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Tactility and Devotion in
Personal Devotional
Portrait Diptychs
Jessica Buskirk, University of
California, Berkeley
There is some evidence that
devotional diptychs like Hans
Memling’s Martin van
Nieuwenhove Diptych (1487)
were intended to be set up on a
flat surface with their wings at an
angle to each other, giving them an
identity as three- (rather than
two-) dimensional objects. This
paper looks at Memling’s habit of
fictively crossing the boundary of
the picture plane with
illusionistic ploys such as fake
frames in light of the diptych’s
actual three-dimensional status.
Conceived of as an object in the
round, the diptych joins other
artifacts in fifteenth-century
devotional material culture that
were intended to manually
manipulated, like rosary. The
tactile character of the diptych, I
argue, deepened the emotional
resonance that already adhered in
their images of Madonna, Child and
patron.
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