Madonna del Parto, par Piero della Francesca

Representations of divinity confront the fact that, all too often, a picture is worth a thousand words. Giving up the prescriptive assumptions intrinsic to the (theoretical / theological) discursive mode, provides the basis for a descriptive understanding. Consider the birth of Jesus according to the gospel of Luke, a narrative motif refigured by Piero della Francesca in Madonna del Parto. An empirically founded apprehension of this object relies upon the anthropologist's grasp of its active properties: the divine Word penetrates a virgin's closed /open body; the artist transposes that which can not be represented into gestures that open / close the body's veils. The interaction between the image and he / she who penetrates it appears to be governed by the relational and cognitive structure of reciprocity. The embedding of a humanised divinity upon a blind wall is the result of optical and volumetric processes whereby the onlooker is drawn into the setting - he / she is put on the spot - and thereby implicated hic et nunc in the mental (re)construction of the scene portrayed

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  Claude Macherel•Études rurales•1979

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