide a
greater degree of indexical proximity than mere water or oil, and are therefore preferable. They have the advantage of
demonstrating the presence of the represented holy figure in the image, are themselves miraculous products as opposed
to being merely miracle-working. In the case of Christ and the Virgin this habit of producing bodily relics would, of course,
have been particularly welcome, because of the (aforementioned) scarcity of the latter due to bodily assumption into
heaven. From holy bodies producing images we have moved to a consideration of images producing holy bodies, or at
least their fluids and other associated materials. (Freedberg 1982:140 and 1989:chapter II).
The proximity of art objects to relics, and the gradual draining of power from one to the other which this enables, can also
be seen in the case of a category of art object not yet considered, namely the reliquary. Early examples of this kind of
object are provided by the ampullae used by pilgrims to carry away oil from holy sites. Strictly speaking, these are
containers for secondary relics, making it possible for a liquid substance to fulfill such a role. The support they give is
more purely physical, however: they tend (from the fifth century, according to Andre Grabar)30 (Grabar:343~4 and plate
LXIII; Cormack 1985:131; fig. 67) to be decorated with images which provide iconic assistance to the relic's task of
making the holy body present. An ampulla bearing an image of St. Menas, for example, helps sustain the relatively weak
indexical link of its contents to that saint, enables visualization of him.
Reliquaries in the sense in which the term is normally understood come into prominence in a later period, and although the
desire for portability continued to be a factor influencing their design (with pendant and ring forms being amongst those
adopted) this did not preclude the employment of images any more than it had in the case of the ampullae. A reliquary-
pendant in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum depicting Catherine of Alexandria on the front (inventory
number M 350-1912) illustrates this quite clearly.
More interesting to consider, however, are those cases where iconicity begins to play a more active role - affecting the
form of the reliquary as a whole, as opposed to being merely embodied in marks inscribed upon its surface. This happens
when the reliquary takes the shape of the part of the saint's body that it is supposed to contain, as in the 13th century
Flemish hand reliquary, also from the Victoria and Albert Museum (inventory number M 353-1956). In the case of this type
of reliquary the container iconically represents its content, supplementing the illegible remains inside through its idealized
image of them. The primacy of those remains is indicated by the presence of holes in the reliquary enabling contact with it
to be sustained: the partial iconic representation of the saint's body is not adequate in isolation, it cannot completely
envelop the relic.
Iconicity arguably performs an even more useful service as a supplement to indexicality in the case of head or bust
shaped reliquaries, given the importance of this part of the body in conveying a sense of personality. The Metropolitan
Museum's reliquary head of St. Yrieix (Limoges, c 1220-1240) originally contained the saint's skull, which would have
offered a relatively powerful indexical link but one lacking the facial features this reliquary cover is able to provide. In this
instance, in contrast to the arm reliquary, one is tempted to see the outer silver and parcel gilt covering not so much as a
replication of its contents as a substitute for the flesh which was the skull's original 'container.' As with the arm reliquary, a
route of direct access to the relic is preserved: a grill in the top and hole in the wooden interior core permit viewing. The
frequent utilization of transparent materials such as crystal in reliquaries must be motivated in part by the desire to
preserve access to the relic whilst permitting formal elaboration (including iconic effects) to proceed.
The type of reliquary in which iconicity gains the greatest degree of power is that in which the entire figure is represented.
Here we see the same pattern as with the miraculous images already discussed: iconicity, which began as the servant of
indexicality, has attained with time to a dominance over the latter. The statue of St. Foy at Conques, perhaps the oldest31
surviving large-scale free-standing Christian sculpture in Western Europe, exemplifies this kind of reliquary. Containing the
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remains of the saint which had been stolen from the town of Agen (the skull is in the head part of the statue)32 it
nevertheless radically exceeds what is necessary to provide a container for its contents, or an idealized 'artist's
impression' of them. It iconically presents the whole of which the relic is the fragment.
Contemporary literary evidence relating to the cult of St. Foy indicates the extent of her influence on her environment, the
degree to which she was felt to be an active presence in Conques. She is recorded as performing miracles to cure illness
or to release captives, for instance. Bernard of Angers (sent by the Bishop of Chartres to investigate the saint's cult)
displays his initial scepticism concerning the statue by the careful wording of the prayer he made on approaching it: "St.
Faith [Foy], part of whose body is present here enshrined in this likeness, help me in the day of judgment." (Ward: 1987:
41) Nevertheless, there is evidence which suggests that perhaps less theologically refined observers saw St. Foy as
being present in her statue and not merely in her relics. People claimed, for instance, that the statue was alive and looking
at them, or that the saint had appeared to them in a vision in the form of her statue.
