Reliquary arms and Vanitas: Inscriptions of time, space and matter in fragments and tales of the body, a sculptural approach

Abstract

The article studies the fragmented body's power in the relationship between relics, reliquary arms and contemporary sculptural production. Focusing on the period between the 16th century and today, it opposes reliquary arms with objects whose conceptual and artistic structure deals with this subject. A cross reading is carried out between the reliquary arms of the Cathedral of Viseu and the Museum of São Roque, of Clara Menéres' "Reliquary" (1970) and of Grécia Paola's "Vanitas Hands" (2018). The study re-examines the definition of relics through the action of materiality, temporality, and sacredness of the body-relic, emphasizing the value and the narrative of the forearm-hand in Ovid's myth of Midas and in artistic production. Based on Peter Brown, Walter Benjamin, Gonçalo Tavares, and Jean Brun the place of the aura, cult value and exhibition value of the relic, reliquary and artistic body-object is examined. The relic, the reliquary, and the contemporary production intersect in an interdisciplinary study as to the symbolic power of fragments and tales of the body. Fragments speak of the body's absence of the totality and evoke its prosthetic and poetic figuration through the anthropomorphic reliquary, opening to the equations of a story that is incomplete and available to the imagination and spirituality. Therefore, the relic is analysed as a sensorial vestige and the study tackles the inscriptions of tales, time and space in sculptures, relics, and reliquary arms featuring the representation of a fragmented body.