An Empty Grave and Two Feet: Presence by Absence in Middle Dutch Lives of Christ

This paper explores how the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ was discussed, explained and visualized in printed Middle Dutch Lives of Christ produced in Antwerp between 1480 and 1520. Aimed at an audience of lay and religious alike, these books were produced within a creative community where various branches of cultural production (printers, painters, and poets) dovetailed both in production and in consumption: the guild of Saint-Luke. Both the resurrection and ascension are marked by images in which Christ is not or only partially present, yet at the same time this absence indicates and even celebrates the very presence of Christ on earth and in heaven. Discussing a variety of texts (a poem, a prayer cycle, a dialogue), I will analyze this tension between absence and presence and thus the interplay between text and image in (post-)incunabula and in the votaries’ meditative practices in the decades before the Reformation