The Altarpiece-Prints of Saint Diego of Alcalá Metamorphosis and Expansion of the Devotional Ecosystem in the Counter-Reformation

Abstract

The article analyzes, based on the premises of anthropological iconology and visual studies, three prints dedicated to Saint Didacus of Alcalá, produced between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with the aim of reconsidering their function within the devotional ecosystem of post-Tridentine Europe. The "vicarious visibility" of these images, together with their portable condition, contributed to multiplying the praesentia of the saint beyond the chapel where his relics rest, the epicenter of his miracles. The innovation of this study lies in the formal and typological analysis of these engraved images and in the formulation of a pertinent theoretical framework for their examination. The author proposes the category of "altarpiece-prints" to designate this formal model of narrating the Wunderviten. Their fragmentary and sequential structure—evocative of Gothic hagiographic altarpieces and Byzantine vita icons—offers an adaptation of the altarpiece language to the printed medium. The study concludes that the emergence of this format may have responded to the need to articulate new devotional practices —effective both in Reformed Europe and in Catholic territories, in Europe as well as the Americas— through images capable of maintaining, extending, or renewing the experience of sacred presence beyond the institutional framework of worship.