The cult of images in light of pictorial graffiti at Doué-la-Fontaine

In the late 1960s the archeologist Michel de Boüard excavated a motte at Doué-la-Fontaine, near Saumur. Buried within the earthen mound was a stone edifice that, between the mid-tenth and early eleventh centuries, had been transformed from a single-storey aristocratic residence to a multi-storey tower better suited to new military needs. De Boüard there discovered pictorial graffiti, incised in rough plaster across a wall in the blinded ground storey; among them were several unusually elaborate compositions. Building on his perspicacious analysis of the physical evidence, I situate the graffiti, dating from c.1000, in the wider matrix of contemporary visual and religious culture. The material enriches our understanding of a major historical phenomenon for which the millennial era is a watershed, namely the emergence and proliferation of cult images

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Cult · Epigraphy · Graffiti · Humanities · Tower · Visual arts · History · Medieval Architecture and Archaeology · Public Spaces through Art