The Principle of Personification

Hardly any other imaging technique was more successful in the early modern period then the personification. Allegorical context, created to the large extent out of these embodiments, has dominated the arts, whereby on occasion, the extensive and increasingly more complex personification image programs began to fluctuate in ambivalence. Although the interest in this pivotal cultural technique arose as early as the end of the middle ages, the principle `personification' received new impulses from the `rediscovery' and union with mythological elements in the 14th and 15th centuries. All of Europe celebrated the return of the ancient gods, who by then detached from their original context, to the coeval viewer embodied primarily abstract characteristics and principles. The discrepancy between the `disembodied projection' of the middle ages and the corporeal figures of the gods discovered by the Renaissance for its own purposes has previously been described by Walter Benjamin. The success of the new form of representation can be attributed not least to this strained connection.

The goal of our research group is to apply the viewpoints of various disciplines to reveal the forms and functions of this pivotal cultural technique in its critical early stages lasting from the late middle ages to the 18th century, a period that must be considered fundamental for the reconstruction of the modern image conception.