Publication details
'An idol emerged from the barbaric night.' Scaling the Majesty of Foy between Ancient Gaul and Modernism
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | A famous passage in the Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis (I, 13, early eleventh century), reveals Bernard of Angers’ shock at the “paganism” of the reliquary statues in the south of France. Asking his companion Bernerio what he thinks of the gilded, gem-covered statue of Saint Géraud of Aurillac, he muses: “Quid tibi, frater, de ydolo?” letting slip the word “idol.” Later he repents, even becoming the advocate of the miracles of Sainte Foy, whose gilded statue-reliquary bears the face of a fourth-century Roman emperor. Nine centuries later, André Malraux, the great advocate of “scaling” the past with modernist artistic forms in his Musée imaginaire (1954), described Romanesque statues as “idols” and the Majesty of Foy as seeming to “emerge from the barbaric night.” Modern research has almost obsessively reproduced this fascination with the statue: the title of Beate Fricke’s 2007 monograph mentions idolatry (Götzendienst) in German, while the English translation (2015) further accentuates the thematic opposition between “Fallen Idols” and “Risen Saints.” In this paper, I reflect on the enduring fascination with Foy’s sculptural presence, which seems to have enchanted medieval devotees, Malraux, and contemporary researchers alike. I attempt to situate this fascination between two apparently opposed poles, which may shed light on our modern gaze on Foy’s Majesty. Firstly, I would like to (re)place the statue in its Gallic context. Alongside Roman busts, a whole section of material culture, largely ignored in the historiography, that recalls the archaic mask of Fides: local Gallo-Roman metal statues, inspired by Roman art but presenting essentializing features. These images undoubtedly inhabited parts of the rugged Gallic landscape described by Bernard; their staring eyes so reminiscent of Foy’s, conjuring up a different mental geography for Romanesque statues. Secondly, with Malraux but also Soulages’ “artistic awakening” at Conques, the immediacy (and Modern imaginary) of Foy’s statue can only be understood through the prism of an artistic modernity radiating from Paris fascinated with the “primitivism” of the “provincial Romanesque.” |
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