Transmediality and the Mystery of Transformation in the Holy Land Pilgrimage Experience, Real and Imagined

Abstract

Recreations of the architecture of the Holy Land together provide a key example of transmediality in the visual arts of Italy from the early modern period. Through the effort of Franciscan friars, who became the custodians of the sacred buildings in 1342, various media, including illustrated manuscripts, full-scale replicas, and printed books were all employed in order to simulate the pilgrimage experience in Italy. The special power of images depended upon interconnections with other media, to provide an embodied experience that could mimic movement and encounters with material entities in space. The interchange between media in itself implied an ongoing process of transformation from the space of memory and imagination to real space. The buildings, as the subject of all of these various representations in diverse media, maintained a unique aura, which seemed to elide with the fundamental mysteries of transformation that defined the Holy Land pilgrimage experience.