New Publication: ‘Images and Indulgences in Early Netherlandish Painting’ by Miyako Sugiyama

This book demonstrates the relationships between images and indulgences in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish art. In the Roman Catholic Church, indulgences served as a way to reduce temporal punishment in purgatory for one’s sins. Indulgences could be obtained by reciting prayers and performing devotional practices. Penitents could earn this type of devotional indulgence with the aid of paintings and other artifacts that possessed theological, historical, and aesthetic values as well as performative and promissory ones. In this study, we explore not only the power of indulgenced images but also the power of their audiences, creating a way to communicate with the divine.

Miyako Sugiyama is an art historian specializing in early Netherlandish art. She received her Ph.D. in Art Science from Ghent University in 2017. She was the recipient of a Flemish government scholarship (2013–14), a Kress Foundation Travel Grant (2016), and a Japan Student Services scholarship (2015–17). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo. Her research focuses on the functions of images and the relationships between art and devotional practices in the Netherlands in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Harvey Miller: Distinguished Contributions to the Study of the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands (HMDC)

IV+193 p., 10 b/w ill. + 126 colour ill., 220 x 280 mm, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-912554-58-4
Languages: English
Retail price: EUR 50,00 excl. tax

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