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Diana and Juno Destroyed: Statues and Pagan Deities in two Meisterlieder by Hans Sachs
Author(s) -
Beringer Alison
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the german quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.11
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1756-1183
pISSN - 0016-8831
DOI - 10.1111/gequ.12098
Subject(s) - statue , german , iconoclasm , subject matter , art , subject (documents) , literature , art history , object (grammar) , history , philosophy , sociology , archaeology , pedagogy , linguistics , library science , computer science , curriculum
This essay analyzes two of Hans Sachs's Meisterlieder which treat ancient tales of a statue and its destruction. Both unpublished, these songs have not received scholarly attention, and yet their subject matter gains a particular resonance against the background of the early modern debate in German regions on images and their proper function. Drawing on a distinction made in ancient Greek between an eikōn and an eidōlon , the essay explores how the songs depict different attitudes towards statuary: what a statue is, what it claims to represent, and how its representational strategies can fail or be foiled. Through comparison with Sachs's purported source, the German mythographer Johannes Herold's work, this essay posits that both songs suggest that iconoclasm can be an appropriate response to statues.