Face-à-face avec l’ange: du regard frontal de l’art byzantin au « regard à la caméra »

The frontal, hieratic gaze of the Byzantine and, later, Romanic angel in Christian iconography fades away as humanism triumphs during the Renaissance. The angel looks away from the spectator, reflecting changes in religious and ideological practice and the reception of cult images. In Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders identifies angels through other details (whether iconic, pictorial or particolare). The “regard à la caméra” directed at the viewer and the interplay between actors’ gazes renew the former interaction with the now (dis-figured) angel. The interplay between images and propaganda in Byzantine economy as well as in the modern Western world and its media is transformed by the German director into a new questioning of History – not far from a medieval sense of the “marvelous”.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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