Outside-In: The Monstrous Intrusion of Ornament into Sacred Narrative

• In Event: Ornament and Monstrosity: Visual Paradoxes in Sixteenth-Century Art

Abstract

The print series of the Passion of Christ, designed by Bruges painter-designer Marcus Gheeraerts, radically upended the conventional distinction between inside and outside, narrative and ornament. The fourteen engravings (ca. 1570-1580) apply the formal vocabulary and syntax of contemporary cartouche design yet violate the status of the frame as something exterior and apart. Architectural, vegetal, animal, and supernatural motifs merge with the Passion narratives to compartmentalize and hierarchize parts of the story. In one print, the logic of the frame is applied to construct a gaping hell mouth from fantastical hybrid creatures. Most disquietingly, biblical protagonists extrude from the frame as quasi-grotesques, eliminating any comfortable sense of containment or separation. The monstrous nature of Gheeraerts’s series stems from the crisis of genre it provokes as well as its sacrilege: ornament dares to participate in and compete with Christ’s sacrifice.

Author

• Tianna Uchacz, University of Toronto