Schatten und Kopie im Sakraltheater. Der auto sacramental als ikonologisches Reflexionsmedium

Abstract

This article proposes autos sacramentales as a means of reflecting on images and their presence in the context of religion. Exploring the context of a presence culture in Catholic Spain and of sacramental representation as a wider European issue of pluri-confessionality, the auto sacramental emerges as an image-sensitive subject. Revisiting 17th century art debates, two figurations, the “parable of the seaside shadows” and the “copia divina”, are used to illustrate the plays’ ‘dramaturgy of doubling’ from the perspective of iconology. The early modern visual and material culture finds its way into the sacramental plays through a ‘poetics of transubstantiation’. Thus, in El verdadero Dios Pan (1670), Calderón uses ‘image transfiguration’ in the moment of change of substance, transforming a painting into a sculpture of a saint. Likewise, in El divino Narciso (1689) Sor Juana employs an elaborate image performativity, re-enacting for example the desire for images in the absence of the (sacred) body. These poetic modes sacralize the stage and mediate the presence of what they represent.