'See the Bridegroom Cometh; Go out and Meet Him'. On Spiritual Progress and Mystical Union in Early Netherlandish Painting

Falque, Ingrid
(2014) Imago Exegetica: Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400-1700 — ISBN: [9789004262003], p. 361-385, published

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Abstract
Siet, de brudegom comt; Gaet ute hem te ontmoete. Jan van Ruusbroec’s Geestelike Brulocht begins with this well-known sentence from the Gospel of Matthew (25,6), which then serves as a structure for the whole tract. By doing so, the Brulocht offers the reader a subtle description of the spiritual life, the goal of which is union with God. In this article, by focusing on the strategies and the themes/metaphors developed by Ruusbroec in his works and by the pictorial devices that we can observe in Early Netherlandish paintings, including devotional portraits, I show how images can be understood as a “mise-en-image” (or visualization) and as visual instruments that both show and explain the complexity of the spiritual quest leading to the union with God in the Late Middle Ages.
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Falque, I. (2014). ‘See the Bridegroom Cometh; Go out and Meet Him’. On Spiritual Progress and Mystical Union in Early Netherlandish Painting. In Walter Melion, James Clifton, Michel Weemans (ed.), Imago Exegetica: Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400-1700 (p. p. 361-385). Brill. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/46003