From the Site of Presence to the Medium of Representation, and Beyond: The Fluid Epistemology of Imagery in Post-Reformation Poland-Lithuania

My ultimate purpose in this essay is to provide evidence for a pan-European nature of the epistemological shift in Western early modernity that, according to Hans Belting and Victor Stochita, triggered the birth of a new conceptual category of 'art'. In order to give this assertion a manageable scope, I have restrained my material to a few selected examples of early seventeenth-century Polish-Lithuanian visual culture, which—along the theories of Belting and Stoichita—could be seen as 'art'. If the Polish-Lithuanian context, which I provide to the reader, can serve as a useful test for the pan-European purview of an early modern epistemology of images, it owes this property to the nature of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a place of contact between different cultures and religions. And herein lies the critical potential of the visual culture produced in this geographical locale: the coexistence of diverse confessional practices within the Polish-Lithuanian state, as well as fraught relationships between members of various religious and social groups, can cast additional light on our understanding of an early modern epistemology of images across Europe. Such frame of reference includes the beholders' attitudes to images, and acts of iconoclasm that have not previously been considered in English-language scholarship. Importantly in this regard, and atypically for Anglo-American Art History, Polish-Lithuanian visual culture ought not to be seen as a source of auxiliary case studies, but as crucial participant in early modern European culture whose examination can elucidate a more nuanced theory of the development of the Western category of 'art'.