On Red and White Cheeks: Jakob Balde’s Poetic Ekphrases on a Triptych by Christoph Schwarz in the Light of the Scholastic Theory of the Passions

Smeesters, Aline
(2024) Motus mixti et compositi: The Portrayal of Mixed and Compound Emotions in the Visual and Literary Arts of Europe, 1500–1700 — ISBN: [978-90-04-69460-6], p. 220-249, published

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Abstract
The neo-Latin poetic corpus by the Jesuit Jakob Balde (Ensisheim 1604 - Neuburg-an-der-Donau 1668)), the so-called “German Horace”, contains several ekphrases of religious paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries. This contribution focuses on two of these poems, describing two panels of a religious triptych by the Munich painter Christoph Schwarz, representing respectively a St. Catherine of Alexandria and a Virgin and Child in a glory of clouds. It tries to show how Balde’s insistance on a pictorial detail, the red-and-white colour of the characters’ faces and cheeks, can refer to different levels of symbolic meaning, and in particular, how it can be read against the background of the scholastic theory of the passions and of their bodily impact.
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Smeesters, A. (2024). On Red and White Cheeks: Jakob Balde’s Poetic Ekphrases on a Triptych by Christoph Schwarz in the Light of the Scholastic Theory of the Passions. In Karl Enenkel et Walter Melion (ed.), Motus mixti et compositi: The Portrayal of Mixed and Compound Emotions in the Visual and Literary Arts of Europe, 1500–1700 (p. p. 220-249). Brill. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/269484