Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (44.2011)

and transformation) can never be crystallized into
a static image in any strictly Literal way. Invisibility
and visibihty here come to a difhcult, almost aporetic
confrontation. An additional question is therefore:
how do the immaterial dimensions that shimmer
through the motif, and particularly articulations of
process, inňltrate a visual and static medium?
We can hrst posit as a general conclusion that the
iconographie motif also has the touch as its visual
epicentre: almost ail narrative details disappear from
view so that the tactile interaction between Jesus
and the Haemorrhoissa forms the Condensed axis
of composition. Notwithstanding the fact that it is
never just the split second of the "mere" touch that
is represented, but rather - as an iconography of
the — a condensation of the few preceding
and successive moments before, during and after the
touch, it is nevertheless clear that it is the touch as
/TwqA that gives the iconographie benchmark. We
stated that the tactile aspect of the motif almost
paradoxically médiates a feeling of potentiality: the
touch is intrusive and contaminating, but at the same
time uniting, generative, healing. In the iconography,
it is the uniting touch, the touch of exchange, which
is foremost. It is the touch in its relational epistemo-
logical dimension (in which both the Haemorrhoissa
and Jesus simultaneously "feel" and "know"), it is
the intercorporeal healing touch (see the interaction
between both their bodies, often mdeed Consolidated
m the play of hands), it is the touch that looses A
In short: it is always the visual incorporation
or externalizing of the relational and intercorporeal
as locus of the potential.
Where potentiality is hard to capture literally in a
static image, this potentiality and its transformative
operation are in the iconographie motif bunched in
bodies that pull away from one another, that almost
how into one another, that barely touch one another.
Sometimes the play of hands is arresting, sometimes
rehned and ephemeral. How the bodies of Jesus and
of the Haemorrhoissa relate is not a graduai aspect,
but rather one of extremes: sometimes an aniconic
electrifying space vibrâtes between them both, other
times the bodies are placed so close to one another
that they seem intertwined. Let us return to the im-
ages. On the Brescia Casket, we discern a close bodily
interaction, the hands encircling an aniconic space
within which the unvisualisable is about to take place

[Fig. 5J. On the mural in the catacomb of SS Peter
and Marcellinus, powers of potentiality and trans-
formation between the bodies are represented in
almost the opposite fashion: Jesus and the Haemor-
rhoissa stand far apart, the touch is extremely délicate
[Fig. IJ. Does this translate the healing "mere" touch
as a typically early Christian phenomenon: the more
fteeting the contact, the more intense the effect?^ On
the miniature from the CoipAFbA o/ O#o Zff [Fig. 3],
the contact is again drawn out: the Haemorrhoissa
touches with just a single hnger. On the 5^-century
ivory relief we can discern yet another variant: here
the sequential dimension is magnihed, the bodies are
located in performative action and incorporate what
"is happening" [Fig. 2].
Secondly, from an anthropological reading, the
following is also crucial. The motif articulâtes itself
from a feeling of potentiality, and an important
aspect of this is articulations of Hux, huidity, how-
ing, of what is not in rAtW. This is translated into
a kaleidoscopic appearance together of a fountain,
How, wellspring, the modality of the episte-
mological dimension. They appear to be important
constants in the motif as articulations of sequential
process, of what is not in but in transition, of
what articulâtes itself though a relational modality,
of what brings about transformation and miraculous
These articulations of sequential process,
and more particularly huidity, are only given icono-
graphie form in a number of suggestive typological
coordination (primarily linked to the invisibility of
the Haemorrhoissa's how connoted as fountain or
hood, but also to Jesus who incarnates a howing
divine power). Only in one case do they perhaps
aniconically inhltrate the image: in a mosaic from
the church of the Kariye Djami in Istanbul (14^
Century), the Haemorrhoissa herself seems to hâve
become ftuid. At this last level, there is therefore
really a short-circuiting in the image, at least with
regard to its "représentative", iconic abilities.
We can now reverse the process, and in the second
instance this poses the question: where hâve affective
patterns, initially sketched on the basis of the narra-
tive form of the motif, been modihed or rehned in
its iconographie form, or where are they articulated
in a particular way?

55 SIDGWICK 2011 (see m note 37).

156