According to Benedicta Ward, the statue of St. Foy at Conques was kept above the high altar, and pilgrims were allowed
access to it at all times. Not only, however, was the statue a focus for pilgrimage (the movement of people wishing to be in
her miracleworking presence), she herself was often on the move, abolishing spatial barriers to her presence through her
own initiative. When taken out in a procession (which might last all day) the statue would be accompanied by music. Much
revenue would be raised on these excursions, with miraculous cures occurring not just to those who saw her, but even at
the places where she had rested on her journeys. On one occasion the mobility of the St. Foy image enabled her to be
moved into the cloisters to quell a riot there (Ward 1987:37), and in the early eleventh century she even attended a synod
called by Bishop Arnaldus of Rodez. (Forsyth 1972:42)
The reliquary statue of St. Foy at Conques is not an isolated phenomenon - many further examples still exist and textual
evidence points to the one-time existence of others. Bernard of Angers, writing of the St. Foy statue says that 'it is an old
usage and ancient custom in the whole country of the Auvergne, whether in the Rouergue or Toulouse, and in all the
country around, for a statue to be set up either of gold or silver or of some other metal, in which the head of the saint or
some other part of the body is preserved with reverence.' (Ward 1987:141) From an early manuscript by Gregory of
Tours (Forsyth 1972:31) comes evidence of a statue of the Virgin which contained some of her hair, as well as drops of
her milk and pieces of her clothing. This reliquary statue was constructed of a gold covering over (like the St. Foy statue) a
wooden core. It had been made for Bishop Stephen II in about 946 (that is, before even the St. Foy image)33 and existed
at one time in the Clermont-Ferrand cathedral treasury.34
The Clermont-Ferrand Madonna appears to have been a forerunner of the Throne of Majesty type of sculpture, which
Ilene Forsyth refers to as 'the cult statue of the middle ages, because in it divine presence seemed more fully
concentrated.' (Forsyth 1972: 9) Many examples of this sedes sapientiae type (such as the Metropolitan Museum's
Twelfth Century Morgan Madonna) also contain reliquary compartments. This is particularly so of the earlier examples,
indicating a role for relics in making sculpture in the round acceptable in the Christian context.35 That later sculptures are
less likely to contain relics can be regarded as evidence that those images had taken over some of the functions of the
relics, that the iconic means of evoking presence was becoming established.36
Forsyth's account of the Throne of Wisdom images emphasizes the extent to which these statues were felt to embody
their referents, to act as a valid substitute for them, and shows how they are able, for this reason, to function as active
social entities. In many ways they fulfill the range of functions which I have previously noted had been undertaken by
relics, for example by fundraising for the community which owned them37 or acting as protectors against outside forces.
Furthermore, just as an oath could be taken on a relic so too it could be taken before a statue of the Madonna: prior to the
Sixteenth Century, knights swore feudal oaths in the presence of the golden Madonna of Hildesheim. (Forsyth 1972:45)
These statues, however, also functioned to embody presence in ways unavailable to relics because of their lack of iconic
qualities. Forsyth convincingly argues for instance that they would have played a part in liturgical drama: "A most
appropriate role for the statue was that of the enthroned Madonna and Child in the Offidum Stellae, a medieval play which
was performed at the Epiphany to commemorate the Adoration of the Magi. As participants in this play the revered wood
figures of Mary and the Christ Child were presiding presences, witnessing the mimetic re-enactment of the visit of the
three kings. They received the homage and offerings of high clerics dressed as the Kings in the realistic dramatization
which preceded the drama of the Mass itself at the feast of Epiphany."38 (Forsyth 1972: 49)
Thanks in part to the reliquary statue, even in the Western church the status of the image eventually became more
assured and its use more widespread. Nevertheless, in those later periods which can be thought of as high points of
Christian artistic culture some indexical backing for this predominantly iconic means can still be seen. Even when an
image does not have a miraculous origin or house a relic it is often created for a specific site close to where a relic can be
found, such as a chapel containing a saint's remains.
To a greater extent than images of saints, images of Christ or the Virgin seem able to be imbued with power even when
they exist away from relics,39 but in the case of the sixteenth century polychrome wood sculpture of the Virgin and Child in
Chartres cathedral known as Notre-Dame du Pilier40 a relic is in fact to be found nearby. The statue stands a little behind
the relic-a robe of the Virgin41 displayed behind the glass of its reliquary -helping the visualization of this secondary relic's
metonymic connection to her body. Not only is the Virgin's robe depicted in the wood of the statue, but the statue is further
covered with a replica cloth robe somewhat more sumptuous than that displayed in the reliquary. Thus two superimposed
images of a relic exist within view of the relic itself. This statue provided me with an illustration of the ease with which an
image can be infected by the power of a relic through mere proximity: whilst observing it I saw a believer come up and
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touch the cloth robe over the statue.42
The continuing association in the Baroque era between the iconic and the indexical, as embodied in the relationship
between images and relics, can be demonstrated by looking at two examples from the very centre of Catholic power, St.
Peter's in Rome. Both are the creation of Bernini: The Cathedra Petri and the statue of Longinus. The former is actually a
kind of late and elaborate form of reliquary since the gilt bronze throne wholly encases the 'real' wooden chair of St. Peter.
The latter adopts the previously discussed strategy of proximity as a means to establish a reinforcement loop between
image and relic. The spear of Longinus is placed in a shallow niche above the statue of the saint (which includes a
depiction of the spear), a similar strategy being adopted with respect to the relics associated with Saints Andrew,
Veronica and Helena which are kept in St. Peter's.43
The physical proximity between relics and images seen in the case of the St. Longinus is echoed by the proximity of
discussion of the two categories of object in the deliberations of the Council of Trent. When we first hear (from St.
Augustine) (Kitzinger 1954: 92) of Christians worshiping images they are mentioned in the same breath as tombs
('sepulcrorum et picturarum adoratores'), and when they are discussed in the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent
relics and images are similarly juxtaposed as analogous phenomena.
