Anca MANOLESCU

Original title: L’omnivoyant de Nicolas de Cues: tableau ou icône?

Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue 

Keywords: Icon, Path of mystical knowledge, Picture, Theory of image.

The treaty De visione Dei, with the alternative title De icona, was translated in French by Agnès Minazzoli as Le tableau ou la vision de Dieu. The path of mystical knowledge commences indeed with an image of the All-seeing: an image which is „artistic”, „manufactured”, as the one produced by the art of the „great master Roger”. But in the „experiment” for which Nicholas of Cusa gathered his friends, the Benedictines of Tegernsee, is this image regarded just as an artistic picture? Does the „meeting of eyes” between the monks and the portrait not have the intensity of a personal communication? Hence, we wonder if Nicholas of Cusa does not regard this image as both a picture and an icon. The picture manufactured by artistic craft, the icon that houses the presence of the divine – what is the relation between these two instances of image in the cardinal’s thought? It has already been said that Nicholas of Cusa has phrased the content of medieval Wisdom in the modern language of the Renaissance. But doesn’t he also propose a new way of relating to the image of the divine? A way that blends concepts from both Eastern and Western Christianity and still manages to innovate on both „official” theories of image.