The iconographic narrative of Christian art after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council from a Peircean perspective

Abstract

This article aims to present the possible semiotic readings of works of art present in contemporary Christian churches, in the context of the changes brought about by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (CVII), highlighting both the aesthetic and theological aspects. In effect, the sacred images can also be analyzed within the scope of their iconicities, including their indexical and symbolic elements in a semiotics based on a Peircean matrix. In this sense, our aim is to present the variables involved in the possibilities of decoding the messages contained in sacred images, using the three universal categories proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce, which, in the context of art, can be correlated as: a) pure feeling as contemplation (firstness); b) immediate otherness as an aesthetic experience of the here and now (secondness); and c) mediation as enjoyment of art (thirdness). On the other hand, we will borrow from Maria Giovanna Muzj the classification of the places where we find the images and the symbolic relationship in the church: in the privileged and secondary aspects of their positioning, to understand how art and architecture, in their iconicity, act as propellers of a semiotics of a character that is not only aesthetic, but also theological.