The priority of the represented body, which our modern attitude to religious images as art objects tends to obscure, is
clearly visible in such Baroque era assertions as that of Lope de Vega, who claimed to honour "paintings for what they
represented, which is the reason why they are adored; because the effigy is inseparable from the real person, who thus
receives the affection and the attention of the viewer." (de Vega c. 1600:169) In response to the criticisms which had
been raised concerning Catholic use of images the Council of Trent did draw a distinction between images and their
referents, insisting that the honour which is shown the former "is referred to the prototypes which they represent, so that
by means of the images which we kiss and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ
and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear."44
Even this fine theological discrimination made by the Council of Trent between image and referent retains the idea of the
image as a channel to the body it depicts, a means of evoking its presence, but in the practice of the actual users of
Catholic images the identification of image and imaged may have been closer still. As David Freedberg (1982:139) asks,
is it likely "that the countless men who went on pilgrimages to particular images, who sought aid from a favourite painting
or sculpture, or who went to be healed by the miracle-working powers of a particular shrine made this kind of distinction?"
Freedberg's answer to his own question is that all the evidence suggests they did not. "They expected such things not
only from St. Anthony or the Virgin, but from specific physical embodiments of them, from a St. Anthony in a favoured
chapel, from the Virgin at a renowned pilgrimage shrine."
In the foregoing pages I have described a move from the relic to the image within Christianity, with the latter coming to
usurp the former's role in producing a sense of the presence of the holy. I have hoped to make clear, however, that this
usurpation is never complete: just as the relic needed supplementation by the image because of its insufficiency before
the task of abolishing temporal distance from the holy body, so the iconic, even in a fully developed mimetic system, was
unable to provide a totally secure means of healing the ache of absence. The indexical mode of reference remains
necessary as a prop to the image's efforts. Although power shifts from one to the other, the icon and the index are like two
drunks who succeed in propping each other up-when neither may be too secure standing alone.
The story of the aid which mimetic art required from the index to reach (and even to sustain) its ascendancy seems to
have parallels in the history of other elaborate symbolic systems. Could the acceptability of paper currency, our belief that
it embodies value, have evolved from the use of 'intrinsically' valuable metal currency directly? Was an intermediary stage
in which paper currency merely referred to the 'real' currency necessary? To this way of thinking Fort Knox would be a
species of'reliquary,' whose little seen contents provide support for the circulating notes - the notes in return making the
gold seem imminently valuable of itself, and not just a further species of sign for value. Coming off the gold standard, the
abandonment of a one to one relationship between 'signifier' and 'referent,' would be analogous to the image's growing
ability to signify away from the immediate vicinity of a relic.
A further example, again involving a move towards more easily portable bearers of meaning, is provided by the case of
writing, at least if the conjectures of Denise Schmandt-Besserat (1978) as to its origin are to be believed. She notes that
the earliest Sumerian inscriptions are predated by a much older system of using tokens as records of transactions, and
that the symbols of early writing take similar form to those tokens. As well as arguing that the written symbols are
two-dimensional images of the pre-existing three-dimensional code of the tokens, she also points to an intermediary stage
where the tokens coexist alongside the marks as a validation of the fragile new code. The referents of the written signs
need to be nearby to endorse the signifiers for them, signifiers which begin their existence as subsidiary to the tokens but
which come to replace them in importance as the conventions of their use become established.
The tokens and written marks are brought together by means of a reliquary or Fort Knox principle: the tokens are placed
within a sealed clay container (one for each transaction) on which symbols corresponding to them are inscribed. In the
case of some of the clay envelopes, the relationship between the marks on the surface and the tokens inside is
underlined indexically: Schmandt-Besserat describes a type in which the surface marks are made by impressing the
tokens themselves into the clay before sealing them inside, rather than by using a stylus or thumb to produce a
representation of them. Her conjecture is that this technique of producing a trace of the token preceded the evolution of
incised representation.
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My point in sketching the two foregoing examples is merely to offer the tentative suggestion that a similar pattern of
doubling can occur in other complex symbol systems than that of art when the naturalization of a new symbolic order is
taking place. In neither case am I attempting to draw any closer analogy than that since it is not possible to characterize
either writing or paper money (nor their predecessors) as primarily indexical or iconic in nature. Even if it were possible to
point to analogous relations between indexicality and iconicity in discourses distinct from that of art I do not think that one
could claim on that basis to have uncovered any general law concerning the relationship of these categories of signs. My
intention has not been to propose one, but instead to offer a historical account of a particular encounter between them.
Having made this disclaimer, however, I do feel that within the field of Western visual culture there are other instances
where the icon and the index have an analogous relationship to that displayed in Christian religious art, and it is to these
(historically linked) instances that I wish now to turn. The area within which I intend to confine my search for examples is
that which could in the loosest sense be defined as portraiture. Whilst one can talk generally of Western mimetic art as
being concerned with the evocation of presence, portraiture is specifically (by definition) involved with the making present
of (particular) bodies, as was the religious art I have been considering, and this is a reason why close parallels can be
drawn between them. Indeed a broadly defined category of portraiture would include as one historically distinct instance
those evocations of the presence of Christ, Mary and the saints which I have so far been considering.
In all portraiture the represented body is the focus, and indexical means of reference to that body can supplement iconic
ones. In the case of certain kinds of portraiture the necessity of evoking a high degree of presence in order for the image
to function effectively makes it further analogous to religious art. One example of an area of portraiture where the stakes
are higher in this way would be funeral effigies of early French and English kings,45 and even though the importance of
abolishing space and time is not so intense in certain other domains of portraiture (a nineteenth century photo of a
departed loved one, for example) the same basic intentions are at work, and, I shall argue, a support from the index is still
to be found.
