Margit Kern, Freie Universität Berlin: “Translation Processes in the Art of the Early Modern Age – Stone Crosses in New Spain”

In this lecture, Professor Margit Kern devotes new attention to a characteristic of stone crosses with the arma Christi (instruments of the passion) in sixteenth-century New Spain. Sometimes in the presentation of the arma heads are included that normally represent certain protagonists of the passion: Judas with his sack of pieces of silver hanging around his neck and a centurion spitting at Christ are highlighted and face each other. Interestingly, the local oral tradition often identifies these figures as "encomenderos" and caciques, i.e. as Spanish colonizers with members of an indigenous tribe entrusted to them by the crown as vassals. Until recently, art historical research had rejected this interpretation as a misunderstanding of the arma Christi iconography. Similar colonial new readings have often been described with James Lockhart's model of "double mistaken identity". This lecture aims to depict transcultural imaginations not as misunderstandings, but rather as test cases for the generation of new image semantics and to contrast them with similar new processes of semiosis in Europe.

Since 2011, Dr. Margit Kern has been Professor of Art History of Spain and Latin America at the Freie Universität Berlin. She is currently doing research at Yale University as the recipient of the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Dr. Kern is an Executive Board Member of the Carl Justi-Vereinigung e. V. and an External Member of the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Visual Culture of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Her publications include: Tugend versus Gnade. Protestantische Bildprogramme in Nürnberg, Pirna, Regensburg und Ulm, Berlin 2002 (Virtue versus Grace: Protestant Image Programs in Nuremberg, Pirna, Regensburg and Ulm; „España ia través de la cámara“. Das Spanienbild im Fotobuch, essay and editor, Leipzig 2008 (“España ia traves de la Cámara”: The Spanish Picture in the Photo Book); and “A Question of Conscience: El Greco’s Martyrdom of Saint Maurice and the Theban Legion” in El Greco: The First Twenty Years in Spain (Proceedings of the International Symposium Rethymno, Crete 1999, trans. 2005).