Perhaps the earliest surviving artifacts which deserve to be described as portraits are the modeled skulls which have been
found in Jericho, and which date from cyooo-6000 B.C. These images, since they use an element of the human body
itself as a basis, rely on indexical means for a great deal of their effect. The additions to the skull do increase its iconic
potential, enabling features to be represented, but since these additions are somewhat schematic (sea shells stand as
eyes, for example) it is only from the indexical direction that the individuation, the status as a portrait, is established.46
That these artifacts should indeed be seen as concerned with evoking the presence of specific individuals may be
conjectured on the basis of anthropological data concerning similar contemporary objects which have the function of
funerary effigies (such as those produced in the Sepik River area of New Guinea), (Breckenridge 1968:17 and 19; figs. 6
and 7) as well as on the basis of historical evidence. (see Kuryluk 1991:205 where evidence from Herodotus [ca. 484-425
BCE] is discussed).
The role of the funerary context in the evolution of portraiture is a major one, (as Breckenridge shows in his 1968 study,
death providing both the need for and the greatest challenge to the image maker's ability to evoke presence. In many
cases the portrait image will be aided in its task of (iconically) evoking presence by the proximity of the corpse or
elements of it (as indexical representation of the body), the form of their articulation following the previously identified
reliquary or Fort Knox principle whereby one will remain hidden and the other will act as a supplementreplacement. We
see this in the instance of the encaustic portraits from Faiyum in Roman Egypt (painted on panels which were originally
attached to mummy cases), in the gold funeral masks of the mummified Mycenean princes, in Etruscan canopic urns, as
well as in Christian tomb sculpture and the funeral effigies of kings.
As well as this reliquary-like method for creating a juxtaposition of the iconic and the indexical we can find instances from
the broader sweep of Western art of another previously identified strategy for introducing indexicality into the world of the
image. The miraculous imprinting of a holy body's image has its more mundane (but equally indexical) counterpart in the
practice of taking death masks, an activity which can be documented from the Egyptian Old Kingdom (Breckenridge
1968:63) and which is still being practiced in our own era.47
When death (and life) masks are discussed in the context of art it is usually as tools for enhancing realism, but there are
two ways in which I wish to qualify that picture. Firstly it needs to be pointed out that the realism of a death mask is not so
intense as is sometimes thought. As a result of death various changes occur: wrinkles disappear, for instance, and the
eyes become sunken due to the disappearance of the moisture in the tissues supporting the eyeballs. (J. Has 1932:47)
The process of taking the death or life mask also has aspects which compromise verism: body hair (such as eyebrows)
becomes clotted by grease used to make the mould.48 Secondly, although death masks have undoubtedly been used by
sculptors as tools,49 I do not feel that the discussion of them can be confined to a consideration of the way they fulfill that
function. On many occasions we as spectators are made aware of the role a death mask has played in the creation of an
image, or it is displayed as a death mask in its own right. In both cases our knowledge of its indexical quality is a factor in
our appreciation of the final image, and our sense of its closeness to the person it represents.
Vasari's Life of Andrea Del Venocchio informs us that the practice of taking (and displaying) death masks was a common
one in the era of that artist, and credits him with being one of the first to employ them. During Verrocchio's lifetime, he
states, "the custom started of doing inexpensive casts of the heads of those who died; and so one can see in every
house in Florence, over the chimney-pieces, doors, windows, and cornices, endless examples of such portraits, so well
made and natural that they seem alive. This practice has continued until the present day." (Vasari 1965: 239) The use of
masks in this private, funerary context (which has documentable antecedents at least as far back as Rome)50 has
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continued in more recent times. Sir Kenhelm Digby, for instance, not only responded to his wife's sudden death by having
Van Dyck paint her on her death bed but he also had plaster casts made of her face, hands and feet. (Llewellyn i99i:3i)51
Death masks of well-known figures have frequently been more publicly exhibited, with extensive collections including that
formerly displayed in the Museum of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, and now in the possession of the University of
Edinburgh. Perhaps the most well known such collection is that of Madame Tussaud. Amongst the death masks she took
are those of Louis XVI, Marat, Charlotte Corday and Marie Antoinette. When put on show the indexical link between these
masks and their subjects was emphasized in the catalogue. (Leslie and Chapman 1978:108)52
The indexical supplementation of iconic representation can be seen continuing into the nineteenth century in a variety of
forms. As well as the death mask, and casts from the living body (in wax sculpture and elsewhere)53 one can point for
example to the popularity of silhouettes,54 and the invention of the physionotrace (which might be taken as a more
sophisticated development of the same principle).55 In the case of the physionotrace a pantograph56 was used to
produce the image and to reduce its scale. The pantograph could also be employed in the process of producing
silhouettes, and an extension of the same principle was used in the copying of three dimensional objects.57 It is in the
context of such techniques and devices that the invention of photography should be seen,58 as part of a continuum of
attempts to provide indexical links to the represented body in portrait images, and a particularly successful way of
supplementing iconicity at a time when hand made mimetic images were beginning to lose their sense of transparency,
that is, at a time when the insecurity of the iconic as a means of producing presence (which had existed all along)
threatened to become the full blown crisis of representation which is a characterizing feature of modernity.
Photography's aura of reality is commonly attributed to a supposed ability to copy with mechanically objective accuracy
and detail, but is in large part a consequence of the indexical relation it has to its subject. Every photo is, as Roland
Barthes put it, "a certificate of presence," (Barthes 1984:87) being able to lie as to the meaning of things but never as to
their existence. In contrast to a painting or drawing, which may have been made far away from the subject it depicts (or
which may even depict a subject which has never existed), we always know with a photo that a subject was there in front of
the camera when the image was created, that a referent existed to validate its representation-photographic images have
no purely fictional mode. This indexical connection is highlighted in certain uses of the photographic process which
downplay the more common use of the media for the production of realistic effects -such as in Man Ray's "Rayographs."
Whilst there might be a temptation to view such images as detours from photography's main enterprise rather than as
stripping it down to reveal an occluded basic characteristic, it should be noted that Fox Talbot's first experiments in the
Spring of 1834 were with leaves spread on sensitized paper.59
The early discourse of photography emphasized the fact of the indexical connection of the photo to its subject, and
indeed chose to present the photo as a trace or emanation of its subject, that is to make the subject the possessor or
metaphorical creator of the image. Daguerre described photography as "a chemical and physical process which gives
nature the ability to reproduce herself (1838; inTagg 1988:41) and FoxTalbot, in his 1844 book The Pencil of Nature,
makes the same point. He points out that the images it contains are "impressed by Nature's hand," or describes them as
'self-representations'). Elsewhere he says of Lacock Abbey, a subject of his early photographic experiments, that he
believed it to be the first building ever yet known to have drawn its own picture. The leaves placed on sensitized paper in
the early experiment mentioned above "were found to have left their images very perfectly and beautifully impressed or
delineated upon it. " Fox Talbot is keen to underline that no trace of a maker's body is to be seen in his images. The
"Notice to the Reader" at the front of each volume of The Pencil of Nature points out that the plates are made 'without any
aid whatever from the artist's pencil,' the automatic nature of the photographic process having insulated them from contact
with the body of the photographer, preventing it from disrupting the transparency, the seamlessness, of the images.60
A parallel between photography and earlier 'images made without hands' (acheiropoietot) hardly seems strained, despite
the plainly radical difference of historical context.61 Fox Talbot himself seems to be half-recalling the Mandylion of
Edessa or Veronica's veil when he describes Nature (or even inanimate objects) as producing images of themselves. His
account (albeit intended as metaphorical) situates the photographic image closer to these mysterious forebears than to
other categories of contemporary imagery produced by means lacking in opacity concerning their means of production.62
If the way in which mid-nineteenth century culture articulated lack to itself was manifestly different from the Middle Ages,
there was nevertheless still a role for images in attempting to assuage a sense of absence to some degree, perhaps
whilst dreaming of a time when their ancestors seemed rather more adequate to the task of evoking presence.
[Footnote]
NOTES
1 Ernst Kitzinger (1954:90) sees Christianity's admission of the graven image as one of the momentous changes in Western art.
He notes that in the time of the Cappodocian fathers relic cults were in full swing, but "image worship . . . [did] not come into their
purview even in a negative way."
2 Peirce claims that "it would be difficult, if not impossible, to instance an absolutely pure index, or to find any sign absolutely
devoid of the indexical quality." See pp107-111 of that text for a presentation of Peirce's ideas on the index. For comment on the
above statement see Douglas Greenlee (1973:90), and Thomas A. Sebeok (1990:13-14.) The latter text is a useful recent
review of thinking about indexicality. Given the subject matter of the present study there is the possibility of a confusion between
'icon' as a category of sign and 'icon' as a category of image, especially since a confusion between 'icon' (first sense) and 'image'
is possible and may perhaps be discovered in the writing of Louis Marin. I try to minimize confusion by avoiding the use of the
term icon to describe Byzantine images.
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3 Peirce gives several definitions of the index, and there are inconsistencies between them (see Greenlee 1973:84). Sometimes
he claims that a real, material signified is required for an index, that it is 'a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue
of being really affected by that object' (quoted Sebeok 1990: 11). For the view (shared by this author) that the relation of the
index to its object is secured by convention rather than actuality see Greenlee 1973:84-93, which includes a statement by Peirce
(pp86-7) consistent with that position. Peirce explains here that "an index represents an object by virtue of its connection with it.
It makes no difference whether the connection is natural, or artificial, or merely mental." In the present text I shall not be
attempting to distinguish between 'real' and 'fake' relics, nor will I offer a sharp distinction between supposedly miraculous
images which have an actual existence and those concerning which only textual accounts exist. That textual evidence, even
when it may be taken as interested fabrication, still provides valuable insights into the way images were viewed in the period in
question.
4 Note that iconicity has intruded into this grading of relics, as it did into the Church's distinction between reliquae insignes (at
least head, arms and legs, or most of them) and reliquae non insignes (less than this). Another factor affecting the status of a
relic would be the status or narrative significance of its referent: although the cross is strictly speaking a secondary relic it was
important enough to have its own secondary relics -the hammer and saw out of which it was made. Its status does not depend
solely on its proximity to Christ at a key point of the Christian narrative, since the wood out of which the cross was made was
said by Medieval legend to have come from a branch of the Tree of Knowledge, taken with him by Adam on his expulsion from
the Garden of Eden.
5 If relics mean power, then power can be attacked by ridiculing relics: when the Elector's relics were paraded in the streets on
All Saints' Day 1522, many people jeered them. No procession took place in 1523 (piy7). The most famous textual attack on
relics is of course John Calvin's 1870 A Treatise on Relics. Bentley refers (30) to a Soviet anti-relic museum where bones of
saints were displayed in order to demonstrate that they do decay. The museum was situated in Red Square . . . near the
mausoleum containing the embalmed body of Lenin.
6 See Geary 1978:47. The Synod of Mainz (813) ordered that no translations should take place without permission of the
Church authorities. The Synod of Frankfurt (794) had already attempted to exert control over the creation of new saints (see
p45).
7 Although in another account (from forty years earlier) by Theodosius it is claimed that an impression of Christ's face was also
to be found on the column.
8 This letter, since it was said to be written in his own hand, shares the indexical, relic-like relation to Christ of the image. In an
earlier version of the story there was no image, only this letter.
9 Andre Grabar's Martyrium, Volume 11:346. Chapter VIII ("Des Reliques aux Icones") is of great importance to later studies of
the relationship of images and relics, including this one.
10 The face of Christ was said to have changed its age, growing older as the day progressed.
11 See Kuryluk 1991 for a full discussion of the Veronica legends, which overlap with those of the Hemorrhissa.
12 The sense of presence in this image was strong enough for Pseudo-Gregory to refer in his sermon on it to Camuliana as "a
new Bethlehem" (Kritzinger 1954: 144). For a discussion of incarnation and representation see Kitzinger here, and Kuryluk
(1991: 143).
13 See Victor Turner and Edith Turner 1978:68-71 for a discussion of the Mexican image "Our Lady of the Remedies," as well
as p4i-2 for a further discussion of found images of the Virgin. For a pre-Christian example of the treatment as holy of something
which has appeared inexplicably we can note the Greek reverence for meteorites, which were taken as indices of the heavens.
These objects lacking in iconic qualities, which nevertheless were regarded as having a numinous presence, are discussed in
David Freedberg 1989:33; 66; 70-1.
14 Other miraculous copies were also later produced, see Kuryluk 1991:30-32. The Mandylion also produced copies on tiles
according to one account (p59).
15 A version of this kind of proximity can also be achieved by artists in the case of figures no longer alive, through the aid of
dreams. Kuryluk (1991:73) recounts the story of St. Mary Younger appearing to an artist in a dream and commanding that her
image be painted.
16 Freedberg (1989:132) gives another example, drawing on Theodoret as his textual source: The stylite Symeon blessing
images of himself. see Freedberg, Chapter 5 in general for a discussion of the consecration of images.
17 This early 'miraculously produced' image is of particular interest since it actually exists today. Cormack dates it to the period
after the mid 5th century.
18 The image of Camuliana was also used to provide protection against a military enemy, see Veronica and her Cloth, p71.
19 See Geary 1978:35 for a characterization of much Western Christianity of the Central Middle Ages as hagiocentric.
20 I am basing my argument here on that of Grabar. see Martyrium, p356.
21 See Cormack 1985:124. Kuryluk (1991:62) says a mid-tenth century version from Mount Sinai is the earliest known.
22 Photography is a special case, since photographic images have an indexical relation to their subject (a point which will be
considered later in this essay) and therefore can be taken as relaying it in a way painted images normally cannot. A parallel
indexical means employed in a time before the invention of photography is the amulet mirror, held up when a relic was displayed
to capture some of its power. On photography and the Turin Shroud see George Didi-Huberman (1987:39-57) and Kuryluk
1991:2. A popular study of the Turin Shroud with much detail is H. David Sox 1981.
23 A special case discussed by Svetlana Alpers (1983:80-82) is a print by Cornells Korning after Pieter Saenredam which is
designed to undermine, rather than to help, seeing-in. The print attempts to show that supposedly miraculous images of figures
in the cross section of an apple tree are not images at all.
24 The same is true of Zurbaran's Sudarium (1635-40), which depicts Christ's face in three-quarters view. Freedberg doesn't
seem to take this point about impressed images, and refers to them as appealing through iconic accuracy (see Freedburg
1989:209 and 212).
25 The contagion of power from one version to another continued via the copies of it acquired by pilgrims in the form of
pilgrimage badges (see Freedberg 1989: 103-4). Since these were produced at the site of the parent image and of the
associated miracles they too acquired an indexical association with holiness.
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26 The 25th session of the Council of Trent mentions kissing of images (see Elizabeth G. Holt 1982:64). see also Turner and
Turner 1978:71 on tactile response to images. It is relevant to the present discussion to note that touch is in its nature more
mutual than sight: to see is not necessarily to be seen by, but to touch is in a sense always to be touched by.
27 See Kritzinger 1954:148. The act of drinking the plaster is described as "the entering in of the saints." Kitzinger adds that
"this amounts to complete identification of picture and prototype."
28 The Eucharist had been accepted even by iconoclasts as a representation of Christ. On the Eucharist as a relic see Geary
1978:39; on cases where the bread is arranged to create an image of Christ see Kuryluk 1991:190.
29 Freedberg (1989^105) gives another example of a bleeding image on p3ii.
30 See the latter (pi28-i34) for Feedberg's discussion of Ampullae.
31 Concerning the date of the image, see note 33 below.
32 This practice has pre-Christian precedents which may have been known to the Byzantines (see Freedberg 1989:92). The
same source (p95) points out that Richard Gombrich has identified a similar practice in relation to Buddhist images.
33 The date of the St. Foy image is a matter of dispute. Keller, following Brehier, suggests a date of c. 984, but Taralon dates it
to the Ninth century, that is, significantly earlier than the Clermont-Ferrand Figure. The head of the St. Foy is undoubtedly
earlier, perhaps fifth century. see Forsyth 1972:68-70 for a discussion of the issue of dating. Stephen II was also Abbot of the
Conques Abbey.
34 See Forsyth 1972:36 and 79 for further accounts of early reliquary statues.
35 In the case of Bernard of Angers, the presence of relics in the St. Foy statue seems crucial to his acceptance of it. Forsyth
dismisses Keller's view that all early statues were reliquaries, but accepts that relics played a part in making images acceptable
(see Forsyth 1972:37-8 and 76-82). Whilst not always themselves reliquaries the statues did perform the same task as
reliquaries -the evocation of holy presence.
36 One account tells of a Veseley statue whose relic compartment had been forgotten until the image miraculously avoided fire
damage, indicating that by its date (Twelfth century) the presence of relics inside images was not considered essential. The fire
was said to have occurred in order that the relics within the statue might be found. see Forsyth 1972:32-36.
37 Forsyth (1972) recounts that the Countess of Malmesbury (Eleventh Century) hung a necklace around a Madonna in
Coventry (p48), and (p41) describes a gift which the St. Foy elicited by appearing in dreams to Abbot Bernard of Beaulieu.
38 See pp49-59 for Forsyth's discussion of the role of these images in liturgical drama. When supplicants gave gifts to a statue
they might have been aware of the way their actions paralleled those of the Magi.
39 Later shrines of the Virgin tend not to be relic-based, but to be founded on the sites of apparitions. At Lourdes, for instance,
the site where Bernadette Soubirous saw an apparition of the Virgin is marked by a statue (see Turner and Turner 1978:plate
12). The desire of statues to gain the indexical link to their subject which placement at the site of an apparition affords them is
indicated by stories of them moving miraculously to the site of the vision (41). Perhaps visions can be viewed as a particular
category of miraculous image (albeit one which is not permanent, publicly visible, or employing a physical medium), but defining
their relationship to artistic images is a matter of some complexity. Some images (such as Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa) can
be taken as representations of visions, attempts to make them publicly and permanently visible (note 15 above gives an instance
where the vision was that of the artist himself). The relationship can be reversed, however, with visions occurring in front of
images (see Freedberg 1989:288 - but also fig. 143 for a painting of this vision in front of a sculpture), or holy figures appearing
in dreams as they are represented in images. The whole of Chapter Eight of Freedberg's book is relevant to the issue of the
relationship of images and visions, but see especially pioy for a discussion of the visualization process metaphorically described
as picture making.
40 A different statue of the Virgin, destroyed (like many other relics) during the French Revolution, was once a highly valued
possession of Chartres. see Forsyth 1972:107-11.
41 See Ward 1987:153-5 on the history of the Virgin's robe at Chartres, plus Forsyth 1972:106; and 109-110.
42 Calvin's attack on religious images is based in part upon his awareness that this kind of contagion can occur. He notes
(1870:281) that in his own parish, when he was a boy, the images of the tyrants who had stoned St. Stephen "were adorned as
much as that of the saint himself. Many women, seeing these tyrants thus decked out, mistook them for the saint's companions,
and offered the homage of candles to each of them." A similar abhorrence of métonymie contagion is present when Calvin is
discussing relics: his feeling (p246) is that those who worship the nails, spear and thorns "used at our Lord's crucifixion are more
wicked than the Jews who employed them for that purpose."
43 The spear is an index of Longinus, but also of Christ since it pierced his side and would have been covered with his blood.
Formerly four holy lances existed simultaneously -the one which reached Rome was a gift of Sultan Beyazit II to Pope Innocent
VIII. Since it lacked a tip, this made it possible for Pope Benedict XIV to consider that the tip of the Sainte-Chapelle one was
authentic. A parallel to antique practice can be seen: Achilles' lance was kept in the temple of Athene at Phaselis. Such
pre-Christian relics functioned differently in that they were not contextualized by a belief in resurrection.
44 See Holt 1982:64 on the 25th session, 1563. This formula had already been propounded in the second Council of Nicea held
in 787 (see Forsyth 1972:91). Freedberg (1989:393) traces it back to St. Basil.
45 For discussion of these effigies, see for example Ernst Benkard 1929; Freedberg 1989: Chapter 9 and Nigel Llewellyn
i99i:Chapter IX.
46 See Ernst Gombrich, (1983:93-4) for a discussion of the Jericho skulls. Gombrich argues for the image as substitute for the
person, but fails to make clear the indexical element present-he conflates the skull with the person it evokes. This is also the
case with the next example he gives, in which an image painted on a kayak replaces the skin of the owner's grandmother (which
had been wrapped around the boat), rather than substituting directly for her. Breckenridge also points out the more general
practice of preserving skulls, which can be traced back to an earlier date, as well as considering mummification (and the
possibility of its influence on Egyptian funerary images.
47 The American sculptor Ibram Lassaw, for instance, told me that he had taken a death mask of the poet Dylan Thomas.
German sculptor Georg Kolbe contributed a section to Undying Faces.
48 This can be seen, for instance, in the case of the right hand eyebrow of the Henry VII effigy in Westminster Abbey. Cennino
Cennini gives a full description of how to take a life mask in his Fourteenth Century guide (1960:124-7), and notes the
impossibility of reproducing a beard or hair. Life masks have the additional complications of the need to provide a breathing tube
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and to block the ears.

49 Vasari's Life of Verrocchio (1965:239) records Verrocchio as using them. Roubilliac used death masks of Newton and Swift,
David of Marat, and Landseer of Scott. Likeness (Breckenridge 1968:149, and fig. 2) discusses examples of Roman art being
made more or less directly from death masks, but in general their influence on the portrait sculpture of this period was more
indirect (seejitta 1932: esp. 84-89, for a full discussion). Wax Portraiture very often made use of casts from its subjects: one
example would be the funeral effigy of Edmund Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (1735, Westminster Abbey). Phillipe Curtius, who
taught Madame Tussaud the technique of was modeling, frequently took casts.
50 Pliny and Polybius are the textual sources. For discussion of Roman funeral images, see Jitta 1932:esp. p22 and p27, and
Freedberg 1989:213-6.
51 Van Dyck's Lady Venetia Digby on her Death-bed is in the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
52 When in Ireland Tussaud also advertised (p129) that "models are . . . produced from persons deceased, with the most correct
appearance of animation," indicating her involvement in the production of masks for private funerary use as well. Her
involvement with the indexical also expressed itself in her collecting of Napoleonic relics. On Napoleonic death masks and relics
see also Bentley 1985: 191.
53 Since casting is a technique already utilized in the process of producing a bronze sculpture, it is only a question of extending
that process back to the beginning as well, rather than of introducing a new technique.
54 Silhouettes could be produced by freehand drawing or cutting, but would commonly also be produced by tracing a shadow.
See Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, 1956:111 for a description, and plate 24 for an illustration of the mechanism involved. For
the Greek legend identifying the origin of painting as a trace drawn around a shadow see Kuryluk 61.
55 See Gernsheim 1956:112 and John Tagg 1988:39-40 for details of the mechanism.
56 The pantograph was invented by Christopher Scheiner in the early seventeenth century.
57 See Albert Eisen (ed.) 1981: 249-256 for description and illustration of such a mechanism.
58 The continuity between photography and these earlier techniques is demonstrated in the naming of a variant in the use of the
pantograph in portrait sculpture (involving the employment of photos) as 'photosculpture.' This technique, invented by Willeme,
is described in Gaston Tissandier 1876: Part III, Chapter III. In discussing one of his early photographs Fox Talbot compares the
way photography can alter the size of a two-dimensional original in copying it to the (slower method of the) pantograph.
59 Even images made by Fox Talbot which did not involve pressing objects directly onto the photographic paper can display
silhouette-like qualities: his Study of a Tree (C1840-45) seems influenced by the aesthetic of the silhouette. Frrancis Gallon
(whose interest in the indexical trace led to his work on fingerprints) utilized photography as a tool for producing silhouettes.
60 The Pencil of Nature is not paginated. It should be noted that there is a degree of ambivalence in Fox Talbot as to the exact
relationship of nature to the photograph. The understanding I have emphasized here is that of Nature as subject reduplicating
itself in the image (a focus on the represented body), but one can also see in his statements hints of a notion of Nature as a
replacement for, an improvement on, the artist's body. Such a reading is clued by references to the camera as a disembodied,
perfected "eye" not only capable of more complete perception but of an ability to truthfully translate perception into
representation: "the camera may be said to make a picture of whatever it sees. The object glass is the eye of the instrument -the
sensitive paper may be compared to the retina." The same reading is also encouraged by references to the 'hand' of Nature (as
opposed to references to 'impressions' made by her) -presenting her as an artist able to copy faithfully, without allowing the hand
to lapse into either ineptitude or style. The contrast with Fox Talbot's description of his own attempts at drawing are instructive.
He writes of his 'faithless pencil' . . . [which] had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold,' indicating his sense of the
inadequacy of the embodied artist to the task of representation conceived as faithful copying -the trace of the artist's body as the
index of failure. In the case of the miraculous images the role of the artist is abolished, but with photography one can only hope
to displace the function onto nature, not eliminate it. Geoffrey Batchen (1991:13-26) makes a similar point about the
ambivalence of early descriptions of photography as part of a different argument.
61 Barthes (1984:p82) makes the connection between photographs and miraculous images such as Veronica's veil.
62 The opacity (if not the novelty) of the photographic process persists even today, in the case not only of many spectators but
also of many (amateur) producers of photographic images. Relevant to my point concerning the way Fox Talbot chooses to
describe the photographic process is a story of a magic image he tells in "The Magic Mirror" (1830), an extract from which is
included in Mike Weaver (ed.) 1989:15-17.
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[Author Affiliation]
DAVID CLARKE
University of Hong Kong
Indexing (document details)

Author(s): David Clarke
Author Affiliation: DAVID CLARKE
University of Hong Kong
Document types: General Information
Publication title: The American Journal of Semiotics. Kent: 1992. Vol. 9, Iss. 1; pg. 49, 34 pgs
Source type: Periodical
ISSN: 02777126
ProQuest document ID: 778901931
Text Word Count 15323
Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com.monstera.cc.columbia.edu:2048/pqdweb?did=778901931&sid=28&Fmt=3&cl
ientId=15403&RQT=309&VName=PQD
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touch the cloth robe over the statue.42

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and to block the ears.

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1870. A Treatise on Relics. (Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter and Co.).

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